Work vs. Family: How to Reframe the Tension Between Your Most Important Priorities

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Today, I’m flipping the script on one of the biggest mindset traps working moms fall into - the belief that work and family are at odds with each other. What if that tension you feel isn’t a sign that something’s wrong but proof that you’re living a full, meaningful life? I’ll show you how to reframe that tug-of-war into one of your greatest teachers, helping you sharpen focus, build confidence, and make decisions that lead to a no-regrets kind of life.  

Topics in this episode:

  • The truth about the “competing priorities” mindset and why it’s holding you back 

  • How reframing work vs. family tension can actually strengthen both 

  • Four reasons your career and motherhood work together, not against each other 

  • Real client stories, who found peace and focus through this reframe 

  • Why mindset work is the foundation of sustainable work-life balance

Show Notes & References:

Transcript

Intro

You know that feeling — like you’re constantly being pulled in two different directions? You want to show up to work with focus and excellence, and you want to be fully present with your family. But no matter how hard you try, it always feels like one side loses.

What if that tension isn’t proof that you’re doing it wrong or that there’s a problem — but proof that you’re living a full and meaningful life?

In this episode, we’re flipping the script on competing priorities, especially the ones between your career and your home. I’ll show you why this tug of war is actually your greatest teacher — how it can sharpen your focus, strengthen your confidence, and help you make decisions you won’t regret.

Because balance isn’t about doing everything perfectly. It’s about learning to hold on to what matters most with peace, clarity, and trust.

If you’ve ever thought, I just want to feel good about both, this episode is one you don’t want to miss.

Are 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.

Reframing the Beliefs That Hold You Back

Hello, working moms. We’re going to start a little series over the next few weeks where we’re going to reframe some really common beliefs and mindsets that I hear so, so many working moms struggle with. And to be honest, they’re holding them back.

Reframing is a tool that I use a lot in coaching to help my clients essentially find a different perspective. Now, you’ve heard me on this podcast talk about a flashlight versus a floodlight view, and that’s essentially what we’re doing here — we’re opening up a floodlight to another perspective that you can have that’s more useful to you, that makes you feel good.

Because the way we think about something is never right or wrong — it’s simply a perspective. And you always have control over what perspective you decide to have.

The Guilt That Consumes So Many Working Moms

For example, I remember when I went back from maternity leave to my full-time job — that was almost 11 years ago now, which I can hardly believe. We had selected a daycare for my daughter to be at, and it killed me. The guilt that I experienced was immense.

I was paying somebody else to watch my kid. I remember thinking about that a lot — I should be spending more time with her. I should be the one that’s comforting her and supporting her and growing her. Something just felt so wrong about the situation.

That was my perspective for almost the first year that we sent her to daycare. And just to be clear — this daycare was amazing. I feel like I literally hit the jackpot with it, even though I was having all of these feelings and holding this perspective for so long.

The Reframe That Changed Everything

Until one day, my daughter mooed like a cow. I’ll never forget it. I remember going to my husband and saying, “Did you teach our daughter how to moo?” And he said, “No, I didn’t.” I knew I hadn’t either.

And in an instant — literally — a reframe happened in my mind. I held a different perspective: Maybe this daycare is actually really good for her because she’s learning things that I didn’t even know I could teach her.

Maybe this daycare is actually the best thing for her because she has two child development specialists watching her and expanding her brain and guiding her in ways I’m not even sure I could.

And with that reframe, everything changed. All of a sudden, the guilt was gone, the tension was gone — because I believed my daughter was getting the best.

Sometimes there’s a triggering event, like my daughter mooing (literally), that brings about a different perspective or reframe. And for my clients, it’s often a very intentional conversation that loosens up a perspective or mindset that’s no longer serving them.

Reframing Competing Priorities

So today, the reframe that we’re going to tackle is around competing priorities. It’s this belief that your work and your life are sort of at odds with one another — that in order to be really great at either one, you have to choose.

We’re reframing this idea that your work and your life feel at odds with one another — and that it’s even a problem. Because here’s the thing: if your perspective is that it’s a problem that your work and your home life are competing for your time, or that your job takes away from being the mom you want to be, then you’ll likely start believing you have to pull back in your career.

You might think, I can’t handle this. I’ll have to go down to part-time, change jobs, or do something to get rid of the tension between work and home — because it’s a problem.

At the end of the day, if you were really forced to choose between your career and your kids, you’d choose your kids every single time. Because at the end of the day, it’s your family that matters most.

I believe this is one of the reasons why so many women leave the workforce within 18 months after having their first child — or change jobs, go down to part-time, or shift in some way to create more flexibility for themselves and their families.

Why So Many Women Feel Forced to Choose

Actually, statistics show that one-third of women make this change within 18 months. But it’s not because it’s what they want — it’s because the tension between work and home feels like too much. It feels like they can’t navigate both, and they have to choose.

