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In order to balance life as an ambitious person, you must learn to feel “enough” no matter how much you do or what anyone else thinks. Enoughness is the key that helps an ambitious person slow down and feel satisfied in who they are and what they have accomplished so they don’t burn out. In today’s episode I interview Misty Dykema, a past client and friend, who shares some of the foundational mindset shifts and practices that have helped her create a foundation of enoughness and belief in herself.
Topics in this episode:
What is “enoughness” and why is it important to an ambitious person?
The importance of giving space to work through your mindsets and feelings
Creating an unshakeable foundation of being (and feeling) enough
How enoughness propels you into more ambition (with less drama)
Several key everyday practices to believe in yourself a deeper level
Show Notes:
Learn to balance your ambition with feeling enough by hiring me as your coach! Click here to learn more about the coaching process and to schedule a free call here: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book
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Transcript
Intro
To be an ambitious person means that you are somebody that is always striving towards something.
You're very goal oriented. You're always chasing a checkbox and always feeling you have more to offer. Someone that feels enough is someone that feels very satisfied with who they are and what they've accomplished without needing anything more.
In a lot of ways, ambition and enoughness can feel very opposite to each other. And yet I believe in order to truly balance life as an ambitious person, you must learn how to feel enough at an unshakable level.
So today on the podcast, I have brought in a client of mine who is also now a good friend and colleague to talk about what it looks to be an ambitious person while also, at the same time, feeling enough.
You're probably going to want to listen to this one a couple of times to catch all of the nuggets of wisdom that we have on this topic.
Misty shares some of the mindset shifts that have taken place that have helped her build a foundation of enoughness.
I share about the enough triad and the three core beliefs that I teach my clients to unlock. Balance. It's so good. I can't wait for you to hear it. All right, working moms, let's get to it.
Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms Podcast, the place for women who want to balance their ambitious career goals with their life as a mom. If you're looking to feel more confident, decisive, and productive at both work and home, then this is the place for you. I'm your host, Rebecca Olson. Let's get to it.
Rebecca: All right, working moms. I am very excited to be introducing a friend of mine and a client of mine as well, Misty Daikama, onto the show. I'm going to have her say hello.
Misty: Hello.
Rebecca: I'm going to have her introduce herself in just a moment, but I want to give you a little context of why Misty is here. First off, I can't believe I haven't had you on the podcast yet because we have been working together since May of 2019.
Misty: That seems impossible.
Rebecca: I actually went back and looked it up. We talked almost to the day, like May 4 or something like that. And right now it's May 2. And so that's just crazy to me that we have known each other for four years and we've been working together and we've been friends now. It's so cool.
So I can't believe, one, that you haven't been on this podcast, but two, I'm kind of glad because I think this conversation that we're going to have today is a really important one.
And it actually came from another podcast listener that emailed me, and I have this topic idea, but I just need somebody to talk about how do you balance ambition with enoughness?
And those are two things that we talk a lot about on this podcast, as she wrote me this email and what she wanted to get out of it. The very first person that popped into my mind was you. And I said, I think I just need to talk to Misty about this, because we have had so many conversations over the last four years about balancing ambition and enoughness and even understanding what both of those things mean in this current context and so forth. And so I just think you just have so many rich ideas.
So I'm glad that you are here. Why don't you take a moment and introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you and we'll keep going.
About Misty
Misty: Absolutely. Well, first of all, thank you for having me. I think the world of you. And congratulations on this amazing podcast. You do so much good for so many.
So yeah, my name is Misty Dykema. I have owned a marketing and advertising firm for the past several years. I've been in the industry for 19 years. I now own my own agency out of Peoria, Illinois, called Symantle.
But in addition to that, I also have a side business I call the Misty Effect, where I teach leaders to look inside themselves and own their story and their superpowers and put that out into the world.
So a lot of the work that I have done with you, Rebecca, has been trying to balance all of that while also being a mom of two little girls who are ten and five and yeah, just exploring all those issues of continuing to goals and dreams and aspirations as career women, but also feeling enough within ourselves.
Rebecca: Yeah. And issues, challenges. Let's see, how do we want to talk about these things? Yes, obviously, you are an ambitious person, and actually, I find it really interesting. I remember one day I said that to you, that you are ambitious. Or I think, I'm almost positive. I'm, like, 99% sure that was the word I used. And I remember you were like, I've never thought about myself that way. Do you remember that conversation?
Misty: I actually do. And it was really kind of weird and eye opening, because if I were to go take the strengths finder test, achiever would be, like, one of my top things, right. Or, you know, I'm big into the enneagram, so I've got, like, a very high three in me.
“I never considered myself ambitious…”
But I never really have considered myself completely ambitious because I'm fiercely competitive with myself, not other people. It's always been about growing outwardly, not upwardly, for me.
But when you put that back, I was like, yeah, of course I'm goal oriented. Right. Like, every day, all day long. I'm just, like, setting the next milestone, so for sure.
Rebecca: Yeah. I love that. I'm curious, though, as I posed this topic to you, I sent you a message, and I'm like, here's the topic I want to talk about. You want to talk about this with me on the podcast?
