Follow the show:
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Everywhere else
Both big and little changes can cause lots of anxiety and stress, but there are 5 specific things you can do to make change easier. In today’s podcast I am sharing what I learned over the last 5 months, while my family has been going through a huge change, that will help you to feel more calm and in control during your next transition.
Topics in this episode:
My family is moving to Benicia, CA
Why no human like change (no, you’re not the only one)
What your body experiences in the midst of change and why it feels so bad
What to do when you feel like quitting or you’re second guessing the change
How to calm your body when it freaks out in the midst of change
5 specific things you can do to make change easier
Show Notes & References:
Episode reference: Stop Shoulding (www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/8)
Schedule a free coaching call if you want to not just control the Sunday Scaries, but eradicate them from your working mom life: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book
Don’t forget to leave a rating and review to help spread this resource to other working moms!
Enjoying the podcast?
Make sure you don’t miss a single episode! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or where ever you listen to podcasts.
Leave a rating and review in Apple Podcasts or Podchaser.
Transcript
Intro
Whether we're talking about big change like changing careers or jobs or moving, or we're talking about little change like just trying to get out the door every day at 5 or lose 10lbs - No matter if it's big or little change, it feels hard. Change feels hard for everyone. And over the last five months, my family and I have been in the midst of a really big change. In today's podcast, I want to share all about what's been going on in my life and my family's life and talk to you about the five things I think I did very well to help me stay on track and create ease and less anxiety through the change. 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.
Okay. Well, my family has been in the midst of a very big change. We are moving just 30 minutes away to a little town called Benicia in California. What makes this change so big and so emotional is that we are leaving a home in a town and a community that we love so deeply and that we don't actually really want to move away from. To make a very long story short, for about the last 14 years or so, my husband and I have lived in my parents house, they have lived about 3 hours away. And it was always their plan for them to come back to this house in Albany - it's really near Berkeley in the San Francisco Bay area. And they wanted to move back, essentially, after they retired. They were working 3 hours away and so forth, now is the time for them to move back. So, although we have known that their intention is to move back, this is also the longest that I have ever lived in a house. And I have just fallen in love with this community and my little street and the schools that my kids go to. We've raised our kids here for the last eight years. We live on a street that holds block parties and barbecues and happy hours, and we walk to our neighbor's house and we play games.
The town of Albany that we are moving away from is only 1 sq mi, but it hosts probably, like 50 restaurants and coffee shops and little stores that we can walk to. It's less than, like a, 20 minutes commute for my husband. And because of my parents' generosity, they have just allowed us to rent this home. That is unbelievable. It's a Craftsman style home bungalow. It's almost 100 years old. It just is a magical house and place that we have lived. Although this move makes sense, it's really time for them to move back. And it's time for us to probably make a change in our life and move towards our own home ownership.
It has not been easy. I cry most days. My brain focuses on all of the lasts that are happening. The last time I'm going to watch that person walk their little dog in front of my house. The last time we're going to go over to that friend's house for game night. The last time my kids are going to be able to drive past their little preschool that they've been in for the last five years. It's really been hard. And as I said, it's been a really big change for us. My parents included, who let me be very clear, do not and did not wish for us to move away. We tried desperately, actually, to figure out how we could stay close, how we could even build on our house so both of our families could live there together. But in the end, for lots of reasons, that just wasn't what worked out. So the news of my parents moving back into this house happened really, like, around late March. And they moved in with us, basically May 1. So they decided sometime in, like, the middle of March that they were going to come back. They immediately went into, like, selling their house. It happened within a week or so, and then they moved in. And they've been living with us ever since that. And now it's the middle of August and we are beginning the process of moving out. So it's been, like, a long time of processing the move and the transition and the change that's happening and about to happen. And a lot of time for my kids to think about the fact that they're moving away. Feel sad about that, get excited about where they might move to. My daughter insisted that we find a place that had a pool, which we did not go that route. She was super disappointed about that. But there's been just a lot of time for us to take in this change.
Change has a physiological effect on our bodies.
