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On today’s episode I am answering 3 listener questions: How do you and your ambitious spouse BOTH make strides in your careers at the same time without neglecting the family? How do you stay confident even when there is a gap in your resume? How do I get my friends and coworkers to focus on the mindset of balance?
Topics in this episode:
Is it possible for both you and your spouse to rise up in your career at the same time or is it always one then the other?
Redefining success so that you stop thinking you need to work more hours to be more successful
Clearly understanding your tradeoffs will help you make more confident decisions
The transition from being a stay-at-home mom to a working mom and vice versa
How to navigate the “gap” on your resume
Dealing with other’s emotions when you make large career pivots
Learning to be ok with other people’s stress and overworking behavior
Show Notes & References:
Have a question you want answered on a future episode? Send me an email at rebecca@rebeccaolsoncoaching.com.
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Transcript
Intro
I have such a fun episode for you today. It is my first listener Q&A episode. I've taken three questions from listeners, and I have answered them in detail right here in today's episode.
Here's what we'll be covering:
How to balance you and your spouse's ambitious careers simultaneously.
We'll talk about how to handle other people's big emotions when you make big life decisions like changing jobs.
And lastly, we'll dive into how to help your coworker and your boss develop a mindset around balance so that everybody on your team doesn't feel so stressed out.
Can't wait to share this with you. This is going to be such a great episode. You all 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.
Hello, working moms. I'm so excited for today's episode. Today I am hosting our first ever ambitious and balanced working Moms listener Q&A. Woohoo. I am so excited.
Several weeks ago, I sent out some emails, and I posted all over Instagram and LinkedIn soliciting questions for this episode. And I heard from several of you out there, and so I'm going to answer your questions here on the podcast today.
Now, I have a feeling this is going to be a very loved podcast, and so I want to make sure I do it again. Make sure you are following me on LinkedIn and Instagram. If you're not on my email list, you're going to want to get on my email list.
You can do that by signing up for my free audio series on my website, rebeccaolsoncoaching.com and the audio series is all about being present every day for 19 days.
I send you a five minute or less audio, kind of like a mini podcast on what it takes to be present for the day. And you'll get all of the tidbits and nuggets of wisdom, from that series, and you'll get on my email list so you'll be able to respond back to other listener Q and A episodes that will be coming up in the future.
All right, so let's dive into this episode. I love this first question that we're going to get into, and I really spent some time thinking very deeply about how to respond to this. So I'm just going to read the question as it was written to me word for word. Okay, here it goes.
I'm curious about how ambitious couples where both partners are high achievers and are seeking balance making career decisions.
There is a balance at a personal level, and then there's a balance at sort of a couple family level when there is balance in the family unit.
But then one partner decides to make a change, it can feel like their ambition burdens the other partner. How can each partner strive higher without making the other partner feel like they have to assume more family responsibility?
It seems like the scale has to tip back and forth or we have to take turns, but I just want everyone to be able to rise together.
The family unit rises together.
I love the image of the family unit rising together, as she describes it in the latter half of that question, because it's such a beautiful illustration of what this ambitious mom is looking for.
And so there are three points that I want to make about this and the first has to do with that illustration, that image that she brings to mind, where the whole family unit rises together because that's going to be very important in your brain.
This family has an image of sacrifice when it comes to balance. It's an either or. When one parent is feeling ambitious and going after the career, the other one is feeling held back and is suffering.
And if that's what's going on, if that's the image your brain has when it thinks about balancing ambitious careers, like it's an either or and you don't want it to be an either or, your brain needs to sort out what the options are.
What does this life look like when the whole family unit is rising together?
Clarity is really important to our brains.
If your brain can't visualize what that even means or looks like, it's going to have a really hard time creating that.
Now, the problem is, for a lot of women out there and a lot of families out there, there isn't another example of this, or at least an example of this that you want to emulate.
A lot of women that I work with don't have anyone in their life that is truly balancing their ambitious career with motherhood in a healthy way, let alone balancing their own career and the career of their partner in a healthy way.
And a lot of women don't have mothers or parent figures that were going after an ambitious career and so they don't have any examples to go off of. So I realized this could be a really hard task, but it has to start here.
What does it actually look like in a day to day sense for parents to have ambitious careers and balance that together with their family?
Paint a picture for your brain. If you have a hard time getting started with this, I would encourage you to simply take a journal and a pen and a quiet like 20 or 30 minutes, close your eyes for a while, a good 5-10 minutes, and sort of let your mind wander.