I said, I want to talk about the intersection of ambition and enoughness. I'm curious what your initial thoughts were as you, percolated on that idea now for a while, and as you reflected on your own journey, probably in that moment, as you thought about it. And what were some of your initial thoughts as you thought about the intersection of these two words?
Misty: It's so funny, because my first thought was, of course, Rebecca names the one thing that I should be building my entire brand on. Right? Like, you just have this way of doing that. I'm, like, yeah, I should write a book on that. I have a lot to say about that topic. But I don't know beyond that.
“Trying to own my ambition”
I think that my whole journey in working with you these past four years has been trying to own my ambition in a way that I no longer have to feel shame about. Because I'll be honest, I've heard a lot through the years of people saying, why do you work so hard, Misty? That's not what life is about. Right. And it always felt very sort of icky inside me, because that made me feel good to be ambitious, and I didn't want to give up that part of me that makes me great.
And I know a lot of other women who feel the same about their work, and yet, certainly there's an acknowledgment that I could find more peace and joy inside myself. And that, getting comfortable in those spaces and making that part of my day to day thought process has been important work. A lot of people don't take the time to do that work.
Rebecca: Yeah. What has some of that work kind of looked for you over the last several years?
Misty: Well, I'll be really honest, and, you know, I'm nothing but direct, Rebecca.
Rebecca: It's one of the things I love about you.
“Understanding what I wanted personally and professionally…”
Misty: I'm going through a divorce right now, and it's by far the hardest thing that I have ever done in my life. I'm about nine months into the process, and so prior to getting to this crossroads moment, enoughness looked like I was really trying to understand what I wanted personally and professionally for my work. I was still very much coming at things through the lens of my work. I own a business, but I knew that I had more to give into the world. I could feel this light inside me, and I wanted to pour that into other people.
“How do I live a life that's not so focused on building and doing more…”
And so you and I started talking about writing my book or building Misty 2.0, or doing more coaching and consulting, which I love. But enoughness today looks more really at life and trying to figure out how do I live a life that's not so focused on building and doing more and being more to all the people around me.
I don't think of myself as a people pleaser, but at the end of the day, I care a whole heck of a lot if I'm sort of meeting expectations of other people and myself.
And so now I'm really just focusing on what do I want? What's my greatest desire? Not 10,15 years from now, but every single day, and it's changing how I think about enoughness.
Rebecca: Yeah. What conclusion have you come to today as we're talking about that? Because I'm sure it changes a little bit, but probably not the big picture probably doesn't change, but maybe the way you describe it changes. But I'm curious.
What does enoughness look like?
Misty: Yeah. And this is why you're such a great coach, because I don't think many of us pause to ask ourselves these reflective questions, like, what does enoughness look like? In my day to day, I can tell you that the people in my world, the people that are closest to me, have said things to me like, misty, you're showing up differently now, and you can't really step outside yourself and see that. Right.
But I know that I'm enough, maybe for the first time in my whole life. And I know that I am not going to let anyone else tell me that I'm not. And so what that has led to is a whole heck of a lot of confidence, a whole heck of a lot of dot connecting and ability to pour into other people. I can keep more balls in the air. I can pour into my kids, my business.
Rebecca: And that's impressive because you've got a lot of balls. You've had a lot of balls in the air for a long time.
Misty: And I'm still hard on myself, everybody is. I think constantly, am I doing enough? And what I love about our coaching calls is at the end of them, you often say to me, as a reminder, you're doing it right. And I think sometimes we forget that.
“Reminding myself that I am doing amazing.”
So it's been reminding myself that I am amazingly so, doing so much right. And being kind to myself. That's a big part of my platform. Right. It's actually self compassion, not self esteem that sets leaders on a path to self love. Just acknowledging your greatness can completely change your day to day.
Rebecca: Yeah. I want to park on the subject for a little bit and talk about just the concept of enoughness. For me, I've gone on my own journey over the years of understanding what it means to be enough, and I talk about it in a Triad form.
I am enough, I'm doing enough, and I'm good enough.
I talk about the beliefs that I am enough, I'm doing enough, and I'm good enough. And those are three really core beliefs that I think are at the heart of what a balanced person experiences, is those almost, like, unquestionably, they're unshakably believing those things, regardless of whatever else is going on in life, that those things don't change.
And for me, the reason why I think those beliefs are so core to enoughness is that they bring about this feeling of satisfaction and sufficiency that I also think is really required when we talk about enoughness.
I mean, even if we break down that word, right? Enough would mean, like, there doesn't need to be any more, right? Like, the cup has enough water in it, or whatever it may be. It's reached its capacity on some level. So you're satisfied with it. You feel it's good. It's enough. You've kind of labeled it as being enough. There doesn't need to be any more that we are kind of striving for and so forth.
So when you reflect that back to yourself, believing that essentially, I am enough. I am sufficient, I don't need anything else to be inside of me, change inside of me. I don't need to achieve anything more, do anything more, take on anything more. I don't need anything more. Like, it's already here. I've already arrived. And then after that, belief has to be followed with that belief that it's ultimately enough. Right.
