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The fastest way to get to the balanced and fulfilling working mom life you desire is to love your current working mom life. When you need something to change, you feel dependent on it for happiness. When you feel satisfied and happy with the life you already have, you feel more confident in yourself and your ability to navigate through any changes you desire. In today’s episode, I am explaining why the fastest way to make a change is to love your life without it changing.
Topics in this episode:
3 practical exercises to help you see your current life as amazing
Why I cried my eyes out, twice last week
The difference between gratitude and satisfaction and why satisfaction is more powerful
Our brains naturally see what isn’t going well and what you need to do to redirect it
Sorting out want vs. need
Show Notes & References:
Stop waiting for a job change, a promotion, to have more money or for your kids to get a little older before going after the life you want! Work with me and you will begin to love your current life while taking steps toward your big goals. Click here to learn more and to schedule a call: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book
Want ongoing support as a working mom? Sign up for the free 19-day audio series: How to be a present and connected mom. Each day you will receive an email with a downloadable audio of 5 minutes or less that will teach you a tool or strategy for being more present and in the moment. Click here to sign up and receive the first audio: https://www.ambitiousandbalanced.com/be-present-optin
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Transcript
Intro
Happy holidays working moms.
Today I am rebroadcasting an episode that feels fitting for the holiday season and the year to come. It is titled, love your current life.
I actually re-listened to the episode as a I prepared to write this intro and it bought tears to my eyes. I remember where I was at the time I wrote this episode and where my heart was at. It was so stuck. This almost feels so vulnerable to share again.
When I wrote this episode, many of the goals in my business and not yet been reached, moth after month, year after year, I just felt like I was falling short. There were personal milestones for my husband and I, like buying a house and coming out of debt. I was so focused on all of the failure.
As I re-listen to the episode it almost feels like I wrote it for myself. Almost like a little pep talk to myself to say ‘snap out of my not enoughness!’.
Because here is what is going on…I am an ambitious women. We are all ambitious women. We all have big goals, we all have big dreams, we all want to make a really big impact in our life.
We want a both AND life. We all want it all.
And sometimes that desire for more, that internal drive, it robs us of the good things we have going on.
That internal drive for more prevents us from seeing all of the good, all of the success, all of the progress that we have made.
Ironically what I have found in order for you to have the ambitious life that you want and to make exponential progress towards your goals that you have - the fastest way to go about that is to love your current life so much that you don’t feel so desperate for the change, desperate for whatever it is you want next.
In todays episode, I am sharing exactly why it so important to love your current life while going after your ambitious goals and I’ll give you a couple of tips on how to do that.
This one, whew! It might pull at your heart strings. Right, you ready working moms? Let’s get to it.
Welcome to The Ambitious and Balanced Working Mom Podcast, the place for women who want to balance their ambitious career goals with their life as a mom. If you're looking to feel more confident, decisive, and productive at both work and home, then this is a place for you. I'm your host, Rebecca Olson. Let's get to it.
Working moms, hello! I had the most remarkable experience last week that I want to share with you all, and I just want to dive right into it. Last week, I found myself in just a puddle of tears, twice, actually, as I reflected on my life that I currently have now. One of these sort of cry fests, if you will, happened to me while I was at a coffee shop. And I was just sitting there with a notebook, and this emotion came over me, there was just no possible way I was going to stop it.
And there was actually this woman that was sitting not too far from me in the coffee shop, and I'm pretty sure she noticed that I was crying. You could just tell she was, like, a little uneasy. Should I go over there? Should I not? I ended up leaving the coffee shop and then sending this ten minute audio message to my husband as I walked and talked and cried and just shared everything that was going on in my heart.
And the crying, it really started this particular morning when I ran into a very close family friend of mine at the coffee shop. He's like a second dad to me. He has known me since the day I was born, and he's dealing with some health problems. And we weren't together for more than, like, five minutes. But he reflected ever so briefly on how it's in moments like these that life is put into perspective. He left and I was alone again with my thoughts in my journal. And, I just thought about how short life is. And of course, we hear stories like this all the time how health scares, near death experiences, or sometimes just getting older really can bring perspective about what's really important in life and what's really not.
As I sat and reflected on my life, I found myself asking the question, what is it that I wish I had or did or experienced that maybe I'm not prioritizing right now? And the answer that came to me just simply made me ball. The answer that came to me was not that my life was, in fact, missing anything, that I needed anything more, that I needed to experience something or have something that I didn't. It was that I was not experiencing all of the goodness and the joy of a life I already had.
The need for more robs me of having the experience of joy today.
As an ambitious person, somebody that's always focused on growth and goals and moving forward, there's sort of this pitfall to that inner drive that's within me, and that is that sometimes I forget to be satisfied and happy with the present. The need for more robs me of having the experience of joy today.
