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Can you really create balance with only changing your mindset? For most working moms, it feels like a lot more needs to shift other than your thoughts, but for my client Meredith, a mindset shift was what really made a difference. Her circumstances are almost exactly the same and yet she is out of survival mode, feeling engaged and present with her kids AND the changes feel completely sustainable. How did she do it? She changed her thoughts. Listen in as she shares more of her coaching journey and the mindset tools that really made a difference.
Topics in this episode:
Does mindset coaching really work?
The shift out of “I just have to get through my day!”
The importance of naming who you are not
A game-changing tool: creating an emotional protocol
The most powerful thought that keeps Meredith grounded and centered
Show Notes:
Learn to create sustainable work-life balance that you are in complete control of by working with me in coaching. Schedule your free call here: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book
Need helping ending your workday at 5pm and shutting down your work brain so you can be fully present with your family? Get my free training that teaches exactly what you need to do to end work at the time you want without logging back on. Click here to sign up: https://www.ambitiousandbalancedcollective.com/end-work-at-5pm
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Transcript
Intro
So here's the thing. I talk about changing your mindset or changing your thoughts a lot on this podcast because there's a direct correlation between what you think and what you do.
So if you want to change your habits and behaviors to feel more balanced, the heart of that work is actually in your brain.
I talk about this a lot, but I know a lot of you are sort of skeptical. It feels like a lot of other things other than your mindset or thoughts need to change in order for you to feel balanced.
You need your to-do list to be less.
You need your boss to respond in a certain way.
You need your spouse to do more around the house.
You need to be less busy, you need more help.
Whatever it is, it doesn't just feel like a mindset shift is all you need.
Well, today on the podcast, I'm excited to share with you an interview that I did with a past client whose circumstances really haven't changed at all yet. Her experience of life, her enjoyment of life, her ability to be present and engaged at both work and home, they've completely changed.
I wanted to bring her onto this podcast to share more about the mindset and the emotional processing work we did in coaching and how much of a difference it made. It's so good. I can't wait for you to hear her share. So get 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: Working moms, I'm very excited to have a special guest with you today, and I am interviewing a past client. Actually, she completed coaching with me just a couple of weeks ago. We were talking about that and kind of catching up a little bit.
Her name is Meredith McKay, and I wanted to bring Meredith on to the podcast today to talk a little bit about her journey in coaching, but really specifically about how her mindset shift has really made the biggest difference for her in our time together. And I wanted to hear her really talk about that because I talk about the importance of our thoughts on this podcast a lot.
I talk about how our thoughts connect to our feelings, how they drive our actions, and how when we shift our mindset, when we shift our thoughts, that is going to make the biggest difference in everything. It's going to have a domino effect. And it was that experience for Meredith, and so I thought it would be so much fun to hear from her around what it's looked to not really change her circumstances much, but really change her thoughts about her circumstances and what has resulted in that. So I think there's going to be some rich conversation here.
Thank you, Meredith, for joining me. And why don't you just take a moment and introduce yourself to us? How many kids do you have? What do you do? Tell us a little bit about yourself.
About Meredith.
Meredith: So my name is Meredith. I live in the Charlotte area of North Carolina. And I work in the corporate finance and accounting group of a large corporation in the financial services industry. I've been at the company for, I think I'm about to hit eleven years. So pretty much my entire full time career, but in a lot of different roles.
I have two little kids. My daughter is three and she is quite the little firecracker. She is me in a miniature version. And then my son is turning two in just a couple of weeks. So he's growing up really quickly.
Rebecca: Two little ones.
Meredith: Yeah. I mean, they're not as little as they were when we started coaching six months ago, but they're little and they're close in age, which is so much fun. But, it's quite chaotic.
Rebecca: Was that desired. Would you do it again?
Meredith: Yeah, I would do it again in a heartbeat.
Rebecca: You like having close together?
