Navigating Motherhood as a High Achiever

Welcome to the executive coach for moms podcast, where we support women who are attempting to find balance and joy while simultaneously leading people at work and at home. I'm your host Leanna Lasky McGrath, former tech exec turned full time mom, recovering perfectionist and workaholic, and certified executive coach. 

Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the show. I'm so glad you're joining me for another episode if you've been following along. In Episode One, I talked a little bit about why high achieving working moms feel like we're failing at everything. And episode two, I talked about the tools that I used to make the decision to leave my job to focus on my daughter. And today in episode three, I'd like to dive deeper into the achievement oriented mindset that many of us have, and how it can impact our experiences as mothers, I've coached so many women and this is a common theme that shows up for us. And so I really think it's important to talk about. 

Since becoming a parent, I've had a pretty important realization that while my achievement orientation has served me really well throughout my life, it helped me to achieve goals that I set for myself, it helped me to get to places that I wanted to go. And it was really great. But initially, it made my journey into motherhood so much more challenging. So I really think it's crucial to talk about this mindset not to label it as bad or try to eradicate it completely from ourselves, but rather to become aware of both its strengths and shadows, like any quality, it has a duality, and it can either help or hinder us depending on how we're using it. When I started therapy almost three years ago, now, my therapist identified me as an Enneagram type three, if you're not familiar with the Enneagram, it's another personality tests kind of like DISC or MBTI if you've done any, any of those, but the description really resonated. But honestly, I just never really thought about it as being kind of a unique trait. I think because I've been surrounded by achievers. For the majority of my life, I kind of just assumed that this was like the way of being which I feel like sounds so naive to say but that was just kind of my thought around it. 

So I want to share a little bit from the type three description to see if any thing resonates for you to Enneagram threes are called the achiever. They're motivated by the need to be productive, achieve success and avoid failure. Threes can also be playful, giving responsible and well regarded by others in the community type threes are often hardworking, goal oriented, organized and decisive threes can radiate confidence that others find assuring and inspiring. They like their work to convey their competency type threes are efficient at getting things done. They aim to achieve personal goals and have a keen ability to size up tasks and understand the dynamics within teams. Okay, so those are some of the characteristics and here's what it says about some of the challenges that a type three might face type threes may struggle with taking a break their strong drive for achievement can lead them to exhaustion with a relentless pursuit of their goals. ambition and self development are good qualities. But threes must temper their drive with rest. Something as simple as taking a few deep breaths is enough to recharge their batteries and improve their outlet. So does any of that sound familiar to you? Honestly, I feel like it describes me to a tee. So when I heard it, I was like, Yes, that's me. Absolutely. My whole life. I've been super competitive and very goal oriented. I played competitive soccer my entire childhood. I tried really hard and travel around North America playing really high level teams. I always strive for straight A's in high school in grad school, not as much in college. But that's because I instead I was focused on joining like every student organization on campus and being a president of a bunch of them. I started working when I was 13. And I've always worked really hard to excel at every job I've ever had. So really, throughout my career, just about every company, I've been a I've always worked my way up into leadership roles as fast as I possibly could. I would always put in the hours working, studying and just mastering whatever position I was in and then strategizing how to get to the next one. And as high achieving driven people we often have this mindset of just constant striving so we set goals, we work tirelessly to achieve them. And then we celebrate our achievement for like five minutes before moving On to the next thing as quickly as possible, we set the next big goal, we start right on over striving toward it. And it becomes a way of life, we rarely allow ourselves to fully celebrate and relish in our accomplishments before setting a new goal and chasing the next big milestone. 

I remember when I turned 25, I had what I called a quarter life crisis, because I had gotten my master's degree a few months prior at 24. And so when I turned 25, I realized I'm not working towards something anymore. I had always been working toward a degree. And so I just I didn't know what my purpose was, I didn't know what I was excited about, or what was driving me anymore. And it's like, there's almost this kind of addiction to having that big goal in our lives, that we're striving toward some beacon way out there that keeps us focused on the future, and doing whatever we need to do to achieve it. We believe that we're the masters of our own destiny, and will try to control everything around us, and sometimes everyone as well, to do whatever it takes to make it happen. 

