Thoughts about your future (part 4)

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There are 4 things you need to believe about yourself and your future if you want to meet your goals as an ambitious working mom. Your goals, the things you want in life, are not going to just happen by chance…it is the belief in them happening and how they will happen that makes achieving them inevitable. Today is part 4 of a 4-part series on the thoughts that you have about yourself and in this episode I am focusing on the thoughts that you have about your future and how important those thoughts are to you achieving all of the goals and dreams that you have for your life.

Topics in this episode:

  • Why you want to control your mind

  • Believing your goals are possible

  • Why you are worthy of your goals

  • What it means to hold your goals with open hands

Show Notes & References:

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Transcript

Intro

There are four things you need to believe about yourself and your future if you want to meet your goals as an ambitious working mom.

Your goals, that is, the things that you want in life are not going to just happen by chance. It is the belief in them happening and how they will happen that makes achieving them inevitable. 

And that's what I want for you, for your goals, to be inevitable. 

Today is part four of a four part series on the thoughts that you have about yourself. 

And in this episode, we're focusing on the thoughts that you have about your future and how important those thoughts are to you, achieving all of the goals and dreams that you have for your life. I break it down, thought by thought. You ready? Let's get to it.

Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms Podcast, the place for women who want to balance their ambitious career goals with their life as a mom. If you're looking to feel more confident, decisive, and productive at both work and home, then this is the place for you. I'm your host, Rebecca Olson. Let's get to it.

Working moms, school is starting, at least here in California! And I have to be honest, I'm not ready. 

It's been a really busy summer, possibly too busy. But I also know that the first day of school and really the first several weeks of school for my kids tend to be very challenging, and I am not looking forward to that piece of it. 

Knowing our triggers.

One of the things I talk to my clients a lot about is really learning the circumstances or the situations that happen in life that tend to trigger you into emotion or negative spirals or essentially into some response that you don't really want. 

And when you become really familiar with those triggers, then you can learn to start to anticipate them and come up with a plan on how to handle them and maybe even mitigate them altogether. 

Become compassionate with yourself.

I dive really deep into this with my clients, and they become very intimate with their triggers. And we come up with protocols and plans, and they learn how to be more compassionate with themselves and really create effective ways. 

To kind of interact with themselves and the circumstances and the emotions of triggering moments so that these kinds of things don't feel so deep and so hard and so negative and so long. 

And I could tell you that one of my triggers personally, one situation or one circumstance in life that tends to bring up a bunch of emotion. That's what I mean by the trigger. And it just is a time that's really hard for me is the first day of school, and if not really, it's the first few weeks of school. And that is what is coming up. 

Tomorrow the day that my kids go back to school, and I already know I am going to cry my eyes out. I am already just tearing up as I am thinking about it. 

And as I'm telling you, this season is often just one that feels very heavy to me. And my heart feels very heavy. And my brain likes to question if I'm doing things right, and it tells me I'm not prepared. 

I know this. I know this. I know this because it has happened every year since my kids started going to school. So I know this is a regular trigger for me. 

Giving myself space to be emotional.

And so I've done some things to really have some compassion and maybe even mitigate some of those really hard emotions that come with this season. Things like, I canceled all of my morning calls tomorrow the first day of school. Just to give myself space to be emotional if I happen to be, which I know I will be.

I have also given myself some space, like, I've asked my husband to go into work a little bit late so we can go grab coffee, and so he could be there for me emotionally. We could talk and maybe just debrief about sending our kids off to school. 

I've started to think about the next couple of weeks and just anticipating giving myself more space to cry, probably a little bit more than usual. 

I will journal a little bit more or be more mindful of that. I will just take care of my emotional and mental self. I will be okay with being in my yoga pants all day if that's where I want to be. 

Don’t label our emotions as being ‘bad’.

I am going to help my emotional state by creating space for me to have this emotion and to expect this emotion and to not label it as being bad or wrong and to not have it kind of come as a surprise. I'm just allowing myself the space. 

Understand your triggers.

