The pivot moment

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The pivot moment is the moment you realize you’re about to say yes to something you don’t want to, or you’re feeling anxious about an upcoming presentation even though you’re prepared. It’s the moment you feel your anger rising at your kids that usually results in yelling., or the moment you feel the urge to log back on to work even though you know the best thing is to rest.

It's the pivotal moment where you have a choice. You can either keep thinking, feeling or doing what you’re doing (which won’t result in what you want) or you can change course. In today’s episode, I’m talking about why learning how to navigate the pivot moment is one of the most powerful things you can do as a working mom and I will share what it takes to create an effective pivot.

Topics in this episode:

  • It’s ok to have urges to compromise on your boundaries when you learn to pivot.

  • Why pivoting is one of the most powerful tools in your toolkit.

  • I’m launching this podcast on You Tube!

  • ½ the battle is becoming aware of the pivot moment

  • 2 parts to an effective pivot: process the default emotions and learn to direct your thoughts and emotions in an intentional way

Show Notes & References:

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Transcript

Intro

When you realize you're thinking, feeling, or doing something that you don't want to be thinking, feeling and doing, you can change course. I call this the pivot moment.

It's the moment when you realize you're about to say yes to something that you really don't want to, or when you're feeling really anxious and nervous about an upcoming presentation, even though you're super prepared. It's the moment when you feel your anger rising at your kids and you know if you keep going, it's going to end in you yelling. It's the moment when you feel the urge to log back on, even when you know the best thing for you to do is to rest. 

It's the moment when you realize that you have a choice. And if you keep thinking and feeling and doing what you're doing, it's not going to result in what you want. 

In today's episode, I'm talking all about the pivot moment and why learning how to navigate it is one of the most powerful things that you can do. It puts you in full control over your habits, your behaviors that you want to change or create. 

We're diving right in right here. 

You ready? Let's get to it.

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

Hello, working moms. I am so excited for this episode today for two reasons. 

One is if you're listening right now, you are likely listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, because those are the primary two ways that people listen to this podcast all around the world. However, this podcast is now found on YouTube and this is the very first episode that will be on YouTube. 

If you are one of those savvy people that love to listen to podcasts in video format, then please do check out my YouTube channel. My handle is @RebeccaOlsonCoaching. Short and sweet. So I'm going to also put a link to that in my show notes if you need help finding that. 

I am so excited about offering this in video format. I'm hoping that it really does bring this podcast to even more working moms out there around the world. So please do go check it out and you could see my new office in my new house where I will be recording each and every one of the weekly episodes.

The reason, second reason really, why I am excited about this podcast is because we are talking about something that has come up, no joke, probably at least a dozen times in the last couple of weeks with several different clients. And it has become such a regular conversation that it just felt like a no brainer to have an episode about this on my podcast. 

That subject is something that I like to call the pivot moment. The pivot moment. It's literally the moment when you find yourself doing, thinking, feeling, saying one thing, when you really want to be doing, thinking, feeling something else, and you have to pivot. 

The idea of a pivot is going from one thing to another thing. It's like a shift, right? And that shift or that pivot is massively important. If you learn how to pivot, I promise you, you can almost do anything you really want.

 

I know that's a really big, grand, sweeping statement, and I 100% am behind it. And so I'm going to explain that to you right here in this podcast, why this moment is so important. 

"Pivot moments" have been coming up with my clients recently.

So let me tell you a few stories about how this has come up with clients recently. So I had a client that got on the call the other day during our regular session, and they have been having some challenging conversations in their marriage. There's just been some tension, fighting, disagreements. 

They still love each other very much. I have no doubt they're going to make it through this moment and work it all out. But she came to this call feeling very weighed down, very burdened by what's been going on recently and some of the recent conversations.

And when I started to ask her about it, she said that she was just trying to stay positive, push through. She was trying to find empathy for her spouse and what was really going on. And remember that he's really under a lot of stress right now, and there's just so much going on. 

I love that about her, that she's really trying to find this perspective and find compassion. But she was still feeling very heavy. Everything was still feeling very weighty. And she started to explain more about what she was feeling, as if she just accepted it, as if this was just the way it was. Like, things were hard. She was frustrated, her spouse was frustrated. And this is just the way it was. It was factual, right? And she just had to remain upset and frustrated about it. 

And so I was listening, and I stopped her at one point, and I said, “Would you like to pivot out of what you're feeling right now?” She just stared at me blankly, and I said, “You have a choice in this moment. You can actually do something about the way you're thinking and feeling. You can pivot out of it. You can pivot out of all of this emotional weightiness that you're experiencing right now and sort of release all of that negative energy, if you want to.” 