So then I became a parent. And for me, I feel like the world just completely shifted in little ways, and in seismic ways, as well. And so relating to this achievement orientation, over time, I started realizing that this amazing part of me that had always been a big strength in me and had helped me to get to where I wanted to be, was actually making my parenting experience a lot less enjoyable. So here's what happened for me, when I became a new mother, my type three showed up in full effect. So when we brought her home and she would cry, I would jump right into problem solving mode, I would do all the things to try to figure out how to help stop her crying and make her quote unquote, better. And if I couldn't find a way to help stop her crying, I would be devastated because I made it mean that I had failed. I had this belief that if I were a quote, unquote, good mother, I could problem solve anything. It's kind of like I was capable of problem solving everything in my career. And that made me a good employee. So it was kind of the same logic here that if I could problem solve, then that made me a good mother. And of course, the inverse of that. 

And so that was just the beginning of me holding myself to really unrealistic expectations and determining that if I didn't meet them, it meant that I was failing as a mother because I was just working so hard to be the best mom, I believed that if I ever use screen time, I was a lazy parent, I never had my phone out in front of the baby. Because I had this belief that I needed to be constantly engaged with her, every toy was sanitized. If it touched the floor, we did not have a five second rule in our house for any baby things. And on my days off from work, I always made sure that we had a fun activity or outing plan because I really wanted to maximize my limited time with her. And then when she got older and started displaying those big feelings in the form of meltdowns, or quote unquote, tantrums, I believed that if I didn't keep my colon steak home 100% of the time that I was failing as a mother, and the list of examples goes on and on. 

So I realized that I was missing out on so much on the present moment, by holding myself to these unrealistic expectations and then beating myself up when I didn't meet them. I was so hard on myself, I was putting so much pressure on myself to be the best mother and the best executive and the best everything else that I was not able to enjoy the experience of being a mother or an executive or anything else. And on top of the parenting side of things, I also just couldn't work the way that I had always worked in my job. And so I couldn't put in long hours anymore, because I just I didn't have that many hours in a day, I really think that every baby should come with an extra like four to eight hours in a day plus an extra arm. But I just wasn't able to work like I always had. And I judged myself and I shamed myself so much for it. And I felt like I was a bad worker. Because I had always been able to achieve, I had always been able to work really hard and I just couldn't anymore. 

So after about 18 months, I hired a coach and a therapist. And honestly, I really wish I had done it sooner. It turned out that the therapist was fully covered by my insurance. So I highly, highly recommend that if you have access to therapy, if you have access to coaching that you find one because it's so immensely helpful. I think if everyone in the world had a therapist and a coach, our world would be so much better. But it was at this time that I began to become a lot more consciously aware of the mindset of constant achievement and how this type three was showing up for me at work and as a parent, and I'd like to share five of the many things I've learned about this achievement oriented mindset that will hopefully help to bring some awareness for you as well. So number one is that we have a choice about how we show up, I realized that I was unconsciously choosing to continue to orient this way. But now that I had gained more awareness, I had the ability to consciously choose whether I wanted to continue in that way. Or if I wanted to shift in a different way and show up in a different way, I think my biggest fear about orienting another way is that I would stop achieving. But as my therapist always reminds me, the type three will always be there for me to fall back on, it's so strong within me. So I can release the fear that I had about stepping out of that achievement mindset to the extreme, because it's not going anywhere, I can always fall back on it. 

And honestly, this magical thing happens as I step more and more into a more relaxed state, I continue to achieve but now without all the stress and pressure and anxiety around it, I actually believe that I'm a really great mother now. And it took me a long time to get there. But honestly, it's so important to me. So I still work hard at it. But when I mess up, I give myself some grace. And I don't put all the pressure on myself and the stress. And I feel ironically, much better about it. 

Number two is that we choose what we make things mean. And also we need to remember that we, like everybody else are imperfect humans. So there are circumstances that happen. And then we get to choose our thoughts about them, those thoughts create our feelings, which generate our actions and results. And for me, I had to stop making everything mean that I was a failure or a bad mother. I'm not saying I never do this anymore. Of course, again, I'm a human. But now I really tried to embrace my humaneness and embrace the fact that it's not possible for me to be perfect. And when I've made a mistake, it just means that I'm being human, it doesn't mean that I'm a failure, it doesn't mean that I'm a terrible mom. And lately, I've been working on the practice of acceptance over resistance. And I've felt that this has really helped to I have found that we cause so much more stress and suffering in ourselves when we resist what's happening in the moment. And so when our child or our employee, or our husband or anyone else around us as doing something that we don't like, or when we recognize something in ourselves that we don't like, we can choose to resist what's happening and fight against it with all our will, which still I do sometimes, but I feel like I used to do it a whole lot more. Or we can choose to accept it and preserve that energy and move it to other things that are more important to us, we get no extra points for creating more suffering for ourselves. 

