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As a working mom your brain is likely always "on". You are constantly thinking about the things that need to get accomplished and the decisions that need to be made. For my client Cathy, these constant to-do’s, the second-guessing of herself, the need to make sure she bought the right products and was always prepared…this constant chatter in her head was preventing her from being happy and present in the way that she wanted. In coaching, Cathy learned several tools to help manage all of the thoughts in her head and the overwhelm that came with it and on today’s podcast she is sharing her top 4.
Topics in this episode:
All the things working moms hold onto in their brain and how to let it all go
4 tools to help calm an overwhelmed mind
What to do when you need to clean up the house and you want to be with your kiddos
A funny story about managing the piles of artwork from preschool
How to not feel like a bad mom when you get angry at your kids
The importance of knowing your superpower
Show Notes & References:
If you want to create a customized plan to calm your brain and stop feeling overwhelmed, I invite you to schedule a free breakthrough call. Click here to book your call: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book
Want ongoing support as a working mom? Sign up for the free 19-day audio series: How to be a present and connected mom. Each day you will receive an email with a downloadable audio of 5 minutes or less that will teach you a tool or strategy for being more present and in the moment. Click here to sign up and receive the first audio: https://www.ambitiousandbalanced.com/be-present-optin
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Transcript
Intro
So lately, I've been connecting with working moms and chatting with my clients and even chatting with some friends, and I've noticed a theme for women these days where they're just feeling really stuck in swirly thoughts. At least that's what I like to call them.
Swirly thoughts is literally when your brain is swirling in overwhelm or anxiety or in your to dos and there's just this constant chatter going on in your head that feel feels uncontrollable, and it's sort of keeping you from being able to be present and make decisions and confident and all those kinds of things.
And so I wanted to do a podcast to really help you learn how to create more calm in your brain and end all of that swirly thoughts. And I wanted to give you some really practical tools in order to do that.
But then I realized I've interviewed one of my clients on this very same topic, and I thought it would be really useful to rebroadcast it for you again and get it to the top of your feed.
So in this podcast, I am interviewing Cathy Sullivan, and you'll hear more about her as I introduce her in the episode.
The most useful tools Cathy learnt in coaching.
I remember when I asked her to come onto the podcast and do this episode with me - now, that was over a year and a half ago. At this point, I had asked her to come up with some of the most useful tools that she had learned in her coaching journey with me that really helped her calm her brain down, and she came up with some very specific tools.
And in this episode, we're diving into each of the four tools in detail, so you're not going to want to miss anything in this episode, and you might even want to listen twice. Are you all ready? Let's get to it.
Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms Podcast, the place for women who want to balance their ambitious career goals with their life as a mom. If you're looking to feel more confident, decisive, and productive at both work and home, then this is the place for you. I'm your host, Rebecca Olson. Let's get to it.
Rebecca: Welcome, Cathy. I'm so excited to be talking to you today. Thanks for being here with me.
Cathy: Me too. Thanks for having me.
Rebecca: Cathy has been a client of mine for the last year. We just finished wrapping up a year of coaching together. I coach with clients for six months and then I give them the option if they want to continue. And so Cathy continued for another six months.
So here we are today. And I invited Cathy on this podcast because a lot of the work that we did together is to get her brain to a place where she felt so much more in control of what she was thinking and how she was feeling.
And over the course of our coaching together, we started to call it Calm Cathy. And that was like a pet name for her on some level. It was such a great name because it really showed where her brain was before - It was a very frantic, overwhelmed, constantly moving, constantly going, constant to-do list going in her head and it was really overtaking her happiness.
So when she started coaching, a big goal of ours was just to help her figure out how to calm down her brain so that she could be in control, that she could take the action that she wanted to take, that she could be more productive, so she could be more present, so that she could feel more joy.
All of these things that come when we learn how to control the chatter that's going on in our head. And she just has so much to share about her journey. I'm so excited for this interview. Thank you for being here.
Cathy: Thank you.
Rebecca: You're welcome. I want to start by talking a bit about where you're at when we first started coaching. I want to paint a clearer picture of this because I think every mom in particular can relate to this. And so I'm going to actually just quote you from the very first thing that you ever wrote for me about yourself.
“I’m not a confident decision maker.”
I asked you this question - what are your goals for coaching? What do you want to kind of get out of this time together? And what you wrote is - I don't want to be taken over by my mostly negative script. In my head, I'm constantly in analysis paralysis. I'm not a confident decision maker, and I want to change that. I want to not let the growing unprioritized to-do list run me, not let clutter trigger me into a downward spiral. And I want to be more patient with myself and my family.
I'm curious when you hear me read that back to you, what are your thoughts?
Cathy: It certainly brings back memories of particular points in time of all those. But I think in general, I feel like I've learned and I'm still practising how to be better at each one of those. But it feels good to hear you say those things to me and have known like, wow, I've come really far.
Having constant to-do lists in your head.
Rebecca: You sure have. And I know for a lot of women, they tend to be the logistic runner of the family. Right? It's a default position, maybe in a default back to the patriarchal society that we still live in.
Whatever it is, women still choose to be the ones that kind of run the house. And for you, your brain was just in this place where you couldn't stop thinking about all of the things that you had to get done that you didn't finish.
It was always measuring accomplished versus not accomplished, like a scale in your head going around that. My guess is you probably had to-do lists everywhere on some level, from your phone, to your kitchen, to work.
Cathy: Yeah, post-it notes everywhere.
Rebecca: Like you have lists everywhere. Clutter is such a great word in your head because that's what it feels like. And there's just an inability to concentrate because of all of that that was running in your head. What was life like for you?
