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Nicole felt like an imposter in her job. Even though she had been at her company for over a decade, her brain continued to tell her that she wasn’t good enough. She was convinced the only way to manage life as a working mom was to pull back in her career. But in coaching, she learned how to step back from the imposter voice and shift it into something positive. She started naming and believing what made her exceptional as an employee, mom and human and her confidence increased. In this episode, Nicole shares several tools that helped her manage her imposter thoughts and create a balanced and fulfilling working mom life.
Topics in this episode:
Managing imposter syndrome – what is it and how do you deal with it?
A simple question that will shift any negative voice in your head
Why your brain freaks out when you think about letting go of the thought “I’m not good enough”
A foundational exercise to create confidence in your current job
What it takes to increase self-belief
What it takes to stop avoiding icky feelings like failure or disappointment
Show Notes:
Want to speak to me directly about if you should quit your job or stay? Then apply for a free breakthrough call by clicking here: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book
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Transcript
Intro
Welcome to the ambitious and balanced working mom podcast, the place for women who want to balance their ambitious career goals with their life as a mom. If you’re looking to feel more confident, decisive, and productive at both work and home then this is the place for you. I’m your host Rebecca Olson, let’s get to it!
Rebecca: Hey, working moms, I have a real treat for you today. I am interviewing a past client of mine, her name is Nicole. Nicole is a mom of two young kids and she is also at a director level in her company - she was one of the early people at her company, so she's been with them for well over a decade, I think she even says close to 15 years. And yet, she still struggles with feeling like an imposter, feeling like she's not good enough at her job, feeling like she never gets enough done, feeling like she's letting people down. It was constantly in her head, all of these swirling negative thoughts. And when she came to me, she told me that really what she was resigned to is that the only way she could really focus on being a good mom to her kids was she needed to pull back in her career. She was so overwhelmed that she needed to go down to part-time and she was considering asking her company to do that.
Now, here's the thing about her company, her company was extremely family-friendly. One of the most family-friendly companies of clients that I know - and I've worked with hundreds of women, I have seen lots of different companies, hers was very flexible. Nicole’s work allowed you to take time when you needed it and expected you to take time for your kids when you needed to. And even though she was in that situation, she was still finding herself working 45-50 + hours a week, and just feeling so overwhelmed by everything that she had to do and feeling like she had to say yes to everyone. So that was the state that she came to coaching in. And in about three months’ time, she had truly shifted all of the internal dialogue within her; she'd not just shifted it, but she'd really learned how to manage it, that's probably a better way of saying it. Because all of that negative self-talk doesn't always just go away. Oftentimes, what we have to do is just learn how to not listen to it so often. And that's really what she did.
So this interview is all about how she got to that place. Because when we recorded this interview, I remember she had recently had a review with her boss and her boss even said to her, “I've just noticed over the last few months that you seem a lot more confident.” And he said to her, “I don't know if you're a total mess on the inside, but on the outside, it really feels like you are doing well and you have everything together and you are really thriving at work.” And she got to say to him, “actually, what's going on on the inside feels just like that. I feel very confident in what I'm doing. I feel really good about how I am managing work life.” And then her husband even said the same thing to her, just out of the blue told her, “I've really noticed a big change, it feels like you are really on top of things and you feel much more calm and present.” She is and she does. And so in this interview she shares how she went from this place of feeling like an imposter and feeling like she was always behind and that the only solution was to pull back in her career, to feeling this sense of confidence and where two people that know her very well can call out on her growth and see how much she's changed. What did she do? How did she do that? So you're gonna want to listen to this podcast for sure. However you are right now if you're walking or you're driving, but you may also want to come back and re-listen to this with a pen and paper handy because she really does talk about several of the exercises that we do in coaching to help shift her mindset from being an imposter to being confident. Alright, you're gonna love it. Let's get to it.
Shifting our mindset takes some work.
