Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #137| How to Manage Morning Anxiety, Balance Parenting and Work - Your Questions Answered (Part 2)
Transcript
- 0:00Kari: Michelle, what is a habit that you struggle to break, Like?
- 0:04Kari: Is there one thing that you've just been trying and trying and trying to stop doing that?
- 0:07Kari: You can't quit.
- 0:14Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
- 0:21Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former overwhelmed working woman and current life coach.
- 0:26Michelle Gauthier: On this show we unpack the stress and pressure that today's working woman experiences and in each episode you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease and relaxation to your life.
- 0:37Michelle Gauthier: Hey friend, thanks for joining today.
- 0:44Michelle Gauthier: I'm coming to you from St Louis where it is raining so hard I'm afraid you're going to be able to hear it in the background of this podcast.
- 0:50Michelle Gauthier: Hopefully not Today.
- 0:52Michelle Gauthier: I'm welcoming you back to our birthday celebration, part two for the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 0:58Michelle Gauthier: This is year two and if you caught episode 136, which would have been last Thursday you know we started something a little different Hearing straight from you the amazing listeners who tune in every week, sharing what resonates with you, what's helped, and then asking some really great questions.
- 1:15Michelle Gauthier: This is part two of that celebration, so I've got more listener questions to answer.
- 1:20Michelle Gauthier: Today we'll talk about everything from anxious thoughts when you wake up in the morning to my dream podcast guest Spoiler alert.
- 1:28Michelle Gauthier: I'm putting it out into the universe right now, and then a little dishing on the handsome man friend, because why not?
- 1:35Michelle Gauthier: So, whether this is your first episode or you've been here since day one, I'm so glad you're here.
- 1:40Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening.
- 1:41Michelle Gauthier: Let's keep the celebration going, because two years of growth and connection and learning how to do less and live more that is what we are here for.
- 1:50Michelle Gauthier: If you have not done a review, I would love if you would take a few minutes to do that.
- 1:55Michelle Gauthier: Our podcast here is in the top 2% of podcasts.
- 1:59Michelle Gauthier: There are 3.5 million podcasts and we are in the top 2%, and the reason why we got there is because you are listening and you are leaving reviews.
- 2:09Michelle Gauthier: Also, if you know somebody who would love this podcast, who isn't a listener, if you would pass it along, that would be amazing as well.
- 2:17Michelle Gauthier: I truly, genuinely appreciate that.
- 2:19Michelle Gauthier: Okay, let's dive in.
- 2:21Michelle Gauthier: I think the first question up is about the handsome man friend.
- 2:27Angie: Hey, Michelle, just wanted to wish a very happy birthday to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 2:33Angie: This is Angie from St.
- 2:41Angie: Louis, and my favorite concept that you teach is that our thoughts are just like something that we can step back from and kind of look at from afar.
- 2:46Angie: So it might be that they're floating clouds or whatever you want to imagine, and they are just floating by and we get to choose the ones that we want to keep.
- 2:56Angie: And that was so powerful for me.
- 2:58Angie: And I guess my question to you would be tell us more about Handsome Manfriend.
- 3:05Angie: You don't mention him very much on the podcast.
- 3:08Angie: What could we know about him?
- 3:10Michelle Gauthier: Hey, Angie, thanks for the question.
- 3:12Michelle Gauthier: I love this one.
- 3:13Michelle Gauthier: Okay, so I'll tell you about the Handsome Manfriend we met on Tinder, where all true love happens Just kidding, but I think sometimes it actually does.
- 3:21Michelle Gauthier: We're not the only ones.
- 3:22Michelle Gauthier: He's super tall, he's like 6'4".
- 3:25Michelle Gauthier: He's a big guy, but he immediately the first time I ever saw him, before I even talked to him, I immediately felt at ease.
- 3:31Michelle Gauthier: So he's like a big teddy bear.
- 3:34Michelle Gauthier: He's super sweet and kind.
- 3:35Michelle Gauthier: That's like the first words that I would say about him.
- 3:38Michelle Gauthier: He is a dad of three kids.
- 3:40Michelle Gauthier: He's also divorced.