Our bodies don't like change. It's actually like a physiological experience that we have in our body. Whether we're talking about a big change like a move like I'm talking about, or a career change of some kind, or we're talking about a little change, like prioritizing something differently or getting up early to work out or eating differently. Change has a physiological effect on our bodies. Our brains desperately want things to simply be resolved. Change is almost always a process that we go through, and our brain doesn't like that. It wants things to be, like, immediate, right? It wants things to be totally resolved. It doesn't like open questions lingering in our head, questions that don't have answers yet. We don't like tasks that we haven't accomplished or things that are waiting on us when it comes to change. What our brain desperately wants is to know that the change is going to work out in the end, that we're going to be fine on the other side, that in fact life will be better than it is now and that whatever decision we've made, it's going to end up being the best thing for us. That's what our brain wants.
The not knowing creates a whole lot of anxiety in our body. The fluttering of the chest, the restlessness in the arms, our brain that won't shut down at night, a heart that feels like it's beating out of our chest. These are literally physical sensations that are happening in our body because of the effect of change. And when you have all of these physical sensations happening in your body it makes sense why change is always so uncomfortable because again, no matter if we're talking about a big change or a little change, these physical sensations that everybody experiences inside of their body, they happen regardless of who you are. They happen regardless of whether we're talking about big changes or little changes. Change literally has and comes with a physical sensation in our body that feels uncomfortable.
Discomfort in our body is almost like a defense mechanism to ensure that we don't make a change. That's why it happens in our body. We have all of these physical sensations that come with change that makes us feel really uncomfortable because our brain does not want us to go through the change. And so it brings about this physical sensation in hopes that you don't do it, that you don't follow through, that you hold yourself back because of all of the unknowns, because of fear, because we don't always know what's on the other side. And our brains primary job, you can hear me tell you time after time is not happiness. It's safety and security. It's primary function is to keep you alive to survive. And the easiest way to survive is to keep doing exactly what you're doing every single day. Wake up, keep it the same, go to bed exactly the same way. That's the easiest way to keep you alive is to not rock the boat in any way, shape or form.
Change is inevitable.
But of course change is inevitable. Change happens to all of us. Change indicates growth, indicates new beginnings. Change is required when we set goals, when we want something new and big in our life, it requires change. If you want to be happy in your career right now as a working mom and you're not, it's going to require a change of some kind. If you want to experience balance and you're not experiencing that now, then it's going to require a change of some kind and all of that is going to feel uncomfortable. And it's also a sign that you're probably on the right path coming back.
My family and I have been in this massive change for the last five months or so and while in the midst of this change, I have done some things really well and some things not so well, of course. And I want to take the rest of this time today on this podcast to go through the five things that I think I did really well during this change in an effort to help you navigate change. Whether that's a big change or little change in an easier less stressful way.
Self-compassion.
The first thing that I want to talk about that I think really helped throughout this entire change process was self-compassion. It's the most important thing that you can give yourself in the midst of any change. Let me describe for you what self-compassion really looked like for me in the midst of this time. So hopefully you can kind of identify for yourself what self-compassion might look like for you. Self compassion is essentially being compassionate with yourself, right? It's about being kind to yourself. And I want you to imagine what life would look like in the midst of change, whether that is in a new diet or you're losing weight or you're making a big career change or you might be moving like me. And it should be filled with self compassion.
So for me, what that looks like or has looked like is unapologetically allowing myself to feel any and all emotions that have come up over the last five’ish months. In the beginning, when my parents told me the news that they wanted to move back, those feelings were a lot of anger. There were a lot of bitterness. I actually remember telling my mom over the phone maybe just a couple of weeks after they had given us the news that they wanted to move back. And she was asking me what some of my thoughts were on what we were going to do and where we are going to move and all of those things. And I just straight up told her, like, don't ask me that question again. Because it brought up all of this very negative energy towards her and towards the move. I was just kind of in this bitter, angry place and I wanted to allow myself to be angry and bitter and she just was continuing to poke at it. And so I just had to be like, no, you're not allowed to ask me that question anymore. After I kind of got over anger, I went through a grieving process for a really long time. I still feel like I'm in a grieving process. I let myself cry. There are probably weeks when I cried at least several times every single day. I just let myself be sad when the neighbor walked by with his dog in the front of my house, something that he does twice a day. That just made me sad to think about the fact that I wasn't going to see him anymore.
