117. How to Increase Your Capacity with Better Self-Talk
As moms, we often assume overwhelm comes from having too much to do. But sometimes it’s actually about not having the capacity to hold everything that’s already on our plate. And while we often look for solutions like deleting tasks, asking for help, or creating better systems, there’s another piece we have much more control over: the way we talk to ourselves.
In this episode, I share why the way we talk to ourselves matters so much, especially when we’re balancing motherhood, building a business, and trying to show up for all the people who need us. I also share examples from my own life and coaching to show how self-talk can either leave us feeling exhausted and overwhelmed or give us the energy and confidence to keep moving forward.
I know this is something so many of us struggle with because I’ve been there too. Those moments when we question our decisions, criticize ourselves, or replay what we should have done differently can feel small, but they add up over time. This week, I help you notice the conversations happening in your own head and start shifting them into thoughts that build your capacity instead of drain it.
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:
Why overwhelm is often about capacity, not just the number of things on your to-do list.
How your self-talk impacts your energy, confidence, and ability to handle challenges.
Why talking to yourself like you would talk to a best friend can increase your capacity.
How negative self-talk can become an energy leak that makes everyday situations feel heavier.
The connection between self-trust, decision-making, and building a business.
How to recognize the thoughts and sentences that are draining your energy.
Small ways to practice more supportive self-talk in your daily life.
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Full Episode Transcript:
What if I told you that the biggest thing making motherhood feel so overwhelming isn't actually everything on your to-do list? What if the real problem isn't that you have too much to do or too many responsibilities, but that you're trying to carry it all on an empty tank?
Today I want to share another really powerful tool that has created so much positive impact in my own life and with my coaching clients. It's something that doesn't require hiring help, organizing your calendar, or waking up at 5 a.m. It starts with a conversation you're already having every single day: the one inside your own head. Let's talk about why your self-talk is either increasing your capacity or quietly zapping 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. Today, I want to talk about capacity. Capacity is a pillar of what I work with moms on in my program. I think more than anything, moms have a capacity issue. We have a lot to do, and we don't have the capacity to do it. The definition of capacity is the maximum amount someone can hold, contain, or produce. If we have a lot on our list, all things emotional, physical, and mental, and we don't have the capacity to hold it all, we will automatically feel overwhelmed.
Feeling overwhelmed and out of control is how moms come to me. When we are overwhelmed, we act in ways, let's be honest, we aren't proud of. We might avoid certain tasks that are actually important to us. We may avoid taking care of ourselves. We probably avoid being present with our kids because we're stressed about all the tasks on our to-do list. We might even be a little snippy with the people we love the most. I know that's me. We may feel like just giving up and crawling into bed most days.
I used to think that the solution to this problem was to eliminate tasks. In early episodes, I know I have an episode probably within the first month or two of creating this podcast, and I talk about a process called DADA, D-A-D-A. And it's all about deleting tasks that aren't necessary, asking for help when we need it—that's the first A—delegating tasks that other people can do, the second D, and the last A is accepting help when it's offered instead of saying, "I'm fine," when we really aren't.
But here's the thing: DADA only goes so far. Each of those tools simultaneously requires energy to implement. In order to delete something, we have to spend time thinking about whether it's important to delete and what are the implications of deleting. And all the other mental drama and maybe guilt that goes into deleting something off of our to-do list. If we are asking for help, we need to decide who. We have the task of actually asking and all the follow-up questions and conversations around not only will they do it, but how to do it. And I know we all have that, that sometimes the help we receive requires more energy than just doing it ourselves.
So you get it. I'm not saying that those four approaches, the DADA model, I'm not saying that it's not helpful. And I still stand by them often and coach my clients on, let's talk about what can be deleted, delegated, how they can be open to accepting help and asking for help. I still coach on those things pretty regularly. But what I'm doing more often with my clients is increasing their capacity, increasing the amount they can hold and produce. Because if we can increase your capacity, the long list of to-dos is no longer creating overwhelm.
We don't often see this as possible. We don't think that we can increase our capacity. We think we're at our max capacity because all of the external things happening around us that we can't control. We feel like unless the external demands change, we will forever be overwhelmed. Unless the amount of help we have changes, we'll always feel like we're drowning. But for the most part, we can't change these things. How much our partner helps or doesn't help rarely changes, even if we spend lots of time and money on therapy.
Now, don't get me wrong, I want every mom to be helped. I want them to feel taken care of and supported. I want them to feel, I want you to feel like you're not shouldering everything yourself. And I want you to feel like you don't have to hold all the burdens by yourself. And what I know about moms is that even the most resourced moms often feel like they are at their maximum capacity, and they are overwhelmed, stressed, and exhausted.