Cathy: I guess I felt like I was constantly catching up.
Rebecca: Always behind, always behind.
Surviving to thriving.
Cathy: Yeah, I could never catch a break. And even when I sat down at the end of the day to just relax or watch mindless television, as I like to call it, my brain was still going 1000 miles a minute.
I heard this thing at some work webinar where an external speaker came in and they said, I want to move you all from barely surviving to thriving. And I thought, wow, I feel like I'm just trying to survive every day.
Rebecca: Right.
Cathy: Like, I want to feel what is this thriving thing like you're talking about here? Tell me more.
Rebecca: What does that actually mean? What did you think it meant? What did you think was on the other side of this thriving life?
Cathy: Part of me thought I would learn how to maybe suppress all these feelings and make them go away. Like, maybe I'll never have them or maybe I'll have some of them. Right. I honestly thought it was about making them go away or keeping them from happening altogether.
Rebecca: Yeah. If I'm always in this positive, rosy state in life, then that's the thriving state. Right? All of the negative, icky stuff in life either isn't there or it doesn't bother you and it is significantly less versus all of the good on the other side.
That's a really common thought that we have. And what we tend to do, is we tend to judge all of the negative stuff as being wrong. Like something is wrong. I shouldn't be feeling bad about this or I shouldn't be having a bad day, or I should be more happy.
It's like we take all of the hard parts of life and we label that as being bad, as if there's not supposed to be conflict or there's not supposed to be failure and there's not supposed to be growth and we should just come out of the womb and come into adulthood somehow with a completely rosy perspective and everything fine. Right?
Cathy: And if you're keeping score and you're like, wow, I have way more negative thoughts and positive ones. You're like, well, I need more positive ones.
I should be more happy.
Rebecca: Yes. I should be more happy. So many women think I have the family, I have the kids, I have a great job, I make good money, I have the house, I have all of the things that I thought I wanted.
And it’s strange…this happiness thing isn't happening for me, what's going on? And there's this dumbfoundedness and then you head into self judgement. Why isn't it there? I should be. And then that makes you feel terrible.
My husband and I had a date night this week, and we watched this movie called Free Guy on Disney. Have you seen it?
Cathy: I haven't yet, no.
We as humans are meant to experience all emotions.
Rebecca: We laughed a lot during this movie. There's some clever thoughts to it and clever pieces of it. But he's this go lucky character in a video game that doesn't really know he's in a video game.
And he goes around saying, don't have a good day, have a great day. That's his little line in the movie or his character in the video game kind of like how everybody has this little video game saying, right? And that's his. And he just walks around as you get to know him. He walks around with this, like, everything is amazing kind of attitude. And I kind of think that that's what we think we're supposed to be feeling at all times.
I don't know if it had been introduced to you before coaching, but I remember one of the things that we talked about really early on was, life is 50-50.
Life is 50-50.
50% of the time it's supposed to feel kind of good, or at least on the neutral positive side. And 50% of the time, it's going to be on the neutral negative side, which means you're not going to describe life as being happy. You're going to feel some neutral thoughts. You're going to feel some bad thoughts. That's not a problem.
And I remember we even explored, why would we have all of this negative emotion as human beings if we weren't meant to feel it? Like we're supposed to avoid it all of the time?
I remember your mind was just blown with this idea. Like wait, I don't have to get rid of this. What are you talking about? What were some of your thoughts when we first started talking about this idea that life isn't supposed to always be rosy?
Cathy: When we first started working together, the thing I was a little hung up on was, I would put on a facade for other people, and someone says, how are you? You're like, I'm good. And you're like, no, if you could only see inside my brain and see how fast things were going, what's coming in and out.
I didn't like that I put that on, and I wanted to figure out how I could show up and be more of myself with other people and not necessarily like, I'm having a pretty crappy day, let me tell you about it. But maybe it's one thing, like, I'm really struggling with this one thing, right?
Because I've realized that by opening up to people with even just a little tidbit, they ask you a question, like, why is this thing not going so well? And then, of course, it leads you down this path where they may help you fix it or help you find someone else that can help you get some more insight into it.
And I've realized that the facade I was putting on is not helping me learn and grow and be a better person and to build connections with other people as well.
Rebecca: Yeah. I remember this idea that you can just say something kind of on the negative side or something that happens to you or something that you don't like or whatever. You can just kind of say, like, that sucks.
Cathy: I know. Yeah.
The ‘that sucks moment’.
Rebecca: And that'd be it. And just say, oh, that sucks, it shouldn't have happened. Or that sucks, I'm a terrible person because that happened. Or that sucks, I shouldn't be so angry at my kid. Or that sucks, and then add on a self judgment thought, as if it shouldn't be there.
You could just say that didn't go the way I hoped it would go - that sucks. And you can just sit in that and not take it to the next level - you can actually do that. And we called it the ‘that sucks moment’. And what we started to then talk about is like, containers for that.
And ultimately, in this podcast, I want to pick your brain for some of these really helpful tools that you developed in the toolkit for yourself. We kept calling it your tool belt and this toolkit that you were building. And this was one of them, like a container for the that sucks moments.
Because I think a lot of times what we fear is that if we just allow ourselves to kind of be sad or kind of angry or feel disappointed for a moment, we think that that's going to be with us forever, then I'm just going to be disappointed forever. Right? Like, I can't allow myself space to feel that.
So talk to me a little bit about these containers that we started to create.
Creating containers of time and emotions.
Cathy: There are two categories I fell into for me. One was about emotions, containers of emotions, and then containers of time.
