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Have you ever caught yourself scrolling when you should be laser focused on a project? Or checking email while also playing a game with your kids? Or doing 1 last task when trying to get out the door? How do you correct course when you catch yourself doing the thing you are not supposed to be doing - in other words, living in default mode. In today’s episode, I share a tool to help you move out of “default mode” so you can make intentional progress toward your goals. It’s called: A protocol. I will explain how this tool works, when to use it and exactly what you’ll need to make it the most effective.
Topics in this episode:
What do you do when you catch yourself doing the thing you’re not supposed to be doing?
The importance of knowing the thoughts, feelings and actions that are associated with your old habits
The human brain live sin “default mode” 95% of the time
The importance of ending self-judgement if you are going to take steps toward your goals
4 steps to creating an effective protocol
Exactly when to move from one step to another
Show Notes & References:
Master your ability to move intentionally toward your goals, using protocols and other coaching tools. Schedule a free breakthrough call to learn more: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book
Interested in having me lead a training or workshop at your company or group? Click here to learn more about hiring me as a speaker: https://www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/speaker
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Transcript
Intro
Have you ever caught yourself in the moment doing the thing that you don't really want to be doing but not really sure how to change it? Maybe you're scrolling when you should be laser focused on a project. Or you're checking email while you're also playing a game with your kids. Or you should be wrapping up to go home for the day, but instead you're trying to check one more thing off your list. Or you cancel your doctor's appointment because it's the only time the rest of the team could meet.
How do you course correct when you catch yourself not taking action towards your goals? That is what we're going to talk about here on today's episode.
I'm going to share with you a tool that I use with my clients to help them move out of default mode and into intentional mode. Or out of ‘well, this is just the way it is’ to - ‘this is the life I want’. I call this tool a Protocol.
In this episode, I will share with you how protocols work, when to use them, and exactly what you'll need in yours. 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.
Hello, working moms. I hope you are doing well. I want to give a little shout out to a couple of my clients. The first one is named Meredith. And I'm going to be honest, Meredith just had a really rough January. I'm actually going to read you her little update that she gave me at our last session just so you can get a sense of where she's at.
She says it has been a ride. Lots of big things in the past two weeks have my head spinning. I was knocked down really hard with COVID Like, really hard. I couldn't get out of bed for a few days and really fought the virus for a full ten days.
Meredith’s story
My kids ended up going to my mom's house for an entire week, which was incredibly helpful and kept them from getting sick. But I have never been away more than three days from seeing my kids, so that was a new experience and trusting that they were okay without me.
I also had a full let go of my responsibilities at work and I really just had to take care of myself. And we also found out that our son has really poor hearing, which is really sad, but also encouraging because there's a simple surgery that will help him immensely. So that's been a big event for my mama heart.
And lastly, I found out that the job I was interested in was offered to an internal candidate so that they could move faster, which is really frustrating to hear, especially since a headhunter is the one who initiated our interactions. But I am at peace with it.
So tons of things are going on. Major sickness, being away from her kids, medical stuff with her kids, having to let go of work, and all the things going on at work, having to let go of a potential job and things like that. So many things are going on for her.
But this is why I want to call it a celebration, because there's all these things going on. And then what she tells me next is this. She says, I've been very pleased with how much progress I've made with my mindset every time I get thrown a curveball in life - some days it feels like, Come on, really? But I can almost laugh about it now, and I take it in stride and deal with it in the moment without letting it have any long term implications. What?
This is huge. This is a different way of being for Meredith. This is a different way of responding to life. I love it so much.
I wanted to highlight it, because the work that we do in coaching is really less about trying to control every bit of your circumstance, just trying to get your job or your boss or your husband or your partner or your kids or your family or your friends. All these things. All these other things that are completely outside of our control, right? Trying to get them into a better state so our circumstances are essentially better so that we can feel better.