In my opinion, and this is a fairly new opinion after working with moms with varying levels and degrees of tasks and varying degrees of help, okay? My opinion is that while it will always be useful to manage the task list and manage getting more help for yourself, the most important thing is increasing your capacity to hold everything that is required of you as a mom. If you can hold more, you will feel in control. If you can produce more in a day, you will feel less behind. If you can take on more, you will feel inspired by the cool shit that you're able to create.
Feeling in control, feeling less behind, feeling inspired, and like the badass that you are, all those things give us energy. When we have more energy, it is a positive feedback loop. We have more energy, so we get more done. We can hold more for our friends and family and our kids. We can create more results in our life. We all desperately need that positive feedback loop. And to do that, we need more capacity.
There are so many ways that we can increase our capacity. I talk about a lot of different ways on this podcast. Episode 90 is a great example of creating capacity. Today, I want to talk about another key way that we can increase our capacity. I want to talk about what that is because it is something that you can change and start working on today, low-hanging fruit to increase your capacity, to increase what you are able to hold, to increase what you are able to produce. And I want to talk about how we can get better at this thing if we are not very good at it right now, because I know a lot of listeners are probably not great at it. I know that I was not great at it for a long, long time. I've only recently gotten good at it, and I'd say I still have a lot of work to do.
This key way and low-hanging fruit for us to increase capacity is all about how we talk to ourselves. How we talk to ourselves is so important in the capacity conversation. When we lift ourselves up, we create capacity. When we knock ourselves down, we decrease capacity, right? We zap our energy.
I want to illustrate this for a second. And I have a few examples ranging from pretty low, low-key examples to more personal and really heavy examples to illustrate this. But let's just say, as one of the examples, because I'm living this, let's say that you are dropping your kid off at camp. I've been living this one for every day of the entire summer. So it's fresh and personal. Let's say your kiddo hates camp and drop-off is a nightmare. Let's say you've tried all the things, and it's still taking you over an hour to actually leave. And this is cutting into work and camp time that you're paying for. And even after you've invested all that time and energy at drop-off, trying to help your kid feel safe and supported and loved, your kid still loses his mind and is so upset when you walk away.
In that moment, there's a talk track that happens. There are conversations that you're either knowingly or unknowingly having with yourself about the scenario. If you are beating yourself up, thinking about all the things you could have done better or maybe the things you wish you would have said, maybe thinking about the dread of this going on for the next few weeks left of camp or for your kid's entire life, your body will feel extremely tense. Your body will likely feel dysregulated, and you will feel exhausted. And that exhaustion will have a ripple effect into everything you do that day.
This has been my life every week this summer when we drop my three-year-old off at camp. Of course, leaving when he's still upset is upsetting for me. But also, trying to leave while he's grabbing onto me and telling me he doesn't want me to leave creates a different emotion. The emotion that creates for me that I've noticed is impatience and irritation. And that leads to anger and frustration. And this all comes back to the sentences in my head in those moments.
When I'm at my best in these situations, I can talk to myself like I'd talk to a best friend. And I can say, "All right, Jenna, you're doing the best you can. Remember that he settles in and has a lot of fun shortly after you leave." I could say to myself in my best moments that I'm doing the right things, and this is very normal behavior for a three-year-old. In those moments when I'm at my best, when I have the best language and self-talk, I have more capacity to hold not only my own emotional experience but also my son's.
When that's my self-talk and it's encouraging, grace-giving, and understanding, I'm not overwhelmed by the weight that comes with the external circumstance. I don't dwell on the drop-off, and I'm able to get home, focus on my work, and get more done. I'm able to show up more soundly for my clients and be in a more supportive head space when Adley gets home.
Now, when I'm at my worst, and I must say that I am more a version of at my worst than I would like to admit. But when I'm at my worst, my inner dialogue is full of questioning myself. It's full of judging myself. It's full of judging him. Why can't he just be like the other kids and let me leave? These other parents get to just drop them off. It's like a 30-second thing. When I'm at my worst, I focus on the idea that I have no control, and I'm full of impatience and both unsupportive while I'm with him and unsupportive for myself when I leave.
