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If you are not experiencing the happy and balanced life that you want as a working mom, it’s not because it doesn’t exist. It’s not because “life as a working mom is just hard”...it’s because you haven’t decided it’s your #1 priority. You haven’t given yourself permission to pursue the balanced life you want. In today’s podcast, I am breaking down the 3 reasons working moms don’t pursue the life they want and exactly what to do about it.
Topics in this episode:
The importance of believing what you want is out there for you.
You are worthy of happiness and balance.
You don’t need your husband’s permission to make changes in your life.
Why your happiness is more important than saving money.
Happiness and balance is not going to just happen to you, you have to decide to go after it.
Show Notes & References:
Schedule a free coaching call if you want to make your happiness a priority: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book
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Transcript
Intro
If you are not experiencing the happy, fulfilling, and balanced life that you want as a working mom, it's not because it doesn't exist. It's not because it would be irresponsible of you to go after it. It's also not because, you know, life as a working mom is just hard. It's because you haven't decided it's your number one priority. You haven't given yourself permission to pursue the happy and balanced life that you want. In today's podcast, I am breaking down the three reasons working moms don't pursue the life that they want and exactly what you can do about it. Are you ready? Let's get to it.
Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Mom Podcast, a 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.
Hey, working moms. Today's podcast is specifically for you if you're feeling out of balance, if you are not as happy as you could be in your job or in your life, or maybe you're just even on the edge of burnout. Yes, you are listening to this podcast. Yes, you are likely following people on Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn, like me, who are giving you tips and tricks. You're likely even doing some of the things that you know that you're supposed to be doing. Things like leaving work on time, working out, and yet you still don't have the fulfilling and balanced life that you want.
Now, I'm writing this podcast for you because I want you to know that I see you. I see you trying. I know that companies are losing good people right now, right and left. And all of the leftover work. It's falling to you. I know that there are a lot of managers and leaders in your company, and you have a lot of people working for you that are probably new. I also know that you care a lot. You might think you care too much, but I know that that's not true. You care deeply about the success of your company, of your team, of your family. It's one of the things that makes you really good at what you do. You don't want to let people down, and you want to do whatever it takes to help.
You deserve to be happy and live a fulfilling, balanced life.
I want to start by reminding you that you're amazing. I think that you're absolutely remarkable, and you're feeling burned out, overwhelmed, stressed, or just not happy. So here's the message that I have for you today. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. I'm not trying to be mean or even disrespectful. I just really need to be straight with you. There is another way, and I give you permission to do whatever it takes, whatever you need to do in order to have a happy and fulfilling and balanced working mom life that you deserve, and I mean that. You deserve the life that you want to live, whatever it is - you deserve to be happy. You deserve a career that you love. You deserve to make the kind of money that you want to make. You deserve it just like everyone else because you are a human being and you have a right to happiness. It's literally your birthright.
A lot of women forget this. Life starts happening, you get promoted, you start leading a team. Things get busy at work. You start having kids. Strangely, life just keeps going on, right? Day after day after day, whether you're happy or not. And we start justifying our stress and are overwhelmed. You know, ‘well, that's just the nature of the job. Yeah. If that's just the life of a working mom, I'm sure when our kids get older it will be a little different…’ No. Yes, I'm screaming at you a little bit. There is another way, and it starts with believing that. It starts with stopping right now, taking a big step back from your life, observing it with curiosity and deciding, I don't have to settle for this.
Balance is possible for you, no matter what.
Now, I might be the first person to tell you this. You might be in a profession or in a company that values overworking, where you have no other examples of working moms that are paving a path to balance and you simply have just lived with the assumption that this is life, that life as a working mom is just meant to be hard. Balance is not possible for me in my job and my company and my profession and my role, right? Just fill in the blank. You may have been living with this assumption unquestioned up until this point, but I am here to tell you, I actually think it's my calling in life to tell you if you really want to get down to it, that is simply not true. And I believe that's not true for three reasons:
1: I don't want it to be true. I don't want to live in a world or in a life where I don't have the freedom to live the life that I want to live. And I don't want that for you either.