Instead, what we do in coaching is we get you to a place that no matter what your circumstances are, no matter if you get shut down with COVID for ten days and you have to miss work, and you're away from your kids or your kids are sick, or your kids have medical issues - or whatever it may be, regardless of that, you are still okay. You still feel good about yourself, you still feel confident, you still feel grounded, you still feel calm, ending the roller coaster that we all tend to be on - the emotional one that comes when life circumstances are up, and then we fall really deep when life circumstances are down.
And so my client Meredith, we're about 10 sessions into our 18 sessions total that she has with me in coaching, where she writes this, and she talks about just how she is in such a different place. So celebrating Meredith, congratulations, Meredith, on just being in a completely different place and having the sense of control and calm that you really wanted.
And then I have another client that I want to highlight. I'm not going to give you her name, I just want it to be anonymous here. But she recently started working with me. We've only had a couple of sessions. And she's working with me to help really manage her stress and her overwhelm and learn how to prioritize her health and her family instead of work all the time.
The body stores our emotions.
And she told me how much she struggles when she gets home at the end of a work day to really focus on her family. And she often finds herself waking up in the middle of the night, and she can't get herself back to sleep because her mind is racing. We talked very specifically about this issue, her sleep issue. What I told her was that she didn't have a thought issue. It wasn't really her mind racing so much as it was her body was feeling a whole bunch of emotions that were not processed yet, and her brain was waking her up, but it was really the body that needed to let go of all of the things that she was holding onto.
And so I worked with her to help create a protocol for herself on how to let go and how to let go of emotions that are trapped inside of our body that we're carrying with us so much. And I got this message from her just the next day after we had had that session, and she said, ‘oh, my gosh, Rebecca, I slept in until 4am. I don't know the last time I slept until 4am, that was just crazy to me.’ And then the next day, or maybe it was a couple of days later, she was like, ‘Rebecca, I slept all the way till 5am, I cannot remember the last time I slept until 5am. And I felt so good. I got up and I worked out.’
I have the biggest smile on my face as I am celebrating her and her quick wins that we've had already in coaching and the momentum she's already starting to feel towards creating the life that she really wants for herself.
And so I'm celebrating these two clients, and I love to be able to celebrate them publicly so that you can hear them. I also love sharing stories of my clients so you can hear about really tangible, practical transformations that my clients have gone through and some of the results that they get from coaching and the work that I do in coaching.
But I also wanted to highlight these two specific women, because one of the tools that I teach in coaching that really helped both of them, in this case, reach where they're at now and kind of reach these celebratory moments is I helped them create what I like to call a protocol.
And that's what we're going to talk about here on the podcast today. We're going to talk about a tool I use in coaching called protocols. So I'm going to share with you what's important about protocols, how they work, and then exactly what needs to be inside your protocol.
95% of the thoughts that we think today, we thought yesterday.
So I'm going to give you the steps that are a part of this protocol. And to help you understand the importance of creating protocols, I want to start by getting a little nerdy here, and we're going to talk about brain science, okay? Because recently I was reading this article that said - I just think this is so fascinating. I don't know if you're a nerd about brain science like I am, but I found it so fascinating. It said that 95% of the thoughts that we think today, we thought yesterday.
Take a moment and consider that 95% of your thoughts that you have today, you thought yesterday. It shows how habitual our thinking truly is. I think understanding the fact that we think habitual thoughts or 95% of our thoughts are habitual thoughts, is really important to understand because our emotions and our actions, they stem from what we think.
So it's reasonable to say that 95% of our responses, our reactions, our negative thinking, our perspective, our frustrations, and the things that we do that we sort of wish we don't do, all of these things are just habits. They come from a way of thinking that has become a habit in our brain, and that's why we do them. They're not conscious choices.
Which means that if you want to really respond differently to your kids, if you want to feel less stressed out all the time, if you want your first response to be less emotional, if you don't always want to feel behind, if you want to stop being so reactive, if you want to stop thinking about work when you get home with your kids, if you want these things, you're going to have to do something very intentional to achieve it. Because your brain is just stuck in a habit. Your existence, on some level is like, stuck in a habit. 95% of your existence is stuck in a habit.
