The long term results of coaching (with Nicole Anderson)

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My client, Nicole, shares the long-term results that she has experienced from coaching. Nicole started working with me almost 3 years ago and on today’s podcast she shares how she learned to calm herself and the impact of those “calming” tools, what it took for her to lean into conflict and how that transformed her work and what it has taken for her to truly make time for the things that matter.

Topics in this episode:

  • What your spouse and friends will notice when you hire a coach

  • Coaching is not just to get you through today, it teaches you tools and mindsets that will have lasting effects.

  • Why learning to stay “calm” is a such a vital part of being a working mom

  • How to deal with the little self-doubt voice in your head

  • What it take to make time for the things that matter most

Show Notes & References:

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Transcript

Intro

Today on the podcast. I have a client that started working with me two and a half years ago, and she actually approached me about wanting to come on the podcast and talk about the long term results that she's experienced from coaching. 

Nicole was actually on my podcast two years ago to talk about how coaching helped her overcome impostor syndrome. 

But today, two and a half years later, she shares with us about how calm she is, how she's able to engage and not fear conflict. 

She talks about that little voice of self doubt and how she learned to silence it and what it has taken for her to truly make time for the things that matter. 

Can't wait for you to hear from her. So let's just jump right in. 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. 

Rebecca: Welcome, Nicole Anderson, back to the podcast. I'm very excited that you're here. You were here I think it was two years ago, around this time, actually. I remember it being the fall, so it must be around this time. Welcome back.

Nicole: Thank you so much. I'm happy to be back.

Rebecca: I'm excited to have you back because Nicole and I have built a friendship over time now. We actually started coaching together back in March of 2021, and then we kind of picked up again in the following year in 2022, and did a little bit more coaching then, but we've stayed in contact. 

We've built some friendship. We talk, we connect, we text. And so it's like having a friend on the podcast, and I love that. 

And Nicole said to me one day that she really wanted to come back on the podcast, and she wanted to talk about what's happened since coaching. 

You've had at this point, almost two and a half years of life since we began coaching together. 

And so many of the core things that you learned in coaching are still so core to you now. You still have a little Rebecca voice, as a lot of people like to say, talking to you and guiding you through the day. And so I loved it.

What life is like after coaching.

And I said, yes, let's do a podcast episode. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about what life is like a couple of years after coaching and kind of give people some perspective. 

And I think that that's really important because when you make an investment in coaching and you're making an investment in change for yourself, it's not just change for today. It's like change for the rest of your life. And that sounds really big and grandiose. We actually want to put some tangible thoughts to that. 

What really is the longevity of the kind of change that you went through in coaching and the investment that you made at that time and so forth. 

And so I can't wait to hear all of it. I'm so excited. Tell us just a little bit about yourself to get going, just so we have some context there. And then let's jump in.

Nicole: Great, thank you. Yeah, well, last time we chatted, I was just coming out of my no sleep phase. The boys were much younger. They're now five and seven in about two days, which is really exciting, doing all the birthday stuff. 

Actually, It's funny, I was just thinking about we were talking about the birthday party that I had for the family birthday party last night. And I could even hear you in my head as we were very imperfectly…

Rebecca: A little Rebecca voice people talk about!

Nicole: …Sliding into the birthday. And my mother in law came in. She was like, I'm happy to help. What's the plan? And I just giggled. I was like, that's adorable. There is not a plan. We're just going with it, and we're okay with it. 

I mean, I think, really, that was the shift. It's like, here are the things that needs to get done, and it's okay if it doesn't look exactly like I thought it was going to look. 

We laughed, we had fun, we played games, we ate well, we blew candles out. The cousins played together. It met all the requirements, even though all the pretty things didn't fall into place the way that I wanted. And I mean, that, I think, really sums up a lot of the shift over the past couple of years. Yeah.

Rebecca: And we were just talking about that before we kind of hit record. Here is some of this calmness that you experience, right? And it kind of comes along with this idea of calmness if we want to give it a label of some kind. 

And it doesn't feel like a lot to say that right. It's like, oh, there was a birthday party, and I just went with the flow. And it was great. And I didn't have any other thoughts otherwise. And it didn't stress me out. 

It feels so simple. And I know this is a small example of something that happened literally yesterday, but it is a really big deal. I'd love to hear in your words, why is this a big deal?

Nicole: So I asked my husband, you know, it's been a couple of years since I started with Rebecca, what do you think has changed?