There's kind of a two step process, and in coaching together, we do a lot of both. And way early on in coaching, you and me and coaching for sure, with all of my clients, we do all of this work to name you and get to the core of that. And then, secondly, then we start talking about, why is that good? Why is that amazing? What would it look like to be satisfied with that and really deep and believe that that was who you are and were meant to be and didn't need to change.
Misty: Right.
Rebecca: What are your thoughts?
Misty: Well, I resonate with all of that. And I think there's been two parts of my story. To your point, when you helped me uncover my values as a human and my unique gift to the world, which you and I know we call the flywheel, right. Misty's Push. Push. Push. Momentum, kind of I could see myself in that new light.
It started to unpack for me all the things I was guilting and shaming myself about, because I could see my intention behind it. And once I could see my intention, I knew that it was coming from a good place. And so that was, like, step one on my journey.
But because of this divorce where you're reassessing everything, right, your entire foundation is shifting under your feet, I have recognized that I not only was harboring a ton of shame and guilt that I had to overcome, but I had a lot of fears inside me, and I wasn't naming those.
And so I've been doing a lot of work with my counselor and with you to talk about what it means to be okay and know that I'm okay and that I'm safe and that I might want to have these connections in my life that I am seeking, but I don't need them.
“I've been able to look at myself and see how capable I am”
I've been able to look at myself and see how capable I am at things that I didn't even know was inside my body. And so that, again, has been just another proof point for me that I can do this. I am enough.
Rebecca: The want versus need is a really interesting thing to relate to this, right? Because the enoughness is when the needs are all met. You are taken care of, and there isn't anything more that you need.
Now, that doesn't mean that you might not want to achieve more, you might not want to meet certain goals or whatever it might be. You still likely have a drive towards something in addition, but you aren't hanging as a person on attaining it. And so really separating the want and the need sounds like maybe that's happened on a subconscious level. But it's an important part of this.
Misty: It is. And I think that when you're alone and you're in that space where you're talking to yourself or having those conversations with yourself and recognizing that you don't sort of need anything, but the strength that's inside of you has actually helped me build greater connections.
Obviously, you know, I have a spiritual life, so connections with God, connections with those around me, showing up more vulnerably and asking for help is another big part of what fulfillment has looked for me without acting like I have to control the universe or keep it all together, maintain that strength.
Signs somebody is feeling in control and balanced.
Rebecca: Yeah. What you're naming for us are the results of you having done the work. Those weren't the things that created your enoughness, if you will. They are the things that flowed out of your enoughness. Your connections and your ability to let things go and your ability to pivot and your whatever, all of those things are the results of feeling enoughness, which is the sign of somebody that is feeling in control and balanced and calm on some level. We could see that those things are kind of flowing out of you now in a bit of a different way.
If you were to speak to a little bit of some of the things that have been really pivotal in maybe today, since you're kind of in the middle of another shift of this today. But just generally speaking, I suppose in how you have found that groundedness inside of you, what are some of the tools or the strategies or the exercises or the things that you've done or do continually to get there?
Misty: Well, in terms of daily habits, for me, just working out is really, really critical to my mental health. For me, the idea of working out every day allows me to clear my head space and it gives me time to almost have conversations with myself about my day. And that's where a lot of clearing your brain creates space for new ideas.
Coaching has been one of those tools for me. It's amazing to have somebody reflect back to you the things that you say sometimes which are crazy and say, do you know you're saying this and you're thinking this way, why are you letting your brain do that? And then being able to coach your brain back to a place of rational thought and thinking?
Coaching tools Misty has taken away with her.
You've taught me tools arguing the other side. And I use that every day. So if I get really conflicted about something and I sort of feel these emotions in my body, like why don't people understand me or see me or get my idea? Being able to sort of put myself in the other person's shoes or look down at it from a 30,000 foot view. These are all tools that over time have become a bit of a habit for me. And I've really learned how to manage my mind to feel better in the moment.
Rebecca: And I want to really emphasize that you are talking about mind management tools as being the thing that brings about that sense of grounding and bringing you back to the truth of who you are.
Because life happens and people have opinions and people push back or there's resistance, or your kids act up, or all these things happen and your brain always is going to offer to you a story about that right, I didn't do enough. I should have done it this way. That was wrong. I need to get back on track - with all these stories we tend to believe the stories that our brain tells us. We don't see them as stories.
And so, there is a lot of the work that we did in coaching, that I do with all my clients, that just helps to separate just a bit and say, do you see that? That's just a story. Can we come up with another perspective of that?
That's where arguing the other side comes in. Let's come up with five different ways we can think about that and just decide which one we want to believe today on some level, because the mind is where we essentially experience our life. We filter everything through our mind and ultimately come to the place of realizing that you get to control on some level what sits in your mind and what doesn't sit in your mind, and what you decide to marinate in and what you decide to not marinate in. There's some actual choice involved in that as you learn the tools to go through that process.
Misty: And I think that there's so much you can do yourself. I know that you and I are both writers. We love to pour our brains on a piece of paper, and there's something cathartic about that. But there's something different that happens when you're having that two way conversation and asking somebody else to reflect back. So I've appreciated that.
