Old Thoughts And Identities I Don’t Have Anymore (As A Mom Of 3)

Welcome to Mom On Purpose, where it’s all about helping moms overcome challenges and live their best lives. My hope is by being here, you are more inspired to become the mom you are made to be. I’m Natalie, your host, a wife, boy mom, dog, mama, Chicagoan, and former lawyer turned professionally certified coach. If you’re here to grow, I can help. Let’s go.

Hello, my beautiful friends. Welcome to the podcast. Coming to you just after last week with a big announcement. The podcast on a weekly basis is back after a five month hiatus where I only published weekly podcasts inside the membership, I have decided to bring back weekly podcasts. And really this simply had to do with, I missed it. I missed being able to reach more women with these tools and I hadn’t figured out a way to include the podcast in my business in a way that really like structurally made sense from like a systems perspective.

And since then, I have. I have worked with an amazing business coach, figured out some things myself and making huge changes in my business that I think you’re going to love. And with that, I have decided to bring back the weekly podcast for everyone. So this kicks off the first episode of that and I wanted to make it a little bit more of a personal one and one that reflects my transformations and shifts from doing this work, the work of managing my mind and my emotions deliberately. So I want to talk with you about old thoughts and identities that I don’t have anymore. For some of you who have been around for a very long time, you will, you know, recognize some of these. For others of you, it’ll be an opportunity for you to get to know me in either camp. My intention is that, not just that you get to know me more personally, but instead that you see if you have any of these thoughts or similar thoughts or identities, that they are optional.

And that even if you don’t feel like they’re optional right now, that they are just seeing me as an example of having transformed them and that you can create any change that you truly want and desire. So that’s my hope. So let’s go through, I think I have about seven of them that I thought would be, just fun to talk about. So number one is the identity that I’m an alpha female, meaning I have to lead, I have to dominate, I have to be in control, I have to outperform. I used to think this was so much a part of me that I really self-sabotaged in dating. I thought like, because I’m an alpha female, that means I need to be with more of like a beta guy. But I really wanted to be with more of an alpha male. And like really it was just the wrong dichotomy for me.

It’s not that you either are an alpha female or you’re not, like there’s no blood test for that. That’s how I want you to think about it. The way we talk about identities, we talk about them as if they’re facts. And you can always find truth in whatever you are describing, like personality tests or astrology. Of course, you’re going to find truth in that. And that’s not to say that, you know, it’s, it’s not true, but it is to say that the weight that you give identities is either helpful or unhelpful. And so for me, by identifying as an alpha female for all of those years when I didn’t like that I was that way in dating specifically, I liked that I was that way in my career, it ended up just wasting a lot of time point blank, right? And what I really did to overcome that was see, like I, I don’t have to think that about myself.

Like every single thought you have about yourself is an optional thought. And to break apart any identity, it’s not going to be available to go to like the opposite. Like I’m so laid back and feminine, but instead to do whatever, to put whatever you’re doing in your actions. So, like if I was like being very controlling, instead of saying that makes me an alpha female, it’s, oh, I notice that I have this tendency towards control. Like what is that really about? Like then you have something to work with, then it’s just about skills. Like, oh, there’s obviously a skill and, and being more comfortable in my own body and with vulnerability, right? That’s really all control is about. And if you understand like my upbringing and my history and my home dynamics, it makes complete sense that I was the way that I was. But labeling all of that as an alpha female was unhelpful.

Now to be clear, nothing wrong with labeling yourself as an alpha female. I was doing it in an unhelpful way with respect to dating. Like, I was sort of using it as like the reason why I couldn’t have the family that I wanted. And it’s so interesting now because I’m kind of decades past this. Like I turn 40 next year and I’m just thinking like that type of frame isn’t a part of me at all. And yet I still have like extremely high standards. I still have like a standard of excellence. I still feel like I’m like a go-getter and high achiever and goal setter, and I’m very soft and grounded and feel comfortable being, being vulnerable and receiving and being taken care of. And I just find that fascinating, right? Like the, the dichotomy, the frame of being an alpha female isn’t even in my mind at all.