Meredith: I love it. I mean, it is a total circus and it is absolutely exhausting. But they are best friends. They love each other and they have so much fun together. And even though at the end of the day, my husband and I look at each other, what happened today, we are so exhausted. It was another day of just anarchy, we say sometimes, but it's so much fun. They definitely keep me on my toes, that's for sure.
Rebecca: My sister in law has twins, actually. They just came to visit the whole family. And the twins came to visit us just recently. And I think about what her earlier days were like. I didn't live near her, but it's hard for me to even imagine what a twin scenario would be like. And even though you didn't have twins, there's still this element of multiple kids in diapers at the same time doing the same thing. I love the idea that it's all anarchy.
Meredith: We always think that no one comes to our house to relax. You don't come over to our household for a nice quiet evening. You better come with coffee in your blood and be ready to roll. Because it's crazy, but it's a lot of fun.
Rebecca: I mean, I would imagine that there was an element of wanting to learn how to manage the chaos and the anarchy of the family balanced with the chaos of work and so forth.
That was a piece of the puzzle for you in seeking out me as a coach, to work through that with you, because the circumstances of your kids being young and close in age and it being chaotic and all of the things that wasn't really going anywhere, that was going to be the same for quite some time.
Why Meredith came to coaching.
Meredith: Right. Yeah, that was a big part of it. We had a lot of changes that happened within just a couple of years. The two kids, of course, we also relocated during that time and had kind of a rocky relocation with just, the housing market being crazy and then delays in construction and everything. So we ended up moving multiple times until we got to our permanent house.
And then, of course, COVID just like everyone else with kids our age. And that was just totally unforeseen. Yeah, we didn't have stable child care, and I felt I never had a good support group of colleagues because we weren't together.
I just had so many balls in the air, so much change underway simultaneously while still trying to be committed to my career and be focused when I was working. And I just knew I needed help for sure.
“I knew I needed some professional help”
And I needed to dig deeper into myself than I'd ever done before. To not only just get through it, which is kind of how I started our coaching. That's the mindset I was in. But to enjoy this phase of life and really be fully present and love the circus that I live in in my house and still enjoy my job and feel intellectually challenged. And if I really wanted it all and to enjoy this phase of life, then I knew I needed some professional help to put it that way.
Rebecca: I love that. I just wrote down a couple of things that really stood out to me, enjoying this phase of life, remaining intellectually challenged. and then you used the word which is only standing out to me because this week's podcast that dropped last week, the latest episode was about having it all, and I kind of debunked that on some level. And you just used that phrase like, if I wanted to have it all, what does it mean to you? What does it mean to you now? I don't know if it's changed at all…
Meredith: I've always wanted to maintain a career, even while having kids. And I think even a year ago, my fallback thought process when I got overwhelmed was, I just don't have enough time to do all this. And, something's got to give, something's got to change.
And is deciding I'm not going to have as much time or as much fully focused, intentional time with my kids, or is that stepping back at work? Something's got to change.
And I think through our work together, I found, no, I really don't need a huge change in circumstance. I need to develop my emotions and my intellectual capacity to figure out how to do everything that I've committed myself to do and that it is possible. And it's not just a matter of having more time, but it's a matter of being really strong with my mindset and growing as an individual through this time.
Rebecca: I love that. Okay, so this is really where the heart of what I wanted to talk to you is about. So I'm glad that it's just kind of happening organically as we talk about it here.
You said you knew that you always wanted to maintain your career while having kids, while becoming a mom and starting a family. And that's kind of what it meant to you, was to be able to have a really fulfilling, rich, successful career and to enjoy this phase of life. Because even if you were managing both, it could be that one is just completely draining to you, and thus they're both kind of draining to you, right? The goal was to kind of be happy in both and to enjoy both.
You just mentioned a couple of things. You mentioned emotions, and you mentioned thoughts. So I'm curious, when we got started, the beginning process of talking about your thoughts and your emotions, tell me what your experience of us beginning that process of talking about your thoughts and emotions was like. Were you even aware that that was a thing or that there was an issue? Tell me about that from the beginning.