Our brains live in default mode.
Now, I don't know how you particularly feel about that, but to me, I feel pretty good because it means that the things that I really want differently in my life or the things that I'm ‘doing wrong’, they're not entirely my fault. My brain is just living in default. I could have a lot more compassion for myself, knowing that it requires a lot of effort to change habits, and of course, I'm going to respond in the same way I responded yesterday. If I'm living 95% in default or 95% in habit, of course I'm going to respond in the same way if I have never made a decision to do anything differently about it.
And I hear a lot of humans say this. Not just women, not just men, but humans. They like to say, oh, just wish I could. And then you fill in the blank, right? I just wish I could shut down my work brain. I just wish I could get up earlier to work out. I just wish my husband would help out around the house. I just wish I wouldn't get so angry. I just wish I wouldn't feel so overwhelmed all the time, right?
We say, ‘I just wish’ hoping that things will be different. Likely even judging ourselves for things not being what we want them to be. But it makes sense because we're just living 95% of our life on default without intentional thinking. We're just repeating the same things from yesterday. So we could hope all we want. But until we move our goals into the 5% of intentional thought space, nothing is going to change.
So let's talk about what happens once you decide that you want to change something, right? It's not just the way it is anymore. You actually want to take some control and make progress towards something being different.
You want to stop feeling so stressed out all the time.
You want to stop thinking about work when you're home.
You want to be present with your kids or your partner.
You want to increase connection time or intimacy with your spouse.
You want to feel less tired at the end of a work day.
You want to be less snappy and reactive with your kids.
You want to feel like the time spent with your kids is enough.
You want to feel like you're really good at what you do.
You want to stop second guessing all of your decisions all of the time and spinning in a fear of failure.
You want to stop criticizing yourself all the time and treat yourself with more kindness and compassion.
You want to feel in control of your career where you wake up every day excited and motivated for the work that you're doing.
You want to pursue your life dream when you're ready to make your goals a reality and put the 5% of intentional thinking space that you have toward reaching those goals.
That is where coaching comes in. That is where I help you get very intentional and take really effective action to help you meet your goals as quickly as possible.
In coaching, one of the many things we do to do this is we create a protocol. We create a protocol for when you notice that you are off track, when you notice that you are not doing the thing that you want to be doing or you're doing the very thing that you wish that you weren't doing.
Do you want to be more present with your family?
So you want to stop thinking about work when you get home? Or essentially you want to be more present with your family. You feel committed to that goal. You maybe even hired me as a coach, but it's kind of like now what? Right? Magically, your brain isn't going to get out of default mode or out of habitual thinking mode. There's going to be some effort and regular effort involved in getting you out of an old pattern of thought and starting a new one.
So I want to talk about one of the ways that we do that in coaching. I call it a protocol.
What triggers the need for a protocol.
Now, a protocol, very simply put, is a series of steps that you follow when a triggering event happens. Now, the triggering event is ultimately when you notice that you're doing a thing that you don't want to be doing. When you're not following through with a commitment to shut down your work brain, when you're not following through with the workouts that you plan, when you notice you're not following through with not checking your email or notifications at night, when you notice that you're still spinning in overwhelm and feeling behind.
Now, the triggering event is going to be one of three things. It's either going to be something that you're doing that you don't want to be doing anymore, or something that you're not doing that you want to be doing. Essentially, it's going to be an action that is being taken or not being taken, and you realize that you're doing it.
Or it's going to be something that you're feeling, that you tend to feel like overwhelm or stress or exhaustion or inadequacy or feeling behind. It's going to be a feeling that you notice that you're feeling that is often associated with the action that you're either taking or not taking.
Or it's going to be awareness of your thoughts or mindsets. And the simplest way I like to say that is the words that are going through your head that are making you feel terrible and inevitably leading to the action or the inaction.
So essentially, to make that very clear, the trigger is going to either be awareness to your thoughts, awareness to your emotions or feelings, or awareness to your actions.
