Two years later: the coaching lessons that stuck (with Kelly Luttinen)

Follow the show:

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Everywhere else 

 

In this week’s episode, I chat with Kelly, a former client who shares how coaching helped her stop compartmentalizing emotions, find balance, and become a stronger leader. She reveals her favorite tool, “Thought Adoption,” which shifted her mindset and gave her confidence in both work and motherhood. If you’re curious about the lasting impact of coaching, this episode is for you!  

Topics in this episode:

  • Harmonizing emotions between work and home 

  • “Thought Adoption” tool for building intentional mindsets 

  • Importance of defining your values 

  • Managing career growth alongside motherhood 

  • Self-talk and reframing techniques to boost confidence and resilience 

 Show Notes & References:

Enjoying the podcast?

Transcript

Intro

Today on the podcast, I have a past client, Kelly, who is sharing with us all of the lessons that have stuck with her since we were coaching almost two years ago. @ this point, she speaks about the importance of not compartmentalizing your emotions from work because otherwise you bring those emotions home with you later and they affect your home life. She shares her specific ways that she's learned how to do that and what stuck with her in coaching. She shares one of her most pivotal tools that she uses regularly, Thought adoption, which is really just, a practical tool to help shift your mindset and create intentional mindsets. And I think one of my favorite parts of this episode was when she shared with us what coaching really did for her as a leader, as a manager of people. If you've ever wondered what the investment in coaching gets you long term, this is an episode you're not going to want to miss. You ready? 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.

Career Growth and Motherhood Collide

Rebecca: Okay. Hello, working moms. I have a special treat for you today. I have somebody that I coached with—now it's been at least 18 months, which means that we started coaching two-plus years ago at this point.

And she's coming on the podcast to talk about some of the lessons that she learned—like the longevity of some of the lessons learned. And as she reflects back to our time two years ago, you know, what that experience was like and what has continued to kind of grow inside of her and the tools she still uses.

I'm just really excited because she's gonna bring so much perspective to what the coaching process was. And I think she has. We are going to hear a little bit of her story here too, but she just. So many big life changes have happened in the last couple of years, and it's all coincided with so many amazing things happening in her career. She's going to have a wealth of knowledge for us. So I'm excited she's here. Thank you, Kelly, for being here.

Kelly: Thanks for having me.

Meet Kelly: Strategy Director and Mom of Three

Rebecca: Yeah. Tell us a little bit about yourself before we jump in here.

Kelly: Sure. So, I'm Kelly Lutein. I'm a strategy director at a marketing agency. I am a mom of three, which happened pretty quickly because I also had a set of twins.

Rebecca: Yeah.

Kelly: And I really valued my coaching experience.

Promotions and Babies Happening Side by Side

Rebecca: Yeah. Now we started and you weren't pregnant, so I just want to be clear. Like, how old was your daughter?

Kelly: I think Addie was like a year, maybe towards a year and a half.

Rebecca: But, yeah, it was somewhere around a year, a year and a half. And then it was somewhere towards the end of our six months together that you found out you were pregnant, and then you found out you were pregnant with twins. Right. So it was like all these things happened simultaneously.

And I think that you had just kind of gotten a promotion at work, which is what kind of triggered the coaching process and so forth as well. So there was, like, so much going on. Yes, totally.

Kelly: And both of my last two promotions have coincided with having a baby or having two babies.

Rebecca: Is that right?

Kelly: Yeah. So I was promoted to associate director when I had Addie, and then was promoted to director when I had the twins.

Rebecca: Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. I was—you know, I've just. Now I'm going to talk about it again here on the podcast, but I have a whole episode that's just recently come out. I recorded it recently, but I know it's going to come out before this one, where I talk about this intersection.

Like, career advancement for women tends to happen about a decade into our career-ish. And around that time happens to be when we start having kids. And this intersection between these two really big milestones in our life—how do we balance them, how do we manage them, how do we do them both well?

Right. Like, that's kind of the heart of what I do as a coach. But it is. It's messy.

Why Kelly Said Yes to Coaching

Rebecca: When we started together, tell me. Tell me a little bit about what you remember about where you were at and why you said yes to this coaching experience.

Kelly: Yeah. First of all, I was very grateful for it. I had been promoted to associate director. At the time, we were growing as an agency, and I was over a new service line, as well as some disciplines kind of within my field that we hadn't always clarified those roles.

And so we were growing, we were hiring, and we were also launching this new service line. So not only was I a new mom and definitely new to leadership—and that was a steep learning curve—I was trying to show leadership in a space that wasn't well defined. And it was, I had the freedom to help define that, but it felt like a really steep learning curve.

