Ever ask yourself this question, why do I still feel like I'm not enough, even when I'm doing so much? My guest, Rebecca Olson, is an international life coach and podcast host who helps career focus, parents release overwhelm, reclaim their confidence, and create true work-life balance from the inside out. Welcome to Break Free from the Burnout. I'm your host, Dr. Anastasia Chopelas, physicist turned energy healer. I'm here to help you make the quantum shifts to release the hidden blocks to your success. Your next breakthrough starts now. Known for her straight talk wisdom, bold earrings, and deeply practical approach. Rebecca teaches real success begins with one powerful truth. You are already enough. So Rebecca, welcome to the show. I'm so happy you're here. Grateful to be here. Thanks for having me. Before you became known for helping ambitious working moms, feel confident, balanced, there was a moment or maybe a season when you felt overwhelmed or not enough. Can you take us back to that time and share what Was really going on for you? Yes, absolutely. So I go back to when I was pregnant with my daughter. So I have an 11-year-old daughter and I have an 8-year-old son. But it was really my daughter that started what I now call the motherhood identity crisis. And I call it that because that is exactly what it felt like. I felt like I was having a mini identity crisis being pregnant with her asking big questions. What am I doing with my life? What really matters? What does it all mean? how can I leave this tiny human and go off to, big questions that felt like a crisis. It felt like I didn't really know who I was and what I wanted anymore. now, 12 years later, at this point, really, in all the coaching I've done, I realize this is really common for women. Yes, very common. But I didn't know, people didn't talk about that. People still don't talk about that part of the crisis, or that part of the transition as much as I, I wish that they would. that was really where a lot of it started for me. and in that, it was in that moment where I felt like I needed to go through my own internal process of answering those questions on some level. I was a very goal-focused, ambitious person prior to having kids that didn't leave me at all, but the slowness of motherhood I also felt was against a lot of who I was and was also creating lots of friction within me. So that was the crux of it, and that's ultimately what led me to, to this moment. A lot of us mothers do have a lot of guilt leaving this tiny, helpless baby behind and going to work. And I even had friction 'cause I was a boss at my job that I had at that time. I even got friction from the people around me, how do you feel leaving your child behind? And then when I went to Germany, that was even funnier because all the mothers stopped working after having children. And I was managing, juggling a lot of things. And I would say, yeah, I go to work during the day. What do you do with the children? yeah. Absolutely. it's wild how, embedded in different cultures this is, and what our motherhood experience should, we're shaped by it on some level. And what's in America at least, it's really conflicting actually.'Cause research really still shows that, we as a culture believe it would be best for the child if women stayed home. That is still our kind of overarching belief, obviously not across the board, but that would be what statistically it would show. And yet we also are still in a women's movement that are trying to get more women into the workplace, and yet at this moment, we're also seeing women leave the workplace in droves. It's very confusing right now for women. We don't know what we should be doing at any given time. I will say, at least in America. and then the other thing is the whole idea of being a mom when, I grew up in the fifties. Okay. So we didn't come home until the streetlights came on. Yeah. We were out the whole day and nobody, we had no cell phones. We didn't have any way of contacting mom and dad. We were just up and down the street playing wherever, going to the park, coming back. I used to walk several miles in one direction to visit friends and I would say, I'm going over there. And mom would say, okay. And then. she just went around, did her stuff at home, so Yep. Child rearing is way different now. We have the big fear factor of what's happening in society and how to protect our kids and all of that. Yep. So it's different. It is different. And interestingly enough too, this generation of parents spends more time with their kids than any other generation. And we also, show that we have the most guilt. So we're very interesting parent generation as well. Yeah. Very conflicted in all of it. so many women tell me that becoming a mother didn't just change their schedule, it changed how they saw themselves. Yeah. So how did motherhood challenge your identity, especially as a career driven woman? Yeah, if I was gonna leave my daughter to go away for, eight plus hours a day that need that trade off needed to feel really worth it to me. And that is where, at what I was doing when I had her, that I knew for sure was not what I wanted to be doing at that time. I was in high level event management. I was hosting 20,000 person events, that sort of thing. Wow. I was good at it. It was a decent job. I made good money, but it just wasn't very life giving to me and I just hated getting up every day. It felt like I was tearing a piece away from