Persistance vs. obstinance

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At some point in your journey to having a fulfilling and balanced working mom life, you are going to feel stuck. You are going to know what you need to do but have a hard time doing it because it feels hard or uncomfortable. That is obstinance. Obstinance is the strong desire for something without a willingness to do the hard thing to make it happen. Today on the podcast, I will talk about the difference between obstinance and persistence, the mindset of a persistent person and I will offer 3 steps to get you unstuck and moving toward your goals.

Topics in this episode:

  • The difference between obstinance and persistence

  • How feeling stuck is really just you being obstinate

  • The mindset of a persistent person

  • How investing in coaching is one of the most persistent things you can do to reach your goals

  • 3 steps to getting unstuck and moving toward your goals

Show Notes & References:

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Transcript


Intro

On this podcast, I help working moms go after a successful and fulfilling career while balancing the demands of motherhood. In other words, for most of you, the goal is to be successful at both work and home. But I know for many of you, you'll start to feel stuck along the way. You want to turn off your work brain at the end of a workday, but you just can't seem to do it. You want to leave work at 5pm, but there's always more to do. You want to prioritize working out, but there just doesn't ever seem to be time. At some point in the journey, you are going to feel stuck. And in today's podcast, I'm going to talk about that stuckness in a way that I've never really talked about before. I'm calling it obstinance. 


Obstinance is a strong desire for something without a willingness to do the hard thing to make it happen. But there is a way to move yourself out of stuckness or out of obstinacy and into persistence. And today we're going to talk about the difference between moving towards a goal feeling very obstinate and moving towards a goal feeling very persistent. We'll talk about the mindset of a persistent person as they go after goals. And then at the end, I'll offer you three steps that you can follow to start going after your goals more persistently. You ready? Let's get to it. 


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. 


Over the last several months, I've been pretty active on LinkedIn. Now, if you don't follow me there, I highly recommend that you do that. I'm consistently putting out new content, new ideas, and commenting on other peoples all of the time. And I have found LinkedIn to be a place that I have just really loved. I have started to build some real, genuine relationships and having some really good dialogue about what it means to be a working mom, to seek balance, to have fulfillment in our careers, in our life. 


And several weeks ago, I was in a LinkedIn conversation with a woman and we got on this topic and I was like, oh my gosh, this has to be a podcast. So here we are all over the place. 


From my coaching sessions with clients to comments to interactions on social media - I find inspiration everywhere for these podcasts and I bring them here to you. So follow me on social media, cause you never know when a dialogue that you and I may be having might turn into the latest, most helpful podcast episode, just like this one. 


You go after what it is you want.

Okay, so let's dive in. Today we are going to talk about the difference between persistence and obstinace. As an ambitious woman, most of us would probably be described as somewhat persistent from the people around us. We're GoGetters, we get it done, we don't settle. We have a high capacity and can often do more and juggle more than the average person. Many of us have desires for big careers. We want our work to matter, to be meaningful. People over the course of your life have probably said things like, well, it doesn't surprise me that you are at the top of your class, or you are as successful as you are, or you have worked your way up in the way that you have because you are persistent. You go after what it is you want. 


And that's sort of how I like to think about persistence. It's saying that you want something and then going after it, no matter what. Persistence often goes hand in hand with grit because in order for there to really be persistence, there has to be opposition. Otherwise we wouldn't call it persistence, we would call it ease. To be persistent is to inch towards a goal, regardless of how hard it is. 


You just listening to this podcast shows some level of persistence because it shows that you desire something to be different in your life - in this case, more balance, more fulfillment in your life, and you're willing to take the time to listen as an action towards that goal. 


But there's a difference between persistence and obstinacy. And this is what really struck me in this conversation I was having on LinkedIn with this working mom, the difference between these two things. Because oftentimes we think we're being persistent and we have a image almost like a self image of ourself as being GoGetters and persistent people, when really we're being obstinate. 


Obstinance is the consistent desire for something, but without the willingness to do the uncomfortable thing to make it happen. 

Persistence is that desire for something with a willingness to do the uncomfortable in order to make it happen. Obstinacy is the opposite of that. So in other words, if you're being obstinate, you are saying you want something, maybe you even complain about wanting it on some level, but you don't do anything about it. You only do the things that feel comfortable when you're going after something that you want. 