I just let myself be sad. I didn't try to get myself excited about the possibility of where we might go. Even when we had signed a lease where we're headed to in Venetia, and people were asking me how I felt about moving to Venetia, I would always kind of answer, like, I'm not there yet. I'm not excited about where we're going. That doesn't mean it's not going to be a great place. It's just that I'm still kind of grieving where I've been, and I feel this great sense of loss, and I know that I will get excited, and I know I can feel excited, and I can feel sad at the same time. I just allowed all of these emotions to be there. And sometimes when people would say, it will be okay, change is good, and almost try to help me not feel sad anymore, sometimes I would even stop them. Like, if there was somebody I was close with, I'd be like, Look, I'm okay being sad. I don't need to fix my sadness. I'm just going to be in this space for a long period of time.
“Self-compassion was not judging myself or for the cocktail of emotions that I was experiencing at any given time.”
Sometimes self compassion looked like me just wearing my pajamas most of the day just because I wanted to be comfy and not being on camera for Zoom meetings as often, or just telling clients, I'd say, I know we're supposed to be on Zoom. Is it all right if we just do a phone call today so that I just didn't have to think about what I was wearing? Self-compassion looked like allowing myself to not clean my house or fold my laundry or do some other tasks that of course needed to get done. But if I just really didn't feel like doing it, I just didn't do it, and I didn't feel guilty for that. More than anything, I would just say self compassion was not judging myself or for the cocktail of emotions that I was experiencing at any given time. I tried hard to never say to myself, I shouldn't be feeling this way. I should be doing this, because shoulding is always a sign of judgment.
I have an entire podcast on that, I will link to that in the notes. If you have not listened to the shoulding podcast, where I talk a lot about how shoulding is self judgment, I just stayed away from that as much as possible, and I just let myself be wherever I was at. It was the greatest gift I could have and continue to give to myself.
Be honest with people about how you feel.
Now, the second thing that I want to offer to you, that served me really well in the midst of this change, is that I was honest with other people oftentimes about what I was feeling. In order to have self compassion, you sort of have to be honest with yourself about where you're at, but it's also important to be honest with everyone else that's around you. Like my example with my mom just telling her, hey, this is exactly what I need right now. I need you to not ask me these questions. I need you to ask me these types of questions instead, or to be with me when I cry, or to let me text you and say that I'm feeling sad without it bringing up a bunch of stuff for you.
So I cried multiple times over the last six weeks since we've had the sense of where we were moving to, what was going to happen. I would cry when I would drop my kids off at preschool. Like, I cried to other parents. I cried to their teachers. This preschool has meant so much to me, and it has been such a really big part of the early lives of my kids. I had a ton of emotion about leaving, and I would just let myself cry in front of them and tell them how sad I was feeling and let them hug me or put their hand on my back. I got all sorts of texts from friends and family over the past five months since we've been in this process, just kind of checking in on how I was doing and feeling, which I would usually say was sad. That's often what I would tell them, because I was just being honest. I would tell them I'm sad. I'm grieving a lot around the loss of this house and this community and not living near my folks.
Feeling awkward when sharing our true feelings.
We don't often say exactly how it is we are dealing with other people for probably lots of reasons. But I know one is because we don't like putting other people in uncomfortable situations. A lot of us feel awkward when someone honestly tells us that they're sad or that they're grieving or that they're angry when somebody honestly says that they're experiencing a whole lot of negative emotion, or what we would label negative emotion. We are like, oh, I'm sorry you feel that way. And then we kind of feel awkward. And we don't naturally know how to respond in those situations, and so we just don't like putting people in that situation. But in this case, I just let it be awkward sometimes. I let people respond however they wanted to respond when they didn't know what to say. I would just say, It's okay. I don't know what to say either. I'm just really sad, and I'm okay with that.
