Follow the show:
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Everywhere else
Over the last few months, I've interviewed dozens of working moms through my research and on this podcast. Their jobs were different. Their families were different. Their lives looked different. But the challenges they faced, and the breakthroughs that created lasting balance, were remarkably similar. In this episode, I'm unpacking the four biggest lessons that every working mom needs to hear.
In this episode, we unpack:
Why time isn't actually the biggest problem for working moms
The mindset shifts every balanced woman had in common
How intentional living creates a life with fewer regrets
Why self-trust is the missing piece of sustainable balance
The four biggest insights from interviewing dozens of working moms
Work with me:
Join Ambitious & Balanced:
www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/ambitiousandbalanced
Book a Work-Life Balance Strategy Call:
www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/ambitiousandbalanced-call
Book Your Mental Load Reset Call Here (with free Quiz!):
www.ambitiousandbalanced.com/strategy
Transcript
What if the biggest problem facing working moms isn't actually time?
I know that sounds strange because if I asked a room full of working moms what they needed more of, almost all of them would probably say time. I probably would say the same thing.
But over the last few months, I've interviewed dozens and dozens of working moms for a research project. And then I interviewed a bunch of graduates of the Ambitious and Balanced program right here on the podcast.
When I compared all of these conversations, I expected to find differences in schedules and routines and productivity. But instead, I found something I wasn't expecting at all.
The women who felt overwhelmed and the women who felt balanced weren't really describing different lives. They were describing different ways of thinking.
And I think that explains why so many ambitious women stay stuck, even when they're smart, even when they're capable, even when they're organized, and doing everything that they know how to do.
So today, I want to show you the surprising things that I discovered across all of these conversations that I had with working moms in the recent months. Because if you recognize yourself in these conversations, it might completely change the way you think about work-life balance too.
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.
What Working Moms Taught Me About Sustainable Work-Life Balance
Hey, working moms. I hope you are doing well.
So over the last couple of months, I have been doing a lot of interviewing. Like, I've probably interviewed 40 to 50 different women in the last six to eight weeks.
Some of those women I've been interviewing for a research study I was doing. And I was also doing a lot of interviewing of my clients who had recently graduated from the Ambitious and Balanced program, the last cohort that just graduated.
So at first, I thought I was doing two completely different tasks. One was for this report that I've been building. And then this other one was the evaluation of growth and progress within my Ambitious and Balanced program.
The Difference Between Feeling Overwhelmed and Feeling Balanced
But what is fascinating is that even though I've been doing these things simultaneously, what I've noticed over the last couple of months is that pretty much everybody is saying the same thing across the board.
There's the research study that I've been doing. And a lot of those women are sort of describing to me life before they have found balance. And then there's my clients, who have sort of been describing life to me after they have found balance and after they have gone through my program.
So there's almost like this before and after picture that I've developed with so many women over the last couple of months. It's absolutely been fascinating.
While I want to do an entirely separate episode on the research project and the themes that came out of that, what I want today's episode to be about is actually what my takeaways have been from having so many conversations with working moms over the course of the last couple of months.
Because there have been a few things that have really surprised me that women have said, particularly my clients and the ones that I've interviewed. And so I want to offer those insights to you here in this episode.
Because I think it really gets to the heart of what sustainable balance really means and how, in their own words, what it takes to actually create that.
So there are four things that have really stood out to me that working moms have been saying.
The Challenges Every Working Mom Describes
The first thing that surprised me is how similarly everybody describes the challenges of being a working mom right now.
Everybody talks about the mental load, the guilt, and the lack of presence. Whether I've been talking to my clients or I've been talking to these women across the nation, really around their experience as a working mom, everybody talks about those key challenges in almost every single conversation.
So that's the first thing that surprised me, just the commonality of language that we all use to describe the challenges that we face as working moms.
The Biggest Work-Life Balance Transformation Happens on the Inside
The second surprising insight really comes after observing all of the various interviews that I've had for this podcast.
Because there's been four recent graduates from my Ambitious and Balanced program who have come on this podcast to describe their experience as a working mom, to describe the program to you, and to tell you about what their experience of work-life balance is now, kind of the before and after picture.
So there are a lot of through lines between all of these stories that I've noticed as I've gone back and listened to them and read the transcripts.
Because what I really expected to hear from my clients is I expected them to describe life, kind of on the outside, as being very different. Their schedule being lighter, feeling less busy, feeling like they have more time for themselves, for their marriage, for their kids, better routines, better boundaries, right? These are the kinds of external experiences of balance that I would expect them to talk about.
And I have no doubt that all of my clients experienced those transformations. I mean, certainly they spoke about those things on some level, but it's not the first thing most of them talked about.
If you really go back and listen to their interviews, what they were talking about was increasing confidence and a shift in how they make decisions through the lens of priorities and values.
