Ep #47: Navigating Big Changes
episode summary
Change is hard, whether it's a good change or a bad change, a planned change or a surprise change. The actions you take can make navigating the change easier or harder, and since change is already hard, let's make it a little easier, shall we?
Your change might be returning to work after maternity leave, getting a divorce, or moving to a new city, but these tips work no matter what type of change you're going through, so keep them in your back pocket.
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Ep #17: How to Feel Your Feelings (& Why You Should)
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CHAPTERS:
2:49 - Change is Hard
3:54 - Check Your Expectations
8:55 - One Big Change at a Time
14:20 - Lean on Your Routines
listen to the episode:
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Hey, I'm Michelle Gauthier and you're listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast. Hello friends, we are just back from a really fun trip that we had to go visit some really close family friends of ours who have a new baby who's three months old, and a not- so- new baby who is about 18 months old. And it really made me remember how hard that time is to have little kids and how much change you have to navigate when you go from zero to one kids, to one to two kids. And then, thinking about it on the other side, I have worked with clients and have lots of friends who have gone from, you know, three kids at home to two kids at home or one kid at home as their kids leave to go to college, and just being with them really inspired me to do an episode where I'm talking about navigating life's big changes. So, whether that be going back to work after maternity leave or seeing your kids off to college, as overwhelmed working women we are often faced with these big changes in life and I just want to help you by giving you some tips to make those a little smoother. Also, I just have to say that babies are the absolute best. I adore babies. Are you a baby person? I mean, I feel like I hogged that baby and held him as much as possible for the whole weekend and I'm not the least bit sorry, and I wish I could do it again. Babies are the best. It's funny. I feel like people are either baby people or not, but I am, as is my whole family. We love the babies. So when I think back about some of the biggest changes that I've been through - and I want you to do the same thing for your life; think about some of the biggest changes that you've been through in your life. When I look way back to even the beginning of my life, my biggest changes were moving from Minnesota, where I was born and raised and surrounded by my whole family - my mom's one of eight kids and everybody lived there and I had a million cousins - and I moved from Minnesota to St. Louis when I was in fourth grade and that is like the biggest change I went through in my childhood. And then there's going to college, going to graduate school, getting married, moving from Missouri to Texas, adopting our first child and all that that entailed, adopting our second child, and then moving from Texas back to Missouri, and then getting divorced, and then finally starting a new career is the latest big change that I have gone through. I'm sure you have your own version of that list, and probably more. A lot of times, people will have a loss in there where they've lost somebody who they've really loved and that was a huge change for them, or any kind of change that you just felt had a huge impact in your life. The first thing that I want you to just think about - and you see this all the time; change is hard, or change is uncomfortable, and I think it's really true and it's important to embrace that. So change that you don't want: let's say you're getting divorced and you don't wanna get divorced, or you've lost someone who you really love and you didn't want that, we tend to allow ourselves to feel badly about that and that's great. But even if you're going through a change that you wanted - so, for example, I really wanted two kids, and once I had two kids, I was like holy crap, this is really hard. And even when I started my own business, I really wanted to do that, and it was really hard. So I think it's really important just to notice that change is hard, whether you want it or not, and that's okay. It doesn't last forever, that hard feeling doesn't last forever, but it's just good to acknowledge it. So today I'm just gonna walk you through three or four good tips that I have in order to manage life's big changes in the best way possible. The very first one is to check your expectations. So if you're headed back to work with a baby and a toddler, like my friend, the first thing to check is what you're expecting of yourself. So maybe you're used to being a star employee and your brain has just automatically offered that you're still going to be that person. It's funny how our brain just automatically, or even unconsciously, creates an expectation of how things will go or should go, and that's why it's important to take this step and look inside that brain of yours to see what it's cooked up as far as expectations. So, for example, if you're going back to work after having baby number two, your brain might offer something like well, I already know what it's like to work with one child, and I did that pretty well, so let's just do more of the same. Okay, ready, let's go. But the truth of the matter is you now have twice as many kids. So if you expect that it's going to be harder - just even thinking about getting out the door or getting to your office; if you're going to just an office within your home, it's just twice as many people to manage and take care of. So if you tell yourself that this is gonna be smooth sailing, I've already been a working mom, you're just setting yourself up for frustration and having an expectation that is pretty much unreasonable. I don't know about you, but when I first had two kids, I literally thought, I'm never gonna be able to leave the house again. The amount of stuff that I need and things that I need to think