2: It's not useful to believe. It's not useful to believe that this is just the way it is. It's not useful to believe that you can't find balance in your company or in your profession. It's not useful to believe that it's just not possible for you that you're some shiny unicorn with some extra special circumstances where happiness and balance are not possible, right? The most useful thing for you to believe is that there is a way to make a different choice, a change that you could be making right now. No matter how hard it may be or uncomfortable it may be for you to live a life that is fulfilling and balanced. If you don't believe it's possible, then it's not going to just magically happen for you, right? You're not going to be able to go out and create that life, so it's not useful for you to believe that.
3: And the third reason I don't believe that this is just the way it is and life as a working mom is hard and balance is impossible for you is because, I have over five years experience working with 200 working moms, helping them to find fulfillment and balance in their life. I have worked with doctors and lawyers and educators and entrepreneurs and veterinarians and CEOs and managers. I've worked with founders, I've worked with bankers, I've worked with those in nonprofit, I've worked with artists, I've worked with people that manage teams of 20 and those that manage no one. I've worked with women in virtually every type of profession at every level, having anywhere from one to about five kids. And I have never found a job or a person who really wanted to find fulfillment and balance in their life, not find it.
Happiness, not being stressed out and overwhelmed all the time, not being on the edge of burnout, really enjoying your working mom life - It's possible for you, and it starts with believing it.
You don’t need permission.
I sort of feel like I'm preaching here a little bit because I am. I know someone needs to hear this message today. They have been living a life of settling, of feeling overwhelmed that didn't know how to make changes or even where to start. And more than anything, what I want you to hear is that you have options. You're not stuck. If you're not happy and loving the life that you are living right now, you can do something about it. I give you permission even though, of course, you don't need it. You don't need permission. Did you know that? You don't need anyone to tell you that it's okay for you to make the changes that you want to in your life in order to be happy. You don't need anyone to validate that. You don't need your boss to tell you it's okay to say no, to not work late. You don't need your boss to approve you leaving at 5pm every day to go be with your family. You don't need your husband to approve you changing jobs or starting something new or just even taking a break for a while.
Okay, now hold up here, because that last point may have triggered something for you. You may think that you do need your husband to be on board with any changes, at least major changes that you make, like your job. Like whether you change jobs or work part time or take a leave of absence or something for a period of time, any changes you make might have a significant effect on your spouse and your family, that's true. And your monthly income as a family might go down and your way of life may change if that happens, your benefits may change, your retirement, your investments. I could probably have an entire podcast probably around the subject of not needing your spouse's approval in order to make changes in your life.
You need to feel 100% about your decisions.
But here's what I want to say about it today - I know that you're not going to make any big changes in your career in order to be happy and feel balanced without being responsible. You're not going to leave your family in such a state that you can't pay bills or you're going to go hungry. I know that that's not what we're talking about here, right? You're going to be making a responsible decision for yourself and your family that's going to be a part of you being happy, right?
So likely what we're talking about is changes to your career, to your life that change your everyday spending and your everyday savings as a family, right? If that's the fear involved. And if you're going to be making changes to those things you're spending and you're saving, you need to feel 100% about that. You need to feel like taking a break from saving from your retirement - if that's what you choose to do so that you could be home with your family for a while, with your kids for a while, you have got to feel like that's the right thing to do. That the trade off of being happy for the next year or two or longer, however long you decide to take a break, if that's what you want to do, is worth the trade off of building up your retirement over the next couple of years.
That's what I had to do with my last job. I was putting upwards of 10% of my salary into our retirement when I left that job to start my coaching business, and then everything went into my business instead. And ever since then, we've barely put anything into our retirement. We currently do not actively save towards our retirement. We traded all of that off for the kind of life that we wanted as a family while my kids were young. The happiness and fulfillment that I wanted in my career and that I would have in building my business, the potential earning that I have in my business is way more than it ever would have been in that last job. And my ability to save once my business hits a particular successful point is going to be infinitely greater than what I could have saved eight years ago when I left that job.
We often turn to our spouse for validation or permission to make big changes.