So the emotion one, I think the best example was like, this was last year, but as the weather was starting to get a little bit warmer, it's lighter out later. We come around at 6pm and we've got a big mess in the kitchen. But I want to go outside and ride bikes with the kids.
So I'd send my husband out and I'd be like, you go out and I will finish the kitchen, and it'll be spotless by the time you’re back. But I missed out on all that time outside. I would have enjoyed going outside, too, right?
That was old Cathy. She'd spend the next hour in the kitchen. And it would be completely spotless by the time they came in. And they'd have guessed who was outside or guess what we did. And I'm like, I missed out on all of that. That sucks, right.
But instead now, I can reframe that and say, okay, I'm going to go, we're all going to go outside. And when we come back in here, this kitchen is going to be a disaster, and that is going to suck for a minute. And then we're going to make a plan to tackle it. Like, I'll do bath time and you do this.
And things may get pushed out by 30 minutes, but you know what? I got to spend that time with my family. And actually, I got to choose what I wanted to do rather than the dishes, choosing me, that kind of thing.
Rebecca: Yeah. And I remember sometimes when it came to time, one of the things we would do is we would just say, you would give yourself a container of time to do something.
Like you'd say, I'm going to tackle this for ten minutes, and I'm going to tell my kids, this is what I'm doing. I'm going to clean this kitchen for ten minutes. I'm not going to finish it. I know that. But I'm going to get it to a place where I feel better about it, and then I'm going to go play Legos with you. That's what I'm going to do.
Versus feeling like the endless amounts of time that we can spend on chores and we can spend doing something. We also talked about this, I remember, in researching things.
Cathy: Oh, yes. Oh, my God.
Rebecca: Because you were like a very endless researcher of getting to the right thing, shoes and the right product for your child and whatever, the very best.
I have a very similar tendency so I totally know what you're talking about. And you would say, I'm going to give myself this amount of time, whatever it was - 30 minutes, an hour, and then I will be done.
At the end of this, you learn how to give yourself containers for these things instead of letting it be endless, which takes all your time away.
Cathy: You've been talking about the closing out the end of the day thing, like we could work forever, right? So I'm like, oh, the clock is slowly approaching the time. I have to go pick up my son. Okay, I've got ten minutes to finish this thing. I'm going to set the timer, I'm going to do it, and then I'm going to leave. And you'd be amazed how productive you can be in that time. It's amazing.
Rebecca: Procrastinators often talk about the need for urgency, right? We can get into it if we have urgency. Right? And so it's true for pretty much everyone. Most people can get stuff done when it feels urgent. It's when it doesn't feel very urgent that we give ourselves endless amounts of time to do something, or we just don't commit to it at all.
Giving yourself a deadline.
And so what you're doing in that time is you're giving yourself a deadline. You're giving yourself a false sense of urgency, but you're creating it for yourself. And it works.
fAs long as your brain sees that there's a reason that you're giving yourself an end point. Like, in this case, at the end of the work day, I'm going to go spend time with my family, and that feels more important to me than accomplishing one more thing on my task or whatever. So I'm just going to contain my time here. This is why I'm doing it, because it's going to let me walk out the door and feel like I'm totally present with my family.
So tell me about the emotions one, the tool box containers, learning how to contain things. And the two containers we really thought about a lot were time containers and then emotion containers to talk about that one.
Acknowledging the emotion you’re feeling in the moment.
Cathy: The emotion one we talked about a little bit more about acknowledging the feelings or the emotional state that I was in.
My brain normally just wants to skip over that and then just work on, like you would say, the actions like, what am I going to do? How am I going to make myself not feel this way?
Rebecca: How am I going to fix this?
Cathy: Right. And so recently, I think maybe six months ago, we were talking about the returning to the office thing. I was talking about how I was just really sad about missing people and not being there to connect with them.
And you pause me and you're like, you need to take some time and to just be sad about it. It's okay. We don't know. It may or may not return to it. And I went like, oh, well, I just wanted to fix it. I just wanted to find solutions so I didn't feel that way.
Rebecca: Yeah. You were like, how can I spend more time with people? Where do I need to go? Maybe there's a different workspace I can be in, right?
Cathy: Yeah.
Allowing all emotions without judgement of why they are there.
Rebecca: You started to troubleshoot and you started to…and this is so common for our brains to take something icky that we're feeling - In this case, it was just kind of sadness and then label that as being like, I shouldn't be feeling sad.
Or maybe this means this isn't the right job for me, because I don't know if we're going to be returning to the office, and if we don't return to the office, then maybe I'm kind of in the wrong place.
Cathy: Exactly.
Rebecca: Because I really need to be around people. Right? So we take the icky emotion, and then we extrapolate that out as having a really deep meaning about something. Like, we've made the wrong choice or something is wrong or off, versus, like, oh, or it's just kind of sad.
Cathy: Exactly.
Rebecca: We have been together for two years, and that sucks. And that's it. Tell me, in that example, what did it look like to give yourself a container of time to feel sad?
Cathy: I don't know if this one was really a container per se. After we talked in our weekly call, I was like, I just need to be sad for as long as I need for this one.
It's not like I made a decision and I'm sad about the decision or whatever. Like, this one, I was like, I just really need to let myself be sad. And I think it was like for a whole week where I was like, wow, I am really sad about this. I missed people.
Rebecca: I think you even shared it with people. If I remember.
Being more open with our emotions.
Cathy: I did and that was one thing we talked about, just being more open. And I even said to my husband that night at dinner - I don't need you to say anything back.
I said, I just want to tell you I'm really sad about not being in the office. And he just shook his head. And I think even by telling him, I don't expect you to have an answer or give me advice. We don't need to fix this, I just want to tell you.