Rebecca: Welcome Nicole, I'm so excited to have you on this podcast today. I asked Nicole to come on, she is a client of mine that just recently finished six months of one-on-one coaching with me. I wanted to bring her on this podcast because one of the biggest transformations that took place for her in the midst of these six months was - and she is ultimately the one that said this to me, but she just talked so much about how her mindset shifted over the course of those six months. And I feel like when we talk about changing our mindset, or I like to say changing our thoughts because that's really all we're talking about - we're changing our thoughts. We're changing our perspectives. We're changing our beliefs. We're changing the words that are going through our head. That's really all we mean by mindset. So it's not this big, weird mystery of what a mindset is, literally all that means is the thoughts that are going through your head. So for Nicole, these thoughts really shifted for her in some pretty powerful ways and it had a really, really large impact, obviously, in the positive to the life that she has now. And I just really wanted to hear her experience in a very honest and raw kind of way, because so many people think that this is hard, and it is hard. But there's also an ability to do it. It's not difficult in the sense, it's not impossible, but it's hard in the sense that it takes some work. And so I really want to hear from her about the work that it took and some of the tools that she used, and that we used in coaching to really shift her thoughts and her mindset and talk about what happened ultimately when she did this. So thank you, Nicole, for being here and for your willingness to share.
Nicole: My pleasure, I'm so excited to be here and still feel like I'm a bit on a high after our six months together and just want to share with others about my experiences. And hopefully it will help other working moms.
Rebecca: I love it. Let's start out by telling us a little bit about you, how many kids you have, a little bit about what you do or whatever feels relevant to you.
About Nicole
Nicole: I’m Nicole Anderson, I have two little boys. I had them late in life, so I'm in my early 40s. And they are almost five and three and a half and they certainly keep me on my toes.
Rebecca: My boy is four and a half, and then I have an older girl who's seven. But boys at this age - there is something about his energy that was not like my daughter's energy in the slightest. So the fact that you have two of them at roughly this age, I'm feeling it for you.
Nicole: Thank you. Yeah, it really came alive for me when I was at a birthday party one time and I think I was pregnant with my second. My oldest just ran around and did nonstop circles, just non stop. And I look over and there's this adorable little girl who's about a week's age difference from David, and she was sitting calmly playing with her mom on the blanket. I was like, Oh, hmm, okay, I'm not crazy. It's a thing. It's a real thing.
Rebecca: It's a real thing. I remember my daycare provider that we sent both of our kids to, she was amazing. And after he was born, I started having some conversations with her about him and the differences. She's like, Oh, yeah for sure. There is a difference between girls and boys. Energy wise it is in fact different - not all of them, of course, we can't say it about everybody. But generally speaking the energy between boys and girls at a young age is very different. My son comes up behind you and he just rams you with his head and you usually don't know he's coming and you're just like, please, personal space. I need some personal space. My daughter never did stuff like that - the headbutt that is. Okay, so we have a sense of what home life is like for you, it's very energetic and chaotic. So tell us about work life.
Navigating work as a new mom.
Nicole: Yeah. So I'm a director of an organization that is about 100 people right now. I started the company about 11 years ago, we were 15 people at the time. When I joined the company, there weren't really any other new moms right, new working moms. And so you know, years down the path, I was really just like the second new working mom in the company when I got pregnant. It was really just like a year after my other coworker. So it really felt like we were trying to navigate it all and figure it all out together. Navigating, what is maternity leave? How long do you stay out, creating our first pumping room. You know, really figuring out what career growth meant as a working mom and how to navigate both that side of me that loved my children and loved being a new mom, something I didn't think that I wanted to be for a very long time. And so I was just very excited about that role. But I also wanted to grow and advance professionally. I had heard this phrase at one point, you can have it all but not all at the same time. I liked that phrase because it helped to relieve some pressures but at the same time, I didn't love that concept because it felt like I had to put parts of me on hold or on a shelf and I had to wait to advance my career if I wanted to be a mom to my kids and vice versa. So I struggled for a while. I carried on doing what had made me successful to that point. I just leaned in and said yes to everything. I worked late at night, a lot of weekends...my poor husband...It was part of my every day.
Rebecca: This is what success looked like for you. Your company is fairly, I'm going to use the phrase family-friendly just generally speaking. I mean, the culture, the mindset...from top-down, it's like, they value parents, and they want you to be great parents, and they give you flexibility and there's a lot of grace for employees at this company, which is amazing because of course, not everybody has that. And yet, it still wasn't working for you, which I think is a really important thing to note. Because we often think, if I just had a different company, or if I just had a different boss, or if the culture was X, Y, or Z, or if we had better maternity leaves, or if I could be more flexible...we think about wanting all of our circumstances to change in our work, that somehow that's magically going to create balance in our life, or make us feel better about us, or whatever it is, right? And here you are, you have a great company, it's for sure better than average in terms of really supporting working parents, and you still weren't able to experience the kind of working mom life that you wanted. Tell us a little bit about what that experience was six months ago when we started this process.