These days usually end in tears. I'll pull over and let out a big cry, or like just yesterday at the first stop light, I just stopped and let out the most animalistic combination of like a sigh and a scream thing. I don't know where it came from or what it was, but it's what my body needed to release the stress. When I talk to myself in those ways, I'm suddenly at maximum capacity emotionally. I'm struggling to hold what's going on. And there's a ripple effect for the rest of my day because not only does my work that day exhaust me instead of inspire me, I feel spent when Adley gets home, and I'm less loving and patient with him. I just noticed this the other day. Like I carry it with me all day. And all of this comes back to the sentences that we have between our ears in those moments.
And it doesn't always have to be in such a heightened scenario. It can be as simple as thinking to ourselves like, "Ugh, that was dumb when we make a wrong turn," or, "I'm such an idiot when maybe we say something that was uncalled for or that sounded silly or that was a misunderstanding." Or even, "I don't know how to do this," right? We say that all the time to ourselves when we're working on our business. How we talk to ourselves can give us energy, or it can be a sneaky energy leak. And we want it to give us energy because our capacity grows when we talk to ourselves in loving, grace-giving, understanding, and supportive ways.
And it's low-hanging fruit because it's the voice inside your head that you get to control. Some of us have people in our lives to do this for us, to be our cheerleaders, to talk us down when something really emotional or really heavy happens. But listen, we are the only ones who are with ourselves 24/7. We know even when our friends or partners can't see it on the outside, we know when we aren't nice to ourselves. We don't always say the mean things out loud. We most often don't say the mean things out loud. But even and especially if they're happening in our head, they are zapping our energy and negatively impacting our capacity.
This is so important for my moms whose life is so full, and yet they want to follow their dreams and big goals and start a business. The most perfect example of increasing capacity is telling ourselves that something we create is great and telling ourselves that we can do it, telling ourselves that we're an expert or we have value to give, that a decision we make is the right one or best one that we could make in the moment. We're always talking to ourselves as we're starting these businesses, whether we know it or not. And how we cheer ourselves on, how we talk about ourselves, how we make decisions or think about our decisions is such a simple way to increase our capacity. It's simple, it's not easy.
I have a client that came to me after she had started a business. She came to me wanting to make her business more efficient. She wanted systems. She's a mom of four and no longer wants to set the kids up with an activity and then run to squeeze in things for her business. I told her, "You don't need systems for efficiency. You need to increase your capacity." And for her and a lot of the moms I work with, myself included, one of the ways that you can immediately increase efficiency in your business is to make a decision faster and to decide that you are making the right decision. That comes back to how we talk to ourselves. Am I questioning myself, or am I believing and trusting myself? Am I saying to myself, "This proposal is great," or am I questioning how I can make it better and then spending a ton more time and energy on it?
This final example I want to give is a little bit heavy, but it is something so relevant in my life right now, something that just came up yesterday that I'll talk about. But I'm at a season in life where many of my closest friends are having to say goodbye to their dogs. Most of us got dogs either in college or right out of college, and so many of those dogs, my own included, are reaching the age of 15, 16, 17, 18. My dog Bubba died right before Christmas in 2023, just before his 16th birthday. Anyone who has a dog, for anyone who has been through this, you know how hard this can be.
And when it's your dog, like actually your dog, not a family dog that your parents are making the decision on, which we all may have had growing up, but your dog, this is even more complicated because you are often having to make the decision. You have to decide when it is time for them to go, when their quality of life is no longer worth the fight. They can't talk to us and tell us. And I'm sure many people have had the experience that you just know. You'll just know when it's time. One of my best friends had that experience. But unfortunately, that wasn't my experience. My experience was that I had to make a really hard decision and live with the aftermath of that decision.
For anyone who has made that decision, or maybe if you have the weight of that decision coming up, like a few of my best friends, I want you to know that the self-talk you have during and after that decision can change everything about the capacity you have for life once you have that void in your life. And this is for any big decision you have to make. I know for myself and for people closest to me, it's about saying goodbye to our pets, but this can be with any massive decision that you have to make in your adult life or as a mom.
If you talk to yourself and reassure yourself that you are making the right decision, you will have more energy for life. That's not to say that you won't experience pain and depression and years of healing. Losing a pet is so, so hard. But trusting yourself in that decision gives you so much more capacity than the alternative. The alternative is questioning your decision even after you make it, wondering whether it was the best thing you could have done, second-guessing your decision. This is all self-talk that depletes us even more than the circumstance itself. And these two paths are available to us in heavy situations like this.
I just had a friend reach out, and this, I think this is what led me to want to share this, but she's on vacation in the middle of nowhere, and her dog, who at this point has to be at least 16, was at his favorite dog hotel that he's always loved. And she got a call that he stopped eating, and the vet honestly said he seems like he's ready to die. As I'm sure anyone can imagine, this is the worst-case scenario that someone could be in, being away from your pet, your beloved pet, when they die. And she made a decision that it was too hard to get home, especially with the recommendations from the vet.