Rebecca: Yeah, for sure. Coaching obviously provides that. But even yesterday, I had a really horrible day with my daughter in the morning, right before she went to school. messy tears after she left, I felt awful. And so I sat down to write. I did do a little bit of writing, but after that, I actually wrote a post in a parenting group that I'm a part of, a very small little parenting group. And I wrote this post about it.
And I realized in just having to tell the story, get the words out, and kind of formulate some form of a thought about it that was really powerful, I could have done that with a friend. I could have called a friend. I could have done it in a message. But just the idea that you have to get the words out of your head and formulate some sense of what is going on in there and then ultimately question it, are these things really true? Is this what's really going on? Are these factual? But it starts with getting it out.
There's lots of people out there you're not alone that would say working out is a big piece of that. That is a clear way of clearing. Like, you can't really do anything else but move your body and think about what's going on in your head. As long as you don't have any other inputs going on, which is also okay to do, of course. But that's a really important part.
The importance of visualization.
Misty: Totally. And I think of another discipline that you taught me is visualization. I'm not, like, an expert at it yet, but so often as I'm articulating a way that I think or feel, you'll say to me, misty, I'm picturing you in this setting. Put yourself in it. Right. Something as simple as my body language being turned toward my work instead of my children when I'm super stressed out.
I remember one time you placed me on a swing in a garden, right. And putting yourself into the shoes of the little girl that's inside you and being kind to that little girl has been a strategy to help me get my enoughness back.
You've also helped me see, Rebecca, that the world is not made of these arbitrary black and white rules that I've created in my brain, as many achievers do. That if I go somehow outside of this boundary line that I created for myself, that somehow I'm wrong or bad or not enough, and you've been able to help me see that the world is my oyster. There's this big super highway, and I can go any direction I want, and I can have two way dialogues with my God to be able to say, Where do you see me now? Right. And I think that just all of those changing how your brain has been super wired for so long and just unpacking, that has been so freeing.
Rebecca: Yeah, I love that. So why do you think women struggle, with kind of the intersection of ambition and enoughness?
Misty: I was thinking about this before the call. I can only speak from my own experience, but I see it a lot in those around me. I think the first sort of 1020 years of our work life, we're striving to be seen, to be heard, to be more, and we want to add value. And I think women do that in really unique ways because we listen and we connect dots, but it takes a lot of energy out of us.
And over time, what I've seen for people who are my age in their 40s is that you're really, really tired, you're exhausted. You have put so much in at work as a mom. You've tried to meet all these goals that Disney created for us, that we're supposed to get married and have babies and be in a rocking chair with our person.
Going on a journey to find yourself again.
And somewhere along the way, you lose yourself, and you have to go on a journey to refind yourself. And you also fall into this boredom of life, which is so monotonous sometimes, right? I think as a mom, you look for those special moments of peace and joy, and you find them.
You have those moments where you look across the room at your kids and you just can't even imagine anything better, but you know that there's something more inside you, and you have to go seek it. I think there's some people who want that.
I found in my career that I always thought everybody was super growth minded and just wanted to be better all the time. And I think the data doesn't actually show that many people are okay just being okay, and there's nothing wrong with that either. But for ambitious people, they're typically not okay with just okay. They want more. And so defining what more looks also should not be shamed.
Rebecca: 100%. Do you think that it's different for men?
Misty: I've talked to a lot of men about this topic, and I would say that probably, and I don't have the data right, but let's say 10% of men also are super growth minded. And so I found there's, like, the people who want to have these conversations and pour into themselves and other people, then there's the people that want to have them, but are also scared to have them because it's vulnerable. And then there's just the people who just don't need them. Right? They're like, cool. I just want peace with my life. Like, stop challenging all of my thinking.
I just happen to be one of those people that's so far on the extreme of wanting this level of depth and intimacy and connection with other humans that it shows up as very challenging sometimes in my work and my leadership, very challenging to myself. But the fact that I've come into an awareness of it and I can manage it now makes me that much stronger.
Rebecca: I think that motherhood in particular is an interesting moment for ambitious people because, man, my sense memory can go straight back to particularly my first and the beginnings of the newborn phase with my first, and loving every moment of being with this tiny human and the connection being unreal and the love being unreal and just itching to be somewhere else and just wanting something different and wanting to feel I am moving towards something.
And the everyday monotony of motherhood, particularly in the beginning, but it lasts a really long time. I mean, my kids are five and eight. They're rhythms are still really important in our family and keeping things going. And for an ambitious person, that can feel very monotonous and it can feel like you're holding yourself back.
And I've talked to many women that feel held back in motherhood on some level and they'll use that terminology because having kids kind of ultimately is a slower kind of way of life. For most kids and families to thrive, there has to be a little bit of a slowdown. I'm curious if you experienced that in your own life.
“I was not the mom that wanted to take twelve weeks off.”
Misty: I have, and I'll be honest about that. I was not the mom that wanted to take twelve weeks off. I wanted to be back at work in six. I just could not do it. I needed the interaction. I love my children and I hope that I can grow them into amazing humans.
But being a mom for me has also, gosh, allowed me to see how every little human has a light inside of them. And it's not our job to mold them, right? It's to unfold their little light. And that's been fun for me as a leader. So I guess I'm ambitious even in that way. You know, I've had challenges with both of my children.