me to go do something that I didn't really wanna do and leave my daughter. And so it, it wasn't just guilt. There was guilt there for sure, but it just felt meaningless, For me, at least, I needed a lot of meaning in the work that I was doing. That needed to feel like I was making an impact. And so it set me on my own journey to figure out what did I wanna do when I grew up at this point? and now, I was 33 I think when I had her. And beyond that, there's a high level of responsibility that happens when we become parents, in a really different way for obvious reasons. We have a tiny human that's dependent on us, and so I. At least at first, I didn't really think I could change jobs. I held the insurance for the family. I made more money than my husband. I can't make a change. I have to take care of the family. And that was the reality. But that was also a, a big limiting belief that I had to push through in order to get me to a place that I was really enjoying the work that I was doing eventually. and still providing for my family too. Yeah. while I was living in Germany and even now, like my son is the caregiver who stays home. Yeah. While my daughter-in-law has the much higher paying job. So was that ever a consideration? Not at that time. I think, we live in one of the most expensive zip codes in the country and it was not going to be a possibility for both of us not to be fully employed. and so it was, that's never been our reality. Unfortunately. I know that if I lived almost anywhere else in this country, I could probably do that or one of us could be home, but, or could have at that time. But that is uhhuh. That is certainly not where we're at now. Unfortunately. Yeah, I know if we live in any big city, especially in California, like we both do. yeah. it's not affordable. it's really not. No. The modest homes down our street, the minimum they go for is 1.4 million is so it's kinda hard to afford it that point. When I, where I was living when we had the kids, that was very similar, yeah. I think I let some of those things hold me back though, from being able to make some decisions for myself about what was really life giving to me.'cause that was ultimately the question I was asking myself is, what is life giving to me? What matters to me? what's gonna get me to not only get up in the morning with joy, but also leave my daughter and not feel any guilt, because I know that I'm going to the thing I wanna go to and that feels good to me, and it feels aligned to me. That set me on this self-discovery journey where I really dug into, in a lot of different ways from books to some small groups I was a part of, to some mentorships. I really went on about a year's self-discovery journey to Answer some big questions for myself. Why am I here? What really matters to me? What brings me joy? What parts of my jobs of my past do I really like? It was really a lot of internal data that I was collecting about myself in this new season of life to help me determine what might be next. Yeah, exactly. I spent 11 years in, educating myself to get to become a full-blown scientist. So giving that up was really tough for me. So I did eventually give it up because it got to a point where it did not give me joy anymore. It did in the beginning, but then later, not so much. yeah. So you talk about a lot about the not enough narrative from your own experience, where does that belief usually come from for working moms and how does it quietly shape their decisions, their energy, and sense of self-worth? Yeah, I think about, not enoughness, which comes up within every client relationship that I have at this point. it just a narrative unfortunately that is somewhat embedded in, a woman's mind for cultural reasons, familial reasons. Who knows? We could go into the background behind that. But ultimately, here we are with women that constantly feel this need to prove themselves because they're not feeling like they're enough in some way. Or this constant narrative that tells them, they should be doing more, which is just another version of that, right? I'm not doing enough on some level. There's a dichotomy. I'm a mom and I want to work, and where does that all fit in? How do you dovetail that into a life worth living? Yeah. Yeah. That feels enough to you. And that you feel like you're being enough in both areas of life. Because I like to remind my clients that once we become moms, the goal is no longer singularly focused, where it was likely singularly focused towards a career like goal of some kind. But once we become a mom, it's not just about the career obviously anymore. It's also about being a great mom and having the motherhood experience that you want and giving your kids the experience that you want them to have and so forth. And so the goal really is twofold. But what that means is that if one area is suffering or failing, it feels like both are failing, right? We can't feel amazing about the work that we're doing in our career path that we're on and feel terrible about what's going on at home and feel like we're sacrificing at home or vice versa, right? we're just not gonna feel good. It's not gonna feel like we are living into a success story or narrative that is really, really what we want. Right? Yeah. And so did your former job require you to work many more hours than 40? no, it didn't actually. but it did have me working at weird times, but not necessarily. I would not, what I would say would be like overworking, if