120. Are You Accidentally Creating a Result You Don’t Want?
When you really want something to go well, it’s easy to start worrying about all the ways it could go wrong. Maybe you want to feel closer to your child, succeed in a new role, have a better relationship, or grow your business. When you’re carrying a lot of worry and fear about the outcome, it can affect how you show up. Without realizing it, you can end up creating more of the very thing you were trying to avoid.
In this episode, I share a few stories that helped me see this pattern in action, including what happened with two friends over dinner and my own experience when my son went through a long phase of preferring my husband. I explain how the stories we tell ourselves create emotions, how those emotions influence our actions, and how those actions can move us toward or away from the results we actually want.
Most importantly, I walk you through three steps for interrupting this pattern when you notice it happening. You’ll learn how to separate a story from a fact, find the stories that already exist within you that serve you, and ask yourself how you want to show up in the moment. Because we can’t always control the outcome, but we can choose whether the way we’re showing up is moving us toward what we want or accidentally creating the result we’re most afraid of.
Ready for clarity and a simple action plan to get your business started? Schedule a free 1-hour consultation with me here!
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
How the stories you tell yourself can influence your emotions, actions, and the results you create.
Why anxiety, fear, and overwhelm can sometimes lead you to behave in ways that make the result you’re afraid of more likely.
How to recognize when a story is influencing the way you’re showing up.
The difference between acknowledging a difficult emotion and letting that emotion choose your next action.
Three steps for interrupting the pattern and creating the results you actually want.
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Episodes Related to Creating Results:
8. Managing Your Mind: The Secret Weapon for Building Your Business
111. How Moms Can Shift Victim Mentality & Manage Mental Load with Zahra Premji
Full Episode Transcript:
Have you ever wanted something so badly that you accidentally started behaving in ways that made it less likely to happen? You desperately want potty training to go well. So you become anxious, impatient, and start second guessing everything. You want people to believe you're capable of the promotion you just got, but you're so worried they won't that you shut down and make yourself smaller. You desperately want to feel close to your kiddo, but you're so hurt by their rejection that you pull away from them.
We do this all the time. We become so afraid of a particular outcome that the thoughts and emotions we're carrying start influencing how we show up. And then without realizing it, we begin creating the exact result we were afraid of in the first place. I watched this happening with two of my friends over dinner recently. And as I was coaching them through it, I realized I've done the exact same thing and my version involved my son.
So today I wanna talk about how to recognize when this is happening, why our brains do this, and most importantly, how we can interrupt it.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
Hi, mom friends. The other day, was at dinner with a couple of moms in my neighborhood. We all needed one of those dinners where each person gets their turn to talk about what's going on in life, you know, share frustration, shed a few tears, and mostly just experiencing the relief of being in company of moms who get it and can speak to what you're going through. So we're all at dinner and one of my friends who is thirty two weeks pregnant shared that she was potty training her daughter and feeling completely overwhelmed. She did not feel like it was going well. She also shared very honestly that she just didn't like parenting right now.
She was tired. It's hard to pick up her two year old. She's dealing with a lot of expectations and stuff at work. It all just felt overwhelming. I had another friend who had just been promoted at work.
Instead of 30 people reporting to her she was now going to have more than 60. Her boss was going to announce the news to the whole company on Monday, and she hadn't been able to sleep for the past week. She was waking up basically having panic attacks. She's worried about whether she'd be able to handle the new workload, worried about what people would think, worried about whether people agree with the decision. There was just a lot of heaviness keeping her up at night.
And I rarely jump into full blown coach mode during dinners like these, but this time it felt necessary because both of these amazing women were flirting with creating results they absolutely did not want. In the worry, the anxiety, the overwhelm, in the stories we have about how something is going or how something might go, we can actually start behaving in ways that set us up for the exact result that we're afraid of. So sitting there at True Food Kitchen, one of my favorites, I taught my friends the Model. The Model is a mind management tool that I teach all of my clients and that I use with my clients. It's a way for us to understand how certain thoughts and stories influence how we feel, how we behave, and ultimately the results that we create.
