Productivity vs. Presence: How to Reframe What It Means to Feel Successful

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In this week’s episode of the podcast, I’m exploring what happens when your old definition of success no longer fits your life as a mom. Before kids, success might’ve meant promotions, achievements, and productivity, but now that version just leaves you feeling like you’re always behind. I share client stories and practical tools to help you redefine success in a way that aligns with your values and season of life, so you can finally feel fulfilled, calm, and proud of how you’re spending your time.  

Topics in this episode:

  • Why your old definition of success doesn’t work anymore 

  • How success and balance are connected 

  • Client stories that illustrate new, sustainable definitions of success 

  • Simple ways to create an attainable version of success 

  • How to use your values and goals as a daily guide

Show Notes & References:

Transcript

Intro

Before kids, success probably meant hitting big goals—promotions, titles, completing your checklist. But somewhere along the way, that version of success started making you feel like you're always behind. Like, no matter how much you do, it's never enough and you're failing.

In this week's episode, we’re reframing what success actually means now. Because when your definition of success doesn’t match your season of life, it keeps you stuck in overworking and guilt.

You’ll hear me share some real stories from my clients—women who have gone from measuring success by productivity to defining it by presence, courage, and alignment. We’ll talk about what truly happens when you start living life based on your version of success.

That includes peace, clarity, and confidence—and the joy that comes when you finally stop chasing everyone else’s definition and start living by your own.

If you’ve ever ended your day feeling like you didn’t do enough, then this reframe episode is for you.

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.

Create Boundaries and Balance This Season

Hello, hello, working moms. Hey, real quick before we get into this episode—if you haven’t heard, I am offering free 30-minute strategy calls on how to have better boundaries and balance during the holidays.

These are one-on-one, 30-minute calls with me where we’ll talk all about what it takes to have presence and joy over your holiday experience. I’m literally going to map it out for you. I’ll draw a visual representation based on your circumstances and your vision for the holidays—showing you exactly what it’s going to take for you to have balance and boundaries this season.

I’ve never done anything like this before. This offer is only $9—it’s literally cheaper than taking yourself out to lunch! You’re going to get so much out of this call.

So please, please—there are only a limited number of spots because I’m only doing them up through Thanksgiving. Once the spots are gone, they’re gone.

You’ll want to grab yours right now by going to www.ambitiousandbalanced.com/boundaries-and-balance-session

I know that was a lot of words, so that link will also be in the show notes for you.

As we prepare for the holiday season, I want to make sure you have all the support you need to create the holidays you truly deserve.

Redefining Success for Working Moms

So, we are continuing on this series on reframing. Now, we’ve talked about reframing the tension that you experience between work and home. And then last week, we talked about reframing your to-do list so that no matter how long it is, you don’t get overwhelmed by it.

And today, we’re going to focus on reframing success.

I talk a lot about this in my Ambitious and Balanced group coaching cohorts, and I actually have an exercise that all of my clients go through where they redefine for themselves their own version of success. Because that’s how important this is to the process.

Living in the Default Cultural Version of Success

Because I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I ever really consciously thought about success and how I wanted to define it before having kids.

I sort of lived in this default cultural version of success, which stated that more was better.

 

In order to feel successful, you had to make good money, get a house eventually, get married, move up in your career, be considered for promotion—success and milestones were intertwined. That was kind of the lesson I learned.

But there was also this very subtle version of success that showed up in everyday life. My day felt successful if I got through all of the things I was supposed to get through.

It was a good day if I got my workout in, called my mom, saw my friends, and finished all my work. That was a “successful” day, right?

But it really wasn’t until motherhood that this hit me—that definition of success doesn’t make sense anymore for the version of life I’m in now.

Why Redefining Success Matters for Balance

And so, real briefly, I want to share the importance of why we're even having this kind of redefinition of success conversation.

Because success and balance are deeply intertwined.

If you want to have an ambitious and balanced life—which is what we're trying to create here in this community through this podcast, and what I'm all about in my group coaching program and my one-on-one program—success is an integral part of that.

If you're not feeling successful, which means you're likely feeling like you're failing or not living up to your potential, you're never going to feel balanced. You cannot feel like you're failing and not living up to your potential and experience balance at the same time.