you will. but it left me feeling like I had more to give and that I wasn't living into what I deemed as being good enough, right? I wasn't giving enough of me in the ways that I wanted to, that I felt like I could. I wasn't living into my potential in some way. And because of that, no matter how successful I was on paper, and people could tell me I was successful on some level, I would still have an internal dialogue that told me I should be doing more and I should be doing something different and that I'm failing on some level. Yeah, that's exactly how I felt too. So I can totally identify with what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. So you teach an inside out approach to work life balance, which is very different from the time management hacks. Can you walk us through a little bit about what that actually means? Yeah, absolutely. Balance is an interesting word, right? Because it is completely subjective. You just get to decide. When you're in a state of balance and what work-life balance means to you. And I just get to decide for me, and so it's an interesting sort of catchall word that we use, but it's also fairly undefined. And so it's a really important moment that I walk my clients through to help them put some words to that. what would it mean for you to feel balanced? Let's visualize that for a moment and tell me what you see when you are living a more balanced life. And of course it would mean likely some element of time at work and time at home, and some of those types of images are gonna come to mind. But When you really dig into it, what people describe as balance is ultimately a feeling. Yeah. We wanna feel balanced. That's even the words we say, right? I wanna feel more balanced in my life as if balance was actually an internal state.'Cause that's what a feeling is, right? It's an emotional state. And so when we start thinking about work life balance, actually, from an emotional state, what we're actually trying to create is a different feeling about our life. That doesn't mean that things externally don't need to change. We need to maybe change our commitments or the way we're scheduling things or where we're putting our time or energy, but ultimately we're doing all of that to chase an internal feeling that we all want. In order to create an internal state, we don't do that externally. We do that internally, right? So we have to address then the thoughts and the emotions that coincide and that create that internal state for us, ultimately, no matter what our circumstances are. And that's what I like to teach my clients. I've worked with, hundreds and hundreds of women in all sorts of industries from, top CEO 500 people in their company to solopreneurs, whatever, across the board. I know that you can experience balance when you're working 60 plus hours a week and not experience balance when you're working part-time. I know that it has nothing to do with the amount of hours that you work and it has everything to do with the way you are thinking about what you're doing, how you're doing it, how you're showing up, who you are, and all of those things. And so when I start talking about an inside out approach, I'm talking not just about figuring out what those commitments are, but also how are you building up an internal dialogue about yourself and about your life and about your choices that really feel in alignment with the life that you wanna live. Yeah. So it's getting to a place where you're feeling inner peace over everything that you're doing. Yeah, absolutely. Because inner peace is something that is within our control, right? We don't, that isn't happen externally. There are certainly certain bosses and certain types of career paths or scenarios that make that kind of feeling of calmness and work-life balance and peace easier. Mm-hmm. But it doesn't ultimately create that for us. We get to always choose the way we think and the way we feel and how we respond to life. Exactly. And it's through those thinkings and feelings and responses that we ultimately create a life that feels balanced or not. Yeah, I'd love to hear, an example of maybe a working mom who felt stretched thin on the edge of burnout and how embracing this enough mindset transformed not just her career, but her presence at home. yeah. I'm thinking about, I'm gonna call her, Shay, that's not her actual name. I'm gonna keep that obviously, confidential, and Shay. runs a large team in a company. Mm-hmm. She's got many people underneath her and when we started working together, she was in the kind of job that her, she is still currently in a job that requires a lot of hours of work and a lot of thinking time at work. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And so when she came to me, it was this experience of I, I really don't think that it's possible for me to experience balance in this job. There just isn't enough hours in my day. it was the narrative that she had because also in her mind, being a, a great mom was being very similar to the mom that she grew up with, which was a stay-at-home mom. Yeah. And so her version of good mom and or a good enough mom, was very much dictated by what she had learned. And so the fact that she wasn't the primary, person that made lunch for her kids, or took her kids or picked them up every day, or the fact that she was not going to be able to make every kid recital at school or whatever it is. She was gonna make some of these things, it wasn't as if she was absent from those things, but she was gonna have to pick and choose in order to stay focused in what she was doing career wise, which was also very meaningful to her. And so Over the course of our time together, we really had to start pulling apart ultimately some of the narratives that she had about what's a good mom? What does that even mean to you? Do you really believe that? How would you like to define good mom moving forward? Does it really mean that you make their lunch every day? Does it really mean that you make a home cooked meal every day? It can if you want it to, but it doesn't seem like that narrative really serves you. Let's put some words to it. So we spent a lot of time putting words to what does success as a mom mean? What does success in her career mean? Because mm-hmm. It could, it no longer could mean work 80 hours a week as much as possible at every moment of the day. She was gonna have to make, she was already making sacrifice in her career and in how much she was working in order to be with her family, but she wasn't feeling good about any of those choices. She was feeling like she was failing across the board even though she was in a lot of ways making the same choices she would still make today. It was still like a in alignment in a lot of ways. But her internal dialogue was telling her that it, none of it was enough and she should be doing more across the board. I would listen and I would pull out a lot of these stories and a lot of these narratives. And then we would examine them and we would redefine for her, in a lot of ways, what good meant, what success meant, what balance meant, and starting to put words to that. And then ultimately learn tools to process her emotions in the moment, to redirect her thinking when it wasn't really in alignment with her new versions of success in the narratives that she wanted to live. And so I remember, we're still working together. We've been together for a while, but I remember there was a moment where she was gonna take a two week vacation. She hadn't taken any vacation where she was off from her work since she had kids, which was probably, at this point, four or five years. She was so nervous about it. She was so nervous, and we prepped a lot on like, how do you really stay off, off? How do you redirect your mind? What do you need to do to really put those boundaries up? And then she came back from that vacation though beaming with joy. Just blew her mind that she came back and, nothing burned down, in the job, right? And that everything was still okay and she could pick it back up again. And all of a sudden she felt so energized because she had all this rest and she focused on her kids and all of the great things, and she was like, oh my gosh, for the first time, I really see how these two things work together actually. And that they're not separate. And that when I think about them in a synergetic way, my life in my career can really thrive and I could still be the mom that I wanna be. I could pick and choose what's really important to me and go all in for it, Such a beautiful story. Yeah, yeah. for me, just, as it was because I ended up being a single mom when my daughter was nine and my son was five. It was the connectiveness I had with them, like the rapport, the ability to have deep conversations, even at that age. So they knew I was invested in their success in their life. Yeah. And that me going to work and also I got very sick. Me going to work and getting well was also in their best interest. was also that rapport we had in that conversation. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So it's not, it's not like they don't have a say. They do, they absolutely have a say. Yeah. So if you talk to them, My daughter is like over there with my grandson. they stay here during the week and I love it. Come home during the weekend. yeah. Yeah. I think it's important to have lots of open conversation about this, I have to circle around, not so much with my oldest anymore, but still definitely with my 8-year-old in earlier years with both of them. Why don't you pick me up mom from school like the other moms do? What are you doing? Or if for whatever reason I might have to. I don't work late very often or work on the weekend. I pick and choose that every once in a while, but it becomes this conversation around why I choose what I do and why does it matter to me and to the family and how much I want them to, pick a career path for them that's really life giving and they love it. but I have a narrative that me being a working mom and doing something that I love is the best thing for them. Yes. You know? Absolutely. I always said it's better to have a happy mom that's working and being away than an unhappy mom that's there the whole time going, Ugh. I don't wanna be a full time. homemaker and mom. Yeah. But that's a narrative that for some women really has to be unwound like there Yes. It isn't until we start to examine it and they realize that they are living by this belief that I should be spending all my time with my children. That's what makes me a good mom is more time with my kids, makes me a better mom. And we have to really pick that apart. And I, there oftentimes I'll go, oh, really? Is that interesting? that's such an interesting idea. do you then believe that every stay at home mom is better than every working mom? And they're like, of course I don't. I'm like, that's kinda what you're telling me. isn't that