Rebecca: I mean, come on, we all have.
“The journey to find my own enoughness.”
Misty: But yeah, the journey that I am on to find my own enoughness - I get the benefit now of having gone through that experience and being able to bake those ideas into my kids at such a younger age than I ever understood them. And that's really empowering.
Rebecca: Yeah, I love that. Actually, this just reminded me. I looked down and I have this little sticky note right here in front of me that was written by my eight year old not that long ago, maybe a month ago. And it says, I am loved through this and it has a heart and through is actually spelled T-R-O-W. But I'm pretty sure that that's what she meant. I am loved through this.
And I don't know why she wrote this and why she stuck it on my computer, but I remember the first day I looked at it and I was like, huh. There's something that I say kind of is trickling down in there because this isn't the first time she will write a little note for me of some sort.
I don't know if it's for me or for her, but it is so beautiful to see these moments. I mean, maybe I've said something. Obviously I tell her I love her all of the time, but for her to be able to by just nature of being with me all of the time, and me being who I am, and openly sharing or talking about what life is for me, and encouraging amazing thoughts about my kids and things that, these things rub off. These things rub off on our kids.
Misty: Absolutely. And that's all we all want to know, right, is that we're loved. And I think it's great that you've baked that into her.
I have another friend, and I talk about this when I do my Missy Effect talk that has a note from her daughter that she keeps on her keyboard, and it says it was a note to some little boys in her class, and it says, I do not need your approval to live my life. And sometimes it's crazy that kids understand that concept. And as adults, we're still struggling to seek approval from everyone around us. And once we learn that we have one life to live and it's ours to choose, it seems a lot opens up.
Rebecca: And I want to say that that moment doesn't matter when it happens for some people. That moment where they really know that they don't need approval and they could just be whoever they are, that might be really early on in life.
They might be a kid and that sticks with them forever. Or you could be 40, or you could be 50, or you could be 60. And just now coming to a true understanding of that, it doesn't matter now. Moving forward is the next phase of life where you get to be whoever you want to be.
One of my favorite quotes: who was this? Can't even think of who did these interviews. Oh, it was on Oprah. She did those Oprah Sunday thing. I can't think of what that was.
Misty: But was it Martha Beck? I feel that might be who you're thinking.
Rebecca: No, this was not a Martha Beck quote, but there was a woman that came on, she was like, 93 years old. And I remember that because she said in her little voice, this little lady, she said, I'm 93 years old and I'm just getting started. I mean, I just cry, like, all these tears. It's like, yes, that way of belief that our life can start today anew on all sorts of levels that came to mind.
And I wanted to share that, because a lot of times I see people live in this place of, why am I this? How did this happen to me? And they can get really bogged down in their past story that they are a problem on some level and that this is a problem on some level versus just saying, I don't know, maybe you know, maybe you don't know how you got to this place of not feeling enough and kind of holding yourself back and needing to people please all the time or whatever it is. Maybe you know, maybe you don't know. It doesn't really matter.
You can decide to be who you want to be.
You have a decision today about how you want to move forward. And you can always decide to be who you want to be. And it can be different than who you were yesterday. All of the time. All of the time.
Misty: I remember early on, I asked you, how is counseling different from coaching? And you kind of and, correct me if I'm wrong, but you said one is really about looking back and understanding why, but also coaching is about looking forward and what are you going to do with it. And that always stuck with me.
For me, I wanted both on my journey because looking back allowed me to look forward. But I do understand the difference now. And staying in that place of just wondering why doesn't ultimately propel you forward.
In the work that I do today, there is a looking back component, and I am certainly not a counselor, but when someone can really understand their story and how they came into their own to build their superpower, they start seeing how amazing they are because of their story, not in spite of it. And then they're able to more confidently put that out into the world, and that's what you helped me do.
Rebecca: Yeah, I would definitely agree in the way you kind of think about those two things. And also, I would say counseling tends to have a healing aspect to it. It's the need to quite literally heal a wound that's there and close it up. That is more of a place for counseling if that's the kind of work that we need to do. And that's not to say that we obviously don't look backward in coaching and think about it.
I was just having a conversation with one of my clients that she made a decision and she's been kind of regretting that decision over the last year. And that story, that regret story has been sticking with her.
So in counseling, you might spend some time on kind of a personal healing journey through that and, maybe understanding it a little bit more and how we got to this place and why are you telling yourself all these things? And for me, it's a lot less about that, but it is still saying, like, here's where you're at, you're regretting this decision. Let's take some time to think about where you want to go from here, because you can now make a new decision to go back and go backward into not into the past, but go backward into the old life and basically make a new decision to do that.
Or you could decide today that the decision you made is where you want to go moving forward. And that could also be, okay, we're at another deciding moment, and I don't want you to continue to stick in this regret. So it's just a different approach to some of those things. Of course past stuff is going to come up, and we're ultimately a conglomerate of all of our past experiences, right? So we can't separate that, but we don't have to sit there and dwell in it in order to move forward. In coaching, at least.