- 3:42Michelle Gauthier: He is much better than I am about details and how long things will actually take, so we're a good match that way.
- 3:50Michelle Gauthier: For his career, he's a wealth manager and he has the exact personality of the person who you would want to manage your money for you, whereas I'm like the big idea girl like, hey, let's go on this great vacation.
- 4:02Michelle Gauthier: And then he's the one who knows what time we should actually arrive at the airport and he will pack like six different kinds of sunscreen and things that I would never think to do.
- 4:12Michelle Gauthier: He's just the best guy.
- 4:14Michelle Gauthier: I'm lucky to have him.
- 4:15Michelle Gauthier: We've been together five and a half years.
- 4:20Tasha: Hey, Michelle, it's Tasha from Maryland.
- 4:23Tasha: I just want to let you know that my favorite podcast that you've ever done is everything about people pleasing, because you taught me how to not people please.
- 4:34Tasha: And all your other podcasts are just real and relatable and they're all amazing and I love listening to all of them.
- 4:40Tasha: And I'm going to ask two questions because I'm a rule breaker.
- 4:42Tasha: You know that is what.
- 4:42Tasha: Are you coming to Maryland?
- 4:43Tasha: And I'm going to ask two questions because I'm a rule breaker.
- 4:44Tasha: You know, that is when are you coming to Maryland?
- 4:47Tasha: Because I would love to have dinner with you.
- 4:49Tasha: And two, it's about parenting.
- 4:52Tasha: How do you confront your son who you, who's a teenager who most likely skipped school, and you know about it, but he doesn't know?
- 5:05Tasha: You know about it.
- 5:06Michelle Gauthier: Hey, Tasha, I'm so glad that you've been able to stop or slow down your people-pleasing.
- 5:11Michelle Gauthier: That is awesome To answer your two questions.
- 5:14Michelle Gauthier: You're such a rebel.
- 5:15Michelle Gauthier: First of all, I don't have any plans to come to Maryland anytime soon, but one of my best friends lives in DC, so maybe I could swing that.
- 5:21Michelle Gauthier: Maybe I could make that happen.
- 5:23Michelle Gauthier: And your second question about your son.
- 5:25Michelle Gauthier: It sounds like what you're trying to decide is do you confront him or do you not confront him about this?
- 5:32Michelle Gauthier: And I suspect you found out in a way that you might not want to share with him.
- 5:35Michelle Gauthier: So my advice to you if I was doing a coaching session with you, I would ask you a bunch of questions, but not knowing any more than what I heard in your question, I would suggest to you that you check your gut on this.
- 5:46Michelle Gauthier: So ask yourself should I confront him or should I just let this one go?
- 5:52Michelle Gauthier: Is this a situation where you feel like he needs to be corrected and you really want to make sure that you know what he's up to?
- 6:00Michelle Gauthier: Or is this a situation where you just want to keep that under the radar and then just kind of have your antenna up for something else happening?
- 6:09Michelle Gauthier: Similar to this.
- 6:10Michelle Gauthier: I feel like, as moms, the answer is almost always there for us, like we have our intuition, but sometimes we tune it out or we listen to what other people say we could do.
- 6:19Michelle Gauthier: So I would turn it back to you and say what does your gut say?
- 6:23Michelle Gauthier: You know your kid best.
- 6:25Michelle Gauthier: You know probably what he needs.
- 6:27Michelle Gauthier: Does he need to be disciplined or called out for this, or is this a situation where you're just going to let it go?
- 6:33Michelle Gauthier: And also remember I have to tell myself this often with my own teenagers that the job of teenagers is to separate from their family and they start to make their own decisions, and making bad decisions and doing things that they're not supposed to do or against the rules is actually part of their development.
- 6:51Michelle Gauthier: You get to decide what you do about it, but don't forget that part.
- 6:58Simonetta: Hi everyone.
- 6:59Simonetta: I am Simonetta.
- 7:00Simonetta: I am from Italy, near Milan, and my favorite thing about the ideas that Michelle shares in her podcast is the B minus idea.
- 7:14Simonetta: So I always thought that we don't need to be perfect, also because we can't be perfect, and I liked it so much to find a way to express this idea with just two little letters, or one letter and one sign I don't know the English name for that.