about ahead of time - it's just barely worth it to even leave the house, much less just thrive and run around. I just remember thinking that every place on earth should have a drive-through option. The dry cleaners had that and Starbucks had that, but I was like, I need a drive-through life so I don't have to get these kids out of the car. So it's good to have those lowered expectations. For example, when you have baby number two and you're going back to work, instead of thinking, oh, I know how to do this, and this is gonna be really easy, just expect that maybe you'll go to work later than before, or you might have to take more personal time to manage sick kids now that you've got two of them, or maybe you need to get to bed earlier, or you need to order all of your meals, or whatever feels realistic, instead of setting too high of an expectation that will lead to disappointment. Now, if you're an overachiever like I am - and I suspect you are too - sometimes we think that by setting high expectations we motivate ourselves and honestly, that doesn't really work. If you expect to go to the office, be super focused, get it all done, go home, spend perfect quality time with your kids, kind of on- demand, make a great dinner, and have everyone to bed on time, what will happen is you're likely to end up disappointed every day, because the chances of that happening, especially at first, are pretty much slim to none. So instead, set the bar low and aim to just really get through the first month, no matter what you have to do to do that. And then if you have a day where you do one of those things I just listed, so maybe everyone does get to bed on time and you actually get a semi-decent night's sleep, then you can just be delighted that you exceeded your expectations, instead of constantly feeling like you're not living up to these expectations that are just assigned by you to yourself, thinking that it's gonna be motivating but really it's not. It's not motivating, it just makes you feel bad in the end. A good example of a reasonable expectation that you could have if you're going back to work after maternity leave, for example, is okay, I want to get to work by 9 or whatever time is reasonable for you to get to work, and I want to have on pretty clean clothes and you know, to have taken a shower, and I want to do as much work as I can before I leave, and then I want to eat dinner with my family, and that dinner can be peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or Chick-fil-A or whatever. So just make lowered expectations and really think of it in terms of the first month or maybe two, that this is going to be a little bit of survival mode, and then things will start to be normal. This will be eventually your new normal. Like I mentioned, there's lots of different changes that you can go through in life. So if we apply this same logic to another big change, let's say your kids leaving for college, a good low bar expectation might be to expect that you'll feel sad and that your family and home will feel totally different, and maybe that's all the expectations that you have. I expect that I'm going to feel differently when my child is not living in this house every day like he or she used to. Okay, my second big tip is don't add anything new. So if you're in the midst of navigating a big change, the kind where you're barely hanging on, I would definitely suggest not adding anything else new to your life for a bit. When we moved from Texas, where we'd lived for 11 years, back to Missouri, it was a huge change. My kids were both little and they were both going to new schools and daycares, and we had no friends in our new town, and my husband had a new job at a new hospital. And then here's the bad part. Here's where I broke this rule. I didn't know about this rule! But I went for - at the time - I went for a promotion and I got a promotion at the exact same time as all of this was happening. So literally the first day we lived in our new house was the first day of a new job (same company, so that part was good), but a new job. And I went to go drop my kids off at their new preschool daycare and they were both kind of a mess because, you know, new situation. And I was heading back home to get home in time to lead my first team meeting and I got pulled over for speeding and the police officer walked up to my car and I just started bawling. I wasn't much of a crier at the time but it was like the straw that broke the camel's back and I was just crying, saying I'm new to town, I just dropped my kids off at a new school, I'm starting a new job. Oh my gosh, I was such a mess. And he was so sweet. He said oh, my daughter's about to start kindergarten next week and I'm freaking out. I totally understand. Anyway, he was really - I lucked out. I got a really nice person. I know people always say you should try to cry to get out of a ticket, but I would have rather not cried and gotten a ticket. I was so mortified that I felt that way and that I'd gotten myself to the point where I was just barely hanging on. If I had that to do over again, what I would have done, because I wanted to go for this promotion, was just to ask if I could push my start date out for another month. It was a totally new position. I wasn't taking anyone's job. It could have totally been that way, but at the time what I really loved was just pushing myself as hard as possible. So I was like, oh, I can totally get a promotion and start my kids at a new school and move to a new town where I have no friends and no family and no support. It was a terrible idea. Don't be like me. I feel like I say that a lot on my podcasts: don't be like me. So if you have a chance to just keep things nice and steady and just let the big new change be the big new change and keep everything else as steady as possible, that is definitely what I recommend. I had a client who had two small kids, and she was really beating herself up for not getting up at 5 am to go work out before work. And this is around the time when she was going back to work on after being on maternity leave, kind of like my friend I