79. Manage Your Mind, Gain Back Your Time
If you've ever said, "I just don't have time to start my business," this episode will change how you see time completely. Because while your schedule is full and your responsibilities are real, there's another layer most moms overlook, and that's emotional capacity. Heavy emotions like overwhelm, anxiety, and frustration quietly drain your focus, energy, and productivity long before you ever sit down to work.
In this episode, I'll show you how your emotional energy directly impacts your time, and how small mindset shifts can help you reclaim hours of energy you didn't know you were losing. You'll learn quick and simple tools for managing overwhelm in the moment, including how to name what you're feeling, regulate your nervous system, and bring calm back to your day.
By the end, you'll see that creating time isn't about doing more; it's about feeling better. When you manage your emotional energy, you move faster, think clearer, and finally create space for what matters most: your dream business, your family, and yourself.
If you're ready to stop feeling stuck, join my *FREE* webinar, Unstuck: How to Build the Business You Can't Stop Thinking About. It's happening on Wednesday, December 10th, 2025, at 1 pm ET/10 am PT. Click here to register.
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why emotional bandwidth matters just as much as hours on a clock.
The simple mechanics of how thoughts create emotions that steal your time.
How to use the "name it to tame it" technique to drop emotional intensity by 30%.
The difference between solving a scheduling problem and an emotional management problem.
Practical breathing techniques that signal safety to your brain and restore focus.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
Heavy emotions don't just make us feel bad. They influence how quickly we think, how confidently we decide, and how efficiently we move through our day.
And that's why managing emotions in the moment matters for our time. The calmer your mind, the more efficient your actions. The more efficient your actions, the more time you feel like you have and the more time you actually have. And when it comes to starting a business, this emotional clarity is everything. Small, grounded actions actually give you time back.
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. We are flirting with the end of the year here, and it's both incredibly exciting and a little surreal. These next few weeks are hardest on us moms, so if you skipped last week's episode, episode 78 about self-love, please check it out before we jump into the heat of the season, the holiday season that is.
This week's episode is also so needed this time of year because we have a lot going on and a lot of added responsibilities, and it can feel like we have even less time for starting or building a business. And I want to offer an opportunity to gain back time in your day and week without saying no to things, without asking for help, without depending on anyone else.
That's right. It's a concept I haven't talked about directly on this podcast and I'm really quite surprised that I haven't because I'm really excited to talk about it today. Because if you've ever said to yourself, "I want to start a business, I want to do X, Y, and Z, I really do, but I genuinely do not have the time." If that sentence has come out of your mouth or lived in your brain, this episode is going to blow your mind.
And yes, you absolutely have real responsibilities, real constraints, and a real life schedule that is already full, especially this time of year. But there's also something else happening under the surface that most of us moms don't realize. And that is emotions. Emotions quietly drain the time you do have. Not because you're doing anything wrong, not because your emotions are bad, and not because emotions are the only factor in this time crunch period or in this time equation or puzzle.
The emotions we carry, especially heavy ones like overwhelm, anxiety, frustration, pressure, ones that we are all so familiar with, they don't just make us feel bad. They drain our energy, reduce our focus, slow us down, and quietly stretch tasks far beyond the time they actually require. Which I'm going to talk a lot about today in detail so that you truly understand what's happening and you know exactly how to resolve it.
So let's talk about how emotional energy and time connect. How this affects your ability to start a business and what small shifts you can take to get back some of that capacity that you are losing in the emotional drain of motherhood. So before we dive in officially, I want to acknowledge something. You really do have a full life, okay? I said that before. Your responsibilities are real, your time is limited, your kids, your job, your home, they all need you. So when you feel like you don't have time to start a business, it makes perfect sense. It's valid.
And at the same time, as a coach, I've learned how to look at time like a detective, okay? For all my clients. Every mom comes to me with time scarcity. And part of my work and my job is helping her find not only pockets of time she didn't realize she had, but also pockets of emotional bandwidth she didn't realize she was losing. Okay? Because time scarcity often starts with emotional drains in our life. And not the whole story, but a really important part of it is our emotions. And once you start seeing where your emotional bandwidth is leaking, you gain so much more control over your time than you thought you had.