I think learning how to see and understand your triggers and know why they're happening and learn how to put in place proper plans for yourself and for your emotional self is one of the most important things you can do. 

Because when you're caught off guard by your emotions and your circumstances that are triggering to you, you don't tend to handle it well. 

You're more snappy, you yell more. You have more negative self talk. You spiral. You disengage, you overwork. You indulge in activities that might not be super helpful to you. 

But when you have compassion and foresight to really see who you are and the things that tend to weigh on you, you can get ahead of it. And you can feel really in control, even in the midst of a circumstance that might feel very emotional or very triggering to you. 

If that resonates with you at all, if you think really understanding the very root circumstantial emotional triggers that you have and learn how to mitigate those and learn how to treat yourself with kindness through them, if that resonates with you, I would love to speak with you about the work that we do in coaching and how I could help you both spiral less and feel more in control of getting yourself out of spirals once you're in them. 

I know this feels like a little bit of a tangent, but I trust I am not the only one that tends to be very triggered at the start of the school year. And I hope that you hearing me talk about how I'm handling what's a really common time for moms, working moms particularly, to feel very emotional. I hope that's helpful to you. 

Or if you really want extra support, not just through a school transition, but if you really want to learn how to have less fluctuating emotions that feel really uncontrollable, I want to make sure you know that coaching is an option for you that can really help. 

Okay, so let's segue into what we're going to talk about today, because that word control is a really, really important one. 

Controlling our emotions.

Controlling your emotions or controlling the triggers that happen in your mind, that's ultimately what we've been talking about in this four part series. 

Today is the last of the four part series that we've been doing on the thoughts that you have about yourself. And I have reiterated this on each episode, and I want to do it again for you because it's so central to what it takes to create a life that feels both ambitious and balanced. 

Having a controlled mind is the key to creating the life that you want to have and being the person that you want to be. 

Your choices, your decisions, the things that you choose to do, or the things that you choose not to do, or the things you engage in, or the things you don't engage in, or the boundaries you choose to hold or not hold, they all come from your mind. 

We make over 30,000 decisions a day.

It is your brain that makes those decisions. And you make 30,000 decisions a day simply on your own behalf. And then likely you probably make tens of thousands of decisions on behalf of each of your children as well. So in any given day, you're making upwards of 50,000 decisions. 

And when your mind is controlled, meaning that it's not running amok, it doesn't have a bunch of negativity in it, it's not swirling with all the things that you need to do and all the things that you haven't done. It's not spinning and not enoughness, having not done enough, not being enough - when it's intentionally in control, when you're choosing to think things on purpose, that is when the ambitious and balanced life that you want will unfold for you. 

And for the last three weeks, we've been talking about your mindset or your thoughts and intentionally thinking in three very core areas of life. And today we're going to add the fourth. 

We've talked about controlling your mind and thinking very intentionally when it comes to your marriage or just your relationship life. 

We've talked about controlling your thoughts and being very intentional with the way you think about the value that you give your company and the work that you do. 

And then last week we talked about being very intentional and controlling your thoughts as it relates to being a mom. 

The thoughts you have about your future.

And the fourth area of life we're going to talk about today is being intentional with the thoughts that you have about your future. 

There are four very specific things that you need to be believing about your future in order for you to feel like a really confident and balanced working mom. 

Let me start with the story. I'm working with a client right now who would like to potentially change jobs - potentially she doesn't like no for sure. We've been doing a lot of work talking about what she really wants at a very core level and if her current employer can give that to her. 

But one of the things that has really held her back from having this conversation up till now, even though she's felt super undervalued and underpaid for several years now, is that she doesn't believe that there is another job for her out there that would pay her what she feels she deserves and what it is she wants and will meet some of the other requirements that she has of flexibility and remote work. 

She doesn't believe it exists. And if it doesn't exist, if essentially what she has in her current job is the best she's ever going to get, it's no wonder that she feels stuck and unhappy and confused on what to do. 

You must believe it’s possible.

This is the first belief that you must have about your future - you must believe that what you want, whether that's in a job or in creating balance in your life or in a salary or in a relationship, you must believe that it exists out there. 