Rebecca: Wait, hold on. First off, I love that you asked that question. I love that you asked that question of your husband, because it is so, oh, my gosh, who knows what he's going to say? But the people that love us most have the greatest perspective, right? And so I'd love to hear exactly what he said.

Nicole: Well, it was really interesting because I also asked my mother, who's visiting, and it was interesting, her comment. 

So there were elements of it that weren't as surprised, but there were elements of both of their answers that I was like, oh, yeah, I didn't think of it that way. 

It's interesting how that's showing up. I can tell you how I feel differently, but how it's showing up on the outside was just very interesting. 

So actually, I'll start maybe with what my mom shared. There's a calmness…

Rebecca: Okay, so she was the one that used the word calm.

“I'm making time for what matters in a way that I couldn't before”

Nicole: She used the word calm. And for me, I feel like there's a sense of I'm making time for what matters in a way that I couldn't before, because I was trying to do all the things and I had to look a certain way in my head. 

And then you have the other layers of imposter syndrome and all the other kind of goop that lays on top of it and…

Rebecca: Recovering. 

Recovering perfectionist.

Nicole: Recovering. Thank you, recovering perfectionist. There is this sense of, I want this and I want it now. And I know why that is. I know why it's tied to my natural state. 

But there was a sense of calmness. So, for me, that looks like I'm not working nights and weekends. 

I would literally wake up at three in the morning and my brain was going a million miles a minute, couldn't go back to sleep. So I was like, Fine, I'll just get up and work. And that was happening probably two or three times a week. That's not healthy.

Rebecca: When we first started working together, yeah.

Nicole: That was the norm.

Rebecca: Yeah. That is not healthy.

Nicole: And I was coming out of the no sleep phase with my kids. So there's something in my body that was like, oh, this is just normal. You don't sleep well. It's not healthy. Right. 

So that shift of, not working nights and weekends, actually, and you called me out on this, I don't know, about a year and a half ago now. When I said I tried to sit down on a Sunday afternoon because there was something I really wanted to do that was work related, and I couldn't get my brain to do it. 

It's like I had done such a good job training it to not when I'm with my family, I'm present with my family when I'm working. It doesn't mean that it's easy all the time, for sure. It's a constant challenge. 

“There were other ways to solve problems.”

I'm leading a large people team in my organization. There's a lot of moving factors, like, it's complex, for sure. And I realized there were other ways to solve those problems. Anyway, how it's showing up is this calmness.

Rebecca: This sense of like, I don't need to be doing a whole bunch of other things, or things don't have to be wrapped up with a nice pretty bow and, look pretty or feel pretty. 

I remember one story from our time working together, where you…

Nicole: Oh this is going to be good, I can't wait.

Rebecca: Do you have an idea of what I'm going to say? I didn't tell you about the story.

Nicole: I just love how you can, pull this stuff out from, like we talked about this two years ago.

A huge shift.

Rebecca: Yes, but it was a big one because it was a big shift for you. I remember it being a really big shift for you and something that we celebrated a lot, which was is we were talking about what happens when you stop giving yourself more time to feel prepared and to get every little detail wrapped up. 

And so in this case, you had a presentation, like on a Monday, and it was Friday, and you did not feel prepared. 

And your old self wanted to spend a bunch of time working probably on Saturday, a good half plus day, taking time away from the family or whatnot, to feel more prepared. And because, we were in the middle of coaching together, I didn't let you do that, or you really didn't let yourself do that. 

So then Monday came around and you did the presentation only being partially prepared. 

And I remember you came to the coaching session and you were like, Rebecca, guess what? It went fine. 

“I don't have to be 100% prepared with everything.”

Guess what? I don't have to be 100% prepared with everything feeling like I know absolutely every detail. I could walk into presentations and meetings, birthday parties, experiences, whatever it is, and feel like I don't know, everything and that be okay.

And feel like it's okay to say I'm not really sure. Let me get back to you on that. Or to Pivot midway and say, well, we're going to handle it this way because just my instincts said so. 

“I trusted myself more.”

And I remember asking you, well, what allowed you to do that? Tell me the secret of it. And you said, I just trusted myself more. Just trusted myself more. 

And guess what? I turned out I had a lot of the answers and that were inside of me. I didn't have to spend a bunch of time making myself feel, quote, prepared right, for that presentation. 

