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A balanced life is a life of WANT-to. It’s a life that feels purposeful, motivating, fun and even easy. An unbalanced life is a life of HAVE-to. It’s a life that feels hard, forceful, and exhausting. Two women might have a very similar life with similar responsibilities but one will feel balanced because everything in their life feels like a choice – like a WANT to and the other will feel imbalanced because they feel like they have no choice and they HAVE to do the things they are doing. In this episode we are going to talk about the difference between a want to and a have to life and then explore the process of moving from have to to want to. Ready? Let’s get to it…
Topics in this episode:
A have to life feels forced vs. a want to life that feels chosen
When you want to do something, it feels motivating
Selecting activities with your kids that you want to do
3 steps to moving from a life of have-to’s to a life of want-to’s
Shifting your thoughts so that the activities in life feel like something you want
Show Notes & References:
I can help you create a life you not only want to live, but a life that makes you happy and excited to live. Ready to get started? Click here to book a free coaching call to learn more. www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book
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Transcript
Intro
A balanced life is a life of want to. You want to work, you want to spend time with your kids, you want to cook or do daily household chores. It's a life that feels purposeful, motivating, fun, and even easy. An unbalanced life is a life of have to. It's a life that feels hard and forceful and exhausting.
Two women might have very similar lives with very similar responsibilities, but one will feel balanced because everything in their life feels like a choice, like, a want to. And the other will feel imbalanced because they feel like they have no choice and they have to do the things they're doing.
In this episode, we're going to be talking about the difference between a want to and a have to life and then explore the process of moving from half to to want to. You ready? Let's get to it.
Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms 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.
Being a working mom is full of responsibilities.
I remember when I was working my corporate event management job, and I was exploring the next phase of my career before my daughter was born. I was very willing to kind of look outside the box, to explore lots of different options, maybe even go back to some certification or through schooling, I was willing to not make the amount of money I was making. There was much more willing to take some risks.
But then as soon as my daughter was born, all of that stopped. And I felt very stuck in the life that I had created because I was telling myself that I had to keep doing what I was doing. I had to work at that job. I had to make a certain amount of money. I had to keep the insurance, I had to save for retirement at a certain rate. I had to keep saving now for my daughter to go to college.
There was all of this responsibility that kept me put exactly where I was at.
And then that responsibility started to find its way into other areas of life where I felt like I had to make it home to be with my daughter at a certain time after work. And I declined times with friends because I felt like it interfered with the time that I was supposed to be spending with my daughter.
It was a life that was completely out of balance because it was a life of ‘have to’.
And today, in this episode, we're going to talk about moving from a have to life into a, want to life and exactly how to do it. Let's start out by talking about what a have to life is and why it creates so much imbalance.
So a have to life is a life full of have to’s, right? You have to go to work. You have to make a certain amount of money. You have to clean the house. You have to spend time with the kids. You have to take time for yourself. You have to work out. It kind of feels like this arbitrary, on some level set of rules that you're living by, because you have to, right?
I mean, when you think back to when you were a kid and you had to clean your room or you had to make your bed or you had to do your homework, it didn't feel very good. It didn't feel like something you wanted to do.
Think of when you were a kid, and there were a whole lot of have to’s about being young, where you felt like you had to clean your room or your parents made you make your bed or do your homework.
My husband likes to tell the story of how everybody in his family got up Saturday morning to clean the house. Everybody had to participate - you had to. And my six year old right now, she likes to tell me, ‘why do we always have to do what you want to do? Why can't we ever do what I want to do?’ So much attitude.
Balance is a feeling.
Now, remember, balance is a feeling. So when we talk about creating a balanced life, we're not talking about creating perfect circumstances, but we're talking about feeling a certain way about and within our life.
How does have to feel? It feels forced. It feels hard. It feels exhausting. It feels forceful. It feels responsible. I kind of liken it to pushing a boulder up a hill because there's just so much energy that is expelled in a have to kind of life.
‘Have to’ always creates imbalance.
And that's why have to always creates imbalance, because the emotions that come from a have to are all of the emotions that come in an imbalanced life. If you imagine my six year old who's telling me, why do we always have to do what you want to do? She's yelling at me because she doesn't like that feeling of being forced. A have to life is a forced life, and a forced life is never going to create balance.
A life of ‘want to’.
So now let's talk about a want to life. A want to life is essentially just a life full of want to, right? It's a life where you want to go to work, where you want to spend time with your kids and you want to work out, and you want to take time with your spouse and say yes to things. And sometimes maybe you even want to clean the house because you want a clean home.
A want to life is a balanced life because it feels easy.
Maybe think back to college or just after college, when there wasn't a ton of responsibility and life was mostly just filled with a bunch of want to. Even studying at that time might have felt like a want to because you wanted good grades so you wanted to put in the effort to study. A want to life is a balanced life because it feels easy, it feels naturally motivating, it feels energizing, it feels free and it feels purposeful.
