Listener question and answer - competing priorities and guilt

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In this week's episode of the podcast, I’m doing something totally new – I’m the one being interviewed! My colleague, Amy Capello, sat down with me to discuss one of my favorite topics: work-life balance.

We dove deep into managing competing priorities, dealing with that never-ending mom guilt, and how to shake the feeling that everyone else has it all figured out. Trust me, this interview is packed with real talk and actionable advice.

If you’ve ever struggled to balance your career ambitions with your life at home, you won’t want to miss it! Tune in for some powerful insights and tips you can apply right away. 

Topics in this episode:

  • Managing competing priorities as a working mom. 

  • Dealing with guilt and the feeling of not being enough. 

  • The myth of "having it all" and redefining balance. 

  • How to prioritize what truly matters and let go of unnecessary pressures. 

  • Daily practices to reduce stress and create a more balanced life. 

 Show Notes & References:

Where you can find Amy:

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Transcript

Intro

Hello, working moms. I am excited because I am doing something I have never done on the podcast before. I am being interviewed. Yes, my colleague Amy Capello with pure joy life coaching, asked me to have a conversation with her on LinkedIn, where she took questions from her followers and her clients about work life balance. And then she interviewed me, and I thought it was such a wonderful overview of so many of the things that I speak about here on the podcast and that we do and we talk about in the ambitious and balanced community that I decided to post it here as well. Amy and I talked about managing competing priorities, dealing with guilt, and feeling like other people have it figured out and you don't. This is a jam packed interview all about work life balance principles. I know you're going to love it. Now, just as a reminder, the interview was originally posted on, LinkedIn under Amy Capello's LinkedIn page. So I'm going to drop a links about her in the show notes if you would like to follow her as well. I highly recommend it. All right, working moms, 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.

How to Stay Present with Family Amid Chaos

Amy Capello: Thank you, everybody that's been following along with our conversation for the month of August. We have been talking about how to be present with our partners, with our families, with our kids, because, let's be honest, most of us have a lot going on.

Rebecca: Yeah.

Amy Capello: And it is hard to, you know, balance all the things and keep all those balls in the air and not drop any of them, which, I think that in and of itself, is a great thing to think about because we're going to drop the ball sometimes. It is just going to happen.

So how can we make sure that we are prioritizing our priorities and, you know, making sure that we're connecting with our families even when it's chaos?

So today we have Rebecca Olson on, and she is going to be answering y'all's questions that you submitted around this topic. And I'm so excited to have her here. I was lucky enough to be able to connect with her a little while ago, and she is just absolutely incredible and works with—like, this is what she does, y'all—works with busy moms that are doing everything to make sure that they are taking care of themselves, you know, when they're feeling overwhelmed or like they're not enough, so that they can be present with their kids and also crush their career goals.

Because we often feel like we have to choose between one or the other, and it is possible to do both. So thank you so much, Rebecca, for being here. I'm so excited to dig into this conversation with you and answer these questions.

Rebecca: Yeah, I'm so excited. Thanks for having me, Amy.

The #1 Question Moms Ask: How Do I Prioritize My Time?

Amy Capello: Yeah, absolutely. All right, so why don't we go ahead and jump into the first one?

So, super straightforward, but also really valuable question. Something that I hear time and time again, and you probably do as well: How can I prioritize my time when I constantly feel like I'm being pulled in multiple directions?

And I'm sure whoever submitted this feels that way, but it's probably also the truth. There are probably a lot of things that are vying for her attention. So what are some things that she can do to prioritize her time?

Rebecca: Yeah. You know, this is, I love this question for a lot of reasons. Prioritization is key to lots of things, right? And on so many levels, we all know that. And even if I were to break down prioritization for you, like, it was a step-by-step process, actually, most of us know how to do it.

It is just something that doesn't often feel good. It doesn't feel good to decide to do one thing and not another thing. Right. And so before—I mean, I could talk about that a little bit more, but I actually want to step back to the first point.

You can see my cat in the background. I told you she'd be making an appearance. I love it.

Reframing Priorities: A Busy Life Is a Good Life

Rebecca: I want to step back for a moment because I often like to reframe the idea that you even have competing priorities.

Actually, I think as busy working moms that have careers that we want to stay in and that we love—like, of course we're going to have competing demands all of the time. We're going to have ten things that are vying for our attention, all of which we would love to give our attention to, and we can't.

It's a good thing to be in demand. It's a good thing to have multiple priorities. It's actually the kind of life most of us want to live. We wouldn't really want it any other way. Maybe we want to lessen it a little bit, but we don't want to go to that place where we don't have many things that need us, want us, that we want to do, that bring our… you know, that are pulling us for our attention.

Like, there's something actually really positive about having a life where multiple things are pulling at you all of the time. Right.