Even as I write this, there's a little emotion coming up for me as I'm just thinking about it again and thinking about how sometimes I just don't allow myself to experience the happiness and the joy and the love and the satisfaction of life simply because I haven't yet arrived in certain areas of life. I have an amazing business, and I love what I do. I wouldn't want to be doing absolutely anything else. But I haven't been meeting my business goals over the last few years. I'm frustrated by that.
Of course, my husband is amazing and supportive. I love him so much. But he's in a job that he hates right now, and he comes home most days feeling super unhappy and frustrated. And of course, that affects him, and I have all of this concern and love for him - but it also has an effect on the family.
I have two amazing, remarkable children that I love with every fiber of my being. But my youngest in particular is going through this phase where he's really unkind and mean to his sister, to everyone really in the family. And to be honest, a lot of the time I'm just at a loss for what he says and how to even respond or parent him in the midst of this moment.
Our brains have a negative bias.
I could go on and on with you to share about lots of areas of life that are not exactly the way I want them to be. Because our brains have a negative bias, which means that our brains naturally focus on the things that are not going well, that we want to be different. It's a survival mechanism. And although I know it's not true, sometimes I feel like my brain has an even greater aptitude to see all the negative and the growth and the things that I wish were different.
Feeling satisfied and sufficient with our life.
So in this moment, while I'm sitting in the coffee shop, I was reflecting on my priorities and the ways that fear holds me back. And I realized it wasn't about going after a life I didn't yet have, it was about feeling satisfied in the life that I did. And let me be clear, this isn't about feeling gratitude in my life, though I think gratitude is very important. And I certainly go in and out of various gratitude practices, writing gratitude lists and things like that, things that I'm grateful for. That's not what's coming up here at this moment. This was about and is about feeling satisfied and sufficient.
It's not about feeling thankful for what you have. It's about not needing anything else, because what you have is enough right now. It's about not needing my business to grow in any other way. It's about not needing any more income for our family. It's about not needing more time with my kids, or more vacations, or more experiences as a family. It's not needing to own a house. Instead, it's allowing myself to feel a deep sense of completeness, enoughness, and satisfaction just the way things are.
There is a big difference between need and want.
I'm going to pause here for a moment because I'm sure that some of you, as you're listening to me, you're like, yeah, that's great, Rebecca, but I really don't like my job. I want something different. And I really don't spend enough time with my kids, it's very, objectively speaking, not enough and I really need to prioritize them more, and I have this heap of debt and financial stress, and money is super tight, and we really need more of it - I want to be clear that there is a big difference between need and want. You are allowed to want whatever you want. You could want a new job. You can want more money, more prestige, a house, to be debt free, to spend more time with your kids, to go on a big vacation every year, to own a vacation home, to move across the country, to live near your family. You can want, in fact, you deserve all of that. But that's different from needing.
To need something is to have a desperation for it, to be unable to feel satisfied or happy without it. You will know the difference between if you want something or if you need something based on how it feels in your body, based on how desperate you feel, how tight your body is at the desire of it, how obsessed you feel about it, how much you think about it. I want you to think about need as almost being like hunger. A hunger pain where you almost can't ignore it until you put your food in your belly, your stomach tells you how hungry you are through the discomfort of the pains in your stomach until you fill up your stomach. And then all of a sudden, you don't even think about your stomach anymore. You don't even think about the hunger pain that you have.
A need is very similar where it's almost like you can't even ignore it. It's there all of the time, making you feel uncomfortable and dissatisfied.
Another way you'll know the difference between need and want is how you're thinking about yourself and your life and how it will be after you attain it. It's sort of like the ‘grass is always greener’ experience. If you find yourself thinking that once I get into the new job, or once we make more money, or once I get promoted, or once the kids are a little older, or once I have more flexibility, then I will feel happy or satisfied or like a good mom, if that's your thought - you are dependent on whatever it is that is lacking. Not a want, it's a need. It's a dependency.
The fastest way to attain a goal is to not need it.
Now look, I want you to have an amazing and fulfilling job where you get paid exactly what it is you're worth, if not more. Where you feel like you could show up still as a great parent all the time. And that the time you spend with your kids is satisfying and enough. I want that for you. That's what I help women do in coaching. It's the very thing I help them to do, to create that life for themselves. But I know the fastest way to attain that goal is to not need it. It's to be able to feel like life right now is enough. And that you are good enough and that you are doing enough. And that you make enough. And that you have enough success right now. You have enough money right now.
And the reason that that's so important is that you problem solve much more effectively and efficiently when you're feeling really great about yourself and your life than when you're not.
