Latest / That Mom / Why Smart, Capable Women Can't Stick to Their Goals (Pt. 1)
Transcript
- Maria Woods: To That Mom, the podcast where we explore finding more joy and more meaning in the beautiful chaos of motherhood. I'm your host Maria, and I'm so glad you're here. Welcome back. If you've ever wondered how do you become the person you really want to be, this conversation is for you. Today I'm talking with behavioral scientist Dr. Risa Weisberg. Dr. Weisberg has spent decades studying how people actually change their behavior. She's a psychologist, a formal digital health executive, and a professor at Boston University. Welcome, Dr. Risa Weisberg, to that mom. Dr. Risa Weisberg, welcome to the show. Thank you, Maria. I'm really happy to be here. Yes, on this very hot day. Hot and sticky. So you have a really interesting background. ⁓ Would you tell me how you got interested in human behavior and how that interest started in you? ⁓ wow. I haven't thought about that since I wrote my applications to graduate school 100 years ago. ⁓ Yeah, I I just honestly could never think of anything more interesting my whole life, even as a child, than why we do the things that we do. And I think I was always sort of fascinated by decision making and the things I saw my friends getting into or not getting into the way my family interacted with each other and really just understanding better what motivated us to act the way that we act. And so it's Really been a passion my whole life and hard for me to have imagined going into anything else. That's fascinating. ⁓ and so you're a psychologist, you are into ⁓ health tech, as well as you coach and do therapy one-on-one, ⁓ and a speaker. So this huge behavioral scientist career, and we're lucky enough to talk to you today to understand why we do some of the things we do as moms. Sounds Thank you. So what do you think it is when you have a highly intelligent mom or woman and we're trying to optimize our life? We're trying to do the things that we know are best for us, ⁓ but we can't quite get there, whether it's making habits stick or making bad decisions. I'm curious, why does that happen? Yeah, I I mean, I think there's multiple reasons that we all feel like we know what we want or know what's best for us and Then can't really enact it day to day. And one of those things is really about clarity on your goal. And clarifying, is this something you actually really want, or something that society, your peers, or social media is telling you that you want. Right? So do you actually want your house to look like it's out of architectural digest? Or do you actually want your house to be a messy fun place that your kids can run and color and not worry about things? Right? We all sort of have this idea that it's supposed to look a certain way and be a certain thing. But I think sometimes we don't get there because we haven't really examined whether or not that's our goal and it's something that's actually of high value to us, or just something we think we're supposed to want. So I think clarity on what our values are and what our goals actually are. Is the first place to look. I like that because it feels kind of freeing to say, especially in this house example, but I'm sure there's many others where you're like, you know what? I'm not getting there, but I don't need to beat myself up because it's not actually something that I value. Exactly. And you know, as my kids were going through school, I think that was a really important lesson for them. I have a I have two daughters and both of them are sort of overachievers themselves, but one of them very much from an early age was like always hard on herself about. everything and needed to be perfect. And it was this lesson for her because in school I think teachers early on are like, try your hardest, do your best. And when you're an overachieving person, I'll say woman, because I think we tend to do this more than ourselves, sometimes you don't need to hear the message like try your hardest, do your best. Yeah. Because you're already doing that. And so the message for her was what do you actually care about? And devote your energy there. Try your hardest and do your best there. And on the other things, it's okay to do just fine. It doesn't have to be you don't have to give your best to everything because we don't have the energy to give our best to everything. See, I'm working on that now in in my forties. which I think is so important and and it is really freeing to say you don't have to do everything to the best of your ability. You can choose. Yeah, and I think sometimes we ha we make that choice, like we kind of vote with our feet, but we don't realize that we've made that choice because it doesn't feel intentional. It feels like a failure. Right? It feels like, well, my house isn't perfect because I'm somehow failing to do what I'm supposed to be doing. When maybe it isn't doesn't look like it's out of a magazine because you actually don't really care about that. And to be able to acknowledge that and say, This is not important to me suddenly frees you of like all the mental straining of that, all the like l cognitive load of trying to make it perfect and all the guilt that comes with like feeling like you failed at it. So I think that like Clarity on what you actually value is the first step. Super important. That's