And so she texted me, "We did it. He's gone," about an hour later. This decision was heavy. It's a lot to hold. And like I said before, there are two paths that she can take after making that decision. She can decide that it was the best decision. She did what she had to do for her pup to no longer suffer. And she could even feel that maybe there's a part of her pup that was being loyal and thought that the best time was when she wasn't around to save her some pain, because we know these loyal pups of ours like to do things like that. This is a story that creates capacity because it's a story that supports us. It's a story that supports her. It's a story that doesn't add judgment and questioning on top of an already heavy thing to hold. It's self-talk that embraces us in a hug, the hug that we need.
Then there's, of course, another path that we want to get better at avoiding. The path where we second-guess that decision, the path where we focus on the possibility of our pup feeling alone and abandoned and regretting so many decisions leading up to that event that we are fully engulfed in guilt and remorse. If we're focusing on those things, it's a story, and it's self-talk that creates exhaustion. It zaps our capacity and makes all other things in life feel completely overwhelming.
Both of these are stories that we have in our head. They are how we are deciding to talk to ourselves, and what I want is for us to choose the stories and sentences that embrace us in a loving hug, sentences that hold us when we need it most so we can go on holding all the other things we need to hold in our lives for our kids and family and our goals. This isn't to say we don't grieve in heavy difficult situations. Grieving will happen either way. But there's a part before and during the grief that involves us talking to ourselves in ways that lift us up. This is one of the most capacity-building things you can do for yourself. You can choose to lift yourself up as much as you can in your day-to-day. Choose to talk to yourself like you would your best friend, or imagine what your best friend would say to you in hard moments and then soak that in even if you don't have access to speak to your best friend in that moment.
This will increase your capacity to hold more and produce more on a day-to-day basis. This will have you feeling less like you're at maximum capacity at any given moment and more like you can handle whatever comes your way. The mental piece is so important. So I want you to be honest with yourself right now, and I want you to rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 on your self-talk. Okay, one being you are your harshest critic, and 10 being you are your biggest cheerleader. Where do you fall on that scale?
If you're above a five, good for you. That's a great start. Wherever you fall on the scale, I'm sure you can improve and move up the scale. So I want you to think about how you can do that. Even if your self-talk is a mix of cheerleading and a little bit of criticism, how can you be even more kind and loving to yourself? If you're at or below a five, you have some work to do. And this is most of us. But I also want you to know that if you're below a five, this means that you have the biggest potential for a massive increase in capacity. If you're at a two, that means that you are regularly doubting yourself, questioning your decisions, second-guessing your actions, maybe even regretting your actions, and all of that is running through your head all the time.
If you're able to focus on self-talk and move from, let's say, a two to a six or a seven, I promise this will change your life. You will see that you have more time and energy than you ever had before. You will find that you're getting things done quicker, more efficiently, and having more fun while doing it, not just in business, but everything in life.
No matter where you're at on the scale, I want you to think about this week or this month or indefinitely, right? Specific ways that you can talk to yourself in more supportive ways. Is it making quicker decisions and telling yourself that no matter what, that was the best decision I could have made in that moment? Is it just having heightened awareness around the sentences in your head and acknowledging when one isn't as loving if one zaps your energy and exhausts you? Is it taking note of how the people in your life that cheer you up the most? Is it recognizing how they talk to you and truly embodying that and trying to even just repeat those sentences, the sentences that they're already giving you in your hardest moments when they're not around?
For me, especially these next two days of camp drop-off, I'm going to be a broken record in my head about how even if Adley is crying at drop-off, I'm doing a great job as a mom. And scenarios like camp help to create more independence and resilience for my kiddo. I want you to find what your work is here, and I want you to practice. Just like anything else, self-talk is a muscle. We have to practice to grow the muscle. It takes time and intention to be able to go through something really hard and love on ourselves the whole time in our heads. That may feel impossible, but just start with small steps, small moments, or little sentences that shift and that lean towards supportive talk.
And then I promise it will slowly but surely become more of the default. Right now, the default may be to doubt or beat yourself up, especially if you're a two on that scale. But take this episode with you and think of it next time you're in a situation where your self-talk is negative, and tweak that self-talk just a smidge. And notice how your energy changes. Notice how you have capacity for more, to hold more, to produce more because we aren't as exhausted by the sentences in our head.