I want to give you a very simple example of how this works. I want you to take a moment and imagine getting home from work and feeling like you just didn't do enough today. You did not get everything done that you wanted to get done. You feel guilty about that. You feel like you didn't get back to everyone like you said that you would. You're feeling like you just didn't get enough done. You feel behind, like you don't feel great about the things that you did do.
And so you come home, now, what's your energy? Are you able to be super present with your family? Are you able to really be with them and have fun and have kind of a lightness and a joy to life? How do you handle your kids when they're having an emotional outburst? Do you stay really patient with them? How's the time with your partner? Do you have the capacity to really engage with them, to listen, to connect, to be available?
Okay. Now I want you to think about a day when you feel like you just nailed it at work, like you accomplished everything you were supposed to accomplish. You were on fire. You were on it. Your communication was on par. The way you showed up, the way you spoke up, it was all exactly what needed to be said in the right moment. You come home and you walk into the door with that kind of energy. How different is that? How do you engage with your kids? How present are you able to be? How do you connect with your spouse? It's totally different, right?
You can feel the difference when you're feeling really good and positive and sufficient. You show up differently. You tackle problems differently. You make more confident choices that are all in alignment with the things that are most important to you now.
Which energy do you think is going to be most effective for you when you think about taking steps towards a new job or problem solving for how to make more money or get promoted? Which energy do you think is going to be the most effective for you when you're working on trying to be more present at home, spending less time at work, prioritizing your family more? Of course, it's the second.
Confident decisions and the most effective problem solving come when you're feeling confident.
Let me give you a specific example. A lot of women come to me because they feel really unfulfilled in their career and they want to make some kind of change, or they want to make more money, or they want to get promoted. They want to advance their career in some way, and they're feeling stuck for some reason. Maybe they're not exactly sure what it is they want. Or they have some ideas, but they're feeling held back by fear. Or maybe the responsibility of being the breadwinner in the family is so high that change just feels terrifying to them.
Whatever it is, when you have the thought, ‘I have such an amazing life, I'm exactly where I should be for now’. And you're feeling in awe and you're feeling amazed by the life that you have with that kind of energy. You sit down to write a resume or a cover letter or to change your LinkedIn profile or network in some way. The words are going to flow out of you when you're feeling really amazing about yourself and your life, because you feel really good about what you've created so far in your life. The skill sets that you have, the strengths that you have, you know, the value that you bring to your company.
And so your brain doesn't feel so obsessed with needing to get every little word right so your personality can come out a little bit more. You can be more present, more light in the way you present yourself, because life is feeling really good right now. And so you don't feel so stressed out and you're not comparing yourself to everyone else around you.
And so there's just like a cleanness in your brain as you go about looking to network and put yourself out there and maybe find a new job or promote yourself or advocate for yourself in your current job. Verses when you hate what you're doing and you feel like you're sort of behind in your career, like you're stuck and you should be further ahead, and you should be able to figure this out, and you should be making more money, and your job should be more fulfilling than it is. And you're feeling a little bit of resentfulness or guilt, maybe even shame for where you're at.
Imagine with that kind of mindset of energy, you sitting down to write your resume or update your LinkedIn profile or network in some way. You're so desperate to get out of that job, you obsess about every little word. You research how other people are doing these job searches these days and networking, and you start comparing yourself to others, which of course, probably makes you feel even worse. And you're exhausted from your work day because it's just not really satisfying to you and it's hard to even have the energy to do that kind of job search at the end of a work day or to network or to connect with people. And your brain doesn't feel like it's functioning on all cylinders. You're not describing yourself with the best possible words.
Under which scenario are you going to have the greatest possibility of finding that next job? The first, right?
Re-focusing your thoughts and mindset.
I remember Angelica, who had come to me for coaching several years ago, and she was in between jobs because she had actually been let go from her previous work and she was obsessively applying for jobs and interviewing and just not getting anything. I remember she told me, ‘I have to hire you, Rebecca, because my confidence is so low I could barely think straight, let alone advocate for myself. Why would anybody hire me when I'm like this?’ So, in our first month together, I helped her regain her confidence and all we did was really refocus her thoughts and her mindset off of what she did wrong and why she got fired and everything that had happened in the past. And instead we focused on what made her amazing and hireable, what her strengths were, the things that she was really successful at in that last job. We started to tell her brain a different story about what happened in that last position so she didn't feel so much shame and guilt about it.
Changing the way you think about yourself.
And sure enough, within about a month of working together, she had landed two jobs that were actually competing over her with offers. Because when you believe that you're amazing and you do amazing work and you know exactly what your strengths are and what makes you unique and special, that changes the way you think about yourself, the way you advocate for yourself. How?...You speak about yourself. You see yourself and your life in a completely different way. And so you show up differently. Which is exactly what happened for Angelica.