“I've never really enjoyed working through emotions “
Meredith: I think in the beginning, I was a little bit resistant towards it. I'm a very analytical person. I've never really enjoyed working through emotions or giving that much attention, right, wrong, or indifferent.
I've always kept my head down and tried to remain moving forward and not getting caught up too much with emotions. So I think I resisted it in the beginning.
But when I became a mom and I'm sure a lot of listeners will agree to this, I started to experience deeper emotions than I've ever felt before and to me has become very true. And it's when you become a parent, what you thought was an emotional high - you didn't even know what an emotional high was until you became a parent, and you really feel those emotional highs, but the opposite is also true, right? You really feel those lows whenever it's a bad day or what have you.
And so when I started to experience those deeper emotions and started to appreciate them in a way I never had before, it maybe changed my attitude towards exploring emotions and really getting touch with my inner self a little bit more. And you certainly pushed me in ways I've never been pushed before.
I've never had a one on one coach, so you certainly weren't letting me off the hook very easily. So it took me a few weeks, for sure, but it was very interesting, and it helped me feel a lot more confident about myself, honestly, once I got to know myself better.
Rebecca: Tell me about that. Why do you think that is?
Exploring our personal values.
Meredith: One of the most interesting exercises we did was digging into what my I think we ended up with five or six because two were really closely related, but digging into what my true personal values were. And they weren't just your run of the mill values that everyone would say, but they were very personalized to me. And it felt very validating to put words to things I've always known about myself, but really just to name them and feel confident in them and also to, on the flip side, name what I might not be, who I'm not and not try to be everything anymore.
“It feels like a weight lifted off my shoulders to know who I am and who I'm not.”
That's a very freeing experience to feel confident in who I am and what my values are and to also feel confident in what I'm not and to not feel I have to be everything to everyone in my life at all times. It almost feels like a weight lifted off my shoulders to know who I am and who I'm not.
Rebecca: Yeah, I think so too. I think there's a lot of power in the declaration of the not, right. It's one of those exercises that I have for sure done for myself on a number of occasions, and I've done it with a number of clients just even recently, where I'll have them say something about themselves: I am this and I'm not this, and that not piece feels so empowering to say because it's kind of saying, it's okay, I am this and I'm not this, and that's just the way it is. I don't have to try to fix that. There's nothing wrong with that. I just am and I'm not.
I think you're right. I think we carry that around with us, that we should be more or we should be more this person, this other mom that we see and how they interact with their kids or how this particular mom at work, seems to have it all on some level. And they do this and they do this, and this person over here seems to be able to do this and this, right?
And we kind of die and compare. We inner die, inner death comparison because we keep thinking that we need to be more some of the positive qualities of other people when they aren't really true to who we are.
And so I love that you connected the idea of naming who you are and who you're not to that feeling of freedom and then ultimately confidence. And then what do you feel that did for you as you named who you were and who you weren't and started to feel more confident in yourself?
Meredith: It definitely gave me a stronger sense of self worth. It helps me see the value that I bring to the table for myself, for my kids, for my husband, for those I work with, even if it's not the exact same value as one of my peers, or not the same value as the neighbor across the street brings to her family.
“...it really enabled me to be happier and more present in whatever situation I was in”
And it really enabled me to be happier and more present in whatever situation I was in, because I wasn't constantly judging myself like, okay, we did all these things today, but here's what we didn't do. That's fine. We don't have to do every single thing as a family on the weekend. We can't do every activity.
And just being more in tune with the good things about myself and the good things about my family, it really is just life changing.
And the emotions that come along with that of just being genuinely happy and genuinely content and not always feeling there has to be more, or I should be doing more, or, the flip side of that, I'm not doing enough. Feeling those thoughts become less and less frequent in my mind was incredibly just freeing and honestly, kind of energizing, because those thoughts are very draining after a while.