The connection between our thoughts, emotions, and actions.
Now, I know that can sound a bit confusing, but if you listen to this podcast regularly, or you're one of my clients, one of the things you hear me talk about a lot is the connection between our thoughts, emotions, and actions. And when you come to me in coaching, you hire me to help you reach a goal. You hire me to help you make something happen in your life that you haven't been able to do on your own. Whatever that goal is, the reason you haven't been able to achieve it on your own, it's because of a series of thoughts, emotions, or actions that you are taking that are not effective in helping you reach that goal. There's always a connection between those things.
Building awareness around our thoughts.
And so, in coaching, one of the things that we do is we build a lot of awareness to the thoughts, emotion, and actions or inactions that are holding you back from reaching your goals. We have to know what it is you're thinking when you're not doing the thing that you were supposed to be doing. Meaning we have to know what thoughts, what words are going through your head while you're scrolling on your phone, while also trying to play with your baby on the floor.
We have to know what it is you're thinking about when you're trying to get out of the office at 5pm and instead you stay till 6.
We have to know what it is you're thinking when you keep delaying doctors appointments for yourself and you're not taking care of your health.
We have to know what you're thinking or feeling in those moments when you are either doing or not doing the thing that you want. Because in order to interrupt the pattern of thoughts, emotions, or action or inaction, in other words, to create a really effective protocol that's going to interrupt those patterns, we have to be very aware of what that pattern is to begin with.
We compromise our own goals.
Because, 95% of the time, we're not even aware of the things that we're thinking, feeling, or doing. We're living in default mode. We don't realize it until after the fact, right? And we see the missed opportunity or our brain gets really good at justifying so effectively that we don't even realize that we've compromised our goals.
If you've decided to leave work at 5pm today, 5pm is going to roll around and your brain isn't going to get on board really easily and be like, okay, great, it's time to go, let's go. You just wrap up for the day. You did such a great job today, Rebecca. Oh, my gosh, for sure. Just leave it. It's no big deal. You can come back to it tomorrow - that's not what your brain is going to sound like, right?
Your brain is going to be like, oh my gosh, I have five more things to do. I don't have enough time. I can't leave the office right now. I really got to get this out. I told them that I would do this today. I don't want them to be waiting on me. I really need to do this right now. Maybe I'll just log on later. It sounds really justifiable at the moment, but it's not the kind of life you want. It doesn't help you meet your goals. Your brain gets really good at justifying, and we don't realize it until afterwards when we're kind of looking back that we realize, it was just like, one more day I didn't get out of the office. It's the time that I wanted.
So we're not, generally speaking, aware of those thoughts, feelings, and actions that are causing us to not meet our goals. So in order to create a really effective protocol in coaching, we have to feel pretty cozy with those thoughts, feelings, and actions, those patterns, as I like to call them, that are really not making you feel good and not helping you to reach your goal. And the more clear you are, the more specific you are about those thoughts, emotions, and actions, the faster you will be at identifying that you're in the pattern that you no longer want to be in.
You're no longer in the 5% of intentional, focused action, but you're in the 95% of habitual action. And the faster you realize that, the faster you can then utilize the protocol to get yourself out of it.
Making an effective protocol.
So let's talk about the aspects of a protocol and what makes a really effective one. Now, let me just remind you that a protocol is a series of steps that you go through the moment that you notice that you're in the pattern, when you notice you are thinking or feeling or doing something that is not leading you towards the goal that you have for yourself.
Now, you have to remember, I'm talking about this sort of broadly, trying to break it down for you. But I tailor this to my clients once I've helped them really identify and get cozy with the patterns that are not serving them. We create a very specific, tailored protocol for them.
If you want that kind of in depth support and direction, I encourage you to schedule a free breakthrough call with me. That is essentially a free coaching call where we discuss your goals, we discuss why you want them, what's getting in the way of you having them, and ultimately talk about how coaching can help you reach them.