If this episode gave you something to think about, don't try to change every thought you have overnight. Instead, just notice. Notice the next time you make a mistake. Notice the next hard moment with your kids. Notice the next time you feel behind or overwhelmed. And then I want you to ask yourself if I were talking to somebody I love, my bestie, what would I say? And practice offering yourself that same kindness because every compassionate thought for yourself is going to build capacity for you. Every encouraging sentence gives you a little more room to breathe and to build. And the beautiful thing is you don't have to wait until life gets easier to feel more capable or to build more capacity. It comes from changing the voice that is in your head in all the circumstances with you. And like I said, that's low-hanging fruit because you are in control of that voice.
Thank you so much for spending time with me today. If this episode resonated, if you know some moms in your life who could use a little more love in their self-talk, I would love for you to share it with those moms who could use this reminder. And if you haven't already, please follow the podcast so you never miss an episode. 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.
Today I want to share another really powerful tool that has created so much positive impact in my own life and with my coaching clients. It's something that doesn't require hiring help, organizing your calendar, or waking up at 5 a.m. It starts with a conversation you're already having every single day: the one inside your own head. Let's talk about why your self-talk is either increasing your capacity or quietly zapping 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. Today, I want to talk about capacity. Capacity is a pillar of what I work with moms on in my program. I think more than anything, moms have a capacity issue. We have a lot to do, and we don't have the capacity to do it. The definition of capacity is the maximum amount someone can hold, contain, or produce. If we have a lot on our list, all things emotional, physical, and mental, and we don't have the capacity to hold it all, we will automatically feel overwhelmed.
Feeling overwhelmed and out of control is how moms come to me. When we are overwhelmed, we act in ways, let's be honest, we aren't proud of. We might avoid certain tasks that are actually important to us. We may avoid taking care of ourselves. We probably avoid being present with our kids because we're stressed about all the tasks on our to-do list. We might even be a little snippy with the people we love the most. I know that's me. We may feel like just giving up and crawling into bed most days.
I used to think that the solution to this problem was to eliminate tasks. In early episodes, I know I have an episode probably within the first month or two of creating this podcast, and I talk about a process called DADA, D-A-D-A. And it's all about deleting tasks that aren't necessary, asking for help when we need it—that's the first A—delegating tasks that other people can do, the second D, and the last A is accepting help when it's offered instead of saying, "I'm fine," when we really aren't.
But here's the thing: DADA only goes so far. Each of those tools simultaneously requires energy to implement. In order to delete something, we have to spend time thinking about whether it's important to delete and what are the implications of deleting. And all the other mental drama and maybe guilt that goes into deleting something off of our to-do list. If we are asking for help, we need to decide who. We have the task of actually asking and all the follow-up questions and conversations around not only will they do it, but how to do it. And I know we all have that, that sometimes the help we receive requires more energy than just doing it ourselves.
So you get it. I'm not saying that those four approaches, the DADA model, I'm not saying that it's not helpful. And I still stand by them often and coach my clients on, let's talk about what can be deleted, delegated, how they can be open to accepting help and asking for help. I still coach on those things pretty regularly. But what I'm doing more often with my clients is increasing their capacity, increasing the amount they can hold and produce. Because if we can increase your capacity, the long list of to-dos is no longer creating overwhelm.
We don't often see this as possible. We don't think that we can increase our capacity. We think we're at our max capacity because all of the external things happening around us that we can't control. We feel like unless the external demands change, we will forever be overwhelmed. Unless the amount of help we have changes, we'll always feel like we're drowning. But for the most part, we can't change these things. How much our partner helps or doesn't help rarely changes, even if we spend lots of time and money on therapy.
Now, don't get me wrong, I want every mom to be helped. I want them to feel taken care of and supported. I want them to feel, I want you to feel like you're not shouldering everything yourself. And I want you to feel like you don't have to hold all the burdens by yourself. And what I know about moms is that even the most resourced moms often feel like they are at their maximum capacity, and they are overwhelmed, stressed, and exhausted.
In my opinion, and this is a fairly new opinion after working with moms with varying levels and degrees of tasks and varying degrees of help, okay? My opinion is that while it will always be useful to manage the task list and manage getting more help for yourself, the most important thing is increasing your capacity to hold everything that is required of you as a mom. If you can hold more, you will feel in control. If you can produce more in a day, you will feel less behind. If you can take on more, you will feel inspired by the cool shit that you're able to create.
Feeling in control, feeling less behind, feeling inspired, and like the badass that you are, all those things give us energy. When we have more energy, it is a positive feedback loop. We have more energy, so we get more done. We can hold more for our friends and family and our kids. We can create more results in our life. We all desperately need that positive feedback loop. And to do that, we need more capacity.
