Guilt because you love your job

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Many ambitious career driven women experience guilt because they love what they do and sometimes they like it more than being with their kids. Our culture says that our maternal instincts should be stronger than anything else, but for some that isn’t the case (hence the guilt). On today’s episode, I talk about why it’s OK to love what you do and why it makes sense that it’s more interesting than your kids. And at the end, I will send you off with 3 practical exercises to help all of that guilt melt away.

Topics in this episode:

  • Why we self-inflict guilt with our thoughts

  • The two different types of guilt and where it comes from

  • Why it’s ok to find your job more interesting than your kids

  • The importance of believing you are a good mom and determining exactly what that means to you

  • 3 practical exercises that will allow that guilt to melt away

Show Notes:

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Transcription

Intro

There is not a mom out there that hasn't experienced some form of mom guilt at some point in their journey in motherhood. The most common form of mom guilt is that feeling that comes when you don't feel like you're spending enough time with your kids because you're working. But there's another form of guilt that many ambitious career-driven women experience, and that is the guilt that comes because you actually really love what you do. And sometimes you like it even more than being with your kids. This feels like a really vulnerable topic to be talking about because our culture says that our maternal instincts should trump everything else. But for some, that just isn't the case. So on this podcast today, I'm going to be talking a bit about this very specific type of guilt. Why it's actually okay for you to really love what you do, and even find it more interesting than your kids. And then give you 3 very practical exercises to help all of that guilt melt away. 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! 


Periodically, I invite my listeners to send me topics that they would like to hear me talk about on this podcast. And today's topic came from a listener, her name was Tuba. And she said, “I desire to work more instead of spending time with my family and I feel guilty that work is more interesting. What do I do with that? How do I manage this type of guilt?” And I thought this was such a great topic to cover here in the podcast and I'm so appreciative of her willingness to be vulnerable and send me an email about this. Because so often when we talk about mom guilt, we focus on the guilt that comes when we leave our children every day to go to a job - but I run into this with my clients a lot, they actually feel the opposite. They don't feel guilty for leaving their kids every day, they feel guilty because they enjoy being at their job so much and something feels wrong about that. They should want to be with their family more, they should look forward to their family time and yet, they just don't. So I want to talk about this today by first spending some time diving into guilt and what it is, and then talk about why it's okay for you to find work interesting, and at times maybe even more interesting than motherhood. And then I want to give you a couple of very practical tools on how you overcome that guilt.


What is guilt?

Guilt by definition is a feeling that comes when you feel as if you've done something wrong. What's important to really understand about guilt is that it's self-inflicted, meaning it's when you label something that you're doing, or something that you're thinking or something that you're feeling as being wrong. Even if somebody else tells you what you're doing is wrong, you still have to believe it in order to feel guilty. Typical mom guilt comes from this very baseline belief that we are not serving our kids at the highest level when we leave them with a nanny, or we leave them at daycare or when we're not spending every single waking moment with them. And it feels kind of wrong on some level, like it goes against our maternal instinct. And I remember for me a big phrase that went through my head all of the time when my daughter Lillian was born was, ‘I'm paying somebody else to raise my daughter, and they can't do it like I can’. That thought brought me so much guilt. I was convinced that the best thing for my child was for me to be with her as often as possible and for me to raise her. And because I was choosing to work every day, or really because I needed to work every day - we are a two-income family, my daughter was kind of getting like the short end of the stick and I felt really guilty about that. And that's sort of the crux of very typical mom guilt, feeling like you should be spending more time with your child and feeling like you're a bad mom, or that they're not getting everything that they need. 


This other type of guilt that we're talking about today isn't about feeling bad, because you're working, it's feeling bad because you enjoy working. And sometimes maybe you even enjoy it more than being with your kids. I should want to spend more time with my kids, or I should enjoy spending more time with my kids. These are the thoughts that are at the heart of this type of guilt. And you really see a spectrum of moms out there, right? Some seem to absolutely love everything about their kids and their whole world is their kids. And then there are moms on the other end of the spectrum that are completely consumed with work and rarely see their children.


