How to Overcome Resistance to Change and Finally Start Putting Yourself First (Taking Care of Yourself #6)

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. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  0:27  

Hi everyone. Welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for being here today for the sixth episode in the taking care of yourself series. I had the first five episodes completely mapped out, and I decided, when it comes to the sixth one, I want to see what's happening and see what I'm hearing from clients and feedback from listeners to create the sixth episode. I always write episodes with you in mind. I take specific scenarios from coaching, conversations with clients, casual conversations with friends, other moms at the pickup line, or situations I've experienced myself, and I like to write about what I've learned or what my clients discovered, and then I like to share it with you to spread the wealth for today's episode. This one feels really personal, because I have actually been feeling what I'm about to talk about. I've been experiencing it myself. So I am writing this episode just as much for you as for me, because over the past five episodes, I've been sharing about how to take care of yourself. I talked about some of the barriers that keep us from taking care of ourselves, and I've brought on two amazing guests who shared their stories of what it was like before and after they started taking care of themselves. When I asked myself, what does everyone need to know that I haven't shared yet about taking care of themselves, ad I think it's the idea that if you're having resistance to making a change, if you're having resistance to actually starting to take care of yourself, if that's something you've never really done before, or you haven't done since becoming a mom, you can actually make a change, and that making a change will make things better in your life, because I think that our brains do so much to keep us in the place where we are now, even if it's super uncomfortable. I've shared so many different ideas, techniques and tools and my guests have as well for how you can take care of yourself, then our brain discounts it, or tells us we can't do it, or that it's not going to change anything. It doesn't matter. So why would we even start, right?

Leanna Laskey McGrath  3:04  

So whether you're wanting to try one of those things, or if you're interested in joining my executive mom reset program, starting soon, whatever it is that you might want to be doing to take care of yourself that you're not doing right now, I just want to say there's not a right first step. I think a lot of times, our brains will search for that and say, I have all this information. Now I have to pick the best one or the right one, the only "right", I'm doing air quotes, thing is movement is to move in the direction that you want to go. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  3:42  

So today, I want to talk about what keeps us stuck, what keeps us from making positive changes in our lives, and I'm going to talk about it in the context of taking care of ourselves and prioritizing ourselves and meeting our own needs, if we're not doing those things right now. But I really think this could be some very helpful awareness for any change that you might want to make in your life that could be a positive change for you, but for whatever reason, you're not making it. Why don't we make changes in our lives when we have all the information and we know we should or we want to, but we don't. Number one, first and foremost is that our brain does not like change. Our brains are amazing tools. They are wired for safety, to keep us safe, so that we can keep our species alive and well, and so our brains usually perceive any change as risky, because we know what's here, even if it's very, very uncomfortable, even if we do not like where we're at. We know it, and we know how to deal with it, and our brain does not like the idea of the unknown. It does not want to go there. And so what it does is a lot of times it will discourage you. It will come up with all kinds of reasons why you shouldn't make a change, or it will go to worst case scenarios to keep you stuck. And it's really about the motivational triad, our ancient brain, the part of our brain that is responsible for fight or flight, for keeping us safe, operates on the motivational triad, and that is to seek pleasure, avoid pain and conserve energy. So even when we're uncomfortable, there is a comfort in the known where we can probably find some pleasure here, and we can avoid the pain of change and uncertainty, and we can conserve energy. It's so much less work to keep doing what we're doing, even if it feels like a lot, our brain believes it's less work than making a change, even if the change would make our lives easier, a lot of times, our brain will tell us making that change is way too hard. So we're comfortable overworking and we're comfortable prioritizing everybody else. We're comfortable in our routines and our default ways of operating, even if they don't feel good, they feel a lot safer than the unknown. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  6:21  