The third thing is that while the achievement oriented mindset has its benefits, I think it's important that we also acknowledge what we miss out on when we are constantly focusing on the future and striving we have these tiny beings right in front of us right now. And they only have one childhood, so why not enjoy it with them. I've been working with a coaching client recently, who is an executive mom, and almost every time we talk, she brings up the next thing, what's the next step in my career, when should we add to our family and where she ends up landing by the end of our sessions is actually I'm really happy where I'm at. And I just want to enjoy this for a little while, we came up with an analogy to this about nature. So when we look at trees and flowers, they continue growing into their magnificence by staying still for a little while. And when they've grown enough in that one place to start producing seeds, then those seeds will fly off and create and grow somewhere else. But sometimes the most important growth involves staying right where we are in the present moment for a little while. And I know that's really hard for us with achievement oriented mindsets, because we feel like we need to constantly be moving, going, going, striving, striving. But sometimes when we stay still, I have found that there's more growth there. And we get to we get to grow and learn in that place before we continue to move forward. 

The fourth thing is that how we choose to show up impacts our children now and in the future. We recently had the last day of school and I did one of those little signs and it asks What do you want to be when you grow up and my daughter who's four has always said that she wants to be a mom. And so I think about her experience in motherhood. And I also think about the fact that the reason that she wants to be a mother is because she sees my experience of being a mother. So do I want her to be as stressed out as I felt at the beginning? Do I want her to enjoy the experience of motherhood honestly, her experience will be driven in part by her experiences of me as a mother and honestly, I just don't want her experiencing me as a stressed out always on edge. Everything has to be put affects kind of Mom, I want her to see in my eyes, the joy that she brings me every single day, I want her to be kind to herself when she makes mistakes, because she sees me being kind to myself because I'm modeling it. So I think it's really important to remember that how we show up gets carried over into our children's lives, too. And honestly, I think that as women, sometimes we don't do things for ourselves, because they're good for us. But we'll do them because they're good for others. And so a lot of times I like to start there, if it's too hard to do something, because it benefits us. If we can think about it that, hey, actually, this benefits my child, then we find that out, and it benefits me too, even if that wasn't the initial motivation. And the fifth and final thing is that going right along with being kind to ourselves, is learning to love ourselves and believing in our own worthiness. Just like we believe in our children's. I know that self love might sound cliche, and I feel like everyone lately seems to be saying how important it is to love yourself. But I have found that they're right, it's so true. And it's something that we can model for our children.

I think that if we really dig into it, what's behind that pressure that we put on ourselves, for so many of us, and myself included is our desire for worthiness, and we hustle and we strive so hard, so that we can feel worthy and valuable. And so when we have worthiness tied to our work, and our contribution, failing feels insurmountable, but honestly, it's a chicken and egg situation here. It's also a thought error, because our thought is that in order to be worthy, we must achieve, but actually, we're worthy before we achieve achievement is not a prerequisite to worthiness. In fact, we are inherently worthy. If you're a parent, do you believe that when your baby was born, they were worthy? Or did they have to do something to earn their worth? Of course not. They can't do anything when they're when they're first born. But at what age? Does it change? At what age do we just suddenly lose our worthiness and have to start earning it I believe that we all have inherent worth whether we achieve or not, there's a reason that each of us is here on this earth at this time in history. So I just want to suggest the thought that even if you achieve nothing else in this lifetime, you are still worthy. And if you're a parent, I'm guessing that's a belief you want your kid to have. You want them to know that they're worthy, and they don't have to earn your love or their worthiness. 

So I could honestly go on and on about this topic, because now that I'm aware of it, I see how it shows up everywhere in my life. It's like when you're buying a car and you're considering buying a Highlander and then you suddenly start seeing Highlanders everywhere you look. But I'm gonna go ahead and bring it to a close here. I hope that some of my realizations about the achievement orientation will help you to enjoy your life more, just as much as it's helped me to enjoy mine. I would love to hear what realizations you're having about this. Please don't hesitate to reach out. Thank you so much. And hope y'all have a wonderful week. 

Thanks so much for tuning in to the executive coach for moms podcast. Please like, subscribe or follow the show so you'll be notified when the next episode is available. I hope you'll join me again next time. Take care

Transcribed by https://otter.ai