And so it feels like that what you're telling me about this small example of the birthday party or what you're experiencing now is like, just a deepening of that experience. 

I can just be okay. Things don't have to be wrapped up pretty in a bow, and I don't have to know everything. And I can go with the flow and really, really enjoy life and be present in life. So good.

Nicole: And I think part of that, if it's the same situation I'm remembering, part of that was really going back and saying, when have I done this? Well, I already know how to do it. 

Nothing needs to change in me. I've already shown that I can show up with very little time working with clients. It's really easy. Last minute requests come in and I handle it because that's what you do. 

And so it was just really going back to say, I've done this before, there's nothing different. It's already inside of me. I've already proven that I can. 

And shifting my thinking on that enabled me to be able to go in with confidence with a 70% product.

Prioritize things that matter.

Rebecca: So calmness has allowed you to be more present. It's allowed you to prioritize things that matter. It's allowed you to not work nights and weekends and endlessly and actually get a good night's sleep and not wake up in the middle of the night stressed out about all those things. 

Is there something else that this sense of calmness or it's like, it's okay, it's going to be okay. This has brought you this newfound, just like, peace, I would say maybe.

“It doesn't mean that things are always easy.”

Nicole: It feels important to share that. It doesn't mean that things are always easy. It's really about that decision and the voice in my head that I hear from you. 

Even yesterday, some complex thing that was happening at work, normally I would or in the past have thought about it. It's really the mindset. 

Maybe this is where it feeds into the second observation that I've had is really shifting that mindset when things are tough or when things there's a lot coming. 

At one time, it was really about shifting the mindset. The presentation example is probably there's a blend of a couple of things that were happening that created that. But I notice now I'll feel it because I am an emotional being. I feel it. 

“I am an emotional being.”

I'm no longer at odds with that emotion. Right? I don't try to fight it anymore. Really listen to what is this trying to tell me and then acknowledge I can control the mindset. Right?

I can put different thoughts in my mind. I can put on paper all the things swirling so it doesn't feel quite so big. And then tackle it in a different way, more strategically than just trying to do it all in my head. 

Thought download.

It sounds so simple. We'll just write it down. But the thought download as an example, one of the tools that you had given me was one of those things, and it is a daily practice. 

Two years later, it is still probably one of the things I work the most on, which is normal, right?

Rebecca: That's a lifelong forever, right? I sit and do mindset work, if you will. We're kind of generalizing it, but thought downloads, emotion downloads, journaling exercises. I use some of my own journaling prompts and exercises for myself to kind of keep my brain in the right place. 

Strategic. I love the word used, strategic. And I wrote down strategic processing. 

Not like passive processing where you're like mulling it over in the back of your mind and you're thinking about it, but not actively thinking about it. There's a lot of wasted energy in that way of processing things. 

And a lot of times we think i, just need some more time to think about this, to process this, right. As if time is the thing that's going to get us to the other side. 

Spend intentional, strategic time with your thoughts and emotions.

When in reality, you could spend some really intentional, strategic time with your thoughts and your emotions and your big feelings or whatever it is, and come to the other side of it so much faster and with so much more control than when you're kind of endlessly processing or mulling something over. 

And there's just so much control that comes with that. I love that concept, strategic processing. 

Now, okay, so that came from your mom. Let's circle back to this. What's your husband say two and a half years later? What did he say?

Nicole: His answer was surprising. He said that my ability to deal with adversity was different. Just seemed much more equipped to navigate adversity and translating that from the perspective. 

As I poked a little bit more with him, I was like, well, what do you mean by that? 

Because I didn't want to assume he really just talked about in the past when there were difficult conversations or difficult relationships that I just seemed to have a bit more of an emotional response to it, more reactionary. 

“Bringing more curiosity into challenges.”

And I did feel that there's probably a whole conversation we could have about that. But there's this shift now to bringing more curiosity into the challenges. 

And I remember one period of time, it was about a two or three months right at the tail end of us coaching together. 

And I remember thinking and very intentionally saying, okay, I'm equipped for managing navigating, difficult conversations. I'm no longer going to run from them. I'm going to look for opportunities to have difficult conversations. 

And so I remember spending it was like three or four months just very intentionally. And boy, when you put something out there, boy, does it come for you.

Rebecca: Ah, okay, you want some difficult conversations? Oh, let's just see what you really want. Okay, so good.

“I’m not running away anymore.”