So that's the first reframe that I like to give. And I don't know about you, but when I think about it like that, it's like, oh, yeah. Like, I choose this life. Like, I actually—I would be bored in another kind of life, and I don't want that at all.

So I would choose this over that any day of the week. Right. It just kind of softens. It softens the problem so it doesn't feel so hard to tackle.

Amy Capello: Yeah.

Four Things Moms Prioritize That Aren’t True Priorities

Rebecca: That's the first thing that I would talk about as we talk about being pulled in multiple directions.

The other thing that I would say is—and, you know, Amy and I talked about this, you know, a while ago when we were talking about doing this live—is the importance of really knowing outside of the moment your hierarchy of priorities.

On some level, you have to have stepped back at some point and said what's most important to me, so that when you have five to ten things that need you at any given time, you've already spent time outside of the overwhelming moment having thought through which of the things are going to be most important.

And here's something that I really think is key. And I don't know if this is going to come up in another question. I hope it does, actually, because I think this is a really important message.

Amy Capello: Yeah.

Rebecca: Four things that we tend to actually prioritize that are none of our actual priorities.

Number one, it's being available. It's actually not a priority to most of us. And yet we are trying to be available all of the time—to people, our team, to our boss, to our kids, to our, you know, whatever it is. We think that we have to be available. We have to have an open-door policy to everyone, all of the time.

That's actually, for most of us, not a priority. And yet we prioritize it all of the time.

Another one is being on time. I am notorious for wanting to be on time. Even this morning, I was trying to get the kids out, and my daughter's like, "Look, Mom, it's okay if we're late." And I'm like, you are so right. It's okay if we're late. And I also want to instill in you that being on time is very important and so forth.

But it's like that rush, you know, that we want to try to prioritize. And I'm like, does it really matter if they're late to school today? Does it really matter? No, it never really matters.

Does it really matter if I don't get the email to the client that I said I was going to get to them at the certain time? Almost never is it actually a problem. Is that really what I want to bend over backwards for and prioritize as my number one?

So that's another one.

Amy Capello: Yeah.

The Hidden Trap: Prioritizing Responsiveness Over Presence

Rebecca: Responsiveness is another one. So, like, somebody messages me and I got to get back to them right away. We often have that pull. But is that really… do we want to prioritize that over being present with our kids? Probably not. Right, right.

And then the last one is being that feeling of being, like, 100% prepared. We all love to feel 100% prepared. It, like, calms us down. It makes us feel really grounded. It feels really good. And yet over-preparation is a huge time suck that takes away from all sorts of other productivity and all sorts of other priorities.

And so we tend to prioritize that. And yet, do we really want to prioritize that over some of the many other things?

So really, I want to give—I kind of did it in reverse. I didn’t actually talk. I talked about the things that aren’t priorities that we tend to prioritize. But it’s important to, like, think about it in this way, like, so that you can break down what is most important to you, because in the moment, it’s going to be really hard to figure that out.

Shifting from Overwhelm to Gratitude and Choice

Amy Capello: Right. Oh, God, I love that. I mean, you hit on so many things. I wanted to write them down because I was afraid I was going to forget them.

But, you know, even thinking about the fact that, like, I choose this life, right? When we are acknowledging that it’s a choice, and also I have all these things that are vying for my attention at the same time, I get to choose how to respond.

Right. Like, it is up to me, which instead of making it feel like this overwhelming pressure, if we make it feel like, I am in charge here. I get to call the shots. I know what’s important to me, it’s more of a gratitude perspective than it is a, oh, woe is me victim perspective of, I have all these things that are going on.

Never thought about it like that before. That is amazing. And you got me. I’m 100% prepared. I’m gonna have to, like, go internal a little bit.

The 75/25 Rule: Why You Don’t Need to Be 100% Prepared

Rebecca: I have a podcast episode. It’s called The 75/25 Rule that talks all about this. I, like, really firmly believe that most of the time—I’m not gonna say 100% of the time—most of the time, 75% prepared is enough.

And the other 25% is just you trusting yourself, trusting your ability to be agile in the situation, to pivot, to adapt, trusting your knowledge, trusting your background, trusting you’re not going to look like an idiot or a fool up there.

Right. It is just about believing in yourself and, like, having your back no matter what happens. That’s incredible.

Amy Capello: Yeah. Please send me that link. And when we post this afterwards, I will put a link to that because I’m going to need it. And other people, I’m sure, are going to need it, too.

Because I shared with you right before we got on that I have a talk tomorrow. Right. And I am the person that, no matter what, I can go down the rabbit hole—if it’s the rabbit hole of what I want to say, the rabbit hole of the transition from slide one to slide two, the rabbit hole of should the graphic be on this side or this side? Right.

Rebecca: All of it.