Rebecca: Yeah. Yeah. And there was a lot of needing to prove myself through all of this. Right. So absolutely. So what do you remember as being the challenges then as you tried to manage being a new manager and being a mom at the same time?

When Work Overflows Into Home Life

Kelly: Yeah. I always thought when people talked about work-life balance things, especially for moms, I thought it was more of home life coming into your work.

And for me it was really opposite. It was my work coming into my home life too much. And I felt that I wasn't being as present as I wanted to be necessarily. Yeah, I mean, it was just navigating two very important and very new roles to me at the same time. It was just a lot to process.

Rebecca: Yeah, for sure. So we re-engaged with each other just not that long ago, like literally a couple of weeks ago or whatnot. I always had the intention of reconnecting, but I knew life was crazy with twins and all the things.

Right. And we had talked at some point—we were like, we're going to reconnect at some point. Who knows when that is? Well, 18 months later, here we are. And I can't even believe looking at your pictures of the twins, how big they are. Craziness.

Coaching Lessons That Stick Long-Term

Rebecca: So now we re-engaged 18 months later. And I started asking you these questions around, what do you remember about coaching? Like what stuck with you?

Because as we were re-engaging, you were mentioning things like, “Oh yeah, you taught me this. Oh yeah, I learned this.” And so it was like, yes. I love—obviously it's super validating to me and the work that I do—to have clients come back to me and say: This was life changing to me. This is still a practice that I use. This is still a tool that I use. This is still something that sat with me, that changed me.

Right. Obviously very validating to me. It's validating to coaching, I think, as a process—that it works. But it doesn’t just have quick fixes. It’s not just like digging you out of a hole. It’s giving you something with longevity. It has life-changing qualities to it.

And obviously 18 months isn’t a lifetime, but it is a good amount of time with a lot of lived experience using the tools and the strategies and the mindsets. There’s enough life lived to tell us something about what has really stuck.

And so I want to talk a little bit here today about what’s really stuck in coaching. So what’s one of the first things that comes to mind as you think about answering that question?

The Power of Defining Values

Kelly: Yeah, so many tools. But the first that comes to mind is when we defined my values, because suddenly I felt like I understood the innate pull that I have and why I make the choices I make.

And I know it’s so obvious. And so, like, there were so many points in our coaching journey where I felt like you just illuminated something that I probably knew but wasn’t paying attention to. And values, for me—not only understanding my own, but understanding that other people do not value inherently what I value—was transformational.

Rebecca: Why?

Kelly: One, because there were certain pressures I was putting on myself. I was really worried: Should I be getting an MBA right now? That was a major concern I had. And not to say that someday I may pursue one, but…

Making Decisions From Intention, Not Worry

Rebecca: It was coming because you were feeling sort of like an imposter. Right. It was feeling like you were lacking something instead of it coming from, if you do it now, it's because you want to do it. It's because it meets a goal. Not from a reactive place.

Kelly: Exactly. And just making sure you’re not… exactly that. Making sure you’re not making decisions from a place of worry, but rather a place of intention.

And noticing when I do certain things repeatedly, sometimes that's because I'm fulfilling a need I have because of my values. One value for me that really stood out was—I think we called it—adventure or exploration. But it's this idea of I like to be outside of myself. I need to be in a place where I feel a little uncomfortable.

Which is funny, because I don’t always feel good being uncomfortable, but it is an innate need within me. And it’s why I travel. And it’s why I volunteer for things I may not have, you know, full skill set for right now. Yeah. Or time. Or any. Yeah. But noticing that and seeing that as something that I uniquely bring was amazing.

Understanding Conflict Through the Lens of Values

Rebecca: Yeah. I want to go back to this idea that understanding that people don't always value what we value—and how important that is. Because I think this is really important as a leader, as a manager of other people, to understand this concept.

Oftentimes what I like to say is, when there’s conflict between two people, we see it as, you know, us versus them. When in reality, it’s really their values versus your values. Your philosophy versus their philosophy. It’s not personal.

And I think that—my guess is—that was a piece of the eye-opening nature of this. Recognizing that you weren’t personally being attacked when there was conflict, or if your direct reports were pushing back. It had nothing to do with you. It was that they had a whole different view, a whole different lens of life than you did.

Kelly: Totally. Well, and even, I mean, to that value I just described—exploration. I would find a new project very exciting. And so that’s my mindset. I go into it with.

Rebecca: Right.

Kelly: Like, that’s very motivating to me. And recognizing sometimes, in assigning someone to a new project, their first reaction might be fear. Or it may be worry. Or it may be apprehension. Or any other emotion. So absolutely.

Leading With Values Awareness

Rebecca: And then as a manager, having to interact with them in a different way. Right. Instead of getting frustrated or irritated or—however your response might be to that person—you hold a little space knowing that they don’t have that value of adventure.