Let's say to a year from now, let's assume you figured this out, right? You have figured out how to do this, how to balance the ambitious careers together in the way that you want.
So you've figured it out - let your brain go there and let your brain sort of explore what life looks like.
How would you feel?
How would you interact with your kids?
How would you be interacting with your partner, your spouse?
How would you be handling your to do list?
What does life look like?
How do you carry yourself?
Really get down to the nitty gritty of what this balanced life, were two people going after their careers - what does that look like?
I remember a client of mine came to me in coaching feeling very resolute that there was no way both her and her partner could have demanding and ambitious careers and be good parents at the same time. She was convinced of it.
And we spent a lot of time in coaching together in the beginning, really talking about her goals and painting a picture for her brain of what she really wanted for herself and her family.
Because the way it was looking now was definitely not the way she wanted it going forward, but she didn't have a sense of what forward even meant.
Getting clear on what you really want.
So we spent sessions really getting clear on what she truly wanted out of her career, what she really wanted out of her experience as a mom.
We talked about what the family values were and the kinds of things that she and her husband wanted to instill in their kids.
What a successful working mom looks like.
And really importantly, really importantly, we started to think more long term and paint a bigger picture of what success as a working mom looks like.
And this is the second point I really want to make around this - It's the idea of success, because I have a feeling for this listener, the challenge here is time.
It doesn't feel like there's enough time for both people in the relationship to go after their ambitious career. I would imagine a scenario like this is very common.
If one takes on an ambitious project at their job, that's really exciting to them, gives them new experiences as a resume builder, the idea or thought is that it's going to require more time of them, that they're going to be working more hours and likely taking time away from the family.
And so the other partner, the other spouse, has to pick up the slack. More time does not equal more success.
Now, I've talked about this on the podcast, and I will link to an episode where I get really into it because it's a really important concept to understand and a lot of people misunderstand the connection between success and time, or really the lack thereof.
Working more hours does not equal more success across the board.
It's the most common way that people experience success. It's certainly the way Americans are rewarded. The employee that works the most hours is seen as the most devoted, and hardworking is likely to be the first to be promoted.
It's a terrible system that we have, but there's actually many examples to show that more time does not actually mean a better outcome or a greater success.
It's actually baffling to me when you think about it. I mean, who would you say is more successful? Is it the person that can accomplish the task in 2 hours or the person that can accomplish the task in four?
If more time equals more success, then actually it's the person that takes the longest, right? Isn't that wild?
Because obviously the person that can get it done in two is more efficient and actually can get more things done and is a better worker.
But that's not the most natural place for our brain to go. We think there is a greater reward with working more hours and more time.
You can redefine success.
So I want to ask this listener to redefine success. What if more time is not required of you or your spouse in order to continue to achieve at the level that you want?
If success and time were not related to one another and you could actually be more successful in less time, what would that look like? How would you problem solve for that?
Our brains are sort of lazy and so the more time you give yourself to accomplish something or do something, the longer it will take. Slow and steady is better than fast and efficient when it comes to our brain.
Now there's a little caveat, to this because if you would be penalized for working less hours, then there's a couple of follow ups to this conversation.
So for example, if you are like a lawyer that works in a firm that requires a certain amount of billable hours, then getting your work done in a shorter period of time actually doesn't really matter.
And usually in these situations, more billable hours is how a company decides on bonuses and promotions. So in this case, there's some really core decisions to be made.
You have to decide - is it worth it?
If you're being asked to work 50 or 60 hours a week in order to fulfill requirements or in order to be successful and reach the next level in your career, you have to decide if that's worth it for you.
And this is the last point I want to make on this question. You can't disregard intentional decisions that you make. You can't beat yourself up for them or feel bad about them.
Here's what I mean by that - If you decide to stay in a job that only rewards you for working more hours, or maybe you and your spouse both decide to stay in these jobs because you're both lawyers or something along those lines, then there's a trade off to that.
There's a trade off to how much time you're going to spend with your family.
There's a trade off to the amount of money that you're going to spend on childcare.
There's a trade off to the time that you can take off your vacation time, your PTO time.
You might not get to tuck your kiddo in to bed every night. There's a trade off to that.
Making conscious trade off’s.
And as long as your trade offs are conscious, meaning you've thought through them and the sacrifices of what that trade off is by following your path in your career, you both following your paths in your career. You don't get to beat yourself up for that.
Your brain likes to do that. My brain likes to do that. Your brain likes to tell you that you're a terrible mom, that you're not putting your family first because you're going after your career.
