47. How to Enjoy the Process

Are you constantly pushing your joy to some future date? Whether you’re telling yourself, “Once I leave my corporate job,” “Once my business hits six figures,” or “Once the kids are older...” I've fallen into this trap myself, and I see it with my clients all the time. 

We keep moving the goalposts, believing happiness awaits us at the next milestone. This pattern is what psychologists call the "arrival fallacy" – the mistaken belief that achieving a certain goal will bring lasting happiness. Meanwhile, we're missing out on the life happening right in front of us, wishing away precious moments we can never get back.

Tune in this week to learn practical strategies to break this cycle and start enjoying the process of building your business right now – regardless of where you are in your business journey or what obstacles you're facing. Because the truth is, 99.9% of life is the process, not the destination, and if we're not finding ways to enjoy that process, we're missing out on almost everything.


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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

  • How to identify your "once I" thoughts and start implementing scaled-down versions.

  • Why the strategic pause is your most powerful tool for reconnecting with your values and priorities.

  • The importance of planning joy into your calendar instead of assuming it will happen organically.

  • Why problems never disappear but simply transform.

  • The danger of constantly moving your goalposts and how to find contentment in the present.

Listen to the Full Episode:

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Full Episode Transcript:

When I first started my business, I set out to cover our mortgage. And when I hit that milestone, you know what happened? Nothing. I didn’t celebrate, I don’t even remember when it happened because I was already chasing the next goal.

And that was my wake-up call. Without intention, I was working more hours than I did in corporate, constantly moving my own goal posts, and missing the life I was building this business to enjoy in the first place. And as ambitious women, we tell ourselves, once I leave corporate or once I sign my first client, once I make six figures.

But here’s the truth that I learned the hard way. The time to live deliberately is now. Not some day. And in this episode, I’m sharing how to enjoy the process. The good, the bad, and yes, even the ugly. This isn’t just about finding more happiness. Enjoying the journey is actually a secret weapon for success in both business and motherhood.

By the end of this episode, you’ll have practical tools to create a life you love right now. Not when you hit your next milestone, but today. Because those beautiful little moments happening all around you, they deserve your presence right now.

Welcome to How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. It’s a podcast that helps working moms just like you, optimize your time, manage your mind, and start a business that helps you create more freedom, flexibility, and, yes, fun. I’m business and mindset coach Jenna Rykiel. And I offer practical tips to help you ditch the nine-to-five. I have been exactly where you are and I know what it takes to make the transition without trading one form of burnout for another. So, let’s get started.

Hi mom friends. Welcome. There are two big ideas that I want to address in this episode today. The first is that no matter the obstacles, you can start implementing more intention and action around living a conscious and deliberate life right now.

Even if you were to stay at your corporate job that has no flexibility, what can you be doing differently on your weekends with the kids to make the most of it? How can you utilize PTO this year to make memories with your family? Right? I see this pattern play out with so many of my clients and saw it in myself as well, right? First, they're miserable and overworked in their corporate jobs, saying, once I start my own business, I'll finally take that trip that we've been dreaming about as a family. And then they launch their business and pour everything into making it work.

Suddenly the narrative shifts. Well, I need to replace my income first, then we can take that trip. Months later, they've built up a steady client base and could technically afford that trip with their income, but now they're caught up in the next evolution of their business, creating a new offer or figuring out how to scale, and telling themselves, once this new phase is established, then we'll have time for that trip.

The destination keeps changing. The goal posts keep moving. And that meaningful family experience that everybody's been talking about and dreaming about, it never materializes. Not because we can't make it happen, but because there's always another milestone on the horizon. Okay? And this is what psychologists call the arrival fallacy, right? The belief that when you arrive at a certain destination, you'll finally be happy, you'll finally be able to do that next thing.

But the truth is that research shows that the happiness boost from achieving goals is fleeting. A few days or weeks at most before we return to our baseline. So here's your first practical tip. In this episode, I want you to identify your "once I" moments. Okay?

Take out your phone, maybe make a note, text yourself, maybe leave yourself a voice note if you're driving and can't type. What are you waiting to do or enjoy until you hit some arbitrary milestone? Are you waiting to enjoy morning walks until your business is more stable? Are you delaying date nights until your kids are a certain age? Are you putting off that hobby until you've left your corporate job? Not taking consistent days off until your business hits a certain revenue goal? Right? Ask yourself, what will I do once I make six figures in my business? What will I do once I leave corporate? What will I do more of once my kids are older? And consider doing that thing now, okay?