Nicole: So I was able to just really practice, right? I was not running from them anymore. And so just really had that opportunity to navigate some really challenging things. 

And so through that, I was able to build a bit more skills around this. And then over time, what I've seen is, especially as a people, manager, really thinking about when things are coming at me. 

I became successful over the years when I was younger, because I was a problem solver. I could respond quickly, I could do all those things. 

And those were exactly the things that I needed to set aside in order to get to the next level. 

In order to get to the next level, the things that we worked on around really breaking down where there were some complex relationships, professional relationships, just really looking at it from the other person's side. 

I remember one in particular we just really dove into because it was tough. I had to get past some old stuff. I had to get past biases, I had to get past what am I missing? 

And we were really able to dive into and I completely shifted how I saw that person, how I interacted with them. 

And ultimately, I could go through that relationship knowing I'm doing everything that I can to create a meaningful work relationship right, and help support this person going through a challenging time, that was just really critical. 

“I process the emotional reaction first.”

So I know I continue to bring that into almost every single day. Whenever I'm hearing things or it's no longer a quick reaction, or if I do, I process the emotional reaction and then I move towards the processing of it.

Rebecca: Something more intentional that's going to be more useful to you. 

I mean, a lot of people would say they're conflict avoidant that, they don't like conflict and they avoid it at all costs. That's a fairly typical human experience. 

There are some interestingly that tend to be a little bit out of the norm kinds of personalities that tend to lean into those conflicts. But a majority of us don't like conflict. Even if we're good at navigating it, we don't like conflict.

Nicole: Well, it wouldn't be difficult if we liked it. It wouldn't be called difficult. Right. It would just be a conversation. Right?

Rebecca: Yeah, that's true. That's true. I come back to this question, why is that a big deal? Why is it a big deal that you have been able to lean into difficult conversation and conflict and challenge in what seems like a much more proactive, controlled way?

Nicole: I want to just feed first on normalizing what you said I was a very conflict diverse background. Right. I was the peacemaker in my family. I was from the south, which is a very stereotypical. I kind of fed into the stereotypical, know, you say all the nice things. And so it was definitely rooted in who I was and my norm.

And my organization, as we've been thinking about our culture really intentionally over the years, we knew this was an area culturally that we also struggled with. 

And so it helped knowing that I was going through the change personally as also leading the organization through it, and also made it a little bit harder. Right. 

It's easier to maybe go through that when you've got external forces that support it. So that's why coaching was really critical to be able to push through some of the old stuff. so you asked, why is it.

Rebecca: Why is it like a big deal?

Nicole: I mean, the first thing that came to mind when you asked that was that looking back, I can see that not navigating the conflict well or head on was really a limiting factor.

“It was holding me back.”

It was holding me back in a very real way. And it's like I can't really realize my full potential if I'm hiding from some of the difficult, the stuff that's going to come at us in life. So that feels a little esoteric, like it was literally holding me back. 

And I felt like once we released some of that I've seen over the years, the past couple of years, just slowly taking more and more notches out of that and moving towards it because it's a continued I'm never always, working.

Rebecca: I don't know any actual scenarios because you haven't really necessarily talked about that. But I'm kind of taking it to a level - to a real practical level.

Because when I think about the kinds of things that people avoid, that you probably have stopped avoiding or you've gotten more curious or leaned into.

I'm thinking about conversations with your boss about things that you want or things that aren't going the way that you want them to and how to strategize about that up to like - and I know you've had this conversation with your boss around I deserve to be promoted, and this is what I want in my career path and having those difficult, sometimes conflict inducing kinds of conversations. 

And you manage a lot of people and you're in, one of those roles that all the problems come to you, right? And so if you're constantly in a place of avoiding difficult conversation, not only are you not just saying the thing that needs to be said to the employee that needs to get their act together or whatever it is, maybe you're sugar coating it in such a way you're not getting to the change in the way that you need to. 

You're not addressing that, and then you might not be addressing it with whoever else needs to be addressed in the same situation. And so you continue to have kind of a watered down, change that needs to happen with your people, I think about that.

To the emotion than all of that that you carry with all of that. Because not only is it stressful to you, which then has an effect on absolutely all of the work that you do for the rest of the day, because you can't get those conversations out of your head and those emotions out of your body, but then you're worried about it. 

And you're worried about what other people think about you, how they think about you as a leader, as a manager. 