So, let's talk about how emotions really drain your time and energy. We all know that heavy emotions feel terrible, but what we often don't realize is how much time they quietly consume in our life. And the simplest way to say it is that heavy emotions require more energy to experience. And when your energy drops, your efficiency drops. And when your efficiency drops, your time shrinks.
When you're overwhelmed or anxious or frustrated, which we all know happens on a moment-to-moment basis, your brain slows down, your focus scatters. It's harder to start a task. It's harder to finish a task. It's harder to make decisions. You second guess yourself more. You move from one thing to another without completing anything. And because your brain isn't working at full capacity in those moments, everything takes longer.
It's not that you don't have time, it's that your energy and capacity is being used up before you even get the chance to use the time you do have, okay? And this leads perfectly into a quick story that I want to share that brings this to life because I also know that you've lived this too.
The other day, we were having one of those chaotic mornings. I was leaving for a trip the following day. I had a long to-do list waiting for me. The boys needed to get ready. I was meeting a friend for coffee that morning and I only had two full work days that week. And I had actually had planned them out beautifully.
And then I found myself with this little 30-minute pocket of extra time before I had to leave for coffee. 30 minutes. It felt like gold. I could have done anything in that window, and I had a lot of stuff to do, right? I had to do laundry, there were emails, I could have packed, there were some cleaning things I needed to get done, admin tasks for my business. But instead, I was swimming in overwhelm, thinking about all the things I needed to do that morning before coffee.
And when that overwhelm hit, I became completely inefficient in ways that were almost comical. I kept walking up and down the stairs and forgetting why I'd even gone up there. I'd start one task and then immediately get pulled into another, not finishing anything. I'd pick up something and then put it down and start something else and get distracted. My brain felt foggy and scattered.
And even though I had 30 whole minutes of extra time, I put absolutely zero of those minutes to good use. In fact, I also ended up running late to coffee, even though I was ready 30 minutes before I had to leave. I had texted my friend and said, "Hey, do you want to meet 30 minutes earlier? I have some time." And she couldn't meet, and then I ended up being late.
And while this was happening, I actually noticed myself wasting so much time in that moment, and it sparked such a clear reflection that I didn't lose that time because I didn't have time. I lost it because of my emotions and overwhelmed headspace. And I know this is a major problem because on days when I'm calm and grounded and focused, I've done so much in those same 30 minutes. The difference wasn't the tasks, it wasn't the schedule, it wasn't how much time I had. It was the emotional bandwidth I brought into the moment. And this is the part of time that most moms never consider.
So, let me talk about what not being in a good headspace or being in an overwhelmed headspace or an anxious headspace actually means, okay? When we talk about not being in the right headspace, we're not talking about something dramatic. It's simply this, it’s: you have thoughts happening that create heavy emotions. Thoughts like, I'm behind. There's too much to do. I should be able to handle this better. I don't have enough time to do any of it well. No matter what I choose, I'm going to drop the ball.
Those thoughts create overwhelm, pressure, anxiety, frustration. And all of those emotions drain your working memory, slow down your thinking, reduce your ability to focus. It makes decision-making harder and requires more energy to manage. Okay? Which I talked about a little bit before. All of those things, what that means is they steal time without you noticing.
I also remember a few weeks ago, I was going to a networking event at 8 a.m. It was going to be a mini miracle for me to get out of the house by 7:50. But Chris, my husband, had agreed to take lead on with the kids that morning and run the show so I could focus on getting out the door.
Well, Chris went up to get Adley at 7:45 and he was surprised by a massive blowout. We all know and love. And I mean full on. Chris had to give Adley a shower, change the bedsheets, the whole 9 yards. And of course, in that type of situation, I had to stay back and help.