There are so many ways that we can increase our capacity. I talk about a lot of different ways on this podcast. Episode 90 is a great example of creating capacity. Today, I want to talk about another key way that we can increase our capacity. I want to talk about what that is because it is something that you can change and start working on today, low-hanging fruit to increase your capacity, to increase what you are able to hold, to increase what you are able to produce. And I want to talk about how we can get better at this thing if we are not very good at it right now, because I know a lot of listeners are probably not great at it. I know that I was not great at it for a long, long time. I've only recently gotten good at it, and I'd say I still have a lot of work to do.
This key way and low-hanging fruit for us to increase capacity is all about how we talk to ourselves. How we talk to ourselves is so important in the capacity conversation. When we lift ourselves up, we create capacity. When we knock ourselves down, we decrease capacity, right? We zap our energy.
I want to illustrate this for a second. And I have a few examples ranging from pretty low, low-key examples to more personal and really heavy examples to illustrate this. But let's just say, as one of the examples, because I'm living this, let's say that you are dropping your kid off at camp. I've been living this one for every day of the entire summer. So it's fresh and personal. Let's say your kiddo hates camp and drop-off is a nightmare. Let's say you've tried all the things, and it's still taking you over an hour to actually leave. And this is cutting into work and camp time that you're paying for. And even after you've invested all that time and energy at drop-off, trying to help your kid feel safe and supported and loved, your kid still loses his mind and is so upset when you walk away.
In that moment, there's a talk track that happens. There are conversations that you're either knowingly or unknowingly having with yourself about the scenario. If you are beating yourself up, thinking about all the things you could have done better or maybe the things you wish you would have said, maybe thinking about the dread of this going on for the next few weeks left of camp or for your kid's entire life, your body will feel extremely tense. Your body will likely feel dysregulated, and you will feel exhausted. And that exhaustion will have a ripple effect into everything you do that day.
This has been my life every week this summer when we drop my three-year-old off at camp. Of course, leaving when he's still upset is upsetting for me. But also, trying to leave while he's grabbing onto me and telling me he doesn't want me to leave creates a different emotion. The emotion that creates for me that I've noticed is impatience and irritation. And that leads to anger and frustration. And this all comes back to the sentences in my head in those moments.
When I'm at my best in these situations, I can talk to myself like I'd talk to a best friend. And I can say, "All right, Jenna, you're doing the best you can. Remember that he settles in and has a lot of fun shortly after you leave." I could say to myself in my best moments that I'm doing the right things, and this is very normal behavior for a three-year-old. In those moments when I'm at my best, when I have the best language and self-talk, I have more capacity to hold not only my own emotional experience but also my son's.
When that's my self-talk and it's encouraging, grace-giving, and understanding, I'm not overwhelmed by the weight that comes with the external circumstance. I don't dwell on the drop-off, and I'm able to get home, focus on my work, and get more done. I'm able to show up more soundly for my clients and be in a more supportive head space when Adley gets home.
Now, when I'm at my worst, and I must say that I am more a version of at my worst than I would like to admit. But when I'm at my worst, my inner dialogue is full of questioning myself. It's full of judging myself. It's full of judging him. Why can't he just be like the other kids and let me leave? These other parents get to just drop them off. It's like a 30-second thing. When I'm at my worst, I focus on the idea that I have no control, and I'm full of impatience and both unsupportive while I'm with him and unsupportive for myself when I leave.
These days usually end in tears. I'll pull over and let out a big cry, or like just yesterday at the first stop light, I just stopped and let out the most animalistic combination of like a sigh and a scream thing. I don't know where it came from or what it was, but it's what my body needed to release the stress. When I talk to myself in those ways, I'm suddenly at maximum capacity emotionally. I'm struggling to hold what's going on. And there's a ripple effect for the rest of my day because not only does my work that day exhaust me instead of inspire me, I feel spent when Adley gets home, and I'm less loving and patient with him. I just noticed this the other day. Like I carry it with me all day. And all of this comes back to the sentences that we have between our ears in those moments.
And it doesn't always have to be in such a heightened scenario. It can be as simple as thinking to ourselves like, "Ugh, that was dumb when we make a wrong turn," or, "I'm such an idiot when maybe we say something that was uncalled for or that sounded silly or that was a misunderstanding." Or even, "I don't know how to do this," right? We say that all the time to ourselves when we're working on our business. How we talk to ourselves can give us energy, or it can be a sneaky energy leak. And we want it to give us energy because our capacity grows when we talk to ourselves in loving, grace-giving, understanding, and supportive ways.