Amy Capello: And I was actually sharing it with my husband last night, and he was like, You could do it today and it would be great. I’m like, I need more time to work on it. So, yeah, that was right in the gut, but I probably needed to hear that.

A Coaching Story: “Prepared Enough” Changed Everything

Rebecca: I mean, what I think about is, I remember this conversation that I had with a client that was really poignant to this. And she was like, Well, isn’t it just… you can’t ever really be prepared enough? Like, that was her mentality. A lot of us have that mentality, and we’re told just, like, throw time at it. Keep preparing until you feel comfortable. Right?

And I said, well, how does that—so if you have that mentality that you can’t be prepared enough, how does that make you feel as you think about walking into your presentation tomorrow?

She’s like, I feel terrible. I feel like I’m not going to be prepared.

I’m like, I know, because you’re telling yourself there’s no way that you can be prepared enough, that there’s not enough time ever to get prepared to that level.

She’s like, I’ve never thought about it.

I’m like, well, if you just decided that you were prepared enough today, right now, and you stopped… and I actually, as her coach, I forced her to—there’s no more preparation today. You get to spend time with your kids, get a good night’s sleep. You may not look at your deck at all today.

And she was like—you know, her face, like, what are you talking about?

I’m like, well, you’ve told me you’re prepared enough. You’ve literally said there’s almost nothing you could do in addition that would bring any more knowledge, any more anything that’s going to actually benefit.

So let’s just say you did it. You’re done. Congratulations. So good. Now just go rest.

And when she came back to me, she sent me a message the next day. She said, I haven’t had a presentation go that well in years. I felt so confident. I felt so good. I was so rested. My mind was so clear. I did just a quick refresh of my deck just before I walked in. But I practiced feeling like I was prepared enough, and it changed everything.

I’m like, it worked. There you go.

Amy Capello: It worked. God. And acknowledging that the rest is productive. The rest is preparation. Right? Like, taking that break is preparation.

Rebecca: Yeah. I mean, like, so much research. We have a whole other talk about that, right? So much research gone into that.

The Heavy Weight of Mom Guilt

Amy Capello: So true. It is so true. Okay. All right. This is beautiful. I love that this is the next question, because I feel like this piggybacks on that one so profoundly that, you know, like, yeah, okay, great. I know what’s important. I’ll, whatever.

But guilt, right? So how do I stop feeling guilty about not being enough? And I think we all have felt like not enough at some point. But what I love about this, too, is at work or at home, it seems like no matter what, I feel guilty about one or the other, and it’s exhausting.

Rebecca: Yeah.

Amy Capello: How do we navigate that?

Why “Enoughness” Is at the Core of Work-Life Balance

Rebecca: Yeah, I love that question, too. I think enoughness is really, really, really important.

I actually believe it’s at the core of what it takes to experience a life that feels balanced, because what we’re kind of saying is that life feels enough. That’s what a balanced life really feels like. Like, I don’t need to add anything more. I don’t need to do anything. I don’t have to. Like, I can just be in the sufficiency of the life I’ve created.

I think that’s—so it’s at the heart of what we want to feel in our bodies and in our life as we talk about it. So I think that word is really important to me.

What Guilt Is Really About: Identity, Not Just Choices

Rebecca: So one of the things I like to parse out when somebody starts talking to me about guilt is really what they’re making the situation mean.

So, I’m just gonna use a broad example of this, right? I remember, and I know this is for a lot of people, the immense amount of guilt that I felt sending my kid—my first baby—to daycare. And I would go every day and drop her off, and this immense amount of guilt would overtake me.

It was so big, and I would cry all the time. So then I would ask myself this question—now, as I’m a coach, I wasn’t a coach then, but now I am—I can ask myself this question: What was I making that mean?

Almost always, we’re making it mean I’m not a good enough mom in this case. Or if it was reversed and we were talking about something at work, it’d be like, I’m not good enough at my job.

We’re labeling whatever the situation is as you, as a personal attack on you—not being good enough. It becomes a part of your identity as a mom or as a worker. And whenever your ability to not perform, produce, be there, whatever it is, is connected back to how you view yourself—the who of who you are—then we feel guilty.

You Are a Human First, Not Just the Roles You Play

Rebecca: So our identity—so we have to have broader conversations around this idea that your identity is not found in you being a mom. It’s not found in you as a worker. It’s not found in you as a wife.

You are a human being first. And then you get to decide what roles you want to play in your life and how you want your humanness to show up in the world.

When you can believe in your humanness and you can believe in your enoughness, apart from all the things that you do and all the ways that you show up, then these decisions—which ultimately are all trade-off decisions—become clearer.

I’m choosing to work, so I have to put my kid in daycare. And vice versa. All of the prioritization things that we just talked about, right? So guilt always comes back to that identity.