Our culture labels the moms that spend a bunch more time with their kids as being good moms, and the moms that spend time working as bad moms. Just generically speaking, those are labels we give it. There's a lot of research out there that still suggests this idea that working and not spending more time with your kids is bad. It was not all that long ago that it became socially acceptable for even moms to work. There was a study that was done, and I'll link this article in the show notes as well, where they surveyed 600,000 12th graders between the years of 1976 and 2013. And they were asked - do you believe a preschooler suffers if their mother works? In the 70s, 59% of kids in the 12th grade that were surveyed believed that was true. And in 2010, the number was down to 22%. So that means that one of five people in our culture today - now I'm assuming 2010 is still our culture, even though some time has passed…my guess is it hasn't gone down dramatically since then, which means that one out of five people believe that a mom should be home with their kids, at least through preschool. We've come a long way since the 70s, that number has dropped almost 40%. But we as a culture are not 100% accepting of moms working particularly when our kids are younger. So it makes a lot of sense why there isn't an internal battle for us as women when it comes to working, let alone enjoying your work. We have our outside culture that is sending us this message that our kids are better off when we stay home with them. And then we have this internal drive, we'll just generically call it your maternal instinct, that is constantly telling you you should be nearer your child just like a mama bear to her cub.


Guilt is only there if you believe something is wrong.

The question that we want to wrestle with right now in this podcast is not whether it's right or wrong to work, or even enjoy working from time to time, but instead, why it's okay for you to love your work and find it to be more interesting than your kids. Because the right or wrongness of that is completely subjective. You just simply get to decide. So rather than spending any time considering why it is wrong, we want to focus all of our attention on why it's right, why it's okay. Because my guess is you've probably spent a lot more time considering why it's wrong and processing through some very icky emotions about why it is wrong, and why you shouldn't be enjoying work more than your family. And we want to focus your brain on the other side. Remember, guilt is only there if you believe something is wrong.


So it doesn't really matter what the research says or what anyone else says or anybody else's opinion, we need your brain to come up with the reasons why it is okay. And the more that you do that, the more you mine your own brain and you weed through your own thoughts and find the ones that make sense to you, the faster the guilt is gonna go away.


So why is it okay to love working and at times even find it more interesting, or maybe all the time find it more interesting than being with your kids?


I came up with a list of reasons I'm going to share what I thought were the four most powerful ones with you here today.


You are a better mom because you love to work.

So number one, I say this a lot on this podcast, but you are a better mom because you work. And I want to add a little caveat to this. You are a better mom because you love to work. When you love something, you show your kids that it's okay for them to love something too, and that it's okay to love your job and to be at your job and work. That's a good thing. You show them that making an impact in this world means something meaningful. You are changing the world by what you do. You're also showing your kids the importance of a strong work ethic, doing things well and being dedicated to it. That's a really important skill set to be teaching your kids, you're showing them that passion is an important part of life and that they should cultivate it themselves.


Being motivated in your work and finding your work interesting, that's a really important value I want to instill in my own kids, like the idea of getting up every single day and doing a job that you want to do, that you find energy behind, I want to teach them that that's possible for them. Where work doesn't have to feel like work. I have felt the opposite of that before when I get out of bed and I do not want to go into that job and do the work that I was doing. And that is a horrible, horrible feeling. So even though my kids are going to have a choice, they can pick a job that they're passionate about, or they might not pick a job that they're passionate about, what I want them to know is that the option is there. They can choose what it is that they want to go after. And if they want to go after a job that makes them feel that sense of love and that sense of passion, where they would much rather be doing that than anything else, I want them to know that that's possible for them.


