Don't lower your standard

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You don’t need to lower your standards in order to create work-life balance and you don’t need to settle for B+ work. Instead you need to reprioritize; to trade off being available to your coworkers to being available to your family. To trade off feeling 100% prepared for every meeting and presentation to being 75% prepared and trusting yourself for the rest. In today’s podcast I will share with you why reprioritizing is not lowering your standard and walk you through several examples of what needs to be reprioritized in order to feel balanced.

Topics in this episode:

  • Dealing with that pesky voice in your brain that is calling you not good enough

  • The difference between lowering your standards and reprioritizing

  • Why reprioritizing matters when creating work life balance

  • 10 things to reprioritize in a balanced life

Show Notes:

  • I can help you reprioritize your life so that your family comes first. Click here to learn more about how the coaching process works and to schedule a free call: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/coaching

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Transcript


Intro

It's so often I hear from high achieving women that in order for them to feel balanced, what they really need to do is just simply lower their standard or expectation of themselves. Essentially, instead of putting 100% in or 110% in, they just need to learn to be okay with putting in 80%. 


The problem is, that's not who you are. You're an all in kind of person, and I don't want that to change - and it's not necessary in order to create work life balance. 


In today's podcast, I want to offer you another perspective. You don't need to lower your standard. You don't need to be okay with B+ work. That is not what is going to unlock balance for you. So if you've been thinking that lowering your expectations is the solution to deprioritizing work and feeling balanced, then this podcast is going to change everything. 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. 


Working moms, hello. I have been under the weather lately. This thing has been going around. I don't know if you have been under the weather, if your kids have been under the weather, if COVID has been running rampant in your schools like it has in my area. But, man, it has been difficult to kind of overcome. 


So you might hear this all in my voice as I'm recording this. But I just want you to know that I see you. If you've been dealing with sickness, you are certainly not alone. 


I want to take a moment as we jump into this podcast to celebrate, because I recently finished out my time with one of my clients. We will call her Carla. And Carla came to me knowing that she over prioritized work, and she walked around feeling like an imposter a lot of the time. And over the course of our time, we identified a little voice in her head that she realized was running her life. 


Now, I don't know if you've seen the movie Inside Out. It's a Pixar movie. I'm sure I've talked about it here. I highly recommend it for anyone that's thinking about coaching, because in this movie, the main character is run essentially by five emotions. And over the course of the whole movie, we watch inside of her brain as these five emotions sort of run like a switchboard of thoughts and memories and ultimately, behaviors. 


Identifying emotional and mental drivers behind our behaviors.

And in coaching, it's very similar. We identify the emotions that tend to drive a lot of our imbalanced behaviors. Essentially the emotions that cause you to over prioritize work, or not feel confident, or feel like an imposter, or work later than you want, or not be present with your kids - we identify the emotional and mental drivers behind those behaviors. 


I like to talk about them in a similar way that they're depicted in this movie. So in this case, Carla had a very strong, I would say, dominant emotion at the computer of her brain that was called inadequacy. 


Inadequacy can cause us to over-prioritize work.

Inadequacy was the driver behind a lot of different behaviors that were causing her to feel like an imposter and to over prioritize work. When she would worry about what other people thought of her, feeling inadequate was at the heart of that. When she was constantly going back and forth on a decision, inadequacy was at the heart of that. When she wouldn't speak up in a meeting, even though she knew she had something to offer, inadequacy was at the heart of that. When she wouldn't take time off over the weekends because she knew someone needed something from her and was waiting on her, inadequacy was at the heart of that. So we called her inadequate Carla. 


So I'm coming back to why I'm celebrating Carla in our very last session. Now, I work with my clients for 18 sessions over the course of six months. So this was our 18th session together. We spent the majority of this session talking about exactly how Carla was going to manage inadequate Carla in her brain moving forward. 


Carla already had a protocol, like a step by step process, for what to do when she noticed that inadequate Carla was kind of at the computer of her brain sort of running the show. We had developed that together, and she'd gotten really good at implementing that protocol and being able to shift out of negative thinking in the moment and to take intentional action, kind of follow through with her boundaries and her priorities and speak up at meetings. 