So when I left, 10 minutes after 8, I was in tears. I was frustrated that the morning went that way. I was frustrated at Chris for waiting so long to get Adley, knowing I had to be out the door at 8. And also felt very stressed about the dread of walking into a room of people that I've never met before, late. Okay? The morning threw me into a complete tailspin.
And as I drove to the event, I missed not one, but two different exits, which made me even later. Since I was so emotionally drained and overwhelmed from the morning, I made simple mistakes during the drive that made things even worse. My brain was consumed and tired and not able to focus. And this is how our brain works. And this is how it's connected to time. I wasted so much additional time because I was emotionally overloaded in that moment.
When we're emotionally overloaded, our brain is using energy to process the emotion instead of the task in front of us. And as you can imagine, this directly connects with your ability to start and build a business because when it doesn't feel like you have time, it may be that the mental overload and any heavy emotions that you're carrying on a day-to-day basis are a bigger factor than you think. Okay?
You may be emotionally drained before you ever get the chance to take on a task and start. Even when you may technically have some pockets of time, those pockets don't feel usable because your emotional energy is exhausted, making it hard to start or focus on something that feels big and new. Okay? And this isn't about blame at all, it's about you being able to notice when this is happening. Because when you understand that emotional bandwidth is part of your time problem, you'll know that it's a completely different problem you're solving.
When it's your emotions, that means it's a thought problem, which is completely different from solving a scheduling problem or any of the problems around time that I help you solve in episodes 5, 12, 18, or 61. All of those episodes are about elements of time management and tools and skills that you can apply to get better at time management. This piece isn't time management as much as emotional management. And if we're not managing our emotions, we're definitely not making the best use of our time.
So, one thing that helps in moments of overwhelm is simply understanding how emotions are created in the first place. This isn't about forcing yourself to think positive. It's just about understanding the mechanics so that you can regain a little more influence over what's happening inside your mind and body.
The simplest way to think about it is that something happens. It's a circumstance. You have a thought about it, which is your interpretation. That thought creates a feeling in your body, which is your emotion. That emotion drives what you do next. So, action or inaction. A perfect example is my not focusing on my GPS and missing those exits. That was an action. And that action creates your outcome or your result. So my action created the result of me being 15 minutes later to my networking event.
So when I left my house that morning and my brain was thinking things like this always happens to me, I rarely ask for a favor and then this happens, everyone's going to look at me when I am in and think I'm rude and don't care about this event. Those spiraling thoughts created a feeling in my body, okay? Overwhelm, anxiety, frustration.
And those specific emotions are what led to the actions during my drive that led to the result of me being even later. I know I wasn't able to focus on the directions because I was distracted. I was crying, which is an action. My body was tense and heart was pounding. All of those are actions. When I did miss a turn, I wasted a lot of time trying to decide which way to go next, and then made another mistake because I was flustered in decision-making, right?
All of this means that the result of not having time or wasting time can easily be explained by thoughts that aren't serving us. You don't need to change every thought. You don't need to magically feel neutral, but understanding the link gives you more options. And that's where some really helpful tools come in. So I'm going to talk about a few really easy, simple, in-the-moment tools to manage heavy emotions. And these are not complicated. They are 5-second to 2-minute tools you can use anywhere, anytime, even with the chaos of life and kids running around. Okay?
So, tool number one is to name the emotion. This alone lowers the intensity of the emotion. And this comes from Tara Mohr. I think that's how you say her name. And also from just general emotional neuroscience, right?
When you name what you're feeling, actually name it, the emotional intensity drops by about 30%. They often say, name it to tame it. You can say to yourself, "This is overwhelm. This is pressure. This is frustration in my body. This is anxiety," right? Naming it pulls you out of the emotional swirl and into awareness. And this helps with time and getting time back because when intensity drops, clarity rises. Okay? And clarity makes tasks faster. It makes decisions easier. It helps you to operate at your optimal level.
The next tool, and this is like going back to when we were kids, one deep breath that's longer on the exhale. This is the fastest nervous system regulation tool, breathing. Okay? Inhale to the count of 4, exhale to the count of 6.