I talk more about mind management and reference this tool back in episode eight if you wanna dig a little bit deeper, and we will link that episode in the show notes. These concepts and the concepts of the model are also woven into lots of these episodes. But today I wanna focus on one piece of it, how we create results that we don't want. Because there's a really common pattern where we have a thought or story about something. That story creates an emotion.
And then from that emotion, we behave in ways that are the exact opposite of what would help us achieve what we really want. I have a couple of stories that I want to talk through to illustrate exactly what I mean. So my friend at dinner who was potty training, she had a story. She had a story that this isn't going well. And that story was creating a lot of anxiety and overwhelm for her.
Her daughter was holding in her poop, which was really stressing my friend out. Now myself and the other mom at the table were able to very confidently say, this is normal. But my friend is a doctor and she knows the consequences of holding in poop all too well. And it was almost impossible for her not to feel anxious and overwhelmed. But from that place of anxiety and overwhelm, she wasn't showing up as the mom she wanted to be.
She was judging herself. She was judging her daughter. She was second guessing her husband who had actually wanted to start the process. She was judging the process. She was feeling guilty. She was questioning whether this was the right thing to do or the right time to do it. There were even moments when she was avoiding being part of the process altogether because she just wanted to escape. Now if we simply look at those actions, the judgment, questioning, the guilt, the avoidance, we have to ask what results are those actions likely to create? Probably not the ones she wants. Or at the very least, they're making the results she wants harder to create.
I'll be the first one to say that all of those emotions she's experiencing are valid. This is not about telling her she shouldn't feel anxious. But let's think about what a kid needs when they're learning a new milestone skill, one that naturally comes with some fear. They need us to be patient. They need us to be supportive.
They need us to be confident and present. They might literally need us sitting there holding their hand. Now, of course, my friend is doing an amazing job as a mom. This isn't a conversation about whether what she's doing is right or wrong. In fact, while we were at dinner, she got a FaceTime from her daughter because she was pooping on the potty.
Okay? Which was pretty great timing and amazing. What's really important about this scenario and this example is the story. The story that it's not going well. Because this isn't just about potty training or motherhood. Right? It could be a project at work. It could be something we organized. It could be our marriage. It could be our business.
It could be anything. If we have a story that something isn't going well and that story creates overwhelm and anxiety in our body, we are more likely to engage in actions that turn that story into a self fulfilling prophecy. Now let's look at my other friend who was at dinner. She was feeling worried about the upcoming announcement of her new position.
Ultimately, she was afraid of two things. What will people think? And what if I can't succeed in this position? Her worst case scenario was not doing well in the role. That would clearly be a result that she didn't want. And yet the thoughts and stories she was carrying were going to lead her to show up in less of a leadership identity.
So if she's thinking, I don't know if I'll succeed or other people might not agree with this decision or I wonder if people are thinking who does she think she is. Those thoughts lead her to feel anxious and worried. So I asked her, what do you normally do when you're feeling anxious and worried? She said she wakes up in the middle of the night. She gets less sleep. She shuts down. She avoids talking to people. She gets sweaty and gets in her own head. Now imagine those actions happening before and during the big announcement. Let's say she doesn't get sleep before on Sunday night, so she's exhausted when she gets to the meeting.
Her boss announces the promotion and she's standing in front of the room sweating, quiet, keeping to herself. She's trying to figure out what everyone's thinking. She's worried they don't agree with the decision. She's in her head thought spiraling instead of engaging with her new team. How does that affect the room? It could actually make the room feel less confident in the decision. The very result she's afraid of becomes more likely because the story she brought into the room with her. And again, these thoughts are so normal.
Our brains by default focus on the things we need to worry about. They wanna keep us safe. They want us to avoid pain. So they prepare for the worst. But in the process of trying to keep us safe, our brains can also hold us back from creating the results we actually want. So I asked her to look at it from the other direction. If the result she wants is for everyone in the room to feel supportive of the decision and for her to succeed in the role, how does she need to show up during that announcement?
She probably needs to show up, of course, with confidence, with excitement, feeling energized, ready to talk to her new team of 60 people, ready to maybe schedule time with them, engage with them. She needs to build trust and be trustworthy. They need to see that she's their fearless leader. I can picture her standing up there straighter, smiling big, shaking hands, or maybe high fiving. I don't know what they're doing in corporate nowadays.