And it's low-hanging fruit because it's the voice inside your head that you get to control. Some of us have people in our lives to do this for us, to be our cheerleaders, to talk us down when something really emotional or really heavy happens. But listen, we are the only ones who are with ourselves 24/7. We know even when our friends or partners can't see it on the outside, we know when we aren't nice to ourselves. We don't always say the mean things out loud. We most often don't say the mean things out loud. But even and especially if they're happening in our head, they are zapping our energy and negatively impacting our capacity.
This is so important for my moms whose life is so full, and yet they want to follow their dreams and big goals and start a business. The most perfect example of increasing capacity is telling ourselves that something we create is great and telling ourselves that we can do it, telling ourselves that we're an expert or we have value to give, that a decision we make is the right one or best one that we could make in the moment. We're always talking to ourselves as we're starting these businesses, whether we know it or not. And how we cheer ourselves on, how we talk about ourselves, how we make decisions or think about our decisions is such a simple way to increase our capacity. It's simple, it's not easy.
I have a client that came to me after she had started a business. She came to me wanting to make her business more efficient. She wanted systems. She's a mom of four and no longer wants to set the kids up with an activity and then run to squeeze in things for her business. I told her, "You don't need systems for efficiency. You need to increase your capacity." And for her and a lot of the moms I work with, myself included, one of the ways that you can immediately increase efficiency in your business is to make a decision faster and to decide that you are making the right decision. That comes back to how we talk to ourselves. Am I questioning myself, or am I believing and trusting myself? Am I saying to myself, "This proposal is great," or am I questioning how I can make it better and then spending a ton more time and energy on it?
This final example I want to give is a little bit heavy, but it is something so relevant in my life right now, something that just came up yesterday that I'll talk about. But I'm at a season in life where many of my closest friends are having to say goodbye to their dogs. Most of us got dogs either in college or right out of college, and so many of those dogs, my own included, are reaching the age of 15, 16, 17, 18. My dog Bubba died right before Christmas in 2023, just before his 16th birthday. Anyone who has a dog, for anyone who has been through this, you know how hard this can be.
And when it's your dog, like actually your dog, not a family dog that your parents are making the decision on, which we all may have had growing up, but your dog, this is even more complicated because you are often having to make the decision. You have to decide when it is time for them to go, when their quality of life is no longer worth the fight. They can't talk to us and tell us. And I'm sure many people have had the experience that you just know. You'll just know when it's time. One of my best friends had that experience. But unfortunately, that wasn't my experience. My experience was that I had to make a really hard decision and live with the aftermath of that decision.
For anyone who has made that decision, or maybe if you have the weight of that decision coming up, like a few of my best friends, I want you to know that the self-talk you have during and after that decision can change everything about the capacity you have for life once you have that void in your life. And this is for any big decision you have to make. I know for myself and for people closest to me, it's about saying goodbye to our pets, but this can be with any massive decision that you have to make in your adult life or as a mom.
If you talk to yourself and reassure yourself that you are making the right decision, you will have more energy for life. That's not to say that you won't experience pain and depression and years of healing. Losing a pet is so, so hard. But trusting yourself in that decision gives you so much more capacity than the alternative. The alternative is questioning your decision even after you make it, wondering whether it was the best thing you could have done, second-guessing your decision. This is all self-talk that depletes us even more than the circumstance itself. And these two paths are available to us in heavy situations like this.
I just had a friend reach out, and this, I think this is what led me to want to share this, but she's on vacation in the middle of nowhere, and her dog, who at this point has to be at least 16, was at his favorite dog hotel that he's always loved. And she got a call that he stopped eating, and the vet honestly said he seems like he's ready to die. As I'm sure anyone can imagine, this is the worst-case scenario that someone could be in, being away from your pet, your beloved pet, when they die. And she made a decision that it was too hard to get home, especially with the recommendations from the vet.
And so she texted me, "We did it. He's gone," about an hour later. This decision was heavy. It's a lot to hold. And like I said before, there are two paths that she can take after making that decision. She can decide that it was the best decision. She did what she had to do for her pup to no longer suffer. And she could even feel that maybe there's a part of her pup that was being loyal and thought that the best time was when she wasn't around to save her some pain, because we know these loyal pups of ours like to do things like that. This is a story that creates capacity because it's a story that supports us. It's a story that supports her. It's a story that doesn't add judgment and questioning on top of an already heavy thing to hold. It's self-talk that embraces us in a hug, the hug that we need.