You second guess all of your decisions because all of them feel bad. And so then you are in this loop of a lack of confidence as a leader just because you're avoiding conflict, right? 

Just because you are labeling conflict as bad and you're avoiding it and you're not leaning into it. 

Judging yourself and not processing emotions.

And then you're judging it, and then you're not processing the emotions, right? And then you go into personal life and you think about avoiding conflict in personal life and in marriage, if you can't speak up, if in your closest friendships, you can't speak up. 

These are the people that those emotions are deeper and go so much further down and are ingrained in us with our close family and friends. 

And so if you're avoiding those conflicts, then there's this other whole little loop that's always in your head around, the interaction with these people that weighs on you. 

And every text that you get has an emotional weight to it because of it. I don't know. 

Again, I'm making it all up, but when I think about how somebody operates in an avoidance of conflict, it has a massive effect to how life is experienced.

Being really clear about our expectations.

Nicole: You nailed it. All of those examples, and the other example that comes to mind is the Brene Brown clear as kind concept, and showing up, being really clear about what the expectations are for performance, for projects with clients, all of that. 

Just being able to push through and be really clear up front, even when there's not traditional conflict. It felt like conflict to be really clear about what the expectations are. 

And so that's just another example - I was laughing a little bit when you said at home, because there was an example recently where my husband and I love projects. 

We have number of projects going on around the house. We're starters. Like, we're both just starters…

Rebecca: Starters of projects, not finishers of project.

Nicole: We'll eventually get there. It was starting to become a pattern. Every weekend, my brain was just swirling. 

We'd walk into the house and I would think of the seven things that needed to get done, but we just didn't have a good plan for it. Do project management for years, right? So I should be able to handle that. 

But for some reason, I couldn't get past, how do we actually get to close on some of these? And so it ended up being very simple conversation. He's probably going to laugh when he listens to this. 

A very simple conversation of like, this is getting in our way. We both have the same goal. Let's get agreement on what our end goal is, and then how can we put in the routines to be able to accomplish that? 

So literally, within a week, I put the spreadsheet together. We rated them, it sounds simple, but it was within that weekend, we knew exactly what we wanted to do at our five year milestones. 

We knew what we needed to do month over month over the next six months to kind of get us towards that goal. 

“The burden was released.”

And all of a sudden, that burden is just released. When I would walk in then to the house, and I would see, oh, I just really want that patio. 

I could release it and say, yes, that's March. I know that's exactly it. We've already got a plan, we'll adjust as we need. But that's a very simple example of how it literally was changing by avoiding the conflict.

Rebecca: Where he might not agree with you, or you guys might rate it differently, or he might feel offended because he started things that haven't finished any of the different conversations or emotions that could come up in this just making a plan. 

You were avoiding it because you didn't want to hurt his feelings.

Nicole: Well sure, I mean, he's the one that has the background in construction, and he knows how to do all these things. He's got the talent for 90% of the projects. I can do what I can and I can help. But he's got the expertise. 

So instead of feeling like I had to, I don't know, kind of wish and hope for the best and kind of have the right conversation when he had the right mood, we just got it on paper and came to agreement. 

So it was just a week turnaround, just by having that conversation that felt like in the past, I probably would have just kept noodling, right. 

Maybe I'll figure it out, it'll work out. I'm just going to manage my own emotions because eventually it'll be okay. we just got it out there and talked about it. It wasn't a big thing.

Rebecca: This is interesting to me. Why do you think he named this as one of the things that has really come out of coaching two and a half years ago? 

So you've just named an example with your husband of like, you are able to have way more productive conversations. Why else do you think he would name this one as being a big one?

Nicole: I mean, I think the emotional reaction I would have oftentimes, I wouldn't have it in the moment, but he would experience it at home. 

And I would be just raging when I get home, I can't believe this happened. And they said this, and I said this, and then the tears because I wasn't verbalizing it. So it just kind of got packed in. 

“I couldn't have a conversation about real things because the emotions would just flow out of me.”

And I do remember this when we did our very first call, I remember sitting in my car and just feeling, I couldn't have a conversation about real things because the emotions would just flow out of me, that the tears would start. 

And it was almost like it was this constant sense of trying to repress that by working through some of that together. 

This is going to sound so crazy, but I felt more comfortable being emotional. And because I was able to communicate it all of a sudden the emotion didn't just seep out of me in every conversation. 