Misty: Yeah. And I think that that's the momentum that you need to continue to be an achiever. These goals don't go away day to day. So the other tool I think you've given me in our relationship is really being able, when I'm in that space where I maybe want to reflect on the past, but also know I have these big things ahead.
You ask me simple questions, like what do you know? And just being able to name what you already know inside you and tapping into that, knowing separating out the facts from the feelings.
“Acknowledging what my body needs.”
All of these strategies, again, we're not necessarily taught as little girls to name our deepest desires and wants and confidently put those out in the world. And so part of my journey toward wholeness enoughness, whatever you want to call it, has been being okay, acknowledging what my body needs. And I don't think you introduce me to some of these concepts of where feelings live in your body or what you need to feel in order to show up full and whole. And I think a lot of people are scared to go on that journey.
Rebecca: Yeah, they are. I just wrote it down because I think that it's the first step. If we don't know what it is you desire and what you want, then it's going to be really hard to move on from here. Although maybe we could argue that a first step or half step is the need to believe that you deserve whatever you want.
Misty: Yes, 100%.
Rebecca: And you desire and I'm not quite sure which. I'd have to think about it for a moment to really think about which one might come first, because they're kind of intertwined, because oftentimes that'll happen too.
Naming your values, identity and purpose.
When I walk my clients through naming their values and their identity and their purpose, that's the first kind of three exercises I do with all my clients. There can be a moment for a lot of people at the end, and they kind of go, yes, I think this is all true. And there's something that feels it's not enough and something's missing, and it's this feeling I'm not allowed to live into this. This feels too lofty, it's too much. And people will push back sometimes and say, I can't say those things because they make me feel proud, or they make me feel boastful or egotistical to say that this is who I am, this is what I'm about.
And I'm like, yes, that's what we want. That's why we're doing these exercises. I'm pushing you to think about yourself in a really amazing and wonderful way, because I want your brain to see that you're somebody that deserves this, that you're somebody that has this light within you. And we want to draw that out.
But a lot of women are really scared to do that for fear that they will look boastful or egotistical or that they're going to kind of be domineering in some way, somebody that they're not. And we never want that.
“...I intentionally kept myself small.”
Misty: No. And I think for much of my life, I intentionally kept myself small. And I don't know where that was nature or nurture in me, but I just felt you needed to show up a certain way, look a certain way, sound a certain way. And I'm still on that journey of being able to be bold and brave and put my actual thoughts and feelings out into the universe. But I think I'm starting to do it better, and I think other people are seeing me do it. And when we model that, it gives permission to other people to do the same.
Rebecca: One of the exercises I take some of my clients through is I have them kind of zoom out towards the end of their life. And that can feel somewhat morbid sometimes to kind of think about the end of your life, but we kind of zoom out all the way. This is kind of a perspective exercise, and put yourself in your shoes when you're much, much older and think retrospectively of your life and what you did and what was most important to you and if you had lived your life in the exact way that you wanted to.
What are those images that come up?
What are the things that you did?
What are the things that you didn't do?
What are the things that you wish you would have known?
What are some of these ways of life that your future self can give you some perspective of?
And that can be a really eye opening exercise for people because they will either see that they're nowhere near what they want in their life or what they have thought that they've wanted, or actually they are, and they have just been striving for more without any recognition that they could just be satisfied with whatever they've created today. And that actually, this is exactly the life that they've always wanted and they get to just be okay with that. They could just be satisfied. I don't know.
Misty: As you were talking, I was thinking about my own parents in this. In fact, I've had conversations with both of them in the past week. And I think sometimes we look back on our life and think, what could I have done better? All these regrets when knowing in our hearts that we're good people, we did the best we could with the tools we had in our tool belt at any given time, we don't take into account the context of the world.
So my journey, going through this divorce, I thought my life was going to be growing up, having babies, staying with my person, and that's what I wanted. At the end of my days, I had this image and it didn't turn out that way. And so I'm having to do a lot of reconciling about what this is going to mean for my life.
“...it's all about grace and being kind to yourself.”
But in doing that, number one, my parents are watching me go through the journey that they had to go through themselves. And I'm finding forgiveness and healing in things that I experienced in my childhood. And I'm able to forgive and say, I get it. And so I just think, yeah, it's all about grace and being kind to yourself because when you do that, you can extend it to other people.
Rebecca: Yeah, I love that. And just getting out of the self judgment that we get stuck in our head, in the should have, could haves, would have, and regretful feelings that tend to come up, the guilt and so forth.
Not that those emotions - and I tell this to people a lot because they think that the coaching journey is going to solve those, like, you're not going to feel that way anymore. And I am always correcting and saying, no, you still will have negative emotions and feelings. You are still going to feel bad at times. That's the human existence. I just don't want to make that a problem.
I want you to learn how to be able to experience those things and not feel like the heaviest burden on you and that you carry it around and you shame yourself for it. And I want you to be able to have any experience that is going to happen in life and, you to be able to feel still grounded in what you know and who you are and that deep, deep knowing so that you still feel unshakable in it.
That feels more freeing to me to be able to say that that's how I live my life than it would ever be to say that I've essentially sheltered myself from all potential guilt, negative emotion, fear, failure, and all of those things that we kind of, on some level, wish that we didn't experience.