But for the sake of this podcast, I'm trying to keep it sort of at the meta level. So the first thing that might seem pretty obvious about creating a protocol is that it needs to be short. Nobody wants to do long protocols and your brain is going to have a really hard time recalling it. You don't want ten or 20 steps, you just want five or less. Eventually your protocol will become more of a habit to you. You won't have to go look it up or have it written down. Somehow, your brain and your body are just going to remember what it is. It'll be a natural response and eventually it will become your new pattern.
Normalizing and pulling yourself out of self judgment.
Every protocol must start with what I like to call normalizing. Your protocol will not be very effective if you are swimming in self judgment because once again, you have found yourself doing the same thing that you don't want to be doing. So it starts with normalizing or pulling yourself out of self judgment.
Now, this could be as simple as some deep breathing or having a moment with yourself when you just simply remind your brain that this is very normal for this to happen, that for you to fall back into the 95% default patterns that you live in, like, that's a very human experience. It's okay, of course that was going to happen, and of course it'll happen in the future, right? It's not a problem.
It's really important that you don't move on to the rest of the protocol until you feel yourself out of self judgment. You have to drop it from your head and your heart. You might still feel frustrated or disappointed in yourself, but that's really different than beating yourself up and feeling inadequate or stupid, because you're a human being that lives 95% of the time in default mode. So once you feel your energy shift around that and you're out of self judgment, then you can move on.
Deal with your default thoughts and emotions.
In your protocol, the next thing you need to do is deal with your default thoughts and emotions. You need to recognize what they are. You need to feel the emotion and let it be processed in your body. Remember, you're not judging them. You're just aware and you're noticing them.
I walk my clients through an emotional processing exercise that you can sort of use in the moment. And when they do this, I have them focus their attention on the sensations in their body, the vibrations that emotions carry, and I have them imagine letting them go. I have some clients that like instead to write down their thoughts and emotions and purge them from their head and their heart by getting it out on paper or saying it out loud again, all from this place.
What you're doing is you're just saying, ‘oh, I see what's going on here. I see these thoughts. I see these emotions. I see what's happening here.’ You're getting curious with them. You're naming them. You're getting them out of you and into your conscious awareness. You know that you will be ready to move on from this part of the protocol when the thoughts and emotions don't feel so big, when your body doesn't feel so overwhelmed by them anymore. It doesn't necessarily mean they're gone away entirely, but maybe you've just calmed down a little bit.
I was having a conversation with one of my clients last week, and we were beginning the process of creating a protocol for her when she gets home from work and she's feeling really overwhelmed and exhausted and stressed out. And I'm helping her create a protocol for what to do in that moment so that she could turn her attention to her family and feel connected and feel present and ultimately feel really good about herself as a mom.
I was explaining the protocol, and we were starting to write that together. And I used the example of a toddler. When a toddler is in the middle of a meltdown, there's no amount of reasoning or rational thinking that you could give them that's going to help them calm down. You all hear me, right? It's a complete waste of energy. You have to literally wait until the emotion subsides. And if your kids are anything like mine, you can literally witness the moment when you know that they're sort of on the other side of the meltdown in the tantrum, and they're getting ready to calm down and move on.
You can't move on until you are clear on exactly what it is you're thinking and feeling and allowing yourself to feel emotions.
It's sort of the same thing here for us. You can't move on from this step where you're getting very clear on exactly what it is you're thinking and feeling and normalizing it and allowing yourself to feel emotions. You can't move on from that until you've gotten over the hump and your brain and body are essentially ending the tantrum and are ready to think about a new way of thinking, a new perspective, right?
If you move on too quickly, all of the steps beyond this, all of your effort to get yourself out of this pattern will be futile because your tantrum self is not able to think rationally yet. So once you're on the other side and you feel a little bit more calm and able to receive a new perspective or a new way of thinking, that is when you move into the next step to intentional thinking, which produces intentional feeling.
Shifting into a new perspective.