And I think as I told more people, it just really helped me be okay with that and just realized, like, yeah, it's the reality of where we're at. There isn't much I can do about it, but there are some things I can do about it.
And then I went as I processed those feelings and the thoughts I was having and the emotions certainly coming up, like, you know, remembering things that happened that made me so happy because like you said - And then it made me question things about my job, which I loved. I was like, why am I getting in this place? Like, this is weird.
And then naturally, it made me go into I think our next session was about all the things I love about where I work and my job and my people. And I was like, wow, I can still do all those things from home. It has nothing to do with those things.
Calming down our brains.
Rebecca: Yeah. And this was one of the things that we were doing to calm down your brain through this process. As we were helping to normalize situations and emotions that don't feel so good, we're normalizing that and then basically omitting from your brain all of the rest of the crap where your brain wants to take you, all of the options, all of the like, I got to fix this.
Like, constantly ruminating about it or constantly telling yourself scripts and then starting to wonder about this decision and if there's something else in there. Right?
All of that other stuff that your brain wants to take, it basically you just stopped all of that. Stopped because you're like, oh, I could just be sad and that'd be enough. And then I don't have to let my brain go to all of these different places.
Yeah, I love that so much. Let's talk about one of these other tools that we've been chatting about. I really want to talk about this first one that you listed here as we were prepping for this call, and you labeled it really knowing who I am. I'm calling that a tool because I think it is a tool to have language and belief around who you are at the core. So tell me about this one.
Cathy: I remember when I first started coaching, you were like, who are you? I'm like, well, I'm a mom. This is my job, and I live here, and those were the things. I'm a wife and a daughter, and I would define myself by those roles.
You are not defined by your job or being a mom.
You kept saying over and over, you are not defined by your job, by being a mom. Those are things about you. And I'm like, yeah, but without those things, who am I?
And we first started out, you offer these workbooks that we work through. And I remember going through them. It was one of the core values, your purpose in life and your life dreams. And I think we went through them over a six month period. And I was like, I'm all in here, so I'm going to fill them out. I'm going to do the homework, we're going to talk about them.
And I remember thinking like, okay, these are nice. Now let's go on working and fixing the rest of me. And it wasn't until I think our second round of coaching were like, we went back to those workbooks, and I was like, I did all that hard work. I spent the time on them. Wow. I re-read them about. I'll kind of go through a couple of things about me, my identity.
Like, I'm a person who wants to listen. I want to be able to show up better for others, open my mind to new perspectives. I love to mentor people. I love to realize their full potential through how I can help them at work and at home.
I'm an organizer. I love to bring people together, whether it's experiences or things that we can connect with. I love adventure. Right. And I love energizing people, like helping fill up other people's tanks and also realizing what's important to me.
“It was really the output of those workbooks and realizing it through our conversations every week where I started to make small changes in my life.”
Maybe I started, like, new behaviors and new habits and I prioritize the things that were really important to me because I remembered those things and they aligned to my core values.
And it was just, like, really amazing how those things came together through our coaching. They weren't just activities that I went through on my own and stored them away somewhere on my computer. I'm able to use them, especially my core values, in a lot of my day to day decisions and I never, ever anticipated that would happen.
In coaching, the goal is to understand and know who you really are so that you see yourself as amazing.
Rebecca: I love that. And some of it is on default and then some of it's very intentional when it comes to your brain.
Very specifically, I love the idea that I tell people all the time, this isn't self discovery for self discovery's sake. Who cares about naming these things and understanding who you are? If it's just for self actualization, that isn't what we're doing here.
In coaching, the goal is to understand and know who you really are so that you see yourself as amazing, that you see yourself as a badass, that you see yourself as having really valuable skill sets.
Cathy: I’m calling them my superpowers.
Rebecca: Yeah, your superpower. So that when decisions don't go the way that you want them to go or when you have a moment that you scream at your kids because everybody has those moments, or you have a time that you don't get the project done in the time that you wanted to, or you miss a deadline, or you don't do as well in a presentation.
All of these little moments of we'll call it, ‘failure’, even though we're very much labeling it that way - I don't actually think of it as failure, but for the sake of this conversation, we see them as being very negative.
We don't take those moments and then use that to define ourselves by that and then live in this narrative of all of our failure. And we've built up an arsenal of understanding and ideas and language to describe yourself that you can be like, Well, yeah, that didn't work out so well, but I know that this is really what I bring to the table.
Cathy: Exactly.
When you're thinking really awesome things about yourself, so-called ‘failure’ and ‘negative’ moments don't affect you.
Rebecca: This isn't a problem. And so it helps to depersonalize all of the things that don't go in our favor in life, because, of course, that's going to happen. We can't control that. It's not about trying to control it.
It's about trying to control the way you respond to those things. And when you're feeling really awesome about yourself and you're thinking really awesome things about yourself, those moments don't affect you.
Cathy: They've really been a safety net for me, especially in times where I have really strong emotions, like feeling sad or disappointed in myself or confused, I go back to those things. I'm like, what is important to me?
Like, is this thing even aligned with my core values? No, it doesn't. Okay, let's stop doing it. Why am I worrying about this thing?
Rebecca: Yeah it doesn't matter then. It doesn't matter. Let's let it go. Yeah, let's move on. Which is, again, how we, like, as a piece of really calming down your brain.
It just allowed you to use it as a filter and say, I don't need to keep thinking about this. This isn't important to me. I don't need to dwell in this. I know that this isn't what defines me. It doesn't matter. And you just like, Stop. Move on.
Cathy: Exactly.