Misty: Yeah. When you allow yourself to process, it gives you a different perspective. And I have been witnessing myself do that day in and day out as I've gone through this.
Rebecca: You were talking about your parents and some of this with them. And what that triggered for me was thinking about why I became a coach to begin with, because I remember being pregnant with my first, so that would be nine years ago, essentially. And knowing that I did not want to be doing what I was doing and not having any clue what I wanted to do.
And then coming back from maternity and getting back to work and feeling the sense of restraint in the sense that now, I didn't have a choice. I had to be responsible, and I had to continue to hold the benefits. I had to make a certain amount of money and all these things. I felt very restricted within myself, ultimately, because those are all self made concepts, essentially. They're not actual restraints, but I felt all of this restraint.
And it took a lot for me to be able to open my eyes, to say I want to have a really fulfilling career that I wake up every day that I get excited about. And I want to be able to have the time with my kids and show up as the mom that I want to be.
“I want women to not feel restricted within themselves or in the constraints of their life and society.”
And that journey, ultimately, for myself, then eventually led into coaching and so forth. But then as I started to build my business, I said, that's what I want for women. I want them to not feel restricted within themselves or in the constraints of our life and our society and our culture and so forth. I want them to feel free to have the life that they want to have and to believe that they can have all of their goals and all of their dreams and have the career that they want without sacrificing the motherhood experience that they want.
Misty: Yes. And you use the word choice. I wrote that down because we do have a choice in how we show up every day. Certainly those of us with power and privilege have more choices than those that are just trying to scrape by every day. But I've recognized that you challenged me early on, Rebecca, to say, what is your life's dream? And I told you, you said, Why are you not doing it? So I had to remove all of those barriers that I was telling myself.
Rebecca: I totally remember that. We're talking way early on.
Misty: Yeah. That was our first conversation.
Rebecca: Some of our very first conversations. Yeah.
Recognizing the power that's within you.
Misty: And I was like, oh, yeah, you're right. I could be right. And so just recognizing the power that's within you on those very sort of external things.
But then just yesterday, I had a really hard conversation as I'm going through this divorce, which has felt the most constrained I've ever been in my life, simply because of the process that you have to go through. And, like, for a control freak me, you lose all sense of control. But I knew at that moment that I had a choice to allow myself to feel sorry and drown in that moment or boss up right and recognize that I have a choice on my mindset, on how I'm going to approach this.
And so for me, this journey toward fulfillment has been the constant push and pull between allowing myself those few moments I need to grieve and process and then getting back on the wagon to kind of be the mom I want to be to my girls.
Rebecca: Yeah. And one of the things that's striking about this entire conversation on some level is we continue to talk about the active mind management that's required for you to stay focused on the goals that you have for yourself, to achieve the things that you want to achieve, to be the person that you want to be.
And I think that's really important to mention as well, because, again, we kind of have this idea that at some point we won't have to put in so much effort anymore. At some point, we will have, quote, arrived when it feels easier. And I hear that a lot, too, and I've experienced that a lot, too, is this feeling of I should be there already. This shouldn't be so hard. I shouldn't be experiencing that guilt again. I shouldn't be doing X, Y, or Z right? Or Life will always be about mind management and I assume for you on your journey, but I'd love to hear, has it gotten easier? In what ways has it gotten easier? In which ways has it not gotten easier? I'm curious.
Misty: People say to me all the time, and I think this is a huge compliment, that I'm, like, one of the strongest people they've ever met. And for me, it's not so much about being strong as it is about being resilient. I can come back from things pretty quickly. I can compartmentalize. And I think the pendulum of I'm good to I'm not good, and, like, the back and forth that I know.
When we started our coaching engagement, you would literally see me showing up to calls in one of those spaces. It was almost a manic depressive sort of tendency. And I remember you saying, misty, the goal is not to not go to either of those places, but it is to find balance or sort of live in the middle and being able to sort of bring yourself back from that.
So I've done a ton of work on fight or flight responses and understanding kind of where I feel those emotions in my body and my triggers and my glimmers so that I can bring myself out of it. But it has been intentional and it has been work for years now to get to the point weight. But I felt I owed that to myself, and I owed it to my business, and I owed it to my kids to do that kind of work within me.
Rebecca: And you described this earlier, so I feel I know the answer. But tell us a little bit about whether it feels it has gotten easier to do that in the moment? Does it take less intentional action? I got to sit down with the journal and write for an hour to get all of this out. At least it has been for me, for sure that I feel I can do some of these things in a couple of minutes, sometimes ten, whatever it might be, and sometimes I still want to take a lot longer and need to take a lot longer.
Misty: Oh, absolutely. And, of course, I'll say this recognizing that it kind of depends on how healthy you are at any given time. But it used to be that if I would reach the point of burnout or I would feel very defensive about a certain situation, it would take sometimes two or three days for me to hold up and just feel my body again to the point where I could come back at it.
“I recognize my feelings coming up in the moment.”
Now I recognize in the moment when those feelings are rising up, I can almost hold them in thin air and say, oh, brain, that's what you're doing right now. Right. That's cute. We're not going to go there today and then get back on the level. That's cute, but that takes a lot of practice.