Feeling like you’re in the hamster wheel of life.
Nicole: I love that you pointed out that support was there. We're 65% women. The leaders of the company adapted very quickly when we said, hey, we need a pumping room, they're like, great, what else do you need - the best support was definitely there. But I had this internal perspective of looking around and seeing what other people were doing and that I had to keep up and I had to do all these things. Some of it was part of my own DNA of like, wanting to do more, wanting to be perfect, you know, all of that. I remember very clearly sitting in the car during our first call, I felt stressed, I spent a lot of time anxious...intense was the word used to describe me by some close loved ones. There were a lot of late nights, there were a lot of long to-do lists that were very overwhelming - and I still have to-do lists, they're long even now, but before they were all-encompassing and just this constant feeling like I didn't have enough time in the day. And the reality was I think that there weren't very many days when I left the day feeling energized and motivated. More often than not I felt like I was in a hamster wheel. And as we started talking I started realizing a lot of it was rooted in this feeling of not being good enough. So I have to do more, I have to do better, I have to be perfect. It was a few calls in and I remember very clearly us talking and I was convinced I needed to quit my job, I needed to find something else, if I was ever going to fulfill my purpose - it was this big thing, this big pie in the sky purpose, it was out there. But there was so much sadness and fear because I did love my company so much, but I felt like I just had to make that choice. That was the only choice. And then in that same call, I was thinking if I could just move to part-time...if my problem is there's not enough time in the day to do everything, then let me just agree to do less and then I'll just move to be part-time. And then of course, all the reality is well, that's going to hold me back professionally and all of those things.
Rebecca: Okay, I'm gonna stop you there for a second. Because I really want to talk a lot about the mindset shift. And so if you think back to the dominant thoughts, or the dominant mindset that you had at that time, if we kind of got down into the nitty-gritty - you've named a couple of things like there's not enough time, or I should be doing more, I have to keep up or I'm not good enough. Those are literally just thoughts that went through your head a lot. Are there any others that really come to mind as being like - I was really stuck in this thought pattern at that time, and it obviously wreaked a lot of havoc.
I'm not good enough mindset.
Nicole: Yeah. I mean, really the root of it, I think was that feeling of I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm a fraud, I don't deserve to be in this position that I'm in, I don't know enough. That really was the root of the voice in my head. And the stories in my head really stemmed from that mindset.
Rebecca: How long do you think that mindset had been there?
Nicole: I remember being in sixth grade and having those thoughts. This is something that's carried with me for quite a bit. And so my anecdote was always just to do more. Do it better, be perfect, right?
Rebecca: Yeah. Because if you did more, or you did it right, or you did it perfectly, then you would prove that that's not true. Versus just not believing those thoughts or not listening to them. And we worked on really selectively hearing the thoughts that are more useful to you, and letting go or minimizing you listening to the thoughts that aren't that useful to you. Through the process you learned that there were multiple voices coming to you. You just were really really tuned in to one radio station, which was I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not doing enough...and It was causing you to overwork, basically. So we had to shift the dial.
You can create a different story.
Nicole: The question that you asked me several times that I struggled with more than anything was, and why is this not true? Because in my head, it was so true, so ingrained. And it was in these aha moments when I realized like, oh, wait, this thing that I've been carrying around as truth and that has been really guiding all of my actions - it's not true. I can create a different story, there are other options. And that was mind-blowing...so simple.
Rebecca: For sure, if you've basically indoctrinated yourself with that radio station...and I think about it in this way a lot of times - if we think about it in the negative, we think of somebody being brainwashed. What we're thinking about is them being told something over and over and over again, so much so that it becomes their mindset and their way of thinking and they have no other ability to have perspective of other possibilities of ways of thinking, you know, they've been brainwashed, ultimately, but it's just because they've been told the same thing over and over and over again. Just like you told yourself - nobody necessarily told you externally, but you are telling yourself you’re not good enough. We all have this internal dialogue with ourselves that starts at a really young age. And we just indoctrinate ourselves with that unless we stop and take a moment and assess it and decide, is this really true? How could it not be true? Do I really want to listen to this radio station anymore? Is it helpful to me? Is it useful? We really just stopped for a while there and said: let's just take an inventory of the station in your head and let's decide if this is what's going on in there and why is the station brainwashing you? So you say that this voice has been with you since you were a kid. And I know exactly what that voice is. For me, I have a voice that I could talk about for sure it talks about my inadequacy, ever since I was a kid and then needing to perform for people and so forth. But it's not even about thinking that it came from childhood...we don't have to go back and determine what happened in life that might have sparked it. But one of the questions that we ask in coaching, and I asked of you, is why do you think your brain still defaults to it? Because our brain doesn't offer a thought that it doesn't think is useful to you. Now being at the age you're at now as an adult, why do you think that thought continued to be dominant for you as an adult?