So here's the problem. When we look at a have to life and a want to life, in a lot of ways they look exactly the same. Though usually a want to life probably includes a little bit more fun, adventure, spontaneity. But generally speaking, two women could have virtually the same life with very similar responsibilities. But one of them feels completely out of balance because everything feels like a have to. And the other, it could feel completely in balance because everything feels like a want to.
Have to and want to’s are motivations.
We can't really see motivations from the outside. Motivation is the drive behind the things that we do and the drive behind the things that we do. Either move us towards a life of balance or moves us towards a life of imbalance.
For example, your job if you have to work, how does that feel? How does it feel to get up every day feeling like you have to go to the job that you're at, you have to do the tasks that you wanted to? It feels very demotivating. My guess is it feels very purposeless. You feel very stuck, you feel very alone.
Even now you counter that to someone that wants to work, and where they want to get up every day and go to the place that they're going to spend 8 hours. They feel very driven, it feels very purposeful. It feels like something they want to have in their life. They feel like they're making the impact that they want to make.
Having to work out vs wanting to work out.
Here's another one I hear from women. They talk about working out and how it feels like a have to, not a want to. When you have to work out. How does that feel? It kind of feels like that, right? Where you just have to go to the gym or you have to turn on the DVD and do the workout or whatever it may be. It is filled with this dread that comes with it.
Versus if you want to, It feels very intrinsically motivating. You get maybe even a little excited about what's coming up. It feels like something you want to participate in so you look forward to it.
Having to spend time with kids vs wanting to spend time with kids.
Spending time with your kids - now this might sound kind of odd for some people because they want nothing more than to spend a ton of time with their kids, but we don't always go through that season of life where we want to spend time with our kids. It can feel like a have to at times.
It feels like when they ask to play with us that we have to play with them at that time, or we have to play the games that they want to play and that we're supposed to participate in a variety of things that they want to do. When it feels like I have to spend time with them in the way that they want to and the timetable that they want to on, it can feel very exhausting and tiresome and we don't really look forward to it.
Versus a mindset where you really want to engage in your kids or you are looking forward to the activities that you're doing together and you've chosen activities you want to do, that time with your kids feels much more purposeful. It feels like you're making everyday memories. It feels like something that you want to participate in, that you're glad to participate in and it has an energy about it.
Then we can get down to the nuances of some of our have to’s. Like having to attend a meeting that you don't really want to attend, feeling like you have to attend that meeting. How fruitful is that meeting going to be for you? Probably not at all. It's going to be something that you feel like you're completely wasting your time in or you're doing other things in, or it can cause irritation or frustration or whatever it may be. If you have to attend that meeting, almost nothing good is going to come from it.
Shifting your energy.
Versus if you shift your energy into wanting to attend that meeting or at least getting to a place of neutral about it, then you've opened yourself up to possibly learning something from that meeting or getting something out of it or contributing to it or participating in a way that it feels impactful for you.
The thoughts and energy behind our actions.
I just wanted to give you a bunch of examples of the difference behind the energy and the experience of when you have to do something versus when you want to do something. Because it's not really about working or not working or cleaning the house or not cleaning the house. It's the thoughts that fuel those actions. It's the energy behind it.
And so when we're talking about moving from a have to kind of life to a want to kind of life, we're talking about shifting the way you're thinking about those actions.
I can tell you 100% if you're feeling like you're in a have to kind of life, just adding in an activity once in a while that's just for you - that massage or that date night with your friends or whatever it may be, that's not going to be enough to rejuvenate your life.
Shift all of the ways you're thinking about your life.
You're going to have to actually shift all of the ways you're thinking about your life so that it no longer feels like every activity, every commitment, every obligation, every responsibility feels like I have to. You're going to have to shift out of that in order to really get to this place of everyday balance.
Step 1: Identify all your have to’s.
Okay, so let's talk about moving from have to, to want to. There are three steps. The first one is to identify all of the have to’s. So take a week and literally inventory these. Look at your calendar, look at your commitments, walk through your day, your chores - when are you saying you have to do something? Or when is it feeling like you're slogging through, like it's just really hard or forced, or you kind of have to muster up energy to do it. Those are all the moments where you're living in ‘have to’ energy.
And I also want you to look at your to-do list and I want you to determine which of those that are on the list are have to’s. So the first step is inventory.
Step 2: Evaluate…Do I really have to do this?
The second step is to ask yourself, do I really have to do this? Why or why not? Essentially, which of these have to's? Can you literally just let go of you could delegate to someone else or you could just drop altogether.
I remember one of my clients, we went through all of her to-do’s at one point and she cut them down almost by half. Things that had been on there for over a year. Things like finishing her baby book, she just simply cut it all down by half. She looked at that and she said, I don't really have to do that. I can actually outsource that if I gave them all of my pictures, there's companies that do that for me and I don't have to take the weekend to do that. So she started to get ruthless with the things that she felt like she always had to do and she cut them down by half.