And new feels really… not that they can’t do it, but it’s just gonna take something different for them to get in the game.

Kelly: Right, right, right. Or finding space. I mean, it even allowed me to talk about values with my team and uncover things that they needed for themselves. So that in a space of, like, a new assignment or something, we could still find a way to speak to what they needed in it.

Coaching Lessons That Strengthen Leadership

Rebecca: Yeah, yeah. I’m taking a soft script here a little bit because I know we had a bit of an agenda. But I am curious— as you have grown as a leader and a manager, what did you personally take from coaching?

How have you seen the impact of that as a leader and manager of other people? Beyond just this values piece—I mean, I see this as super valuable, and I’m sure there are other things. I’m just curious.

“If You’re Uncomfortable, You’re Probably Doing It Right”

Kelly: Yeah, I feel like one Rebecca-ism that I have said to a lot of people who are my direct reports… We had a day where I came to a coaching session and I felt energized and I felt so good. I had led a brainstorming session and I was just like, I just think I’m good at this and I feel really comfortable in this space.

And this was at a time where I was doing, because of my new role, a lot of things that felt more uncomfortable. And you reminded me—you were like, you probably didn’t always feel that way about leading a brainstorm. And what you are doing now, the work you are putting in, you are honing these skills. You will get to that place of comfort. It’s not now—you’re in a growth stage.

And so there are so many times where I have members on my team who might be in a stretch place, where they are put on a project they don’t feel 100% comfortable on. And I have all the faith in the world of my team’s abilities, and I can see that they can do it. But reminding them that it’s going to take a little discomfort, and that I know that they can do it—so I definitely have repeated that lesson to them.

Why Growth Feels Uncomfortable (And Why That’s a Good Thing)

Rebecca: Yeah, I love that. Actually, if you are sort of uncomfortable, you’re probably doing it right. You’re going after it. If the goal is to live a really big, full life, that you are going after big things and the things you want that you don’t have right now, that process is inevitably uncomfortable.

Because you are doing things that you don’t already do, or isn’t coming naturally to you, or you don’t already have. And so there’s discomfort in that. Right. So it actually says you’re doing something right if you’re feeling that level of discomfort.

I love that. This reminds me of a statistic that I actually find totally fascinating. And it’s… they call it—the failure ratio? No, that’s not it. I’m going to come up with the name of it. But it’s essentially studies have been done that have come up with the percentage of times in your life that you should be failing.

The percentage is 16%. That’s what stands out to me. 16% of the time you should be failing at things. Okay, so that’s like a little bit more than one in five times that you put yourself out there to do something and you miss the mark. That’s a lot of times, right?

And they find that the research that’s been done around this—like, failure equation, whatever it’s called—has to do with the idea that if you’re not failing enough, then you’re not learning enough. You’re not growing enough. You’re not building the internal skill sets or the external skill sets to go after big things.

And if you are failing too little, or if you’re failing too much, then you’re feeling too downtrodden. Right. You kind of get stuck in the imposter symptoms and all the things. Right. So there’s this very sweet spot.

And I find that—I just love that idea. Because, and the fact that it’s been researched—because we get so scared to put ourselves in growth situations and to push ourselves in that way. And particularly us as women, right? Like, we’re known for not taking on projects or wanting to do things unless we know it 100% of the time. We hear that a lot when it comes to going after jobs and things like that.

So, I love it. I know you’re so growth-focused.

From Fixed Mindset to Growth Mindset

Kelly: Well, and that was—I mean, truly when we started, I wanted to have a growth mindset, but I don’t think I knew how to have one. And the way we would go through problems or situations in the work and you would help me reframe and think about it differently…

Where, I mean, I can think of a time where, especially as a new leader, you have that challenge of offloading your workload to someone else and having someone else do it. And we were trying kind of an experimental thing, and I had somebody else working on it, and it didn’t go well.

And when I showed up to our coaching session, I was like, see, this was proof. I shouldn’t have pulled out of that. And you said, no, that’s not what that proved. That proved that you had space to do that better. Like, you had space to work with that person maybe a little bit longer. Maybe next time, you know, the handoff will look different. Maybe you’ll stay in it a little bit longer.

Just the way you helped me reframe that. These things I was trying and not seeing success on right away—it was that learning. It was that failure to learn. And it was important for them too.

Rebecca: Like, we could go—yes. Point of that, right?

Kelly: Totally.

Rebecca: Yes.

Kelly: Absolutely. Yes. And I think, I mean, it is. It’s trial and error, but it’s being willing to fail. And it’s knowing that it’s not truly a failure because you’re growing, you’re evolving. So that was super helpful.