And it had never occurred to her. Arguments with her husband were just hard, and they were weighty, and they were full of emotion. Her job was to just power through them and try to find a better perspective to get through it and hope that the next one's better. And I said, “No, you can actually do something proactively about what you're experiencing right now. You can pivot.”

Another client of mine has been really struggling with her daughter. Her daughter has really big emotions. I totally get it. So does my son. And we were discussing this pattern that my client had with getting really angry, sort of exploding at her daughter.

And all of us have experienced this, of course, as parents. All of us have experienced yelling and getting angry at our kids. It's very normal. She had a pattern of it. And she came to this call with a very recent example of what had happened. And I asked her to think about the moment when she realized that she was getting angry and her volcano was rising. 

That's what I like to call it within myself. Feels like my volcano is rising. I'll even say that to my kids sometimes. My volcano is rising right now. They know exactly what that means. And I asked her to think about it because there was a moment that she needed to pivot. There's always a moment when our emotions have not quite fully overtaken us yet, and we're aware that our emotions are rising. And it's in that moment that you have the opportunity to pivot. 

And so I was questioning her about where that moment was, because if she kept going down that path of letting her volcano rise and rise and rise, she was simply going to explode at her daughter and yell and say things that she didn't want to say. That was what usually happened. So she kind of knew the outcome of that. But there's always a moment where you can change course. 

And so this client, in particular, found it very difficult to figure out where that moment was with her daughter. It felt like her anger rises so quickly. I gave her the homework, actually, to sit down and really reflect on that particular incident and the next one, to really find the pivot moment where she could change course and take a different path. And I actually got an email from her a few days later, maybe a week later, I can't remember. She was celebrating that she had found for herself when she was getting upset. She started to realize her voice was rising. She could feel her heart start to race a little bit more. She could feel the tension in her hands. And she realized that was the moment that I had been telling her. It was her pivot moment, and she was actually, in that moment, able to walk away, go through a pivot moment experience, which I'm going to walk you through in a little bit, and actually, change the course or change her response to her daughter.

I have another client that's a chronic people pleaser, a yes person, and it's something that we've been working on in coaching. I'm super confident that by the end of our time, she'll really, really be able to shift out of her people pleasing behavior. But we're sort of in the middle of that right now and trying to figure it out. 

And we were talking about the things that she typically says yes to that end up taking way too much of her time that cause her to work late, overwork, over prioritize work, and just ultimately feel super exhausted. We were having this conversation about the pivot moment, the moment when a request comes to her, when her boss asks her for something, or, one of her direct reports needs something from her, and rather than just say yes immediately, because that's something she would normally do, and that, of course, just leads to over prioritization of work and overworking, and having her sacrifice her time with her family and so forth. We talked about the moment that's required before she says yes, because that's her pivot moment. 

Recognizing the opportunity to pivot is half the battle.

So I want you to think about the pivot moment as a pause. It's a quick moment where you realize that if you keep going down the path that you're on, if you keep thinking and feeling and behaving the way you are, you're going to do something you don't want to do. You're going to exhibit the bad behavior, the old habit, ultimately, the thing that you want to change. 

You're going to yell at your kids, you're going to stay angry or resentful. You're going to feel guilty toward your spouse. You're going to agree to travel an extra day when you really, really don't want to. You're going to take on a project that requires you to stay much later than you want to work tonight. There's always a moment where you have a choice to not go down that path for that bad habit or that bad behavior or mindset or emotional space, whatever it is. There is always an opportunity to pivot. 

I like to say that that's half the battle, just even realizing that there is a moment. Because if you never realize there's a moment where you can change, where you could pivot, then you're never going to do it. 

So it's really important for you, as you go about changing behaviors, creating for yourself the ambitious and balanced life that you want, that you figure out where your pivot moments are. 

You have to remember that you live mostly in default mode. Most of us do almost all the time. 95% of the time, actually, is what scientists tell us. We live on autopilot. We live from this subconscious place. And only about 5% of the time do we live in a conscious place. 

So many people come to me and they say, “Oh, I just wish I was able to say no. I wish I was able to stand up for myself, advocate for myself. I wish that I wasn't getting so angry at my kids. I wish that I wasn't so exhausted all the time. I wish I was able to leave work on time. I wish I was able to stop scrolling on my phone before bed or checking email at night or working.” 

They come to me. They know what they want to change. They know their bad behaviors. They know their bad habits. They know they're over prioritizing work in the ways they don't want to. And they think they just want to wake up tomorrow and operate completely differently. That somehow, magically, if they could, they could wake up tomorrow and say no, or just leave their to-do list a mile long and not work late, or stop picking up their phone, and it's all going to happen tomorrow. That's how we like to think. 

It would be nice if it worked that way. I wish on some level it worked that way. But in reality, changing our behaviors and our mindsets, our emotional response to things, it takes time and it takes repetition. 

