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Today I’m sharing a transformative belief: I’m exactly where I should be. Imagine believing that in the midst of failure, you’re exactly where you should be or at the end of a work-day when you checked nothing off your list, you’re exactly where you should be. Even when you are wishing you were further along in your career, you’re still exactly where you should be. This thought is available to you all of the time and you can find evidence for how this thought is true about every single situation in your life. In today’s episode I am walking you through 3 scenarios in life where thinking this thought can powerfully shift how you feel and respond.
Topics in this episode:
Why this has become one of the most transformative beliefs I adopted in my life
How you can believe this thought, even when you checked nothing off your to-do list
Why this thought can pull you out of mom-guilt
Exactly how you can believe this thought, even when it doesn’t feel fully true
How to start using this thought in moments where you feel behind or like you’ve failed
Why this thought is particularly useful to high-achievers
Show Notes & References:
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Transcript
Intro
Today we are jumping into one of the most transformative beliefs that I have cultivated in my life and in my mindset and that is ‘ I am exactly where I should be’. Powerful right? Imagine believing that in the midst of failure, you’re exactly where you should be, in the midst of a long to-do list where you got nothing done today, you’re exactly where you should be. When you were wishing you were further along in your career, you’re still exactly where you should be. This thought is available to you all of the time, you can find evidence for how this thought is true about every single situation in your life. In today’s episode, I am walking you through 3 scenarios in life where thinking this thought can powerfully shift how you feel and respond. You ready? Let’s get to it.
Welcome to the ambitious and balanced working mom 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!
Belief Week
Hey working moms, if you haven't heard, next week I am hosting a week-long event called Belief Week. This is all about increasing your confidence and feeling like a really amazing working mom. I am giving you all of the tools, support and teachings to really help you bolster the thoughts and beliefs that you have about yourself, so you can start to believe in yourself in a much deeper and more powerful way. And this week on the podcast, I want to focus on 1 belief that I am going to be talking about in belief week. And I chose this belief because it has been one that has been the most impactful in my life. All week during belief week I am going to be giving you ‘Belief Bump’ exercises as I’m calling them. These are little questions and things to help spark your brain and deepen your understanding of who you are and to feel amazing about who you are. Everyday I am going to be giving you a powerful belief that is really transformative to myself and my clients.
I’m exactly where I should be.
This week we are focusing on just one of those powerful transformative beliefs, and that belief is I’m exactly where I should be. I’m gonna pause on that for a moment and I want that to just sink in for you this belief I am exactly where I should be. You might not believe that right now but it’s not because it’s not true, it’s just because you’re choosing to think about where you’re at in life and at this very moment or in your job in a different way, but this belief is always available to you, you can always believe that you are exactly where you should be. So today I wanna give you some very common examples that I see this belief really be transformative and talk about why it’s transformative in each of those areas.
I want to start by talking about our everyday life as a working mom.
For most of us there is this constant push and pull between work and home and when we are at work, our mom brain doesn't turn off, and when we are at home our work brain doesn't turn off. So we are constantly thinking about one or the other and there is this feeling of ‘in-betweenness’ that happens for all of us. And though I went through a very long season of this after my daughter was born 7 years ago, when I went back to work after maternity, I really, really wanted to be at home with my daughter and I was nervous that I was making the wrong decision to be a full time working parent. I thought it wasn't the best decision for her, it wasn't the best decision for me. My brian was very worried that I was making a wrong choice and so I was constantly thinking about it while at work, thus I wasn't really feeling great about my job, and I wasn't feeling great about the work I was putting out because I felt constantly worried that I was sacrificing my daughter for my work.
Worrying about making the right decision.