They talk a lot about calmness and experiencing more intentionality in their life. Every single one of them talked about those kinds of things.
So yes, of course, they learned how to manage their time differently. They learned how to put up boundaries and prioritize in a different way. But the real transformation that every single one of them mentioned was this sort of internal, deeper transformational work.
And they put a lot of words to that that was surprising to me that I want to share with you here.
How Changing Your Thinking Creates Lasting Work-Life Balance
The first one that I was able to draw out from all of these interviews was how my clients change their thinking. They're able to pinpoint how different their thoughts feel to them. That's a really interesting way of thinking about it.
For example, if you go back to Tanya's interview and you listen to her, she talked about how she used to kind of berate herself and say, "Oh, I'm such a bad mom. I shouldn't have done that. I'm such a bad mom." And it was kind of this very negative internal dialogue, particularly around her as a parent.
There was one particular coaching session that we all did together in the cohort where we talked about what it means to be a great mom. I literally had people journal about that, think about that, we talked about that, and then we started to coach on that.
Everyone came up with sort of their own definition of what it means to be a great mom. And ever since that particular session, Tanya said she really changed the way she thought about herself in terms of being a mom. She found that sort of negative voice lessening so much more after we went through that process.
I remember Sarah Ann on the podcast. She sort of laughed about this, but she talked about how she has an inner mean girl that she didn't even really know existed until this program. That inner dialogue was constantly berating her and telling her that she was doing things wrong, she should be doing more for others, and she should be being more productive.
And if you go back and listen to Kelly's episode, she talked about Forever Balance, but she also talked about retraining her brain.
Just like you would train your body if you were going to go through some sort of competition, or you were going to do something athletic, there's athletic training that has to be involved. Well, your brain needs to be trained in the same way if you want to experience more work-life balance.
So literally, Kelly learned how to do these daily reps of positive self-talk and reframing how she thinks.
Why Mindset Is the Foundation of Sustainable Work-Life Balance
And so in the program, I actually walk my clients through several exercises that help retrain your brain. There's the Daily Kickstart, there's the Pivot Protocol, there's the Work-to-Home Transition. These are all really practical ways to start practicing thinking intentionally.
I just love how all of these women were able to highlight how important that sort of reframing of their mind really was to them and to their experience of balance in their life.
And here's why I think this really matters. Learning to think on purpose and to reframe your life through the lens of being enough, doing enough, and being successful means so much of that is what creates sustainability when it comes to work-life balance.
And I think this is where so many other programs sort of get it wrong. They try to fix the external: better planning, better time management, time blocking, being more productive, figuring out how to restructure your day differently so you get more things done.
And I mean, these things are helpful, but if you don't change the wiring in your brain behind the way you're thinking about your own time and the way you're thinking about your priorities, then your change isn't going to be sustainable.
So that was one thing that really stood out to me across all of my graduates, how they really understood the importance of shifting their mindset.
Why Being Intentional Changes Everything for Working Moms
The third surprising thing that came out of all of these interviews is the importance of being intentional.
That was a word that came up a lot when I was interviewing for the report. Women talked about wanting to be more intentional. And it's one of the things my graduates said that they really gained from this program.
They were really amazed at how clear things got for them when they finally allowed themselves to stop, take a step back, and think through the things that really mattered to them.
You may remember in the podcast episode with Allison, she talked about the biggest aha for her being week one of the program, when I have them define balance on their terms.
Literally, she took a step back and she put words to what it meant to experience work-life balance, because she'd been telling herself that she wanted to feel more work-life balance and she wanted to be more balanced. But in the end, she actually didn't know what that meant.
She talked in that episode about the power and the clarity that came when she actually stopped and put words to those things.
So many working moms are living by other people's definitions of work-life balance, of success, of joy. And when she was able to put words to it for herself, she found so much freedom and direction.
Stop Reacting: Decide Your Priorities Before the Week Begins
You also might remember Kelly, who talked about deciding ahead of time what her priorities were going to be for the week. That was one of the practices she got into.
So sitting down, whether that was on a Monday for the rest of the week or on a daily basis, rather than coming into her office and feeling really frantic and overwhelmed as she sat and looked at a to-do list and had to try to figure out what was the most important thing to work on, she would take the time to be intentional and decide ahead of time what was most important to her.
By making those decisions in advance, she was able to lessen so much of that overwhelm and frantic feeling every single day.
Why Working Moms Need to Pre-Decide Their Priorities
Intentional living is really about taking a step back and pre-deciding the things that are most important to you, what your priorities are, what you value, and how you want to spend your time. It's about doing that ahead of time instead of in the moment.
Because when you start making those decisions in the moment, most of those choices are reactive. Most of the time, the things you're going to choose to put your time toward are the things that feel the most urgent in that moment, but maybe aren't necessarily the most important.