Success Is Subjective—You Get to Define It

But the problem is, success is completely subjective. You just get to decide what success means.

And yes, of course, our culture has a version of success—and even your family unit likely had a version of success—which talks a lot about money and power and status.

That may or may not be how you want to define it moving forward, right?

You just get to define success for you and your own life however you want.

You don’t have to use the cultural frame. You don’t have to use the frame your parents gave you, or your coworkers, or your neighbors, or the person you watch on social media.

You get to frame up success in whatever way works for you.

The Default Trap: When You Don’t Reframe Success

But if you don’t take the time to stop and reframe it—to actually put some words to it, to decide how you want to think about success, where all of success is successful, not just your work life—then likely what's going to happen is you’ll default into thinking you should be doing more, achieving more, going after that next promotion, checking all of the boxes, and doing all of the things you did prior to kids.

Because that’s the only version of success you were probably ever taught.

And again, some of those things you still might desire—but many of them you probably don’t, or they don’t encompass the full picture of a successful life for you, because they’re still so work-focused, impact-focused, and not necessarily family-focused.

1. Frame Success to Align with How You Want to Live

So, number one, the first thing I want you to understand in this is that when you frame up success, you want to do it in a way that feels congruent with how you want to live your life and how you want to sort of measure life, right? The metrics of life for you.

2. Redefine Success to Make It Attainable

The second reason why you want to reframe success is because you want to make sure that it’s attainable.

You want to make sure at the end of the day, your version of success is something that you are in complete control of that’s not dependent on anybody else doing anything. And it also fits within the confines of a 24-hour day and a 365-day year.

You don’t want to be overly ambitious where you’re setting yourself up for failure all the time.

Shelley’s Transformation in Redefining Success

A great example of this was my client Shelley. She and I worked at reframing her version of success because even though she had reached all of the milestones that you and I would probably say would make her successful—and she herself had dreamed of—she was laying her head on her pillow every single night feeling like an utter failure.

Because she wasn’t living her version of success. She was feeling too constrained by time and energy and commitments that were not allowing her to live it out.

To be honest, it had been several years since she had started having kids. She was stuck in this old frame that was heavily focused on work goals and work priorities.

The amount of time that she spent working, the KPIs for work—those are the key performance indicators—were all related to success in the job. And none of them had anything to do with her family, which at the end of the day left her feeling like she was failing them.

And at the end of the day, if it feels like we’re failing our family because we’re over-prioritizing success in our job, then we’re not going to feel successful at all.

We’re not going to feel this overarching sense of success, because both areas of life have to feel successful in order for us to feel actually successful.

So literally, she and I had to create this checklist where she could physically check off at the end of her day—it was almost like a visual that she needed—that indicated she was being successful that day in the way that she defined it.

Kim’s New Definition of Success

I had another client, Kim, who came into coaching really knowing that she needed to reframe success. It was almost like she was already aware of how incongruent her versions of success in her life were.

She was a high perfectionist. She was an overachiever. She had spent a lot of her life over-prioritizing work—working 70, 80 hours a week. And she came into coaching constantly feeling like she was failing, like she was not meeting her level of success.

After going through a few different exercises together where we named her values and what was most important to her, we came up with a definition of success that worked for her.

And here’s how she defined it: presence over perfection.

It was about being fully in the moment—not checking all of the boxes and doing everything exactly right.

How to Reframe Success When You Don’t Know Where to Start

And actually, for her to help her come up with a reframe of success, what we had to do was decide or define really what success was not.

Because for some of you, I know it’s going to be difficult to think about how you want to frame up success—but you might be much clearer on how you don’t want to frame up success.

You don’t want to frame up success as having a really short to-do list. You don’t want to frame up success as if at the end of the day nobody needs anything from you.

You probably don’t want to frame up success as if your kids never have meltdowns or never cry, right? Because those are versions of success that are unattainable.

They’re not reality. They’re not based in real life.

So, you might be able to think about reframing success through the lens of how you don’t want to do it, which, of course, is going to give you insight into how you do.

The Most Common Reframe of Success: Conscious Decision-Making

I want to offer to you the most common reframe of success that I hear from my clients, having walked them through this exercise time and time again.

Here it is: Success is living life and making conscious decisions based on values and goals.

It’s conscious decision-making that is the frame of success I hear time and time again—or at least some flavor of that.