And I see this kind of mindset happen with a lot of women where they are worried about making the wrong choice, or they’re currently making a wrong choice - whether that is to work at all - like it was for me. Big picture, I was just really worried that I shouldn't be working and that I was kinda screwing up my child by working. But then, this idea of wrongness can come up in everyday decisions like whether you should work late tonight, or work on a weekend. Or maybe you are choosing to participate in an activity that is just for you, or maybe you are prioritizing working out instead of spending that time with your family, and there is guilt, and your brain is wondering if you are making the right decision or not, and you feel anxious about that…maybe you’re doing it wrong, maybe you’re going to regret the decision you’re making. So this thought, I am exactly where I am supposed to be is a really powerful thought to cultivate in these moments because likely it doesn't really feel true in the moment, your brain is saying, ‘but I don’t know if I am making the right choice…I don’t know if this is what I should be doing…I don’t know if I’m going to regret this..’. And that’s where your brain dominates. Maybe I shouldn’t be taking this time away for myself to work out, maybe I should really be working part-time so I could spend more time with my kid, maybe I really should be home instead of on this work trip. That is what your brain is dominantly thinking and so it’s in these moments you can introduce this very powerful belief that I’m exactly where I should be to help really ground you and release some of the anxiety and the guilt that you’re holding onto. What you’re doing at this moment when you say that to yourself is reinforcing to your brain the reason why you are making the decisions you are making. It always feels more powerful to direct your brain to support the choice you have already made - like the choice to work, the choice to prioritize working out, the choice to go on a work trip, or the choice to work late, it’s always better and more powerful to support that choice then it is to second guess it and wonder if it is the right choice.
So, believing I am exactly where I should be, is you supporting the decision you have already made and reminding your brain why you made it in the first place.
When I was back working my corporate job after my daughter was born, for me it was thinking this thought: I’m exactly where I should be, and then reminding my brain of how that was true. What that looked like was why I decided to go back to work full-time in the first place. Why working at the company I was at was still the right choice for me at that moment. I would think things like, I’m an achiever and I am ambitious. I knew that working was going to continue to be something very important to me and I wanted to demonstrate to my daughter that she could have big dreams and have a big career. And although I know I was looking for a different career path at that time, my company was the right place to be while I was in the middle of that search. They were supportive and I had been there for over five years. I was well paid and it supported my family. I had picked such an amazing daycare for my daughter to go to and they became such an intricate part of raising her and supporting me as a parent. See how I could rattle off a whole lot of thoughts that support the idea that I’m exactly where I should be? That’s what it sounds like when you begin to introduce a belief like this when your brain has a lot of resistance to it.
Let’s take the example of working out. I had a client that worked with me one-on-one that felt very guilty for working out. Even though her husband was extremely supportive and always told her she should take as much time as she needed to work out and to do what she needed to do to feel healthy both physically and mentally, she just had the hardest time. So we worked at cultivating this thought when she was working out and whenever those feelings of guilt would surface, and she would begin to think to herself exactly where I should be. Being healthy now is the best thing I could ever give my family. I am adding years to my life by working out right now even though I am missing out on an hour of their life right now. I feel so much more patient and calm after I work out, they truly are getting a better version of me, a better mom and a better wife because I am choosing to work out. This is exactly where I’m supposed to be.
In these moments that thought just really confirms your decisions, so it makes you feel powerful, calm, settled, and sufficient. All the things we want to feel as ambitious working moms.
Ok, so those are some of the everyday moments and decisions that we make where this thought is extremely powerful and can really shift the way you’re thinking, but let’s take another scenario.
Success is often measured by how much you’re able to achieve.
Most ambitious women I meet also call themselves achievers. They run on to-do-lists, they like to get a lot done, they are entrusted with a lot in their job, they have constant to-do's running in their head, and in a lot of ways success is often measured by how much they’re able to achieve. This is a very common mindset and a very common motivator for many ambitious women. A thought that these women have to battle constantly is this idea that I’m behind, that I should be further ahead, that I should’ve gotten more done, I should’ve achieved more. And I see this pop up in a few ways, usually at the end of a workday, when you’re trying to get out the door to get home to your family and you’re looking at your to-do list and thinking. ‘I did not get as much done as I wanted to today.’ and you have this thought I’m behind I should’ve gotten more done, and then you feel guilty, maybe even not good enough, and you either leave to pick up the kids or get home to your family like you planned, but you just feel terrible about yourself and what you didn’t accomplish that day or you end up staying to accomplish more so you feel better.