The Secret to Living a Regret-Free Life
It's really the only way to ensure that you don't have regrets in your life. And regretting decisions is by far the number one thing working moms have said they worry about. Regretting going all in on their career. Regretting missing out on their kids' younger years. Regretting feeling like they didn't spend enough time with their kids.
I think a lot of working moms live with this kind of unspoken fear that they're making the wrong choices in their life and that, at some point, they're going to look back and wish they had done something else.
Well, the only way to make sure that never happens to you is to be ruthlessly intentional with how you spend your time.
And in order to do that, you have to step back and make some decisions. Pre-decide how you want to spend your time, what you want to prioritize, what you don't want to prioritize, what's important to you, and what you value.
That is where a regret-free life really comes from.
And it's why the first step in my Ambitious and Balanced program, out of the three steps—Clarity, Confidence, and Control—is all about clarity.
It's about getting clear on how you want to define balance, how you want to define success, who you are, and what your priorities are.
I literally walk you through exercises where you put words to all of these things so they become crystal clear and intentional for you.
Why Self-Trust Is the Missing Piece of Work-Life Balance
The last theme that was really surprising to me across these interviews, and this is actually really specific to my clients, my graduates of the program, is they talked about an increase in self-trust.
And I think this one surprises me the most because nobody comes to my programs and says, "I think I need to increase self-trust." Those just simply aren't the words that we use.
People describe it, and they did across all of the interviews, as, "I want to feel less overwhelmed. I want to have less on my plate. I want to feel less stressed out. I want better boundaries. I want to take time for myself. I want to end my workday and feel like I still have energy to be with my kids."
Those are the kinds of things that moms describe across the board in terms of what they want.
But what so many women don't understand is that at the heart of being able to do those things is a really solid foundation of self-trust.
If you go back and listen to all of my graduate interview podcast episodes that have happened in the last six weeks or so, you're going to hear them all talk about self-trust.
Self-Trust Helps You Stop Second-Guessing Yourself
Self-trust is believing that you're making the right decisions. It's ending a lot of the second-guessing where you feel all into the moment and aren't worrying that maybe you should be doing something else or worrying about something that you're not doing in that moment.
It's believing that even if you weren't 100% prepared for tomorrow's presentation, rather than logging back on, you go to the workout class or you spend time with your partner and have a lovely evening with them instead of logging back on and working on your presentation because you trust yourself that you're going to be able to navigate it the next day.
You trust your knowledge. You trust your skills because you know that you know that you can do this, and that you're amazing, and you're the perfect person for this job.
So the fact that all four of those women talked about self-trust on some level, and it came up in a lot of evaluations from the graduates of that program, just makes my heart smile because their relationship with themselves has literally changed.
The result of that change and that increase in self-trust is guilt has melted away. They have calendars that feel more spacious and filled with want-tos instead of have-tos, and there's less logging on at night to prepare more or do more.
In the program, a lot of the work that we do is around confidence. And one important element of confidence is an increase in self-trust.
The Practical Tools That Help Working Moms Build Self-Trust
And there are some really practical tools that you can learn in order to do that.In the program, I help my clients build a yes criteria so that they make a lot fewer in-the-moment decisions, which leaves less room for reactive decision-making and a lot of second-guessing.
You also learn the Pivot Protocol, which is how you interrupt negative self-talk spirals and emotional overwhelm so that, even in the moment, you know exactly how to pivot out of those spirals and be back in control and intentional.
I don't typically use the words self-trust when I talk about it with my clients, but it's so true to what all of them have learned. And I just love that it came up in all of their interviews.
Sustainable Work-Life Balance Starts From Within
So to summarize, working moms across the nation are stressed out from the mental load, are experiencing an extreme amount of guilt, and are wishing for more presence.
And my graduates who have gone through the Ambitious and Balanced program learned that they didn't actually need more time, or a partner to help out more, or their kids to stop having meltdowns, or a boss to stop piling work on them.
What they needed in order to create sustainable work-life balance in three months or less was to think more intentionally, specifically about yourself, your time, and your value.
You need to get relentlessly intentional with how you spend your time by defining success, by getting specific with your priorities, and by giving your brain some really clear direction.
And lastly, you need to increase trust in yourself so that you stop making decisions to overwork, to please other people, to prevent a meltdown, or to get your husband to do something.
Instead, you simply believe that you are enough, you're good enough, and you're doing enough, no matter what.
Imagine Feeling Calm, Confident, and Balanced in Just 12 Weeks
Let me tell you, the Ambitious and Balanced program is not an entry-level program. It's also not a DIY program. In three months, I guarantee that you are going to make huge leaps in lessening your overwhelm and your stress and increasing your presence and your calm, and managing your time in a completely different way.
