Balancing Leadership and Motherhood: Choosing What Belongs (and What Doesn't) in This Season of Life

Leanna Laskey McGrath  0:04  

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 Laskey McGrath, former tech exec turned full time mom, recovering perfectionist and workaholic and certified executive coach. 

Hi everyone, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for being here today. I want to talk today about a concept that I have briefly mentioned in different episodes, but I want to dive deeper into it today. And that is this concept of’ tis not the season, and the idea that we have different seasons in life and that each of those seasons includes the things of our choosing and also doesn't include certain things of our choosing. And I think that so often when we become moms and we enter this season, we think that we need to do everything that we used to do. We need to carry forward all of those same expectations of ourselves. And the reality is, is that we don't, we get to choose.  We get to choose what expectations we want to have in this season of our lives. 

You may have heard the saying that so many women have said over time, I looked up to see who actually said this originally, and it was credited to Madeline Albright, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, and others as well. And the idea that you can have it all, just not at the same time. So often we believe that having it all means having it all right now. And as many women and probably humans have discovered over their lifetimes throughout history is that we can have it all, but it's just not possible all at the same time. We are in a season of life right now where maybe some of the things that used to feel really important to us don't feel as important anymore. And I think it's really helpful and crucial for us to do kind of an audit and figure out, is this thing still a priority for me? Do I want to carry this in this season? Do I want to continue to have this expectation of myself in this season? And we can give ourselves permission to let some things go. 

So maybe some examples of what it is not the season. ‘Tis not the season to have a spotless house. That may be something that used to be really important. It doesn't mean that it's not important anymore, but we get to decide, is this the season that I'm going to prioritize this? I used to always make sure that my house was spotless anytime anyone was coming over. And now that I've had a child for six and a half years, it's taken some time, but at some point over that time, I just said, you know what? I have a kid in this house. And so if someone shows up and my house isn't spotless, I'm not going to get all stressed out about it because that's just not how I want to spend my energy. This is not the season where I need to have the perfect spotless house. I can certainly do that again whenever I don't have a young child in my house, if I decide that that's important to me again, but maybe it's not right now. 

The examples I'm giving are things that I have chosen or that my clients have chosen, just sharing different examples to not include in this season and not prioritize. It is different for everybody. What we decide is important. In this season of my life, health and wellness is extremely important and working out often is very important, but somebody else might say, you know what? This is not the season for me to work out five days a week and that's okay. We get to decide what we want to prioritize, what we want to include in each season.

Another one of my clients discovered that this is not the season to have a perfectly manicured garden. It's not the season to get a monthly bikini wax anymore. This might not be the season to have a 60% travel job. So I used to work at a tech startup in my twenties and early thirties and I loved it. I had an amazing experience. We lived in a house, we bootstrapped this company out of a house and it was amazing. I absolutely loved it, but that was a perfect job for that season of my life. In this season of my life, I would not want that job. That's not a job that I would want to do, and I think that a lot of times we are holding ourselves to that old expectation or maybe we're in a job that worked in one season in our life and we're still there and we realize, man, this just feels so much harder or I'm not enjoying it anymore, but I've put in so much time here in this company or in this field or in this role that I don't want to walk away. And the reality is that some jobs and some companies and some roles are perfect for one season in our life and they just don't work in a different season of our life. And we get to decide and we get to make a change if we want to. 

So I'm so glad I had that experience at the tech startup. Maybe I want to do that again after my kiddo goes off to college. But right now, I don't want to spend my time pulling all-nighters and working 80 hours a week and constantly being on call and pouring everything that I have into that because I have other priorities now that I didn't have back then. This is not the season for me to party every weekend until 2 a.m. I definitely lived that season, but that is not the season that I'm in right now. And that's okay. Maybe that is something that you enjoy. Maybe having a travel job is actually how you parent better. Again, you get to decide what gets included in each season of your life. 

What's important here is that we give ourselves permission to let go of certain things because I think we try to hold so many things and hold ourselves to old expectations, that we end up dropping balls and could be because we just carry all of them. And then we end up feeling guilty about it and feeling shame and feeling like we're not good enough because we can't do it all when the truth is that we can't do it all and that we have the opportunity to set some of those balls down. And it doesn't mean that we can't come back to them later. But maybe in this season, they're just not things that we want to carry. They're not things we want to prioritize. We get to be very clear about our priorities in this season. And for me, that mindset of this is not forever, this is just right now really helps because it makes me feel like, you know what, if there's something that I want to do in my life, but I'm not doing it right now, that's okay. I can get to it in the next season. I think that's really freeing.

And whenever we do set things down, it gives us the opportunity to really see, is this something that I need right now? For example, if you decided that gardening is something that you're going to set down, I don't need to have the perfectly manicured garden in this season. Maybe you decide that. And then you realize, oh man, I really miss that. I really, really miss that activity. It was the thing that really grounds me. It's where I can go and clear my mind. And so it actually is something that I want to do. So when we set these things down, it gives us the opportunity to really intentionally decide what we want to add back in, really see what we miss, see those things that maybe are more important to us or more essential to us than what we realized. Exercise, like I was talking about before, was something that I kind of set down in early motherhood and realized, oh, no, this is essential. This is something that I do want to actually prioritize and figure out how to fit into my busy schedule and make time for. 

And also we get to decide what are the metrics for success? What do they look like now? Maybe our metrics are different in this season. So maybe it's not that we have a perfect looking garden anymore. Maybe that's no longer the goal or the purpose. Maybe it's more the process of gardening that we pay attention to. Maybe our metric for success is that I get out and spend 20 to 30 minutes in my garden every day. And that's how I'm now going to measure success for that activity rather than how I used to measure in the past. Maybe I find that that brings me more fulfillment than doing it to make sure that it looks good. 

Again, the concept here is that you are allowed to decide what you want to prioritize. You are allowed to set things down. Give yourself permission to do that without feeling shame and guilt so that you can enjoy this season of life and really pay attention to what's most important here. 

I hope this is helpful for you. I wish you all the best in this season. Have a great week, everyone. Bye-bye.

If you're loving what you're learning on this podcast, I want to invite you to come join me for the executive mom reset. We offer both one on one and group coaching formats, and our next group is starting in October 2025. I created the executive mom reset to help high achieving moms feel less anxious, more competent and more in control of their lives. Instead of feeling like you're being pulled in 100 different directions, you'll learn how to pause, reset and approach challenges with clarity and confidence. You'll stop running on autopilot, stop second guessing yourself all the time, and stop letting stress, guilt and overwhelm dictate your day. You'll walk away with the tools and the confidence that you can use every day to feel stronger, more empowered and more in alignment with the life you want to be living. Head on over to coachleanna.com to learn more and to get signed up. I really hope to see you there.