Nicole: That is a really good question. I don't know if I have a good answer for it. I think there must have been elements of that were feeding a need somehow...like one of the things that we talked a lot about early on was this recognition of how much validation from other people that I was needing. And some of that was baked into those feelings of inadequacy. But yeah, I don't know. I'm sorry, I don't have a really good answer.
Our thought patterns become a habit.
Rebecca: Yeah, we do know for sure that it was a pattern, we can always default back to that because we live in this world of habit and our brains operate in habit. And so it just likes to think the thought that we've been thinking all the time. So we know it's just this habit of a thought. But one of the things that strikes me is that thinking that I'm not good enough, and I'm not smart enough, or there isn't enough, what it would send you into was action mode. And so if we stripped that away, what are you going to use to get you moving? It was the basis of success in your brain to constantly berate you and tell you you're not doing enough. So you move into action mode, and you keep going and you're more successful because you're gonna put more effort into it. It's almost like whipping the horse in a terrible way. As we're reflecting on it, that's what really strikes me is it was your motivator, even though it was negatively motivated and it made you feel terrible - It also made you really successful.
Nicole: You're absolutely right. Thinking about the examples of procrastination that we talked about and how I had procrastinated, and many times it was because I felt like I didn't have the right answers, or I didn't know enough to be able to get to it. But when I got to the point of like, I've got to get this done, I have two hours, It's got to be done, I get there. And that worked because I ended up having something that I could deliver and feel okay about and it just moved me to action. Really moving the needle getting out of that...I don't know...analysis paralysis mode?
Rebecca: So in the process of tuning out of this radio station and tuning into another, part of that process was going to be how do you stay successful as a mom in your job? How do you keep in the action mode? Because that's something that helps you to be successful, but without this very negative voice that's kind of whipping you all the time. I'm curious what some of those tools were that really stood out to you and really helped shift you into a different radio station and into a different mindset that allowed you to still be successful, but without all of these terrible, icky, inadequate, ‘I'm horrible’ feelings that were coming with it.
Discovering your purpose.
Nicole: The first part was really the activity around finding my purpose and moving away from being convinced that I had to be doing something different in order to live my purpose. When we went through the activity of writing all the reasons why I deserve to be in my job, or what led me to be successful and the things that I had done to get me to where I was - I thought it was gonna be really hard to do. But it ended up being a long list, and I looked at the end of it going, oh! And then when we did the work to figure out that this is my purpose and by the way, you're already doing it. And there are ways that you can do that at home and at work exactly where you are. I'm already doing it now, or have the opportunities to live that now. And so that was really, I think, one of the more foundational activities that we did.
Rebecca: Yeah, I love that. Why do I deserve to be here? And how did I get myself here...I remember that session we had where we talked a lot about that, because the old radio station was telling you that you were a fraud, that you were an imposter, that it was other people that magically saw something in you that you don't see in you, but you just kind of walked through the door because they believed in you, and here you are, but you really shouldn't be here, and in any minute somebody is going to find you out and they're going to discover that I really shouldn't be doing this, and I shouldn't be leading this, and I don't have enough experience. That was the radio station, right? That was constantly going. And so we started a new radio station in your brain that said, actually, what was the path here? And I think you went through an exercise and you really thought what did I do? Like what have I done in my life and in my career, and in my journey that has brought me here? And shows that I'm equipped for this?
Nicole: Absolutely. I think once I had that foundation, some of the other tools became really, really helpful, like, I still feel anxiety, I still feel icky. But the difference now is acknowledging that it's okay to feel icky. And instead of trying to run from it, I look it in the face, sit down with it, figure out where it feels in my body, really understand it, deal with it, and then move on. Really trying to figure out why it's not a bad thing that is there. It's my body telling me that there's something to look for, or learn, or listen to, or adjust and that it was okay. So I think that was a really big, big shift, one of the tools that helped stop this spiraling.
Rebecca: Yeah, so I want to talk about that in a second. I love that tool. I'd love to hear your thoughts on why the foundational work that we did around your purpose and around who you were as a person, why that work had to be done first before you could get to some of the other stuff and the other tools later. What are your thoughts on that?