And your brain likes to make you feel bad telling you that you really should be doing more in your job and that you're behind and you're probably not doing enough right? It's kind of a lose lose.
And I see this so often for my clients. They make a decision, I'm not going to work tonight. I'm going to prioritize my family and bedtime. And that feels like the right decision for them. It's the way they want to be living their life, but they don't feel all the good feelings that come with being with their family and with their kids and tucking them in.
Instead, their brain tells them that they really should be doing this more often, that they're terrible of parents for not doing it as often as they should, and they're letting a bunch of people down at work because they really should be working more.
You have to be onto your brain.
Their brain is kind of yelling at them from both sides, and it just feels terrible. You can't let your brain do this. You have to be onto your brain. You are not allowed to feel guilty or resentful or not enough for intentional decisions that you make.
And I will say a lot of times, this is probably the problem. My clients haven't been making intentional decisions. They're not thinking through the trade offs and the gains of their different decisions. It doesn't feel intentional to them. It doesn't feel grounded in purpose.
To this listener, I want to say you need to know what your trade offs are. You need to be clear on, as you decide to go after your ambitious career, what are you trading off? And you need to be okay with that.
So just to recap for this listener or this couple, you need to paint a picture of what it really means for you and your partner to both go after your career ambitiously.
You need to get crystal clear on what that looks like and what it means in kind of a day to day sense. You need to untangle success and time so your brain stops thinking you need more time in order to be successful and ambitious in your career.
And you need to stop beating yourself up for intentional decisions that are made when you choose your career.
Okay, let's move on to the next question.
I have a listener that is a stay at home mom and that's actively making a transition into becoming a working mom. And here was her question.
I'd like to hear you talk about how a stay at home mom can return to work in order to recover her financial freedom and how to manage the mentality and the changes in the family style.
So there's really two pieces to this question. There is your transition from being a stay at home mom to being a working mom and finding the job.
But then there's also this piece as it relates to the family and the changes that are inevitable to happen when one parent makes this type of transition.
Now, it's actually interesting because although I've worked with several stay at home moms and have helped them return back into the workforce, it's actually more common for my clients to come to me the other way around.
I help a lot of working moms become stay at home moms.
At least for a period of time, or take a sabbatical or go part time. But the challenges are exactly the same. So I'm going to speak to both sides since both seem to be represented here.
You need to believe in yourself.
The first thing that's really important is that you need to believe in yourself and your value. If you've been home with your kids for the last two years, five years, ten years, and you want to get back into the workforce, you have to believe that you have something to offer the workforce.
The workforce isn't going to tell you that. You tell the workforce that if you've been in the workforce and you want to be a stay at home mom and take a break for a while, you have to believe that you still have value even when you're not working.
I talk about this a lot on the podcast. Your value does not come from what you do.
It does not come from your job.
It does not come from your job as a mom or your role as a mom.
You have human value, intrinsic value, just because you were born.
And this is a lot of the work I do in coaching, in building up your belief in self, in the thoughts that you have about yourself, I want you to have an arsenal of really amazing, wonderful thoughts about yourself.
Because if you want to make a change to what you do, whether that's transitioning from home to work, or if you want to become somebody that has been working and now you want to be home, or even if you just want to change some of your overworking habits, your brain can't think that you, as a person are hinging on that.
Your brain can't think that your identity is going to be lost if you stop working or you stop being a stay at home mom.
Your brain must see that you are valuable regardless of what you do, that you bring something to this world that's worthwhile, that makes an impact even when you're not working or even when you're not a stay at home mom. So you need to know your value and build up your belief in self first.
Now the second thing you need to do is address the gap on your resume. Again, if you've taken a break for a few years or even ten years, how do explain that gap? What are your thoughts on that gap?
I know this is a sticking point for a lot of women that are thinking about going part time or being a stay at home mom for a while or taking a sabbatical. They really worry about the gap.
And the most important thing to know about the gap, I'm going to tell you right here, you ready? It's not a problem to you.
In other words, if you see yourself as being valuable and having skills that you've developed during that gap and you see that time as being very intentional and you see yourself as a human being having being sharpened and shapened by the gap and you could articulate that, then that's really all that matters.
Because that's how you're going to communicate it in an interview or on your resume.
If you believe the gap is a problem, then you'll have the energy that it's a problem when you get back into work or as you're applying or as you're filling out applications, right? You'll be worried about how other people are going to view this gap.
But if it's not a problem to you, it won't be a problem to them.
Now, the other thing I'll say about the gap is that for some employers, the gap actually might be a problem. And guess what? You don't want to work at those places anyway.
