Latest / Motherhood Uncut / The Hidden Reason Motherhood Feels So Hard for High Achievers

Transcript

The Hidden Reason Motherhood Feels So Hard for High Achievers · Motherhood Uncut

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: You can run a meeting with 30 people watching.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: You can make a hard call under pressure, hit the deadline, hold the whole thing together, and then a two-year-old refuses to put on his shoes and you feel something in you come completely undone.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe the question that haunts you is some version of what is wrong with me?
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm capable everywhere else.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Why is this the thing that breaks me?
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what I've come to believe after years of doing this work and after living it myself as well, of course.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: You're reaching for one kind of intelligence in a moment that's asking for another.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: And almost no one has ever named the second one for you.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Stay with me because once you see it, you really can't unsee it.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: I have spent a long time sitting with high-achieving women in exactly this spot.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: The ones who look from the outside like they have it all handled.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: I was one of those women.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: When my first daughter was born, I looked completely fine on the outside.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: And inside, I was a spinning, overwhelmed mess.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I have watched the same thing happen again and again.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: The sharper and more driven a woman is, the harder this particular part of motherhood can hit her.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't a coincidence.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually the whole point.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Let me show you the two brains you're actually working with.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: I call the first kind of intelligence your achievement brain.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: This is your strategic intelligence and it organizes and plans and analyzes and solves and builds things.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: It gets things done and the world rewards it like crazy.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you're the woman who got the degree, climbed at work, ran the household like an operation, this is the brain that got you there.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's genuinely brilliant.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't want you to lose it, not a bit of it.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't the enemy here.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Your achievement brain looks at anything hard and asks one question.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: How do I fix this?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a second kind of intelligence, and most of us were never taught it with anywhere near the same respect.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: I call it your connection brain.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't organize or solve.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: It notices, it's it attunes, it waits.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: It can sit inside a hard feeling without rushing to fix it.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: It stays.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And your connection brain, your relational intelligence, asks a completely different question.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Not how do I fix this, but what is this moment asking of me?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: How do I stay?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the thing about small children.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the time they don't need your achievement brain.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: A tantrum isn't a math problem.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: A kid falling apart at bedtime isn't a system to debug.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Those moments are asking for the second brain, the one that can stay in it with them.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: So if these moments need the second brain, why do we keep grabbing for the first one?
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, once you see the reason, I think you'll be a lot gentler with yourself.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because the first brain kept you safe your whole life.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Effort got results.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Control made things okay.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: When you felt anxious, you did something about it.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the anxious feeling went down.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: That worked like over and over for decades.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: So when motherhood hands you a moment you can't fix, like a crying baby at 3 a.m.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: or a kid melting down in public, your system does the only thing it knows how to do.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: It tries harder, it plans more, it grips tighter.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: And underneath the gripping, there's almost always fear.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: The fear that you're not managing every moment.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so something bad will happen.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Or that one hard moment with your child means you're failing at the one thing you can't afford to fail at.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: That fear is exactly what keeps the achievement brain running when the moment is begging for the other brain.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what I've come to believe: the real work here is it isn't becoming a calmer person.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Calm is a byproduct, it takes care of itself once the rest is in place.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: The real work is learning to tell which brain the moment in front of you actually needs.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: My word for it is fluency, being able to move between the two on purpose.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the moment genuinely needs solving.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Your kid has a fever, for example, or then you make the appointment, right?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's your achievement brain, and thank goodness for it.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes the moment needs staying.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Your child is heartbroken over something that seems small and there's nothing to fix.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's only someone to be with.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Real grown-up wisdom is knowing what this moment requires.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's the whole thing.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Not a better technique.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: The ability to ask right in the middle of it, does this moment need me to do something or does it need me to stay?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: So how do you actually use this?
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you don't overhaul your personality.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: You start catching yourself in the moment and asking that one simple question.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: What does this moment require?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: That pause, that half second of noticing is the whole skill because the second you ask it, you're off autopilot.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: You now get to choose.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you're going to choose to solve, sometimes you'll choose to stay.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Both are right depending on the moment.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Picture the last hard moment with your kid, the meltdown or the standoff, the bedtime that totally came apart.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now imagine that right before you did anything, you asked yourself that question.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Does this need me to fix something or does it need me to stay?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: For a lot of moms, just asking it changes the entire moment.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: The grip loosens, and your child feels that before you say a single word.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can relate to this, there's one more piece I want you to have.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: I made a video on the number one reason successful women struggle in motherhood and what to do instead.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: So go watch that next one.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: You already have the first kind of intelligence in space.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: This is just you growing the second one.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: And just to be sure you know, this was never about choosing between your ambition and your child.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Your child didn't arrive here needing you to give up who you are.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: They needed you to arrive, the two of them together, moving between them on purpose.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's the whole person finally in the room.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'll see you in the next video.