Rebecca: Yeah, I really latched on to the idea that you started focusing on the good parts of you, right? We did the work to name it, we do that through your values, through your identity, through your purpose. We talk about it in lots of ways over the course of our six months together.
Flooding our brain with positive thoughts.
But what inherently is happening is we're focusing on the good parts of you. So we're flooding your brain with positive thoughts about yourself. It's not that you maybe didn't know some of those things about yourself, or didn't even believe that some of those things were true, but it's in the, flooding, if you will, of your brain - If you flood yourself with positive thoughts, it allows all of the self critical thoughts to not have as much room.
Because your brain can only hold four to six conscious things at any given time. So if four of them are super positive about yourself and you're remembering these good things, there isn't a whole lot of room for all of that self critical stuff to enter in and kind of weigh you down.
And so the whole process was just learning how to flood your brain with thinking about yourself in a more positive way, in a good way. And that made a huge difference it sounds like, in how you started to interact with others, how you just started to experience your day to day life.
Meredith: Absolutely. And I will say that by no means have I reached a perfect state with it. There are still days where I feel very defeated, or it wasn't enough, or I feel overwhelmed.
One of the most powerful things we worked through was a protocol on how to work through those emotions and how to sit with them and not try to avoid them, but to really give them their space, feel them throughout my body and work through them and realize that they're there for a reason. And they're not necessarily bad, but let them kind of have their moment in the spotlight and work through them and consciously make the choice to turns back towards the positive once those more negative emotions have had their turn.
Rebecca: You kind of self declared before that you were not somebody that cared to dive into your emotions a ton, before the coaching process. So I'm really curious about this, and you're right, we did create a protocol because, again, very analytical. And a lot of the people that work with me, a lot of my clients, a lot of the listeners, we're very focused. We know how to get a goal done. And usually that means we have a plan and we work through that.
And so that's what I do. It's like, all right, well, emotions are kind of confusing for us. A lot of us haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it. So let's come up with a very systematic way to think about our emotions and to kind of handle them in the moment.
Now you're telling me that things are better, it's actually a better way of life to do it this way than it was the other way. Can you describe the difference, the before and after? What was it before kind of avoiding emotions and what's it now?
Meredith: Sure. One specific scenario comes to mind, and I don't know if you recall or not, but we were probably three months into our coaching and again, my kids are pretty young, so my daughter at the time was probably two and a half, and my son was one and we had had a pretty good morning, and I dropped them off at daycare. It was my day to do drop off, and my daughter just lost it. Just full meltdown in the hallway screaming.
And it caught me totally off guard. And it was very upsetting for me because I didn't know what was wrong. I couldn't fix it for her immediately.
And we had had days that in the past and previously that would consume me for a couple of hours. I would drop her off, I would worry about her. I would have trouble focusing at work. It would totally determine the direction of my day.
And when that happened, after we had been working together, I sent you a message and I said, okay, I know what I want to talk about next week. I want you to help me work through days this. We worked on sitting with the emotion, letting it really go all the way through me, and then kind of turning towards a rigid thought process on - Am I more worried about her, or am I more worried about myself? Do I know that she's okay?
And I reached a logical answer, yes, I know she's okay. She's with teachers who love her just more than anything, and she's fine, and she's going to have tantrums. It's a phase that she's in. It's her age.
Creating a protocol to work through tough days.
Once we kind of defined that protocol and how to work through days that, when they would happen thereafter, I was able to kind of give that emotion five or ten minutes and then get refocused on my day and know that she was completely fine.
And that was just very powerful because it was on the surface, it allowed me to focus at work or whatever I was doing that day, but it also just gave me a much larger sense of inner peace.
We all, I think, deal with a little bit of hard feelings when someone else is in charge of our children for the day, and we just have to trust that they're okay. But getting stronger with that feeling and that trust has been really powerful for me because I know my kids are at a great school. We're very lucky to love the school that we've picked for them. And even when we have tough days and the drop off is rough or someone's upset, just being able to appreciate the thought that they are fine.
