Perfectly Unhappy: The High Achieving Mom Dilemma

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. Today we are talking about the high achieving mom dilemma, at least that’s what I’m calling it. And I want to start off by asking you a question. Are you good at being perfect and bad at being happy?This is what I think is at the crux of the high achieving moms dilemma. At least it has been for myself and for so many of my clients and just people in this community. And what I mean by this is that you know how to make sure your kids are on time, you know how to clean your home, you know how to host birthday parties and register for all of the activities. You know how to make dinners and accommodate all these specific requests your kids have. You’re mostly organized and you know how to coordinate the family calendar. You volunteer at school events, you keep up with emails and homework assignments. You manage doctor’s appointments, you plan family vacations and weekend activities. You swap out all of the clothes for the next size in a timely matter with a specific system that keeps all of the clothes organized.

You remember birthdays, anniversaries and important dates. You prepare healthy snacks and meals that everyone will actually eat. You keep up with your own work demands and deadlines and kind of career goals if you work outside the home as well. You prepare for holidays with thoughtful gifts and family vacations. You offer emotional support to everyone when they’re having a rough day. Does this sound like you my friend? I want to speak specifically to the person who really knows how to do it all. And yet you don’t know how to play, you don’t know how to rest, you don’t know how to relax, you struggle to just take it easy and lighten up. Little side note, there is a class inside the Mom On Purpose Membership called How to Lighten Up. And it is one of our most popular classes and I think it’s because so many women inside this community know how to do all of the things and get things done except for when it comes to their own happiness.

So do you know how to feel delighted at all? Do you know how to lighten up? Do you know how to set aside time just for yourself without guilt? Typically, I see this being the high achieving mom’s dilemma. At least I know it was for me and I know I continue to coach on it. So I really wanted to do an episode where we talked about it because I think that some of the things you’re likely to struggle with that I haven’t even mentioned yet are being fully present without thinking about the next task and letting things just be good enough instead of having to have them be perfect. Embracing your circumstances when they don’t always go as planned. So when you’re forced to be off schedule, like how do you feel when that happens? Are you able to feel peace when things aren’t perfectly in order?

Are you able to prioritize fun over productivity? Can you reconnect with what brings you joy outside of serving your family and your kids? Do you know how to celebrate small wins without moving on to the next goal and just be still and easygoing and savor those quiet moments without needing to fill the space? I think that this is like the yin and the yang and really what I think I see most of out there in terms of content and experts and coaches and just people kind of talking about any of this is like they’re either one or the other. They’re either advocating for more productivity, more getting things done, better habits, waking up earlier, better to-do list better planning, how you can produce more and kind of be that high achiever set big goals, right? That’s one side of what I see. Then the other side of what I see is sort of the opposite of that.

How to relax, how to play more, how to be more calm, how to let things be, how to just be happy. And what I think is that it’s not either or, it’s and both. So I really want to be a space where you can come as a woman who wants to grow and set big goals and get more done and who knows how to let it go and just be happy. It’s not one or the other. So wherever you are on the spectrum, you might need to expand your capacity for the other area. So you know, the way that I titled this podcast is Perfectly Unhappy- The High Achieving Mom Dilemma. So you know how to be perfect, but you don’t know how to be happy. And who I’m speaking to is who I was, which was someone who knew how to get things done, knew how to be a high achiever, knew how to excel and set goals and kind of accomplish all the things but didn’t know how to be happy and be calm and relax.

And now it’s not that the part of me that produces and sets goals is gone, it’s again more of a spectrum, more of a dial that I can tap into, turn up or down depending on what energy I want to be in, depending on whether I’m focusing on getting more things done, my to-do list, my calendar, all of the logistics of my life or whether I am wanting to play and to relax and to be at ease. Because I think that if you are so one sided in either way, you can end up not fully living the life that you truly desire. So too much rest isn’t a good thing. Now, in our modern motherhood, in our day-to-day life, rarely are we complaining about too much rest. But if you all remember the pandemic and quarantine, we all thought that we wanted a chance to be at home more.