Self-Talk, Failure, and Growth

Rebecca: So good. I love that you had mentioned at one point, when we were talking about recording this episode, how important your self-talk was in this process. So I’m curious—some thoughts that you have about that as it relates to failure and growth. And I have a feeling that it all circles around here.

Owning Your Strengths Without Caveats

Kelly: Yes, totally. You know it’s interesting though because while the self-talk when I was exploring and failing, the way I framed it to myself was not maybe initially as growth minded as I wanted to be.

What stands out actually is how you pushed me into self-belief and in owning my strengths more and not shying away from them, and not softening them even when I was telling you. I would say things I was good at, but I would caveat. Or I would… And you were like, no, fully own it. You’re very good at this. Believe that you are very good at this.

Which—that idea too of truly, I mean, it’s trusting yourself. So it’s both self-talk from watching how you’re framing things and narrating that process to yourself, certainly. But at the same time we were doing that, we were also identifying what I was good at and what I uniquely brought, which allowed that self-talk to be stronger.

Recognizing (and Stopping) the Caveats

Rebecca: How do you… how do you hear? I mean, the caveats didn’t go away. I can’t imagine they do. We’re human beings, right? You have them in your mind. Now you’re just way more aware of them.

Right, right. You’re just more aware of it and you have a lot more perspective of it. And you don’t hear it and believe it all of the time anymore because of that awareness, things like that. But what does the caveat sound like in your brain these days? I like the idea that this is a caveat. That’s such a funny way of thinking about it. Totally is.

Kelly: Yeah, you are right that I stop myself if I’m like, well, I’m good at that, but you know, this person really brings that side.

I’m like, well actually they do, you know, but I also bring this other space that they don’t have. So. And I mean, God, we live in a world of social media and constant comparison. And also it’s hard as women, I feel like, to own your power and to feel proud of yourself without diminishing your contributions.

The Subtle Negative Self-Talk Women Struggle With

Rebecca: And a caveat that comes to mind for me—I think women are so good at this. I mean, all human brains really are. But it’s, yeah, you know, I did the project. The project went really well, but…

And then you focus on the one thing that went wrong instead of the 10 things that went right. You know, yeah, that conversation, yeah, it went good, but I could have done… right, I could have done.

Kelly: I wish we had. Yeah. Or, but a lot of people contributed. Like, you know, it’s also all of—

Rebecca: It, your own contribution to it. That’s all subtle negative self-talk. It’s really subtle ways of essentially like tearing yourself down, or not giving yourself credit, or just very subtly discounting your progress made, success, wins—whatever it is—in really subtle ways.

And over time, that really eats away at you. Right. It becomes a habit of thought. I mean, this is… it’s one of the patterns I think I regularly have to work with my clients on. And I start to really call them out as soon as I notice that they have this habit in their mind. They don’t even see it as a habit. Right. You just think it’s truth on some level.

But then I call it out and then I’m like, I just want you to know from here on out, for the next six months, I’m not going to let you do that anymore. I’m going to tell you. And then all of a sudden they realize how often these little subtle little underminings come.

How Self-Talk Shifted Everything

Rebecca: What have you noticed has changed since you’ve been able to much more recognize the way you talk to yourself and not undercut yourself and those kinds of things? What’s really changed for you?

Kelly: I mean, confidence, for one. So I mentioned with Addie, I had my first promotion. With the twins, I had my second. When I came back from maternity leave the second time, I felt like I knew. You know, I knew who I was. I knew what I was bringing to the table.

I knew too, having gone through, you know, having a maternity leave, I was gracious with myself, but I had full belief that I was going to deliver. That I was—I was going to come and I had my place and I was going to.

Rebecca: Which was different than Addie.

Kelly: Oh, yeah. With Addie, I was like, yeah, desperately finding my footing. I gotta prove myself.

Rebecca: I gotta get in there. I gotta, like, show them what I can do. I gotta show them that pregnant—like, being a mom isn’t gonna change my whatever. Right?

Navigating New Motherhood and Leadership at the Same Time

Kelly: And there was so much newness. I mean, again, standing up a service line that had no definition. I mean, it had some definition, but needed a lot more definition. Needed staffing, needed process, needed technologies, all of those things.

There was, you know, and we were demonstrating it. We had our first client projects in that space and making sure those proved that this could be a really great addition to our company. So a lot of proving myself, certainly a lot of trying to view my contributions in a different way. Not as an individual contributor, but rather at a leadership level. Definitely different.

And… yeah, pumping and having a crying baby and, you know, all of the things. Yeah. Lack of sleep. Yeah.

Why Maternity Leave Coaching Matters for Working Moms

Rebecca: So your company sponsored your coaching, right? So just for full transparency there—and that’s something that I have a handful of other companies that do. I have an offer that is specific to maternity leave coaching.