Walking around like she's talking to people. She's having this sense of like, I got this about her. But here's the thing, she can't just manufacture those actions. She needs to actually tap into the confidence, the excitement, and the energy that would naturally create them. Of course, we can all fake it till we make it.
But there's another way, conjuring up the confidence that is in there, that is within us, the one that already exists. Throughout our conversation, it became really clear that there was excitement and confidence and energy available to her. Because my friend actually did believe she was the best person for the position. There were moments when she was really confident and knew she would excel at the job. That story though, it just wasn't on the front burner.
So I asked, why do you think they chose you? And she immediately came back with really definitive answers. She already had stories that served her within her. She didn't need me to invent some fake positive thought for her. She needed to bring the stories she already believed to the forefront.
Because those stories, they had her feeling confident and energized and magnetic. And those are the stories that she needed to think about come Monday. So I had these two examples come up at dinner, which inspired this episode. And then as I was putting it together, I realized I've done this too. I mean, we've all done this.
But I've done it in a way that I think will drive home that this is so common, so normal, and awareness around this can really help us to create results we want in our life. So this last example I'll give you is my own. And this is one that really shows how painful this pattern can be. So my oldest son, Adley, was about 18 old. I don't even remember whether it happened suddenly or evolved over time, but Adley really didn't like me for a long time.
And my husband, Chris, was his favorite, but it wasn't just that I wasn't his favorite. It was like I was a monster to him. It was incredibly disheartening. I remember talking to a really good friend who was going through the same thing with her toddler and we were both so hurt by it. Adley would come in the door and I'd squat down waiting for a running hug, something he and his dad always did, and he'd literally run the other way.
My husband and I, at night, we alternated who did bedtime with him, and my nights were always a battle. He would just scream, I want dada tonight. And this wasn't a quick phase. This went on for over a year. A good chunk of his life was spent really not liking me.
And I remember my friend and I talking about it, and and she said she hated when people said, it's just a phase. And I agreed. Like, first, it didn't feel like a phase to us because it went on for so long. And second, this was a year of his life when he was so small and squishy and cute that I would never get cuddles back for. Those are the most cuddly times with a toddler.
And I felt like I was a monster to him. I think I've mentioned before on this podcast that this is actually why I initially hired a parenting coach. And I know I've talked about my coach plenty of times. It was one of the best things I've ever done. I needed support not just with what to do, but with how to get through it emotionally.
But I wanna highlight this concept of creating results we don't want because I think we do this a lot, especially in relationships. So like I said, Adley would come home and run the other way when I squatted down to say hi. And I had lots of negative thoughts about this. He doesn't love me. I'm a terrible mom. What's wrong with me? What's wrong with my son? He's never going to love me. What's the point? There were lots of stories and thoughts all with this general theme.
And from those thoughts, I felt lots of heavy emotions. I felt inadequate, frustrated, hopeless, resentful, angry, disappointed, and really, really hurt. And like I've been saying, all those emotions were valid, but none of them helped me create the results I wanted. Because from feeling inadequate and frustrated and hopeless, I engaged in actions that did the exact opposite of what I desperately wanted. They created more separation between me and my son.
When he'd run the other way, I'd shut down. I'd go into another room and sulk. I'd get snappy and irritable with my husband. And even with Adley later that night, I'd go silent. I'd stop talking or answer with short answers.
When Adley did something funny or cute, I didn't feel like laughing or engaging because I was too busy feeling hurt. And when I wasn't engaging with him, when I was quiet and shut down, what result was I creating? More distance. The thing I wanted more than anything in the world was to be close to my son. And yet my actions weren't supporting that.
Not because I was a bad mom, because I was focused on a story that wasn't serving me. And that story created emotions that led to avoidance, fear, and shame instead of helping me stay with him, to be patient, to be warm, and continue loving him even when I wasn't getting the response I desperately wanted from him. We do this type of thing constantly. We wanna be closer to our partner and yet when something feels heavy, we communicate less. We shut down, we pull away.