A longer exhale signals safety to the brain and shifts your nervous system out of that fight or flight mode that we are feeling in these really heavy emotional moments. Even just one breath helps. And when your nervous system calms, you stop spiraling and you regain the ability to focus. Okay? You refocus on the task at hand, you're able to actually complete the task, make fewer mistakes, and get things done.
The next tool is knowing that you can have awareness and not try to fix anything. So it's sort of like having awareness, which is a great strategy in general, without the pressure to change anything. Okay? You don't have to change your thoughts necessarily. Even just noticing them helps you to get into a better emotional headspace.
So if you, similar to the first tool but kind of worded in a different way that might resonate more, is saying things like, "I'm having the thought that I don't have enough time. I'm having the thought that everything is urgent. I'm having the thought that I'm behind. I'm having the thought that everybody's going to stare at me when I walk in late."
So in the first tool, we are naming the emotion to tame it. In this tool, we are sort of naming our thoughts to tame them. I also love the Brené, and I've talked about this before, Brené Brown's, "the story I'm telling myself is," so before any thought, you can say, "the story I'm telling myself is that I don't have time."
And what that does is this separates you from the thought, which softens the emotion automatically. And this helps with time because when our emotion becomes less heavy, you get back that mental bandwidth and energy. And as I've talked about at length, all of that speeds everything up.
There's one more emotional time leak that deserves its own spotlight, okay? Because of what I do, what my clients do, what this podcast is all about. Thinking about your business all day without actually taking action on it.
Whether you are just thinking about the idea of being your own boss and working for yourself but having no idea what you want to do for a business, having an idea but feeling like you don't have the bandwidth or headspace to do it, you don't know how you would do it. Or if you've started your business but you are just feeling really heavy in the business and judging yourself a lot or whatever it might be. But you're thinking about the business all day but actually not taking action on it.
When you think about your business constantly, like in the shower, in the pickup line, during lunch, nursing, lying in bed, it requires emotional energy. Energy that you may feel like you're saving by not going for it, by not working on the business, but you're actually still expending the energy because you keep thinking about the business. Which means you're draining yourself before you ever start. So of course, then it feels like you don't have the time or energy to start your business because it already feels draining. And it's not procrastination, it's emotional exhaustion.
Your brain has been carrying the weight of the business all day, all week, all year, maybe for many years. Like for me, it was 6 years that I had thought about my business but not taken action. And thinking without doing creates even more overwhelm, more overwhelm than taking one small step ever will. Okay?
Every tiny action that you can take creates clarity, it creates momentum, confidence, relief, and emotional lightness. Okay? Because you're actually doing the thing, not just thinking about it. Action isn't just productive, it literally frees up the time and energy you were losing to mental spinning and daydreaming. Okay? Judging yourself or wondering what life could be, all those things that we're thinking about.
And this is a huge part of what keeps us stuck before and during the business process because carrying a business in your mind is far heavier than slowly building one in real life. Heavy emotions don't just make us feel bad. They influence how quickly we think, how confidently we decide, and how efficiently we move through our day.
And that's why managing emotions in the moment matters for our time. The calmer your mind, the more efficient your actions. The more efficient your actions, the more time you feel like you have and the more time you actually have. And when it comes to starting a business, this emotional clarity is everything. Small, grounded actions actually give you time back.
So today we talked about how heavy emotions drain your energy, slow you down and stretch tasks. We talked about why emotional bandwidth matters just as much as hours on a clock and how you're managing the time. We talked about how thought patterns create those heavy emotions, so how thinking all day about your business creates emotional exhaustion. And we talked about a few of the tools that can really help you manage your emotions and gain back time in those hectic, stressful, anxiety-provoking moments.
This isn't about pushing harder, it's about understanding yourself. Okay? It's about working with your mind instead of against it. And it's about reclaiming emotional capacity so that you can use the time that you do have more effectively. And if you feel like you don't have time to start your business, even though you think about your business constantly, I want you to know you're in good company and you're not behind. There are real constraints, yes, and there are also the emotional leaks that can be plugged bit by bit.