And when we got it, it sort of made us stir crazy. And I think that’s just helpful to remember because it’s not that we need to go to either end of the spectrum where we’re always doing, trying to earn our worth through our productivity or where we’re doing nothing and just sitting around and everything is slow all of the time. And so that’s why I think that this is a dilemma because the path of least resistance is the path that you’re already on. That’s from Abraham Hicks. So what that means is if you are in that doer, go, go, go high productivity, high achieving mom energy, that’s the energy. It’s going to be easiest to stay in even at your own expense even when you feel overwhelmed, even when you feel tired because your brain and body have memorized those patterns. Conversely, if you are someone who is on the opposite end of the spectrum, then you are also going to be more comfortable staying in that slowness.

And that’s why I think it’s a dilemma because it’s requiring so much more intentionality from you to shift into different types of energy depending on which you want to be in. That’s why I love planning so much because you can literally, and this is what I teach, plan your white space, plan your downtime, plan your self care. I like to say if you want to give a high achieving woman a goal, tell her to take a nap in the middle of a Monday, right? She knows how to get things done, I’m talking to you, you know how to get things done. But if I just said, Hey, this Monday take a nap at noon, that would be very challenging, most likely. And I just want to speak to my own transformation because oh my goodness, this has just been such a gift that I’ve given to myself and having three babies in three year, has been so helpful when it’s chaos, when my kids get sick, when things don’t go according to plan, when it’s all just a mess, it’s so much easier now for me to get into that playfulness, that relaxing, that take it easy energy, that lighten up energy.

And I say this because there was a time where that was something I truly just did not believe was possible for me. I didn’t think being so type A being so high, achieving being so in my alpha female energy that I could be someone who knew how to relax and let the laundry sit. And so if you are like I was, I want you to know that no matter how you grew up, no matter if you’re the firstborn, no matter if everyone your whole life has been telling you that you are the one in charge, you are the responsible one, you are the one who gets it done, you can shift to expand your capacity, to let things go, to feel softer and slower and to also have more fun and play and rest and relaxation so that you enjoy your life. You know what I’m talking about, right? When you’re so good at getting things done and you’re like, yeah, but I’m not even enjoying this. That’s what I want to speak to. Do you know how to be perfect? And do you know how to be happy? My hunch is, you know how to be perfect in quotes, of course here, but you don’t know how to be happy.

You know how to be fast, but do you know how to be slow? You know how to get things done, you know how to do that laundry and make sure that everyone has what they need. But do you know how to just let the laundry sit? Do you know how to just not let things be such a big deal and lighten up? Do you know how to just feel an extraordinary amount of joy for no reason? This is what I’m talking about. This is letting go of perfectionism. And if you just ask yourself why do we feel this deep drive to have everything be perfect? I think that perfectionism can feel like a standard that you just think you have to meet. Whether it’s because of societal expectations or your own inner voice or just feeling like others are watching and judging and you are watching and judging, whatever the reason is. I want you to know that it is totally normal to have this compulsion to want to do more and make everything better and perfect. If you are a high achiever, you’ve probably spent most of your life receiving praise and validation for getting things done, for helping others for doing more.

The problem with that is that when you rest, when you play, when you take it easy, when you let the laundry sit, no one is giving you that praise. And so there’s this kind of subtle disapproval of those things that you’re telling yourself like, I’m not good enough if I let the laundry sit because people aren’t telling me, telling me I’m good enough. And when your worth gets tied to how much you get done, when it gets tied to the house being perfect, the kids, um, you know, being perfect and getting good grades, whatever it is, it is impossible to keep up with. And it’s not surprising then why you might feel uneasy or guilty when you’re not productive, when you let that laundry sit, when you just relax for yourself, for your family and embrace the slow. And it’s hard and it’s easy, right? Like doing nothing is easier than doing something. But if you’re used to always doing something than doing nothing is actually harder.

So I have talked a lot about 10 minutes of silence and how I teach and coach on this in the membership. And it is not uncommon to have a Mom On Purpose member say to me, the first few weeks I started doing it, I was so fidgety and antsy and I really didn’t like it. And that is because the brain and body have not gotten into a habit yet of being slow and being still. It doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong, you’re actually doing something right if it feels hard. But eventually you can learn to relax and be at peace with just doing nothing. And that’s where you can really tap into how you want to feel and learn how to feel joy, delight, happiness, playfulness, ease and flow for no reason at all. I think we all do know how to feel it in those really big moments.

