264. What Makes Your Mental Load Heavier Than It Needs to Be (Part 2)

Sam - Clarity Coach (: 00:00

Welcome back to Beyond Awareness. This is part two of our What's on Your Plate series. I almost feel like that should have like a little jingle to it, the what's on your plate. But last week we went over your full point and how to find out what yours is specifically with what's what's your full point in terms of what's on your plate and how heavy it feels. This week we're talking about.

The things that get added to your plate without you knowing, which tip your full point over. And it makes you end your day wondering why you feel so depleted. We discussed that everything has weight, right? That was my initial breakthrough that inspired this series. And we talked about that everything we do, we get to choose that's on our plate. It's just that, you know, everything from

Do we want to brew our own coffee in the morning has weight, and picking up a Starbucks in the morning has weight. That has weight as well as like asking somebody to pick up our kids from school and doing it ourselves. And it's not that one weighs more than the other. Well, one might weigh more than the other, which is what we're talking about today. And not only does every little thing add weight to our plate, but also different seasons call for different activities.

And that might make our plate heavier. And maybe for you, that's just summertime. That's a literal season, right? And so for you, it might just be like driving your kids longer distances to sporting practices, or it might be like the end of a quarter in your business or the start of one. And you sit down with your team, or maybe it's just yourself and you really focus on planning out.

Q3 or Q4 or whatever it is. Right now for me, my quote unquote season is my son Griffin. He's getting ready to start kindergarten. And he is scared. And I am anxious too. So something new on my plate right now is not just prepping for kindergarten, but is actually utilizing a membership that I pay for called Good Inside. It's a parenting membership.

And it has all these courses that I have not used since Griffin was like two or three. And I was going through it for sleep courses. But now they have courses on back to school for deeply feeling kids, which is literally my son. And so I'm adding that to my plate. And that feels heavy for me. It doesn't feel like an obligation or something that I should.

try to make lighter. It just kind of feels like something that I want to do because I know that once I do it, it's going to feel lighter. It's going to make me feel more confident. All the things are going to be great. And once the day of drop-off, kindergarten drop-off comes, then it'll all feel better. And so that's just on my plate in this season. It does feel a little bit heavy. And so those are all examples of

Kind of like non-typical things that can make our plates heavier temporarily that are kind of necessary for the time being. Our kids have to go to those practices or games, right? Our businesses have to have a strategy and systems in place. I want my son to feel confident going into school. And I also don't want to have the anxiety sending him to school. So there are ways to make

Each of those things feel lighter, which is what next Tuesday's episode is going to be about. But there are two other things that make our plates heavier that are worth questioning because it's not seasonal things and it's not things that we might genuinely want to be doing. These two things make something that's already on our plates feel heavier than it actually is, or

They are the reason that something landed on our plate in the first place. Okay. So the first thing is comparison. Comparison is when we see someone else doing something, and we automatically think to ourselves that we should be doing that thing for one reason or another. And we'll get to that reason, that belief, at the end of this episode. But here's some examples of how.

Comparison might be showing up on your plate. The first example that is coming to me is strength training. And it might just be because it's coming up for me literally on my plate. But I am over 35. I'm 38 right now. And about a year ago, I heard that when you're over 35, you should be strength training. And I heard that the benefits are like, I think you can live longer.

But bone density as well, like women need that more than men over 35. I don't know. There's just good things, all all the all the things are good about strength training for women as soon as you hit 35. And so when I was 35 though, actually I think it was, yeah, 35, 36, 30, I don't know when it was. But I remember when I learned this information, I was on my little workout hiatus. I was not working out.

at all. So I felt like I kind of quote unquote lost two years of any sort of benefits of movement. And so when I dove back into exercising about three months ago, yay for me by the way, not just for exercising, but because I'm finally doing it because I want to move my body and I love my body, not because I am judging it and want to change it. But that's another story. So when I

dove back in, I started with strength training and I added it because I wanted those benefits, because everybody else and their mom is talking about strength training, at least from what I'm seeing and what I'm hearing. And so it was my choice, but I did it because I saw every other woman talking about it and doing it. Like when I scroll Instagram, I'm never seeing cardio exercises.