Rebecca: Yeah. It's so good. I love the idea that you had, and I think you've said that you're like, I'm not quite sure how this is going to help make me happier or be less anxious, but I'm willing. I love that.
Such an amazing client, you're like, I hear you, and I'm just going to follow along in the process. I'm going to assume it's working. And here we go, like, full circle for sure. I love that.
Cathy: And I remember when it was right before we met, like, maybe four months ago or so, one of our sessions, and it clicked. It was like, I went, oh, that's what they're for. I was like, oh, my God, this is amazing.
The feeling of knowing that those were there and I was like, wow, those are always there. I created those things. They're always going to be there for me. Nobody can take them away from me. Nobody else can change them. It was an amazing feeling.
Redirecting our brains.
Rebecca: The idea of redirecting your brain there, because that's really what you're doing in these moments.
Let's use the example, because I remember we talked about this a couple of times, and if I'm really honest, I'm struggling with it right now with my son, like, getting my son dressed and getting his shoes on in the morning. I have an almost five year old. Your son is almost six, right?
Cathy: Almost six. Yeah.
Rebecca: Both in the same place in dealing with this. And I know so many deal with this, like getting them out the door and getting their shoes on. This is a moment of constant battle. Right.
And so with really knowing who you are, you're going to have moments, though, of course, where you're not calm, where you're very frustrated. I think I've admitted this on the podcast. If I haven't, I'm about to open what feels like a closet that could be somewhat shameful. But I'm choosing to not say that it's shameful at all.
But I got so frustrated at my son not that long ago, and he was just, like, kicking his shoes around. I finally picked up the shoe, and I threw it out the door. I threw it down the stairs and out the door. And then about 30 seconds later, I went back and I got it. And then I apologized.
But I had this moment of, like, I couldn't control my anger so much that I took a shoe and I threw it. And in that moment, that's a really extreme emotion. And you are having these moments, too, with your son.
And you can either choose to think like, I am a horrible mom. What good mom would open the door and take their son's shoe and throw it as hard as possible out the door? Who would do that?
Cathy: Every mom.
Releasing tough emotions instead of dwelling in them.
Rebecca: But you don't think that at the moment, you think, of course, that you're the only one that ever gets frustrated with it.
So, of course, that sat with me for a while. I remember crying. I think I dropped him off and I had a moment where I needed to feel those feelings that were coming up.
So before I got into my work day, I had my moments and all of that. But for what we're talking about is like, I could choose to dwell there, and I could think about that and replay it over and over and over again. And I can tell myself how terrible a mom I am, and I shouldn't be angry and I shouldn't have all of this stuff. I could go in. That's all true. I did actually open the door and throw the shoe at the door so I could stay there.
Or I can acknowledge that it happened and I can move over to these other thoughts about myself and what makes me an amazing mom, how patience I often have so much more than I think even other people are.
If I were to compare myself, which I try not to do, but I do see patience as a superpower, just not in this moment. My compassion, my ability to sit in emotion with my kids. I create so much fun for my kids. There are all of these things that I do well. And because I've done the work to name it, it's really easy for my brain when I'm ready to redirect it to say, okay, let's really think about how amazing I am, though.
Cathy: Exactly.
Rebecca: That's one of my examples. Do you have an example similar to mine in those situations?
Cathy: I probably would have thrown the shoe, too. But I think another thing to add on to that that I would do is using them as opportunities to talk to him about emotions, because I think a lot of us don't talk about emotions.
And sometimes we want our kids to suppress them because we want them to go away.
Just like we want our own emotions to go away, right? And I've started saying, like, my son, if that happened to me, I'd be like, hey, buddy, look, I was really frustrated, right? I really wanted to get us out of the door, and I really shouldn't have thrown that shoe.
Sometimes we just get so overwhelmed. And I'd love a chance to redo that. I've been trying to live this, like, redo thing.
Rebecca: I love that.
We are humans with strong emotions.
Cathy: And to say we all make mistakes, right? Next time I won't throw that shoe. And next time, you know what I would have loved to have done in that moment, maybe I'd go in the bathroom and scream for a minute and shut the door. Maybe that'd be better than throwing the shoe.
But I think just like acknowledging to him that is life. We're people, right? We're humans, and we all have those strong emotions and there's different ways that we could handle them. And I shouldn't have thrown the shoe.
Rebecca: We could probably point to that being a part of what is really important to you.
Cathy: Yes.
Rebecca: As a value, as a mom. And probably there's authenticity. I don't have your values in front of me, but, like, authenticity and honesty are really important to you.
And so you learn how to harness some of that in these moments. And then your brain remembers like, see, yes, we're human and we have these moments. And here's also how I handled it, and I'm amazing. I love it.
Okay, let's talk about another one. Let's talk about creating systems for yourself, because I know for a lot of people, it's the constant to do list in your head.
That's one of the things that is hard to calm down your brain as you're thinking about all the things you haven't accomplished whether that's you get home from work and you're thinking about all the things you didn't do at work that day, or your household chore duty list is, like, a mile long, and you need to figure that out. Or sometimes it's just systematizing. It was the artwork.
And I want you to share a little bit about this story. It was like, my kids bring home an immense amount of artwork. What am I supposed to do with these things?
And then they sit everywhere and it clutters the house, but it clutters your brain because you're should I hold onto this? Is there meaning behind this? Am I going to regret not having this? How are they going to feel if I throw this away? Am I a bad mom if I don't really want to keep…these are all the thoughts that every time you see the artwork sitting on the table that you haven't dealt with, they all flood in.
And now you have a host of thoughts that are, like, cluttering up your brain. So tell me about the artwork, because that was such a great moment.