We want someone to understand us, but because we're convinced they don't, we stop trying to explain ourselves. We want our child to come to us, but because their rejection hurts, we become less emotionally available. We want our team to trust us, but because we're afraid they won't, we show up uncertain and withdrawn. We want our business to work, but because we're afraid it won't, we stop taking the actions that could actually make it work. Our fear says it's protecting us, but sometimes our protection strategy is creating the exact thing we're trying to protect ourselves from.
So what do we do? Step one, just notice the story. Okay? The first thing is awareness. We have to notice that we have a story. And remember, a story is not the same thing as a fact. Potty training isn't going well. They're going to think I don't deserve this promotion. My son doesn't love me. Those are stories. That doesn't mean we shame ourselves for having them at all. And it doesn't mean we immediately slap a positive thought over them. We explore them. We acknowledge them. We acknowledge that we are human and we have human brains that have human stories.
We talk about them with our friends, our partner, our coach, our therapist. We give those emotions. We give those stories somewhere to go. But we don't automatically hand those stories the steering wheel. Okay? They're not driving the bus. I like to think of it as putting them on the back burner. They're still there. They're still cooking. We still need them for dinner.
We're not pretending they don't exist, but they're not driving our behavior. Step two, want us to find the story that serves us. Not fake stories, not affirmations we don't believe. Stories that are already true and available to us, but maybe aren't getting our attention right now. My friend already knew she was the best person for the promotion.
She already knew she was capable. She already knew why they chose her. Those thoughts existed. They just weren't on the front burner. For my friend potty training her daughter, there's a part of her that knows my daughter is learning. This is hard. We can handle hard things. I can be patient with her while she figures this out. And for me, I needed to tap into the part of me that knew I'm a good mom. My relationship with my son is bigger than this moment.
I can continue being warm and patient and available even when this hurts. There were plenty of times throughout this journey with my son that I would immediately respond and want to just walk away and I would literally walk away. And then I would catch myself and I would say, no, Jenna, stay. Stay. Every part of you wants to walk away and respond in the way that feels safe and that feels like the default and automatic, but we need to stay.
When we have these thoughts, when we have the thoughts that I am a good mom and my daughter is learning and I am right for this position, those thoughts lead somewhere very different. Step three, I want you to ask who you want to be in this moment. Okay. How do I wanna show up here? Not how do I make this feeling disappear?
Not how do I guarantee the outcome I want? We can't always control our outcomes. My friend can't control how every person in the room responds to the promotion. My other friend can't force her daughter to poop on the potty. I certainly couldn't force my son to want me instead of his dad or even to run and hug me or like me in that time frame.
I couldn't force that. But we can choose how we want to show up. Patient, present, confident, connected, engaged, supportive. That's the part that's ours. One thing that I want to make really clear here, a really important distinction is that this is not about positive thinking. The heavy emotions are here to stay. Overwhelm, anxiety, resentment, hurt, frustration, they're all gonna be happening. It's valid. It's normal. This isn't about getting rid of them.
It's about awareness. Sitting with those heavy emotions and giving them their own time and space, that can actually help us in the long run. We're not covering them up with a positive emotion Band Aid. We're recognizing I don't love the outcome I create when I act from these emotions. I can honor the emotion without asking it to choose my next action.
That's different. That's choosing who drives the bus. We wanna be in control and in the driver's seat. We don't want some of these emotions to be. And if we aren't intentional about it, I guarantee these emotions will impact more than we'd like. These thoughts will impact more than we like. So the next time you find yourself spiraling about something, your kid, your marriage, your job, your business, I want you to stop and ask yourself a few questions. What am I afraid is going to happen? What story am I telling myself about it? How does that story make me feel and how do I behave when I feel that way?
And then the big one, are those behaviors moving me toward the result I want or accidentally helping create the result I'm most afraid of? I want you to find the stories that already exists, that live within you, the ones that you know you're a good mom even though the moment's hard, the ones that you know your child is capable even though they're struggling, the ones where you know you earned the promotion even though part of you is terrified, the ones where you know your relationship can handle an uncomfortable conversation.
I want you to find those stories. I want you to bring those stories to the front burner and ask yourself, if I believed this story right now, how would I show up? There's so much we can't control in life, but we can become much more intentional about whether the way we're showing up is moving us toward what we want or away from it.