Right. So companies hire me to be a maternity leave coach, essentially. So I coach women before they start their leave, a little bit in their leave, but mostly after their leave. That’s what this moment was all about. Right.

It was kind of getting you through the journey of embarking on a whole new adventure in life and figuring out how to manage it and to not jump ship—which is what so many women tend to do. Statistics show, in fact, in the first 18 months of someone having their first child, they make a lot of career decisions, and one in three leave their job during that period of time.

And I’m sure you can understand why. It’s like, so much going on. So much newness. And so the coaching, even though this wasn’t necessarily specific to maternity leave coaching for you, it was that period of life for you. And it was such a crucial moment to get support, to deal with the mindsets, to rebuild the confidence, and see yourself in a new way.

And trust not just in the workplace, but in the mom place, in the home place. Right. That you could do this. So good. I never even thought about that before.

Compartmentalization vs. Emotional Awareness

Rebecca: So I want to shift into talking about compartmentalizing because I know that this was a big piece of the coaching journey for you. I’ll leave it at that. Tell us a little bit about what I mean by compartmentalizing and sort of omitting emotion, if you will, and what that sort of looked like and what some of the lessons were for you.

Kelly: So, when we started coaching, I perhaps naively thought, okay, I am going to learn how to—when I say robotic, like, I wanted to become a perfectly compartmentalized person who could experience situations at work, very neatly tie them up with a bow, leave them there. I would have my home life, and that would be very separate, and I would just really learn how to turn off emotion that I did not want.

And I always, jokingly—I went back and I found I had sent you a message of, why won’t you let me become the emotionless cyborg I wish to be? I thought, you know, I do pride myself on professionalism. I try to show up in a very specific way.

And yeah, through our coaching, you reminded me, unfortunately, I am human—and that’s fine. To deny emotion…

Rebecca: Yeah.

Kelly: Didn’t serve me.

Why Stuffing Down Emotions Doesn’t Work

Rebecca: I’m sure that I know this is the case for other women as well. You know, this is what we think it takes in order to really have the career and advance in the career and have the motherhood experience.

You’re supposed to completely compartmentalize. And by compartmentalize, what we mean—that’s the emotion. Right. That’s what we actually are compartmentalizing when we talk about compartmentalization: we’re boxing in emotion.

And in a lot of ways we’re stuffing emotion down, not feeling emotion in lots of areas of life. And we feel like if we can do that, we can just figure out how to do that. If we were just emotionless, then we’ll be able to manage life in a better way and experience more balance.

So I don’t think you’re alone in that.

Learning to Sit in the Feelings

Kelly: Yeah, well, and I also pride myself on being a problem solver. I’ve had people describe me in the workplace as a fixer. So I wanted in any situation to be able to very quickly pivot and never get upset about things, you know, but rather immediately get to a solution mindset very quickly, which I do and I try to do.

But you helped me learn that sometimes you can slow down in that.

Rebecca: Yeah.

Kelly: It’s okay to sit in a feeling. Address that and then problem solve next.

A New Philosophy on Emotions

Rebecca: Is it really okay to sit in the feeling? Tell us about working on it.

Kelly: Let me throw the feelings.

Rebecca: What do you know about the philosophy of sitting in the feelings and not compartmentalizing? Let’s start with that.

So why—I mean, it took a bit of convincing, right? We had to literally come up with a different way of thinking about emotions, a philosophy on it that your brain could latch onto. And so what do you know now about emotions and why you shouldn’t be compartmentalizing them at work or at home for that matter?

Kelly: Yes. Well, first, emotions—I feel like, especially for women, is such a loaded word. And when we say emotions, we tend to only think of the negative, which is definitely how I viewed it.

And that was definitely a theme in our coaching: emotions can be all of the good ones too. The belief, the energy, the excitement, the positivity, the passion—that is all emotion-based. So there are so many positive emotions.

So again, taking emotion out of the equation is not necessarily the answer.

Rebecca: And so, I mean, there’s a—

Kelly: Hold on.

Reframing the Belief: All Emotions Are Okay

Rebecca: There's a clear reframe here, though. It's like all emotions are good on some level. Like this belief all emotions were bad—that was sort of where you were coming at it. You probably didn't know that at the time. But we sort of uncovered you were living by this belief that I shouldn't be any of these things really. Like I should just, no, I should not be. I shouldn't have emotions on the good or the bad side.

Right. And so we had to flip that and come to this new philosophy. Like actually, emotions all—there's a whole spectrum of them and they're all okay. There's nothing wrong with emotions.

Kelly: Yeah, well, and I think, I mean completely that. And it's so funny because emotions showed up positively for me for years. People would say you bring a lot of passion, you bring a lot of energy, you bring—so it's like I should have known that emotions could be that.