Thinking the thought, I’m exactly where I should be in this moment, what you’re doing is reinforcing the decisions you made that day, the meetings you took that day, recounting the things that you did accomplish that day, the emails that you sent, how many interactions that you had, the progress you made on projects, the small things you checked off your list - when you’re thinking I’m exactly where I should be, you’re reinforcing to your brain the things achieved instead of the things you didn’t. Sometimes I have my clients go through an exercise at the end of their workday where they write out the things that they accomplished, because their brain no matter how much they get done always tells them that they’re behind and that they didn’t accomplish enough, and so we start retraining the brain by just looking at the things that they did do.
I had a one-on-one client who was at an executive level in her company and she had one of those jobs that was just a constant revolving door of people coming and needing things from her, she had a lot of direct reports and a big team, and one of the things we worked on in coaching is reminding her brain that her job was to help solve her direct reports problems or equip them to do that work, and that was infinitely more important than checking things off of her list. So part of her thinking I’m exactly where I should be, was reminding her brain that she was paid to strategize and help her direct reports more than anything else, of course, she still needed to plan time to get some of her other work done, but just generally speaking if she had a day where she didn’t get a lot of her to-do-list taken care of because they were fires to put out, that was what she got paid for and it was exactly what she should be doing.
Feeling behind in your career.
Now for some women, the thought that I’m behind shows up in a bigger picture. Like I am behind in my career, I should be further ahead, I should be at a higher level, I should be making more money, kind of feeling like where you’re at in life is behind. This one shows up for me a lot as an entrepreneur because I set my own goals and my own financial goals and I am my own business, when I’m not making the money that I wanna make, or making the progress that I want to make in my business my brain likes to default all the time to how I’m behind, particularly because I choose to participate in groups with other entrepreneurs and other coaches and so I see their successes and my brain likes to think ‘oh they’re successful, why am not? I must be behind’. But again it’s this overachieving belief.
Success can happen in an instant.
I love the thought of being exactly where I should be in these moments because it brings so much perspective. It requires you to zoom out and say here’s how I got myself here, here’s the path that I’m on and why I’m at the level that I’m at, or why I have the success that I have. It also reminds your brain that success can happen in an instant. If you want to be further along in your career, it’s probably time to ask for a promotion or the shift companies if that’s the right move. There’s some ownership that can come with that perspective of why you’re exactly where you should be.
And sometimes I look at this belief, ‘I’m exactly where I should be’, with my clients and we examine not just the external evidence for why you’re exactly where you should be, like my family has enough money to live, I am constantly praised for my work, we live exactly where we wanna live, and my kids are exactly where I want them to be in school - But we also look at the internal. How do you know your heart is exactly where you want it to be? How are you the exact person that you need to be at this moment? Maybe your focus right now is on being extra patient with challenging kids and it’s not in building your skill sets in your job, that’s exactly where you need to be in order to be the parent you wanna be, so we look at the soft skills that are being developed, how you’re caring less about how other people think of you, how you’re learning how to say no, how you’re learning to be more patient, how you are learning to not be so ruled by your to-do list, how you’re learning how to have more self-control with technology. These internal lessons, or heart lessons as I like to call them, there’s evidence in there for why you’re supposed to be exactly where you’re at right now and why you’re not behind.
Redirect your brain into the positive.
The last example I want to give of this is how this thought can be used in failure. This might be the hardest one for people because we don’t like to fail - in fact, our brains do everything possible to avoid failure, and when we fail our brains often like to use it as evidence that we in fact did something wrong that we were in fact making a wrong choice or behind in some way or not good enough, right? So this is one of the most powerful moments you can use this belief, to redirect your brain into the positive.
