3 Simple Shifts to Reduce Stress and Overwhelm

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In this week's episode, I’m talking about something every working mom can relate to—ending the day completely wiped out. You give everything at work and have nothing left for your family or yourself. In this episode, I share 3 simple but powerful practices that will help you end your day feeling lighter, calmer, and more present. You’ll learn how to transition intentionally from work to home, release built-up emotions throughout the day, and get ahead of predictable stress triggers so you stop running on empty and finally reclaim your energy and evenings.  

Topics in this episode:

  • The hidden energy drain of daily context switching and how to create a “work-to-home” transition 

  • Why emotional buildup leads to evening exhaustion—and how to release it in minutes 

  • How to spot and solve predictable stress triggers before they take over your day 

  • The truth about burnout and why exhaustion is not “just a season” 

  • How these small daily practices give you back time, energy, and presence

Show Notes & References:

Transcript

Intro

Do you ever end your day completely wiped out? Like you’ve given everything at work and have nothing left for your family or yourself? You walk through the door, and instead of being excited to see your family and your kids, you just feel done.

This kind of exhaustion isn’t just a part of being a working mom — it’s a signal that something needs to shift.

In this episode, I’m breaking down six simple and quick practices that will completely change how you end your day. You’ll learn how to transition intentionally from work to home so your family doesn’t just get the leftovers. You’ll learn how to release heavy emotions that pile up throughout your day so you don’t explode at night. And you’ll learn how to spot and solve predictable moments that trigger overwhelm.

When you put these practices into place, you’ll end your day feeling lighter, more grounded, and way more present for the people who matter most.

Are you ready to stop settling for exhaustion and start reclaiming your energy in your evenings? All right, let’s get to it.

Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms podcast, your go to resource for integrating your career ambitions with life as a mom, I'm distilling down thousands of coaching conversations I've had with working moms just like you, along with my own personal experience as a mom of two and sharing the most effective tools and strategies to help you quickly feel calm, confident, and in control of your ambitious working mom life. You ready? Let's get to it.

Hello, hello working moms. I hope you are doing well.

I have had so much fun recently giving some workshops. I’ve given like four or five over the last month. I’ve done several of them virtually for ERG groups, community groups, women’s groups, parents groups, caretakers groups — talking about sustainable work-life balance in a variety of ways.

And I’ve also gotten to do a few of them in person recently, which is so much fun because I don’t do that very often. But there were a couple of local groups that I got to do that for. This is just something that I love, love doing.

If you are a leader of a community group or an ERG group — some sort of group you think I would be a good fit for in terms of talking about work-life balance — I would love to be connected.

By all means, please go to my website. There’s a speaker page there, and there’s even a button to connect with me further about your event and so forth. My website is RebeccaOlsonCoaching.com/speaker if you want to find out more information about that and the topics that I teach on and all those kinds of things.

Burnout Is Everywhere — And You’re Not Alone

But the reason I’m bringing this up is because in one of these groups I was leading — one of the in-person ones — I was having this conversation with someone, and she was talking to me about how exhausted she feels at the end of her workday. You could just see it in her eyes, you know? That energy that she has about her — like she’s kind of a walking zombie. She just doesn’t have any energy for herself, her family, or her kids.

She’s not sleeping great. She’s gotten into some really bad doom-scrolling types of habits. So she’s not really taking care of herself in the way that she needs to in order to get out of this place of exhaustion.

And if you and I were in a room together right now, with all the listeners, I’d have you raise your hand if you can relate to this woman — because I bet a lot of you can.

There are so many studies being done right now on burnout and work-life balance for parents in particular. And there are a bunch of statistics ranging from 65% to 92% of working parents surveyed who indicate they experience regular symptoms of burnout. That is a lot of us out there.

So I know that this woman is not alone. I know that you are not alone.

“Hold On — It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way”

And one of my jobs as a coach, when I’m having a conversation with a client or a working mom around work-life balance and so forth, and they tell me that they’re exhausted — and it’s not just this kind of like one-time thing — it’s sort of a chronic exhaustion. They’re sort of at this point where they’re telling me, like, they’re exhausted all the time.

And you know, that’s just, that’s just the way it is, right? This is just an exhausting season of life.

And the first time I start to hear this sort of language and energy come out of a working mom, I stop them and I say, “Hold on, it doesn’t have to be this way.”

We Don’t Settle for Exhaustion

Of course, being a working mom is hard. Different seasons are harder than others. Different circumstances require more energy from us, which can cause that overwhelm and exhaustion that so many working moms feel.

And there is something you can do about it. In this Ambitious and Balanced community, we do not settle for exhaustion. This is not just the way things are. It is not just a season or a circumstance.

And so, on this podcast episode today, I want to offer to you three things that you can do that will dramatically change exhaustion at the end of the day — if not completely eradicate it — because that’s the goal.