That women are doing. I'm always seeing strength workouts. And I do feel like I was comparing my body and goals to what other women had. Not in a negative sense of like, I want my body to look like theirs, but in the sense of like, I want a strong body. And that woman looks strong AF. Like, can we take a moment to just visualize Hillary Duff right now? I'm just, she's popping up on my feed.

Right now, she's going on tour for her tour. What is that? I don't even know the name of it, but she's got an album out. And she's doing she actually is the person that motivated me to get to start ladder workouts. Those are the workouts that I'm doing. She and my friend Lauren, shout out to Lauren, because I saw her doing ladder workouts. But these women, Lauren and Hilary Duff, are just strong. And I'm like, I want that. And that is a form of comparison.

There is nuance here as well, because for me, I'm working out right now three days a week, which I'm so proud of because again, my hiatus was zero days a week for a year and a half. And then before that, it was sprinkled in a couple days. But I do feel like I have a should as well, a should ghost, if you will, that I probably should add in cardio.

Cause there are benefits of that too, right? Of like getting your heart to pump really hard. I know there are benefits of that too. There is also a woman that I was talking to at the leaders table at our July dinner, and she was telling me that she added on strength training to the end of her existing workout routine, purely because she heard of the benefits recently and everyone else was doing it. That's what she said. Comparison, right?

So, yes, those examples are actually good that we are strength training. This is good for our bodies and we want to be doing it, but it also feels heavier because we're piling it on top of what we already have, like that existing workout plan. And we started it, especially the woman that I talked to at the leaders table. We she started it on top of what she's already doing. And it's because somebody else was doing it. Would she be doing it?

If we didn't get this new information, I'm not sure. Maybe, maybe not. Another moment, and this is a little bit different because it's not as quote unquote good. But I dropped my son off at school at summer camp a couple weeks ago. And we are supposed to bring a snack for them. And it's like a lunch, right? So I bring Griffin's lunchbox and I pack it with whatever.

snacks type snacks type food because he doesn't eat meals. But when I dropped Griffin off, I saw a mom bring a donut box. And it was a Wednesday, I think. And I thought in my head, first, my gosh, that is so sweet and brilliant. Like, is her son gonna have donuts for lunch? And then I was like, wait, maybe it's for the teachers?

But it looks like a really small box just for the teachers. And I was like, wait, is it for the whole class? And then I was like, wait, I should be the one on Friday to bring a whole box of like 50 donuts for the kids and/or just the teachers. Like, I want to be that mom. I want the teachers, which is true, to feel like I support them. I want to not be like the school.

The room mom or whatever. But I don't know, I want to do little things. I want to be sweet and like, yeah, throw a little shower them with things every now and then. But it purely was because I saw that mom do that and I thought, I want to be that type of mom for the teachers. It was a 100% comparison. Have I done it yet? As of a couple weeks ago? No. Do I think I will? Maybe, but it's a should in my brain.

It's like it's one of those things on my list. Like, I would love to do that. Is it a priority? No. If I do end up doing it, I will be so proud. Like it truly does bring a smile to my face to want to want to do that. But again, it's something extra now on my plate that does not need to be there. Do I think that the teachers would appreciate it? 100%. Do I think that they would expect it? Zero percent. Right? And so

How many things are you doing right now? Because it would be nice, but you don't need to. You're just doing it because you saw somebody else do something similar, even. And now you think, I should do that. One other quick example is I used to compare myself constantly in my business all the time, so often, on social media. When I would see someone else do a post, I would think, I need to copy that real.

or that trend or use that audio or whatever. And sometimes it would be because I would think that will be the thing to get me more views or another client. Or it could just be my post for the day. I would trick myself into thinking this is actually lightening my load because I didn't have a post idea for today. And now this popped up in my feed first thing in the morning when I logged into my phone. And this is this can be what I posted.

Instead of having the belief of, well, Sam, why don't you just not post today? That would be okay. Not posting doesn't mean that you won't lose a client. Not posting will mean that you can have more time for yourself. Not posting will mean that you can have more space and you can use that time however you want, versus spending that whole time now creating that real and comparing myself to

the other reels and also watching other people's reels, specifically how they did it, so that I can do it just as good or get a similar like text placement, all the things, right? And so that was heavy, obviously, because it came from comparing my business, comparing my creativity. And even in the donut example, it was create it was comparing my identity and the type of mom that I wanted to be to others.