It feels crazy to say it, but it's like once I gave myself permission to be emotional, all of a sudden, I didn't have the need to. We could probably have a whole coaching session on that.

Rebecca: We probably could. And he was I would assume he…

Nicole: He was the tail end of it.

Rebecca: He was the one that was hearing the brunt of the emotion and the conflict. And that's something that I hear from a lot of my clients a lot when they first start working with me. 

It's like, my husband's tired of hearing about this, so I know I need somebody else to talk to. Or it's like, this is having an effect on our marriage because I can't process what's going on at work, and I'm not making plans, and I can't talk about it, and I'm going around in loops, and my husband's tired of it, and I got to figure something else out. 

I got to do it in a different way because it's having an effect on our intimacy and our connection and all sorts of things.

Nicole: That was probably part of our story too.

Rebecca: So your mom said that you are more calm, which kind of showed up as being more present, more strategic processing, not working as much, and so forth. 

Your husband said you're facing adversity. You're more apt to lean into conflict, be curious about it, be less reactive, to not hold on to the emotions of it. 

So two really big things that other people have noticed, and obviously you notice them too, but the fact that they're calling them out is pretty cool. 

Making time for what truly matters.

And then I know that there's a couple of things that we've talked about as we were preparing for this podcast. We talked about making time for what truly matters, and we talked about kind of mastering your mindset. 

And I know we've talked about a little bit already in these other two examples, but I'd love to dive into both of these because I know that these were really key for you in the coaching journey. 

And what has really sat with you since that? I mean, making time for what truly matters. I mean, what is important about that? 

Tell us more about what you mean by that. When you think about what you gained from our coaching experience.

“I felt like I had to do it all.”

Nicole: This is a really important topic, making time for what matters. There was a sense of feeling, like I had to do it all. 

And what was interesting about one of our times together was really reframing this concept of what does it mean trying to have all the things - excel at work, to be a great parent, to be a good spouse, to be a good friend. 

There was this sense that I had to do it all. And I get really angry about I heard this great speaker one time say, well, yeah, you can have it all, but just not at the same time. 

You had a really great podcast on this as well. This concept of you can have it all. 

And by the way, having it all means something a little bit different. And so we were really able to reshape, what does that mean, having it all? And how can you have it right now? 

Or how do you already have it right with these shifts and tweaks. You don't need to go get another job. You don't need to go do this whole other thing. You can be really clear about what it is that matters and then kind of approaching them differently. 

It really did lead to this concept of you really can have it all. 

So I joke, right? I have to feel like I have to add context every time I say you can have it all. Because it really does require that shift in what does that really mean to say have it all for me? 

I didn't want to put my career on hold. I did want to be a fantastic parent. I did want to have a quality relationship with my husband and people in my life.

Rebecca: You did not want to be waking up two or three in the morning and working in the middle of the night.

Nicole: No, I really didn't.

Rebecca: Or working on the weekends and holding around the emotion of your work life and the stress of your work life and carrying that around with you?

What does having it all mean?

Nicole: Yeah, this one was a bit more iterative. I don't know that I could point back to, maybe you remember a specific time when we talked about it, but this was more of a reframing. What does having it all mean? 

You don't have to change anything. You don't have to blow up your world to create what really matters. 

How do I show up? How do I be present with my kids? And it was not the quantity of time, it was quality. 

When I'm with them, looking in their eyes, putting my phone down, just very intentional about not thinking about the checklist in my head when I was having my playtime with them. Right? 

And then when I was at work, just being really intentional with the time that I had and the people really focused on what are my values, what is most important to me, what's the impact I want to make? How do I navigate the calendar.

There were some sessions around that kind of tactically how to navigate that, how do you close the day to be able to that five minute tool that you gave me and also had a great podcast? I feel like I could just point to your other podcast. I live off of your podcast.

Being intentional.

Rebecca: The word that's really, sticking out to me is that word intentionality. In so many ways, having it all, making time for what truly matters is about being intentional. 

It does not mean that there aren't going to be trade offs. Even if you weren't a mom and had a whole bunch of time and energy that you needed to put into your family, likely there are still lots of things that you would like to do that you can't do or you have to choose to not do. 

You have to trade off in order to do other things.

Life is on some level a series of trade offs. And it's about deciding what trade offs you want to make and making that a very intentional conversation and then processing what can be sad when you let go of some things that you really want and that had wanted and wanted right now. 