- 7:32Simonetta: I also have a question for Michelle, which is among all the advices and the ideas that you give to your listeners, that you will give to your listeners, which one is the one that changed your own life, the best one that fits for you and that helped you change, improve your life?
- 7:54Simonetta: Thank you very much and happy birthday.
- 7:58Simonetta: Michelle's podcast.
- 7:59Michelle Gauthier: Hi Simonetta, thank you so much for your question.
- 8:02Michelle Gauthier: So the number one thing that has changed my life is the idea that we don't have to believe all of the thoughts that come into our head.
- 8:11Michelle Gauthier: When I was first transitioning to becoming a life coach, the thought would come into my head a lot that was like you're never going to make it as a life coach, you need to go back to a corporate job.
- 8:20Michelle Gauthier: How are you going to support your family?
- 8:22Michelle Gauthier: All those kinds of thoughts would come into my head like every day.
- 8:26Michelle Gauthier: So, for example, if a thought came into my head like you're never going to make it as a life coach and you need to go back to a corporate job, being able to evaluate that, and ask myself okay, my brain offered that thought because it's always trying to keep me safe and it perceives that it's safer for me to have a corporate job.
- 8:45Michelle Gauthier: But is that thought really true and do I need to believe that thought and does it help me to believe that thought?
- 8:51Michelle Gauthier: So just the idea that the thoughts that pop into my head aren't necessarily true and that I can change them and work on changing them permanently over time is the most life-changing tool that I use, and I use it almost every day in the morning.
- 9:06Michelle Gauthier: I write down all of my thoughts.
- 9:08Michelle Gauthier: If there are any that aren't serving me, I either see if I can just let them go or if I can change them into a new and better thought.
- 9:15Michelle Gauthier: Thanks for your question and I love your feedback on the concept of B-minus work.
- 9:25Abby: Hello, I'm Abby Francis and I'm from St Louis Missouri.
- 9:28Abby: Congratulations, Michelle and O-W-W, for your second birthday.
- 9:35Abby: What a celebration.
- 9:37Abby: So my favorite thing about your podcast, Michelle, is that I can access your voice anytime, anywhere, so when I can't see you in person, I can hear you and I feel like you are talking to me.
- 9:53Abby: The other thing I love I know I was supposed to say one, but there's two I love that your podcasts don't overwhelm me by their length.
- 10:02Abby: I love that you keep it short, concise and simple, and I don't have to listen for an hour and a half to hear your message.
- 10:12Abby: So thank you for keeping your episodes to an appropriate, non-overwhelming length.
- 10:20Abby: And my question for you is who is your dream podcast guest and what are you doing to get that guest on your show?
- 10:33Michelle Gauthier: Hey, Abby, I love this question and I was cracking up because I would immediately say Mel Robbins would be my dream guest.
- 10:40Michelle Gauthier: What I admire the most about her is that she has such a simple way of teaching these cool concepts, like the let them theory and just how to be less anxious, and she says it so simply.
- 10:52Michelle Gauthier: I would love to meet her.
- 10:53Michelle Gauthier: I admire so much the concepts that she teaches and how vulnerable she is in saying that she still, to this day, struggles with things.
- 11:01Michelle Gauthier: It just makes her so relatable.
- 11:03Michelle Gauthier: The second part of your question what are you doing to get her on the show?
- 11:06Michelle Gauthier: I was like, oh dang nothing.
- 11:09Michelle Gauthier: I have pitched some big people to be guests on the show, but I haven't gone that big yet.
- 11:14Michelle Gauthier: So I'm going to commit to you right now, Abby, before this episode goes out, I'm going to reach out to Mel Robbins and ask her to be a guest on my podcast.
- 11:21Michelle Gauthier: What can it hurt, right?
- 11:34Atavia: Hey, Michelle, my name is Atavia and I live in Leeds in the UK and I absolutely love your podcast.
- 11:37Atavia: It's helped me in so many ways.
- 11:37Atavia: You wouldn't believe if I told you.
- 11:38Atavia: My favourite one so far, I think, has been the advice around how your mobile phone can hurt your productivity, and something I've started doing is purposely not looking on my phone for the first half hour of the day, which has really helped to not make me feel as overwhelmed in the morning.