I certainly feel like feminine in my marriage and I feel like I married a guy Steve, who’s like very masculine. And so, it’s just interesting, right? Like the more you are focused on an identity, the more you live into it. And again, like there are awesome helpful identities, right? Me calling myself a high achiever, I love that, okay, but I’m not using it against myself as a reason why I can’t relax, for example. So, just an invitation for you to ask yourself what identities you’re using that are preventing you from getting what it is you want. Okay? Number two, I have to do anything. So specifically the word have to have have is the word have to two words, right? Anytime I would say I have to do something, I would really disempower myself and give my power away. And there is nothing, nothing that you have to do.

And I really believe this to my bones, to my core, and it’s been so helpful for me to empower myself in any situation. I always like to think it’s like not the hand you’re dealt, it’s how you play your cards. And if you use that analogy when we say I have to, it’s like, oh, well this is the hand that I was dealt, so I have to fill in the blank. Versus, okay, this is my hand. Now what? I’ve got options. I could just fold. I don’t know, I don’t play cards. But you get the idea, right? It’s like this is sort of a general one, but it has been so life changing for me because as my Mom On Purpose, girlies know, I like to refer to myself as having been the queen of self-pity. And that’s the opposite of feeling empowered. You’re really feeling at the effect of your life when we, when you say like you have to, so I used to say I have to get up with my son during the night, but I didn’t.

I didn’t have to. The truth was I wanted to, I wanted to be a mom who got up with her son in the middle of the night more than I wanted to sleep. That’s the truth. And also the truth is that it was hard and being sleep deprived is not fun. But what makes it even less fun is adding on top of the tiredness, self-pity. And that’s what I was doing. And so where are you feeling like you have to do something and just question that. And remember, there’s nothing that you have to do. Not ever so crazy, right? Number three, there’s not enough time. This one I think is just something we like glorify as women because we are rewarded for doing a lot whenever we even sarcastically refer to like Supermom or the woman who does it all, it’s about how much she’s getting done.

And so we start to define our goodness by our productivity. And now please do not hear me saying anything wrong with productivity. I love to get things done. I love to be productive, but I’m not basing my goodness on it. I have days where I’m just totally relaxing and not producing. I have hours throughout the day where, you know, nothing’s getting done and I don’t like, I just, I don’t buy into tying my worth and how good I feel about myself to accomplishing things. And I love to accomplish things like that’s so fun. But I believe in my internal goodness regardless of what I get done. And this ties back to there’s not enough time. Because if you are in a rush and if you are thinking I’m behind, I can’t catch up, I need more hours than you are in scarcity, then you are thinking negatively and you are rushing.

And if you’re rushing, you’re trying to like avoid some sort of pain versus like, you could just be behind as like a fact. I don’t know, it’s really a thought, but let’s just say it’s a fact. But you could not care about that and you could not feel so urgent and in scarcity, I’m not suggesting you do that. I actually think it’s better to kind of pull apart the thought and just think like there’s no such thing as behind. But really the problem is not the thought I’m behind. It’s what you make that mean about you. Like, and I shouldn’t be and there’s never enough time and I need more hours. So oh my gosh, I just love the mindset work that I have done on time. It has been so transformational. I am going to do a masterclass inside the Mom On Purpose Membership this year.

I have to check and see what month I’m going to do it, but it’s definitely upcoming. It’s going to be my time freedom method where I teach you all of the amazing goodness that will change your life with respect to time, productivity, time scarcity, not enough time planning. Like truly, I think it is just so foundational in terms of being able to show up as the woman you want to be like with everything planning. It’s just how you use your prefrontal brain. And coming back to the, the point here, it’s like when I used to just think that thought it would feel terrible, but it would also feel so true. And it was just poor mind management really. I didn’t know that I could think something else. I didn’t know that that was optional and I didn’t understand what time really was. And time is just like, it’s like I don’t want to get too woo, right?