what you're telling me? And they're like, they have to sit there and go, I guess I am. And I don't really believe that. Now what do I do? and we get to examine the way they're thinking, Exactly. I watched, what happened with the brilliant women that stayed home with their kids in Germany 'cause most parents have maybe one, maybe two kids. Sure. There are no big families there anymore. Yeah. And I was watching this mom walk with her little son. He was about two. She was just following behind him and everything he did, she commented on it. Let him explore! Let him be his own guy! But I think that's going in the opposite direction, that we need to feel like we have purpose beyond that. I do, but I also have met many women that, always wanted to be home with their kids and that's what they, that was the motherhood experience that they want, and I want that for them, Yeah. Really, ultimately, I'm an advocate for women having more choice. Yes. and less of societal pressure or pressure because we don't have enough childcare or what, whatever it might be. I just want women to feel like they can make that empowered choice if they wanna be home. They're living their choice. I have a high school classmate who was brilliant and got her bachelor's degree, became a nurse. Got married, had kids, and then stayed home. And now she has 10 kids. The youngest is now wow. Yeah, like 25. The youngest is 25, so you can imagine she was in her forties and she has, I don't know, over 20 grandkids. Like a really huge family. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, and she goes, people have criticized me for that. I go, but it's what you wanted and it's what gives you joy. So yeah. That's, and that's what you're giving to the world. I love it. I love that. And unfortunately, our system is not designed for women to, to be really successful in the workplace, right? Until we really figure out our childcare crisis and are more supportive of working parents in that way, we're never gonna see women be able to truly choose to be in or not be in. Because we ultimately, at the end of the day, if we have to choose one or the other due to financial reasons or whatever, we're gonna choose our kids, right? We're gonna sacrifice for that. And that still makes the most sense for a lot of women, depending on where you live to do that. Otherwise, your whole paycheck is just gonna childcare and that doesn't make any sense. And so it is. It's this subject of balance and women's choice. All of it very much coincides with the childcare crisis that's happening in America. No question. Yeah, I absolutely agree. Yeah. They had to move. She went to school in Chicago and she and her husband were living there, and they couldn't deal with the city, and they couldn't really afford it. So they moved quite a distance away. Yeah. and so they could live on a. in a farm area outside of Chicago. Sure. Yeah, sure. Yeah, absolutely. And he was gone during the week and came home on the weekend, so it was pretty stressful to have 10 kids with her there. yeah. So many ambitious women fear that slowing down or being present means sacrificing success. From what you've seen, how does believing I am enough actually enhance leadership, performance, and long-term success rather than diminish it. I think that. You ultimately get to decide if work and home are in conflict with one another. and we do often see it's work or it's home. We have a visual as if it's an either or, like the scales and that sort of idea of work-life balance. It's what's in our mind on some level, unbeknownst to us. And so this idea that these two things are conflicting and that there's a choice that has to be made. We can either be successful in one or the other, and again, we're almost always gonna choose our children. So it's that we have to downshift our career. That's our option. If we really wanna feel like we can balance life and so forth, that, that idea that these two things are at odds with one another is one of the narratives that ultimately has to change. We have to see these things in synergy. We have to see that being all in as a mom actually enhances us in our workplace. It brings us more value. I can't tell you how many women I've talked to that has this belief that, their company gave them such a wonderful maternity leave and now they feel somewhat indebted to this company. And so they can't leave anywhere, or they have to prove that they're still, dedicated in some way and that the motherhood. Penalty exists. So there's no doubt that companies and our kind of mindset is still that women are in fact less committed when they come back to work. So we are fighting that narrative, but partially that narrative lives within us. I remember coming back from maternity leave with my daughter and we went right into a performance review cycle. And I did not get an increase that year while every other year, six years prior to that, I had gotten a pay increase and they never, I never, I didn't ask why, and they didn't tell me why, but I just assumed it was because I went on maternity leave and I just decided that was okay. I was like, obviously I was gone like three months last year. Of course I was, it wasn't until many years later I went, wait a second. Yeah, exactly. This is what the motherhood penalty is. But I didn't even realize it. I just assumed that was what it was. And so it's fascinating for me to have examined ways I used to think about this. That now I just go, oh my