But it wasn't until we were talking through it that kind of illustrated for me. I can't, you know, you can't have one probably without the other. It's not that you're never going to have negative emotions at work. And that, by shoving them down and waiting to deal with those emotions until you got home, might potentially negatively impact your home life. So.

The Cost of Compartmentalizing Emotions

Rebecca: Right. I mean, prior to kids and probably prior to even being married, that way of operating probably wasn't bad. I mean, it had its—it was a way. And it worked for you for a while. Right. And it worked to be able to compartmentalize that and then come home and decompress that however you want to decompress that.

I mean, we could make an argument for why that maybe wasn't the healthiest of things, but it was the habit. And so you just, you didn't have a different way of operating. So you just did that when you had a kid. And so—but then there was a big impact on that. And you saw the impact of compartmentalizing your emotions at work and how that was affecting your home life in a not-so-great way.

Then what did you have to—or, I mean, even now, like 18 months later, how do you think about emotions? Or what are some of the ways that you start to process those a little bit more in real time so that you're not doing that so often?

Coaching Gave Permission to Feel

Kelly: Yeah, well, one—coaching, it felt like, gave me permission. Not that I needed permission to feel things, but it really allowed me space to. And I say that like, I'm not—I don't want to make it sound like I'm an overly emotional person at work. I'm not. But I care deeply. And when you care deeply, you're going to be impacted by how things go.

And so naming the feeling and recognizing sometimes when I'm rushing to a solution or the next step, or moving too quickly to, you know, resolve something—that sometimes that was not in the best service, primarily for myself. That I just needed. I needed to name it. I needed to acknowledge how I was feeling without judgment.

I think I was very quick to say—back to caveats—I would be so quick to say, well, that person probably didn't mean it like that. Or, you know, I probably, I was, I probably took that the wrong way. Or, you know, or we didn't give enough space. It was too little time to pitch that idea or, you know, whatever.

I would so quickly dismiss, like, and I would feel that I shouldn't feel the way I felt. And so I would shove it down, I would solve the problem, and then at night—

Rebecca: Right.

Kelly: Come back to it.

Rebecca: Yeah.

Kelly: Yeah. So, I mean, I think naming it, I think giving permission to not immediately try to fix something was super beneficial. And also recognizing that I don't—sometimes when I would feel that negative emotion or whatever emotion, if it was one I didn't want to bring home with me, I would kind of tell that to myself of like, okay, this is where it's at right now, but we're going to do what we need to, whether it's journaling or something right now, so that this is not my focus tonight.

Tools for Processing Emotions in Real Time

Rebecca: Yeah. I was actually curious if there is a couple of little tools that you use to try to, like, actively process it. So do you literally sometimes write out some thoughts or, like, emotional thoughts out?

Kelly: Yes. And when we worked together—because I would caveat it to you—you were like, no, just spew unfiltered thoughts.

Rebecca: Stop it. Carefully—don’t carefully craft it. Right.

Kelly: Right.

Rebecca: Sucky situation. I hate frickin’ happened to me. And it's so blah, blah, blah. Right.

Kelly: I'm ticked that that budget got cut or whatever. Like, yeah, I would. Journaling is one of—just even if it's an open doc that I'm going to close and delete and it's never going to see the light of day—just getting it out there.

Rebecca: Purge, thought, download. Yes.

Writing Out the Next Steps to Process Emotions

Kelly: Well, and we talked about writing, like, the next three things I was going to do. Out of that frustration or out of whatever—of what am I going to do in my immediate future? And I would usually try to include, like, a walk or doing something physically to just not stay exactly in that moment, change my senses.

Rebecca: So good. Yeah. I love that tool. I love it.

Thought Adoption: Choosing Intentional Mindsets

Rebecca: So that kind of leads us probably into another tool that I know was really important to you and that you talked about continuing to use, which we called thought adoption. Right. Because probably out of processing all of the gunk of messy thoughts—or feelings really, and thoughts—that you have, comes the other side of things, which is the thought adoption.

It comes with intentionally thinking things and creating new mindsets and new ways of thinking about things that are a lot more supportive to you. They're certainly much more positive, but they're just more supportive to the kind of person you want to be, the kind of life that you want to lead, the kind of emotions you want to have in your life, and so forth.

So tell—what does that look like today? Thought adoption.

Kelly: First off, that was one of my absolute favorite tools that came out of coaching.

Rebecca: Sounds like you still use it.

Kelly: Yes, I do use it, and quite frequently. And whether in moments, yeah, where I'm coming out of a certain emotion or even just in a positive headspace and I want to set forth an intention.

Rebecca: Can you give us, like, a specific example of that?