Then I had another client who was telling me about how she had all of these have to’s swimming about in her brain and it was causing a lot of imbalance for her. And one of them was getting her daughter's communion dress dry cleaned. It had been sitting in the closet for months and months and months. And it was something that she just always felt like she needed to do.
It was as if her whole body sensed the communion dress in the closet. And, she just knew that she had to get that done. And so we talked about it. She talked about if it was really important for her to do it or not. And by the end, she said it was 100% important for her to do it. It had been in the family for a long period of time, she wanted to keep it clean. She wanted keep it for the next generation. And that weekend she went out and accomplished it. She finished that to do because it moved off of the have to list to the want to list.
So the second step is to ask yourself and be really ruthless about it, do you have to do this? Why or why not? And to the things that you don't have to do? Can you delegate them or can they just simply drop off your list?
Step 3: Shifting your mindset.
So step number three is looking at everything left on your list and then going through the process of shifting your thoughts about it. So let me give you an example.
I'm somebody that has always gotten up before my family to do a bit of journaling and spend a little time with myself. But I wanted to add in working out. I have never been somebody that's consistent at working out in any way, shape or form. This was something I wanted to add into my routine, but I was having a really hard time doing it because it felt like something I had to do.
My body's getting older, I'm not liking the way some things are starting to shift and it was just feeling like something I had to do, but I did not want to get up to do it. So I spent the time really thinking about why I wanted to work out, why I wanted to get up a little bit earlier and include that in my morning routine.
I started thinking about how I wanted to be flexible at an older age. I started thinking about how my knees feel every single day because I sit so much in the work that I do and how good they would feel if I got them out and I stretched them and I become more flexible.
I started thinking about the energy that I wanted to have with my kids as I continued to work out and I built up some more endurance. I started thinking about playing Ultimate Frisbee, which is my one form of exercise that I have always been consistent at and how I could get better at that game if I became more flexible, if I built up a little bit more endurance as I became somebody that could run more often.
“I started getting my brain on board with all of the reasons why..”
I started getting my brain on board with all of the reasons why I really wanted to get up in the morning to work out. As soon as my brain was able to shift ever so slightly on tilting towards the want to side of the equation, almost like magic, I was able to do it.
My alarm went off and the immediate thing that I thought of was this is just something that I want to do. This is something I want to include in my life. And my body just kind of on its own, if you will, just got itself out of bed and I started to work out.
“I remind myself of all of these reasons why I want to do it.”
It obviously eventually became a habit and now I've been doing it for almost a year without hardly any problems getting myself up out of bed. And whenever I get into a cycle of not getting up, I remind myself of all of these reasons why I want to do it.
Questions to ask yourself to shift your mindset.
So how do you shift your thoughts from have to, to want to? It's really just a series of questions to be asking yourself. Here's a few to get you started.
Why do I want to do this? That seems like an obvious one, right?
How am I on board with this already?
How is it going to benefit me?
How is it going to benefit those around me?
Why is it the best thing for me to do?
Shift your thoughts to shift the fuel behind it.
Those are just a few questions to get you going. But what you really need to do is just continue to answer them little by little or as often as possible in order to shift your energy about them.
The whole point of this exercise as you shift your thoughts is to shift the fuel behind it, right? It's to shift the emotion behind the task so that it doesn't feel like a dread, like a have to, like a forest, so that it feels like something may be more purposeful or maybe more motivating, maybe more freeing.
You may not be able to get from have to to want to in this, at least not yet. I'm certainly at a point where I want to get up in the morning and do the exercise that I do. It's something that feels very motivating to me. But I wasn't there in the beginning.
At first, it just felt very purposeful to me. I knew exactly why I wanted to do it. I felt very grounded in that. And that feeling is very different than the forced ‘have to’ feeling.
The forced half to feeling kind of happens to us when we're at the beginning of a goal, when we feel that sense of natural motivation towards something, and then eventually it wanes. Eventually the reason why we stop moving towards our goals is when that motivation ends is because all of a sudden it moves from a want to, to a have to. And we never want to do anything that we have to do.
So in the beginning know, that you're probably not going to get from a have to, to a want to, although you might, but you're going to get from have to, to purposeful or have to, to freeing. You're going to get somewhere more neutral in order to help you naturally get yourself on board with the things that you want to be doing or have to be doing, but don't want that forceful energy behind it.
Conclusion.
All right, working moms. Just to recap, in order to move from a have to, to a want to, first you need to identify all of the have to’s. You need to take an inventory of all of the things, the tasks, the routines, the chores that feel like I have to. And then you need to ask yourself, do you really have to do this? Be very ruthless.
And if you don't have to, then you need to either delegate it or drop it all together. And then the third thing you need to do is shift your thoughts about all of the things left on your list that feel like have to’s into want to’s by asking yourself strategic questions until you shift your energy to a place of wanting to.
I'm looking forward to connecting with you all next week.
Remember to rate and review this podcast if you have found it helpful. It really is the most effective way to share this resource with other working moms. I can't wait to talk to you all next week. Let's get to it.