Nicole: I think the work that we did, I think it was just so foundational, it was so ingrained in everything that I was doing. Without going through that and breaking through some of the assumptions and stories that I've been carrying around in my head about who I was and what I was bringing to the table and my purpose and all of that. It just it felt very foundational because it was the block, it was the brick wall in front of me, you know, I could manage my calendar...we did a bunch of work just figuring out how to navigate the day and how to stop at 5pm when I wanted to, or stop at 4:30pm or whatever that time was, but if I couldn't get to a place where I was accepting who I was and that...
Rebecca: Believing in yourself in a different way.
Self-doubt.
Nicole: Yeah, absolutely. The self-doubt I think at some point about halfway through we were just acknowledging you know, I feel like that self-doubt, that constant questioning, am I doing the right thing? Am I saying the wrong thing? It just kind of melted away. It feels like it was right around the time or just after we did this purpose work. We had done the facts and values work and this on top of really being aware when my brain was doing something and acknowledging what it was doing, and that I didn't have to accept it just because it had always done that and being able to shift that voice.
Rebecca: It had this foundational work of really believing in yourself, and ultimately knowing who you are at the core and believing in yourself and naming the deeper senses of purpose and identity and so forth. And building this other foundation, when we started to deal with how do you leave work at 5pm - we wanted to end the overworking that was going on at the same time, right. And so as we started to do that, it was going to require you to make some changes. That felt kind of scary because you are going to all of a sudden have to tell people ‘I'm leaving at 5 and I'm not logging back on again’, or you are gonna have to be much more selective about the meetings. I remember you said, ‘I think about 25% of meetings I don't have to be at, but that would require me telling them no’, that was really hard because we don't want to disappoint anybody and we want to be available to our team. And a lot of this is your team coming to you, and so you want to be a leader that's very available. So there was all of this stuff going on, that we were going to have to shift some perspective of and change the way you were operating. And if we didn't have that foundation of who you were at the core and just believing in yourself at the core, your brain was just going to use all of that as more evidence to why you're really not all that good and why you definitely are in the wrong place, and you're for sure an imposter - it would just continue to use it as evidence because we wouldn't have addressed it at the core level. Now, your brain can't use it as fuel anymore because you could always go back to, no, this is exactly who I am, and I know I should be here. Here's all of the reasons why there was a solid foundation that your brain really couldn't argue with anymore.
Nicole: Yeah, absolutely.
Allowing the icky feelings.
Rebecca: Okay, so then that foundation work happened. And then we started to work on some of these, like the overworking behaviors and the people-pleasing and the perfectionism and all of those kinds of things that were a result of you not feeling good enough. And so, one thing that you just mentioned was not avoiding some of those icky feelings, like expecting that saying no to a meeting request is not going to feel good, we're not going to try to change that it's going to feel bad to tell somebody I can't be there, I think you can handle it, but I'm not going to be there and be the support that you want me to be...that's just not going to feel good. And we're not going to change that, we're just going to allow that to feel bad. What happened for you when you really started to allow, instead of pushing back or label some of these icky feelings?
Nicole: The first thing was I realized that what I thought was gonna feel icky and bad, didn't always feel bad. Meaning that when I pushed back and asked the team to kind of take the meetings or do the thing, it was really giving them an opportunity to grow and develop. And so by me being there all the time, it potentially was actually hurting them. So by me stepping back and giving them the tools they needed to be successful, they can then thrive - which is really my ultimate goal as a leader.
Rebecca: Yeah, because you had the thought, if I'm not always available, and I don't come to every meeting, then they're not going to be successful. That was the thought that you had that went through your head, like for sure me being available is the best thing for them. And me coming to everything is the best thing for them and if I’m not then I'm setting them up for failure, right? That's the mindset, that radio station you were tuned in to, that was one we had to change and you had to think about that in a different way. And I remember we explored the other side of it, we said, well, what if that wasn't just true? How might it actually be true that it was better for them that you weren't always available? We pushed your brain to think differently.
Nicole: And I had immediate examples that I didn't even make the connection with, like conversations I had to have with my boss and say please step back, I need to be able to do something or try something that I haven't done before in order to learn it. So by you as my boss stepping aside, then it helps me to be able to grow. And it was just ironic that I had just had these conversations, and not even making the connection that I was doing the same thing to my team.