Framing Thought Adoption the Right Way

Kelly: Sure. Well, and before I say that, what was so powerful too was working this with you, where I would try to tell you, okay, I want to adopt this thought. And you would call me out—you cannot control that. You just tried to name a thought that you may have influence on, but you don't have control of.

So, like, even framing the types of thoughts that I can adopt, that I can own, that I can make real, was a really simple part, what I would say.

Rebecca: It's like if you came out of a meeting and you were super ticked off, your thought adoption probably isn't going to be, Wow, that's super great. That was such a great meeting.

Like, if your default is to be ticked, we can't go to the other extreme in thought and think that your brain is going to accept that. Right. Like, it's just going to completely reject it. And because it's just too extreme.

So when we start talking about coming up with new ways of thinking about things, it's like you could walk out of that meeting—if your default was ticked—you could probably reframe it or adopt a new thought that said, That was hard, but I learned a lot from it. And that probably feels better than where you were at initially. Right.

So that's a way that—just as an example of what I do with that. So.

Kelly: Totally. Or, I would say, like, a thought of, I will change everyone's minds about X. And it's like, well, you don't control that.

Rebecca: So, like, oh yeah, yeah, that's a good one.

Kelly: That's something that you can, you know, you can influence.

Rebecca: But, yeah, I just want them to know or to think that I, that X, Y, or Z about me or the situation or whatever.

Kelly: Well, that's—

Rebecca: You don't get to do that.

Kelly: Right.

Building Self-Belief Through Thought Adoption

Kelly: One that comes to mind—I will have a long and successful career. What do I like about that? And then running through these supporting questions. And my favorite supporting question is, What do I like about this idea?

Because it felt so empowering to choose thoughts based on what I felt good about and what I liked and what I wanted. And so I loved that question.

And even sometimes I'll have just thoughts as I'm, like, cleaning or something. And this second thought will be, Why do I like this idea?

Rebecca: Yes, I love it. Such a good one. I mean, other questions I use are like, How am I already in support of this idea? How do I already live this idea out?

Kelly: How—

Rebecca: How does it benefit my future? How does it benefit my family? Right. These are all questions that help your brain find evidence for the truth of a thought that you want to think more dominantly.

And so, just to give the listener some context here—we start using thought adoption when we start uncovering sort of philosophies and mindsets that aren't really helpful to you, that are kind of holding you back.

I was just talking with a client earlier who was talking about how, in a broad sense, she always feels like she's got to be working. And so she kind of had this idea: If I'm not working, I'm not successful. Literally, like, if I'm not actively working.

And so we had to start talking about thought adoption. And how is rest an active part of work? Right. Like, it's a different way of thinking about it. And it kind of twists your mind for a moment when you go, But I don't really believe that.

Well, if I really thought that was true—what if I… What do I like about that? Why do I want to adopt that? Why does it make sense to me? How am I already on board with it?

Then you start asking all these questions because then we remember that our thoughts are just thoughts, right? Like, they're not truth. And that was probably a big thing that came out of coaching, I assume, for you—recognizing that just because the words go through your head doesn't mean that it's actually true. You get to decide what you want to believe about anything at any given time completely.

Using Thought Adoption to Support Your Team

Kelly: And it helped me once with a really discouraged team member, who said kind of a feeling as a truth. And I said, Well, that's one way to see it. What's another? What's another way you could look at this? What's another thought you could have about this?

And same thing. Like, it gave me not only the permission for myself to choose a different thought and then find all the reasons that was true, but I could do that with my team too, to help them out of certain situations.

Rebecca: Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I think that is one of the ones that I hear from leaders and managers that trickles down into their direct reports and into their one-on-ones—just being able to help hear other people's words as not true.

It's like, hear somebody else—somebody on your team or even your spouse for that matter. We do this really well with our kids, just so we're all… everybody has the skillset.

We listen to our kids talk and emote and obviously we know that what they're saying is not the whole truth. They can't know the truth at 3, at 5, at 7, even at 10. My daughter's 10, right. She doesn't know the whole truth. Her words are just her perspective of it.

We're easily able to do that with our children because we put it under the caveat, Well, they're just kids, right? But it's actually just—they're humans, and they only have a flashlight view, a very narrow view of life, because that's all they've lived.

Well, the same is true for all of us. Right? So when you're listening to your direct report or your husband share their story, as you get better at it, you start to go, Okay, well, that's just a piece of the puzzle. That's just like the flashlight view of this. There are so many other ways that they could be thinking about it or that could be true.

It brings so much perspective. So good. Oh my gosh.

Making Thought Adoption a Daily Habit

Kelly: I loved the repetition of it too because that exercise really focused on doing it kind of habitually and coming back to it. I remember I was at a conference, in a hotel bed, writing down Why do I like this? What do I already know to be true?