And if I can control my emotions or kind of work through my emotions and take control of where my mind is going today, then I'm also going to have an okay day. Even if it started out with a rough 15 minutes.
Rebecca: Yeah. And I think it's really important to spend time digging into the impact of not dealing with the emotions. Otherwise, why do the work? Right? Why does it matter? If you truly are able to have a difficult moment with your daughter like that and then walk away and go, all right, well, dust off my shoulders and go, that stunk. That was terrible, and then move on, then, all right, well, then there's really nothing to do here. But that's not generally our experience.
This is one of those things I really push all of my clients to see the impact of some of the behaviors, if you will. I call them the imbalanced behaviors that really aren't serving them, because if you don't see the impact, there's going to be no desire to change it, right?
Meredith: Right.
Rebecca: And so for you, what you're telling me, and I know what I experience is this long, lingering kind of get into my work day. I feel exhausted already. My brain is having a hard time focusing on anything else. I'm kind of replaying the moment over and over again.
For me, if I have to jump straight into, like, a client, call a meeting of some kind, I know I'm not all there yet. My brain and my body are not connected at all. Not quite all together. Even if I have notes in front of me, my edge isn't there, if you will.
My best self isn't focused yet, and that can go on for a while, and then eventually, usually it goes away. Usually I can get over that hump, but that could be hours later. But if I come back into my family, for me, and I haven't really dealt with that, my brain just floods right back to it and I remember what it was in the morning, and that exhaustion sticks with me. And I want to reconcile something with my daughter that doesn't need to be reconciled.
All of this little stuff that doesn't feel much, but when we're talking about the goal, being enjoying life, and that's really what we want in this magical, balanced life that we're all talking about, yeah, there's better ways to deal with it. There's better ways to handle it and move on.
And that was a lot of our work together, was learning, like, what does it look to kind of contain or give some space to some of these emotions and truly let them go so that you can walk into your best self?
Projecting our emotions on others.
Meredith: Absolutely. And one other thing I noticed that was a big change for me when those tough emotions would strike is that I no longer would direct my frustration in the wrong place. Previously, if we had a bad morning and my poor innocent husband would text me about something, he would get my attitude right.
Rebecca: Totally.
Meredith: Whoever I spoke to next would get the misdirected frustrations. And being able to contain and really work through an emotion and let it be what it is, but not bleed into other parts of my day was really powerful.
Rebecca: Yeah, very powerful. Because these are the people that you love the most, right. These are the people that you're connected with on a daily basis. They're the ones that we want experience our best self. And not to say that you're going to walk away from kind of going having your moment with your emotions, your protocol and so forth, and walk away and feel 100% better. We don't tend to be a light switch, right? We don't just walk away and go, okay, that was done. I'm moving, on. Sometimes there's some things that kind of linger with us, but we know it's sort of behind us. There isn't much more to process through. And that's the big part of it.
Meredith: Yes. Absolutely.
Rebecca: I'm also remembering a very specific conversation we had. It had to do with bedtime. So you had, like, very typical young kids, right? Getting them out the door and getting them to bed. The two hardest moments of the day with our kids.
Meredith: Absolutely.
Rebecca: So there's all these struggles with I think it's your oldest one, your daughter, that is having a hard time getting to bed. And so we had this conversation about it. And I remember and I asked you why it was a problem that your daughter was having big feelings about going to bed or whatever the situation was that we were talking about in specific.
And you said, Well, I just want her to be happy. And I said, is it okay that she's not always happy? And I remember there was this log pause. You're like, Is it okay? I don't think so. I think my kids are supposed to always be happy. Tell us about your experience of this conversation and what's lingered with you since then.