gosh, I wish, if I could talk to that woman 12, 11, 12 years ago, when I would tell her, yeah, absolutely. But it's this enoughness that is such a, an integral part of balance and of living a joy filled life, that you get to decide what enough really means to you. When you've worked enough, when you've reached success at a level that you want, when that is enough, when you've done enough, when you have shown up enough, when you spent enough time with your kids. This kind of enoughness, when we start digging into it, is again another line that just keeps moving in the horizon. If we don't take the moment to say, this is what I mean by this. This is how I know I have been enough for my company and I've brought enough value to my company. And here's how I know me being a mom and the qualities of everything from multitasking to compassion to to being able to manage your time differently and commitments differently and boundaries. All these things that you just learn as a mom, that you bring to your workplace is highly valuable if you see it that way and you start advocating for it in that way. Yeah, it's exactly true as a mom. You have to learn how to keep many balls up in the air at once you, in a way that you just can't even appreciate before having kids. You just, yeah. You just aren't in a circumstance that, forces you to do that, but you absolutely, there's just a skill skillset as a mom. Yeah. It's, that is crazy valuable to our company. Yes. I completely agree with that. So you have a free offering for people, I can put, the link on the show notes. So you have a free offering. It's a daily kickstart. Yeah, I would love to talk about that. so much of what we've talked about, our narratives and stories and believing in your enoughness. This is a practice that I give every single one of my clients and they continually come back to me and tell me, this is the tool I learned out of all the tools I learned that that made the most difference for me when they were consistent at it. So the daily kickstart is just a way to build in the narrative and the mindset of I am enough. I'm good enough. I'm doing enough. Or I'm valuable to my company. Whatever the mindset is that you want to embed in you. But I always love to, to point my clients to starting with any of the enough ideas because they're so powerful to us. But it's a way of. practicing that on a daily basis because we know that the, our brains are highly malleable and that we can teach ourselves new ways of thinking and build these new synaptics in our brain. But it takes repetition. And so this is a very simple. 10 minute practice to help think on purpose, really powerful thoughts about yourself, and to then get ahead of any of that kind of swirly negative, not good enough thinking that might happen throughout your day. So highly recommend it. the kickstart will walk you through the whole thing. There's a video that teaches you how to do it. It's gonna be a really powerful practice. Oh, that's exciting. I can't wait to try it myself. Yeah, I hadn't even considered, usually I go and look ahead of time so I can say, oh, that's really awesome. But it sounds really awesome because everything that you've talked about I completely identify with. even that I am enoughness and not enoughness. I think that's even before I had kids and even now that I'm past it 'cause my children are. 42 and 38. So they're, they're quite mature and I have three grandchildren, but I am not in their everyday life and I don't need to make decisions. I take care of my grandson in the morning and get him to school every day. He's 10. It's easy. yeah. Absolutely. But that narrative, to your point though, I think it's, yes, I think it's a female, it's a female narrative more than it is a male, that's for sure. And then I think it just intensifies when we become a mom because we now, we have multiple roles and areas of life that we practice the not enough narrative in our mind. And yeah, unfortunately. It's we gotta look good, we gotta have a good body shape, we gotta get in shape, eat right, sleep enough hours. And so then this just adds this whole level of responsibility that's huge. Being responsible for another life is huge. When I first started healing, that was also huge because I'm going, oh my goodness, I've got, I'm in charge of this. I've got to help them, and I don't, I want it to matter. And the first big one was taking care of a person in a coma. I was so overwhelmed. Oh my gosh. And he woke up. Wow. He woke up out of his coma and when I first started doing it, I was like, going, God, what am I doing? And then when I walked in and he was laying there in the coma, it's spirit just took over and just had me do what I needed to do and he woke up. That's amazing. Yeah. What a beautiful story. yeah, so yeah, it's that, I'm an uber responsible person, This, adding this layer of motherhood and enoughness. I, thank you. This was very beautiful. Yeah. And I appreciate you being here. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Break Free From the Burnout. If you're ready to bring more harmony into your relationship, check out my free five step relationship healing protocol at scientifichealer.com forward slash relationship. Resources and show notes are available at www.breakfreefromtheburnout.com. Until next time, I'm Dr. Anastasia Chopelas, sending you gold healing light add success vibes to becoming aligned, confident, and prosperous. Your gifts are so needed in this world.