January Reset Day 3: Overcome Barriers

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 to this special bonus episode of the January reset. The January Reset for High Achieving Women is a 5 day transformative program to support ambitious women in starting the new year off strong with a renewed sense of purpose, actionable goals, and a plan to thrive both personally and professionally. I do this every year, and this year, I decided to do it on LinkedIn live and to then share the recording here on the podcast so that everybody in the world can listen to it and benefit from what I'm teaching. If you would like to receive the associated worksheets, there's a worksheet for each day to help you in your practice to setting you up for an intentional year to create the kind of life and career that you want to this year, then just go to the show notes, and you can sign up for it. So I hope you will join me all week long. I know that it will help to set you up for an amazing year. And now onto today's episode.

Hi, everyone. Day 3 today. I am so excited to see everybody here and to talk about this topic today. Every day is my favorite in the January reset, but this one's my favorite favorite. I know we've got lots of people attending live on LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube, and we've also got lots of people listening to the replays because they can't do it during the day. So if you're listening to the replay, hello. Let me tell you a little bit about the January reset. So the reason that I decided to create this, and this is the 2nd year I've been doing it, is because I love the New Year energy. I love whenever we are all so positive and optimistic and excited and hopeful for the future. And what I want to invite everyone to do is to set up your year so that you can enjoy it, so that you can create the kind of life that you want. Instead of the year happening to you, I want you to think about how you want to happen to the year, what you wanna create in the year ahead. And just like I shared about my client, Carrie, yesterday who participated in the January reset last year, she's created so much for her life in 2024, so much positive change. She's exercising regularly. She just got a brand new amazing job and promotion. And she's a single mom of 3. She has all the reasons not to do it. But setting your year up with intentionality and deciding, this is how I wanna live my life. This is how I want my career to look. This is how I want to create my life this year. And you can do it, too. I hope that all of you who are here today and who have been here all week will join me in that invitation. 

If you are just tuning in for the first time, today is day 3. We spent 2 days together already and we have 2 days still to go. So we're halfway through our January reset. So you are in the right place if you are a high achiever, if you are someone who has very high expectations of yourself and you're used to achieving and succeeding and you like how that feels and you wanna continue doing that. If you are always so busy, if you're always running from place to place, your calendar is covered and filled up with all kinds of things, work, life, and you're kind of running from one thing to the next, often too busy to kind of stop and check-in. If you desire positive change, maybe you have some hopes and dreams. And maybe in our exercises yesterday, you realized more clearly what some of those are. And you have these desires for your life, but you aren't living into them yet. For whatever reason, you haven't made those changes yet, but you have a desire for something different or for something more for your life. And if you sometimes fall off the wagon, I think that at the beginning of the year, we tend to make resolutions or set goals and, you know, we might start off the year strong and then kind of fall off the wagon. That can happen anytime throughout the year as well. But maybe you have some great intentions of making positive change, but you just haven't made some of those changes yet that you need to. We're going to talk about why you might not be making those changes or why you might be avoiding taking actions to change your life. 

Okay. I just want to introduce myself to those of you who are new to me. I am a certified executive coach in my past life. I spent over a decade as a tech start up exec leading companies and teams through various stages of growth, and I loved that. And then I became a mom, and I decided I wanted to do something different with my life. So now I am a coach, and my mission is really to empower women, especially executive moms, to really live the lives and have the careers that they want. I want every woman to live in alignment with how she wants to live her life, not how everybody else is telling her to live her life or how she feels that she should be living her life, but really for every woman to decide on purpose how she wants to live her life and then live into it.

That's really why I'm offering this this week because I want to help to set you up for that. You'll definitely walk away with more clarity, more clear about how you wanna show up this year, having a clear vision for what you want your life to look like, and also developing a plan. And what we're really doing today is helping you to figure out how to overcome barriers as they come up. You know, you might have the best plan and the best vision, and it's very clear to you. But then what happens whenever you aren't taking action or whenever an obstacle comes up?

Before we jump in, I want to let you know about an offer that I have for you. It is a 1 hour free vision call where we are gonna sit down together and look at what we're doing this week and dive into what you need some more help with. So if it is that you are struggling to kind of clarify your vision and really own it, step into it, and say, this is what I want, then we're gonna work on that. If you have a very clear vision, but maybe you recognize that you have some things holding you back, then we're gonna dive into that. And if it's that you have the vision, but you need to create the actionable steps and plan, then we'll dive into that. But, really, it's customized to help you to set yourself up for success here in 2025 so that you can have an amazing year. 