Be honest with other people.
In the midst of change, the most important thing you can do is have self compassion for yourself, which means being really honest with what you're feeling ultimately and not judging yourself for it. And the second thing is you need to be honest with other people. Speak up, tell people what you're feeling and what's going on.
Ask for help.
The third thing is to ask for help. Now, that could be something like a meal if you're moving, or someone to watch your kids, in this case, so that we could pack. The answer to that is just yes, of course you can. That's a super tangible way that you can help. Or it could be emotional support. Several times I called friends and I just cried and they listened and I cried and sometimes they cried with me and I just did that when I needed. Sometimes I would text a friend and say, will you check in on me this week? I'm just feeling like I need to know somebody is thinking about me and would you just check in on me? And they did. I found myself needing a lot of extra hugs and snuggles for my husband and I would just hug them and I would hold them as long as I needed.
99% of people in the world really want to help. They just don't know how because you don't tell them how. So when we're talking about a change that might be smaller. Because a lot of this example is about me moving. Which is a really big change. But when we're talking about change that might be smaller. Like learning how to prioritize and be present with your family instead of always thinking about work or being on at work and so forth. Support might look like telling your boss. ‘Hey, I need you to remind me to leave work today at 5pm because I really want to get home and be with my family.’ Or maybe you say, ‘hey, in our next one on one, will you ask me how I'm doing about leaving work on time? Because that's something that I really am trying to work on.’ You can ask for accountability. Or if you're trying to change eating habits so that you can lose weight and feel better in your body, that kind of help might look like deciding to order a meal service three times a week for a couple of months just to get in a better rhythm of eating healthier and eating food that's good for your body and so forth. Even if there's an investment cost to that, if it's going to help you to stay the course during the midst of that change, then it's 100% worth doing that. Or it might be asking your parents or a friend or a neighbor or spouse to watch your kids for 30 minutes so that you can go on a run, ask for what you need. I bet there's nobody in your life who doesn't want to help you through the midst of change, no matter what that changes.
Expect that your brain is going to forget why you're making this change in the first place.
So the fourth thing is to expect that your brain is going to forget why you're making this change in the first place. We had this opportunity to rent a house just a mile from where we were moving from, from that Albany house, which would mean that the kids could stay in their schools, that we'd just be living a mile from my folks, that we wouldn't really be changing much of our community or churches or anything like that. At the same time we saw that house, we saw another one, which is the one that we're ending up moving to in the town of Benicia, which is 30 minutes away. And when we compared the two homes, the one in Benicia, the one that was further away, was the one that really felt right to us. It provided the opportunity for us and our family, for my kids, to each have their own room, for me to have an office, to have a bigger yard, to have all of these things that were important to us. And we actually took a little bit of time, my husband and I, to sit down and think about the values in the house that we wanted to move into next. And when we put each of those houses next to each other, the one that would have kept us in our community or the one that we are in fact now moving to, it's like the one in Benicia really went out, which is why we ended up going that direction.
“I had to spend time intentionally redirecting my brain back to the reasons that we were making the change in the first place.”
But long story short, my brain forgot that a lot. My brain forgot all of the time why we were making this decision, and I had to spend time redirecting it. I had to tell my brain, hey, brain, I know this is really hard to leave your community and have your kids leave their schools and to move away from your family. These are the things you desperately wanted to keep, and you're making a decision to not do that. And here's why, everybody gets their own room. Here's your financial goals that you set for yourself that moving into this house is going to help with. I had to spend time intentionally redirecting my brain back to the reasons that we were making the change in the first place.
And just like when you set a goal of losing weight and you decide that you need to get up and work out every day. And your alarm clock goes off and you wake up and you're like. I don't want to get out of bed. You have to remind your brain while you're doing it in the first place because likely you're not going to jump out of bed with motivation to go work out if that hasn't been your habit for a while. Our brain forgets these things a lot, and when it's faced with discomfort, when it's faced with fear of change, your brain is going to bring up the question of why you're doing this a lot more. Because, remember, your brain doesn't like the discomfort that's happening in your body, and it's going, hey, if you just wouldn't do this, if you just decided not to lose the 10lbs or you just decided to stay near your family and not move your kids away from their schools, then you wouldn't be in all of this discomfort. It sounds really logical to your brain. It's like, obviously if you just didn't do this then you wouldn't feel this way.