Meredith: Yeah, I wrestled with that one for several hours after we talked. It is hard to watch your kids be unhappy and watch your kids deal with the realities of life and emotions and things they don't want to agree with or things they don't want to cooperate with, namely bedtime in our household. It is very hard, but I've learned to appreciate the fact that part of growing up is her learning how to deal with emotions and not always being happy and not always getting exactly what her three year old brain thinks she wants in that moment. And that was a very tough one for me, I will absolutely admit that. And it's still hard. But we've come a long ways with our bedtime problems. We're getting there.
Accepting big feelings.
Rebecca: And part of it is because of this, because on some level, you just accepted, like, yeah, she's going to have some big feelings about it. Maybe I don't have to fix it. Right. Because that's a lot of the time, what we think we need to do with our kids negative emotions when they're having a tantrum, when they're angry, when they're upset, whatever it is, our job is to fix it.
Meredith: Yeah, it used to feel that way, for sure, and now I see it differently. My job is to empathize with her, to understand she had a lot of fun today, and she doesn't want her day to end.
Rebecca: That's great.
Meredith: I'm really glad that she enjoys her life so much that she doesn't want to go to bed, but still being firm with her that mom knows best, and she needs to get some sleep in order to have a fun day tomorrow. And seeing a change in my perspective of, okay, I don't always have to make her happy, but I do have to help her learn what is best for her and help her learn some tough life lessons. That's been a huge game changer, and luckily, over time, she's maturing right, and she's starting to see that she's starting to understand she feels better when she gets some sleep. So, we're getting there. But that is one of the tougher phases of our day, every single day.
Rebecca: And I remember this very kind of in depth conversation about how do our kids benefit from being able to experience negative emotions? Why might we want them to do that?
And that's kind of one of the things that we do in coaching a lot with our mindset and our thoughts is we kind of have our initial perspective of something. In this case, it's like, no, my kids should be happy all the time. It's like, okay, well, that's a perspective. Let's talk about another perspective. What if it was just okay for our kids to be unhappy sometimes? Let's talk about that.
And oftentimes when I would ask you that kind of a question, be like, well, that's a hard one for me to get there. It's like, logically, we know there's another perspective here, but it takes a moment for our brain to go, all right, well, if I'm going to entertain another perspective, let's think about it, right?
Offering our brains different perspectives and thoughts.
A lot of our thought work is just starting to offer to our brain that there's something else we can think about this, that there's 100 different ways we can approach this, 100 different perspectives. We can have 100 different thoughts. Some of those make us feel really good, and some of them are super useful to us, and some of them aren't.
Meredith: Yeah, absolutely. And learning to go through those exercises of, playing the opposite perspective or even just a different perspective, it's very challenging for me. But I felt that I've grown a lot intellectually by being able to take my brain to the other perspective and say, well, what if that's not really true? And what if the perspective is it's actually, in this case, okay for her to be upset and I don't have to protect her from those hard feelings?
Learning to play that opposite perspective for that situation and for plenty of other situations has been really a huge game changer for me.
Rebecca: I want to hear a little bit about that, either from like, what are some of the conversations that really stands out to you as we've talked about perspective or changing your thoughts? Or what are some of the things that you have found yourself doing now, a month or so after we've ended the coaching time together that have been really useful to you, that have kind of stuck with you over, our process to help you kind of shift your thoughts.
“I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.”
Meredith: One of the most powerful sentences, really just a matter of, one sentence, has been, I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. I use that thought very often in a lot of different contexts, sometimes on a very large scale with my career and my current status in the company I work for. And then I use it as a day to day perspective.
For example, I think you maybe mentioned that I set a record for having kids out of school with sick days the most times during our time together. But true to form, last week, my son brought home a virus and took the whole family out.
Rebecca: You guys get sick a lot?
Meredith: Well, you got me in the wintertime with two really young kids. So we had a lot of daycare viruses. But this weekend, we were sitting around the house, we had big plans for the weekend, and none of that happened, and everyone was sick, and we were just snuggling on the couch, watching our 18th hour of Bluey. And there was a moment where I felt a little bit bitter about it. Right? Like, I wanted to do other things this weekend.