I want you to choose one thing from that list that you can start doing this week. Even if it's a scaled-down version. Maybe it's a 15-minute walk instead of an hour, or maybe it's a lunch date when the kids are at daycare instead of a weekend getaway. The point is to stop waiting to hit some arbitrary metric and start living now.

The next strategy that I want to offer to find more moments of joy in your life right now is the pause. Yes, it's that simple, right? I want you to implement slowing down and even pausing in so many moments of your life.

Maybe it's a pause when you're getting wrapped up and frustrated about some tech issue in your business. Maybe it's when you're at a networking event and feeling drained from all the small talk and conversations since you were up all night with your toddler.

Maybe it's a pause when you're in a follow-up call with a potential client, right? The pause itself is an effort to reset and to remind yourself that this is the process. And it's time to enjoy the process. If you're not enjoying it, it's not worth doing, and I promise there is space for you to actually enjoy it. Okay?

When we talk about a pause, what we're talking about is breaking the cycle of automatic responses and stress reactions. We're talking about creating space to reconnect with our values and priorities. We're talking about giving ourselves permission to appreciate the present moment, even if it's hard and messy and it's natural to want to just breeze past it. Okay?

The pause doesn't have to be long. Even 30 seconds of conscious breathing can shift your entire perspective. I recommend setting reminders on your phone or, you know, a post-it note by your computer. These little reminders to prompt micro moments of pausing until it becomes a habit.

And my husband and I recently had our own little pause and reflect moment, actually a kind of big pause and reflect moment because we found ourselves in the grind of our businesses. And yes, we love working in our business, which is part of the problem. And it's not a terrible problem to have, but, you know, still a problem, which I'll talk about.

But our oldest son Adley started full-time daycare because part-time wasn't available as an option at the place we liked. And so we have ample childcare, right? Which means more time to work on our business. We both have ambitious goals and we like going for those goals, but we also realized that the day-to-day joys of being present with our kids was taking a backseat as we were wrapped up in working.

We used to both have one full day off with Adley each week, and now we've found ourselves working five days a week since we have childcare and help to do that. But that just isn't aligned with the life that we envisioned for ourselves as parents.

So for us, what's the point of owning our own business if we aren't taking advantage of flexibility that comes with being entrepreneurs? So just recently, we had a moment of pause where we were in the kitchen and just kind of stopped and said, like, is this how we want to be living? And we committed actually to taking summer Fridays, where we take Adley to the neighborhood pool and get back to spending less time in our business and more time with our kiddos in the upcoming season.

But coming up with that solution and planning that wouldn't have been possible without an intentional pause with both of us. So being able to take a step back and reflect on how things are going and whether that's aligned with our vision.

And that leads me to the next, most important tool in your toolbox when we are talking about living a joyful life right now. And I've talked about this before. Planning. If it doesn't get planned, it doesn't get done. So what I want you to do is start planning your fun stuff first. The stuff that you enjoy.

And not the work stuff you enjoy, but the family stuff you enjoy, the house project stuff you enjoy, the trips you enjoy, right? That park you wanted to take the kids to. Make sure you plan that into an upcoming week. Actually put it in your calendar and block it off, okay? That restaurant you and your partner or you and your friends have been talking about? Go ahead and put it in your calendar.

We don't often think to schedule fun stuff in our calendars because we think that it will just organically happen. And this is especially true with our weekends, right? How many of you have gotten to Sunday and realized that you basically did nothing the entire weekend? You feel like you wasted your days off falling into a normal flow of the day and forgetting to plan special events during the week windows.

And this happens all the time for me. And the best way to prevent it is to plan out exactly what you want to do each weekend. Whether it's a house project, a fun activity, plan out what you want to do with your time on Saturday and Sunday, and trust me, it's like magic that you start doing more of the things that creates a life you love.

So this episode is all about living right now and enjoying the process of the business, not putting life or joy on hold. No matter what you're doing, even if you're still in corporate. And so the other important thing I want to address is that no matter where you're at in your business or in your life, whether it's just an idea or whether you're at a certain revenue, you're likely striving for something more. And that's why you're listening to this podcast. And when we're in striving mode, it can be easy to forget that the process itself is something to enjoy.