You don't want to put any energy in trying to convince someone that your gap is a problem when you know it's not.
Because if they can't value the idea that a woman or anyone really would make a countercultural choice to be home with their kids for a while, to raise a family, if they can't see the skill sets involved in doing that and trust that they're going to actually be a better employee because of it, then you don't want to work for them anyway.
Which might mean that there are less jobs available to you. I mean, I don't actually know if that's true, but even if it was, it doesn't really matter.
It hasn't changed the fact that you have something to offer a company. You are somebody that they want to hire that has a skill set that is valuable to them, that has life experience that's valuable to them, and it's really just your job to match that skill set to them.
Your beliefs in yourself matter.
And your beliefs about that gap matter a lot when you're making this transition.
The third point I want to make here is really important. What is your reasoning for going back to work or leaving work, depending on whichever scenario you might be in.
What’s your why?
I have a lot of clients that come to me thinking about making a job change or thinking about going part time or thinking about taking a sabbatical. And it's likely something that they've kind of thought about a lot, maybe ever since having kids.
But the reasoning is because they don't believe that they can make it work. Like, they're drowning in work, they're so overwhelmed. They're living in this constant state of stress and imbalance, and they can't figure out how to make a change. And so they think that quitting or taking a break is like their only option.
And sometimes I ask this question on a breakthrough call. I'll ask, let's just assume that if you work with me, you're going to figure out how to manage your stress so that you're not always overwhelmed and you get plenty of sleep at night and you feel like your family is actually being prioritized in the way that you want and you're resting and you're taking your PTO.
So let's just assume that that's possible if we were to work together. Tell me your thoughts about wanting to quit or go part time.
Now, sometimes they'll say, I still want to quit or go part time. Like, that truly is a dream or a vision that they've had is to be a stay at home mom for a while, particularly when their kids are young.
And that's great, and we talk about that, but a lot of women say, if I could figure out how to balance life, I would stay working 100%. Not being able to hack it or not being able to figure out how to experience balance in your life, that's probably not a very compelling reason to quit work. Right? It doesn't feel very good.
Get curious with yourself.
Now for this listener that's going from being a stay at home mom to a working mom. You need to get very curious with yourself on why you want to do this.
Now, you mentioned financial freedom, so I assume that there's a money component to this, but that can't be it. It's not just about financial freedom. It's about what the money will mean to you and your family.
What would you do with it?
How would you spend it?
How would you save it?
How will it impact the legacy of the financial future of the family?
What opportunities are you buying with that money?
What will the emotional state of the family be with more money in your bank account?
What would you believe about yourself?
What opportunities are you giving yourself if you woke up tomorrow employed with $100,000 job?
How would you care for yourself differently?
How would that impact the family differently?
You need to get very specific about your why.
You need to actually be very specific on your why. It's not just about the money. It's about so much more than that. You need to feel that and you need to feel that in your bones.
And there's a really good reason why it's important and why this is probably not just a one time exercise. It's something that you have to deeply think over and over and over again and remind your brain over and over and over again.
And we're moving kind of into the second part of this question now, the impact that it has on your family.
The reality is people, namely your kids, are going to have really big feelings about this. They're not going to like it if you're mom going from working to being a stay at home mom, your boss is not going to like this. Your coworker is not going to like it. Your team is going to feel super let down. Your spouse is probably going to have a lot of thoughts about it too, that might not be in alignment with you.
Everyone's going to have to adapt and change because of this decision that you're making. And that feels really bad, particularly when it comes to our children.
Our kids don't really start developing a sense of making decisions on behalf of other people until they're around the age of eight. I think that's what it is. Meaning all the way up to that point, they're very self focused.
They can only see their own personal gratification in their decisions. It's really hard for them to make decisions on behalf of other people's gratification where it feels like a sacrifice to them, which means all you're going to hear is, I don't get Mommy all day every day. Mommy's not going to pick me up from school. They're going to have really big feelings about this.
And your reasonings for doing it, your reasonings for going back to work need to feel stronger than their emotions.
The purpose on why you want to go back to work needs to feel so compelling to you. It needs to feel so deep inside of you that even in the midst of their frustration and anger, you'll be able to handle it.
Leaving your job to be a stay at home mom or being a stay at home mom and going back to work, these are not emotional decisions or you don't want them to be.
Your decisions need to be based on your purpose, values and goals.
These are really big life decisions that you want to make sure are based on purpose and reasoning and values and goals. Not based on comfort or in this case, not based on the fear of other people's discomfort. So expect that people are not going to like your decision and your kids are not going to like your decision.