I like to bring the analogy back to weight loss because it feels like something we can all really understand. 

Tell me this. How likely is it that you will exercise and eat more healthy and change whatever habits you need to change in order to lose 20 pounds? If you don't believe on some fundamental level that you're able to do it, really think about that. 

If you did not believe that you could lose 20 pounds, the likelihood that you will do what it is necessary in order to make it happen is nearly impossible. You just won't do it. You won't do all the things that you know you need to do in order to lose 20 pounds. You won't change all the habits that you need to change if you didn't believe that you could. 

It is essential to believe. Otherwise it's simply a pipe dream. 

The same is true when it comes to your future. In order to get the job that you want at the pay that you want, in the lifestyle that you want, with the rhythms that you want with the hours that you want to work, you first have to believe that it's possible that what you want exists out there. 

Balance IS possible.

Now, when it comes to creating a life that feels balanced, that belief is essentially the idea, that balance is possible. 

Perhaps other people have done it. It's possible for you to be a lawyer and not work 80 hours a week and still make partner and still make good money. 

It's possible for you to be an executive at a high level in your career and for you to not be completely tethered to your phone all of the time or always available to everyone in your company. 

It's possible for you to get a new job and not work 60 hours in those first several months in an effort to prove yourself. 

It's possible what you want exists, whatever it is, whatever that vision of being an ambitious and balanced working mom is. 

The first thing you have to believe is that it's possible. 

The second thing you need to be believing about your future is not just that what it is exists and is possible. It's that it exists and it's possible for you. 

  • You can land the job. 

  • You are deserving of the promotion. 

  • You have done enough and are worthy of getting paid more. 

So it's not just that it exists for other people and that you know it's possible in the world to have the life that you want. It's very specific to your ability to have that life and your ability to go after it. 

Let me ask you this. If you believed right now that whatever it is you want next in life, whatever it is that you want to be different in your ambitious life, if you truly believed that it was possible for you that you deserved it, that you were worthy of it - If you believed that today, what would be different about how you go about making that change happen? 

If you believed that it was possible for you to get promoted, to get that raise, to find that new job today, you don't need more experience, you don't need more continuing education. You don't need to up level your skill set. You don't need to prove yourself in any way. Your experience, your skill set, your uniqueness was enough to get you what you want.

 If you believed that, what would you do differently today? 

  • How would you approach your job search differently? 

  • How would you go into a conversation with your boss about your salary differently? 

  • How would you approach your husband or your partner about what it is you really want? 

You hear me talk about my process here on the podcast. When I work with my clients, one of the very first things we do right out of the gate is we dig into three things. 

Finding your compass.

I have them name their core values, their identity, and their purpose. I call that your compass. And the reason I do this first is because I want to jumpstart the conversation. I want a flow of positive thoughts about yourself to just flood you early on in our coaching together. 

I want you to create an arsenal of thoughts and beliefs about yourself where you see how unique and special you truly are and have actual language to describe it. 

If you heard the interview I did with one of my clients, Anna, just a few weeks ago on the podcast, she talked about how doing this work, naming her values, her identity, and her purpose actually helped her land the job that she got. 

Because she had a very unique and specific language to describe what made her good and what made her valuable and what made her special at what she did, which stood her apart from other candidates. 

And it wasn't just because of her skill set. It was because of who she was. She understood her value in such a different way because of this work that we did together. And she was able to sell herself in job interviews with so much more confidence and ease because of that work. 

So belief number one, what you want exists in your future. 

Belief number two, it's possible for you to attain whatever it is you want right now. You don't need to prove yourself to get it. You are valuable and deserving of it right now. 

Belief number three is that you can figure out how to have that ambitious and balanced life, whatever that life is that you want, that you can figure out how to meet those goals. They're possible. You're deserving of having them, and you can figure out how to achieve them. 

You can figure it all out.

Those are the first three beliefs. Everything is figureoutable. That's such a powerful belief to have, isn't it? 