Let's talk about what we've done so far, what we're gonna do today, and then what we've got left. We are on day 3 of the January reset, and each day has a meta question, kind of an overarching question. I had someone ask me yesterday, what is meta? Meta question is kind of like an overarching question of the day.

Day 1 was, where are you now? And we kind of took stock to check-in with what's going on right now. Day 2 is creating your vision. So where would you like to be? And taking a look into the future and kind of painting that picture. And I shared a lot of exercises yesterday, and I hope that you have downloaded the worksheet to help you through that, to kind of really paint that picture and get that clear vision about what you want your life to look like, what you wanna create for yourself here in 2025. Day 3 today is to identify and overcome barriers. So I am gonna talk about some of the most common things that come up whenever we start to take action toward our dreams, and I'm gonna give you some tools to work through them. 

So the meta question for today is what's been stopping you? What has been stopping you from going from where you are now to where you want to be? I want to remind you to move from a place of judgment to a place of curiosity. When we ask ourselves the question, what's been stopping me? We can tend to get real judgy of ourselves. And it's often why we avoid doing this work because it feels really painful. Get in a headspace of, well, I should have done this. Why am I not doing it? And we just start kind of beating ourselves up and and being really mean to ourselves. As we start to be mean to ourselves as we might do something else, we might pick up our phone and start scrolling, or we might dive into our work or get really busy or do something to get ourselves out of pain. 

The judgment and the beating ourselves up is keeping us stuck, and it's not letting us actually take action. And, also, it's completely optional. We don't have to do that to ourselves. And so instead, I just want to invite you to bring in curiosity as we start to ask ourselves questions about, you know, what's stopping me? What's holding me back? Why am I not taking action? The best way to learn so that you can actually do something differently is to be curious because then you might find something that is the thing you needed to get unstuck, to take that action forward.

The first thing I wanna share with you is that every action we take or don't take is driven by our desire to either feel or avoid a certain feeling. So I want you to think about that for a minute and think about how that applies to you. Let's think about working out. Why do we work out? Why do we exercise? Well, because we wanna feel good. Right? That's a feeling. We wanna feel good. Or maybe because we wanna look good so that we can feel confident. And so it's always kind of driven by how we want to feel. What we're doing is driven by how we wanna feel and also what we don't do. So let's say that you really like, part of your 2025 plan or part of your vision includes getting a promotion, but why don't you go for it? Why don't you put your name in the hat? Why don't you raise your hand for it? Why don't you advocate to your boss? Well, usually it's because we're avoiding a feeling. We we tell ourselves, oh, I might look stupid. Like, who am I to think that I am qualified for that? And then if you kind of just keep going down the track, well, okay. So what if you're not qualified? Like, then I'm gonna look stupid. Well, what happens if you look stupid? Well, then I'm gonna feel embarrassed. And at the end of the day, whenever we go down that track, we realize we're not going for a promotion because we don't wanna feel embarrassed. So it might be that. It might be well, actually, what if I get the promotion and then I don't know what I'm doing and and I end up, you know, getting fired? Well, then I'm gonna feel terrible about myself because, you know, I thought that I was more qualified than I was. And, again, it's gonna come back to that I'm gonna feel ashamed. I'm gonna feel embarrassed. It's these horrible feelings that we don't want to feel, and we avoid at all costs. And so I think it's helpful just to notice what feelings we are trying to avoid whenever we don't take action because that's really what we're talking about today is we wanna get from point a to point b, and we're we're not there yet. So what is it that's keeping us from getting there? And oftentimes, it is this. So that's one thing I want you to think about.

Next thing I wanna do is just building on the last two sessions that we've done is to think about kind of what is the gap between where you are now and where you'd like to be. And that is how we can design our action plan. And so we're not gonna get into action planning today, but just if you could think of, like, 1 or 2 things that you might need to do or make a change in order to get there. Something that you might need to take action on. Something that you realize is keeping you from doing it. Some change that you might might need to make to get from point a to point b, from where you are now to where you want to be. And then the question to ask yourself is, what stops you from doing those things? And see what comes up. And I would encourage you to write it down of what comes up. But often, when I'm working with clients, what comes up is some series of thoughts, something like, well, I don't have time to do that. I don't know how to do it, or I have too many responsibilities that would be irresponsible of me to go for that dream that I have. And what that means as we start to uncover those thoughts that are keeping us from taking action is that we are believing that these are valid reasons why we shouldn't live our dream, why we shouldn't have the lives that we want to live. And maybe that's true. Maybe you decide that that's true. Maybe you decide, you know what? I don't have enough time to create my dream life. And so I'm I'm going to put my dream life on hold or I'm going to not live that life. That is a decision that you can absolutely make. You know, I would invite you to consider alternatives that I wonder if, what if, what if we could make some changes to move you closer to the life you want to live? Because I believe that we should all live the lives that we want to live.