great. I love it. Then I think the next piece is really understanding like your why, right? I know we talked a little bit offline about motivation and how sometimes motivation isn't enough. And I think that tends to be when we're thinking about motivation as like willpower, right? It's like, you know, I'm gonna get up and go and just do this. But I think of motivation more like actually what are your motives, right? Like the really base root of that. Like what's your why? Why do you want this? So, you know, most of us probably have goals of like getting more exercise and eating healthy. But understanding why I think is really important. Because there's lots of reasons why you might think you want to get more exercise. First of all, Possible that you actually don't and you just think you're supposed to, it's not a value to you, and you can cross off your list. But for most people, there's probably some reasons that they do care about, but they're gonna vary for different people, right? So one person might want to exercise more because they have a health problem that their medical team has told them would be improved by getting more exercise. Someone else maybe wants, you know, is actually motivated by the idea of being able to run after their kids and one day their grandkids and they're looking at increasing their health span. Someone else might just be, I wanna pick up my kid at daycare in the summer wearing a tank top and have the other moms go, Wow, you look cut, right? And like those are all absolutely okay motivations, but they're different. And so understanding your own why I think is really important because it's gonna be hard to wake up in the morning When you also have motivations to stay in bed or spend more time, you know, reading to your child or whatever it might be in the morning, to be like, okay, I'm gonna actually go to the gym, if your why is really vague, right? So understanding what it is that you want to get to is really important. Yeah. I think for me when it comes to exercise in particular, since this is our example, of course I wanna look good and feel good. I think that's you know, it's always kind of been a a bonus. But I think as I've gotten older, I think about the longevity piece. And I have this vision of being like 80 with my husband and we're in good health and we could pick up kids that might be our grandkids or what you know, go play sports with them or whatever it is. So that for me is a totally different motivation where like, yes, I would like to look good this summer. But it's really I'm kind of like, well, do I look okay now? it's not a strong enough motivator for me to do the health things that to work out to eat well. But I think that longevity piece doesn't mean I eat perfectly, but always having that in my mind and knowing that that's one of my missions to be this strong eighty year old woman, that helps me to make those decisions more consistently over longer periods of time, I think. Yeah, I love that example, right? Because it's something that you're gonna have to sustain for a long time now, right? And it's a really clear piece of a goal that you really value and care about and it's harder to talk yourself out of it, right? It's probably very easy for someone like you to look in the mirror and go, I look good. I don't need to exercise today, right? But that if the motivation isn't necessarily looking good tomorrow, it's feeling good when you're eighty, right? That motivation kinda keeps you going in a different way. Yeah. So I think it's you know Clarity around your values, clarity around what motivates you for real. Like why? What is your big why? Why are you doing this? And then specificity on what it is you want to do, which in part comes from that clarity of your motives, right? So the what you might be doing to exercise now might look really different. If your goal was, you know, to look as fit as possible by August, then if your goal is To have a really healthy body in your 80s. Yeah. It's gonna dictate a different kind of exercise routine, it's gonna dictate a different plan. And then we need to get specific because we don't do well without specific plans. It's kind of like saying, you know, my goal today is to buy food, but you haven't decided like what you're cooking this week, you haven't made a shopping list, you don't even know which supermarkets are where and where you're going, right? It's gonna be very hard to knack that. But yeah, you have a list, you know where you're going to get your groceries, your car's filled with gas to get there. Like you've got all these specific plans. You can check that off your list and get it done. And so saying, I want to exercise more usually doesn't get us to do things as well as saying, you know, this week I'm gonna go for a 20-minute walk four times. Right? And like maybe even blocking out, I'm gonna do that walk at Seven AM after I've dropped my kids off at daycare, but before it gets to be ninety degrees, right? So like where you've really made it super specific, that also really helps us. Clarity, motivation, specificity. And then I think the other big issue is this piece ⁓ that we know from psychological science called delay discounting. Yeah, you probably have heard of like the like Stanford Marshmallow study years ago. And we also got when we have little kids, right? Yeah. It's