And sometimes the awareness alone about the role that our thoughts and stories are playing in that is enough to right the ship. If this episode speaks to you, I want you to do a couple of things. I want you to follow it. Of course, new episodes come out every week and it's like a little coach in your pocket. You'll get a reminder if you follow that a new one is up and it's a beautiful thing.
New thoughts, new ideas, new coaching every Wednesday. Follow the episode, share it with other moms, other friends who need this message. And if you are realizing that mind management would be life changing for you, don't be shy. Let's talk about it. I offer a free one hour consultation for moms who are desperate for change and want tools to be able to make it happen.
I help moms start their own business so that they have freedom and flexibility, but I also help moms manage their minds so that they can create results they want in all areas of their life. So check out the show notes, jenna.coach/100andtwenty, and schedule time with me. Check out the show notes, see the other episodes as well. There's always some great stuff in there. Check out a ton of different episodes.
Go back, maybe re listen to a few. There's some great stuff in here and it's all going to help you to feel better as a mom and to create change as a mom. Create results that you actually want. Until then, I will see you next week. 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 wanna 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.
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.
We do this all the time. We become so afraid of a particular outcome that the thoughts and emotions we're carrying start influencing how we show up. And then without realizing it, we begin creating the exact result we were afraid of in the first place. I watched this happening with two of my friends over dinner recently. And as I was coaching them through it, I realized I've done the exact same thing and my version involved my son.
So today I wanna talk about how to recognize when this is happening, why our brains do this, and most importantly, how we can interrupt it.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
Hi, mom friends. The other day, was at dinner with a couple of moms in my neighborhood. We all needed one of those dinners where each person gets their turn to talk about what's going on in life, you know, share frustration, shed a few tears, and mostly just experiencing the relief of being in company of moms who get it and can speak to what you're going through. So we're all at dinner and one of my friends who is thirty two weeks pregnant shared that she was potty training her daughter and feeling completely overwhelmed. She did not feel like it was going well. She also shared very honestly that she just didn't like parenting right now.
She was tired. It's hard to pick up her two year old. She's dealing with a lot of expectations and stuff at work. It all just felt overwhelming. I had another friend who had just been promoted at work.
Instead of 30 people reporting to her she was now going to have more than 60. Her boss was going to announce the news to the whole company on Monday, and she hadn't been able to sleep for the past week. She was waking up basically having panic attacks. She's worried about whether she'd be able to handle the new workload, worried about what people would think, worried about whether people agree with the decision. There was just a lot of heaviness keeping her up at night.
And I rarely jump into full blown coach mode during dinners like these, but this time it felt necessary because both of these amazing women were flirting with creating results they absolutely did not want. In the worry, the anxiety, the overwhelm, in the stories we have about how something is going or how something might go, we can actually start behaving in ways that set us up for the exact result that we're afraid of. So sitting there at True Food Kitchen, one of my favorites, I taught my friends the Model. The Model is a mind management tool that I teach all of my clients and that I use with my clients. It's a way for us to understand how certain thoughts and stories influence how we feel, how we behave, and ultimately the results that we create.
I talk more about mind management and reference this tool back in episode eight if you wanna dig a little bit deeper, and we will link that episode in the show notes. These concepts and the concepts of the model are also woven into lots of these episodes. But today I wanna focus on one piece of it, how we create results that we don't want. Because there's a really common pattern where we have a thought or story about something. That story creates an emotion.
And then from that emotion, we behave in ways that are the exact opposite of what would help us achieve what we really want. I have a couple of stories that I want to talk through to illustrate exactly what I mean. So my friend at dinner who was potty training, she had a story. She had a story that this isn't going well. And that story was creating a lot of anxiety and overwhelm for her.
Her daughter was holding in her poop, which was really stressing my friend out. Now myself and the other mom at the table were able to very confidently say, this is normal. But my friend is a doctor and she knows the consequences of holding in poop all too well. And it was almost impossible for her not to feel anxious and overwhelmed. But from that place of anxiety and overwhelm, she wasn't showing up as the mom she wanted to be.