Expect in the midst of change your brain is going to freak out
And you instead have to one, know that that's going to happen. That there's going to have to be energy involved in redirecting your brain back to the reasons why. And two, that doesn't mean that you're making the wrong decision. I know that you often think when you don't feel motivated to do something or when your brain keeps bringing up how hard this is, what you like to do is go back and question the decision. Like maybe this isn't the right thing I should be doing. Maybe this isn't the best, you're right. I don't think that this is the right time to prioritize me. I don't know if the market is really good that I should be shifting careers during this time. I don't know if you go back into the second guessing that then spins you out even more discomfort. And so we just need to expect in the midst of change your brain is going to freak out. It's going to tell you that you shouldn't be doing that. You're going to have to redirect your brain back into it. It's totally normal.
Create a plan for what to do when the change gets hard or you think about quitting
The last thing that I want to share with you that I think I did really well in the midst of this change and that I think would be really helpful for you in the midst of change is to come up with a plan for what to do when the change gets hard or you think about quitting. Now, in my case there was no quitting. My parents were moving back in. They had in fact already moved back in. We needed to go out and find a house so there was no quitting. But I did have to make a bunch of decisions along the way in the midst of this. Like for example from the signing of the lease to the time we actually moved was about twelve days. It wasn't very long. In the midst of that time there was just no way that I was going to be able to work during that time. That was too fast of a timeframe. My kids were starting their new school earlier than they would have had we stayed. Our school started at nine. Like where they had been going. The new school started at eight and because we weren't going to be in the new house by the time the school started I had to commute them out to their new schools. There was all these things right?
And so I had to make a decision to cancel my client calls. I need to move them to the end of August, beginning of September. That's what needs to happen to be there for my family and for this move. Of course my clients all understand that there's no problem with that. But many times I had to remind my brain why I was deciding not to work because my brain kept going, You're letting so many people down. I'm sure that they're upset with you, the working moms out there in the world, they need you, and you're not showing up for them. You should be working on your business more than you're working on your business. My brain wanted to rethink the decision I had made to stop working for a period of time so that I can get my family and us through this move.
I had to come up with a protocol for myself for what to do when that happened, when I felt like quitting on the plan that I had for myself. In this case, that protocol can be very simple. Like, we're not talking about anything very complex, but I highly recommend it, because we know that your brain is going to put up a fight through this change. It's going to remind you that you shouldn't be doing this. It's going to make it really uncomfortable for you, for you to come up with an exact thing to do, an exact plan to follow when that happens.
So, for example, if you set a goal for yourself to leave work at 5pm every day and be home with your family, and that hasn't been normal for you, right, that's a change that you want to make in your life. There's going to be a lot of days when 5 rolls around and your brain is going to argue that you can't leave. People are going to be disappointed in you. You're not prepared enough for tomorrow. Your brain is going to tell you that you didn't do enough. Like, we could just expect that that's really going to happen and you're not going to feel motivated. At that moment, it's going to feel not very good to get up and leave your chair, to go home and be with your family. So inevitably, your brain is going to put up a big fight for that. Of course, when that happens, the best thing you can do is to have a protocol for what you're going to do when that inevitably happens. So for me, what that looks like in the midst of my move, whenever my brain wanted to offer to me, I needed to get back on my computer. I needed to write some more content. I needed to be more ahead on my podcast. I needed to be checking in with my clients, all those things.