The second reason why it's okay to find work more interesting, and sometimes even like all the time more interesting than your kids - is because in some ways, the reward of raising children doesn't happen for many years, if maybe ever to reap the rewards of it. You know, raising a kind, loving and compassionate human being doesn't happen overnight. It takes repetition, time and dedication. And you may not see the result of that for many years to come. If maybe ever. 


Right now my four year old, he just doesn't want to get dressed in the morning. He's perfectly capable of it, he has done it many times, but for the most part, he much prefers that if somebody else dresses him. I am very interested in raising an independent and capable human being, those are values that are important for me to instill in him. And when I help him get dressed every single day, it's an opportunity for me to remind him that he is capable of getting dressed on his own, that he can do hard things, that he can overcome that feeling of not wanting to do something, and that I'm always there for him no matter what and I love them no matter what.


And I assume that all of this patience, and talking to him is going to eventually work itself out. And he will in fact, learn how to get himself dressed, and to do hard things, and overcome some of those feelings. But I don't know when that's going to happen. And if I'm honest, sometimes that patience kind of feels like I'm being taken advantage of and that maybe I'm not actually teaching him anything in this process. But I have this focus on my brain of the long game, like I'm cultivating in him how to be capable and learning how to be independent and I'm talking to him about his emotions through the process.


But it is hard, it is very hard.


And I have to assume there will be a payout when it comes to being dressed. But I don't really know if he will ever be that capable, independent, overcoming emotions kind of boy that I want him to be, I don't know if that is going to be the way he turns out or not, vs work that has a very immediate feeling of gratification to it.


There is immediate gratification that comes with our work.

Anytime you check a task off of your list your body surges with dopamine that feels so good. And you're solving complex problems, you're with adults, and you're using the deeper parts of your mind. And you see all of the rewards of your effort through the money, through feedback that you get from your boss, through reviews, through sales. There are all these metrics to show that you're doing a great job at work. And it's much harder to find those metrics in motherhood. So there's this immediate gratification that comes with our work, that unless you spend some time intentionally cultivating what gratification looks like in motherhood and what some of those metrics are in motherhood, it's not going to feel the same. So it makes a lot of sense why work would feel much more motivating and interesting then sometimes parenting does.


My third reason for why finding work more interesting than your kids is okay. Is because I think different stages of motherhood are more interesting to different people. You hear people say sometimes, ‘oh I just love babies’, and then you'll hear other people say, ‘oh my gosh, I hate the baby phase, I can't wait till they get a little bit older.’ I think all of that's okay. I think you can find enjoyment in every phase of motherhood, if you really want to search for that enjoyment.


There are stages of motherhood that are just naturally more enjoyable.

For all of us, I think there are stages of motherhood that are just naturally more enjoyable and more interesting to us, where we don't really have to put in that effort to think about it in that way. So it could just be that work is more interesting right now in this particular phase of your kid's life, because you are going to be much more engaged and interested as they get older.


The fourth reason why it's okay to find work more interesting than your kids is because you just simply get to decide if that's okay or not.


There's no motherhood police out there that determine what makes you a good mom, you just get to decide.


And you can decide that loving your work is an aspect of being a really great mom. You can decide that spending a chunk of time on the weekends working and really enjoying that work. You can decide that that's relaxing and that it contributes to you being a great mom.


You just get to decide that, always.


You determine what you believe about yourself and what makes you a good mom. I did a podcast around this that was talking about the more typical mom guilt and it focused a lot on this on what you believed about yourself as a mom, so I'm going to link to that in the show notes as well, if you want to go back and listen to that one.


Okay, so we've spent a little time talking about guilt, we spent some time thinking about why it's okay to find work more interesting than your family. And you could probably guess that based on the way that I presented some of this here, there are really powerful thought exercises that you can take yourself through to really start to reframe your thinking on this, because that's really where it's all about.


Your guilt is self-inflicted and it's based upon the way you're thinking about yourself and what is enjoyable, and what's not enjoyable. So the solution is found in spending time actually reframing the way you're thinking.


The first exercise that I want you to do is to make a list of why it's okay for you to find work more interesting than your family if you fall into that category.