Like, these sick kids, they're breaking my heart, and no one feels good, and this is frustrating. And then I had a moment of thinking, no, this is exactly where I'm supposed to be. Like, our plans for the weekend didn't matter. Everyone feels horrible. We're snuggling on the couch. We're enjoying our day of cartoons, and just shifting my mindset to today where I'm supposed to be, is at home with my family.
This was really powerful because it put a positive spin on what is a really negative situation. No one likes having sick kids at home or canceled plans. But knowing that I was making the conscious choice to appreciate that it was a weekend, and I did have, really all the time in the world to sit there and just snuggle with them and take it all in, it was great. It was just awesome to have that mindset of, I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be today.
And I use that on a grander scale, too. If I'm feeling, like, a little bit of an itch in my career and I'm wanting to know what's next for me, just being able to work through the thought of, no, I'm where I should be right now. I know how to do my job. I'm not incredibly overwhelmed on a daily basis. I feel confident in what I'm doing. And this is perfect for the life phase that I'm in. And it's a very reassuring thought that I work through pretty frequently.
Rebecca: Yeah, I love that. And what you're also telling me is that you support it, right? So you have the thought, I'm exactly where I should be, and then your brain goes searching for evidence for how that's true. I'm exactly where I should be because this life stage with my kids, it's nice to be where I'm at in my career right now. This is not my growth year in my career.
Meredith: Right.
Rebecca: Your brain naturally starts to direct it to find evidence. And that's one of the things we talk about a lot as we talk about how our brains work, is our brains are always on our side. Like, if you tell your brain something, it wants to help you believe that it wants to help you find evidence for that. And so if you're constantly telling yourself, I'm not enough, I'm not going anywhere, I should be further ahead, I shouldn't be feeling this way - your brain goes, yeah, you're right. You really shouldn't. That's a big problem. Look at your colleagues that have really propelled themselves in this way or that way. Your brain really does latch onto it.
And so when you start telling it the opposite, it's like, yeah, for sure. There's a lot of reasons why right now, this is exactly where you should be, and it'll start going the other direction. It's amazing how that happens. And it sounds like you experience that pretty regularly as well.
“..I feel fully present most of the time in my day.”
Meredith: I do, and it really takes me back to one of the largest benefits being that I feel fully present most of the time in my day. So if I am able to harness the thought of I'm exactly where I should be, whether that's physically or emotionally or in my career, it helps me be fully engaged with the place that I am and who's around me and not be on my iPhone looking at what other people are doing.
It's helped a lot with our family dynamic and just enjoying, I said, the circus of our life stage right now.
Rebecca: I love that because your brain isn't off somewhere thinking about where you should be or what you should have gotten done, or what you lack in, or what isn't being accomplished right now, or how you could be utilizing your time better, or all of these different things. It's here, it's engaged in the moment, and it's searching for those little moments of connection that bring in so much joy. I love it.
Meredith: Absolutely.
Rebecca: One of the things that you said in your final evaluation, which is what I brought to you as we were preparing to have this conversation, was you said, even though my circumstances remain relatively the same, albeit my brain feels tired from all the grown up and in depth work we have done, but the most amazing thing is that I feel I have a more sustainable life. I'm not in survival mode all the time. I'm no longer on the fast track to a complete burnout and depression. And it's pretty cool considering the only thing that really has changed was my mindset.
Such a beautiful thing to realize that it doesn't need to be the job that changes, or the title that changes, or the money that changes, or our kids to be doing something, or our spouse to be doing something, or whatever it may be. The experience that you wanted of presence and engagement and enjoying this phase of life was possible just through you doing something.
Meredith: Absolutely. My days don't look that much different than they did six months ago, and it's just a matter of approaching them differently.
I don't wake up in the mornings feeling I just have to get through another day, or feeling a huge overwhelming sense of resistance when a circumstance changes or my day gets thrown in a completely different direction than I expected it to. But having a more well grounded approach to my day and feeling I'm able to handle whatever comes my way, and I know how to respond to it, and I know how to work through the emotional toll that it might take if things go differently than I expect them to.