- 11:53Atavia: But something I'm struggling with that I'd love your advice on is as someone who gets a lot of anxiety and a lot of intrusive anxious thoughts in the morning when I first wake up.
- 12:01Atavia: I feel like sometimes that can still happen even if I'm not going on my phone, although going on my phone definitely made it worse.
- 12:07Atavia: So I would love any advice or tips around what to do when you are just a very highly anxious person and you get quite a lot of intrusive anxious thoughts which can really derail your day and make you feel very overwhelmed, because then I feel like I don't really know where to start or what to do.
- 12:22Atavia: So yeah, I would love any advice you could give me on that and I also want to say happy two year anniversary to the podcast.
- 12:29Atavia: Thank you for everything that you do and all the amazing advice you give us.
- 12:32Atavia: And, yeah, happy birthday to the podcast.
- 12:35Michelle Gauthier: Hey Atavia, thank you so much for your feedback and for the question.
- 12:39Michelle Gauthier: What I would say to your question about waking up with anxious thoughts is, first of all, you are not alone.
- 12:45Michelle Gauthier: You probably already know that, but this is something that I hear all the time and something that I experienced myself.
- 12:51Michelle Gauthier: I don't know what it is about our brains.
- 12:52Michelle Gauthier: They just waiting until we open our eyes to throw out all of those anxious thoughts in the morning.
- 12:58Michelle Gauthier: Great job on noticing that your phone causes anxiety and not using that right away in the morning.
- 13:03Michelle Gauthier: But if you're still feeling those anxious thoughts, a couple of things that I would recommend.
- 13:07Michelle Gauthier: The first thing I would do is give your brain a name.
- 13:11Michelle Gauthier: Maybe it's like Jessica.
- 13:14Michelle Gauthier: So let's say we name your brain Jessica and then observe what's happening from the outside.
- 13:19Michelle Gauthier: Like Jessica is really talking loudly.
- 13:23Michelle Gauthier: Today, she has a lot of anxious thoughts that she wants to share with me.
- 13:27Michelle Gauthier: Today, jessica is telling me that, whatever the thing is, whatever anxious thought that you're having in your mind that day, when you talk about it in this way, it just makes you once removed from the thoughts themselves and it makes you be able to talk about your brain as a separate entity from yourself, and I think giving your brain a name is a quick and easy way to do that to remind yourself that the thoughts that your brain offers are separate from you as a person.
- 13:55Michelle Gauthier: And then, normally, the way that I think about anxious thoughts, especially the ones that come in the morning the best thing to do with them is to try to acknowledge them and deal with them right away.
- 14:07Michelle Gauthier: So step one would be boy Jessica is really offering a lot of anxious thoughts today.
- 14:12Michelle Gauthier: Let's take a look and see what they are.
- 14:14Michelle Gauthier: I would recommend that you just get out a piece of paper or type a note in your phone oh wait, you don't have your phone in the morning Get out a piece of paper and write down all of those anxious thoughts.
- 14:24Michelle Gauthier: A hundred percent of the time, in my experience and the experience of my clients, that makes the anxiety feel less.
- 14:30Michelle Gauthier: So it doesn't.
- 14:31Michelle Gauthier: You don't write them down and they're just gone, but writing them down and just seeing them on a piece of paper sometimes I can honestly even laugh at the ones that I have, which helps me.
- 14:40Michelle Gauthier: Let them go, sometimes they feel more real but writing them down and just taking a look at them and deciding if there are any that you can just let go of or anywhere you need to change them to a different thought.
- 14:53Michelle Gauthier: Or sometimes those negative thoughts or anxious thoughts, just hang on and just knowing it's there and telling yourself, like I'm having this anxious thought today, for example, sometimes I'll get really worried about my kids, especially when I'm not with them, in situations where I don't need to worry about them.
- 15:11Michelle Gauthier: But I have kind of a recurring thought that comes up of what if something happens when I'm out of town, etc.
- 15:16Michelle Gauthier: And so when I'm on a trip I will say, ok, that's the thought that comes with me when I go on a trip and I can see it there, but I don't have to react to it.