All of those reasons I was very convinced of when I went to my husband and I told him I was ready to quit my job. I had already considered all of those trade offs and what it would mean for myself or our family if I did that. I knew that I was in conversation with him, I was in conversation with myself, I was in conversation with mentors and a coach at that time, when I was thinking about those trade offs. And oftentimes what we as women do is we go to our spouse and we ask for their validation or their permission to make big changes. And when we do that, it's usually because we ourselves are not 100% convinced of it.
There's a big difference between going to your spouse and saying, hey, here's what I want to do. What do you think? Notice that's an act of validation. That's a seeking of validation in that question versus, here's what I want to do, why I want to do it. How can we make this work? It's a very different conversation. So when it comes to talking changes over with your spouse, the most important thing is for you to feel 100% about what you want. It's not a conversation around permission. It's a conversation around logistics, how to make it work.
Are you happy?
So if you're not happy, if you're not spending enough time with your family, if you are on the edge of burnout, if you are not taking your weekends off, if you're not taking time for you, if you're not hiring a coach to help you get to the life that you want to be leading, let's talk about why.
Now there are three reasons why you are likely not pursuing the change that you want. The first one we already talked about. It's really the most important one. You don't actually believe it's possible. You think about, or you daydream about changing jobs or looking for another company or having less on your plate, but then your brain sort of feels stuck. Your brain starts offering things like, ‘oh, but this company is so flexible. I've worked so hard to be here. What if it's not better somewhere else?’. And then you start feeling confused and stuck. Am I right?
You have to believe that what you want is out there or it's possible for you.
I remember a conversation I had with a client just a few years ago who wanted to leave her company that she had been at for, like, ten + years, which was basically the entirety of her career, and she wanted to move states to be closer to her family. And the more we dug into what was preventing her from going after that new and more flexible job that really allowed her to work remotely, allowed her to move to the other state where she wanted to live near her family, the thing that was really stopping her was the belief that it was even out there. She ultimately told me in one session, she said, ‘I don't think I could get it any better than this’. And I stopped her, and I said, ‘oh, so this is it? Like you've peaked in your career?’ And she took a pause and laughed and said, ‘well, when you put it that way, no.’ But the truth is, that's exactly what her brain was telling her. She had a good job. She was with a good company. She was well respected, she was well paid, and there wasn't anything better, even though she wasn't happy.
So let me tell you, if you are not happy with your job, no matter how good it is, how flexible it is, how good they are to you, there is something better for you out there. And the first step to finding it is believing that that's true. You have to believe that what you want is out there or it's possible for you in order to ever go after it.
Feeling guilty for choosing what we want.
The second reason you aren't going after your happiness or balance is that you feel guilty or irresponsible for having it. Now, most of the time, that guilt comes from the strain that change has on the people around us, right? Our family, our kids. We don't want our husband or our family in any way to experience a change or discomfort on our behalf. And usually this has to do a lot with money, right? Either choosing to work part-time or work less hours or take on less clients or change companies where your earning potential is potentially less. It means that your family has to make some decisions on how to change their spending habits or their saving habits. And that feels bad. It feels bad to make decisions for ourselves and have it affect other people. But the thing is, you're making decisions to sustain your job that is having a negative effect on your family right now. You're making decisions to not go after work, life balance or happiness. And that is having an effect on your people around you. When you're not happy, the family is not happy. This is super important to be honest about.
If you've been really wanting to make some changes or been on the edge of burnout or wanting to change jobs and you're not doing it because of the impact it will have on your family, I want you to consider and write down the impact of your unhappiness and how that is having an effect on your family right now. What are you teaching your kids by staying in a job or in a position that you're unhappy in? How is that affecting your marriage? Are you able to have any other conversations with your spouse or friends other than to commiserate about your unhappiness?
It's time to really be honest, because my hunch is that if your kids were able to articulate it, they would choose a happy mom instead of a room full of toys every time. We don't get older and remember all of the cool gadgets and toys that we had, we remember our family and memories and vacations together and our parents. We remember their energy, their mood, how they felt when they got home from work. It's time to get real honest.
You need to decide that this is important to you.