And so before we move on to the number two thing, I want us to just imagine letting someone else's choice to just be theirs. Whether they bring in a donut box, whether they choose to post, whatever they choose to do for their workout today, let their choice be theirs without any recalculation of our own plate.

Of our own priorities for today. You get to live your own life, your own day, experience it how you want. And that's enough. That is more than enough for you and for everyone around you. So just breathe that in for a moment.

And the last thing to remember about comparison is that we can't see everything else or really anything else that's on someone else's plate. So they might be squeezing in the things that we see them do, but we don't know what else they're doing. We don't know what else they're not doing.

We also don't know what else they're dealing with or how they're handling it. We don't know the fact that they brought in that donut box, but they brought it in with guilt and shame and comparison. Or did they bring it in with pure joy and authenticity? We don't know. And we shouldn't spend any time trying to guess. We should just focus on ourselves and what we want and how we feel. So number two, the second thing that either

makes something that's already on your plate feel heavier than it is, or is the reason that something landed on your plate in the first place is shoulds. And I mentioned that word a little bit already when talking about comparisons, but a should is a little bit different because it's when I do something not because I want to, but because I think someone else will judge me if I don't or I would judge myself. I would feel some sort of shame

Or guilt if I don't do it. Some examples here. One of my past private clients, she was a CFO. And I say that because I want you to picture the level that she was in her company. She dreamt of leaving her office at 3 p.m. in the summers because it's summer. It was a slow season in her business. Winters were really busy. So in the summers, she just wanted to leave at three.

And we were even planning as well that when she were to become a mom, work days would end at three because then she could go home to her future kids. And I asked her what was stopping her from leaving at three now, especially since it was summertime. And she said that she would stay into at the office until 5 p.m. Because leaving at 3 p.m. would come off as lazy.

To all of her employees that would see her leaving, or it would come off as entitled, like, you guys have to stay here, but I'm leaving. See ya. Have a great weekend. Have a good night. Even though she's the boss, even though she logically knows that she has different you know, perks, and she put in the time to get there, she was being humble.

And wanted everyone to see her working just as hard. Whether it's conscious or unconscious, we often think: if I do or don't do this thing, like if I do leave at 3 p.m. or if I don't and I stay until 5 p.m. or whatever it is, we think someone will judge me for it. And I used to think this too, daily.

When it came to what I was wearing. So if you can't relate to the leaving the office example, I think you might be able to relate to this. I was wearing leggings daily out of comfort and just it made sense. Like I would always work out in the morning and then I just wouldn't change. I just didn't put that time in. But every day I judged myself thinking I should wear jeans more often. I should put in the time to get.

Dressed to change out of my workout clothes and literally put anything else on. And I would judge myself saying, like, why can't I? Why don't I leave myself enough time to do that? And then it was about two years ago, I started wearing jeans almost daily. But instead of forcing myself to because other women did or because I should or anything, I just started doing it genuinely. And I really remember I

Was waking up, and there were definitely days before this where I was like, fine, I guess I'll put on jeans today, but it just felt uncomfortable. But then two years ago, I would wake up and I wanted to. It was like this genuine desire to be the type of person who wore jeans, who got dressed for the day, who who had an actual outfit. And I remember I used to tell my mom, like, I just want to wear an outfit. And she was like, Well, Sam.

know, leggings and a tank top is an outfit technically, but it just felt different. And I did the mental and emotional work on why it felt so hard to change physically out of leggings, but also, you know, mentally to change of like the patterns. And there are still days now, today, where I wear leggings. In fact, right now as I'm recording this, I'm wearing like

legging shorts and a workout tank top and a hoodie. But it doesn't feel like, ugh, yuck, I'm gross. Like, why am I wearing this? I should be wearing something else. And it's because now I just check in on myself and I ask, what would I feel best in today? Most days that is jeans. And some days it's like, nope, I also feel fine in these shorts, in these leggings. And it stems from

Within, it's not stemming from a should. What I should do, no matter what anyone else is wearing, it's not stemming from that, from that judgment place. And lastly, I struggled with a should just the other day. I was exhausted by 4 p.m. Like I truly felt like I should go to bed by 4 p.m. But I didn't. It was but and I was thinking, okay, the next big thing that I need to do today is dinner time. And I did not want to lift a finger for dinner.