And that's exactly what we're going to do and dig into in my free workshop coming up on December 10th called Unstuck, How to Build the Business you Can't Stop Thinking About. We're going to talk about why you feel stuck, why starting feels so hard, and how to finally take consistent action in tiny pockets of time, even in, and especially in a full, beautiful, messy season of motherhood that you're in.
You don't need to search for and find and create necessarily more hours. You just need more clarity, emotional bandwidth, and the right structure to get you moving. You can reserve your free spot using the link in the show notes or go to mom.jenna.coach/unstuck, and I truly hope to see you there. And in the meantime, 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 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.
And that's why managing emotions in the moment matters for our time. The calmer your mind, the more efficient your actions. The more efficient your actions, the more time you feel like you have and the more time you actually have. And when it comes to starting a business, this emotional clarity is everything. Small, grounded actions actually give you time back.
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. We are flirting with the end of the year here, and it's both incredibly exciting and a little surreal. These next few weeks are hardest on us moms, so if you skipped last week's episode, episode 78 about self-love, please check it out before we jump into the heat of the season, the holiday season that is.
This week's episode is also so needed this time of year because we have a lot going on and a lot of added responsibilities, and it can feel like we have even less time for starting or building a business. And I want to offer an opportunity to gain back time in your day and week without saying no to things, without asking for help, without depending on anyone else.
That's right. It's a concept I haven't talked about directly on this podcast and I'm really quite surprised that I haven't because I'm really excited to talk about it today. Because if you've ever said to yourself, "I want to start a business, I want to do X, Y, and Z, I really do, but I genuinely do not have the time." If that sentence has come out of your mouth or lived in your brain, this episode is going to blow your mind.
And yes, you absolutely have real responsibilities, real constraints, and a real life schedule that is already full, especially this time of year. But there's also something else happening under the surface that most of us moms don't realize. And that is emotions. Emotions quietly drain the time you do have. Not because you're doing anything wrong, not because your emotions are bad, and not because emotions are the only factor in this time crunch period or in this time equation or puzzle.
The emotions we carry, especially heavy ones like overwhelm, anxiety, frustration, pressure, ones that we are all so familiar with, they don't just make us feel bad. They drain our energy, reduce our focus, slow us down, and quietly stretch tasks far beyond the time they actually require. Which I'm going to talk a lot about today in detail so that you truly understand what's happening and you know exactly how to resolve it.
So let's talk about how emotional energy and time connect. How this affects your ability to start a business and what small shifts you can take to get back some of that capacity that you are losing in the emotional drain of motherhood. So before we dive in officially, I want to acknowledge something. You really do have a full life, okay? I said that before. Your responsibilities are real, your time is limited, your kids, your job, your home, they all need you. So when you feel like you don't have time to start a business, it makes perfect sense. It's valid.
And at the same time, as a coach, I've learned how to look at time like a detective, okay? For all my clients. Every mom comes to me with time scarcity. And part of my work and my job is helping her find not only pockets of time she didn't realize she had, but also pockets of emotional bandwidth she didn't realize she was losing. Okay? Because time scarcity often starts with emotional drains in our life. And not the whole story, but a really important part of it is our emotions. And once you start seeing where your emotional bandwidth is leaking, you gain so much more control over your time than you thought you had.
So, let's talk about how emotions really drain your time and energy. We all know that heavy emotions feel terrible, but what we often don't realize is how much time they quietly consume in our life. And the simplest way to say it is that heavy emotions require more energy to experience. And when your energy drops, your efficiency drops. And when your efficiency drops, your time shrinks.
When you're overwhelmed or anxious or frustrated, which we all know happens on a moment-to-moment basis, your brain slows down, your focus scatters. It's harder to start a task. It's harder to finish a task. It's harder to make decisions. You second guess yourself more. You move from one thing to another without completing anything. And because your brain isn't working at full capacity in those moments, everything takes longer.