And my clients will tell me, “Yes, wouldn't that be nice to just magically be able to do things overnight?” But here's the thing. If you learned the tools to pivot - so when you learn how to notice for yourself when you're getting really angry and your lava level is moving up, or when you notice you're feeling really nervous and anxious before a meeting, or notice that you have an urge to log back on and keep working, or you notice that you've stopped prioritizing your workouts, you've stopped prioritizing your rest time, or you notice that you've stopped doing the thing that you don't really want to stop doing - you have all of the tools to stop yourself. 

You literally know how to pivot out of that moment and into a mindset, into a behavior that you actually want. If that was true for you, if you knew how to identify your pivot moment and how to actually do it, then it wouldn't matter. It wouldn't matter if you had the urge, or if you had the anxiety, or if you had a lack of motivation, or if you just didn't feel like you wanted to, or if you got angry sometimes. 

It wouldn't matter because you would know how to get yourself out of that moment. 

Look, I'm going to be honest with you. You might always, always have an urge to want to stay late at work. Or you might never feel motivated to go on a run or go work out or take your yoga class. You might always have a small little panic attack, a little anxiety when someone asks you to do something that's going to require more time from you than you want to give. 

We can't read into the future. We have no idea if you are truly one day going to be able to wake up and never have an urge to work late, or never have an urge to scroll your phone, or you're just going to feel motivated all the time to work out or to be able to say no without any problem. We have no idea if that's ever going to happen for you. But what I can promise is that you're going to expel a whole lot of energy and a whole lot of time and a whole lot of failure trying to get there instead of the better way. 

And what I do in coaching is I teach you that the urge doesn't matter. What if not feeling motivated, it didn't matter? What if the nervousness or the anxiety or the feelings of potential failure, they didn't matter? Because when you learn how to pivot, it doesn't matter what your default responses to things are, because you know how to follow through anyway.

You know how to motivate yourself and get intentionally out of wherever you are that you don't want to be in in order to get somewhere else. That's control. That's power. Because then it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter if you have the urge to log on, because you won't. Because then it doesn't matter if you feel motivated to get up today and work out or do a little self care or not. You'll do it anyway. Then it doesn't matter if you're 100% prepared for a meeting, or 90% prepared, or 75% prepared. You'll go into that meeting trusting that you'll do it, that you'll nail it. The pivot moment is everything, and it's something I 100% promise you you can do.

The first step is finding your pivot moment.

So the first step is to find the pivot moment, because there's always a moment. If you never know what that moment is, if you never see that you have an opportunity to change the course of whatever's going to happen and change your behavior and change your mindset and change your emotions, if you can never see the moment, then you'll never be able to change it. So you have to be able to see the moment. 

For my client that was having some challenges in her marriage, that pivot moment, she said to me, was actually between conversations one and two. Because it was really in that second one, she said that, she told me that she really exploded, and that she kind of did the things that she didn't want to do. And so it was somewhere between the first and second conversation she had enough perspective to be able to truly pivot. 

And for my client that is struggling with her anger volcano with her daughter, right? That moment was after her daughter ran to her room screaming and crying. She said it was at that moment she still had enough perspective to be able to pivot. 

Or for my client that says yes too much. That pivot moment is before she gives her response. When a request for a meeting of some kind or a project or something comes in, she can't immediately respond. There has to be a pause, so then she can pivot and not go into default mode by just saying yes to it. 

It might take some work for you to find your pivot moments. You're going to have to think about it in retrospect, just like I do with my clients. The question you want to ask yourself is, “At what point do I still have enough rational thought and perspective to be able to make a more proactive, values based decision, or have a more kind of proactive response and intentional response instead of a reactive kind of default response?” So for a while, you're probably going to have to think about this in retrospect and find the moment so that your brain sees that there's a choice in there, that you had a moment where you could feel the emotion rising, you could feel the discomfort, whatever it is, and you could have responded differently. 

Now, I don't want you to get too hung up on this idea of choice, because I know many of you out there probably feel like you don't have a choice, right. That you just simply respond. It just comes out of you. You just say yes, you just get angry, right, whatever it is. And although I know it can feel that way, I want to offer to you that that's not a useful way for you to be thinking about it, because if that's the case, then there's actually no choice. There's just simply no way to make a change, and you will always just be the way you are. 

That's not a useful way to think about it. If you see that there's choice, if you see that you can actually choose one way or another, then you actually can do something about it and change the behaviors and change the responses to things. It's only with the belief that you control the way that you think and the way that you feel and the way that you behave that you have full control over your responses and your ability to pivot from them, should you want to. 

I would say about half the battle is just simply finding this pivot moment and the work you do, the more effort you put into retrospectively seeing where you can pivot, the faster you're going to find that moment, and then the faster you can actually pivot in that moment. 