Rebecca: Yeah, so good. So we just flipped the thought we flipped the mindset around in that one. So not really avoiding the icky feelings. And then obviously, what you're telling us is that the icky feelings lessened considerably because you shifted the way you thought about them. The things that you thought originally were icky, don't feel icky anymore. You don't feel bad about them anymore in a way that you did. So that's when big results happened. What's another tool that comes up for you as you think about shifting thoughts and shifting your mindset?
How to deal with a spiraling mind.
Nicole: I think one of the challenges that I struggled with is what I mentioned earlier about the spiraling in my head. This past week was a really good example. There's just been some things that are going on, lots of feedback that's been coming in over the past couple of weeks from employees and from team members. And so it's just been spiraling a lot in my head. And one of the tools - it's so simple, but just doing a data dump of everything in my head and then taking a step back and seeing what I notice. And it was interesting, in the past couple of weeks, I've done this a couple of times. I get up early in the morning, I have my coffee in my quiet time and I just do the dump. The first time I did it, I was like, Huh, that's such a long list of everything in my head that feels like it's been keeping me up at night. I can actually tackle that...interesting. So that was one of the aha moments, was just getting it on paper. The other time that I did it, it was really fascinating because when I wrote down all of the things that were on my mind that I just couldn't get out of my head and in my gut, what I realized was that there was a theme with each of them, there was that feeling of inadequacy. Will I be prepared enough? Will I show up as authentic? What if they don't like me? Will I be good enough? And so then I could tackle the feeling of inadequacy and start going back to some of the other things that we had talked about, versus trying to work on all the little things on my list that were overwhelming because at the end of the day, it wasn't about those things, it was that I was allowing that voice of ‘I'm not good enough’ to surface again.
Rebecca: Give us even a little bit of how you do the brain dump. What's the process for you literally, it can feel really simple. But there's a lot of people out there that have never done anything like that. So we're talking about literally getting your thoughts down on paper. What do you ask yourself? What do you do?
Nicole: I'm a little bit of a weirdo, but I have to have the right paper and pen. That's the first thing. I can't let that be a barrier.
Rebecca: I don't think you're a weirdo. I think that's totally normal. I love it.
Nicole: I do it two ways. I have my favorite notebook, and like I said, I have to clear my space, I get up in the morning before the kids wake up, I have my coffee and a big glass of water, I feel refreshed and quiet. And then I just start writing. I think the first line is always the hardest. There's so much emotion that comes up right in the gut. Like I always feel it in my stomach and my gut. And so I just kind of forced myself to write that first thing, and I have to consciously tell myself, it's okay if it's not perfect. Because even that perfectionism still comes in, in these activities.
Rebecca: Even though nobody else is gonna read this, obviously, it's just for you. But still, you got to get it out there perfectly.
Nicole: And that's a good point. Because I have to consciously say, I'm going to throw this paper away when I'm done. I'm not going to keep it. And so that gives my brain permission to just be unfettered, right, just to be completely...
Rebecca: However you want to write.
Nicole: Exactly.
Rebecca: Do you have a question that you ask yourself that gets you into the brain dump?
It is okay to feel emotion.
Nicole: So the one that I did the past couple of weeks was really about what is it that's keeping you up? Give me everything that's creating anxiety. That was my trigger. I was feeling in my body that something is going on, because I'm feeling this anxiety that I haven't really felt in a while, so something's going on, let's start there. What is that? I also do a little bit of breathing work and listening to my body. I think that was one of the things that you had talked me through is just stopping and pausing. And I have for so many years thought feelings were a negative thing, you know, don't cry, don't be emotional. And I think part of the work, and some of the activities that we did together really started to break through that it's okay that I feel that emotion. And so instead of running from it, I would give myself time to just feel that. It's not long, It's 30 seconds. It doesn't take long. It was just a moment of centering.