Cathy: It really was. By the way, our system is falling apart a little bit, but we've got a plan to get it back on track.
Rebecca: Your art system is falling apart?
Cathy: My art system is falling apart just a little bit. I know. I got a plan, but honestly, some of the parts of it are still working really well.
So we would take it out of everyone's bags and backpacks, and we would just pile it on the kitchen counter, right? It would be there for, like, a week, maybe two weeks.
And for me, it was a constant reminder early on in our coaching of how I just couldn't handle things right. Like, my list is long, and then I see this pile, and I'm like, that's just the confirmation that you can't handle this. There's just more than you can handle. It was always there.
And I remember asking you, what do I do about this thing? And we talked about all the feelings that I had and the thoughts that I just mentioned to you. And once we got through all of that, you started asking me questions about how I want to feel when I look at that artwork.
I want to feel happy when I see it. I want it to remind me of how creative my kids are. Or, like, maybe it has, like, a sentimental value. Like, maybe it's like a Mother's Day picture of them. Right?
And you said, let's start to categorize some of those things. And I went, oh, that's a really good idea. Because you're right. They, um, don't all hold the same amount of value and weight, right? And we did.
Rebecca: The scribbly lines that come home versus the time that it clearly they spent to create something.
Cathy: Yes. So you were like, Write down the buckets and so I typed them out in my notes, right? And then as we started doing that, I realized, yeah, I need to make a system out of this, right?
And so we got some little clips that I put, like, eight of them up on the wall. I said, I'd really like for some of them to be on display.
You were like, no, back up a minute. When it comes into the house, how are we going to handle it?
And I was like, Well, I'm going to need a pile here for the things I want to keep. I'm going to need a pile for the things I want to hang and then have to get over some of that. Just throw out the things like you said, the squiggly things or the random half drawn things.
And I've learned, I hope my son never listens to this podcast, but when he's asleep at night, that's when I put them all in the recycling bin, right?
Rebecca: Amen, that is where they go.
Cathy: Or sometimes I have my husband. I'm like, you need to throw this away for me, because I wasn't the person who threw them away. And occasionally he found them in there. What's good this? Why is this in here? And I'm like, who put that in there?
Rebecca: Oh, my gosh, totally. The recycling is going out. And I'm like, oh. Man, I should have thrown that one outside where he was never going to see it.
Cathy: Exactly. But yeah. So either, like, it gets thrown out, it either goes on display, or it goes immediately into, like, a sentimental box and I'll write on it the year, the date, maybe the teacher's name. Right. And it feels so good.
And so there is a pile on the kitchen counter that we have a backlog right now. But to have it come in and to know, I don't have to ask myself, what am I going to do with this thing? Oh, it makes me feel really bad because I have no idea. Right. I already know where it goes. Do I like it enough, yes or no? It's super simple, right? Yeah.
Rebecca: Let's talk, though, about even the moment where you kind of realize I need a system for it, because we created several systems together for a variety of things that were feeling overwhelming to you.
A system is going to help you not think about this anymore.
But it's a tool because when our brain constantly wants to remind us of things like this, it's like a moment where our brain is trying to say to us. Hey, you should create a system for this. A system is going to help you not think about this anymore.
I'm curious about just system building generally and kind of what you've learned about that. And how do you know when you're supposed to create a system and kind of go from there?
Cathy: I think that at least for me, things that I encounter over and over, probably in the same week, like, returns. I think we all, uh, my friends and I were always like, I got to go do my returns today.
Rebecca: The Amazon returns.
Cathy: I’d be overwhelmed by those. I wouldn't have a place for them. And then my husband said, I've got a return. And I'm like, well, I don't know what to do with that. We created a box, and you do your stuff online, you put your label on, you put it in my box.
Rebecca: Then somebody's going to take it eventually.
Cathy: Exactly right. And then I make a time in my calendar to go and do those returns. It's things that I kept encountering over and over that were likely overwhelming you.
Systematize your life.
Rebecca: My guess is the emotion that kept coming up was overwhelmed or, like anxiety. Like, I should do something with that. When you hear yourself say that, it's your brain saying, yes, do something systematize it, you can do this. It's like a clue.
It's not a moment that you have to judge yourself and feel bad and terrible that you don't know what to do. It's like, oh, you should do something with this. There's a decision to be made here.
And even if we talk about creating systems as being almost like decisions, because I think it happens in the same way in our brain. I like the idea of when something happens over and over again.
This happens for me sometimes, particularly like in parenting. If I'm struggling with my son to get his shoes on every single day, every single day, I could do the same thing tomorrow that I did the last two weeks that have created the same result of him, like, running around the house and not getting his shoes on.
Or I could choose to try something different. It's amazing how it takes us a while to clue in. It's like, oh, maybe I just need to make a different decision about that.
Cathy: And we talked about that, too. I remember at one point you said, well, you got really into the details. When we have the shoe thing, you're like, Tell me about the shoes.
And I'm like, oh, boy, here we go. I'm like, well, I'm like, there's a bin for my daughter who loves to pick out her own shoes. And you ask me about the shoes, tell me about the shoes in the bin.
I'm like, okay, well, there's, like, four pairs of sneakers and maybe boots, and there's, like, some shoes in there that I don't want her to wear. And you stop me. You're like, Why are there shoes you don't want her to wear in the bin? And I went, that's a really great question.
And so I immediately went downstairs. After I called, I said, wow, there should only be shoes in here that she's allowed to wear. I was like, that's a novel idea. So now there are never shoes in there that I'm not willing to let her leave the house in that are appropriate and it just makes my life so much easier, right?