She was judging herself. She was judging her daughter. She was second guessing her husband who had actually wanted to start the process. She was judging the process. She was feeling guilty. She was questioning whether this was the right thing to do or the right time to do it. There were even moments when she was avoiding being part of the process altogether because she just wanted to escape. Now if we simply look at those actions, the judgment, questioning, the guilt, the avoidance, we have to ask what results are those actions likely to create? Probably not the ones she wants. Or at the very least, they're making the results she wants harder to create.
I'll be the first one to say that all of those emotions she's experiencing are valid. This is not about telling her she shouldn't feel anxious. But let's think about what a kid needs when they're learning a new milestone skill, one that naturally comes with some fear. They need us to be patient. They need us to be supportive.
They need us to be confident and present. They might literally need us sitting there holding their hand. Now, of course, my friend is doing an amazing job as a mom. This isn't a conversation about whether what she's doing is right or wrong. In fact, while we were at dinner, she got a FaceTime from her daughter because she was pooping on the potty.
Okay? Which was pretty great timing and amazing. What's really important about this scenario and this example is the story. The story that it's not going well. Because this isn't just about potty training or motherhood. Right? It could be a project at work. It could be something we organized. It could be our marriage. It could be our business.
It could be anything. If we have a story that something isn't going well and that story creates overwhelm and anxiety in our body, we are more likely to engage in actions that turn that story into a self fulfilling prophecy. Now let's look at my other friend who was at dinner. She was feeling worried about the upcoming announcement of her new position.
Ultimately, she was afraid of two things. What will people think? And what if I can't succeed in this position? Her worst case scenario was not doing well in the role. That would clearly be a result that she didn't want. And yet the thoughts and stories she was carrying were going to lead her to show up in less of a leadership identity.
So if she's thinking, I don't know if I'll succeed or other people might not agree with this decision or I wonder if people are thinking who does she think she is. Those thoughts lead her to feel anxious and worried. So I asked her, what do you normally do when you're feeling anxious and worried? She said she wakes up in the middle of the night. She gets less sleep. She shuts down. She avoids talking to people. She gets sweaty and gets in her own head. Now imagine those actions happening before and during the big announcement. Let's say she doesn't get sleep before on Sunday night, so she's exhausted when she gets to the meeting.
Her boss announces the promotion and she's standing in front of the room sweating, quiet, keeping to herself. She's trying to figure out what everyone's thinking. She's worried they don't agree with the decision. She's in her head thought spiraling instead of engaging with her new team. How does that affect the room? It could actually make the room feel less confident in the decision. The very result she's afraid of becomes more likely because the story she brought into the room with her. And again, these thoughts are so normal.
Our brains by default focus on the things we need to worry about. They wanna keep us safe. They want us to avoid pain. So they prepare for the worst. But in the process of trying to keep us safe, our brains can also hold us back from creating the results we actually want. So I asked her to look at it from the other direction. If the result she wants is for everyone in the room to feel supportive of the decision and for her to succeed in the role, how does she need to show up during that announcement?
She probably needs to show up, of course, with confidence, with excitement, feeling energized, ready to talk to her new team of 60 people, ready to maybe schedule time with them, engage with them. She needs to build trust and be trustworthy. They need to see that she's their fearless leader. I can picture her standing up there straighter, smiling big, shaking hands, or maybe high fiving. I don't know what they're doing in corporate nowadays.
Walking around like she's talking to people. She's having this sense of like, I got this about her. But here's the thing, she can't just manufacture those actions. She needs to actually tap into the confidence, the excitement, and the energy that would naturally create them. Of course, we can all fake it till we make it.
But there's another way, conjuring up the confidence that is in there, that is within us, the one that already exists. Throughout our conversation, it became really clear that there was excitement and confidence and energy available to her. Because my friend actually did believe she was the best person for the position. There were moments when she was really confident and knew she would excel at the job. That story though, it just wasn't on the front burner.
So I asked, why do you think they chose you? And she immediately came back with really definitive answers. She already had stories that served her within her. She didn't need me to invent some fake positive thought for her. She needed to bring the stories she already believed to the forefront.
Because those stories, they had her feeling confident and energized and magnetic. And those are the stories that she needed to think about come Monday. So I had these two examples come up at dinner, which inspired this episode. And then as I was putting it together, I realized I've done this too. I mean, we've all done this.