Or maybe you're going to decide to let them go altogether, or maybe you're just going to pitch it down the road for a future time. 

But either way, you feel like you've decided and your decision about it feels good. 

It feels right to you. Still might be sad, but it feels right to you. 

You know why you're choosing it and how it connects to the deeper parts of your values or your goals or whatever it is. It feels right to you and you know it. 

And again, there could still be some other feelings about it, but you know that you're following the path and you're making the choice that you want to make. 

Ultimately, having it all does not mean you get to do absolutely everything and every whim and every fun thing that would be imaginable to you, because those things have consequences, because there is trade offs to doing all those things. 

The other thing that stands out to me, as you were talking, was how important it is to hold your desires, your priorities, on some level with some equal weight. 

A lot of times we think about things as being an either/or. 

And when you decided what was most important to you in your career and what you wanted to focus on in your career, and you decided what were the aspects of motherhood that were non negotiable for you, what does it look like the present time? 

What are those actual things, as we named them now? The question was, how do we do both at the same time? 

A lot of times, people don't ask that question. We don't think about holding multiple goals or multiple priorities at the same time and realize that if one is failing, if we're not prioritizing one, we're actually not doing well, we're not meeting the goal. 

It's not about one or the other, it’s about both at the same time moving forward. 

And so we have those kinds of conversations that are very strategic and what does that look like? To hold two goals, in this case, your career, and then pieces of motherhood at the same time and move them forward. 

Conscious decision making with intentionality, that feels in alignment with you - that's having it all.

Nicole: Absolutely. And it does mean that along the way, we've got to reshape expectations of those around us being on a leadership team. 

There are certain expectations that I had watching other men in leadership roles and thinking I had to do it that same way in order to be successful. 

I don't know the latest stats, what 80% of men are at the executive leadership level. So this was really about the intentionality of you can still be in those leadership roles and do it your way. 

And I think the work that we did helped to start to shift my thinking on that as well.

Rebecca: All goes back to that intentionality, intentional conscious decision making that feels in alignment with you. That's what it's all about. 

I know we just have a couple more minutes, so I'd really want to hear about this last piece around mindset. And one of the things that you mentioned to me as we were talking about this podcast is kind of the level of self doubt. 

And the whole podcast we did two years ago was on Impostor Syndrome. We talked about Imposter Syndrome a lot in that last podcast that we did. 

And so you've kind of lumped this all together around thought tools and mindset tools and you didn't even realize that that was like a thing before we started. 

So tell me about this kind of result and the impact that this one has as you've really learned how to kind of hold captive your thoughts.

Nicole: Yeah, there was really that big shift that you mentioned that we talked about before around feeling worthy and just trusting, going back and looking at how I've already accomplished the things or done the things that I felt like I was questioning. 

That was a big part of the first breakthrough. 

I think the second kind of, ongoing work over the past couple of years has been more about in the moment catching myself, listening to the stories that are in my brain and realizing that I have control over those. 

I can shift them and by shifting them, I can shift behaviors and I can then shift the actions. Right, so many outcomes and so there's a zillion different examples of those along the way that it's more of just practicing that and continuing to be intentional. 

Even, I don't know, a few weeks ago, I guess it was just feeling some of that swirl and some of the angst and realizing in that moment, I don't have to figure this out from the perspective of whatever the complex thing is that was that I was trying to solve. 

“I can shift my mindset.”

I can shift my thinking now, I can take that ten minutes, reshape what I want my mindset to be. And then that small shift, like realizing it earlier, before I got really deep down the down the path, shifted a whole series of activities afterwards and was able to really take control as it comes together.

Mastering the mindset.

This concept of mastering the mindset, even saying it that way, the picture it's really about it was that initial shift that we did and then this constant resetting and questioning the story that is in my head and how I can reframe that or just poking at it. Is that really true?

Rebecca: Hold on, though, because I think this is really important because you bring the idea of mastering your mindset back to our initial work of worthiness and how we had to propose a different story to your brain that you were worthy, that you deserved to be where you were at, that you deserved the level that you were at in your job, that you were good mom. 

Creating a positive story in our head.

We had to create a more positive story around yourself that your brain believed on some level. And that way from there, whenever you started to notice that your brain wasn't believing, that you were listening to another storyline going on, your head was tuned into a different station.

It was then that we were able to do some work to notice when your brain was at a different station, listening to music you didn't really want to listen to, or those thoughts that you didn't want to listen to. 