Rebecca: I like to say that life is 50/50. I think that was first introduced to me, probably by my coach, my business coach, Stacy. And I think it was a concept that her coach, Brooke Castillo, talks about how life is 50% on the positive end of the spectrum emotionally and 50% on the negative end of the spectrum emotionally. It's all normal, all emotions are normal. That's the goal here is to not judge ourselves and the fact that we have negative emotions 50% of the time we are in that end of the spectrum...not necessarily at the far end, you know, we're not feeling depression, or feeling grief, you know, those are very far end of the spectrum, but we could be just feeling dissatisfied, or we could just be feeling uncomfortable. We could just be feeling something that's a little bit more on the neutral side. But regardless, every day we're going to have emotions on both ends of the spectrum. And if we always attempt to be on the positive side of the spectrum, there is just so much that we miss out on. There's a lot that the negative end of the spectrum is meant for on some level, like, I really do believe that negative emotions are useful to us to feel we actually want to feel them at times, they are a communication to us about our life. And they're telling us, you know, sometimes it's very tangible, like danger, danger, danger, like we want to feel danger, that's a negative side of the spectrum. But we want to feel it because something could be threatening us, and our body and our life, or kid's life or whatever, we want to have that emotion in our life. That's a drastic example, but our emotions are just tools. They're communication that our bodies have been designed with, to speak to us and give us information and tell us about our life and tell us what's going on and give us some clues into things. We don't want to ignore them and we don't want to dismiss them, and we don't want them to not be there. But we do need to take some space, as you're saying, to allow them to be there and to have a moment with it and see if you need to think about it further. Maybe there is something further that you need to explore with this? Whatever it's communicating to you, or do you just need to have a moment with it and let it go?
It’s okay to be vulnerable.
Nicole: What you just said is so so important, and I think it was a really big shift for me to be able to just accept. It was part of the accepting who I am and accepting that emotional side, which I don't know where it came from, I don't know if it's cultural, or society or just a female thing or what, but there's this, you know, this voice that says that it's not okay to feel emotion or to cry or to be vulnerable. And, you know, thank God for the Brene Browns of the world sharing the message out there about vulnerability...but what you just said is so, so important.
Rebecca: So I'm curious what the result has been for you having gone through lots of mindset shifting, and laying a new foundation of the way you see yourself and the thoughts about yourself, and then having some of these tools. And obviously, we processed through a lot of that in coaching. And now you have them to use on your own, ultimately, where would you say you are today as a result of this process?
Nicole: The first thing that comes to mind is just a general calmness and competence that I have now. I was telling my boss, recently, we were talking about my coaching, and he was like, you know, I have noticed a difference and you seem calmer. And he asked if that was real, or if I was like the duck who is calm on top of the water but furiously kicking underneath. And I said I don't feel that way. I told my husband that later and he's like, you really are, you do seem calmer at home too. There's this just pervasive stress that I had before, this intensity that just was gone. And so with that came the ability to just be present. You know, being present is something I've been working on for a couple of years now. And it's a journey - I'm not saying I'm always present, but there's just a general sense that when I am with my kids, I am with my kids, when I am in a meeting with my team, I’m with my team, I'm not constantly thinking about all of the other things. And so, you know, just being able to be present has been such a gift.
Being in the present moment is a gift.
Rebecca: You're actually where you are, your brain and your body are in the same place at the same time. That's what being present ultimately is, right? You're able you have the tools in order to do that. So good. And I know another big thing that came out of all of these processes, like you had mentioned earlier that when you started the coaching process, you were pretty convinced that you probably had to leave the job and leave the company potentially, like for sure that that was going to be the solution. There was no other way. There was no way for you to be fulfilled, there was no way for you to really be confident in that role. There was no way that you could find balance. You know, that was it. And so obviously, that hasn't happened. That hasn't happened at all. What has happened in your work as a result of this coaching?
Nicole: Well, I think there's a shift in getting ready for the next thing versus kind of fighting and feeling like I was swirling and spinning and not feeling good enough. The shift now is, if I don't know how to do something in my job, to me, it's no longer a character flaw. It's like okay, this is a skill that I don't know yet and I haven't had a chance to practice it yet. I think in the past my brain was telling me it was hard so don't do it. That showed up a lot. But now it's like okay, let's lean into that like, okay, brain you're telling me this is hard and it's gonna take a little bit more work, It's gonna take a little bit more focus, and that's okay, great. That's part of the process and one day I won't have to think about this thing so heavily it'll become second nature and I'll be able to work on the next thing. So I think that shift from being a character flaw to, it's a skill, I got to learn it, I get the chance to practice something new.
Rebecca: So good, for sure your brain tuned into the old radio station when something felt hard, your brain would just use that as evidence and say, see, you really shouldn't be in this job, this should not be hard. And now because you’re not tuned into that radio station anymore when you see something hard, you just go, okay that’s interesting, I’ll have to put in some effort to figure that out, just like anything if I didn’t know something I’d have to put in some effort. It doesn't mean anything about me personally. It’s just I haven't practiced that before which means I need to spend some time practicing it.