- 15:25Michelle Gauthier: So it's either one see if you can just say I don't need to think that thought anymore, that one can just go away.
- 15:31Michelle Gauthier: Two, I can change that thought to something different, like I could try saying my kids are safe, I don't have to worry about anything right now.
- 15:39Michelle Gauthier: Or three, just know the thought's going to be there, but don't make it too meaningful.
- 15:43Michelle Gauthier: Send me a message and let me know if that helps you.
- 15:45Michelle Gauthier: If it doesn't, I can do a longer episode on this question, because it's a great one and it's something that I hear a lot from my clients.
- 15:52Michelle Gauthier: Thanks so much for your question.
- 15:57Jen: Hi, my name is Jen and I'm based in Brooklyn, new York.
- 16:06Jen: I love Michelle's podcast so much.
- 16:07Jen: The tips and tricks that she's shared over the years have really helped me move further away from overwhelm during my day to day and into a state of balance.
- 16:12Jen: One thing that always resonated with me was how she convinced me that multitasking was actually hindering my efficiency, not to mention my sanity, and how to embrace single tasking.
- 16:25Jen: So thank you so much for that, Michelle.
- 16:27Jen: One question I have for you as I enter into motherhood I'm expecting any day now is how to embrace parenthood and working in a not overwhelming way.
- 16:38Jen: So anyway, thank you so much, excited for more episodes to come.
- 16:44Michelle Gauthier: Hey Jen, thanks for your question and congratulations in advance on becoming a mom.
- 16:48Michelle Gauthier: That is so exciting To answer your question about how to embrace motherhood in a non-overwhelming way.
- 16:55Michelle Gauthier: I just have a couple things that I would suggest for that.
- 16:57Michelle Gauthier: Number one is to know and accept and have the expectation that at first it will be overwhelming.
- 17:04Michelle Gauthier: Just, I mean, I remember thinking who gave me this child?
- 17:08Michelle Gauthier: I have no idea what I'm doing.
- 17:10Michelle Gauthier: Do they know that?
- 17:11Michelle Gauthier: Do they realize that?
- 17:12Michelle Gauthier: And I sort of thought that it was because my kids were adopted.
- 17:16Michelle Gauthier: And then I realized from talking to my other mom friends, nobody knows what they're doing at first.
- 17:21Michelle Gauthier: And you know, people act like there's this magical mothery thing that just happens upon you.
- 17:27Michelle Gauthier: But it does happen upon you.
- 17:29Michelle Gauthier: But it happens upon you because you spend a ton of time with your child.
- 17:32Michelle Gauthier: You start to understand like, oh, that means they're tired, or that means they need a new diaper, or yeah, he really likes to look out the window or whatever it is.
- 17:40Michelle Gauthier: So it is a little overwhelming at first, maybe sometimes a lot overwhelming without being able to get good sleep.
- 17:45Michelle Gauthier: But just remember that that is true of most brand new things and this is one of the bigger, brand new things in life.
- 17:53Michelle Gauthier: Totally worth it, but I would expect that at first it will feel overwhelming for sure.
- 17:59Michelle Gauthier: And then the second thing is the idea of work life balance I think is kind of a myth.
- 18:03Michelle Gauthier: I don't think that there's like this state that you reach where you have balance between, like, your motherhood and your work.
- 18:11Michelle Gauthier: I think it's more of a day to day or a week to week strategy, and some days you feel like I nailed it, and some days you feel like, oh my gosh, I didn't get any work done, like, let's just say, your child is sick or you know, something comes up with your child, you don't get any work done, or you're on a deadline and you feel like you didn't see your child enough, and there will be days like that.
- 18:31Michelle Gauthier: So the advice that I would give you is just doing your best to plan ahead where you can and have specific boundaries and work hours and all of those things, and then just know that sometimes that's all going to go sideways and that's OK too.
- 18:45Michelle Gauthier: You are going to be such a great mom.
- 18:52Cori: This is Kori and I'm from St Louis.
- 18:53Cori: I've been listening to the Overwhelmed Working Women podcast since the beginning.