What triggers inadequate feelings?

But in this final session, what we did is we took it one step further to talk about exactly what triggers inadequate Carla and some of the more subtle ways that she shows up so that Carla could be more intentional in these moments. 


Carla had told me that she had gotten maybe like, 75% there in being aware and being able to catch inadequate Carla when she was at her computer in her brain. But the conversation we had in this last session was about getting her the rest of the way. I just want to read to you her final evaluation and what she told me. Here's what it said: 


“I achieved a new level of confidence”

“I achieved a new level of confidence that I have never had. I learned that many of the items I've been insecure about in leadership at work were basically a biological response or a fight or flight, and that my alter ego - inadequate Carla, would take over and put me in cruise control on a path that kept me safe. 


I've achieved the ability to stop the loops of self doubt by pausing, processing emotions and feelings, letting it sink in and then analyzing what my perceptions of the situation are. 


My biggest takeaway from our time together was realizing what little consideration or value I give to myself, my thoughts and feelings inside of work and out and how that can be extremely damaging to me and the values that I hold. I matter. My feelings matter. My considerations on subjects matter.” 


So good! This just brings the biggest smile to me. And I want to celebrate you, Carla, and all of the work we've done in coaching and your ability to stop the loops in your brain, to interrupt those patterns of thought, and to remember that you matter. I love it so much. Congratulations. 


Now, I wanted to share this story with you about Carla because Carla was a self declared people pleaser and perfectionist. And one of the things I hear a lot from my clients that know themselves to be perfectionists is that they think they need to lower expectations. It's one of the main things their brain offers to them as being a solution. They just need to lower expectations, lower the bar. They need to believe that their 80% is someone else's 100%. 


The problem with that, though, is that it feels bad. It's hard to feel good and adequate and successful and amazing with what you do when you are thinking that you're only putting in 80% and you know that you could be putting in more. 


It's really hard to allow yourself to feel the joy and satisfaction of your work at 80% when you know that you could be putting in 100. I don't think this is a useful way to be thinking about this, because when you're creating a life that you want to have - the joy filled, balanced, fun, successful life, you can't have this little voice in your head that's constantly telling you, yeah, but you could have done more. 


You being an all in kind of person is not something we want to change, and I don't believe you have to change it in order to create balance in your life. 


I challenged one of my clients recently, who, after working with me for about the last two months, had started to notice a really big shift in her life. She was sleeping better. She was making faster decisions. She wasn't second guessing herself as much as she had been before. Even her husband and her staff had commented that she was different. 


Prioritizing yourself differently.

And when I asked her specifically what was contributing to that, she said that she had just lowered her expectations of herself. She claims that that didn't feel very negative to her, and I believe her. But I also challenged her to think differently about it. I told her, you didn't lower your expectations. You just prioritized differently. 


“It wasn't about the 20% she was letting go of, it was about the 80% she was choosing to have.”


We spent the rest of the session talking about what she has reprioritized in very specific terms. And by the end of our time, you could just feel this energy shift about her, the sense of freedom and control, because it wasn't about the 20% she was letting go of, it was about the 80% she was choosing to have. 


Choice feels powerful. 

Choosing to prioritize one thing feels a lot better and more powerful than saying I have to let go of something else. Because usually letting go means that we have no choice. It was like, I had to let go of that. It just simply feels bad. You're not lowering your standard, you're not letting go of expectations or lowering your expectations. You're simply reprioritizing. 


But I want to get specific about what you are actually prioritizing. Because this is where the real magic happens, when you can name the change of prioritization. Because in a life that feels out of balance, when you are over prioritizing work and getting things done and not feeling present or rested, you are still prioritizing things in that life too. They're just not the things that are bringing you joy and balance. 


So to create a life that feels balanced, when you are prioritizing people instead of tasks and connection instead of efficiency, when you feel that sense of inner calm and presence, when you have more fun, when you go on more adventures, when you take all of your vacation time, in order to have that life - you're going to have to prioritize something different. You're going to have to trade off one priority for another. 


Unbalanced VS balanced life.