And usually what happens when I start having these conversations with my clients, I say, So if we stripped away the guilt and we stripped away who you are as a human being—being wrapped up in this—what’s left?

And almost always somebody will tell me they feel sad.

I say, yeah, it feels really sad to leave your kid at daycare every day. That’s a sad experience. It’s sad to think that you can’t show up for your team, support them in this meeting. You just gotta let it go and let them be, and they’re probably going to fail because you’ve got to focus over here.

You’re not a bad manager. It’s not personal, but it feels bad. It’s sad that you can’t be there in the way that you want to. Like, it’s okay to feel sad. But what we really want to take away from this is that you’re not a bad person. We don’t have to label you as anything less than because you have to make those trade-off decisions.

Why Guilt-Based Decisions Backfire

Amy Capello: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think, too, when we are constantly feeling guilty, thinking that we are bad, then we make guilt-based decisions.

Rebecca: Oh, all the time.

Amy Capello: Right. That are not serving us, our family, our kids, our staff.

Rebecca: Because we’re trying to fix the guilt. And we think that if we change it up—If I take my kid out of daycare, then I won’t feel guilty anymore—guess what? You’re for sure gonna feel guilty about something else. There’s no question about it. Right?

Yeah, we try to fix the feeling.

Amy Capello: Exactly, exactly. Yeah, nail on the head. Right? And my husband and I talk about this all the time—that mom guilt is just like low-hanging fruit. Like, it’s so easy for us to grab onto.

We can find anything to feel guilty about. You can do everything and still find a way that, like, maybe you could have done it better or more or whatever. Or like, Yeah, I made them a lunch, but it wasn’t organic. Like, we can always find something.

Rebecca: Right.

Amy Capello: To really have that guilt around.

Rebecca: As I gave my kid processed meat today.

Amy Capello: Right, exactly. Exactly.

Rebecca: Right, exactly.

The Deserted Island Question: What Is Your Value Without Roles?

Amy Capello: Yes. But I just want to touch on that identity piece as well, because, you know, what you were saying and stripping all of this away.

So before I started my business, I was an assistant principal at the largest school in the state. Right. And I went to a leadership training at the beginning of the year. We were doing, like, the DISC assessment and all of that. I love personality tests. I'm, like, so excited to take it.

Rebecca: Right?

Amy Capello: And probably all coaches have that, like, at least a little bit, right?

Rebecca: I know.

An Eye-Opening Exercise on Self-Worth

Amy Capello: And so we were there that day. I got the report. I'm sitting at a big table with all of my peers, and the guy gets up on the stage and he starts to talk. He’s kind of just introducing concepts or whatever.

And he said before I dig in—and maybe you’ve heard this before—but he said, Before I dig in, I want you to answer a question just silently in your head. So if you can do this, maybe you have heard it.

Rebecca: People that are watching.

Amy Capello: Let’s see, I was checking to see. So we do have people that are watching live, too. So if you’re watching live, feel free to do this as I’m talking about it.

He said, Before we jump in, just quietly in your head, don’t share it with anybody. You can keep it to yourself. I want you to pretend that you are on a deserted island and there’s no one else there. It is literally just you, existing solo on this island.

You have every provision you need—because we thought we were going to be asked, like, What are you bringing? Right? But no—you have everything. If you want down comforters, you have a down comforter. If you want unlimited alcohol—

Rebecca: Yes. A beautiful pillow. I do want that as well.

Amy Capello: I want the umbrella, the mimosa, like, you know, whatever it is, all the things. Right? So every provision that you need to have the most comfortable, best version of you living life on this island—it’s there, it’s done. Everything you need is taken care of, right? Except it’s just you.

Measuring Your Value Without Titles or Roles

Amy Capello: So, on a scale of one to ten, one being the lowest, ten being the highest, what is your value—you as an individual—just for yourself, inflecting? What is your value as a human on this island? One to ten. Where are you?

I’ll give you guys a second to think about that.

Okay. So what was really interesting for me is when he asked this question, I’m sitting at the table with my peers. It was an immediate answer for me. Like, I didn’t even have to reflect on it. I had an immediate answer. Some of the people needed to think a little bit longer about it.

And then he did a show of hands and he said, All right, how many of you said a one? And I’m looking around the room and it was over half the room raised a hand.

The Surprising Truth About Self-Worth

Amy Capello: And what was so funny and so shocking to me is my answer was a ten. Like, I didn’t even have to think about it. And that’s not an ego answer. It’s a: I have value no matter where I am, or what the situation is, or what my role is.

I am who I am no matter where you throw me. Right? Like, Amy is still Amy. And I guess, you know, just having an arrow of focus, I didn’t realize other people might not see it that way.

And so the discussion opened up into, Well, I wouldn’t have my children. I wouldn’t have my partner. I wouldn’t be leading a team. I wouldn’t be contributing to the world. Right?