And what I also want to offer is that these are all reasons to stay where we are. So I want to teach you a couple of things. I kind of nerd out on neuroscience. I was a psychology major in college and my favorite class was neurobiology. And so what stops us from making changes? I just want to talk about kind of the way the brain is set up. And this is a real basic version of it, but I've done a lot of studying on it and I love learning about it so that I can understand how my brain works so that I can work with it instead of against it. That is what I want for you as well. It's just to know enough about it to be able to leverage it and use it to your advantage instead of against you. Because by default, so many of us, our brains are kind of working against us, and that is why we stay stuck. And that's why we don't live the lives that we wanna live and live into our dreams. 

There are two parts of our brains. 1st, there's the prefrontal cortex, and the prefrontal cortex has the executive functioning to plan and dream and create. This is often activated when you are working on projects, when you are doing something that requires a lot of thinking and intelligence, rational thinking, decision making, it is also responsible for impulse control. When this area of our brain is activated, that's when we feel motivated, inspired. We're taking action. We're feeling confident. We're living in alignment. It also takes the longest to develop, and it's not fully developed until age 25. So those of you with kids might see that on a daily basis, especially with toddlers. This is actually kind of what we might call our adult brain. So that's kind of the adult in there inside of our brains. This is also the newest. So in terms of evolution, the early humans did not have this part of their brain. This is something that has added on to our brains as we've evolved as a species.

But the other part of the brain that I want to call attention to, there are more than 2 parts, but these are the 2 parts that I want to focus on, is the amygdala. And the amygdala is our survival brain. This is the oldest part of our brain. It's been with us since early days of humankind, and its job, it has one job. Its job is to keep us alive. It is to continue our species, make sure that our species survives and continues on. Nothing about thriving or anything beyond just basic survival. So this is the part of your brain that gets activated when you go into fight or flight, whenever you come up against a lion. If that happens in your daily life, then your brain, your amygdala will start to shut down. It takes away from your ability to really like think super rationally, and it starts pumping blood to all of your big muscle groups in case you need to run or fight against that threat. So this part of your brain is so good at identifying threats and making you feel super alert whenever there's a threat present. Part of the problem is that over time, our brains have evolved, but the things around us are different. So it is responding to the threat of seeing a lion in the same way as it might respond to a threat of having your boss email you on a Friday at 4 o'clock to ask for a meeting. Right? And you feel like, oh, my gosh. What's happening? Am I getting fired? It's sensing those threats and putting our our bodies into a stress response, just like it would some of those like real threats out in the world. And this part of the brain, the amygdala is run by the motivational triad because this is what helps to keep us alive. Remember, it's trying to keep us alive, trying to make sure our species survives and continues on.

So the motivational triad is to avoid pain, seek pleasure and conserve energy. Remember, it's just trying to survive. It's just trying to get by. And so notice the amygdala is trying to do the bare minimum. It does not like change. It it doesn't like change at all. It wants us to find a safe place, like go into a cave and then just, like, stay there forever because it knows we're safe. So once it has detected safety, it's like, stay here, stay here. This is why it sometimes feels like our own brains are working against us because our prefrontal cortex is saying, I want this. I wanna make this change. I wanna go out in the world and do something that might feel a little bit scary. And our amygdala is saying threat threat alert changing is scary. We do not need to change, and we do not need to go out and put ourselves in harm's way. And so it starts to offer all these thoughts, like, you don't have time to do that. You have way too many responsibilities to do that. You don't even know how to do that. You're gonna look stupid if you try that. And so our amygdala is in there, and it serves a purpose, and it can be really helpful in some situations. But when it comes to designing the lives that we want to live and making changes, it can often feel like our brain is working against us because that part of our brain is very loud. It is kind of sometimes called the toddler brain. It is the one that is like, look at me, pay attention to me. I need to tell you this right now, and I don't care what you've got going on. It's why we have intrusive thoughts. And it's just, like, trying to jump in at inopportune moments with, you know, thoughts of, you know, you're not good enough. You, you need to stay quiet. Different things like that to keep us safe. Has the best intentions to try and keep us alive, but there are places where it doesn't serve us to listen to that part of our brain as much. 