It's not that you don't have time, it's that your energy and capacity is being used up before you even get the chance to use the time you do have, okay? And this leads perfectly into a quick story that I want to share that brings this to life because I also know that you've lived this too.
The other day, we were having one of those chaotic mornings. I was leaving for a trip the following day. I had a long to-do list waiting for me. The boys needed to get ready. I was meeting a friend for coffee that morning and I only had two full work days that week. And I had actually had planned them out beautifully.
And then I found myself with this little 30-minute pocket of extra time before I had to leave for coffee. 30 minutes. It felt like gold. I could have done anything in that window, and I had a lot of stuff to do, right? I had to do laundry, there were emails, I could have packed, there were some cleaning things I needed to get done, admin tasks for my business. But instead, I was swimming in overwhelm, thinking about all the things I needed to do that morning before coffee.
And when that overwhelm hit, I became completely inefficient in ways that were almost comical. I kept walking up and down the stairs and forgetting why I'd even gone up there. I'd start one task and then immediately get pulled into another, not finishing anything. I'd pick up something and then put it down and start something else and get distracted. My brain felt foggy and scattered.
And even though I had 30 whole minutes of extra time, I put absolutely zero of those minutes to good use. In fact, I also ended up running late to coffee, even though I was ready 30 minutes before I had to leave. I had texted my friend and said, "Hey, do you want to meet 30 minutes earlier? I have some time." And she couldn't meet, and then I ended up being late.
And while this was happening, I actually noticed myself wasting so much time in that moment, and it sparked such a clear reflection that I didn't lose that time because I didn't have time. I lost it because of my emotions and overwhelmed headspace. And I know this is a major problem because on days when I'm calm and grounded and focused, I've done so much in those same 30 minutes. The difference wasn't the tasks, it wasn't the schedule, it wasn't how much time I had. It was the emotional bandwidth I brought into the moment. And this is the part of time that most moms never consider.
So, let me talk about what not being in a good headspace or being in an overwhelmed headspace or an anxious headspace actually means, okay? When we talk about not being in the right headspace, we're not talking about something dramatic. It's simply this, it’s: you have thoughts happening that create heavy emotions. Thoughts like, I'm behind. There's too much to do. I should be able to handle this better. I don't have enough time to do any of it well. No matter what I choose, I'm going to drop the ball.
Those thoughts create overwhelm, pressure, anxiety, frustration. And all of those emotions drain your working memory, slow down your thinking, reduce your ability to focus. It makes decision-making harder and requires more energy to manage. Okay? Which I talked about a little bit before. All of those things, what that means is they steal time without you noticing.
I also remember a few weeks ago, I was going to a networking event at 8 a.m. It was going to be a mini miracle for me to get out of the house by 7:50. But Chris, my husband, had agreed to take lead on with the kids that morning and run the show so I could focus on getting out the door.
Well, Chris went up to get Adley at 7:45 and he was surprised by a massive blowout. We all know and love. And I mean full on. Chris had to give Adley a shower, change the bedsheets, the whole 9 yards. And of course, in that type of situation, I had to stay back and help.
So when I left, 10 minutes after 8, I was in tears. I was frustrated that the morning went that way. I was frustrated at Chris for waiting so long to get Adley, knowing I had to be out the door at 8. And also felt very stressed about the dread of walking into a room of people that I've never met before, late. Okay? The morning threw me into a complete tailspin.
And as I drove to the event, I missed not one, but two different exits, which made me even later. Since I was so emotionally drained and overwhelmed from the morning, I made simple mistakes during the drive that made things even worse. My brain was consumed and tired and not able to focus. And this is how our brain works. And this is how it's connected to time. I wasted so much additional time because I was emotionally overloaded in that moment.
When we're emotionally overloaded, our brain is using energy to process the emotion instead of the task in front of us. And as you can imagine, this directly connects with your ability to start and build a business because when it doesn't feel like you have time, it may be that the mental overload and any heavy emotions that you're carrying on a day-to-day basis are a bigger factor than you think. Okay?