So I want you to ask yourself, if you're feeling resistance to making any kind of positive change, and here we're talking around taking care of yourself, ask yourself the question, what would happen if I started taking care of myself? Pause this for a second and actually think about it and see what your brain offers you, because I think a lot of times our brain will go to the worst case scenario that everyone around you might suffer. The kids wouldn't have anyone to take care of them. All of your work would fall to the wayside. You'd probably get fired. Right? All these terrible things might happen. So your brain might do that, or your brain might tell you something like, well, it wouldn't change anything. Nothing would be different, which I'll talk about more in a second. Or it may tell you, Well, I don't even know how to do that. My brain loves to offer me confusion, like, you don't know how to do that, so don't even try. These are all thought errors. They're all things that our brain is telling us to keep us where we are. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  7:26  

Remember the saying, don't believe everything you think, because just because your brain thinks it does not mean it's factually true. And I think we have the opportunity to question, is that true? Is this really true? Is this really going to happen if I start taking care of myself? What does it even mean to take care of myself? Let me get really specific on that. What is it that I want to do? And then go into what does my brain think about that? The solution here is to notice when your brain is doing this, acknowledge its efforts in trying to protect you, I say 1000 times a day, thank you so much brain for trying to keep me safe. I really appreciate your perspective, and I'm considering it, and also I'm going to consider these other perspectives as well, and then also maybe allow yourself to imagine best case scenarios, if your brain's going to the worst case, or even just better scenarios. Doesn't have to be the best case, but just better scenarios than the horrible ones that your brain might offer you. The second reason that we don't make positive changes in our lives, and I touched on this a little bit, but it's another thought error. We don't believe that it's possible, or if we believe it is possible, we don't believe that it will make a difference, so therefore it's not worth the effort. And again, this goes back to our brains trying to keep us safe and trying to conserve energy. But I was thinking about this one specifically because I think this is something we tell ourselves so often, well, it's not going to make much of a difference anyway. It's not really going to help. So like, why even bother?

Leanna Laskey McGrath  9:08  

Martin Seligman is a leading researcher on positive psychology, and he came up with the 3P's of resilience. Even though this episode isn't necessarily about resilience, I think one of these especially really applies here. So the 3 P's are personalization, permanence and pervasiveness. And I think permanence is the one that often keeps us stuck, because permanence is when you feel like nothing can change, like this state of being or how things are right now is how things will be forever or for a really long time, or maybe until your kids go to college, or until they get out of this stage. It's like we believe that things are the way they are, and it's beyond our control. And so if you ever find yourself thinking, I see no end in sight, I'm underwater and I can't get out. It doesn't matter if I make a change, it's not going to make a difference. You feel stuck here and you see no way out. I see this with so many of the women that I work with at the beginning of their journey, because they come to me feeling like I want this to be better. I want it to be different. But I don't actually believe it ever could be, and a lot of times it's what keeps us from seeking out help from a coach or a therapist or doing anything to take care of ourselves, because we don't actually believe that it could be different, that it could be better. We think as long as I have kids and a job, this is just how it's going to be. It's so hard to balance everything, and I'm always pulled in different directions and always feeling like I'm failing at something, and it's just never going to change. It's just my new state of being, and we don't believe that we can make a positive change. This is probably one of the biggest reasons why we don't make changes even when we are unhappy, because we believe our current state is permanent and that we don't have enough control over it to change anything without completely blowing up our lives and like doing an Eat, Pray, Love, tour through the world. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  11:15  

So I want to be really clear, it is absolutely possible to feel better, to feel different. I'm not saying that you should believe it's possible to always feel good and at peace 100% of the day. I think that Melissa's episode last week really highlights what it looks like to feel good. And also, we talked a lot about what does it mean to feel good? And what should our expectation be there? Because it is possible to feel more balanced, to feel more taken care of than you may be feeling right now, and the little things I have suggested will make a difference. I'm telling you that from my personal experience and from working with so many clients and seeing them start to feel better. You heard from Laura and Melissa about how starting to take care of themselves and prioritize themselves helped them to feel better as well. So if you can't get your mind to believe it, that's okay. Just try some of them, even if you're just doing it to prove me wrong, just try it and see what happens. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  12:23  