My protocol was very simple. It was, I see you brain, I see what you're trying to do. I would acknowledge it. I would close my eyes. I would take a couple of deep breaths. I would often center myself in my body. If I was sitting down, I would just kind of ease into my chair. If I was standing up, I would feel my feet on the ground, just becoming very present with where I was at. I would say to my brain, I would literally talk to it. ‘I know you're thinking that this is what I should be doing. But here's what I've decided to do. My family really needs me right now. It's more important to me to be present for my kids and help them through this transition and be very present for them than it is to write one more social media post.’ And I would notice all of those sensations in my body.
This is emotion processing.
This is something that I do with all of my clients. I help them through this moment of discomfort that, of course, happens when we're in the midst of change. And that's it. Usually I would breathe and then I would move on. I could go pack the box, or I would do whatever the next task was that I needed to do. Or if we're using the example of leaving work at 5pm, it might be your plan to text your partner and let them know that you're on your way home so you have some form of accountability for getting out the door.
So create a plan for yourself when your brain forgets what you're doing and why you're doing it, and literally write steps for yourself. I have my clients put on a sticky note, like, here's the five steps. Here's exactly what I'm going to do when this happens. I just had one of the free coaching sessions today that I offered to women who are interested in working with me as a coach. And she told me that she 100% knows that she needs to pivot in her career. That's what she told me 100%. I know that I need to pivot in my career. Not only does she know she needs to change jobs, but she probably needs to do something different as well. She doesn't know exactly what that is, and that was why she was coming to me for coaching, as she feels very lost and stuck and not sure what her next steps are.
And when I asked her what was getting in the way of her really figuring out what she wanted, what she told me was fear. She was afraid of losing the flexibility and the money that she was making currently, and she was afraid to put herself out there and do new things. And she sort of felt like an imposter in some ways. And so I told her that one of the things that we're going to do in coaching was come up with a protocol for when all of this fear and anxiety comes up for her. Because it's inevitable if you're going to apply to a new job that you only know 70% of the other 30%. You're going to have to learn on the job. Your brain is probably going to tell you that you're not qualified and that you shouldn't be applying for that job. And when that happens, rather than not apply or even allow yourself the possibility of not applying, you need to come up with the protocol of how to handle that in a moment.
And I told her that I was going to teach her exactly what to do when all of that fear comes up. I was going to teach her how to calm her body down, I was going to teach her how to keep moving forward despite the fear and anxiety that comes up when we go through change, when we do something new, when we do something big in our life. Because at this point, her brain was sort of in charge and her brain was bringing up all of the fear, anxiety, and she was listening to it, and that was what was keeping her stuck. So I was going to help her through that moment.
So the fifth thing I want to share with you, to help you really ease your change is to come up with a plan or a protocol for what to do when you feel like quitting, or you do, in fact, quit maybe for just a moment in the middle of the change or when you're starting a new habit or where you're doing something new and big.
Okay, so let's just review really fast the five lessons that I've learned in the midst of this move that I want to offer to you to help you in the midst of change.
Have self-compassion. Allow yourself to feel whatever it is that you need to feel or want to feel without any judgment.
Share how you're feeling with others. Be honest.
Ask for what you need. People want to help.
Expect that your brain is going to forget why you're making this change in the first place and that you're going to have to redirect it so you really know why and feel really committed to why you're making this change so that you can in fact, redirect it.
Come up with a protocol for exactly what to do when you fall off the bandwagon or when you quit, or just when your brain is running amok and reminding you of all of the reasons why you shouldn't be doing what you're doing.
Moms, if you are struggling to meet your goals right now, if you know you need to make change in your life but you're really having a hard time doing it, if you feel stuck, I can help. I am a life coach for ambitious working mom. So if you've been thinking about hiring me as your coach, now is the time. The process starts with you booking first a free coaching session. I call that a breakthrough call. That is the time we're really going to spend talking about why you feel stuck or out of balance right now, exactly what you need to do in order to move forward. And we'll discuss all of the various coaching and options. I want to answer all of your questions to really help you determine if coaching is the right next step for you.
So you can go to rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book to find a time to connect with me in the next week or so, now is always the time. There's no reason to be going through any kind of life change on your own. I am here to both make it easy doable and help you do it faster. All right, working moms. Talk to you soon, and let's get to it.