- 18:57Cori: I love Michelle's sincere, relatable voice and I find the topics varied and interesting.
- 19:03Cori: Sometimes the episodes make me laugh out loud, Sometimes they move me to tears and very often they move me to take action.
- 19:11Cori: One of my favorite episodes that stands out is the one with Laura Sawyer, I think the stylist.
- 19:18Cori: I was so encouraged by that episode that I emptied my entire closet and the only things that went back in were items I loved and items that fit, and I could not believe how much decluttering my closet actually decluttered my brain.
- 19:33Cori: One question I have for you, Michelle, is where are you traveling next?
- 19:36Cori: What country do you want to visit most?
- 19:39Michelle Gauthier: Hey, Corey, thanks for your question and I love that the episode with Laura Sawyer was so impactful.
- 19:45Michelle Gauthier: I agree it's amazing what a difference it can make in your life.
- 19:49Michelle Gauthier: Your question is about which country I want to travel to next.
- 19:53Michelle Gauthier: I just got home from Costa Rica, so if I would have answered this last week, I would have said Costa Rica, but my real answer is Japan.
- 20:00Michelle Gauthier: I am planning to take both of my kids to Japan next summer not this summer, but next summer after my son graduates high school.
- 20:08Michelle Gauthier: My son is really into Japanese cars and there's like a whole car culture there that I didn't even know existed, but now I know quite a bit about.
- 20:16Michelle Gauthier: And it's funny.
- 20:17Michelle Gauthier: Ever since I've been thinking about this trip and starting to plan for it in a very light way, it feels like my entire Instagram feed is going to Japan and I know so many people who have gone on vacation to Japan and it's just fun.
- 20:30Michelle Gauthier: So if anybody has tips on traveling to Japan, let me know.
- 20:37Kari: Hi, my name is Kari Kaiser.
- 20:39Kari: I'm from Billings, Montana, and the thing I most appreciate about Michelle's podcast is just how efficient she is with her listeners' time.
- 20:50Kari: I feel like they get right in there and talk about things that are relevant and informative and useful to those of us listening.
- 20:56Kari: So I really appreciate that.
- 20:57Kari: And my question is, Michelle what is a habit that you struggle to break?
- 21:03Kari: Like?
- 21:04Kari: What is there one thing that you've just been trying and trying and trying to stop doing that you can't quit?
- 21:10Michelle Gauthier: Hey, Kari, I appreciate the comment that I am very efficient with my listeners' time.
- 21:14Michelle Gauthier: I'm always thinking about the overwhelmed working woman who I'm talking to and trying to make it as impactful and powerful and as short as possible.
- 21:22Michelle Gauthier: Okay, your question is what's something that I've tried to stop doing and I just can't?
- 21:28Michelle Gauthier: The answer immediately popped into my head and it is flavored coffee creamer.
- 21:34Michelle Gauthier: I know you might be thinking, oh, that's not so bad, but the stuff I drink, which is like French vanilla flavored, it's very concerning.
- 21:43Michelle Gauthier: I think it's just all plastic in there, but it just tastes so good.
- 21:46Michelle Gauthier: And I have tried, like making vanilla creamer at home.
- 21:50Michelle Gauthier: I've tried all the organic, like the superfood ones or whatever, and it just doesn't do it for me.
- 21:56Michelle Gauthier: And I'm such a healthy eater and I could go from morning to night and really feel like, oh, I ate everything good except for that damn creamer.
- 22:03Michelle Gauthier: I just can't quit it.
- 22:05Michelle Gauthier: So that's my answer.
- 22:06Michelle Gauthier: Okay, friend, that's a wrap for today.
- 22:09Michelle Gauthier: Thanks for listening.
- 22:10Michelle Gauthier: Not only did you learn what to do with your morning anxiety, how to have more balance as a mom, but you also learn that I'm addicted to flavored coffee creamer and that I met the handsome man friend on Tinder.
- 22:22Michelle Gauthier: What more can you ask for?
- 22:23Michelle Gauthier: Have a great week.
- 22:25Michelle Gauthier: I'll see you Thursday.
- 22:26Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 22:34Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegauthier.
- 22:38Michelle Gauthier: com.
- 22:40Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.