You may be emotionally drained before you ever get the chance to take on a task and start. Even when you may technically have some pockets of time, those pockets don't feel usable because your emotional energy is exhausted, making it hard to start or focus on something that feels big and new. Okay? And this isn't about blame at all, it's about you being able to notice when this is happening. Because when you understand that emotional bandwidth is part of your time problem, you'll know that it's a completely different problem you're solving.
When it's your emotions, that means it's a thought problem, which is completely different from solving a scheduling problem or any of the problems around time that I help you solve in episodes 5, 12, 18, or 61. All of those episodes are about elements of time management and tools and skills that you can apply to get better at time management. This piece isn't time management as much as emotional management. And if we're not managing our emotions, we're definitely not making the best use of our time.
So, one thing that helps in moments of overwhelm is simply understanding how emotions are created in the first place. This isn't about forcing yourself to think positive. It's just about understanding the mechanics so that you can regain a little more influence over what's happening inside your mind and body.
The simplest way to think about it is that something happens. It's a circumstance. You have a thought about it, which is your interpretation. That thought creates a feeling in your body, which is your emotion. That emotion drives what you do next. So, action or inaction. A perfect example is my not focusing on my GPS and missing those exits. That was an action. And that action creates your outcome or your result. So my action created the result of me being 15 minutes later to my networking event.
So when I left my house that morning and my brain was thinking things like this always happens to me, I rarely ask for a favor and then this happens, everyone's going to look at me when I am in and think I'm rude and don't care about this event. Those spiraling thoughts created a feeling in my body, okay? Overwhelm, anxiety, frustration.
And those specific emotions are what led to the actions during my drive that led to the result of me being even later. I know I wasn't able to focus on the directions because I was distracted. I was crying, which is an action. My body was tense and heart was pounding. All of those are actions. When I did miss a turn, I wasted a lot of time trying to decide which way to go next, and then made another mistake because I was flustered in decision-making, right?
All of this means that the result of not having time or wasting time can easily be explained by thoughts that aren't serving us. You don't need to change every thought. You don't need to magically feel neutral, but understanding the link gives you more options. And that's where some really helpful tools come in. So I'm going to talk about a few really easy, simple, in-the-moment tools to manage heavy emotions. And these are not complicated. They are 5-second to 2-minute tools you can use anywhere, anytime, even with the chaos of life and kids running around. Okay?
So, tool number one is to name the emotion. This alone lowers the intensity of the emotion. And this comes from Tara Mohr. I think that's how you say her name. And also from just general emotional neuroscience, right?
When you name what you're feeling, actually name it, the emotional intensity drops by about 30%. They often say, name it to tame it. You can say to yourself, "This is overwhelm. This is pressure. This is frustration in my body. This is anxiety," right? Naming it pulls you out of the emotional swirl and into awareness. And this helps with time and getting time back because when intensity drops, clarity rises. Okay? And clarity makes tasks faster. It makes decisions easier. It helps you to operate at your optimal level.
The next tool, and this is like going back to when we were kids, one deep breath that's longer on the exhale. This is the fastest nervous system regulation tool, breathing. Okay? Inhale to the count of 4, exhale to the count of 6.
A longer exhale signals safety to the brain and shifts your nervous system out of that fight or flight mode that we are feeling in these really heavy emotional moments. Even just one breath helps. And when your nervous system calms, you stop spiraling and you regain the ability to focus. Okay? You refocus on the task at hand, you're able to actually complete the task, make fewer mistakes, and get things done.
The next tool is knowing that you can have awareness and not try to fix anything. So it's sort of like having awareness, which is a great strategy in general, without the pressure to change anything. Okay? You don't have to change your thoughts necessarily. Even just noticing them helps you to get into a better emotional headspace.