Now look, there is a subset of women out there who, after having kids, absolutely want to deprioritize work and prioritize their family. In other words, they want to be stay-at-home moms — that’s the motherhood experience they desire. Or they want to work part-time. That’s amazing, and I love that for you if that’s who you are.

But studies also show that’s only about 3% of women. The rest — the majority who decide to leave the workforce or pull back in their careers — do it because they feel like they have to. They believe work and family are just too much at odds with one another.

That’s why reframing this mindset is so important. Your work and your family are not at odds — at least, you don’t have to believe that.

How Might That Not Be True?

When I start this process of reframing a perspective and opening up a floodlight for my clients, I often start by asking them this question: How might that not be true?

In other words — how might it not be true that your work and your family life are at odds with one another? How might they actually be working together? How might they actually be supportive of one another and in harmony with one another?

So I want to offer you four reasons why your work and your family life are actually working together — four perspectives that show they’re not at odds, and that you don’t have to choose.

Reason #1: Tension Isn’t a Problem — It’s Proof of a Full Life

Let this tension that you experience between work and home — it’s not actually a sign that things are wrong. It’s a sign that you are going after a full life.

A life where you have it all. A life where you choose to make an impact in the world through your job and also experience the joy and fulfillment of being a mom. There’s no problem there — it’s simply a sign of a very full life.

A life where you are going to have no regrets.

Reframing Presence: Living the Life You Always Wanted

I remember a client of mine, Kim. When Kim and I started working together in coaching, she was really struggling with being present. At work, she was always thinking about her daughter — things going on with her, how she was feeling, her development. And then at home, she was always thinking about clients, upcoming deadlines, and projects.

She couldn’t seem to get her mind and body in the same place at the same time. But together, we were able to reframe that. She stopped seeing her lack of presence as a problem and instead decided that she was actually living exactly the life she wanted to be living.

Now, that didn’t mean she didn’t want to optimize life — to make some things better and lessen that tension between work and home — but solutions became infinitely easier when she no longer saw work and home as being against each other.

I remember she made a few key decisions. She decided to have really clear ends to her workday. She started picking up her daughter a couple of times a week after school or daycare — something she didn’t always do — and she really relished that time. Then she’d log back on later to make up for the work time she missed.

That was what was important to her. Her confidence as a working mom grew. She started to live in this energy and perspective of, “I’m living exactly the life I’ve always dreamed of — isn’t this amazing?”

And because of that, she was able to live a very full, ambitious working mom life.

Reason #2: The Tension Creates Focus

Reason number two that your work and your home life are not actually at odds with one another — and maybe they’re even supportive of each other — is that it forces you to have focus.

When you have two good things going on in your life and you want both to succeed simultaneously, you have to be extra focused on what matters most. You cannot be wasting time with commitments or things that don’t really matter to you or aren’t aligned with your goals — or that are other people’s problems.

It forces you to go all in on what matters most to you and let go of the rest. It brings clarity. When your schedule and commitments reflect your ultimate goals — being successful and impactful at work while also being a present and connected mom — that’s when you know you’re leaving no room for regret.

What “Having It All” Really Means

Some people like to think “having it all” means not having to make any choices. Others like to think it means not having everything at the same time.

But I like to think having it all means going all in on the things you’ve decided matter most to you.

And when you go all in on some things, inevitably that means you’re not going all in on others.

So when you allow the tension between work and home to be supportive of each other, it will force you to narrow in on what truly matters — and that creates natural focus, if you let it.

Reason Number Three: The Tension Forces Confident Decision-Making

So let’s get into the third reason and the last point. We’re talking about focus, right? That your work and your home life aren’t at odds. It actually provides a ton of focus for you, making sure you’re going all into the things that matter most.

Well, it also forces confident decision-making.

I had a client, Shelly, who just never felt like she was ever doing anything right. She was not giving her best to her family, she wasn’t giving her all at work. She was kind of feeling like she was failing at everything.

And so when we stopped and reframed this idea that work and home were not actually at odds with one another — that she was living exactly the life that she wanted to be living, right — and that there wasn’t a problem here, and that she didn’t really have to give up either one, and that she could, like, work in harmony with these things together, what happened is she naturally started to problem-solve with a lot of confidence on how to sort of ease up the tense moments throughout the day.

Because if there’s no longer a problem, that means that there must be some way that these things work together, right? There must be some way to make it so that, like, the gears don’t feel like they’re grinding all the time.

Seeing Work and Home as a Team

And so the natural next question emerged for us in coaching, which was: since work and home are not actually at odds with one another and you don’t have to choose, what would be required in order for you to make them feel more harmonious, more in sync with each other?

You actually are able to go straight into problem-solving mode when you don’t see these things as at odds with one another, right?

What would need to happen, or what would you need to do, in order to bring more harmony between work and family? You can really only answer that question if you don’t fundamentally see that these two things don’t work together, right? You have to see that they can work in tandem together, right?