so hard for us to value something that where the payoff is gonna be tomorrow when we have to kind of restrain ourselves or suffer a little bit today, right? we tend to think, a lot of us anyway, especially when we're kids, but even as we're older, of our future self as sort of A different person than who we are now. And research shows that the more you can connect with your future self and the more that you see that as you and there's continuity and it's your same person, the more you can do to take care of your future self. Wow. And so especially a goal like yours, like being a fit eight-year-old, enacting that means that you today is taking care of eight-year-old Maria. And the only reason that you're gonna sacrifice Maria today for eight-year-old Maria is if AD old Maria is someone you really care about because she's you, right? If you see her as a stranger, or it's hard to even imagine being her, why would you like make life hard for yourself today for this distant thing or person, right? Yeah. And so kind of understanding and feeling more connected to that future version of ourself ⁓ can help us do things today. That are a little bit less pleasant in, you know, the surface of who we're gonna be tomorrow and who we wanna be tomorrow. Yeah, that's so fascinating because I was going to ask you, you know, how do we become the person we wanna be? Which seems very tied into this because I think as moms, we think about who do we wanna be for ourselves? ⁓ we start to evaluate things and then who do we wanna be as an example for our children? I will say in this example of me thinking of myself as 80, at first when I did it, I was like, This is weird because I don't really want to think of myself as eighty. But also, if I am going to be eighty, do I wanna make it to eighty? Yes, I do. And what kind of person do I wanna be? So, like having that visualiz visualization is strange, but it also allows you to be a little excited about the future because you know, and things change over time, like it used to be when you were 40 or 60, you were old. Now that's not really considered the case. You can still be really vibrant and young looking and attractive. So I think it gives you that space to create the version of yourself in the future that you actually it would be fun to be this person at 80 or 100 or whatever it is. Exactly. And I think it's really kind of a great thing to start not only thinking about for yourself, but also for modeling for your kids as they grow up. Because we know that like that ability to delay gratification and also that ability to kind of see yourself as who you'll be later grows over time and we're much worse at it when we're really little and we only kind of develop it over time. ⁓ but there's so many things that we see our kids do that have to that are all about living in the moment, right? And that's a beautiful lesson we can learn from them. It's this balance, right? We don't wanna kinda always live for tomorrow, right? We wanna be present and be here and little kids in particular are so present and so in the moment. But there's this piece of like some of the things we try to instill in them as moms. You know, like you need to go to bed now or tomorrow you're gonna feel really cranky all day long, right? or as they get older, you know you have a huge project due in two weeks, you're gonna wanna start working on it now or you're gonna feel so stressed out two weeks from now when it's due tomorrow. Right. Right. So how do you start to model this idea of like taking care of future Maria, taking care of you know your kids future selves as you balance out also kind of living in the moment and taking care of who you are today. Yeah. And What do you think for a mom who wants to kind of optimize her life for that example and also for herself to go after these big goals? ⁓ is there anything in particular for people who are kind of pressed for time or who feel stretched at the limits? ⁓ is there anything unique to thinking about achieving goals or setting up the life that you want in that kind of situation? Well, I think a couple of things. First of all, there is the reality, right? But if you are, you know, a lot of your audience are working moms with young children and there is only so much time in the day, right? And so I think the need for really thinking about what is most important to you in this moment, what you care most about, whether your values right now and how you want to show up now sometimes overrides a little bit of like who I want to be 30 years from now. ⁓ because you're in this very specific window of time. but that window of time is what sets you up to be who you are later still, right? So we still kind of want to be moving forward on on things. I think really being able to hone in on what's important to you. So again some of that values clarification and then letting some of the rest of it go. So I sometimes talk with people I'm either patients or Executives and I'm coaching about disappointment. Most high-achieving women became high-achieving women in part because we are people pleasers. We are used to living up to people's high expectations of us. We've gotten a lot of positive feedback, attention, reward, gratification for like always being there for, you know, living up to those expectations, doing the things other people want. and live to not disappoint