Rebecca: Like, not even relive. I’m not contributing. I’m making an impact in no way, shape, or form to the greater good of the world. Totally. Yes.

Women and the Struggle With Inherent Worth

Amy Capello: And so therefore, my value is as low as—he likes, Let me go. Which is a one.

And that really kind of took, like, the scales off my eyes that this is something that we deal with. And I think that it’s very common with women in particular.

Rebecca: Oh, yeah.

The Pressure to "Do It All" as a Working Mom

Amy Capello: That we will create that guilt around everything. So identity and role—when those two get enmeshed together, the guilt's going to be right there. I mean, you hit the nail on the head for sure.

Okay, so good. Thank you so much for that. I love it. All right, so how do I manage the constant pressure to do it all? So now that we addressed the guilt part of it, this person went on to say, I know, I know. I have to give myself grace, but for real, the pressure is intense. Sometimes I see all these other moms doing it all, and I feel like I must be doing something wrong. They even have time to get their nails done. And it's been years for me.

Rebecca: I hear. I mean, even that last comment, though, like, it triggers something in me. Because we have to remember that social media in particular is an edited version of someone's life. Right.

You are seeing the things that they're doing, not the things they're choosing not to do. So in your mind, they have it all. But you have not seen the sacrifice. If this truly is a person that's balanced and is, like, crushing all their goals and so forth, you're not seeing the things that they have edited out in order to go all in on the things that you see on social media.

We always have to be careful when we look at that.

Redefining "Having It All"

Rebecca: Coming back to this idea of how are you defining having it all is also really important. Because what does that mean? Does that mean that you never say no to anything? Does that mean that you just have a career and you have a family life? Well, I bet she does too. What does it really mean?

And what I hear a lot, that I think is a misunderstanding or a misrepresentation of having it all is this: it’s this life where you don’t have to say no to the things you don’t want to say no to.

Amy Capello: Right.

Rebecca: And so that means that you have the career, and you have the family that you love, and you have time in your marriage, and you have time for yourself, and you're sleeping really well, and you're working out, and you have hobbies, and you go away with your girlfriends on occasion.

Right. It's all of these things. It’s some level of—like, the equation is a cocktail of all the various areas of life having attention all of the time.

And if that is the definition, then we have to work backwards on how we're ever going to create that. But for me, one of the things I really like to say is: a balanced life is a ruthlessly edited life.

A Balanced Life Means Choosing Which Balls to Drop

Rebecca: It is a life where you have gone all in to a few things, not everything. And I would guess, I would say, at least in particular seasons of life, you have gone all in to some things, which means that you’re not going to go all into others.

You actually used this phrase when you first started this live stream just a bit ago—you talked about dropping the ball.

I just happened to read a book called Dropping the Ball. She wrote it maybe ten years ago. It’s really a brilliant book around work-life balance. You should totally read it.

Amy Capello: Okay.

Rebecca: Yeah. Check it out. I loved it. And her concept is around this idea that, like, you have to drop the ball. You have to be okay dropping the ball.

Amy Capello: Right.

Rebecca: I would say I want you to choose which balls to drop, instead of thinking that you can juggle all the balls and then of course something is going to drop. Because when you haven’t necessarily chosen it, it’s going to feel even worse. Then there’s going to be guilt and all these other things that come with it.

I want you to choose the things that you’re going to go all in on, and make a really conscious decision around the things you are not going to go all into. And then deal with all of the emotion and the feelings that come with that.

Because it’s still likely going to feel bad to say no to good opportunities and things that you would love to do. That feels sad, that feels bad—that’s just life on some level.

But we can process those emotions much easier and much faster, versus having an expectation that you were going to do all of the things at a certain level and not be able to do it—because it was inevitable you were never going to be able to do it.

And then things happen and it just feels infinitely worse. Right. And then we start getting into guilt and shame. And that’s really where pressure starts to come—from the avoidance of guilt and shame. And we don’t want any of that. That’s not a balanced life at all.

The Pressure Moms Feel Comes From Expectations

Amy Capello: Right? Absolutely. Absolutely. And that pressure is something of our own creation.

Rebecca: Totally. Now it's your own expectations of what you're supposed to do and the balls that you're supposed to be juggling—and at the level you're supposed to be juggling them.

Amy Capello: Exactly. Exactly. I love it. I absolutely love it. And yeah, that comparison is going to automatically take you into the pressure.

Rebecca: Right.

Social Media Doesn’t Show the Behind-the-Scenes Struggles

Amy Capello: Because you are making a lot of assumptions when you see that. You might not know—she’s getting her nails done because her and her husband finally had their last fight and she's going to serve him divorce papers tomorrow, and she's trying to make herself feel better before she does it. Like, you have no idea, you know?