Most of my clients rate themselves—I have them kind of evaluate themselves when they come in. Most of them rate themselves at around a three or four when they start the program. And by the time they end, on average, it's about a seven and a half or an eight. That's just in 12 weeks.
I mean, imagine how different life would be for you if you got to the holidays and you were experiencing balance at an eight out of 10. Maybe it's even more than that, where you wouldn't be stressed out about the holiday season or longing for the vacation because you were already experiencing a life of calm in your daily life.
You're not waiting for the weekends in order to rest or relax. There's no Sunday scaries, right? You're just actually enjoying the life that you've created for yourself.
Then imagine what would be different in 2027 if you were able to live with that level of intentionality and that feeling of confidence and self-trust.
Maybe the next promotion is going to happen sooner than you think.
I've had at least five clients get promoted while either in my three-month program or directly after that three-month program as a result of our coaching together. Because all of a sudden, when you're feeling intentional and confident, you start showing up differently.
You start speaking up. You start sharing ideas. You feel less worried about what other people are thinking and how your work is impacting your family, or vice versa.
What Could Change for You by 2027?
So maybe 2027 is finally the year that you go after your career ambitions. Or maybe it's the year that you finally take that dream vacation. Maybe it's with your family, or maybe it's with a bunch of girlfriends. You go away for a whole week just to experience radical relaxation and fun.
Or maybe 2027 is the year that you ask for a raise, and you don't feel shy about it because you know that you deserve it.
What would be different for you if you were entering 2027 and you had learned to interrupt the negative self-talk, gotten ruthlessly intentional with your time and priorities, and built a trusting relationship with yourself?
I thought when I was doing all of these interviews with different working moms over the last couple of months that I was researching the mental load and burnout. And I certainly did gain some insights into those things.
But at the end of the day, what I was really researching was how to increase your capacity and the important role of identity when it comes to work-life balance, and the impact it has on your confidence.
Maybe you're someone who resonates with how these working moms felt prior to the transformation they experienced in this program. Maybe you're craving not just a break from overwhelm, but how to lessen it permanently and to experience what Kelly described on the podcast as "forever balance." I love that term so much.
Maybe right now, all you really want is to take back control of your time, create some space in your calendar, and feel more on top of everything so that you don't get to the end of your day feeling like you didn't do enough and feeling like you're not good enough.
Sustainable Work-Life Balance Isn't About Time Management
And I hope what you learned in this episode is that the mechanism to do that is not actually time management strategies, productivity hacks, or some sort of perfect calendar.
It's through intentional decision-making and self-trust. That is what makes it sustainable. And that's what the Ambitious and Balanced program is really all about.
I guarantee that in less than three months, you will shift from regularly feeling overwhelmed to regularly feeling calm.
You will move from having a calendar that is back-to-back meetings and exhausting to a calendar that has space for things that are important to you, like self-care and uninterrupted time for your work and your goals.
I promise that this is all something that you can then repeat after you leave the program because that's the sustainable part.
The tools, practices, and strategies that you are learning are going to be lifelong management, not just today management.
Ready to Create Sustainable Work-Life Balance?
I still have a few more spots open in the July cohort of Ambitious and Balanced. We actually don't start our weekly calls until August, but the virtual classroom is going to be opening up here in July. And I would love for you to join.
If you have even just the hint of interest in joining this program, if there's a little bit of a nudge, like maybe now is the right time, and it's okay if you're feeling a little bit nervous or scared, that's why I want you to schedule a 30-minute Work-Life Balance Strategy Call with me.
That's how it starts for all of these women. We get to know each other, I can tell you a bit more about the program, but really, we can dig in to figure out what your goals are for the next season and decide if this program is really the right fit for you.
So if you want to book that Work-Life Balance Strategy Call, there is a link in the show notes. I encourage you, I encourage you to do that right now while it is still on your mind.
Don't let another day go by where you are not experiencing the spaciousness, joy, and presence that your life really can be.
There are some surprising things taking place for working moms right now. I would love for you to join in and have the same experience as my graduates.
I can't wait to talk with you, and until next week, let's get to it.
The Mental Load Reset
One sec before you go, I want you to know that every woman who has ever transformed her life inside one of my programs started the same way. One session. Thirty minutes. Just the two of us.
In this strategy session, we cut through the noise of your life and get specific about what's actually driving your overwhelm. You walk away with one concrete thing to do about it.
And most women tell me this is the clearest they have felt in months. I've opened up a few of these Mental Load Reset spots exclusively for podcast listeners for $9.
If you've been listening and thinking, "Oh, I wish I could chat with Rebecca without making any sort of coaching commitment," this is the next step. And it's the one that makes everything else start to make sense.
There's a link in the show notes. Grab your Mental Load Reset spot, and I'll see you there.