The third reason working moms don't go after the fulfilling and balanced life that they want is they haven't decided to go after it yet. They haven't decided it's the most important thing right now. It might not be! Saving might be more important. Paying off your debt might be more important. For some, when they step back and they look at things like financial goals and family goals and needs and their own happiness, they decide that their own happiness isn't the number one thing, and that's okay. You can decide not to go after happiness or balance, provided you are doing it intentionally and you love all of your reasons. For most women, though, that's not where they're at. They haven't sat down consciously to think about what it would take for them to feel happy and balanced and why that's important to them and then decide what's the most important thing to pursue right now. With the decision comes commitment. And that's why it's so important.
Committing to change.
It's like losing weight. If you want to lose 10lbs, that's probably not going to happen without you deciding and committing to doing it. You're not just going to get up every day, eat the same way, think the same way, move the same way, and then magically lose 10lbs. No. One day you have to decide, I'm going to start losing weight. I don't like the way I look. I don't like the way I feel. I don't like what I'm teaching my kids. I know that being at a healthy weight is going to let me live longer, so I'm going to do it. From there you make a plan for how you're going to eat, how you're going to exercise, right? But that plan for how you're going to get to that goal of losing 10lbs, that's not going to come until you commit to the goal.
Pursuing a happy and balanced life takes intentionality and pursuit.
The same is true for wanting to feel happiness and balance. If you're not experiencing that right now, it's not going to happen until you decide to go after it. You can't just get up tomorrow and operate in the same way and interact with yourself and others in the same exact way and magically you're going to feel something different. No. Pursuing a happy and balanced life takes intentionality and pursuit. It takes effort.
For many of my clients, this is when they come to me for coaching. They realize that a happy and fulfilling and balanced life, that is what they want as a working mom and it's not just going to happen to them, they're going to have to decide to do something about it. So they sign up for a free call with me, and on that call, we decide together to either make an investment in coaching and go all into that goal of being happy and balanced, or not. And if you fall into this third bucket, like if you aren't pursuing your happy, balanced life that you want simply because you haven't decided to go after it, to make it the most important thing right now, then I ask you why? Why aren't you going after that? Why are you not committing to it.
Now, to help you answer that question, I want you to fill in this blank. If I believed blank, then I would go after a fulfilling and balanced life. Or you could even be more specific. If I believed blank then I would quit my job. If I believed blank then I would never work late. If I believed blank then I would never schedule over meetings that I have with myself. If I believed blank, then I would take more time for myself. Whatever it is for you, whatever it is that's going to make you feel happy and balanced, the thing that you most want, fill in the blank. What is it going to take? What are you going to have to believe in order to have that, in order to do it? And I'm curious, if you were to give yourself permission to pursue the happy and balanced life that you want, if you felt worthy of that life, what would happen? If you need permission, I'm giving it to you. If you don't feel worthy, may I remind you that it is your God given human right to pursue happiness.
And working moms, if you need a guide through that process, someone to help you overcome the fear or the guilt, then let's find a time to chat about coaching. I work with my clients one on one for six months or in a group coaching program called the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms Collective. You can find information about both of those on my website. There's a place to book a free breakthrough call with me to get a taste of coaching and to have the experience of actually deciding on our call whether or not you want to pursue this goal of being happy and balanced or not.
You are worthy of happiness.
But please, whatever you decide to do, working moms - whether you decide to reach out to me for coaching, or whether you decide to quit or not quit, or whether you decide to put more boundaries in place in your life, whatever you decide to do, here's what I want you to not do. Don't do nothing. Don't settle. Don't just keep waking up every day and operating in the same exact way and thinking magically it's going to fix itself, because it won't. You are worthy of happiness. You are worthy of an investment in coaching in order to be happy, if that's what it would take. You're worthy of pursuing whatever it is that you want to pursue, following any dream that you have for your life. You're worthy of it. You deserve it. I give you permission even though you don't need it from me. You just need it from yourself. Okay, working moms, have a great week, and let's get to it.
Hey, before you go, I want to take a moment and tell you about an opportunity to speak with me directly. If you've been listening to this podcast and still feel like you need help balancing a fulfilling career with motherhood, then I encourage you to schedule a free breakthrough call. On this call, we will get crystal clear on exactly what it is you want out of your career and how you want to balance that with motherhood. And then we'll craft next steps for you to start moving toward a more calm and fulfilling working mom life. Head over to www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book to apply for this free call till next week, and working moms, let's get to it.