I have a client in my group coaching program, the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms Collective, where I teach five steps to work-life balance. She is in the middle of a job search, and her last few jobs were a bit rocky, not quite the right fit. Her brain likes to go back into those stories of how she failed in those jobs and how they were not the right fit, and as she looks for new work she gets all anxious and scared that maybe she’s going to find another job that won’t be the right fit or maybe she won’t be good at that either and it tends to kind of spiral her downward in this whole process. Every time we coach together I always redirect her brain back to how are you exactly where you’re supposed to be? And she’ll tell me things like, I wasn’t happy in that job, I didn’t want to be there anyway, I was glad to go. Or she’ll tell me about how much time she gets to spend with her kiddo right now and how much she loves that and that makes her feel like she’s exactly where she is supposed to be. Or she tells me about how she really wants to learn from her past experiences about why she chose the job she chose and what really is the right fit for her and what her strengths are, and she’s taking the time and coaching to sort through all of that so that she makes more powerful decisions in the future, and so this is exactly where she needs to be sorting through all of this. She’ll tell me about how she’s in a good financial place, and she’s not desperate to find the next job and that’s how she is exactly where she is supposed to be. I watch her struggle to come up with some of these answers at times, every time she pushes her brain to think about why this is exactly where she should be instead of why is she behind and why she shouldn’t be here in the first place, she reinforces to her brain that she’s in control, she makes smart decisions, that she’s in the middle of figuring this out, and her whole demeanor tends to relax and feel comforted.
Depersonalize failure.
I’ll talk to clients about how a presentation didn’t go so well, or a conversation with their boss, or they didn’t get a sale, or they didn’t handle a moment with their kids as well as they had hoped, and will talk about how in the midst of the failure what they learned, what they gained from the experience, sometimes even around why things aren’t their fault, so we start to depersonalize some of the failure, and with that we’re able to reinforce in their brain this is exactly where they should be. Because maybe they needed to learn that lesson in order to be even more successful in the future. Or maybe they needed to learn that that tactic with their kid didn't help and they needed to try something else.
The process of going after big things in our life, not settling, having a really successful and fulfilling career, and a joy filled experience as a mother - it requires failure. It requires you to try new things, and put yourself out there, and advocate for yourself, and to feel uncomfortable as you have uncomfortable conversations. It’s not always going to work out, you’re going to fail, but it is in the midst of failure that you grow more comfortable with discomfort, you learn important lessons, you gain new skill sets, you become more resilient, you lean into your strengths and you learn how to evaluate, you start asking for help. And I know 100% that in order to achieve at the level you want to achieve that’s exactly the lessons you need to learn, those are exactly the emotions you need to learn how to cultivate and feel.
So even in the midst of failure, that is always exactly where you should be, if you choose to see it that way.
Now I wanna remind you that the goal as you introduce this belief in these moments is not to make yourself feel better - well it sort of is, and it sort of is not. When you’re thinking I’m doing it wrong or something is wrong, or I’m behind or I should be further along, I should’ve gotten more done, I shouldn’t have failed, I’m not good enough…all these thoughts tend to make us feel guilty and inadequate and maybe even there’s some shame in that and those feelings aren’t very useful to us. There are very harsh feelings that make us feel bad about ourselves and our life, and kind of tear us down, and tear our beliefs down, and tear our confidence down, and that is what this thought; I’m exactly where I should be is helping to counter that.
Now it’s still hard to leave your baby at daycare every day, it’s still uncomfortable to fail, it still feels bad to be let go from a job. And it’s OK to feel sad, or disappointed, or even frustrated, those emotions are likely still going to be there. We’re not trying to make life rosy and positive all the time, that’s not what this thought is going to do for you.
It’s about getting rid of the guilt and shame and the inadequacy so that you can move forward easier and faster. It’s so that you have a more positive view of yourself and your decisions instead of a negative one. Remember the goal is to build up a belief for the decisions you make, regardless of if they work out so that you feel powerful and confident and in control.
Conclusion
I am exactly where I should be. Wherever you’re out right now listening to this podcast, whether you’re at home in the kitchen cooking, or your commuting, or you’re working out, or you’re sitting there very attentively with a notebook, whatever you’re doing right now I encourage you to stop and just take a couple of minutes to think about why you’re exactly where you should be right now in this moment. However your brain is going to answer that question, it’s right.
Sending a lot of love to you all, I hope you have a great week and let’s get to it.