Then there's, of course, another path that we want to get better at avoiding. The path where we second-guess that decision, the path where we focus on the possibility of our pup feeling alone and abandoned and regretting so many decisions leading up to that event that we are fully engulfed in guilt and remorse. If we're focusing on those things, it's a story, and it's self-talk that creates exhaustion. It zaps our capacity and makes all other things in life feel completely overwhelming.
Both of these are stories that we have in our head. They are how we are deciding to talk to ourselves, and what I want is for us to choose the stories and sentences that embrace us in a loving hug, sentences that hold us when we need it most so we can go on holding all the other things we need to hold in our lives for our kids and family and our goals. This isn't to say we don't grieve in heavy difficult situations. Grieving will happen either way. But there's a part before and during the grief that involves us talking to ourselves in ways that lift us up. This is one of the most capacity-building things you can do for yourself. You can choose to lift yourself up as much as you can in your day-to-day. Choose to talk to yourself like you would your best friend, or imagine what your best friend would say to you in hard moments and then soak that in even if you don't have access to speak to your best friend in that moment.
This will increase your capacity to hold more and produce more on a day-to-day basis. This will have you feeling less like you're at maximum capacity at any given moment and more like you can handle whatever comes your way. The mental piece is so important. So I want you to be honest with yourself right now, and I want you to rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 on your self-talk. Okay, one being you are your harshest critic, and 10 being you are your biggest cheerleader. Where do you fall on that scale?
If you're above a five, good for you. That's a great start. Wherever you fall on the scale, I'm sure you can improve and move up the scale. So I want you to think about how you can do that. Even if your self-talk is a mix of cheerleading and a little bit of criticism, how can you be even more kind and loving to yourself? If you're at or below a five, you have some work to do. And this is most of us. But I also want you to know that if you're below a five, this means that you have the biggest potential for a massive increase in capacity. If you're at a two, that means that you are regularly doubting yourself, questioning your decisions, second-guessing your actions, maybe even regretting your actions, and all of that is running through your head all the time.
If you're able to focus on self-talk and move from, let's say, a two to a six or a seven, I promise this will change your life. You will see that you have more time and energy than you ever had before. You will find that you're getting things done quicker, more efficiently, and having more fun while doing it, not just in business, but everything in life.
No matter where you're at on the scale, I want you to think about this week or this month or indefinitely, right? Specific ways that you can talk to yourself in more supportive ways. Is it making quicker decisions and telling yourself that no matter what, that was the best decision I could have made in that moment? Is it just having heightened awareness around the sentences in your head and acknowledging when one isn't as loving if one zaps your energy and exhausts you? Is it taking note of how the people in your life that cheer you up the most? Is it recognizing how they talk to you and truly embodying that and trying to even just repeat those sentences, the sentences that they're already giving you in your hardest moments when they're not around?
For me, especially these next two days of camp drop-off, I'm going to be a broken record in my head about how even if Adley is crying at drop-off, I'm doing a great job as a mom. And scenarios like camp help to create more independence and resilience for my kiddo. I want you to find what your work is here, and I want you to practice. Just like anything else, self-talk is a muscle. We have to practice to grow the muscle. It takes time and intention to be able to go through something really hard and love on ourselves the whole time in our heads. That may feel impossible, but just start with small steps, small moments, or little sentences that shift and that lean towards supportive talk.
And then I promise it will slowly but surely become more of the default. Right now, the default may be to doubt or beat yourself up, especially if you're a two on that scale. But take this episode with you and think of it next time you're in a situation where your self-talk is negative, and tweak that self-talk just a smidge. And notice how your energy changes. Notice how you have capacity for more, to hold more, to produce more because we aren't as exhausted by the sentences in our head.
If this episode gave you something to think about, don't try to change every thought you have overnight. Instead, just notice. Notice the next time you make a mistake. Notice the next hard moment with your kids. Notice the next time you feel behind or overwhelmed. And then I want you to ask yourself if I were talking to somebody I love, my bestie, what would I say? And practice offering yourself that same kindness because every compassionate thought for yourself is going to build capacity for you. Every encouraging sentence gives you a little more room to breathe and to build. And the beautiful thing is you don't have to wait until life gets easier to feel more capable or to build more capacity. It comes from changing the voice that is in your head in all the circumstances with you. And like I said, that's low-hanging fruit because you are in control of that voice.
Thank you so much for spending time with me today. If this episode resonated, if you know some moms in your life who could use a little more love in their self-talk, I would love for you to share it with those moms who could use this reminder. And if you haven't already, please follow the podcast so you never miss an episode. 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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