But I've done it in a way that I think will drive home that this is so common, so normal, and awareness around this can really help us to create results we want in our life. So this last example I'll give you is my own. And this is one that really shows how painful this pattern can be. So my oldest son, Adley, was about 18 old. I don't even remember whether it happened suddenly or evolved over time, but Adley really didn't like me for a long time.
And my husband, Chris, was his favorite, but it wasn't just that I wasn't his favorite. It was like I was a monster to him. It was incredibly disheartening. I remember talking to a really good friend who was going through the same thing with her toddler and we were both so hurt by it. Adley would come in the door and I'd squat down waiting for a running hug, something he and his dad always did, and he'd literally run the other way.
My husband and I, at night, we alternated who did bedtime with him, and my nights were always a battle. He would just scream, I want dada tonight. And this wasn't a quick phase. This went on for over a year. A good chunk of his life was spent really not liking me.
And I remember my friend and I talking about it, and and she said she hated when people said, it's just a phase. And I agreed. Like, first, it didn't feel like a phase to us because it went on for so long. And second, this was a year of his life when he was so small and squishy and cute that I would never get cuddles back for. Those are the most cuddly times with a toddler.
And I felt like I was a monster to him. I think I've mentioned before on this podcast that this is actually why I initially hired a parenting coach. And I know I've talked about my coach plenty of times. It was one of the best things I've ever done. I needed support not just with what to do, but with how to get through it emotionally.
But I wanna highlight this concept of creating results we don't want because I think we do this a lot, especially in relationships. So like I said, Adley would come home and run the other way when I squatted down to say hi. And I had lots of negative thoughts about this. He doesn't love me. I'm a terrible mom. What's wrong with me? What's wrong with my son? He's never going to love me. What's the point? There were lots of stories and thoughts all with this general theme.
And from those thoughts, I felt lots of heavy emotions. I felt inadequate, frustrated, hopeless, resentful, angry, disappointed, and really, really hurt. And like I've been saying, all those emotions were valid, but none of them helped me create the results I wanted. Because from feeling inadequate and frustrated and hopeless, I engaged in actions that did the exact opposite of what I desperately wanted. They created more separation between me and my son.
When he'd run the other way, I'd shut down. I'd go into another room and sulk. I'd get snappy and irritable with my husband. And even with Adley later that night, I'd go silent. I'd stop talking or answer with short answers.
When Adley did something funny or cute, I didn't feel like laughing or engaging because I was too busy feeling hurt. And when I wasn't engaging with him, when I was quiet and shut down, what result was I creating? More distance. The thing I wanted more than anything in the world was to be close to my son. And yet my actions weren't supporting that.
Not because I was a bad mom, because I was focused on a story that wasn't serving me. And that story created emotions that led to avoidance, fear, and shame instead of helping me stay with him, to be patient, to be warm, and continue loving him even when I wasn't getting the response I desperately wanted from him. We do this type of thing constantly. We wanna be closer to our partner and yet when something feels heavy, we communicate less. We shut down, we pull away.
We want someone to understand us, but because we're convinced they don't, we stop trying to explain ourselves. We want our child to come to us, but because their rejection hurts, we become less emotionally available. We want our team to trust us, but because we're afraid they won't, we show up uncertain and withdrawn. We want our business to work, but because we're afraid it won't, we stop taking the actions that could actually make it work. Our fear says it's protecting us, but sometimes our protection strategy is creating the exact thing we're trying to protect ourselves from.
So what do we do? Step one, just notice the story. Okay? The first thing is awareness. We have to notice that we have a story. And remember, a story is not the same thing as a fact. Potty training isn't going well. They're going to think I don't deserve this promotion. My son doesn't love me. Those are stories. That doesn't mean we shame ourselves for having them at all. And it doesn't mean we immediately slap a positive thought over them. We explore them. We acknowledge them. We acknowledge that we are human and we have human brains that have human stories.
We talk about them with our friends, our partner, our coach, our therapist. We give those emotions. We give those stories somewhere to go. But we don't automatically hand those stories the steering wheel. Okay? They're not driving the bus. I like to think of it as putting them on the back burner. They're still there. They're still cooking. We still need them for dinner.