Rebecca: Yeah. I remember there was a conversation this was a bit ago now, but we talked about how really the only way you could get yourself back was to go on, not a long retreat somewhere and you by yourself, or maybe it was with a girlfriend or something like that. You'd go away and that was it.
“What if you didn't have to have a life that you constantly needed a retreat from?”
And you could tell that you were reaching that point when you would start kind of dreaming about it and wishing for it and then probably eventually book it. And I kept saying, what if you didn't have to have a life that you constantly needed a retreat from? Not that going on a retreat isn't a bad thing. And just you're telling it to me as if an everyday life of being able to manage yourself in such a way wasn't possible. And I wanted to offer to you that maybe that was yeah.
“I was relying on a lot of external factors when now I can look inside myself.”
Misty: And I would always just because I am goal oriented and achiever to me, setting a long weekend with my family was the thing to look forward to, to then make me feel recuperated. Right. I was relying on a lot of external factors when now I can look inside myself, I can open up the door to conversations I probably wouldn't have had at that point in time. Like, here's what's going on in me. And then that leads to deeper connections that can happen in a meeting in a moment.
Rebecca: I want to circle this all the way back to the intersection of ambition and enoughness. Because all of these mind management tools that we're talking about, the ability to essentially feel your feelings and be able to let them go and kind of get out of a pendulum swing and so forth. That is the work that you're doing as an ambitious person in order to be centered and grounded.
And that's the work that has really come from your ability to know who you are, what you're about, and own that unapologetically and know it, that you know it. That you know it even when your ex says this, or even when staff say this, even when this happens in the business, even when all of these things happen, those things used to shake you to your core - and not that they still feel bad today, of course they do, but they don't shake you anymore in the way that they used to.
And it's because of that, because you're so grounded and feel so enough within yourself, that has allowed you the ability to keep moving forward, to get off of the pendulum swing to continue to achieve, to continue to ideate, to continue to do what you do at an excellent level and do even more of it. Actually, amazingly, you actually, as an ambitious person, can do more when you feel enough because of that deeper work that you do and that you bring yourself back to consistently in order to be at that level.
Misty: Absolutely. I honestly had somebody very close to me in my life today say to me, you're not as warm as you used to be. And it really struck me, it bothered me in the moment. And I had to explain to this person that for the better part of a year, I've been working very hard to keep a load of balls in the air, fight through this tough exterior.
“I no longer need to go to everybody with my cup and ask them to fill me up.”
You use that language, right, that I'm doing that for myself every day. So that may look different in terms of my confidence, but I care just as much. And maybe that's not as visible. It's listening to that feedback, taking it in, and then figuring out what you're going to do with it.
Rebecca: Yeah. And my very first coach question is, Do you think that that's true? That you're not visible?
Misty: I don't think it's true.
Rebecca: I don't think that's true either. But it probably looks different than it did before when you were spending a lot of energy and effort making sure everybody was pleased with you. It probably does look different than that. And they've interpreted that as warmth. But you still feel very connected to people and think about them a lot and care a lot about respecting them and honoring them and lifting them up. I know that you know that. So you could take it and then you could just let it go and go. That's interesting.
Misty: Absolutely. And I was able to say, and this person needs something from me, right? Like, this is more about something they're feeling than something I'm doing. And so, yeah, just being able to tap into that empathy so good.
Rebecca: This has been such a rich conversation. Thank you, Misty, for being here to talk. I feel I could endlessly talk to you. So at some point I have to stop and decide to be done. There could be another conversation about this in the future, for sure. Is there anything in particular that really stands out to you in our conversation today? I'm just curious.
Misty: Well, I think we just need to keep leaning into this ambition versus enoughness concept. You're right. We did spend most of our time today talking about sort of mindset tools, which has been my way of managing it.
But I just completed season seven of my podcast called Marketing Sweats, and the season was focused on ambitious women in heavy industry. And I asked them this question: is this something that you're struggling with? And to a person, they definitely agree that it's okay to be ambitious. And you've taught me that it's not so much about balance, it's being where you need to be and being confident where you are in that moment. I know that's a lesson that I'm going to take away from this conversation and pass on to others.
Rebecca: I love it. I always like to end my interviews with a piece of advice. So do you have a piece of advice for those ambitious working moms that are struggling to balance themselves with their enoughness?
Be brave and be kind.
Misty: It's really simple. Be kind, be brave and be kind. That's my message to everybody. If you take one thing away, just remember that you're the shit. You don't need to ask anybody else to tell you that. You just need to know it. And if you're kind to yourself, it allows you to be kind to other people.
Rebecca: I love it. So good. I believe it. I believe it about you, that's for sure. And I believe it about all of the amazing listeners that listen to this podcast, always.
If you are a working mom out there that is interested in figuring out the intersection of your ambition and what it means to feel enough and this conversation resonates with you, I would love to have a conversation with you to talk to you about coaching.
You can just simply go to www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book to fill out a little form that I can get to know you and then find a time for us to connect. So I would love to connect with you over that. Thank you again, Misty, for being here. Such a pleasure, as always to connect with you.
Misty: Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Talk soon.