Rebecca: Yeah. Right. Or she's getting her nails done and her daughter was crying at the door when she left the house, having a complete meltdown because she didn’t want mommy to leave.

Amy Capello: Exactly.

Rebecca: And she still chose to go get her nails done, even though her kid is 100% having a meltdown because she's leaving, and she's still choosing to do it anyway.

Amy Capello: Right, exactly.

Rebecca: If you saw the behind-the-scenes of that, would you still label that as having it all? No. She's still going to walk out the door and feel terrible that her kid is crying. She's going to get in the car, take five deep breaths, maybe even shed a tear, and she's going to tell herself, This is really hard.

She’s going to have to give herself a pep talk to still go get her nails done, because she can still, in her brain, hear her kid crying. And she has to remake the decision that her nails are more important than spending time with her kids, because she really needs this time for herself and all of the things.

That’s what’s happening on the other side. You don’t get to see any of that on social media. That is the backstory.

Amy Capello: Being able to do that 100%. We don’t have those conversations often enough.

Rebecca: So hard. So hard.

Amy Capello: Absolutely.

Pressure Is Really About Identity Protection

Rebecca: And I do want to, like, loop back. I know we're at time here, but I want to loop back. That pressure—pressure is, you said, it’s created. Yes. It’s created in the attempt to avoid guilt and shame. It’s also created in trying to avoid not feeling enough, not feeling valued.

It still has this identity connection. If you’re somebody that’s not willing to say no and let some balls drop intentionally, likely it’s because your identity is so tied to having to do everything for everyone, and making sure everything is at a certain level of expectation.

That’s all an identity—that you’re so interconnected to—that of course it feels better to try to do it all and attempt to do it all (but only do half of it well) than it does to go through that feeling of not being enough, of feeling like a failure, and of feeling all the shame that’s associated with it in your identity. Right? It’s identity protection.

Amy Capello: It absolutely is. It absolutely is. Yeah.

Rebecca: Oh, I love that. That’s a great idea—identity protection. What’s that phrase? Like, you want to protect your identity online? I don’t know, I just had a whole concept run through my head. I’m going to have to leave it.

Amy Capello: Whole masterclass or course, right? How we are protecting that identity.

And also, there are so many assumptions. We could talk about that forever. But one of the assumptions as well is this—and this is huge, because I find myself doing this, too. So let’s just use that example there: we see the nails that are getting done, and there’s an assumption that that mom figured out something that you haven’t yet figured out.

Rebecca: Right?

Amy Capello: Right. That maybe it was, This is possible if I hired a nanny. Or This is possible if I made a million dollars a year. Whatever it is, but there’s some magic formula or situation that you just haven’t figured out—but she did. Or she has resources that you don’t have.

Rebecca: And then you’re less than.

Amy Capello: Yes. You’re less than. And it creates this constant need to strive and work harder and figure out what’s wrong with you, when in truth, everything that you just done, you

Identity Struggles and the Myth of “Arriving” at Balance

Rebecca: You know, again, an identity. An identity of, like, I'm not smart enough, I'm not capable enough. I don't have enough capacity. All of that is related to identity that you start labeling. Yeah. If somebody else has it figured out—oh, my gosh—that, I feel seen in that, because I think I live in that space a lot. Feeling like there's some mysterious something that I don't know. And I take that on. Yeah. I make that mean a whole lot of things about me. I have to work myself out of that mindset all the time.

Amy Capello: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Thanks for normalizing that. Even as someone who's a coach, that we also still deal with these things. And that's one of the reasons we can talk so authentically on it—because we live this day-to-day. It's active.

Rebecca: I mean, I think that's one of the mysteries I like to take out of the conversation around balance—it’s that it’s not an arrival.

Amy Capello: Yes.

Rebecca: It's not the end of the race. You're in a constant marathon toward a never-ending goal. You never will arrive. It's constant.

And I have to tell myself that in other ways, particularly when it comes to business stuff and all sorts of things—there’s never an arrival. But we have this sense that, like, I'm just trying to get to this place where I feel balanced, and then I get to rest. No. Balance is a constant tweaking of life.

It takes intentionality. It takes daily practices that require daily decisions—deciding to prioritize something and not others, and processing all of those emotions in it. It is consistent.

And so it's important to remember that. And I know—that can sound exhausting to think like, Oh my gosh, Rebecca, there's never an arrival. And I do—even as I was saying it—I was like, wow, Rebecca, that feels so hard. That's like a terrible thing to say out there.

And yet I think that it is… You can get there. When you find the tools, when you find the rhythms, when you make the decisions and overcome the emotions that come with the hard decisions, the maintenance of balance gets infinitely easier.