So I'm going to talk to you about what really needs to be reprioritized and I'm going to take it sort of one for one. So, for example, in an out of balance life, you are likely prioritizing being available to your coworkers and boss. They have access to you either through personal messaging or Slack or email that you check regularly. 


But in a balanced life, you prioritize being available to your family, where they have full access to your time and your thoughts and your energy. 


Another way of saying this might be that in a life that feels out of balance, you are prioritizing responsiveness, meaning somebody would hear back from you as quickly as possible when they reach out. 


But now in a balanced life, instead of prioritizing being responsive, you are prioritizing instead the top three things that you have on your list today. Which means you can't always be available on Slack and on email, because that would be sidetracking you from your top three things. 


Have you really lowered the bar or lowered your expectations of yourself? Or have you just simply reprioritized? 


In an out of balanced life, you prioritize everyone being on board and happy with your decisions or your strategies. And in a balanced life, you prioritize yourself, being 100% on board, or maybe just one or two key players. 


In an unbalanced life, you prioritize every decision, feeling really good in your gut, like no tinge of uncertainty. But in a balanced life, you prioritize making more decisive decisions so that you can move faster and make greater progress. 


 Prioritize trusting yourself.

In an unbalanced life, you prioritize feeling 100% prepared for every meeting, every presentation. But in a balanced life, you prioritize trusting yourself and what you know so that you don't always need to be 100% prepared all of the time. 


I'll never forget this client. This was like a couple of years ago now. She sent me this message. Or maybe it was actually on our call, in our session, where she was telling me this, but she felt really proud of herself, because at the end of the day on a Friday, she left work exactly at the time she wanted to, even though she was only, like, 75% prepared for this presentation she was giving first thing on Monday. 


She didn't work over the weekend to feel more prepared. She was just okay with being 75% prepared. And when I asked her how she was able to do that, she told me I just trusted that I knew the rest of the 25% and that that was enough. She wasn't lowering the standard of herself, she was reprioritizing to trust in herself more. 


In an unbalanced life, you prioritize as many things as possible being checked off your list. But in a balanced life, you prioritize predetermined or selected things on your list, because you know that not everything's going to get done. 


Prioritize your own opinion of yourself.

In an unbalanced life, you prioritize other people's opinions of you. And in a balanced life, you prioritize your own opinion of yourself. You just simply don't care what other people think. 


In an unbalanced life, you prioritize efficiency of tasks. But in a balanced life, you prioritize connectedness with people. That's such a good one. I want you to hear that one again because this one has come up with a couple of my clients recently. In an unbalanced life, you prioritize efficiency of tasks, but in a balanced life, you prioritize being connected with people. 


In an unbalanced life, you prioritize things being “right”. But in a balanced life, you prioritize things just simply being decided. 


In an unbalanced life, you prioritize needing to know everything before you even get started. And in a balanced life, you prioritize just knowing the next thing, so you make progress.


 You're not lowering the bar, you're not lowering expectations of yourself. You're just reprioritizing the behaviors, the mindsets, the emotions, and the tasks that get you to the goal of success and balance at the same time. 


I really hope that this frame of mind resonated with you. I'd encourage you to make your own list. 


What are the very specific thoughts, mindsets and behaviors that you were prioritizing that causes you to feel out of balance? 


And then, what are the very specific thoughts and mindsets and behaviors that you need to prioritize or are prioritizing when you feel balanced? 

You don't need to lower your view of yourself.

If you are a self proclaimed perfectionist that has struggled to lower your expectation of yourself in order to stay successful and feel balanced. I just want you to know I see you and you don't need to lower your view of yourself and what you do. I can help. It all starts by scheduling a free breakthrough call. On that call, we dive deep into the behaviors and the mindsets that are not serving you and talk about exactly what you're going to do to get yourself out of them through the process of coaching. 


You can go to www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/coaching to learn more about the process of coaching, exactly what we do, and then ultimately to schedule that free breakthrough call and connect with me personally. 


Perfectionists, people pleasers, working moms out there - I see you. Keep going, and until next week, let's get to it. 

Rebecca Olson