So you want to be more present, or you want to change jobs or prioritize your family, or you want to stop working late, or you want to feel more confident, or you want to have a more meaningful career, and you want to have more flexibility or time with your kids, or you want to make more money, or you want to feel less stressed or more calm and less busy - these are the things that you want. 


You come home, you complain to your partner that you want these things, you commiserate with your friends that you want these things and you think things like, I'll just do better tomorrow. But when push comes to shove, you don't do the hard thing. You don't make any changes to reach that goal. You're unwilling to let your boss be frustrated with you, so you just continue to attend those 6pm meetings and sacrifice the time with your family. 


You're unwilling to let your team feel overwhelmed, so you don't delegate and you just keep saying yes to more, which then causes you to work late and on the weekends. You're unwilling to let your partner take care of the kids or clean the house in the way that they want to do it, because it's not “as good as you”. And so you carry all of the responsibility. You're unwilling to feel behind or inadequate when 5pm rolls around and you didn't get everything done that you'd hoped to get done today, and so you keep working. 


You're unwilling to feel a little selfish and invest thousands of dollars in yourself and your happiness by hiring a coach to help you reach your career goals and your goals as a working mom, even though you've been stuck for years and you know that you can't figure it out on your own. 


This is obstinate. It's your unwillingness to do the hard thing or feel the icky emotion in order to reach a goal. So instead, you just yearn for the balance and the happiness and the time with your kids and the meaningful career. And you just sort of hope that it magically is different tomorrow. 


→ To just hope that your partner changes. 

→ To just hope that your kids are in a better mood tomorrow. 

→ To just hope that you can get more things done and checked off your list tomorrow. 

→ To just hope that nobody requests a meeting from you during a time that you set aside to work out in the middle of the day. 

→ To just hope that your work tasks are manageable so that you don't feel overwhelmed when you come home. 

→ To just hope that your boss notices your hard work and starts advocating for you. 


That is obstinate. 


But there is a way to move yourself from a place of obstinate towards a goal to persistence. And I want to walk you through those steps on how to do that. 


The mindset behind being persistent.

But before I take you through the steps, I want to talk a little bit about the mindset that somebody has when they are being persistent towards a goal. I think their dominant thought is, I can figure this out. Their thought is, “oh, this is working. I'm making progress.” Their mind is always thinking about how important reaching that goal really is, like holding the vision of what it is they want ahead of them and never losing sight of it. 


To be honest, I've never had a client that I would not categorize as persistent, because making a financial investment like $8,000, which is what it costs to work with me, that's $8,000 of an investment towards their goal. I cannot think of a greater act of persistence than financially investing towards what it is you want. That is you making a declarative statement to yourself, to your family, to the world, hey, this is what I want and I will stop at nothing to have it. That is persistence. 


And that's the mindset of a persistent person - whether they actually ever put money towards their goal or not. It's that they are willing to stop at nothing to have it. It is that important to them. They're always thinking I'm going to figure this out. I know I can figure this out. And they're willing to do what it takes. 


Persistent people feel very committed and connected to what it is they want. 

They know why it's important to them and so it feels very purposeful and almost inevitable to them. Persistent people feel very compelled towards what it is they want and they're anticipatory of having it. I want you to notice that as I'm describing their kind of overall energy and feelings, I'm not using the word motivated, though motivation may be very high for a persistent person because there is a lot of other emotions here that are driving persistent people forward. 


I think it's important to note because I think a lot of people wait around to go after their goals until they feel motivated. Because when you feel motivated towards something it usually feels easier to attain. You're more easily willing to push through the discomfort of going after it. When you feel motivated, when you feel 100% motivated to make it to your kids recital tonight, you are willing for other people to be disappointed when you leave the office early, when you feel motivated to lose 10lbs, you're more willing to deny the cupcake even though you really want it. 


Motivation is never consistent.

Motivation is a very useful tool to have in your arsenal when you are persistently going after a goal. But it is not the only tool a persistent person has or uses in order to attain it because motivation always wanes. Motivation is never consistent. It goes in and out and I think is often more of a mindset more than anything. Persistent people don't wait around for motivation in order to go after their goal. They're not waiting for it to be more comfortable. They're not waiting for the investment in coaching to be more comfortable. They're not waiting until the holiday season is over or they're not waiting for the busy season to end at work. They're not waiting until it's easier or more comfortable. They're going after it anyway. 