This step is about bringing to mind the mindset or the perspective that's going to help you reach your goal. So for example, with my client that I was speaking about earlier, for her, this step looked like reminding herself what makes her such a great mom. Literally going through a list in her head, making up a new list in her head, really about what makes her a wonderful connected mom, the mom that she wants to be.
Because oftentimes in these moments, she feels like a terrible mom. She might also stop and think about why what she did today at work was enough, how she accomplished enough, how the things that she did was good enough.
Orienting your brain towards the positive.
That's my enough triad that I teach my clients how she did everything that she was supposed to do and it was enough, right? She is orienting her brain towards the positive things that she accomplished so that she could silence that part of the brain that wanted a reminder of all of the things that she didn't do.
Or if your goal is to prioritize your family more by leaving work at 5pm every day and not working late. At 4:45pm, as 5pm is approaching, your brain and your body are starting to freak out and are giving you all of the reasons and excuses why you can't leave and you have to log back on later and you have more work to do and all of that, right?
And you go through the first steps of normalizing and getting out of self judgment and then kind of processing the thoughts and feelings that are coming up. And now you're ready for an intentional space of thinking.
You might start thinking about why getting home and being with your family is so much more important than the five more things that you could get done today. You'll remind your brain of how important it is to be with your family and how they're going to be with you forever and this job won't. You're getting your brain into a more intentional space of thinking that supports the goal that you want, that's what we're doing here in this step.
Take intentional action towards the goal.
And then once you've introduced a more helpful set of thoughts that kind of bring the perspective that you need in order to meet your goal, that is when you do the last thing, which is you take intentional action towards that goal.
So, again, for my client, after she had thought about how great of a mom she was and how much she did at work today and how that was all enough, she would immediately go over to one of her kids, and she'd start talking to them about their day, or she'd jump into doing a homework with them. She would immediately do something that reinforces the things that she wants, the being present with her family, the kind of life that she wants.
The goal, taking the example of trying to leave work at 5pm, if that was you, and you did all of that work to kind of get into an intentional thought space, your immediate action would likely be, to start shutting down your computer, closing all the tabs, organizing your desk, putting things away - it's the intentional action of actually leaving the office.
I want to give you another example of this. My client, Cathy, was constantly struggling with getting her kids out the door and to school on time. And she always felt terrible coming into work because oftentimes the morning was really frantic, and she felt like she was nagging at her kids. And what she really wanted instead was to feel more connected and calm with her kids. She wanted to let go of the time frame a little bit.
So when she realized that she was getting into this pushing energy of trying to, like, let's go, let's go, let's go, she would start to feel when she was there in that space, she would start to feel worried and stressed out, and her heart would start to race to try to get out the door, right? These were the things that she recognized in her pattern.
And when she realized she was doing that in the protocol that we set for her, what she would do is she would stop. She would take a deep breath and remember that it was very normal to want to be on time. And in fact, that was a really big value of hers. And inevitably, kids are just not fast at this age. They were pretty young, and that was okay too. They just operate at a different speed.
“Being a connected mom was way more important than being an on time one.”
So she stopped herself. She normalized the experience, and that was where she kind of ended the self judgment. And then she would remember the value that she had voiced to me and to herself, that being a connected mom was way more important than being an on time one. When she reminded her brain of that, that was getting her into an intentional thinking space.
And then she would take very intentional action by going down on one knee, looking her kids in the eye, reminding them of how much she loved them, asking them if she could help them get their shoes on. And eventually, she did that enough that her brain stopped offering to her that she needed to be moving faster and getting out the door and that she was going to be late. Her brain just stopped telling her that because she had essentially created a new pattern for herself, a pattern that she wanted, where she felt calm and confident and connected as a mom in this kind of daily life of getting out the door.
Let me give you another example. I will use myself. I have a regular protocol for myself when I notice that I am spinning in confusion because I'm not quite sure what to do or what to prioritize at that moment. This is during my work day, really, because as an entrepreneur, I just kind of get to decide what I get to do with my time, like, all of the time. And my brain often likes to jump to confusion. And I'm not exactly sure what to do with my time right now.