was telling you about here. So lots of nights, she got very little sleep. When you have two littles, the chances of both of them sleeping well is just so unlikely. So we worked on the idea that she could work out at any time for the whole rest of her life but that for now she could just let herself off the hook and just manage having two kids and going to work and make those kind of be the priority things. And in the end, a couple months later, you know it also helped us that it became spring - winter is kind of brutal when you're going through that stuff. But they ended up doing a family walk, just a quick family walk with both parents and both kids and the dog, and the parents could talk to each other and the kids were happy in the stroller and it was a little bit of exercise not the same as, like you know, going to a workout class or something, but it was a little bit of exercise and kind of gave everybody the energy that they needed to get through the night. So that was a great example of her letting herself off the hook and then eventually adding in a gentle version of that. I would bet - I haven't talked to her in a while, but I would bet - now she probably is working out in the mornings now that her kids are a little older and she's got everything more into a routine. I have two more tips for you. The second to last one is to allow yourself to feel however you feel. I said this at the beginning, but change is hard. If you feel sad or mad or frustrated, that's totally fine. It goes back to the expectation. So don't expect yourself to be happy or try to shame yourself into being happy, even if it's something you wanted. So if you wanted two kids and you have two kids, it's okay that having two kids is hard and frustrating sometimes. Or if you wanted a divorce or you wanted a promotion and when you get there you feel scared or sad or frustrated again, that's totally fine. A great way to deal with this is just simply to notice and name your feelings. So if you're driving to work and feeling super nervous about just being away from your kids for the whole day, just notice it and even say out loud, "I notice that I feel nervous", or today I'm feeling pretty anxious, or even today I'm feeling pretty good," If that's true, I did a whole podcast on the topic of how to feel your feelings and why it's important. That one was from July 13th, 2023. So if you wanna go check that out, if this is an area where you struggle, which is noticing and feeling your feelings, that's a good episode for you to go back to. And then my last piece of advice is leaning on routines whenever possible. So earlier I said don't add any big changes, keep things as they are. Take a look around your life and say where do I have routines that are totally working, that I'm going to stick with? Where in my life can I just press play and do what I've always done? So, for example, when we moved into a new city and had a new house, I could still keep my kids' bed time routine, which was very familiar to them. So maybe they're taking a bath in a new bathtub, but they know the routine is okay, it's almost time for bed, take a bath, we'll read three books, I'll sing you two songs, whatever. So keeping that familiar to them and to me and to us was great. And then I'd always been a runner, so going for a morning run was a part of my life. That gave me a lot of calm. So in this case it wasn't adding a new thing for me, I just kept the old thing going. By the way, just as a side note, I did not keep that thing going when I was on maternity leave and when my kids were little. My kids were older by the time we moved, so I had worked running back into my schedule and I decided that getting up in the morning and going for a little run before facing a new day, new town, new job, new everything felt very good to me. It was like putting on an old shoe. Maybe you always get coffee on the way to work, or you call your mom on the drive, or maybe you get your hair done every eight weeks, or maybe you work from home on Mondays. Whatever routines you have that worked in your life before and can still work now, lean on those and use them. That just requires so much less brain power than starting something new. Okay, and this last piece of advice comes directly to you from my mom. A ny time I call my mom and I'm upset about anything, it doesn't matter what the thing is, she always tells me" and go to bed. You need to go to bed.", \and then she'll follow up with me later and text me and be like I hope you're in bed. I think she's right that there's nothing that sleep can't at least make better. So sometimes, when you're going through a big change, you have to prioritize sleep over cleaning the kitchen or just doing that one more thing. Just take the time to take care of yourself, and go to sleep, or take a bath or just relax in some way, and as you're falling asleep and you've got your eyes closed and you're laying in bed, go back through your day and think of everything that went well. When you're going through a big change, it can feel like everything is hard, but if you really look for it, you'll always find things that went well and felt good. So maybe your college daughter FaceTimed and said, oh, I went to my new classes today and everything was great. Or maybe you were able to focus at work for a whole hour. Or maybe you met a new friend. This is just a super helpful activity because it reinforces what you're doing right while you're navigating a big change, and then the next day it encourages you to also look for more things that are going right. The very last thing that I want to say is you're doing great. If you have taken the time to listen to a self-improvement podcast to figure out how to navigate a change in a better way, you are putting forth the effort it takes. You are trying your very best and I just want to tell you I see you and I think that you're doing an amazing job, so just keep going. Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast. If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegauthier.com. See you next week.
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