Persistent people don’t have a lot of negative self-talk.

Some of the things that I see persistent people do when they're going after a goal, the first is I see them evaluate regularly so they can problem solve for what is not working. They don't allow for a whole lot of negative self-talk when things don't work out or when they fail or when things are kind of happening slower than they expected. They don't personalize failure. They are just willing to apply to 100 jobs and be rejected 100 times and still believe that they will get the job that they desire. And the only way they're really able to do that is when they don't engage in a lot of negative self-talk. 


Persistent people focus on the progress they have made.

Another thing I see persistent people do is they focus on progress made instead of the things that they have not done. So if they're trying to leave the office at 5pm every day to be home with their kids and to be present and they were only able to do that twice this week, they celebrate that twice instead of focusing on the three times that they didn't make it. 


Persistent people don’t compare themselves to others.

Persistent people don't spend a lot of time comparing themselves. That's something that they don't do. They're on their own journey and they're focusing on their own journey. They don't have time to think about other people's journey. If you have a goal of leaving your company and starting a dream business or leaving your company and just following a different path in your career; a persistent person when they see other people having done that, they feel inspired by them instead of feeling bad about themselves and not having been able to do it yet. 


Persistent people don't let “I don't know” be the answer.

Another thing I see a lot of persistent people do when they are moving towards their goal and they're not exactly sure what to do next and they feel a little bit stuck, they make an educated guess. They're willing to just be wrong as they move forward. They don't let “I don't know” be the answer or be the thing that stalls them. They simply make a decision and it either works out or it doesn't, and then they learn from that and then they make another decision. They just continue to follow educated guesses, their hunches, as I like to say. 


So that's kind of the picture that I see in my clients that have a lot of persistence towards their goals and just generally my own experience of persistence towards my own goals. Those are the mindsets, the emotions that fuel persistent people and then the things that I notice that they do in order to reach their goals. 


Moving from obstinance to persistence.

So now let's talk about moving from obstinance to persistence. Actually, I think this is pretty funny because I like to dictate my notes when I am writing a podcast. And so when I was writing this particular podcast, every time I would say obstinate, my note would reconnect it to abstinence. So as I am, going back over this podcast and recording it now, I'm seeing all of these words that say abstinence over and over and over again. There's not a time that it autocorrected to obstinance and they are all abstinence, which I just think is really funny. 


Okay, we're not talking about moving from abstinence to persistence, we're talking about moving from obstinance to persistence. When you notice, and it might just be in this very moment that you've noticed that you really want something, that you really want more time with your kids, that you really want to be more happy in your career, that you really want to feel calm and in control of your time, you really want to reach the C Suite. You know that you want this thing - and you realize now, as I'm describing it to you, that you have not been persistent in hitting it…instead, you've been very obstinate. What do you do? So I have three steps for you. 


Stop and evaluate. What is working? What is not working?

The first in moving from obstinance to persistence is to stop and evaluate. This is one of the things I said persistent people do all of the time. They stop and they evaluate three things. What's working? That's always the first one. You always want to start with the good, what are you doing good? What are you doing well? What are you doing that's making progress towards your goal? 


What is not going well? What are some of the hang ups, the things that you think that you should be doing but you're not really doing? Like what's not going well as you're attempting to reach these goals? 


And number three, what do you want to do differently? It's a really simple evaluation. 


This is the same three part evaluation that I teach my clients to do, that my coach, Stacey Boehman, taught me how to do. It's very, very simple, but effective. So let me just give you an example. 


Let's take the goal that you have of being home at 5pm every day to be with your kids, if that's your goal. Or maybe your goal is to not be on your phone around your family, to be more present. Or maybe your goal is to stop working nights or on the weekends. Or maybe your goal is to get out of your job and into a new one, right? Whatever your goal is, ask yourself this: 


  • What is going well towards the pursuit of that goal? 

  • What's the mindset that you have that is moving you closer to that goal? 

  • What are the things that you're doing that are moving you closer to the goal? 

  • In what ways have you been consistent in some of the things you know that you need to be doing in order to move towards that goal? 


And then number two,


  • What is not going well? 

  • Where are you letting fear overtake you? 

  • At what times have you found yourself not able to follow through with this commitment, and why? 