This kind of always happens when I'm faced with a time slot on my calendar that I haven't designated for something in particular that's not filled with coaching or calls or things like that. So I created a protocol for this.
So here's what I do. I stop. And I notice I'm feeling really confused, and I'm feeling kind of resistant to doing any kind of intentional thing right now. I noticed that I'm sort of buffering. Like, maybe I'm on social media a little bit, or I'm scrolling, or maybe I'm up around my house and I'm cleaning, and I kind of stop myself. And I notice, and I remind my brain that this is just where it likes to go when there isn't structure or a planned time. I think this is just normal. This is where my brain likes to go. It's the most natural place for my brain to go.
Reminding your brain of the habit you’re making/breaking.
I remind my brain it's just a habit that I'm looking to break, and I don't need to beat myself up for it. It's just normal. If there's unplanned time to spin in confusion on what to prioritize, it's perfectly normal for any brain to do that. So that's me getting out of self judgment. And then I need to process the thoughts and the emotions at the moment.
Turning inward.
I will often take a few really deep breaths. I will turn inward and look at my body. I kind of notice exactly what I'm feeling. The vibration, the sensations of the moment. I help my body become calm. Oftentimes the emotions that I feel besides confusion are inadequacy. Like, my brain thinks I should know what to do at this time. And so I'm feeling kind of inadequate as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, right? So I notice all of that, and I do that until my body feels calm.
Remind your brain of all the options you have.
And then I move into intentional thinking and I remind my brain of all of the options that I have at this moment, all the various things that I can do, all of my priorities. And I've actually created a very specific list of things that I could do in these moments. So I look at that list either in my mind or it's posted in my office, and then my intentional action is to pick one and do it immediately. That is my protocol, step by step.
Intentional thinking, feeling and action.
I think protocols are one of the most useful tools because it moves us out of unintentional space and into intentional space. And you're never going to reach your goals just by chance, right? You're going to meet any goal that you have for yourself, whether that's losing 10lbs or it's being more calm and less overwhelmed. You're going to do that by intentional thinking and feeling and action, right? Otherwise, you're just kind of leaving it up to the universe. You're leaving it up to God to change things and it's never going to happen.
Protocols give you a very specific step by step on how to approach the change. How to move from unintentional default patterned thinking and behavior into intentional thinking and behaviors that are going to help you meet your goal. And I promise you that the more time you spend getting yourself from the unintentional into the intentional, the less often you'll do it.
Eventually, as you do it more and more and more, your brain will just remember that it's not supposed to do the unintentional, it's supposed to do the intentional. Your brain is always on your side helping you. So once it realizes that, then it will start to do things naturally.
Just like the story I was telling you about with Meredith, who realized how calm she was even in the midst of this crazy January that she's had.
Just like my client, who's struggling with sleep, is starting to realize that the more she's practicing this, the better she's getting at processing those emotions, which is letting go of her thoughts and helping her to calm down, to sleep more.
To spin less. For myself, I spin in confusion way less than I used to because I'm so much more intentional with my time. I'm thinking ahead of the things that tend to spin me out in that confusion and in that I don't know space. And I'm starting to be more intentional with my time, so I don't go into that default as often as I used to before.
Conclusion.
It's hard to end these things altogether. We're human and again, we live in patterns. And some of these patterns are really ingrained in us since we were kids. Some of them are not. It just takes time and then, because we're human, sometimes we fall back into bad habits. We fall back into bad patterns. Ultimately, we have to pull ourselves out, but this is what we do, we move from unintentional to intentional.
If you are wanting a guide through this process to help you create very specific protocols for you and the goals that you have, and helping you to get very clear on what's preventing you from meeting those goals on your own, that is what I am here for.
I am your working mom coach and I would love to work with you. You could go to www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book to schedule a free call to learn what coaching is all about and ultimately to get a taste of our experience together.
I would love to connect with you, working moms. Let's get out of our default thinking and into intentional thinking, into meeting our goals. You can do it. I'm here for you. Let's get to it.