Okay. And then the third reason, one of the other tricks our brain likes to play, and that you probably have lots of experience with, I know I do, and it's all or nothing. Thinking it's the idea that we are either all in or all out. We think it has to be this huge change in our lives, and so we've talked about all these different ways to take care of yourself, and I think there are some big steps that we've talked about, like believing you're worthy of having needs and having your needs met. You know that's a bigger step, or having conversations to set boundaries or to advocate for your needs. Maybe you've never had those conversations before, or that's something that's really hard for you. So those might feel like bigger things, and you might not feel ready for some of those yet, and that is okay, because there are so many other small steps you can take, like some of the nervous system regulation techniques that Melissa shared, or simply checking in with yourself throughout the day and asking, What do I need right now? Just taking a breath whenever you start to feel tightness in your chest, just giving yourself a deep breath and doing things like taking a walk or standing up and stretching or getting a snack or taking a drink, just simple things to start to tell yourself, I am taking care of myself. I am taking care of myself in this way today, and so, like I mentioned at the beginning, movement in the direction that you want to move is all that is required here. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  14:00  

You do not need to suddenly become a person who takes care of themselves, 24/7, and forgets about everybody else. And that is not what I'm suggesting at all. And I think a lot of times we have this mindset of like, I'm either taking care of myself or I'm not, I'm on a workout schedule, or I'm not, I'm eating healthy, or I'm not, and that's that all or nothing thinking. The question that you get to ask yourself is just right now in this moment, what can I do to take care of myself today? What's one thing I can do? Maybe I haven't been taking care of myself nutritionally, rather than feeling like I need to do a big meal prep and planning on the weekends and be this big thing that takes up my entire Sunday. I can just ask myself in the morning, what meal can I focus on today to be a little bit more balanced and healthy? Maybe I know that I operate better when I get fresh air. So maybe I can look at my calendar and see where I have some little breaks. I see that I have a big meeting at two, so I'm going to block my calendar from 1:45 to 1:55 to go outside and take a walk. Maybe I want to start working out, but I cannot seem to find the time with everything I have going on in my life. So maybe I look and see that I have an hour free for lunch today. Maybe that doesn't happen every day, but maybe I do today or on Thursday. And so maybe I'll spend the first 20 minutes doing a yoga video on demand, and then have the other 40 for eating. We can do lots of little things that move us in the direction where it doesn't have to be that we flip that on switch.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  15:42  

And then I think we need to drop the expectation for perfection. If you have it in your mind that you're either taking care of yourself or not, I think it's important to get clear of what are your expectations of yourself that would put you into that category of a person who takes care of herself. I was speaking with a client the other day, she had missed an email from her daughter's school and felt so guilty like a bad mom, she said, now I'm one of those parents who doesn't read their emails. What she realized was that she had two buckets: parents who read their emails and parents who don't read their emails, and essentially, either she had to be reading 100% of the emails, or if she missed one, she was in this other bucket. It's interesting how our brains do this. This is one example, but I'm sure that there are lots of examples that you can think of of how your brain does this. It likes simple categories and dichotomies and so first of all, I'm pretty sure every school these days sends way too many emails and messages through the portal and the app so many messages from the school, and we need to really define what is the amount that is okay. If we expect ourselves to read 100% of those emails, then we are setting ourselves up for failure, because no parent is reading 100% of the emails, or maybe they are. But you get to decide if you are going to be the parent that holds themselves to that standard, or if you are going to accept that you are a human with other things on your plate, and you get to decide what is enough, what is okay, and then take some time to make peace with the imperfection of maybe missing an email here and there. I think what happens is our brains tell us like, Oh no, I'm going to become one of those parents, and I'm never going to pick up my kid, and I'm going to miss every dress up day and I'm going to forget to send in the snack, right? It's like our brains have this idea of a slippery slope. No, you just missed one email because you're a human and you have another job, and your full time job is to not read emails from the school. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  18:00  

