Decide Who You Want to Be Amidst the Chaos: A Mindset Tool for Ambitious Women to Stay Focused on Your Goals

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 joining me today. Here in January, I have been talking about goals for 2026 and working towards them and not getting thrown off track by them.

And before I jump into what I want to share this week, I feel like I need to address the elephant in every room in America right now, which is what's happening in our country, and the fact that every time you turn on the news, you learn about some new horrible things happening. And I think that as compassionate people who care about others who are responsible for bringing up the next generation here in our country and who are also people who want to be informed, you might need to be informed for your business, I think it makes total sense that our emotions get elevated when we witness terrible things happening in the world. So I don't know that there's a way to avoid that completely. I think that sometimes people will say, turn off the news, and that may work for you, but for me at least, that feels really kind of incongruent with one of my personal values of being a responsible citizen.

So I have been having to learn how to stay informed without getting hijacked all day long. And so if you're in this boat, I just want to take a second and share with you in case it's helpful, just something that I have learned before I get into what I want to talk about for today. So I think that one of the most important things as consumers of the news is that we regulate ourselves before we consume the news. Because let me tell you, if I have just put in a full day at work and then I am making dinner for my family, and then my daughter refuses to eat what I made, and I'm just feeling like I'm tired from the day and I'm hangry because I need to eat, and I'm a little dysregulated after managing that whole meltdown with my daughter, then my nervous system is close to like its max capacity for regulation, and that is probably not the best time for me to pick up my phone and look at the news. I'm already activated, and then I'm gonna get even more activated. And that's gonna throw me into a tailspin. So I just think that it's really important for us to be conscious about when we are consuming news and what kind of emotional and mental state we're in, how regulated we're feeling before we engage. Because if we're feeling dysregulated, then looking at the news is not gonna help, and it's probably gonna end up eating a lot more of your time and your energy than if you were to wait until you're in a regulated state, maybe after you've eaten and had a rest to take in the news.

So trust me, I have tried both and I'm sure you have too, but what I'm really working on right now is just making sure to check in with myself before I pick up my phone and look at the news, and also choosing a worthy news source where I go and seek out my news rather than having notifications disrupting my day all day long and alerting me because that doesn't set me up for success. I personally love Jessica Yellen's News, Not Noise, and I highly recommend checking it out. And also since the news is all over every kind of media and social media, I think one of the other things I've been working on is really trying to limit my social media consumption. And I actually took the apps off my phone so that I don't just start mindlessly scrolling, you know, just like pick up my phone without thinking and scrolling through. But I actually have to like make a conscious choice to go and sit down at my computer and open up the thing and look at it. And when that's the case, when I have to like make a choice to do it, then I'm gonna check in with myself. I'm going to make sure that mentally and emotionally I feel prepared to learn about what's happened for the day.

Okay. So I just wanted to share that because I feel like I've been talking about achieving our goals and I think for some people, especially those who are directly impacted, like those close to Minneapolis or activists are probably feeling like, yeah, I can't even think about that right now. There's too much happening in the world for me to really focus on myself and my goals. And it's interesting because I've been talking about the January reset and I've been talking about how to get back on track whenever you get knocked off track from your goals because life throws you curve balls or things kind of pull you out. And I had really meant like our kids get sick or you get sick or one of your employees unexpectedly gives their notice or kind of like the everyday things that happen that can throw us off track. But actually I realized that what I'm teaching about, about not letting things throw you off the path of getting to your goals, t hose skills are actually extremely applicable right now with everything happening in the world because I think that these external events can be one more reason that we don't work toward our goals.

What I don't want for you, and what I don't want for any woman is for at the end of your life, for you to look back and be like, well, I didn't really do what I came here to do. I didn't really meet all of those goals because I was so distracted with all the terrible things happening in the world, or I just kept getting thrown off by life circumstances. Every time I would start to work toward my goals, then something would happen and I would get thrown off, and then it would take me a really long time to get back on. So I never built enough momentum to get to where I wanted to be. So that is what I don't want for you, and that's why I have been talking about this. And I think that what I've been sharing and what I'm sharing today is hopefully helping you to stay informed and also continue working towards your goals.

Okay, so the thing I wanna share today to help you get closer to your goals is one of my favorite concepts, and that is who before how.

Last week I used the example of going to the gym. So this week I'll use a professional goal. So let's say that right now I'm a vice president and my CEO announced that she'll be retiring at the end of the year, and I would like to step into her role. That's my goal, to be ready for that next step and to show everybody that I'm ready and my ultimate goal is to get hired into that role. And so in this year ahead, I've decided that that's what I'm gonna be really focusing on. So a lot of times what happens when we set a goal is that our brain will ask the default question of, How do I do that? How do I become a CEO? And a lot of times when we ask that question, we become overwhelmed because when we set big goals, we are doing things that we've never done before. Maybe we've never even seen it done before. And so when we start with how our brain will inevitably tell us that we don't know. I don't know. I don't know how to do that. And sometimes we will believe that thought so deeply that it'll stop us from going for it. We'll convince ourselves that we're right, we don't know, and we don't have time to figure it out. I don't know how to get there, so I'm just not gonna do it. And we let it be a reason that we don't pursue our goals.

And so what I wanna suggest today is that we ask ourselves a different question. Instead of asking, how do I do it? How do I get there? We can ask ourselves, who do I need to be in order to get there? And I think that when we ask ourselves that question first, it's just a way more fun question to answer. So in this example, who would I be if I were the CEO of this company? And like what a fun thing to explore. Who would I be? Maybe who I'm being as a CEO is a woman who is okay asking for help. Asking for help from my team, from my personal network or my household employees because I know that I'm going need that if I'm trying to run a company. Maybe the CEO version of me is a person who makes decisions quickly without overthinking. I'm going to be a decisive CEO. Maybe if I want to be a CEO, then one thing I know is that I need to spend less time scrolling social media or spend less time engaging in drama from my coworkers.