We're not pretending they don't exist, but they're not driving our behavior. Step two, want us to find the story that serves us. Not fake stories, not affirmations we don't believe. Stories that are already true and available to us, but maybe aren't getting our attention right now. My friend already knew she was the best person for the promotion.
She already knew she was capable. She already knew why they chose her. Those thoughts existed. They just weren't on the front burner. For my friend potty training her daughter, there's a part of her that knows my daughter is learning. This is hard. We can handle hard things. I can be patient with her while she figures this out. And for me, I needed to tap into the part of me that knew I'm a good mom. My relationship with my son is bigger than this moment.
I can continue being warm and patient and available even when this hurts. There were plenty of times throughout this journey with my son that I would immediately respond and want to just walk away and I would literally walk away. And then I would catch myself and I would say, no, Jenna, stay. Stay. Every part of you wants to walk away and respond in the way that feels safe and that feels like the default and automatic, but we need to stay.
When we have these thoughts, when we have the thoughts that I am a good mom and my daughter is learning and I am right for this position, those thoughts lead somewhere very different. Step three, I want you to ask who you want to be in this moment. Okay. How do I wanna show up here? Not how do I make this feeling disappear?
Not how do I guarantee the outcome I want? We can't always control our outcomes. My friend can't control how every person in the room responds to the promotion. My other friend can't force her daughter to poop on the potty. I certainly couldn't force my son to want me instead of his dad or even to run and hug me or like me in that time frame.
I couldn't force that. But we can choose how we want to show up. Patient, present, confident, connected, engaged, supportive. That's the part that's ours. One thing that I want to make really clear here, a really important distinction is that this is not about positive thinking. The heavy emotions are here to stay. Overwhelm, anxiety, resentment, hurt, frustration, they're all gonna be happening. It's valid. It's normal. This isn't about getting rid of them.
It's about awareness. Sitting with those heavy emotions and giving them their own time and space, that can actually help us in the long run. We're not covering them up with a positive emotion Band Aid. We're recognizing I don't love the outcome I create when I act from these emotions. I can honor the emotion without asking it to choose my next action.
That's different. That's choosing who drives the bus. We wanna be in control and in the driver's seat. We don't want some of these emotions to be. And if we aren't intentional about it, I guarantee these emotions will impact more than we'd like. These thoughts will impact more than we like. So the next time you find yourself spiraling about something, your kid, your marriage, your job, your business, I want you to stop and ask yourself a few questions. What am I afraid is going to happen? What story am I telling myself about it? How does that story make me feel and how do I behave when I feel that way?
And then the big one, are those behaviors moving me toward the result I want or accidentally helping create the result I'm most afraid of? I want you to find the stories that already exists, that live within you, the ones that you know you're a good mom even though the moment's hard, the ones that you know your child is capable even though they're struggling, the ones where you know you earned the promotion even though part of you is terrified, the ones where you know your relationship can handle an uncomfortable conversation.
I want you to find those stories. I want you to bring those stories to the front burner and ask yourself, if I believed this story right now, how would I show up? There's so much we can't control in life, but we can become much more intentional about whether the way we're showing up is moving us toward what we want or away from it.
And sometimes the awareness alone about the role that our thoughts and stories are playing in that is enough to right the ship. If this episode speaks to you, I want you to do a couple of things. I want you to follow it. Of course, new episodes come out every week and it's like a little coach in your pocket. You'll get a reminder if you follow that a new one is up and it's a beautiful thing.
New thoughts, new ideas, new coaching every Wednesday. Follow the episode, share it with other moms, other friends who need this message. And if you are realizing that mind management would be life changing for you, don't be shy. Let's talk about it. I offer a free one hour consultation for moms who are desperate for change and want tools to be able to make it happen.
I help moms start their own business so that they have freedom and flexibility, but I also help moms manage their minds so that they can create results they want in all areas of their life. So check out the show notes, jenna.coach/100andtwenty, and schedule time with me. Check out the show notes, see the other episodes as well. There's always some great stuff in there. Check out a ton of different episodes.
Go back, maybe re listen to a few. There's some great stuff in here and it's all going to help you to feel better as a mom and to create change as a mom. Create results that you actually want. Until then, I will see you next week. 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 wanna 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.
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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