So in terms of taking care of ourselves, if your brain is telling you that you have to do it perfectly, that you have to take care of yourself every day, work out every day, always put yourself first 100% of the time. And that's what it means to be able to put yourself in that bucket of a person who takes care of themselves. Then I invite you to re examine your own definition, because I think often the all in the all or nothing keeps us from doing it because we think we're committing to this major thing. No, I can be a person who takes care of myself and still puts others first sometimes, I can be a person who takes care of myself and still deprioritizes My own needs. Sometimes, whether on purpose and consciously or not, I can be a person who takes care of myself nutritionally and still goes through the drive through sometimes because I didn't take the time to meal plan and prep. I can be a person who exercises, and I can miss a week because I had so many other things going on at work, and I can just pick it right back up. I think so often, our expectation of getting it perfect keeps us from doing it at all. So we think we have to change our life all at once, but what if you just took a small step each day, check in with yourself. One time per day, do one of those grounding exercises. Instead of changing our life 100% overnight, we are incrementally making changes. What if, each time we do that, it makes it 1% better? That's going to add up over time. So I invite you to examine this thinking and allow yourself to take one small step and be okay with that. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  19:41  

And then finally, I think so often, we believe that we need to change our external circumstances in order to change how we feel. We believe that if this isn't working, then we need to get a new job, because it's just not feasible to stay at this company or to stay in this role, and if we change that, then we will feel better. This is why we see people jumping from relationship to relationship. You may have done this before, or maybe you're doing it now, or maybe you have friends who you see doing this, where we change out the person, but we don't change ourselves, and we see the same patterns repeating themselves. I think so often we change out the job, and then we see the same patterns repeat themselves. We get burnt out, and we're like, wait a minute, I wasn't supposed to get burnt out in this job. I only got burnt out in that other job. Maybe it's not the job, maybe it's actually instead of those external circumstances, maybe it's our thoughts about those external circumstances that determine how we feel. And I just want to offer that we have the opportunity to feel so much better without changing anything externally. I'm not saying that things might not have to change externally. What I'm saying is that there is an opportunity to take care of yourself, even without getting a new job, a new partner or moving to a different state that has a slower pace. Right? We might believe that the solution to our problems is to change something outside of ourselves. It might be, and also, we also need to change inside of ourselves, because if we take our same brain and go into a new situation with it, we are going to repeat those same patterns. The opportunity here is learning how to change your thoughts and internal experiences, to change how you feel. That is definitely a skill that they don't teach you at school. We spend a lot of time practicing it inside the executive mom reset program, but the first step is recognizing that changing something outside of yourself is not the only way to feel better. There are other ways to feel better with a lot of these tools that we've shared over the past five weeks. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  22:09  

So I hope this helps. If you have been feeling resistance to making changes and taking better care of yourself, I want to remind you that it's so human of you to feel that resistance when presented with a change, it's not a problem, but it may be keeping you from living the life that you want, but maybe keeping you from feeling better. So it's really important to notice whenever these thought patterns are coming up, whenever your brain's telling you that it's too hard or it's too much effort, or it's not going to change anything, or it's giving you worst case scenarios, or telling you that it's this huge thing and that you're either taking care of yourself or not with the all or nothing thinking, or it's telling you that you need to change something outside of yourself. All of those are things our human brain does to keep us safe and stuck, and we have the opportunity to recognize what our brain is doing and then decide consciously what we want to do. Do we want to believe that, or do we want to tell ourselves a different story? We do not have to believe everything we think. We get to decide what we believe, and we get to decide what changes we want to make in our lives. So I hope this helps to encourage you to make some positive changes in your life and to be taking care of yourself. If you're finding that challenging, I hope you'll come check out the executive mom reset program. We have a new group starting next week, and we also have one on one coaching available as well. Head on over to coach leanna.com to find out more, and I hope to see you next week as we continue to talk about taking care of ourselves. Thanks so much everybody. Have a great day. Bye.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  23:57  

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.