But it’s kind of woo, right? Because time is not like a real thing outside of ourselves. It’s something like that we have created to measure and create systems for ourselves around. But like to say there’s not enough time when you actually pull that thought apart, it does not even make sense, okay? Because there’s, there’s just time. Time just is, we all have the same amount of time now. We, all don’t have the same amount of resources of course, but like time just is what we mean when we say there’s not enough time is that we actually want to do something that requires more time than the time we’re going to give ourselves to do that thing. And like even that is such a more empowering like way to describe something, but we just short it and say there’s not enough time. But that’s not true.

Like there, there’s no such thing as that. Okay? I know it’s going to get a little meta if I spend too much time, no pun intended there on this one, but I’m telling you because I don’t think that if I’m behind, it’s fine if I can’t catch up. Like I don’t even use the that phrase. This is why managing your mind and doing thought work’s so important, like those words would never come out of my mouth. I can’t catch up because that phrase catch up. Like what does that even mean? That’s the part where you’re pulling apart your thoughts. Like, I don’t know, like what does that mean? What are we catching up to? That’s that self coaching and getting coach, that’s so life changing because in like a very practical way, I’m just not thinking that thought ever. No, that doesn’t mean that like everything’s always done and there’s some like magic laundry fairy that comes overright?

I have piles of laundry right now in baskets and I do not care. I don’t mean that I don’t care about my stuff and taking care of my home and my kids, but laundry just isn’t a high priority and it’s not messy and it’s not too far gone. Like, it’s fine. We always have clean clothes. I’m in this phase right now where I’m not really folding them and we just like either sort them and put them directly away, or we just like get them out for the next day. I’ll get them out for the next day for the boys and it’s fine. Like I just, it’s just not a problem. And I don’t make it mean I can’t catch up. There’s always more to do, like all of those heavy thoughts because I don’t define my goodness on laundry at all, right? And I’m like, I could hire someone or not, or we could just not do laundry.

Again, this goes back to number two, having to do something. I don’t believe I have to do laundry and my kids have to have folded clothes put away, and I just don’t. And those are optional thoughts. And letting go of those has been really life changing for me. Number four is different. I’m such a spender. I used to think this was a fact. My friend, again, we say these things about ourselves and we think they’re facts, but they’re not. There’s no blood tests for being a spender or a saver. And instead of going to, I’m not a spender, what I actually think now is like, I just love money. I love spending money. I love saving money. I love having money. I love learning about money. I love creating money. I love that. Like we’ve created this system of capitalism. And please don’t hear me say that there are not problems with it.

There absolutely are. But this is the economy that I live in and you know, this is the one that I’m participating in. And so with that, I want to have abundant thoughts as like a player in the game. And so I actually love that. Like we trade value. So I will work with a client for weight loss and they’ll pay, she’ll pay me, right? Thousands of dollars. And I help her very directly lose weight. She pays me thousands of dollars, she loses 30 pounds. I give her that, I give her the skills of weight loss. Like that is so cool. We go to the grocery store and we just pay money and we get all of the groceries. It’s like such an awesome system. This is why the work that I did on like paying bills has been really helpful because you never are done with paying bills and feeling really like, abundant around it.

Like I always find it fascinating when people say they don’t want like a membership fee. I’m like, I kind of get it, but also, have you ever thought about like your internet bill and your electric bill and your gas bill? Like you pay those every month. And so it’s just in the, in the frame that you’re thinking about it, right? Like if someone was like, well, we’re just going to take away the internet, I would be like, I will, I will pay like a lot more if, if we’re going to take away internet. Like, I want to pay that bill, I want to pay my electric bill, I want to have lights. And of course like it would be great if the bills were lower always right? We want to be smart with our money. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that the default way that we think about like bills and, saving money and, and not spending it like pulling apart those thoughts like says who.