Exhaustion is not something I want you to settle for. It is not a way of life. And so we’re going to do something about it right here today.

The Hidden Energy Drain of Context Switching

So we’re going to talk about three things, and the first one I want to talk to you about is context switching.

Okay, we all know what that means, right? We kind of go from one task to another task, and there’s this moment where we have to switch in our brain from thinking about one thing to thinking about the other thing. That’s essentially what context switching is.

There’s a lot of energy loss in context switching. Right? If we were going to talk about time management strategies and productivity strategies and things like that, we would talk about batching a lot of your activities together — or similar tasks together — so you don’t spend and waste a lot of energy on context switching.

The Biggest Daily Context Switch: Work to Home

Well, for us as working moms, there’s a big context switch that we go through every single day — and it is that transition from work to home.

You do not magically shut down your work brain or your work thoughts or your work energy and tasks the moment you leave your office, right? Your brain needs time to transition or context switch between work and home.

If you don’t do that, you end up carrying with you all of the emotions and the not enough thoughts and the tasks that you didn’t get done throughout your workday into your home life — causing a huge energy leak, causing a massive amount of exhaustion to happen at the end of the day.

Why a Work-to-Home Transition Matters

And so when I hear working moms say they feel like their families are just getting the leftovers of what they have available throughout the day — and they’re not giving their best to their family, and they’re feeling guilty about how they’re showing up as a mom, and they want to change this — creating a work-to-home transition is the first thing I teach them how to do.

Building a Work-to-Home Transition That Restores You

I had a client that described her weeknight evenings like this. She said she would get off of work, rush home, get there around six o’clock, and dinner would usually be on the table at that time. They’d sit down for a few crazy minutes as a family to share a meal together.

She had two young kids. And then right after that, she’d rush the kids into bath time and rush the kids into bedtime routines — only to log back on and rush through a little bit more work before she would, you know, hit her head on the pillow at the end of the night.

That was her rhythm, day in and day out. Sounds exhausting, right? Just hearing me talk about it, I feel exhausted talking about it.

And so, what we worked on building together was a bit of transition time between work and home. Even if it was just during her commute — intentional time where she would close out her thoughts and emotions from her workday and then open herself up to the experience she wanted to have with her family in the evening.

A Simple but Powerful Practice That Ends Daily Burnout

Now, I teach a very formal work-to-home transition. My clients literally get a workbook on this. I walk them through a process — all of the key steps in doing a really effective work-to-home transition.

It is also one of the two anchor practices that I teach inside my group cohorts, and I hold them accountable to that because it is that important in ending burnout and exhaustion and showing up as the parent that you want to be every single day.

And so, I’m not going to go into the depths of all of those steps here — I certainly have done some podcast episodes on it — but I want you to think about this transition just in a very simplistic way. Okay?

How to Create an Effective Work-to-Home Transition

An effective work-to-home transition is essentially where you practice closing out your thoughts and feelings and tasks from your workday and intentionally decide on the thoughts, feelings, and maybe even tasks that you want for your evening.

Deep breathing. Closing your eyes. Visualizing yourself letting go of emotions throughout the day. Closing out tasks. Simple planning tools to help you get ready for the next day.

There are so many things that you could do intentionally if you put a practice together that is essentially like putting a period at the end of your workday. And it will make all the difference when you do it.

The Payoff: More Energy, Less Guilt, More Control

Because when you do this well, you’ll be able to walk into your home life with more energy. You’ll have a lot fewer “should have done that,” “could have done more,” “should have done more” types of thoughts.

You’ll be more open to playtime, to activities with your kids. You’ll be less likely to feel so tethered to your phone or your email — and certainly less likely to log back on later.

You are essentially taking back control of your energy, your time, your life, your balance when you build a work-to-home transition.

So if you are experiencing a lot of exhaustion as a working mom right now — and it feels sort of chronic, like you’re in this cycle of overwhelm and exhaustion time and time again — this is the place to start.

Start by Building Your Own Work-to-Home Transition

The first thing I would tell you to do is build a very clear work-to-home transition process for yourself.

Of course, if you want some accountability — if you want someone to walk you through a proven process on how to do it — the Ambitious and Balanced group coaching cohort is the perfect place for you.

The next cohort is starting in January, and the early enrollment period is happening here in the middle of October. Early enrollment just means those that want to join in this first phase of enrollment are going to get a couple of bonuses — a couple of one-on-one sessions with me to go along with the group that’s actually going to start in January.

So if that’s of interest to you, I highly recommend you book a free breakthrough call with me so we can talk all about what’s going on in your life and make sure you are the perfect fit for that program.

You can find information on that breakthrough call in the show notes if that’s of interest to you.