or let anyone down. But when your time is really pressed, it's going to be impossible to never disappoint someone. And so leaning into that disappointment a little bit and becoming okay with it is an exercise that can feel so uncomfortable, but I think is really necessary for people in this like busy working mom hood point of life. ⁓ if you allow me, you gave an example just earlier today where you said like you went to part of your son's kindergarten parade. Yes. But you missed the end because you were recording. And so, you know, there's a chance that you were slightly disappointed to miss the end. There's also a chance that your son was disappointed to see you miss the end. I think too other people might judge you. I think that comes up for me ⁓ personally. I wish I think to some degree I don't care what people think, but to some degree I do. And I wish I, in some ways, didn't care at all, but I do. So, you know, that's something I think personally that I'm working with. Like, if this is what I want to do for myself, I'm okay with it. But I hope people don't judge me too harshly. Yeah, and I think that becomes part of like being willing to disappoint some people. Yeah. And so I used to literally wake up in the morning and ask myself, Who am I gonna disappoint today? And not like in a fearful way, but like, okay, someone's gonna get disappointed today. You know, it's when I was a full-time professor, like it might be one of my students or trainees who's hoping I'm gonna review their work today, I'm just not gonna get to it. It might be one of my kids who's hoping I'm gonna show up to something today. You know, the to the 15th recorder concert of of the semester. And I'm like, actually, today I'm gonna skip it because I'm gonna be, you know, teaching a class or speaking with some students. it might, you know, it might be a spouse. It might make there there's someone I'm gonna disappoint today because I have to, because there's no way I can possibly make everybody else happy, but with this goal of really trying as hard as possible to make sure that. person I disappointed most often wasn't myself. Because I think we tend to like we're so busy taking care of everyone else, pleasing everyone else that we don't meet our own goals, we don't meet our own values, right? We're and then we just feel burnt out and stretched and kind of resentful, right? That everyone else is kind of everyone needs stuff from me all the time and they're making me do things. And so that actually like it's my choice, right? So how do I how do I not disappoint myself? How do I know what I value? And really make those choices. Sometimes what I value is gonna be being there for that recorder concert. Right. Sometimes what I value is missing that recorder concert. I'm like, that's okay because I'm doing I'm intentional about it. Yeah. And what you said about if you're doing some things for you, whether that's focusing on your work or making the moments that matter at home or doing something entrepreneurial or doing something for your health. That allows you to feel less burnt out and more okay with how everything's going because you are giving back into yourself. Exactly. And if it feels like a choice, right? If you know the school sends home this time of year, you know, a thousand end-of-school, end-of-year activities, right? I remember that feeling such a burden. I kind of getting a little like angry. Can't believe school thinks that like all parents can show up at, you know, noon on a Tuesday and this is ridiculous. But once it starts to feel like a choice, right? Like I am intentionally choosing to go to this and to miss this, it takes away some of that feeling of like everyone's putting pressure on me. Yeah. ⁓ and starts to feel like, okay, I get to pick what I want to do, right? And that just that that mindset shift just feels really different. Yeah, it's a more empowering mindset that you're in control of what you choose to do and to not do. Exactly. And we don't all always have, you know, I I'm well aware we don't all always have that power, right? There's gonna be some of us and certainly some situations where you are gonna feel like all I wanna do is be at that twelve o'clock concert and I absolutely can't, my employer won't let me out and not in an empowered role at work. Like I have to I I am being forced to miss things that I wanna be part of, and that's a different situation. But when you're in a situation that a lot of higher achieving moms are, where you you get some of that latitude and you get some of that choice. And so that's such a privilege to have it. So use it, right? And Risa, I think this is the perfect place to pause this conversation. For everyone listening, make sure and follow along for part two coming up on Wednesday, where we talk about the surprising role of anxiety. How we build identity and how to build the future self you want, as well as how do our kids experience us? What do your kids think, for example, if you're traveling for work? I have more with Dr. Risa Weisberg on the very next episode of That Mom. This is Maria, and you've been listening to That Mom. Thank you for being here. If this episode resonated, Share it with a mom who needs it too. And if you're ready for more, your next episode is waiting, because every conversation here is meant to empower you to live better.