And then number three, when you look at the what's not going well list, then you want to ask yourself: What am I going to do differently tomorrow or next time in order to achieve this goal or move closer to this goal? 


And that what's not going well list can be a good place to start making that list of what I would do differently. Everything that you see in that what's not going well list, you should have something in the what to do differently section that kind of counters that. 


So this is the first one, evaluate, stop, think about the progress you've made, think about where you still have hangups and decide how you're going to move forward. It's very simple. Evaluation, that's step number one, you need to do that very first thing. 


Pick something and commit to do it differently.

The second step is to pick one of those things to do differently. List and commit to doing it tomorrow. I don't want you to focus on all of them because that would be very overwhelming. Just pick one and work on that all week. And then the following week, evaluate and pick one of those and work on that all week. We have the long game in mind. We have creating new habits in mind and those things take time, sometimes months at a time. So we want to just simply chip away at one thing or another. 


Decide how you will keep yourself accountable.

Number three, you need to decide how you are going to keep yourself accountable to moving forward. Statistics show that you are 90% more likely to attain a goal if you have some form of accountability. 90%. Now, for most people, that form of accountability isn't a person, but it doesn't have to be. If you're really good at following your reminders in your calendar, if you are really good at sticking to your commitments in your calendar than just your phone or your calendar, that could be a really simple form of accountability. 


But really the most effective way to have accountability is to have someone else ruthlessly ask you about your progress towards your goals. 


Not reaching your goal is not an option. 

To be honest, this is a really big reason why people hire me as a coach. I'm not just a guide through the process. I am built in accountability. I am not going to let you off the hook every single week. I'm going to be asking you about your goals and your progress towards your goals. We will be evaluating your goals. If you're not making progress or you don't follow through with the things that you say you're going to follow through with, I'm going to ask you why, right? Not reaching your goal is not an option. When you work with me, I hold you accountable to the things that you want. 


But if you're not ready to hire me as a coach, you might just need a person in your life that is willing to be ruthless and speak the truth. So that's the third step. Decide how you are going to keep yourself accountable to reaching your goal, that you have the balance and fulfilling life that you want. Make sure that's a really specific goal and towards the little things that you're going to do along the way. 


What's the one thing you're going to be doing differently this week? How are you going to hold yourself accountable to following through with that one thing that's going to be a piece of the bigger puzzle moving forward? 


Working moms, it is perfectly normal to be in a state of obstinance when reaching goals feels hard and when we feel unmotivated to do it. The most natural thing to do is to do nothing. It's totally okay. But if you are ready to make your goals as a working mom a reality, if you want a fulfilling career and feel like you spend enough time with your kids, if it is time to get persistent towards your goals, then this might be a really good time to reach out for that free coaching session where we will discuss coaching and exactly what we're going to do to help you reach your goals in the next six months. As always, feel free to reach out. I will leave the URL on how to connect with me in the show notes. 


Conclusion.

Working Moms, here's the crux of what I have to offer you today. If you stay obstinate, meaning you wake up tomorrow and have the same thoughts, the same emotions, and do exactly the same thing as you did the day before, you will create the same exact life. You will not be moving towards the goals that you have in your life. You will not create balance. You will not have an amazing and fulfilling and satisfying career unless you decide to do and think and feel something different. 


Persistent people are constantly trying things, adjusting, moving forward, following hunches. They are always in a movement forward, trying new things every single day to hit their goals. 


I don't want you to be obstinate. I don't want you to feel stuck or stagnant when there is a way out, when there is something you can do. I hope you found this episode helpful to you today. I hope you found it convincing. If you have been in a state of obstinacy and stuckness around your goals, follow these three steps. I would love to hear from you on how it is going. Make sure you're following me on LinkedIn as well and all right, Working Moms, let's get to it. 


Thanks for listening to this week's episode. If you want a little extra support as a working mom, I invite you to download my free training The Secret to Ending Your Workday at 5pm. In this free training, I teach you how to shut down your computer and your work brain at exactly the time you want without all those feelings of guilt. And like you need to log back on. By the end of this training, you will know exactly what you need to think and do in order to fully engage with your family, even after a long workday. To sign up for the training, you can go to www.ambitiousandbalancedcollective.com/end-work-at-5pm If you didn't catch all that, don't worry. Check the Show notes for a direct link. Alright, working moms, let's get to it.

Rebecca Olson