Now, my guess is you have never spent the time to really consider this question. And so your brain is probably going to go blank for a little bit. It's going to want to tell you I don't know, and you're going to have to push through that discomfort and sit there as long as it takes for you to come up with some answers.


It might be helpful for you to think about this as someone else other than you, like, why would it be okay for your best friend to enjoy working and find work more interesting than being home with their kids or being with their family? Sometimes when we reframe it as somebody else that we love, we're much more able to come up with reasons and thoughts on their behalf. So that's one place to start as you answer this question. And then I want you to build from there. Sometimes when I do exercises like this, I like to sit there twice as long as I think is necessary. Because oftentimes, the last few things that I think of are the most impactful things. 


The second thing I want to offer to you in managing this guilt and moving past this guilt, is this question, do you want to be more interested in your family or not? It's okay if you don't want to be. But if you wish that you were, if that was a part of this whole scenario, as you wish that you felt more compelled and more interested to be with your family, then you can just cultivate that interest.


In another journaling session what I would do is I would sit down and I would ask yourself, What are your favorite memories about being a parent? What are the things that you love to do with your family? What are the moments that you look forward to as a family? There are probably a dozen different ways that I could give you the same basic question. But the point is that you're trying to get to the heart of where you already today currently feel, even the slightest bit of motivation and interest in being with your family, or being a mom, because guaranteed that it's there, you just need to go searching for it, your brain has been very tapped into how you're not feeling that interest, you're not feeling that motivation right now, and we just want to go in and we want to show your brain that there are pieces of it that are happening today, you don't have to go out and start from zero, you get to build upon something that already exists today.


Shifting your thoughts allows for guilt to melt away.

In this last exercise that I want to offer to you, we are still focusing on your thinking because when you begin to shift your thoughts, that's when the guilt is going to start naturally melting away.


What I want you to do is make a list of what makes you a great mom. Because remember, the heart of this type of guilt is that you've labeled yourself as a mom in a negative way. You've labeled yourself as being wrong or bad in some way. And we want to change that. And of course, none of us are perfect moms, we all have things that we need to be working on. So it's not that you're ignoring those things that you might need to work on as a mom, it's that you're just simply orienting your brain towards the positive, towards the good things. And if you have a really hard time answering this question, what makes you a good mom right now, for whatever reason, that's fine. Ask your spouse, ask your best friend, ask them what makes you a great mom. We oftentimes can see things and other people that we have a harder time naming in ourselves. So it's fine if you want to reach out and ask for help. Again, you can put those thoughts in your brain and you can start to say, Yes, I really am that way. 


What I really want you to hear in all of this is the guilt that we feel as moms, whether that is simply because you don't spend as much time with your kids as you think you should or that you enjoy working more than you enjoy being with your kids. That guilt is self-inflicted, and it comes from the way you're thinking about yourself and particularly yourself as a mom and you're putting a lot of ‘shoulds’ on yourself and you can change that.


We have the power to change our thoughts.

Our thoughts are extremely malleable. And we always have the power to cultivate new ways of thinking so that we feel different and then we act differently in our life.


So thank you again, Tuba for bringing this subject to me for this podcast here. I think it's been a really beneficial one and something we haven't talked about here. And so if you have more topics that you are interested in sharing with me, I would really love to hear them. I always love getting emails about potential topics, you can simply send me an email, I promise I will respond to each and every person that sends me topic requests. And we often have a really lovely email exchange. So please do send me topics.


Outro

And if you find this podcast to be a helpful resource to you, as a working mom, the absolute best thing you can do right now to support other working moms, and getting this resource into their hands is to rate and specifically to write a review telling people what you love about this podcast, that really does in fact move me up in the algorithm, it gets this podcast suggested to more and more moms, and it spreads the word so more moms will get to hear the show.


Thank you in advance for getting the word out there and I will see you next week. Let's get to it.

Rebecca Olson