So last, what I want to offer to this listener is I want you to make a plan for how you're going to handle these moments, these emotional moments when your kids are upset, when they are dysregulated for months maybe, as you establish new rhythms after you get that job.
How are you going to handle these emotional moments when your heart aches, when you feel so bad that your kids are upset?
How are you going to treat yourself with kindness?
How are you going to have compassion?
How are you going to overcome those big feelings of yours?
I recently interviewed my client Skylar on this podcast. If you remember, she had moved her entire family from one coast to the other, and she has four kids and her husband, so six of them, and they moved to this new town.
Though in her story, it wasn't about being a stay at home mom or a working mom - It was about the move. Her kids had a lot of feelings about the move. Her kids did not like the idea of this move.
And by the time we started coaching together, it had already been six months since the whole family had moved and the kids still had, really big feelings about it. It hadn't changed much. Everyone was still adjusting to new rhythms, new culture, new family dynamic.
And one of the things we had to talk about in coaching was why she did it.
She needed to remember all of the good things that came from this decision that she made. And we talked about why it was okay for her entire family to have big feelings about it.
And we talked about what it looked like to hold space for their emotions as well as hers. When her kids were really in the middle of being upset about it in coaching, we actually developed a plan, like a little protocol for her to help process those emotions as they came up so that they didn't feel like this emotional baggage that they had been for months and months on end.
So we came up with a plan on how you're going to handle your emotions when other people have really big emotions about your decision.
Okay, let's dive into the last question that we're going to get into today. Let me read it for you.
I've immersed myself in learning more about work life balance as a working mom, mainly through your podcast. And I've invested quite a bit of time and effort in improving my mindset so I can live, a more joyful and balanced life.
This time spent has really paid off, but a roadblock I run into is many of the people around me don't have this mindset and it causes tension, especially from my boss who works a ton of hours and is a perfectionist.
Do you have any tips for sharing work life balance mindset ideas with the people around you without me having to invest a significant amount of time in teaching them?
Ideally, they would just listen to your podcast, but I know most of them will not take the time to do this. So I was wondering if there was just some actions I could do when talking to people to help everyone's work life balance mindset.
I see this in my personal life too, when I'm starting to make more time to see friends and family, but they're still too busy to see me because they're not prioritizing the things that they tell me are a priority.
I love that there's just such a range of questions here, don't you? Before I dive into this last question, let me just make one more plug.
Once again, get on my mailing list, follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram, send me your questions. I would love to do another one of these episodes where I'm answering your very specific questions and helping you achieve a more balanced life.
That's what this is all about. That is what we are doing on this podcast. We are choosing a both and life, both a successful career and a very connected and loving personal life. All right, so let's dive in.
The first thing that stands out to me is why does this listener need people to change? Why does she need them to understand or have these skills?
I mean, just based on the tone and the energy of this question, my guess is it's not just for them. I mean, obviously there's a piece of that. She wants people to experience balance and feel what she's feeling. I love that, and we're going to dive into that.
But I'm also curious why she needs them…it almost feels desperate for them to have these skills.
Now, my hunch is because she doesn't like feeling in conflict with her boss or her coworkers or her friends. She doesn't like the pushback that she's getting as, she is making more balanced decisions for herself. And so she wants everyone to have the same mindset because she thinks it's better and everyone should operate in this way.
Now, wouldn't that be nice if everyone in our world had a very similar mindset and similar goals and operated in similar ways? I'm sure it would make life much more efficient.
I never actually will forget this moment in premarital counseling with my husband. One of the most impactful statements that was said by the pastor that was guiding us at that time was that he told us we would spend a bunch of time and energy attempting to change the other person so that they would become more like us.
We would spend time in our marriage somewhat unconsciously, trying to change their mindset, trying to change their thinking, ultimately just trying to change them because it would make for less tension in the relationship. There would be less conflict and things would be more efficient.
And he said this: It would also be one of the most boring relationships we'd ever be in. We actually need relationships in our life and people in our life that think differently, that push us out of our way of being.
It helps us hone in on our better self. It helps craft our values and our thoughts. It allows for diversity of skill sets.
So for this listener, likely at a very core level, the reason why she wants everyone around her to have these skills, it's for her own comfort. It's for her own efficiency.
You can not control others habits.
The problem is she can never be in control of other people's habits. She can never be in control of their mindsets. She can never be in control.