Rebecca: Yeah. This moment of, like, when it keeps coming up, it's a moment that you need to decide what you're going to do or create a system so that it never comes up again.
Cathy: Exactly. Yes.
You could create a system. You could make a different choice.
Rebecca: Another way of clearing out your brain so that you don't have to think about that thing over and over and over again, or you don't have to experience the same exact emotion or whatever over and over and over again. Like, you can do something about that. You could create a system. You could make a different choice.
Cathy: Exactly.
Rebecca: I love that. Yeah. The getting out of the house list. That was one conversation that we had. It can be challenging if you don't have a system that you're following that's going to get the lunch, and it's going to get the jackets, going to get the shoes.
And then for me, as my daughter is older than your oldest. And now we're getting to the point of how do I equip her to do some of these things so much more on her own? And what are my expectations? And I realize when I'm battling my own expectations, hey, it's a moment that I can systematize this.
Like, we should have a conversation. What do I expect of her? I probably have never told her that and start to realize that so I don't continue to ruminate on what's going on and how everything is going wrong.
Cathy: Exactly.
Rebecca: Let my brain go there. Problem solving tools. Let's talk a little bit about some of your problem solving tools.
There is no right or wrong answer.
Cathy: I think the biggest thing that you helped me uncover was that I already have all the answers, and I already know how to find the answers. And I think the other biggest thing is there is no right or wrong answer. It's just that I get to decide any answer is a good answer.
Rebecca: When would you find yourself getting stuck in indecision or kind of going back and forth all the time?
Cathy: I think one of the best examples I have is probably in some meetings at work where I would start to look ahead at my day and get some meetings, and sometimes a feeling of dread would come over me, and it was more about, like, I don't know what to expect in this meeting.
I don't really know how this person is going to accept my work or be open to my ideas. The same feeling of being an analysis paralysis would come up in those meetings.
So in that moment where I'd be like, oh, my God, I go in this downward spiral of, like, oh, like, so many emotions that I didn't want to feel in those moments.
Rebecca: I remember this all the way and back in our very first call together, a breakthrough call where you would say, I actually would just start denying that, like, I would start moving them. I'd come up with an excuse not to have meetings or have these meetings, and I push them back because I was so ridden with anxiety over it and I didn't know what to do and I didn't know how to approach it and so forth.
Cathy: Easiest thing for me to do is push us off to tomorrow. Yeah, let's go do that. Now the feeling is gone, right? I can move on. And doing that, you're never going to make progress, learn and grow and become a better person and contribute to your teams.
Rebecca: If you're constantly doing that same thing with projects, I assume, like, yes, there'd be a task or something that you didn't know how to do or was kind of new to you or was challenging, and you just avoid pushed off, push the deadline off, tell them it's not ready yet. Exactly.
Cathy: Yup.
Rebecca: And then not make much progress on it. Like, not do anything about it, but just feel better because now you don't have to deal with it today.
You have all the answers within.
Cathy: Exactly. And it's holding me back. I realized, like, now this is holding you back, and I have to figure out how to deal with this.
And I remember you told me you're, like, you actually have all the answers. You know how to find them. You already know how to do this. And you said that I was like, what do you mean, how do I right? There are no right or wrong approaches to this. Like, I get to choose how I want to tackle this or how I want to handle it.
So we started talking about what are the feelings I'm having here as we do with everything? I write them all down.
Well, I'm feeling unprepared or I'm feeling uncertain, or I'm not feeling really confident in my position or my approach. And once I was able to work through all of those feelings and not be like, oh, how do I suppress that feeling? But like, okay, well, how do I deal with the feeling of being unprepared? Okay, well, what would I do that's easy?
Like, and you asked me that. I was like, of course I know how to deal with that. That was what you were getting at. You already know how to deal with that. What would Cathy do when she's feeling unprepared?
Oh, well, I would like, right down. Okay, here's what I want to get out of this meeting or here's my pitch or something. Even this week, I found myself looking at my calendar head, like, okay, I need to prepare for this thing so that I go in, and I just feel really confident about what I want to get out of it. Even acknowledging it. You want to push that out?
No, Cathy, you're not going to push that out. You always have. Like, thank you for that thought, but it's not useful. I say to myself, like, I appreciate that.
Rebecca: I could push it out and feel better now, or I could just do it now and I will also feel better. It's always about a feeling, right? It's always about trying to either avoid or pass a feeling. And there are helpful ways to do that, and then there are lots of helpful ways to do that, ultimately.
Cathy: Exactly. And I always think to myself at the end, and I'm like, thank you for sticking through it with me, because it's always worth it to have those in your back pocket and be like, no, remember that one time? Or you did that? And it turned out really well. Now things got done sooner or they got done more efficiently or whatever it is.
Confidence is about moving forward and trusting without having all the answers.
Rebecca: I like to say to myself, like, okay, if I had the answer, what would I think? What's my hunch about this?
And I often will say that to my clients, but I say to myself, too, like, okay, I know that I'm feeling stuck and I'm feeling overwhelmed, or I'm feeling not prepared, or I feel like, I don't know. But if I did know, or if I thought I knew, at least what's my hunch about that? Why do I think that that's probably the right answer or the right direction?
And then I start to make a supporting argument for it, and it's like, okay. And then by the time you get through all of that, you're like, yeah, there's probably not a better answer than that. That's right. That's learning how to access what is inside of you.
And so often when people talk about confidence, they think that that means being an expert at something. It means that you have the answer. You have the right answer. You know exactly what to do. When confidence is really about being able to move forward on, like, really good hunches and just trusting that it will probably work out. And if it doesn't, that's fine.