Maybe you don't exactly know how to achieve your goals yet, but when you believe that you can figure it out, you're constantly problem solving and, evaluating for how to make it happen. 

As an entrepreneur, this is one of the most challenging things for me, particularly very early on in my business. I would set business goals. $100,000 in my business, $200,000 in my business, whatever it was, and then I would fail at it. 

And I would perpetuate this belief in my head that I wasn't ever going to figure it out. I have watched my peers figure it out. I've watched them fail and fail and then figure it out. But somehow, every time I would fail, I would just perpetuate more belief that I would never figure it out. 

Believing you're not going to figure it out, or that you can't figure it out is almost like you're believing that you're incapable of it. 

It's not a very useful belief to have when you're going after a goal or you're looking to accomplish something different, something that you've never done before, believing you're incapable that you can't figure it out is like a complete block or a total shutdown to any types of ideas or creativity or problem solving and how to make it happen. 

Visualizing our goals.

One of the exercises I have started to practice for myself and have started using a lot more with my clients because I have just found it to be so useful for me has been visualizing my goals or their goals complete. 

So, for example, I was walking my client through this process. She had a really big transition coming up at work and she was being promoted at the highest level and an announcement was going out to the rest of the staff and she was getting some of her first opportunities to kind of create and shape vision for the company. 

And she was having a really hard time figuring out how to have some of these conversations with other senior leaders and how to roll out some of the new initiatives and vision that she had for the company. 

And so I had her envision her accomplishing that goal or that task.

So I had her visualize what it would look like on the other side of these big meetings, of these big rollouts of vision on the other side of this promotion, like six months from now, after all these things were said and done. 

Seeing your goals as complete.

I took her to this place of really seeing them complete, these goals complete, and her feeling really proud and confident in the way that she handled it and having her feel really good, even stronger than she had felt before. 

And I let her go to this place where it all had been done and these things that she was worrying about were already complete and they went really well. And then I asked her to tell me how she did it. 

I would take her mind in our coaching session to this place of it already being done. And then I would start asking her future self some questions. 

Hey, future self that's already accomplished this goal, can you tell me some of the really important insights that you had along the way that made you successful at this? 

Okay, future self that's already accomplished this goal and done it well? Can you tell me the things that you looked out for that would have been like pitfalls, but you navigated them really well and smartly? 

“One of the most powerful things I have ever experienced..”

I literally start interviewing their future self. And I started doing this with myself as well. And it's one of the most powerful things I have ever experienced in coaching to take your mind to a place where the goal is already achieved, to feel all the good feelings that come with that goal being achieved. And then in that energy and in that headspace, you start problem solving for how you did it. 

I recently hit a really big milestone in my business. I hit the goal of generating $200,000 in my business over the past year over a twelve month period in my business. 

And I have been celebrating this and sharing this and evaluating very intentionally how I was able to do this. 

And one of the thoughts that crossed my mind recently was if I had just believed that this moment was possible three years ago, four years ago, even five years ago, I wonder what would have been different? 

When I first started my business, I had no idea how I was going to be successful at it. I wasn't an entrepreneur or a business person. I didn't know. 

And with every failure, every time someone said no to working with me, every time I would send out an email and there'd be crickets, all of these little micro failures, my brain would take me to this place. It would act almost like it was a sign, I'm never going to figure this out, that I was incapable of it. 

And I lived in this place of not believing that I was going to figure it out for a really long time and my brain was fixated on it. 

And so now, today, I'm literally on the other side of that goal. I've had this goal of $200,000 in a twelve month period for a while. And now I'm on the other side of this goal of creating multiple six figures in a year. 

And it feels so obvious to me right now that I was going to figure it out. I feel so confident in what I did and how I did it in order to make this goal happen. 

And I wonder what would have happened if I had lived in this energy, in this belief just a few years ago, if I had unblocked myself and started believing much more intentionally that I was going to figure it out. And it was inevitable. 

How about for you? If you believed that the ambitious and balanced working mom life that you want was inevitable, the career is inevitable, the money, the flexibility, whatever it is you want is inevitable. The amount of hours you want to work, being home with your kiddo when they get off the bus after school, that was inevitable. 