Like you get married, you have a baby, you buy a house, you get a new car, I don’t know, fill in the blank with whatever it is that is like a big thing for you. It might be an achievement or a career move or something like that, but those things aren’t even happening annually. And so the work is to take a look at what is happening daily that you can celebrate just because you want to. You want to delight in your life. If you have this drive to always get things done and never stop and to make things perfect so that you can feel good enough about yourself, it will come at a cost. You will feel burned out and emotionally exhausted because of the pressure you are putting on yourself. That stems from that mindset that I love to reiterate, which is you think it’s your job to do everything for everyone always.

And that puts this constant pressure on you and doesn’t leave any room for you to be happy, to enjoy your life, to have fun, to just smile and laugh and lighten up. And as you already know, it can negatively impact your relationships too. I know it did for me. It really kept me focused so much on career and on doing way more than I wanted to be and how that manifests now even though I have pretty strict working hours for myself so that I can be the primary caretaker for my kids, it still comes up when I am doing household things and the logistics and all of the things that are required of me that I love to do, but that can easily shift me into that go, go, go doer more masculine energy. And so I have to be mindful of that even when I’m with my kids because as you all know, there’s lots to do and that is a good thing.

I want you to know that we want to be invited, we want to to have homes, we want to have opportunities. It’s our job to manage our minds and change our mindsets so that we can feel as good on the inside as we are trying to make our lives look on the outside. That is truly the work because otherwise you’re not going to feel fully connected to yourself nor to your kids, to your spouse. You are going to be so in overdrive thinking about what you need to get done that you don’t even notice how disconnecting it is in your relationships. And eventually you will notice that you can’t keep up and you’ve spent so much energy trying to keep up that you don’t even remember the last time you really felt free and relaxed and just joyful for no reason.

I have many, many clients who do this work with me inside the Mom On Purpose Membership. And when they finally pause, they will say, I have no idea what I even like anymore or what brings me joy. And I just want to say that if you can relate to that, that is totally normal. Nothing wrong here at all. It’s just that you haven’t given this part of yourself any attention for so long that you sort of need to warm it back up and bring it back to life. But before we dive into how you can do that, that’s not even the first step. The first step is shifting your mindset. ’cause you want to work on your mindset first, then your actions. If you keep the mindset, it’s my job to do everything for everyone always. And you keep the mindset that you’re only a good woman, wife and mom, if you get more done, then there’s no amount of doing that will work because you will self-sabotage to live into the identity that your job is to take care of everything all of the time.

And so that’s the work. The work is to reframe happiness and success. The work is to drop that mindset. It’s not your job to do everything for everyone always. And just imagine what if success didn’t mean perfect dinners. It didn’t mean a spotless home, or never missing an appointment. You can redefine success proactively so that it includes some of the things you do want to get done. But I don’t think you have a problem with that. What I want you to add in is that success also means moments of connection, moments of peace, moments of doing nothing, moments of laughter, moments of just self validation and self-acceptance and appreciation. You won’t get the validation externally that you’re looking for from this, but if you proactively decide what success means to you, then you can validate yourself. And I promise you it’s worth it because then you stop trying to outrun yourself.

You stop tying your worth to productivity. You don’t think you have to earn your rest. You start telling yourself, great job. Me, I had moments of play and happiness today. Great job. Me, I had moments of connection and laughter. Great job, me, I let the laundry sit. I have gotten so good at this that I continue to tell myself how proud I am for that because I never in a million years would have thought that was possible for me. But if I didn’t do the mindset work first, it never would have been possible because I would’ve thought, no, the laundry just needs to get done. So I’m the one who has to do it, but because I have decided to think it’s okay to let the laundry sit, if it means that I get to rest and play more, then I genuinely do that because it comes from a completely different mindset. So just ask yourself, what if you didn’t have to earn your worth through getting things done?

Your true value isn’t found in how much you get done, but it is found in who you are. You are good inside and you are also imperfect, messy and a dynamic human. And that’s who we all are. So we don’t have to perform to earn our internal goodness. Letting things be, letting things just be good enough. Letting things be undone isn’t failing. It’s freeing. Let me repeat that, it’s a good one. Okay? Letting things be, letting things be good enough, letting things be undone isn’t failing, it’s freeing, okay? Now, once you have shifted your mindset, I is going to so much easier to take action from there because you’ll have your kind of inner self-talk on board. You won’t have to be kinda fighting against yourself using willpower. You’ve worked on your thoughts and your feelings so that you know, even if it’s challenging to take different actions, or in this case maybe inactions, you’ll still do it because it’s important to you and you understand your why.