The Second Fix: Stop and Check In With Your Emotions

But the second thing — the second fix that I would suggest for you if you’re in this constant state of overwhelm and exhaustion and burnout — is to intentionally stop several times throughout your day to check in with how your body is feeling and the emotions that you are carrying, and then release them.

I may be talking about like three times throughout your workday, anywhere from two to five minutes at most. And the point is to make this quick and effective. I don’t want you to take much longer than that because then it wouldn’t be quick, right? And it might feel overwhelming to even do that.

We Are Emotional Beings

But we are emotional beings, right? We are meant to experience a range of emotions throughout our day. Some of those emotions are hard — like guilt, fear of disappointing someone, confusion, or not feeling enough, or imposter syndrome feelings. And then some emotions are good — they feel motivating, exciting, and energizing to us.

But if you’re constantly experiencing exhaustion or overwhelm, my hunch is that your emotional state is skewed toward those harder feelings — the ones we often label as negative emotions. And unless you do something intentionally with those emotions, you essentially just carry them around like a heavy backpack.

The Cost of Carrying Emotional Weight

You literally pile them on inside. It brings down your shoulders, it brings down your neck, it makes you tired. You move slower, you think less quickly.

Negative emotions like stress, overwhelm, and exhaustion — particularly at chronic levels — increase your health risks. Your chances for stroke and diabetes go up. You can’t lose weight when you’re in a chronic state of overwhelm and stress.

But here’s the good news: those emotions you’re carrying around in your backpack all day? You can intentionally let them go. You can take off the backpack.

If we’re going to use that analogy here — let me give you a little Emotion Processing 101 course.

The Science Behind Emotional Overload

Okay, crash course here — real quick. At a very fundamental level, emotions are simply vibrational experiences that your body is experiencing throughout your day.

And if you’re not processing all of those emotions throughout the day, essentially what you’re doing is stacking up vibrational experience after vibrational experience in your body until there’s nowhere else for those emotions to go — and they sort of explode out of you, right?

And I know we all know what this experience is like. We blow up at our kids or our spouse, and it’s so much more dramatic than it’s really called for in that moment. Or you yell or snap at your kids when you don’t really need to or want to.

It’s because your body is releasing emotions that you’ve pent up and stored to the point of explosion.

The Power of a Two-Minute Emotional Reset

So taking two to five minutes, three times throughout your day to literally stop and release those emotions is going to clear your backpack of all the heaviness and negativity.

You begin to feel lighter. You begin to feel more in control. You have less brain fog. You’ll be able to react more proactively. And you’ll receive more satisfaction, motivation, and energy throughout your workday as well.

The Pivot Protocol: A Simple Emotional Processing Tool

Of course, I teach a very simple process on this. A lot of my clients come in and have no idea how to sort of process their emotions intentionally. So I’ve developed something called the Pivot Protocol. I’ve talked about that multiple times here on the podcast before.

But really, at its core, it’s an emotional processing tool — a way of releasing and letting go of emotions that you’re carrying around in a very intentional way.

How to Release Emotions in Just Two Minutes

Releasing your emotions can be as simple as sitting quietly, closing your eyes, putting your hand over your heart, and taking just two minutes to intentionally breathe. Imagine emptying your backpack, imagine your body feeling lighter, imagine the vibrational experiences in your body releasing.

I literally do this on a regular basis throughout my days. I recognize when my heart feels heavy, when it’s racing, when I’m feeling a little jittery, or when my gut feels uncomfortable. I sit and focus my mind on those body experiences — because that’s where our emotions are held — and then I imagine myself releasing them.

A lot of my clients, when they start working with me, are not in tune with this kind of emotional experience in their body. I certainly was not in tune before I became a coach. So I have to teach them to build awareness of these sensations so that their emotional processing becomes intentional, proactive, and quick.

We can process our emotions anywhere from 30 seconds to two minutes if we’re really intentional and proactive about it.

Using Drive Time to Process Emotions

A great example is one of my clients in a past cohort of Ambitious and Balanced. She came to the program not very aware of all of these emotions that she was carrying throughout the day.

So she made a really intentional choice to use a lot of her driving time as emotional processing time, because that was the best time she had to do this. She stopped listening to podcasts, she stopped calling her friends and family during that time, and she used it as an intentional time to stop and reset the way she was feeling.

She would think about how she was feeling, label those emotions, and then literally imagine herself letting them go.

The Results: More Patience, Presence, and Peace

What she started to say throughout this program, as she learned how to do this on a regular basis, was: “Oh my gosh, I’m more patient with my kids. I’m more present with them. I feel more available to them.”

At the end of the day, she was actually liking how she was showing up — as a mom and as a human being in the world.

And that’s just because she really learned how to take back control of her emotions and her experiences within her body.

So, tip number two is this: if you’re ending your day with a lot of exhaustion, take three intentional emotion reset moments throughout your day to name the emotions you’re experiencing and release them — so you don’t carry them around with you anymore.