The Power of Problem-Solving Without the Problem

So some of the natural next steps emerged for my client, Shelly. She decided she wanted to be home for dinner every night at 6 p.m. on the dot. She was going to make it — she was not going to take work calls or do any emailing. She was literally going to put her phone away between the hours of 6 and 8.

Eight o’clock was when she put her kids to sleep. She realized she needed to prioritize more rest time or self-care so that she had more capacity throughout the day. There was a whole host of meetings she needed to start saying no to, and a few projects she needed to be taken off of.

When there’s no problem, you can more easily problem-solve for the result that you want, which is, of course, more work-life harmony and alignment.

Reason Number Four: Tension Builds Emotional Resilience

The last reason — the fourth reason I want to offer to you that your work and your home life are not, in fact, at odds with one another (and maybe are even harmonious) — is that it forces more emotional resiliency and boundaries.

Which is never a bad thing.

You’ve heard me say time and time again on this podcast that the only thing that ever gets in the way of you sticking to your priorities, holding to your commitments, or keeping your boundaries is an emotion.

It’s a feeling — like you might be disappointing someone. It’s fear of failure. It’s the experience of regret or immense guilt. These emotions are what get in our way.

Boundaries That Come From Strength

So when you see that work and life actually work together — that they’re not at odds with one another — it’s going to force you to make decisions around what’s most important to you.

And it’s also going to force you to put boundaries around those most important things, and increase your emotional resiliency to keep them.

A willingness to not spiral in guilt. An ability to overcome fear of failure and the potential disappointment — I can’t even speak — of others, right?

You literally stop making so many emotion-based decisions and you feel so much more in control of how you feel today.

Four Reasons Work and Home Aren’t Actually at Odds

All right, so let’s recap real fast — four reasons why work and home are not actually at odds with one another, and in fact, might even be supportive of each other.

Number one: It’s actually a sign of a full life — one where you are going all in without any regrets.

Number two: It forces focus on what truly matters most to you.

Number three: It builds confident decision-making because you have to get clear and more focused on what matters most to you, which means you’ll make quicker, more decisive choices around the things you’re going to protect and the things you’re going to let go of.

And that really leads into number four: It builds a lot of emotional resiliency. You get more practiced at holding boundaries and taking back control of your emotional life.

When Quitting Feels Like the Only Option

I had a client on the show several months ago — she was in my Ambitious and Balanced group coaching program. Her name was Dana.

Dana came to the coaching program really as a last resort. That’s what she told me, I remember so specifically. She said the only way she was going to find more harmony between work and home — and not have so much tension — so she could show up as the mom she wanted to be, was to go part-time.

But that was really not what she wanted to do. It would have had a big impact on her family, their finances, and all the things. In her mind, there was so much conflict between work and home that her only option was to quit.

Can anyone else relate?

A New Way Forward

I told her, “Look, try this first. Go through this program first. Let me teach you how to make more aligned decisions, how to stick to your boundaries, how to manage your time better, manage your emotions better — and then let’s see where you’re at.”

And I remember just six or seven weeks into our coaching together in this group, she told me she was no longer considering quitting or pulling back.

She could absolutely see a path forward — one where she could experience more balance, be more in control of her time and priorities, and ultimately feel so much more joy in her life.

And of course, at that point she hadn’t perfected anything. Six or seven weeks into the program, she was still learning. She had a long way to go. But she saw this path forward that she had never seen before — and she knew it was possible for her.

When You Drop the Struggle Story, Everything Shifts

There are countless stories I could tell you of clients who, when they dropped the struggle story and really reframed work-life balance — not as being at odds with one another but as being supportive of each other — everything shifted for them.

Now, I’m not going to lie — reframing a story like this takes time. It’s not a one-and-done coaching conversation or a quick mindset shift you can make overnight. If you’ve been believing a story that life and work are at odds, and that maybe you need to quit your job or take time off to figure out balance, reframing this is going to take time, repetition, and a lot of digging in.

That’s why so much of the Ambitious and Balanced program is focused on shifting mindset and shifting stories. Because what you believe ultimately dictates the solutions you come up with and the actions you take — your behavior.

Change the Story, Change Your Life

In order to change your overworking habits, change what you prioritize, and change how you feel — in a sustainable way, where it’s not just good for a couple of months but good forever — we actually have to dig into what’s going on in your mind: your perspectives, your stories, your patterns of thought.

It’s such an important part of the process that we focus on deeply in this program.

If you’re interested in joining the next cohort and talking with me about work-life balance — and learning how to reprioritize yourself and your family in three months or less — then please book a time to connect with me to find out if you’re the perfect fit for the next group.

You can do that by going to my website and booking a time at RebeccaOlsonCoaching.com/book. There’s also a link in the show notes.

All right, working moms — reframe the belief that your work and home life are at odds. They’re not. And over the next couple of weeks, we’re going to continue reframing some of the key core beliefs that are likely holding you back from the working mom life that you want and deserve.

Till next week — let’s get to it.

Make 2026 the Year You Finally Feel Balanced

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rebecca Olson