Now I want to share with you a few practical tips that you can implement after you’ve worked on your mindset. Number one is to sit in 10 minutes of silence every day. Number two is to give yourself permission to pause. So this week, pick a moment to just be without needing to do. I like to say I’m a human being, not a human doing. Maybe it’s when you first have your morning coffee, maybe you’re sitting with your kids, maybe you are simply getting ready for bed. It doesn’t have to be big or drastic. It’s just a moment where you reconnect with yourself and you’re very inwardly focused on you. I do these moments all of the time and I cannot tell you how freeing it is to my nervous system and just how reconnecting it is with myself. And I end up being such a better wife and a better mom and I’m just in a better mood because I’m taking care of myself.

I’m taking breaths. I’m slowing down that nervous system to that place of safety where I’m not in that crazy activated energy. Definitely recommend this one. Number three is to start noticing small little joys every single day, at least once a day and increase your capacity to feel joy, to feel happiness, to feel delight. Not because you got something done, just because that’s what you want to feel. Did you know that you could just feel happy for no reason when your house is in chaos? I promise you this will change your life. Number four, use your strengths to your advantage. So if you love a to-do list, if you love to calendar, then put these items on your to-do list or on your calendar so that you can check them off so that you feel validated and like you accomplish something, even though the thing that you’re accomplishing is more rest, more play. That is productivity that is useful. So you might put on your to-do list 10 minutes of silence or notice one small joy or pause three times today. Or you might put that on your calendar. Just think about your strengths. If you really like the to-do list, if you really like the calendar, if you have a system that you like, use it to your advantage where you are putting in those systems. Something that helps you get into that more feminine flow energy, where you take it easy, where you start to work on and actually prioritize yourself and your happiness and your calm and your peace and your lightning up.

Finally, embrace imperfect moments of connection. I was coaching a Mom On Purpose member recently about how connection is about authenticity. It’s not about your kids are happy. So when she’s showing up with her kids during meltdowns, those are moments of connection when she can show up calmly, authentically, and you know, sometimes hold boundaries when needed. But validate and respect, those are imperfect moments in the day with our families, with our kids that I think deserve acknowledgement. And it was just such a game changing mindset for her because she was thinking of those moments as disconnection. But I want to offer to you, when you think about your most fulfilling relationships, your most connected relationships, it’s not because you both are like beaming with excitement and happiness and joy all of the time. Yes, that’s part of it. Hopefully there’s a lot of play and laughter and, and fun and your relationships.

And also it’s that person you call when things are tough, when you know you need a good cry. When you really are needing someone to listen those calls, those coffee dates, those conversations, we often leave thinking, gosh, I’m so thankful for that person. I feel so connected to that person. That was really helpful. And I love thinking of that mindset and applying it to kids because then we see, oh yeah, me just being there for my kids during their hard times. That is connection. My dad was really good at this, really good at the like, sit, don’t solve. He wouldn’t try to solve my problems for me. He would just listen and kind of ask me questions. And reflecting back. Now thinking about that, I see it was that presence, that holding space for me that felt so connecting. And so I bring that up here, in a podcast about how to kind of get into your femininity and relax and be more playful and easygoing because it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re just going to do nothing all of the time. It means that you are embracing the imperfections that come with life and celebrating that. Because I do think that a huge part of why we’re so good at getting things done, is because everyone else has been validating that part of us for so long. And so if we can learn how to validate ourselves for the other side of the coin, we will become a lot more successful at it. All right, my friends, I want to leave you with the final question that I started this episode with, which is, are you good at being perfect and bad at being happy? And if so, it is your responsibility to work on it for your sake. It will have a compound effect, it will have a ripple effect into your home, into your relationships with your kids and your spouse and your extended family and everyone in your life.

Yes, it will. But the real best reason to work on this is for your own sake. So I invite you to continue to do this work on letting things go on dropping the perfectionism and giving yourself permission to take it easy to rest, to added more play, and to get really good at being happy. I will talk with you next week, my friend. Take care.

Thank you for being here and listening. Now, head on over to momonpurpose.com/coaching to learn more about the Mom On Purpose Membership, where we take all of this work to the next level.