So I hope that that helps to maybe just give you an understanding of what's happening in your brain. To me, it's so helpful to just know what's going on so that I can have some more awareness of first of all, that it's normal. It is totally, totally normal. I think sometimes whenever we think, like, that we had decided that we're gonna work out. We decided that we were gonna work on this project. We decided that we're gonna work on building our brand. Whatever it is that we you know, our prefrontal cortex, our adult brain decided in advance, it is so normal for our toddler brain to come in and say, hey. You know what would be really fun? Let's lay on the couch and watch Netflix. Hey. You know what would feel great right now? Let's go get some ice cream. It's just your survival brain trying to keep you safe. So we can thank it and honor it. And also, we don't have to listen to it. We don't have to let it run the show. It's a choice that we have. 

Don't believe everything you think. We almost always believe that our thoughts are accurate and true, and we read them. We say them like we're reading the news with such certainty. But, you know, we say things like, I don't have time. I'm too old. I'm too invested in my career to make a change right now. I have too many responsibilities to to go for that dream. And these are all just thoughts and beliefs that our survival brain is coming up with, and they may be limiting you. They're not facts. They're not universal truths that could be held up in a court of law. Your brain will try to prove that they are true, but those are just thoughts. They're just sentences in our brains, and we can decide if we wanna believe them or not. And so I love this quote, don't believe everything you think, because our brains offer us all kinds of things, and we get to decide what we wanna think. We get to decide what we wanna believe. 

I wanna share an exercise with you just to empower you that whenever one of these thoughts comes up, what you can do with it. And there are a few different tools and exercises that I love to take my clients through, and this is just one of them. As these thoughts come up, try this. These are Byron Katie's 4 questions. First ask, is it true? And just answer yes or no. And oftentimes, immediately, we'll be like, yes. Yes. It's true that I don't have enough time. Can you absolutely know that it's true? Okay. And this is where we start to wonder. What is enough time? How much time would I need? How much time do I have? Has anyone else in the world ever had the amount of time that I have and created what I want? Maybe. Right? And so then we can start to kind of poke holes in that thought of I don't have enough time. And so, really, we don't know for sure that it's true. We can, you know, maybe we say no. No. I don't know for sure. 

And then we wanna bring some awareness. How do you react? What happens when you believe that thought? So when I believe the thought, I don't have enough time, what happens? Well, I don't do the things that I wanna do. I don't work toward my dreams. I usually take actions on things that are less important to me and that don't matter as much in the big picture. Like, I might do busy work or I might do other things that I have to do rather than the things that I want to do because, you know, that's the choice that I'm making in that moment because I'm telling myself I don't have enough time to work on the things I wanna do. 

And then who would you be without that thought? I love this question. I think this opens up so much possibility. So if I took that thought out of my head, if whenever I thought of working on something, taking an action toward the life I wanna live, toward my dream, who would I be without the thought, I don't have time to do that? I'd probably be a person who takes action on my dreams. I'd probably be a person who isn't limited by a thought like that. Right? And and whatever else comes up for you, I think that is such a powerful question, and this is such a  powerful exercise to go through and do with every single thought that comes up every time you wanna take an action and you don't. 

I hope these tools are super helpful for you. I know they're helpful for me personally, and they're some of the tools that I share with my clients. I would love to dive deeper into your limiting beliefs that are holding you back. That's one of the big things that we do in coaching, and we clean all that up so that you can take the steps forward So you don't have to stay stuck. So you don't have to feel like you are a victim of your circumstances. You can take the action that you want to take and live the life that you want to live. So I would love to talk to you. Book a ‘25 vision call. I would love to talk more with you.

 To recap what we've done so far, where are you now? Where would you like to be? And what's been stopping you? Tomorrow, we're going to work on planning your steps so that you can have a really intentional year and create the year and life that you want to create.

If you would like to connect with me, I would love to connect on LinkedIn. I hope you all enjoyed today's lesson. Thank you all so, so much for being here, and I hope to see you tomorrow at 10 AM. We're gonna talk about working on your plan for setting you up for an amazing year because you deserve to have an amazing year.

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.