And I, I do think that this is a lot easier for me to do because I have so much experience with money and being a certified financial planner and a wealth manager and a lawyer and running my own business. And I, you know, thinking about how little I used to know about money and how much more I know about it now it’s easier for me to say like, oh my gosh, it’s all just made up, right? Like, I don’t think I would’ve had the confidence or the experience to reflect back and say that had I not. But having had the professions that I’ve had and the experience that I have with business and with like, making awesome offers and helping my clients and being able to just live in the system where we exchange money and give value. Like, I love that. I love being sold, right?

Like I went and bought a car recently. I love that. I love like investing in programs. I love getting on a sales call. I’m like, sell me on this, right? I have questions. I’m, I’m not just automatically a yes, but like, I love that process because I’ve cleaned up my thoughts. Like I don’t think that’s like skeezy or unhelpful or like I think that’s literally how we get to experience more of life, right? It’s kind of like the way that you get to go on an awesome vacation is by paying for it, right? That’s awesome. Like, if there were no vacations and you couldn’t travel at all and you couldn’t pay money for that, that would be a bummer, right? And so just questioning the way that I think about money has made life so much better. And now I, I like to embrace lots of different identities around money being a spender and a saver and an investor and a creator of money and thinking of those as really useful.

I love that. Okay. This one kind of dovetails nicely with number four as well. It is related to money, but it’s, it’s really to like working hard. I used to really believe that I have to work harder to make more money and kind of like harder than other people as well. Like, so believe number one was I have to work hard to make money and believe number two is just me personally given my skills and characteristics. Naturally I have to work harder than everyone else to make good money. Meaning like, you know, nothing comes easy. Success requires constant pressure, and now I don’t think that anymore. And guess what? My business and my life and my money is a lot more fun. So like, just really breaking down my belief of tying work to money has been really helpful. And how I have taught this before, I’m actually going to teach a money master class as well later this year in the membership where, I’d like to think of like tools, right?

We’re, learning tools here and acquiring skills. And when I think of tools in my tool belt, I like to think of hard work as a tool in my tool belt. So what I’m not saying is that you should be lazy and you shouldn’t work hard. What I’m saying is that I grew up thinking that hard work equaled more money and we know that’s not true. There are, like people earning a lot less right now working three jobs, right? And, maybe making good money, maybe not working so hard, way harder than someone who is working one job or part-time from home. Like there are so many examples of this where hard work doesn’t equal more money. And you know, I think it’s actually helpful because I think it’s just as high achieving women, at least I was definitely this way. Like we can start to be judgmental of people who don’t work hard.

I’m like, you’re not a better person if you work hard. You just have the tool in your tool belt of knowing how to work hard, which by the way is very, very valuable. Like, I love that I know how to work hard, but before I used to be on one end of the spectrum where I thought I had to work hard to be a good person and to make money. And neither of those are true, right? We know lots of people, you know, lots of people, they have lots of money and they don’t work very hard at all. And what’s interesting too is just check on your own money mindset and how you feel about people with a lot of money who don’t work for it. Like that’s definitely, a personal development journey, to go on as well. So for me, untying that and just thinking like, I want to be someone who knows how to work hard and pull out that tool when I want to use it, but not thinking that I need it to be good enough.

Again, that’s that worthiness complex that we have as women thinking we need to do more and work harder and prove ourselves in order to be good. But you could just not do that and it’s a way better time. And then pull out the hardworking tool whenever you want to and then kind of same thing, but a little bit different is like you also can make money more easily and more simply and with less, which is kind of crazy, but I really learned this when I lost weight with less. This isn’t even one that I was going to talk about, but let’s make it one. Okay? I definitely over complicated weight loss and when I lost 50 pounds at four months after having my third baby, which yes, you can still get the mini course, it’s over @momonpurpose.com/weightloss. It’s my most popular mini course.