Right. In the beginning, it does take a lot of learning, having to make really tough decisions, learning how to prioritize in a different way and overcome all of those emotions, separating your identity from your work and from being a mom and from your productivity, and really building that feeling of sufficiency within you. That’s hard work. That starts the process.

But once you’ve gotten there and you have those tools—you know what your priorities are and how to go about it—those decisions get easier. Those emotions don’t feel so strong. You have a whole toolkit in order to process those things as they come up, as life changes.

It is not as difficult as it sounds going forward, but it still takes intentional thought.

Daily Practices for Work-Life Balance

Amy Capello: Yeah, exactly. It's going to the gym. That initial six months in the gym—and then after that, it's just maintenance, you know.

But our last question—I love that you said daily practices, because that's exactly what they asked. They said, What are some quick daily practices that I can add to reduce stress? And they said, to stop feeling like I'm dropping the ball all the time. But just in general, to have balance, I think, is probably exactly what they're hitting on.

What are some—I don’t know—one or two quick daily practices that we can start no matter where we are in helping us get to that balance?

Rebecca: Yeah, I love this. And I actually am launching a group coming up this fall, and it's all about… it’s just like I’m streamlining work-life balance. Three months—you’re going to fix all of it. You’re going to make all those decisions. You’re going to learn all the tools. You’re going to fix your overworking behaviors. You’re going to get to this place of like, Oh, I can get into maintenance mode because I’ve done all the hard work we’re going to do together in three months.

I’m so excited about this group. It’s called Ambitious and Balanced. Okay. But one of the things we’re going to do is—I’m teaching them two daily practices, and they’re just going to repeat those every single day. They don’t have to learn anything else except these two that you’re going to master.

So I’ll quickly go over them. Obviously, I have a whole formula to them, but I’ll quickly talk about them at a high level, because I think they’re really important.

The first one is starting your day. I like to say starting your workday, ideally—just because I think the chaos of the morning with the kids can be really difficult. People like to wake up and do their journaling, but right—usually, I would say right at the start of your workday, because we can be super consistent with that timeframe.

Your goal is to get into an intentional, positive thought space for your day.

Most of us sit down at our computer, and the thoughts that are going through our head are like, Oh my gosh, I have so much to do today. There is not enough time. When am I going to get that done? I'm not going to be able to get that done.

Amy Capello: I'm already behind.

Starting the Day with Intention: The “Enough Triad”

Rebecca: I'm already behind. I can't do this. This is really hard. I mean, that's the mentality, right? And so listen to those thoughts. Of course, you're going to create an entirely stressful, overwhelmed, pressure-filled day if you're starting your day with those thoughts, right?

So we want to start your day with something different, and that could look like all sorts of things. But really, if I were to give you one to just start practicing every single day—or really it's three—it’s my Enough Triad that I like to call it:

  • I am enough.

  • I'm good enough.

  • I'm doing enough.

You literally write those three things down. Doesn't even have to be on a consistent piece of paper. It doesn't have to be a journal. It could be a little sticky pad, right? It doesn't really matter.

Amy Capello: Yeah.

Rebecca: Write those three thoughts down, and you take even just two minutes to think about how you already believe those thoughts right now, how you already know those thoughts are true—that you don't have to prove those thoughts at all. Like, they are already embodied within you.

You just start your day thinking: I am enough, I'm good enough, and I'm doing enough.

And if you have a hard time even finding evidence for that, sometimes I literally will take a whole page and I'll just write them over and over and over again until my body releases and I go, this is true. You know, sometimes it's the 20th time that I wrote it down.

It doesn’t take that long. I mean, I'm talking about something that takes less than five minutes. But the point is getting your head into an intentional thought space.

Ending the Day with Progress: The “Bookend” Practice

Rebecca: The second thing I would say is we’re going to bookend the day.

Amy Capello: Okay.

Rebecca: Your end-of-day transition from work to home is also critical. If you end your workday, as most of us do, feeling like, I didn’t get enough done today. I’m behind. I’m letting people down. I shouldn’t have done it that way.

If those are your thoughts and then you go into your home life, it makes perfect sense why you're going to log back on. It makes perfect sense why you're going to stay available. It makes perfect sense why you're going to be distracted and not let anything go.

Like—you left your day feeling like you weren’t good enough, you didn’t do enough, and you let everybody down.

So it’s also another key moment where we want to release all of the thoughts for the day—all of the negative thoughts—and come into our home life so we can be really present, which is what all of us really want when we’re creating work-life balance.

So I would say that practice could look very similar. You could bookend the same practice if you really wanted to. But one of the things I really like to say at the end of your day is to just focus on progress made.

It’s the Progress Effect. If you went on and googled that, there is tons of research around it. Essentially, your brain is really, really good at pointing out to you all the things you did not do and all the ways that you missed the mark. It’s natural.