Circling back to the story about me in the coffee shop and crying my eyes out, I could see why I needed this reminder in that moment. I've been pretty obsessive over business growth and feeling pretty hard on myself for having the debt that we have and that we're not in a position to buy a house right now. And I just haven't been experiencing the joy of the life that I have today. I've been focused too much on things needing to change in order for me to feel more deeply satisfied and sufficient in life.
So I've done a couple of things since these cry fests that I had last week to really shift my thoughts and my emotions about my current life, to sort of recalibrate or reorient my brain back to how my life is truly amazing.
Journal prompt: How is my life amazing?
The first thing I did is I sat down with my journal - which is one of the ways I particularly get re-centered, and I just asked myself the question, how is my life amazing? I started to list various things that I just love about my current life and then I asked myself about each of those things. What makes each of them amazing? What makes my kids right now absolutely amazing? What makes my marriage in its current state absolutely amazing? What makes where we're at in our finances absolutely amazing? What makes living in this house that we're in right now absolutely amazing?
I did this exercise with one of my clients last week as well. I had her list for me a handful of things that were amazing about her life. And as she would say them, I would say, well, what's amazing about that? No, truly, like, blow my mind. What is amazing about that? This is not the natural place for our brains to go. Remember, our brains are hardwired more towards the negative. We have a negative bias. We have to push our brains to not just see the positive, but to blow our own minds with how awe inspiring or amazing or remarkable something is.
I guarantee there are many things about your life that are truly remarkable from all sorts of perspectives. If you took a moment to really sit with them and look at them, analyze your life from that perspective.
Allow yourself to feel all of the good feelings.
The second thing I did after writing this list and I did it once while I was sitting with my journal and my pen, but I also have been just doing it in my mind as I've been going about life and thinking about how remarkable some of the things that are in my life. The second thing that I did is I really sat with how good it felt to say those things. And this is something that I used to skip over a lot. But over the last couple of years, I've been really incorporating into my own personal practice and then helping my clients as well, which is to allow yourself to feel all of the good feelings that come when you think you have an amazing life that should feel good in your body.
And because we have this negative bias and we tend to see all the things that are lacking or not going well, we're actually much more comfortable sitting in a more negative or kind of neutral zone versus being in this really happy, joyful, amazing space.
And so I've been practicing allowing myself to feel that really deep sense of satisfaction and joy by putting my brain towards what's amazing about life and then letting that emotion kind of trickle in and imagining it kind of growing inside of my body. So that was another thing that I've done over the last week or so.
Celebrating the amazing things in life with others.
And then the third thing I've done is I've told people about it. I've actually expressed to people how amazing some of the things are that are going on in my life. Like I'm celebrating with people, I'm acknowledging, declaring in a public sense things that are absolutely amazing.
Because of these things, I have experienced a huge shift over the last week. I can sense myself feeling lighter and more calm and clear. I have a smile on my face, I have more of an adventurous spirit, more energy to be with my kids and to engage with them in a different way. Just to be clear, not a whole lot has changed - the circumstances of my life are exactly the same as they were a week ago. But my feelings about my life, my experience of my life are different.
Your circumstances do not dictate your ability to be happy.
And isn't that what we really all want? That no matter what our circumstances are, no matter really what the job is, no matter really how much time you're spending with your kids or the kind of money you have in your bank account, no matter your circumstances, you can feel and experience happiness and joy almost like it's on demand.
And I know I say this all of the time on the podcast, but it has just been such a grounding reminder for me over the last week. Your circumstances do not dictate your ability to be happy or feel joyful or satisfied. Your joy is found in the way you're thinking and feeling about your current life. The life that you have right now, the life that you have created up until this minute. Your greatest possibility of happiness or joy is not in the future, it's now. Your greatest possibility for feeling like a fulfilled and balanced working mom is to not hold on tightly and desperately for things to change and try to will it into being, but instead to see your current life as being enough and who you are as being enough and feeling satisfied with the life that you already have.
Conclusion.
Working moms, if you are not experiencing that right now. I want you to commit to sitting down with a journal and a pen and writing as many things as possible for how your life is currently amazing and remarkable and wonderful. And then for every one of those answers, I want you to think about how in fact, that is amazing and remarkable. Why it is. And then let your body just be filled with the joy of the life that you have today. The job that you have today, the things that you have today, the person you are today.
Because you are amazing and you are remarkable and the life that you have is too. You do not have to be alone on this journey. If you are looking for a guide, someone to help walk you through the process of actually attaining that working mom life that you desire, take me up on my free coaching call. If you haven't already, I would love to connect with you to discuss exactly what it is you want, what's getting in the way of you having it, and then tailor a plan for you to attain it in coaching.
You can just go to www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book where you can schedule a time to connect. Alright, working moms, feel satisfied in life. Love the life that you currently have. Until next week, let's get to it.