Nicole: And I have validated this with some people that I work with, and I feel there is a difference in how I talk about those things as well. I think about a recent example, I was really struggling with it. In the past, I think I would have felt like I had to fake it or cover it up and prove that I could do it. But instead, I was able to say, you know what, this is a skill I have not learned yet, you are an expert in this, would you sit down and mentor me through this. And this created a really nice experience where I no longer feel like I am apologizing all day, my words are different and I show up more confident.
Immense results in coaching after just 3 months.
Rebecca: So good. This is so fun to hear you talk about the shifts. It is really useful for working moms to hear some of the inner thoughts that go on and that have happened, or that you have had to work at to get to the other side. And ultimately, it was just 6 months that it took us to do this! Which is mind-boggling to me and in reality, I remember when we did a midway check-in about where you are at, and how you have progressed in your goals, you were nailing this 3 months in, you were feeling immensely different.
Nicole: Yes I was going to say the same thing. I think the first half of doing the foundational breakthrough and the second half was really about fine tuning and using examples to test my assumptions. I was surprised!
Rebecca: Find all the hidden ways that your brain was trying to self-sabotage you and tuning into some of those things.
Nicole: Yeah, exactly. And I’ve done a lot of different coaching in my life and they have all been very helpful but there was something different about this experience. The transformation happened so fast and so dramatically. There is such a difference from when I sat in my car on our first call to when we were doing the close out session, I just felt like a different person. I am so grateful for the opportunity and I also know I have to keep on doing the work. I am no longer afraid of doing the work, it is a constant discipline.
Rebecca: I love that thought, it is a constant discipline. And it is! Self-development and managing your thoughts and becoming the person you want to become, and having the life you want to have, you gotta do some stuff! You gotta work on that. It’s not just going to happen to you, right? I mean, some people have these fairytale lives where they absolutely love it and are so happy, but that didn’t just happen to them, they did something to make it happen! They work on things on a daily basis to make it happen, for sure. I love that this has been so transformative for you and I’m curious if you can go back to our breakthrough call - which is the very first call I offer for free, where we talk about coaching and if it’s the right next step and I’m wondering if you can put yourself back to that call and what your thoughts where at that time that really said, I gotta do this, this is my next step in moving forward.
Nicole: I had followed you for a little while. I knew your process and the great success stories. I think for me, it was acknowledging that if I don’t do this, I can’t keep on living the life I’m living right now. I just can’t. It’s not an option. I'm not healthy mentally which is impacting my body, how I show up with my kids and at work, I’m not healthy. And I needed to tackle what was going on. And doing this brain-based coaching of really getting to the root that was going to create this transformation.
Rebecca: Had you tried a bit on your own pre-coaching?
Nicole: I had read some of the blogs and tried to have some conversations with people close to me, but I think part of where I was at the time was I didn’t trust myself to be able to do the work. It didn’t occur to me that I could do it on my own, if that makes sense.
Rebecca: We are a very individualistic society in America, where we think that we should be able to do things on our own, and we have a massive self-help industry here, and books that can solve all your problems - and there is no question that there are a ton of books that if you really digest them and did all of the exercises in them you could make some progress. But the 3 month, let’s dial it in, let’s get this done, let’s figure out what's going on and change it at the core, let’s get you into a foundationally new place...that for sure couldn't happen in any other way, I think, except for in coaching. It has been my experience personally in my own coaching journey with my various coaches, it sounds similar for you.
Nicole: Yeah, I think this next phase of joining The Collective that you started and journeying with other moms feels like a really nice and natural progression, but you’re right, that diving in and doing that one-on-one coaching and get fully real, and diving in fast, that was really incredible.
Rebecca: Thank you for being here, it has been so fun to hear you chat and have some insight into your brain. I think it is so useful to hear from other people's journeys, not just mine. I could share mine forever, but other people's journeys are very inspirational to hear and I love it. Thank you for your willingness to be here and be honest and vulnerable with us. Any parting words for working moms out there who are struggling to find that balance?
Nicole: Well something that you just said sparked something within me...It wasn't that long ago when I didn't feel that comfortable sharing the things that were hard, and that were on my mind because I felt like I had to know it all, and I think being brave enough to talk to other people about the challenges and connect with other moms, and realizing that oh, other people feel the same and you’re not alone in it.
Rebecca: Yeah, just permission to share your thoughts and your journey and receive the thought that you’re not alone and that other people have experienced it too and that there is help out there.