So if you, similar to the first tool but kind of worded in a different way that might resonate more, is saying things like, "I'm having the thought that I don't have enough time. I'm having the thought that everything is urgent. I'm having the thought that I'm behind. I'm having the thought that everybody's going to stare at me when I walk in late."
So in the first tool, we are naming the emotion to tame it. In this tool, we are sort of naming our thoughts to tame them. I also love the Brené, and I've talked about this before, Brené Brown's, "the story I'm telling myself is," so before any thought, you can say, "the story I'm telling myself is that I don't have time."
And what that does is this separates you from the thought, which softens the emotion automatically. And this helps with time because when our emotion becomes less heavy, you get back that mental bandwidth and energy. And as I've talked about at length, all of that speeds everything up.
There's one more emotional time leak that deserves its own spotlight, okay? Because of what I do, what my clients do, what this podcast is all about. Thinking about your business all day without actually taking action on it.
Whether you are just thinking about the idea of being your own boss and working for yourself but having no idea what you want to do for a business, having an idea but feeling like you don't have the bandwidth or headspace to do it, you don't know how you would do it. Or if you've started your business but you are just feeling really heavy in the business and judging yourself a lot or whatever it might be. But you're thinking about the business all day but actually not taking action on it.
When you think about your business constantly, like in the shower, in the pickup line, during lunch, nursing, lying in bed, it requires emotional energy. Energy that you may feel like you're saving by not going for it, by not working on the business, but you're actually still expending the energy because you keep thinking about the business. Which means you're draining yourself before you ever start. So of course, then it feels like you don't have the time or energy to start your business because it already feels draining. And it's not procrastination, it's emotional exhaustion.
Your brain has been carrying the weight of the business all day, all week, all year, maybe for many years. Like for me, it was 6 years that I had thought about my business but not taken action. And thinking without doing creates even more overwhelm, more overwhelm than taking one small step ever will. Okay?
Every tiny action that you can take creates clarity, it creates momentum, confidence, relief, and emotional lightness. Okay? Because you're actually doing the thing, not just thinking about it. Action isn't just productive, it literally frees up the time and energy you were losing to mental spinning and daydreaming. Okay? Judging yourself or wondering what life could be, all those things that we're thinking about.
And this is a huge part of what keeps us stuck before and during the business process because carrying a business in your mind is far heavier than slowly building one in real life. Heavy emotions don't just make us feel bad. They influence how quickly we think, how confidently we decide, and how efficiently we move through our day.
And that's why managing emotions in the moment matters for our time. The calmer your mind, the more efficient your actions. The more efficient your actions, the more time you feel like you have and the more time you actually have. And when it comes to starting a business, this emotional clarity is everything. Small, grounded actions actually give you time back.
So today we talked about how heavy emotions drain your energy, slow you down and stretch tasks. We talked about why emotional bandwidth matters just as much as hours on a clock and how you're managing the time. We talked about how thought patterns create those heavy emotions, so how thinking all day about your business creates emotional exhaustion. And we talked about a few of the tools that can really help you manage your emotions and gain back time in those hectic, stressful, anxiety-provoking moments.
This isn't about pushing harder, it's about understanding yourself. Okay? It's about working with your mind instead of against it. And it's about reclaiming emotional capacity so that you can use the time that you do have more effectively. And if you feel like you don't have time to start your business, even though you think about your business constantly, I want you to know you're in good company and you're not behind. There are real constraints, yes, and there are also the emotional leaks that can be plugged bit by bit.
And that's exactly what we're going to do and dig into in my free workshop coming up on December 10th called Unstuck, How to Build the Business you Can't Stop Thinking About. We're going to talk about why you feel stuck, why starting feels so hard, and how to finally take consistent action in tiny pockets of time, even in, and especially in a full, beautiful, messy season of motherhood that you're in.
You don't need to search for and find and create necessarily more hours. You just need more clarity, emotional bandwidth, and the right structure to get you moving. You can reserve your free spot using the link in the show notes or go to mom.jenna.coach/unstuck, and I truly hope to see you there. And in the meantime, 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 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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