So many raving clients and reviews definitely recommend it. And like what I proved there as like a pattern is you can get a result doing less. And that’s what I like to think about with respect to money is like, okay. And even now, I think about that. It’s one of the questions I ask myself with my business is like, how can I grow my business significantly, exponentially with less, right? Because there’s tons of stuff I could do with more, but if I am primary childcare for my three kids under five years old, that’s with less, right? And so like, it’s just been really fun to come up with ideas and test them and some work and some don’t, but I know that it’s possible. And that’s one of the kind of philosophies that I have, like doing more with less because it works really well when you’re like a busy mom with little ones.

And, and I don’t want to be someone who believes that I have to do more to like make more money. Okay? Number six, I have such a sweet tooth. Like even if there is scientific evidence in the brain about certain people’s brains that light up in a certain way with sweets compared to others, I still think this is a thought because it’s a summary of whatever data is out there. And because of that it’s optional. So I just choose not to think it about myself because you know what I do when I think the thought, I have such a sweet tooth. I eat more sweetss and you know what? I don’t want to do eat more sweets. And this like broke my brain. Like I’m telling you my friends, when you do thought work and identity work, you will break your brain into what’s possible. Like you could just decide to not eat sweets.

I did that for a while. I ate a little bit of sweets now, but it’s nothing compared to what I did before. It’s really not a part of my life. I could totally cut them out completely. Which is just like really cool. And it comes from not thinking that, like I just, I just think I’m a person who likes some sugar, don’t we? All right. Okay, last one is also a health one and it’s, I’m just this size. So when I was, I was probably 15 pounds heavier than I am now. This was before I ever had any kids. I thought like, I’m just this size, this is just my set point. This is just my body. This is where I land. I’m just a little bit thicker. Losing weight like, you know, isn’t possible. I don’t want to have to work out that much.

And all of these thoughts were extraordinarily unhelpful, my friend and not true. Like I’m 15 pounds less than I was then. And I lost that before having kids. And then with each of my kids I gained 40 pounds, 40 pounds and 50 pounds. And then in between having each of them, I lost that weight rather quickly. If you’re doing the math on having three kids in three years, okay, so, and in a healthy way, I, I just think there’s so much misinformation out there and I think doing thought work has been a huge part of it for me to be able to pull apart, apart those thoughts and, um, decide what I want to think. It’s like the most empowering thing and you just stay in your power when you make these shifts. And I am not perfect at it, but that’s like why I need it.

Like I do not know how you enjoy motherhood and how you, like how you feel happy in life without utilizing thought work because the brain’s wired for survival. So it’s always going to pay attention to the negative validating content and the, stories and headlines that perpetuate that victim mentality. And your brain’s going to scan for it and you have to use thought work and coaching tools to get out of that. Like, I just don’t know another way. And, it’s been really, really life changing for me. The thing that keeps me in my power, the thing that keeps me feeling, you know, not just like motivated and excited, but the thing that keeps me grounded and content and okay with like the negative parts too. Okay? With being bored. Okay, with being tired, okay, with being overstimulated. Like it’s not that I’m only vibing high over here, it’s just that I don’t have a problem with when I’m not.

Let that break your brain for you for a minute, my friends. Alright, I am so glad to be back. I’m really, just looking forward to connecting with you again every single week. Do me a favor, if you haven’t, if you would write me a review. If you’ve been a long time podcast listener and you love the podcast, the only reason I ask is that it really does help give this podcast like a little oomph, a little boost. Apple or Spotify will see that as, oh yeah, more people are listening and then it will show it to more women or moms or alternatively if you want to just send it to a girlfriend, any little bit really goes a long way. So leaving a review, I appreciate it so much. I read every single one and or sharing it with a girlfriend, who might love a motherhood podcast. Alright, my beautiful friends, I will see you talk with you next week. Take care.