Essentially, this is about living life how you want to live life, based on what matters to you—your values, your goals, your dreams.

Defining Your North Star: Living Without Regret

Now, of course, you might be asking yourself, “I don’t even know what my values or my goals or my dreams are.”

Which makes perfect sense. A lot of times, what goes along with this exercise of redefining success is also a conversation around defining your values, goals, and dreams.

It’s the next logical step.

That’s why I spend so much time with my clients defining their inner compass—their North Star—helping them put words to the things that matter most.

So that they can evaluate their life to make sure they’re living without regret, to make sure they are making conscious decisions aligned with the life they want to lead.

Look, you could potentially check all of the boxes at the end of the day, do all of the things you planned, and get your to-do list to zero. You might have even been able to do that prior to kids.

I’m not necessarily saying that’s what you should do—I’m just saying it’s possible.

But if you haven’t taken the time to decide for yourself if those checkboxes even matter, then you will have potentially wasted time and energy—your most precious assets.

Real-Life Reframes of Success from Ambitious & Balanced Clients

I want to offer to you a couple of other reframes of success that have come up for my clients in coaching—particularly in the Ambitious and Balanced group, because we do this exercise together as well.

So, so far you’ve heard me say presence over perfection—that was Kim. We have conscious decisions that are aligned with your values and your goals—that’s kind of the most common one I hear.

And then other ones that I’ve heard are: loving how I’m spending my time, feeling in the flow and making an impact, feeling calm and enjoying life, and the last one I have for you is being in control of my feelings and my responses.

Turning Success into Daily Evidence You Can See

Now, with each of these, of course, you could break it down like it was a checkbox—like my client Shelly needed—so that way you really know, literally, you could check the boxes.

How do I know I’ve been present today, or that I’ve been calm today, or that I’m enjoying my life? What would be evidence of that throughout the day?

So you could break it down in such a way that you could literally check boxes to determine and find evidence for how you were successful that day.

And for some of my clients, that’s what they really needed.

Just like Shelly—she needed this list essentially that she could write down every single day that said:

  • Did I spend quality time with my kids today, even if it was just five minutes?

  • Did I literally put down my phone and look them in the eye and feel connected to them?

  • Did I pause throughout the day and take some deep breaths and feel grounded and centered?

  • Did I step away when I was feeling irritated at people today so I made sure I wasn’t snapping at them?

  • Did I get through my three essential tasks that I had planned to get done today?

  • Did I make progress on some of the projects that were most important to me today?

Redefining Success on Your Own Terms

These are all things that you could kind of break down, like my client broke down, that would help you to determine if you are accomplishing and achieving success in your own definition.

Success is not checking every box. It’s not making sure that everyone is happy around you. It’s not even necessarily being the top performer or top earner at your company or reaching that next title.

You get to reframe success however you want.

When you define success for yourself and you reframe it based on however you want to do that, you’re going to feel more grounded and content because you’re going to know exactly how you want to measure success in your life.

You’re going to experience more joy and fulfillment because at the end of the day, you’ll be able to look at your day and actually measure your version of success instead of trying to ladder up to somebody else’s version of that.

Living Without Regret and Feeling More Balanced

You’re going to make sure that there’s no regrets in life because you will have consciously decided for yourself what matters most.

And that way, you can make more aligned decisions to that.

Ultimately, you’re going to unlock for yourself the ability to feel more balanced in your life as you become more successful in all areas of life.

Book Your Holiday Strategy Call: Boundaries and Balance

If you want to specifically talk to me about success—particularly success during the holidays—where you feel more balanced and more present for the amazing holiday memories that are to come, be sure to book your Boundaries and Balance 30-minute strategy call with me.

There’s just a limited number of these seats, and they are going fast.

I want you to be sure to grab your spot—so go into the show notes and click on the link there.

I’m not going to give you the URL because it’s so long—just go into the show notes and click it there.

Be sure to grab a spot to talk with me about balance during the holidays, about framing up success for you this holiday season.

I can’t wait to talk to you, and I can’t wait to be with you next week where we’ll be reframing another aspect of life that’s holding you back from experiencing the ambitious and balanced life that you deserve.

All right, working moms—until next week, let’s get to it.

Rebecca Olson