Your job is, every single day at the end of your workday, to focus on progress made—all the things that you accomplished, all the conversations that you had, all the ways that you moved something forward, even if it was just a little bit.

And then I like to add a little extra thing at the end of that, which is to just say, How was that valuable today?

Giving Yourself Permission to Shut Down

Rebecca: Really sink into this idea that you provide value in your workplace and in your day. And I have to actually put a sentence to that answer—that these things were valuable today because...

It’s going to help your whole brain just go, Oh, I really did do a lot today. I can shut down. It’s okay for me to let go and shut down.

Amy Capello: Right.

Rebecca: So, I mean, I definitely flesh this out in the practices that I give my clients, but at a very high level, it’s very simple. We really do need to go in with the right thoughts, and we need to end our day feeling really good about what we’ve accomplished instead of focusing so much on the negative.

Wins Are About Action, Not Just Results

Amy Capello: So what we did, I am going to add a small little tidbit to that, because you have absolutely called me out, and I feel challenged. So my coach encouraged me—because I did always feel behind. And, you know, I have practices and coaching, self-coaching I can do. That’s better than I was a year ago, but still, feeling like I'm in this exponential growth in my business right now, I just feel behind.

And so she said, get a journal. And I'm not really a journaler, but I did get a journal, and kind of like you were saying with the bookends—so at the end of my workday—she encouraged me to write down my wins.

And for me, if I can be really vulnerable and transparent and authentic here, that's hard. Because what it takes for me to qualify something as a win, as a high achiever and a perfectionist, is really difficult. And so I wrote that down myself.

Rebecca: I'm like, ooh, that would be a hard one for me.

Amy Capello: So what she encouraged me to do is to see the action as the win, not the result. Right. So I took action to make sure I had a conversation with someone I hadn't followed up with before. It doesn't matter that they didn't respond to me. I took the action I needed to take. That was my win, right?

Rebecca: Yeah.

Amy Capello: I made sure that I created this resource for this client that I promised them for a month that I hadn’t gotten to them yet. It was really important, and I took the action to do it. Maybe I didn’t finish it yet, but I’m halfway there, and that action counts.

So it's not the result that is the win. The win is taking the action. But I have to say, I'm going to call myself out—the last day I did this was on August 8, and I haven't done it since. So I'm going to pull this out so it's on my desk where I can see it, because it's easy to let those things go. But when you're doing them, they really do make a difference.

Building Balance Requires Maintenance

Rebecca: So part of the maintenance plan.

Amy Capello: Part of the maintenance. I love it. So thank you for this. I have been challenged and learned things, and I'm going to look into a few of these, like the Progress Effect. I haven’t heard that before, so I'm going to look into that.

How can people connect with you? And when does the Ambitious and Balanced group roll out? Because that sounds absolutely incredible.

Join the Ambitious & Balanced Group

Rebecca: Yeah. So really the best way to follow me is on my podcast, which is called Ambitious and Balanced Working Mom. Very easy to find. I give lots of content, lots of tools, lots of strategies on that.

And then, I mean, I have a website you can go to, obviously, and get more information on that. But the group is going to launch—we’re going to start in October.

Amy Capello: Okay, perfect.

Rebecca: And sign-ups are going to start—actually, they start next week. And if you check the next episode of the podcast, which comes out on Mondays—if you check the next one coming out next Monday, I'm going to roll it all out. I'm giving you all the details. You’ll have the link and so forth to start signing up for that.

I’m only taking ten amazing women into this program in this first iteration of it. So I'm so stoked about it. It’s gonna be great.

Why This Coaching Program is Priceless

Amy Capello: All right, so people better hop up and join, because that is something that would be super powerful for them to have those resources and that guidance as they're going along. Knowing that it's not even just like, here's a tip, but that they're going to have a coach that walks them through step by step and can hold them accountable to the process for that three months. Priceless. That's amazing.

So we will make sure to share that on our page as well. That’s amazing.

So, Rebecca, thank you so much for coming on and for being here. Absolutely amazing insights, and I am encouraged and going to make sure that I do my journal at the end so that I can hold myself accountable, too.

So thank you so much, and yeah, we will connect with you soon. Thank you.

Rebecca: All right, thanks, Amy. Hey, working moms. Thank you for being a part of this community.

If you're listening to this podcast, it's because you are a career-driven, goal-focused, ambitious working mom that is looking for more support and practical tools to balance life. You’re in the right place, and it has been an honor to support you through this free podcast.

But I want more women just like you to get the support they need through this resource. And the best way you can help me do that is by rating and reviewing this podcast. When you rate and review, it makes its way into the algorithm, and then it recommends the podcast to more amazing, ambitious women just like yourself.

I thank you in advance. And until next week, let's get to it.

Rebecca Olson