That doesn't mean that I made a wrong decision or that I'm bad or I'm a horrible human being or whatever. Like, I'm not a bad worker. I'm just going to make a different decision.
Confidence is like moving forward despite not being an expert in having 100% certainty about something. Every time you do that, you're just continuing to Hone in on that confidence and build that up and say, no, I have the answers. I can find the answers.
And my guess is, over time, as you continue to practice this, you won't have the resistance to it as much. And maybe you will, maybe you won't. But my guess is that you create a habit for it, and you continue to tell your brain, like, I have the answers. I can do this. You won't have resistance to it.
Cathy: Exactly. And you've also said making a plan and knowing that you can change it. But you've also used the term, like, experimenting with it, like, try it out. If it doesn't work, you don't have to do it again. And to tell my brain that, too is like, it's reassuring. It's like you can try it out if you don't like it or it didn't work. Let's do it again. That's cool. Let's do it.
Rebecca: Yeah. This isn't a one and done, you can change your mind. What? You can change your mind. You can make a different decision. We're like one of the only animals on this Earth that has the ability to make choices and decide different choices and reevaluate choices based on outcome for sure. It's what makes us intelligent beings ultimately.
This is so much fun. Ok. So we've talked about containers of time and containers of emotions. And we've talked about knowing really who you are and kind of that safety net of knowing who you are so you don't define yourselves by past failures or emotional outbursts or whatever.
We've talked about creating systems for yourself, and we've talked about believing you have all of the answers within you so you don't procrastinate and you don't push things off and you build up that confidence. These are amazing tools, Cathy. Thank you for sharing these.
I think this is so valuable for people that really want to learn how to calm down their brain and get rid of all the mental clutter and feel happier. That was the whole goal of all of this, right? You were like, it's like, I can't even be happy. I've got so many things going on in my brain, and none of it is like making me feel happy. I love it so much.
I'm curious why knowing what you know now, what would you have said to yourself about going forward and investing in yourself and investing in coaching? Making an investment in yourself, no matter how much money it is.
I mean, for some people, it's like getting their nails done, that's an investment all the way up to thousands of dollars on yourself for your mental health and in coaching. But knowing what you know now, what would you have said to yourself then as you were contemplating going through the coaching process? And then you did it again. And I remember you had a lot of thoughts about should I continue? Tell me some of your thoughts now.
“I needed someone else to hold me accountable.”
Cathy: Knowing what I know now, I think the biggest thing was like, I needed consistency. I needed someone else to hold me accountable. Actually, I knew I needed all those things, but I didn't know how important it would be to go through it.
And the exercises that we did like the workbooks and even like the structure - and I kept meticulous notes from every one of our sessions. Because I wanted it to be durable. But I didn't know as I'm going through all those things, even like I said, the workbooks, I didn't know how transformational they would have been.
“Coaching for me was transformational.”
I think transformational is the best word I just thought maybe I'd come out with a few different ways of thinking about myself. But these tools here are huge. I have pages of notes here on how to use these and moments in time that we specifically talked about where I can go back and I can remember that, how I felt, how I couldn't handle that in the moment. I just didn't know how transformational it would have been.
I mean, I've done a little bit of career coaching in the past, and it was for very specific situations or a project. Right. But this was, like, so holistic of me as a person and what I want out of my life.
Rebecca: So it's almost like the investment and just being happy in the moment was enough. But now that, you know, the transformation that took place, you are forever changed ultimately.
Like, we didn't just get you out of a hole. We built a mountain for you to be on, where you feel confident, where you can problem solve, where you feel more decisive, where you feel calmer, where you feel more present, where you feel happier.
And it's not just today, these things are lingering with you over the course of the year, and you will forever have these tools and this different way of knowing yourself and what's possible for you. I love that it was an investment in ten years from now.
Cathy: And it affects everyone that I interact with and live with as well, too. Which it's exponential in that way as well, too. Like, it helps me be a better mom, uh, a better wife, a better manager, a better coworker, like a better neighbor. I just think of all the people that I've focused on through this as well. In learning more about myself and what I want. I think that their lives have been touched and made better, too.
Rebecca: I remember multiple times you would come to our calls and you'd be like, yeah, I had that conversation or I did something, and my husband stopped in his tracks and was like, you would not have used to respond in that way.
Cathy: I know. That was the spilled milk. Milk, an entire bowl of cereal. Yeah, that's right.
Rebecca: The spilled milk..and you would have like, flipped out and made a big reaction.
Cathy: And I was like, no, that sucks. Let's clean it up. It's not a big deal.
Rebecca: And then your husband paused.
Cathy: Like, who am I too?
Rebecca: I know what is going on. Yeah, you said the same thing. You're like, Whoa. That reaction was exactly what I wanted. Uh, it to be.
Cathy: I know everyone just stops their tracks.
Rebecca: That's just such a beautiful thing to remember when we make any investment in ourselves. And it feels very selfish in some way to do that. The reality is you being a better version of you not only affects everyone else, but you're investing in what will be the rest of your life. And ultimately the question is, is that worth it for anyone to ask themselves?
“Investing in coaching is like the ultimate self care.”
Cathy: I think it's like the ultimate self care. It's great to go get a massage and go get your nails done and get a cut and color.
Rebecca: I was in a sauna last night. So I hear you on that. Yeah, felt good.
Cathy: We will still do those things, but this one was like so much more and like you said, it will last a lifetime.
Rebecca: Love it. Thank you again, Cathy, for being here. This is so great. Uh, yes.
Cathy: Oh, thank you for having me.
Rebecca: I have a feeling we're going to get so much more wisdom out of you, even in the future, so I love it. All right, working mom. See you next week.