Oftentimes, I will have my clients, after having some conversations around this, they'll come to a session and be like, “Oh, my gosh, Rebecca, I found it. I saw it.” We've been talking about this and talking about it, and then all of a sudden, it's like one day their brain just goes, “I get it. I see it. Oh, my gosh. I saw the moment where I could actually change course. I could change the way I was responding, and I did.” It's so exciting to be able to have that moment and to see it. 

The second step is to process and redirect.

So that's the first thing that I want you to do. The second thing is to actually pivot. There's a lot of ways to do this. I teach a very specific way to my clients. I've talked about it on the podcast a few different times. I'm going to see if I can go back and find a couple of those episodes and put them in the show notes for you. But, there's two things that are required in a pivot. 

One is handling or processing all of the default thoughts and emotions that are happening in the moment, and then once you've done that, to direct your thoughts and emotions in a much more productive way. Okay, so handling your default thoughts and emotions and then intentionally directing your thoughts and emotions in a very particular way. That's what's required in a pivot moment. 

Handling your default thoughts and emotions could look like so many things. It could look like writing out or journaling all of your swirly thoughts that are going on in the most rawest form possible. So that means don't edit them, just write them down the way you're thinking or feeling them. It could look like screaming them out loud if you're somewhere empty. If you're in an empty room, that's what I mean. Or like into a pillow or something like that. You could go on a walk. You could say them out loud. You could put your hand on your heart and breathe or kind of meditate through those thoughts and emotions and sort of let them go. If you have any practices like that, that's all in handling your default thoughts and emotions. 

The second thing is intentionally directing your thoughts and emotions. And that could look like writing them or journaling them down, or journaling down another perspective of that situation, or talking out another perspective of that situation. It could be using affirmations, it could be writing a letter to yourself from your future self. That could look like saying the “Enough Triad” over and over and over again - I am enough, I'm good enough, I'm doing enough. - and just let that sink into your core. 

What's important to remember about the pivot moment is that it doesn't happen while you're doing something else. It's its own moment. You can't multitask through this moment. It just won't be as effective. A true pivot moment stands alone. It's you and your thoughts and your emotions, and nothing else. 

When you learn the tools to properly pivot, you are going to have so much control over yourself and your life. Because no matter how many things you might have on your to-do list, you will learn how to pivot from the urge to keep working and go home to be with your family. Because no matter how much bickering is happening between your kids, or how mean they're being to you, or how much they're crying or complaining, you can pivot from the rising anger and frustration. 

Because no matter how guilty you might feel for leaving work, to go pick up your kids, to go attend a soccer game, or leaving early while the rest of your team is still working, you will know how to pivot out of that guilt. 

So you can stay present and attentive to your kiddo and still follow through with your commitment to be with them, even when everybody else is working. Because no matter how messy the house is, you'll be able to pivot out of that discomfort and those feelings of failure or inadequacy or just discomfort that comes when you have a messy house in order to really enjoy that time at home. 

Because no matter how anxious you may feel about being completely offline for your vacation, or just even over a weekend for that matter, or a day, you'll be able to pivot out of that anxiety. Turn your email off and your messaging off and actually rest and relax. 

Pivoting is everything. The urge is okay. The anxiety is okay. The anger is okay. All these emotions, all these big feelings and swirly thoughts, they're all okay. They don't matter. If you learn how to manage yourself out of it, if you learn how to pivot and get out of the reactive mode and into something much more proactive, it is what gives you control.

You can move from reactive to proactive and I can help you get there.

Working moms, if you need help pivoting out of your overworking behaviors and tendencies, if you're ready to pivot out of your low confidence or negative self talk or indecision, I got you. I am a life coach for ambitious working moms and I offer a free call. It's called a breakthrough call and it's an opportunity for us to really discuss getting you exactly where you want to be in 2024. To schedule that call, you can go to www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book. I will put that in the show notes. 

As always, don't forget to check out this podcast on YouTube. Send it to a friend. Your recommendations and referrals help this podcast reach thousands of working moms every single week. 

So let's keep spreading the love until next week. 

Let's get to it.

Do you want to take your commitment to yourself a step further? 

Schedule a free breakthrough call today!

Hey, before you go, I want to take a moment and tell you about an opportunity to speak with me directly. If you've been listening to this podcast and still feel like you need help balancing a fulfilling career with motherhood, then I encourage you to schedule a free breakthrough call. 

On this call, we will get crystal clear on exactly what it is you want out of your career and how you want to balance that with motherhood. And then we'll craft next steps for you to start moving toward a more calm and fulfilling working mom life. 

Head over to www.rebeccaolsencoaching.com/book to apply for this free call. ‘Til next week. Working moms, let's get to it.

Rebecca Olson