Yes, it might not always feel like rainbows and butterflies when you're creating that email sequence or going to networking events or figuring out your niche. But if you can learn to enjoy the process, you will enjoy more of your life. If we stop making failures and negative things in the process that happen, you know, in our business, in those micro moments mean something about us and our ability. If we stop thinking that problems will go away eventually, if we just figure this last one out or pay someone else to figure it out, right? Problems don't go away. They just transform.

It's just like parenting. We think, I can't wait until the baby sleeps through the night. Which quickly becomes, I can't wait until they can sit up on their own. And then it's, I can't wait until they can tell me what's wrong instead of just crying. Followed by, I can't wait until they're in school. And then, I can't wait until they can drive themselves places, right? You get it.

Before we know it, we've wished away the entire childhood. And then we look back and realize we were so focused on getting through each challenging phase that we missed the magic happening right in front of us. Time passed by even more quickly than we anticipated and those moments, even the difficult ones are gone forever.

The problems in parenting never go away, they just look different. When kids are young, we're trying to figure out how to be so dependent upon and needed when we have so many other things that we're responsible for. And then one day we're trying to figure out how to not be needed anymore at a time in our life when we want more responsibilities. Okay?

In our business, we have to enjoy the problem-solving part as well. We have to find a way to enjoy the moments where we're creating something and figuring things out and connecting with people and building something. We have to enjoy each brick that we are laying, not just the building at the end of the construction project. Okay? Because listen, we will keep adding to the structure and one day you'll look back and you'll see that you built Rome and barely knew it was happening. Barely stopped to smell the roses along the way.

So the next time you're sitting in a problem in your business or as a parent and you are really eager to find a solution, I want you to pause and remember that on the other side of this problem is another problem. And that's not a bad thing. Because with each problem you are growing and learning and evolving. With each problem, your business looks different. Your business is in a different place, is evolved, is growing.

And same things with your kids, right? We always want to get that time back when we look back, but, you know, the time forward and the next phase of problems are really exciting to look forward to as well.

We talked about the importance of enjoying the process and creating a life you love now. Not in the future. Take all the obstacles and setbacks and difficulties now and figure out how you can start doing more of the things you want to be doing. We talked about figuring out those things and strategies around what questions can be helpful in figuring that out. Okay? You can ask yourself, what are the things we're putting off? How can we start creating time and energy in our life to do them now? Even with obstacles.

We talked about the power of pausing in little and big moments, especially when we're facing challenges or growth moments. Taking a pause helps us to break the cycle of automatic responses. It helps us connect with our values, and it helps us to appreciate the present moment.

We also talked about the importance of planning as it pertains to creating joy in our life because if it doesn't get scheduled, it doesn't get done. So scheduling the important stuff that truly matters in life must be a priority.

And finally, I talked about reframing problems as part of the process and not feeling like you need to rush through every problem because there is no finish line where problems don't exist. They just look different. And it's a slippery slope once we start trying to fast forward through challenges. Just like we all learned after watching the movie Click, right?

We need to enjoy the process in order to find more joy in our life because 99.9% of life is the process. And there's only a small sliver of life that is feeling like you've accomplished what you set out to do, right? Because again, once you get there, the goal post will just continue to move.

If we keep waiting around for some version of change or success to live the life we want, we find that we never seem to arrive because our measure of success will continue to change. And that's not a bad thing. We need to commit to creating time for the things that are important to us now, no matter what the obstacles are.

This week, I have a simple but powerful challenge for you. Identify just one of those "once I" statements. It's something that you've been putting off. What small version of that postponed joy can you experience this week? Not someday, not once you hit a milestone, not once you leave corporate, but right now in the next few days. Whatever it is, take that small step toward enjoying the journey now.

And if today's message resonated with you, please subscribe. So you never miss a beat and share this episode with another mom who might need this reminder. Whether it's somebody who's looking to start a business or not, this is an important thing for all of us to keep in mind.

The truth is, you know, we're all building something amazing. But the real magic isn't waiting at the finish line. Okay? It's happening right now in these beautiful, messy, imperfect moments of creation and growth and failure and mini moments of frustration and impatience and all the things. So make sure that you are taking pause and finding a way to enjoy it.

I'm really excited about next week's episode because I sat down with a mompreneur I admire who left corporate to build her own business. She's a professional home organizer bringing peace of mind to busy families, especially busy moms. Hello. With spring cleaning season among us, this is the perfect time to talk about how cluttered spaces can get in the way of our building a business. And Meg is here to share what to do about it.

Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.

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