If you could figure out how to make that happen, if your goal was inevitable, if it was completely figureoutable, what would you do today to make it happen? 

That's goal number three. Believing that it is figureoutable that you can figure out how to make the life that you want happen and the goals that you have happen. 

Now, the last belief is a really important one. Maybe the most important out of all of them. Because too often I see women hold tightly to the things that they want, to the goals that they have. That the money that they want to make, to the time that they want to spend with their kids, almost with this desperation. 

Like it has to happen otherwise they're going to be unhappy for the rest of their life. Otherwise they will live in regret or they will live with this deep sense of disappointment and guilt. 

They hold on to these goals and their desire so tightly that it almost feels obsessive. And look, as your coach, even if it's just for this podcast, I want you to have everything that you want in your life. 

As your coach, I want to help you meet all of your goals. I want to help you get into that career that you want to get into. I want to help you get promoted. I want to help you be more efficient and productive with your time so you could work less but be just as successful as you are today. 

I want to help you learn how to be home at 05:00 every single day and actually shut down your brain and be present with your family and take all of the vacations that you want to have and use up all of your PTO - I want it for you. 

I also want you to be okay. I want you to be happy and centered and confident, even if they don't happen. I want you to hold your goals more loosely in your hands so that you're more nimble, you're more flexible as life happens. 

I don't want you meeting your goals in life to be what unlocks feelings of success and joy and enoughness. 

I want you to be happy and filled with joy and feel confident and valued and successful, no matter if you hit your goals or not. 

The fourth belief is this: I will be okay, no matter what. 

And it's not that you're going to be okay in the sense that you're going to survive, of course. I mean, not exactly, of course, but 99.9% of you listening out there, I'm sure, will be able to survive if you don't meet your goals. This isn't actually a life threatening survival situation. That's not what's on the line, and that's not what I mean by you're going to be okay.

You’re going to be okay with yourself.

I mean, you're going to be okay with yourself. You're going to be okay even if you fail, where you know that you are enough, that you are good enough, that you are doing enough always.

You don't have to meet your goals to prove that to yourself, or to anyone for that matter. You don't have to meet your goals in order to be successful and feel confident. You can feel and believe those things right now. That's what it means to be okay. 

This is one of the most important things you could ever believe about yourself, that you achieving a goal or not achieving a goal doesn't change who you are. 

It might change your resume, might change your qualifications, might change your skill set, but it doesn't change you. 

You and your achievements or goals, your successes or the amount of things that you do or accomplish today or in your life. It does not define you. 

You are okay, you are more than okay. 

  • You are valuable. 

  • You are successful. 

  • You are enough. 

Even if you don't meet your goals, that is true freedom, that's ultimate control. When you no longer depend on what you do and what you accomplish, that is when your goals become inevitable. 

In coaching, that's exactly what we do. We make your goals in life, your ambitious and balanced working goals happen for you because you feel so confident, so grounded, so valuable, just because you're you, that that unlocks your ability to achieve whatever it is you want. 

It unlocks your ability to problem solve for how to have the things that you want that are challenging for you right now. It unlocks your ability to be creative in how you achieve your goals. It unlocks how you talk about yourself, how you advocate for yourself, what you look for, how you sell yourself. 

This is what I want for you, this type of freedom. 

If you're interested in learning more about what we do in coaching and what the process looks like, I would love to connect with you over a free coaching call. You just go to www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book to fill out a little form and then find a time on my schedule to connect. 

Working Moms, the thoughts that you have about yourself and your life need to be intentional. They need to be controlled and they can be. This is what will unlock an ambitious and balanced life. 

When you learn how to control all of the swirls that happen in your head all of the negativity that happens in your head, all of the not enoughness in your head - when you learn how to let those go and more intentionally fill your mind with possibility and positivity and enoughness and good things that is when your goals will happen for you. 

I can help. I would love to connect with you. Reach out. And until then, let's get to it.

Rebecca Olson