Identify and Plan for Your Daily Stress Triggers

The last tip I want to offer to you to end chronic exhaustion is to identify common triggers. Because my hunch is that there are common moments throughout the day that are always stressful to you — almost like you could predict how stressful, overwhelming, and exhausting those moments will feel and be, right?

And if you can identify these moments throughout your day, then you can make a plan to mitigate them — to lessen them.

For example, the morning rush to school and work was a very common stressful moment for me, as I know it is for many of you out there. Every morning, my kids would not get ready fast enough. They would drag their feet, have meltdowns, I’d be pushing them to go faster, telling them they’re going to be late. There would be all of these emotions flying around — I’d get irritated, I might even yell. And it was literally happening on a daily basis.

Once I stopped and identified this moment — and decided I could do something about it — I started to actually problem-solve for how to remain calm and how to get the kids out the door with a whole lot less rushing.

Now, of course, it’s not perfect, but I experience immensely less stress and overwhelm during this morning rush out the door than I used to. And I’m not carrying that sense of rushing into my workday either — which has made all the difference.

Identify Your Predictable Stress Points

Now, maybe it’s not the morning rush that triggers you. Maybe it’s a meeting with a particular person that’s rather triggering to you. Or maybe it’s a client meeting or client calls that stress you out. Or maybe it’s when you sit down at your desk and stare at a long, unprioritized to-do list that triggers stress and overwhelm for you.

I want you to take a moment — even right now — and ask yourself: When do I regularly feel predictable stress and overwhelm throughout my day?

And once you’ve identified that, now you get to ask yourself: What can I do about it? If there was one thing that I could do to make this predictable moment easier, what would that be?

At least then you have the option of making an action plan and changing this chronic stressful moment before it even happens.

Three Daily Practices to End Exhaustion

Okay, so three tips to help you end the overwhelm that happens at the end of the day:

  1. Be intentional with the time you transition between work and home.

  2. Build three emotion-processing moments throughout your day to let go of whatever it is you’re holding onto, so it doesn’t stack up and you don’t take that home with you.

  3. Get ahead of those predictable stressful moments so they just don’t happen as often — and you’re less triggered by that overwhelm and stress throughout the day.

Essentially, you just build up less stress and overwhelm because you’ve intentionally mitigated those predictable stressful moments.

Take Back Control of Your Time and Energy

Now, I know you could be hearing these three tips and it could feel like a lot to add to your already very busy schedule. But these three practices actually give you back time, energy, and mental space.

They are not triage practices — they are preventative practices so that you don’t get into a state of overwhelm. You feel better throughout the day, make better decisions throughout the day, and feel better about yourself throughout the day. You’re ending this overwhelmed cycle.

These are all tools and strategies that I can teach you how to do — and hold you accountable to making them happen in your own life. We can do that together through one-on-one coaching, or you can join the next Ambitious and Balanced cohort, which starts in January, with early enrollment happening right now in the middle of October.

If you are looking for a guide and a proven system where you are guaranteed to get out of this cycle of exhaustion and overwhelm and truly take back control of your time and energy, I would love to connect with you on a free breakthrough call.

Book Your Free Breakthrough Call

On this call, we’ll break down what’s really going on in your life, what your work-life balance challenges are, and create a plan together to get you out of this cycle of burnout, exhaustion, and feeling out of balance.

If you’d like to book that free breakthrough call, you can go to RebeccaOlsonCoaching.com/book — you can also find that link in the show notes.

Working moms — end exhaustion. You do not have to feel exhausted and overwhelmed at the end of your workdays. You can take back control of your time, your energy, and your presence with these three strategies.

All right, working moms — till next week, let’s get to it.

Make 2026 the Year You Finally Feel Balanced

If you want 2026 to be the year where you end all of the stress and exhaustion and finally take back control of your time and your energy, then this is your moment.

The next Ambitious and Balanced cohort is kicking off in January 2026 and runs through April. And this isn’t just about taking back control of your time — it’s about building habits that protect your energy and create more space for what truly matters: your health, your family, and your joy.

Imagine closing your laptop at 5 p.m. and actually being done, or walking into your evenings without guilt or exhaustion, or having the mental space to think clearly, laugh more, and feel more like yourself. That’s what this program is designed to create.

And if you join before October 31st during early enrollment, you’ll get three private 30-minute coaching sessions with me to use before the end of the year — so you can finish 2025 feeling grounded and step into 2026 with clarity and momentum.

You can go to my website to learn more and schedule a free call with me at RebeccaOlsonCoaching.com/ambitiousandbalanced to save your spot before October 31st.

Let’s make 2026 the year that you finally feel balanced — not because you’re doing less, but because you’re finally doing what matters most.

Rebecca Olson