And so we ask ourselves that question of who, and then we have the opportunity to start bringing in that next version of ourselves that we're gonna need to be in order to create the life that we wanna create. The future version of you is created today. So yes, we have a goal that's in the future, but the only control over the future that we have is in the decisions that we make today, right now. So it's about bringing that goal into our lives today and acting as if, instead of working toward the goal, really embodying that person that we wanna be and bringing that person into our lives right now and starting to create it right now today, so that whenever we make a decision, whenever we take an action, we are doing it as that next version of ourselves, and that's how we get closer and closer to becoming her.

So in my examples of who I wanna be as a CEO. If I know that that version of me is spending less time overthinking and is making more efficient decisions, then if today, if I have a decision to make, I can look at that and say, what if I brought in my CEO energy? What if I brought in that person that I want to be? How would I approach this decision differently? Maybe I recognize that I can't do everything on my own today. Then maybe I can say, who is the CEO version of me who is going to be okay asking for help? And knowing that that is important and that there's nothing wrong with it. So that is how we can start to bring in that new version of ourselves.

I always tell my daughter, one of the things that I love about motherhood is the fact that I get to meet so many different versions of her. I got to meet the little baby version and the toddler version and the preschool version, and now I'm getting to know the grade school version of her, and of course I always want to stay in each version forever. And also I am so excited to get to meet all of the future versions of her that will exist. And I think it's so cool to see because kids grow and change at such a rapid pace. And I also think it's really cool to get to meet all of the different versions of myself as well as look back at all the different Leanna’s that I have been and look forward to. All of the Leanna’s that I want to be in the future. And the one that I'm envisioning next for myself, I can start acting like her today. I can start embodying her. I can start acting as if.

Now two things that I want to note for my fellow recovering perfectionists. Number one, when I am saying to act as if and to focus on who you're being and who you wanna be, I just want to be really clear that you're not going to act from the future version of yourself 100% of the time completely perfectly. That should not be your expectation. You are not her yet, and you're trying new things. They're not your default yet. Even she's not going to do them perfectly because no human is perfect, but they'll become her default and she'll be doing them a lot more naturally than how it feels right now. But anytime you're starting something new or you're trying to act in a different way, or rewire your default patterns, of course it's not gonna be perfect. And so that's one thing.

And then the second thing is a lot of times when we imagine the future, what happens is that we imagine perfect circumstances. And I think this is a really important thing to notice if you're imagining that the future version of you is living in perfect circumstances, then you probably need to reimagine because yes, you can create different circumstances than what you have right now. And if you want to change your circumstances, go for it. You absolutely should do that. But also there are going to continue to be bad things happening in the world, and there are going to continue to be challenging life circumstances, even when you're that new version of yourself. Like in the VP to CEO example, when you take over as CEO, the company is not gonna suddenly become easy and perfect, and all of your competitors are just like, oh, we bow down to you and you can buy us at a low cost. No! But you can become someone who's strong enough to handle the obstacles and challenges. And to handle the next version of those. And so I think sometimes what we try and do is we imagine that we'll suddenly have perfect circumstances, but what I want to invite you to do instead is to imagine that you are the version of you who can handle any circumstance. You're capable of showing up to these tough circumstances in ways that you've never done before. And that is so much more powerful because you have control over that. You don't have control over all of the external circumstances. As much as we like to think that we do. But we do have control over who we're being and how we're handling those circumstances. That is where the real power lies. Notice that when we feel overwhelmed and out of control is when we are trying to control all the external stuff. And when that starts happening, we can ask ourselves, who do I want to be right now? How would future me show up to this challenge? And we can start to bring some of that energy into how you're handling the situation that's happening right now in front of you. And the more and more you do that, the closer and closer you'll get to that version of you.

So again, remember who before how. Who do you want the next version of yourself to be? And when you're making a decision today, tomorrow, next week, ask yourself, how would she approach this? And continue asking yourself that all the time. And slowly over time, you'll start to become her. You'll start to become this version of yourself that you want to be, this next evolution of you. Not that anything's wrong with the current one, but the one that you want to evolve into next. And as we step into that next version of ourselves and we get to meet her, we can do that with intentionality. We can do that on purpose.

And if you are really wanting to step into the next version of yourself, then I want to invite you to join me in the January Reset for high achieving women. We're going to be starting next week, and I cannot wait for you to meet this amazing group of women and come together so that we can all work together on becoming the next version of ourselves and on not letting the circumstances of the world and of our lives throw us off track from becoming her. So head over to coachleanna.com to get registered, and I hope to see you there.

All right, everyone, have a wonderful week. I'll see you next week. Bye-bye.

If you're loving what you're learning on this podcast, I’d love to invite you to check out The Executive Mom Reset. It’s my 6-month coaching program for ambitious, success-driven, career-focused women who are ready to stop surviving and start thriving. Together we’ll tackle the stress, guilt, and overwhelm that come with being a high-achieving executive mom. You’ll learn to set boundaries, prioritize what truly matters, and build the confidence to show up powerfully at work, at home, and for yourself. Head on over to coachleanna.com right now to schedule a free discovery call. We’ll spend an hour talking about where you are now, what you want to create, and how I can help you to get there, because every woman deserves to live the life of her dreams. Let’s create yours together.