Rebecca: I love it. I love it. So good.

What I'm also hearing though is in all of these things that have really stuck with you, there's still a lot of active nature to it. Like, it's maintenance. Maintenance still has a lot of activity involved in it. It still has a lot of intentionality behind it.

And I think that's really important for our listeners to hear. A coaching process—anything that you learn, tools that you learn—yes, they can become somewhat habitual to you. It's just like you grab a pen and a paper to write something down, there's a habit formed in that.

But it still takes actively doing something to shift your mindset, to feel your emotions, to not go into the weeds with your direct reports, to think about your values. All these things take activity.

We love the idea that I'm going to learn something and I'm going to internalize it and it's just going to become a part of me and I'm never going to actively have to think about it again. And that's when I know I have arrived. And that's when I know that I've experienced life and the work-life balance in the way that I want.

No. You still gotta go to the workout if you want to maintain weight loss. Right? You lose 10 pounds, 20 pounds, however many pounds, and you still gotta keep working out, otherwise you're gonna gain the weight back.

So it's very—I love what I'm hearing in this: you have found those tools and strategies, we created that toolkit for you, and you found the ones that really stuck with you and made a difference. And you've maintained using them.

From Powerless to Empowered: Life After Coaching

Kelly: Definitely. And I think you helped me build awareness of patterns. So noticing, just bringing this mindfulness to certain situations and how I typically respond to them or things like that, so that I could be more…

Rebecca: Aware. Yeah, I love it. Oh, so much good stuff.

So if we were to kind of wrap this all up in a nice shiny box and bow—with the holidays coming along—what would you say? How would you describe life in terms of its differences now? Because you went through the coaching experience and because you're utilizing tools in the way that you are.

Kelly: I feel more capable as a mom, leader, mom of three—yeah, mom of three multiplied really quickly. Yeah, I feel more capable.

I feel empowered with, again, tools, strategies, awareness. I feel more intentional. I think when we started I felt a little powerless. I felt like situations were beyond me.

And I feel now in a place of power in terms of deciding both sometimes what I want to pursue, but also how I want to think about things or how I want to reflect on things.

So I do feel more capable, more in control, a little bit more settled about all of it.

Redefining Control as Empowerment

Rebecca: And I think that, I mean that word control, I think is a really important one and one that maybe has a bit of a negative connotation to it. We don't want to be controlling. Women can be labeled as that in some way.

And yet we do really desire control over our future, over our destiny if we want to go there, right? Like, we desire control in life. We don't want life to just be happening to us. We want to be in the driver's seat of it, right? We want to be directing it.

And so that's what I'm hearing. As you describe this, it's that you put yourself in the driver's seat and are making very intentional, thought-out decisions on the big things in life—the direction you're heading, the choices you're making—but also in just how you want to feel about life, how you want to think about life, and how you want to show up in those little daily interactions.

You're feeling very capable and in control of those things as well. And that's really where most of our life is lived—in the daily small moments.

Building Self-Belief and Resilience

Kelly: And I think more self-belief too—of if it doesn't go okay, if it doesn't go exactly how I want, I'm going to figure it out.

And I feel like you helped remind me time and time again, Well, okay, in that situation, what else would you do? Or what skill sets might you bring to the table?

I think there was so much of that. Like, I left really feeling—again, back to the word capable. Like, I can pivot. I am capable. I have the skills I need.

Wrapping Up: Coaching That Lasts Beyond the Sessions

Rebecca: So good. Oh, my goodness. This has been so fun, Kelly. I mean, it fills my heart for sure as a coach, obviously, but it's just so fun to hear your story, to hear how far you've come, and to hear what tools you continue to use. Awesome. You're amazing. So good. You're doing so good. You are too.

Kelly: Thank you.

Rebecca: Thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. Working moms, if you are interested in going through the same kind of journey that Kelly went through—if you are interested in values-based living, not compartmentalizing your emotions, and really taking control of the way you're thinking and feeling in your life—this is the perfect container for you.

And I would love to talk to you about that. You can go to my website, www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com to learn more about it and to book a time to connect with me.

All right, Kelly, I'm sure we will be connecting soon. And to all of you out there, let's get to it.

Book Your Free Breakthrough Call

Rebecca: The next step to getting unstuck and having more days where you bounce out of bed feeling certain that you're doing exactly what you want to be doing, regaining your confidence, and ending all of that negative chatter in your head, is to book a free breakthrough call.

This is a strategy call where I will guide you through setting a vision for the life that you want to lead as a working mom. And then I'll lay out a plan for exactly how we will achieve that together through one-on-one coaching.

You can book that call by going to rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book.

All right, working moms, let's get to it.

Rebecca Olson