If they ever actually decide they want to change their working habits and prioritize in a new way, she can't be in control of that. She could keep trying, but likely it'll just be a waste of energy and she'll never get the results that she's looking for.
The only thing that you can ever control in your life is YOU.
So in her case, she gave us an example of her boss who sounds like overworks, meaning the boss works many more hours than maybe they want to work or should be and so forth. And they probably sounds like they live in a very frantic, overwhelmed, stressful state all the time.
And so what if that just wasn't a problem? What if your boss was able to be stressed out and overwhelmed and work as many hours as they want to work, and you just didn't let that affect you?
You didn't make it mean that you weren't doing a good job.
You didn't make it mean anything negative about you.
That's where true control comes in, when you can operate in this way and you can let people operate in their way and not let it affect you.
So I want to ask you this, listener, what would it take for you to disengage from their stress and their overwhelm and just not let their overworking tendency affect you?
Now, that doesn't mean you might not be sad. That's very understandable. I have several friends that tend to over schedule themselves. Like, these are some of my favorite people in the whole wide world, and I would spend a ton of time with them if they had time for me, but they just don't.
In fact, when I reach out oftentimes, they're in like a complete state of overwhelm, and they don't even want to put something on the calendar for two months from now because that's overwhelming to them. That hurts. It's disappointing.
Other people's life choices can cause emotional discomfort with us, and that's not a problem. That doesn't mean they're doing it wrong or we're doing it wrong. It's just sometimes people prioritize things differently, and that can have a conflict to it, and it doesn't feel great.
Be okay with discomfort.
So listener, what would it take for you to just let this go and be okay with the discomfort that people prioritize things differently?
Now, the second thing I want to offer to you is that you actually probably genuinely want them to change habits. Like, you've learned that there's a better way to do it, and you actually want to share that. You have a genuine desire to help people create work life balance and so forth.
So there's two things I want to offer to you. The first is there's no quick fix here, right? Most of you don't just listen to one podcast episode and have a light bulb moment, and it changes how you prioritize and it changes all of your work life habits. It takes time.
And if your boss or your coworkers don't actively engage in a conversation around work life balance or listen to podcasts or something like that, then it's going to take time.
But the first thing I really want to offer to you is to stay curious.
You will never be able to change their behavior. They will have to want to change it within themselves. They will have to want to operate differently. And your role, perhaps for a long while, is to help engage with their own thoughts and mindsets that are not serving them right now.
Not to point it out to them, but to be curious about it. It requires a lot of open questioning, pure curiosity. If your boss tells you, oh, we really got to get this done today, I'm going to have to work late to accomplish it. We got to get it to the client first thing tomorrow.
And you sort of feel like it's not that big of a deal. It's okay if we push back the deadline or push back and tell the client we're not going to get it to them till the afternoon.
This is a perfect moment to be curious and say how what about this feels like a really big priority to you in your mind? Is it the highest priority of all things that we kind of got to get done right now? What do you think would happen if we just pushed back the deadline a little bit? Does it feel worth it to you? What's the sacrifice that you have to make? How does that feel to you now?
If you have boss or a coworker that's just frazzled all the time by so many things on their to do list and they come into your office and you're meeting with them and you could just tell that they're frazzled, you could stop and say, hey, how are you doing?
How are you handling your workload right now?
What do you think the most helpful thing would be for you to focus on right now that would alleviate the most stress?
Is there something that you could just let go of and deprioritize right now?
What would make things easier for you?
Lead with curiosity, not judgment.
The second thing I want to offer to you is to continue to foster compassion for people that don't have these skill sets that you do yet, haven't learned the things that you've learned through this podcast.
They're not wrong.
They're not bad.
They're not doing things wrong.
They shouldn't even necessarily be focusing on balance right now, If that's not their goal, that's okay. You know what it's like to manage like a million things and feel overwhelmed. Don't judge them. Have compassion for them. Understand why they're struggling so much and why they're struggling to even make work life balance a goal.
Lead with curiosity, follow up with compassion.
If your boss and your coworkers feel like you're on their side and you're not judging them and you understand them, then they're infinitely more likely to take any suggestions from you in the future.
Outro
All right, working moms, that is it for today's episode.
I would love to hear from you. If you have questions you'd like me to answer here on this podcast, you can always email me at rebecca@rebeccaolsoncoaching.com
And make sure you get on my email list. I will put a link to that in the show notes and make sure you're following me on LinkedIn and Instagram, all of the different places.
All right, working moms, it has been a pleasure to answer your questions. I can't wait to do another one of these episodes. Until next week, let's get to it.