“..(coaching) has been life changing.”
And just being very intentional about my mindset and being present. It's been life changing, honestly.
And even though our six months of coaching together has wrapped up, I think I have a lot of tools that I can carry with me. And who knows what the next stage of my career looks like, and who knows what life will be as my kids get a little bit older.
But regardless of those circumstances, having complete control and being very intentional about how I think through my day and I think through my life and I have control over my emotions has been just a wonderful outcome.
Rebecca: I love that because it's so much the heart of what I want for my clients in coaching is I want them to feel that sense of control, that sense of freedom. They actually do have complete control over their life.
That doesn't necessarily mean that they don't want their job to change or their career to change or something different. That's fine. It's the not needing it in order to experience the life that you have. You don't need your kids to be a little bit older and to get through this phase in order for you to enjoy life and engage and be present. You could enjoy it right now in the midst of the chaos that's 100% available to you.
“There's no outside circumstance that has to change in order for me to enjoy myself right now.”
Meredith: I don't feel that I'm waiting for the next change. You're waiting for the next phase to start. There's no outside circumstance that has to change in order for me to enjoy myself right now.
Rebecca: So I'm curious having the, knowledge that you have right now about working through your thoughts and your emotions and how they actually have a pretty strong effect over your life and your experience of your life, I'm curious if you tend to either find yourself kind of going there with other people now friends, spouse, coworkers, if you start offering different perspectives, or some of your troubleshooting is more mindset troubleshooting than it is. Just that tangible, practical stuff. Have you seen it trickle out into the way you're interacting with other people now?
Meredith: I think most obviously with my husband, just because we're partners getting through this phase of life together and we don't always see eye to eye, but, not only have I kind of taught him some of the things, that we've worked through, and he's learned how to work through his own mindset a little bit. But I'm also just much more intentional about my interactions with him, and that's paid dividends in our marriage and just our interactions in the household and just making sure that everyone is really more at peace on a day to day basis.
It's contagious, right? I mean, everyone that I interact with we can sense other people's emotions when we talk with them. And so, yeah, I've seen it most obviously with my husband, but then, of course, with coworkers also. I just don't have quite as close of a relationship with them, of course. And I am a remote worker, so I don't have the coffee, or what's the phrase? Water cooler chat, that for sure.
Rebecca: I love it. Well, if you were to give some thoughts, some advice to other working moms that maybe were where you were at back when we started, what would be your advice to them?
Meredith: I think my first piece of advice would be just take a deep breath. When things feel completely overwhelming, just take a pause and don't blow circumstances out of proportion. One bad day or one overwhelming moment with your kids or at work does not have huge implications for the presence of a problem. Like, there's nothing that has to be changed or fixed just because things are hard.
So just being able to pause and recompose and kind of maintain a very balanced and intentional view of life is really rewarding and take you out of that feeling of just being in overwhelm or constantly just responding rather than proactively, taking control of your life. Just having that pause and that self discipline to really just take a moment and reset is really powerful.
Then the other thing I would recommend is taking care of yourself. I mean, it's incredibly cliche, right? But it really is true that you can't pour from an empty cup. So whether that means investing in coaching or it means taking time to exercise every day or not, going for a girls' night out once a month, making sure that you have time to take care of yourself and you invest in yourself will really pay dividends for everyone in your life. So there's no use of feeling guilty about it, because everyone benefits from a mom taking care of themselves 100%.
Rebecca: I love it. So good. It's been so fun to have you here. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and your journey and just being vulnerable with us.
Meredith: You're welcome.
Rebecca: Yeah, absolutely. All right, working Moms, you have heard it from Meredith herself to go, do what you need to do for yourself. Everybody benefits. When you do, make sure to focus on just taking those pauses, those intentional resets, in order to get to that place where you can really enjoy and love your life and be present in it. You only get one, right?
Meredith: That's right.