And then being able to have some awareness of that, and then being able to utilize the tools to shift to another station and turn the dial. 

If we hadn't done the initial work to know what dial we wanted to shift it to, you would have just kept flipping the dial over and over again, trying to find the thing that resonated with you or that you wanted to listen to that day. 

I just wanted to highlight that because it's such an important piece of it. It's why I do the work in coaching. 

Believing in yourself.

Ultimately, we start with your confidence. We start with believing in yourself in a different way, creating what I like to say like an arsenal of really good thoughts about yourself, where you believe in yourself, that you know your worth, you know your strengths, you feel good about them. 

You have evidence for them that that feels really true and grounding to you first so that we have another place to take your mind when it's listening to something doesn't want to listen to anymore.

Nicole: Yeah, I was thinking about one of the examples, one of the moments we had. 

There was a two week period where it was just incredibly stressful. And the way that I was telling the story was that all these things were either really hard or didn't go well, or the outcome wasn't what I was hoping for. 

What did I learn from the hard moments.

And I remember you really stopping me and saying well, let's process the past two weeks. And by the end of it, it was really seeing it as yes, it was hard and what did I learn from it? 

What were the opportunities that showed up because the two weeks happened the way that it did. 

And I do remember that being a little bit of a moment where it shifted and then it carried on. Right. I remember pulling that same thread when I was planning for a vacation. I was burnt out. 

This was the second time we started coaching. Oh my God, I was so tired and it was just so much and I was exhausted and overwhelmed.

Rebecca: Oh my gosh, I know.

Nicole: I finally was able to get two weeks off of work. I planned it all out, coordinated it. And even that you were like, you have this two weeks and you're going to come out on it exactly where you started if you don't plan for the shift in thinking. Right. 

So we got really clear about if something came up from a work perspective, what were the specific things that I would take and not take? What were the things I wanted to accomplish and not accomplish? 

And it was interesting because I did all of that work came out of the two weeks. And within a couple of days, I was kind of back to where I was.

Rebecca: Wwhich is exactly what I told you was going to happen if you do some of the things that I was encouraging you to do on your break.

Nicole: Exactly. So I tried it again a couple of months later with a four day vacation. Completely different. I did work half time, but it was a different experience. 

“It was revolutionary.”

And I carried some of the mindset shifts into that and it was just revolutionary. Right? It was just completely I came out of that four days just completely refreshed and renewed. So it was just even in how I take time off, it has shown up, this shift in thinking.

Rebecca: There's so much here. I feel like I just could talk to you endlessly about it. I'm so glad that you came on this podcast to share with us some of this. 

Again, we're not just trying to pull you out of burnout today, right? We're not just trying to get you out of your stuckness today. 

We want something to be different for the rest of your life. 

I want you to have tools that help you to manage stressful situations, life that happens to you, whatever it is, in a way that you feel in control of and that feels intentional. It feels in alignment with you. That's a big part of the goal. 

I love that you were able to share some of this. And I love that we actually heard from your mom and your husband, strangely, as if they were with us, telling us a little bit about this. So good to get some of that perspective too. 

So thank you for being here and for being honest and sharing with us your journey and your life.

Nicole: Yeah, my pleasure. I am just really grateful and I look back and think about it took me a long time to get to commit to coaching the first time. 

And I remember the second time when I got back into that swirl, there was just something it was holding me back on moving forward. And I'm just so glad you asked me this question around. 

You can keep doing what you're doing and get the same result, or you can shift what you're doing and get a different result. 

Either way, it's going to be hard. And I think when you said that to me, I was like, yes, I've got more work to do. We all have more work to do, right? But I had more work to do to get through that next phase in my life. And I'm so glad that I made the investment.

 I hear often, especially leading a people team. I hear a lot in talking with other leaders in organizations about development and investments, and I'm just so glad that I made the investment in myself. It has definitely paid dividends, both at work, at home growth just over and over again. So I am very grateful.

Rebecca: So good. I love it. Thank you again, Nicole. 

Book a free coaching call.

And of course, if you working moms are interested in connecting with me about coaching, and you want these kinds of long term results, and you want the shift today, and you want the life that you want always with that level of control, please do reach out and book that free breakthrough call where we will connect and talk about coaching, talk about where you're at and get you moving in the right direction. 

All right, Working Moms until next week and let's get to it.

Rebecca Olson