I didn't even want to like make spaghetti. That felt like too much to get a a a pan and to boil water. And at first I thought, I wanna order food out. I wanna just get chicken nuggets or what is it, chicken tenders from a pizza place. And I judged myself, thinking I should make a healthy meal. Like

I was used to when I grew up. I felt like we were always eating definitely always eating a homemade meal, but also it was normally healthy. And I might circle back to that a little bit later. But I debated like going through my pantry in my head. I was going through my pantry, like, what do I have? What could I make? And then I found out I was like, you know what? No, I do not want to make anything. I also don't even really like calling.

And then even getting delivery. For some reason, I didn't want to do delivery. So was like, I don't want to go and pick up anything. So what I ended up doing was making Griffin a mac and cheese cup. And then I air fried Griffin's chicken tenders for me. And it I was so proud. I was so happy with that choice. And I was like, this for some reason felt like something I shouldn't do. But I did it. And I was like, this is the best choice of the day.

And then Griffin didn't end up liking his mac and cheese, which is not surprising because normally he doesn't like it. And he saw me eating his chicken tenders and he asked for them. He wanted them. And I was like, sure, let me go make your food for you. but I felt so proud for making that choice and realizing that the should came from perceived shame.

That I released in the moment. And that's, you know, quote unquote, the work is being able to release it. And one way that I was able to release it is going back to the healthy meals that I grew up with. I was talking to my mom a couple of weeks ago and I was like, How did you do it? Like you had three kids. I just have one. And she said, When you were this little, as little as my son is, a lot of times it wasn't the healthy meals you remember.

Cause you were so little, it was like spaghetti and meatballs or goulash. It was like really easy things to put together. And it made me feel better because my son does not eat that stuff. And so it just takes me longer to think of meals for myself and to make him meals. And it's not super healthy meals. And those were again homemade, but still. So I was able to release any sort of shame, expect expectations, standards, like go through all that and be like, fuck it.

I'm eating my son's chicken tenders, and it was amazing. The thing about shoulds is that once you do that, what I just did, once you question it and say, like who says, right? Says who, half of them don't even hold up. And that's the thing that you need to release it. They're just rules that somebody else never even put on us. We just accepted. We put them on ourselves.

And we just need permission to break them. Lastly, there's a pattern underneath comparisons and shoulds to tie this all together. And once you see what that pattern is, you can't unsee it, which makes it easier to break it and to lighten your plate. Comparisons and shoulds work the same way. They convince us that something belongs on our plate.

That was never actually ours. And it's heavy because it's somebody else's that we assigned to us. If you think back to our examples, or hopefully you've been thinking of your own examples as I've been going through this, then all of those examples w stemmed from us looking to the side of like, what's she doing? Or how did she do it? And why we

Then decided to put that on our plate, or how we changed what was on our plate to look like somebody else's is usually because we think that we are not enough in some capacity. And at first glance, when I say that and I think about myself, I'm like, no, I'm enough. I know that I'm enough. I know that I'm worthy. I know that I'm deserving, all this stuff. But when I break it down, I'm like,

Yeah, I know that in theory. I think that that's why when I say enough, I know that in theory. But when I break it down to like, we should be a better mom. That's kind of what it was when I was thinking of like the donuts. Like I should be the mom, even not for the teachers. For my son, I want to be the mom to bring him donuts on Friday. I should be a better mom. I should be a more fun mom. We should be stronger for our age. Right. Going back to that strength training example.

We should be a good boss. We should set a good example for our employees. We have these standards for ourselves and expectations. And we just never stop to question them. So until we do, we feel less than and we keep searching for something to fill the gap. And often that thing is an action item that gets added to our plate.

Or again, if we already have something on our plate, we just tweak it so that it feels heavier, so that we're doing more, or that we're doing it in a way that's just like not efficient. It takes up more time, all because we think it's gonna make us look better. Stay tuned for Thursday's episode because if any of this resonated, you are nodding along or just being like, hell yes to Hillary Duff's body on Thursday.

We're going to strategically journal through one item that's feeling heavy for you and your subconscious belief as to why it's still on your plate. Like, okay, Sam, but why can I not just flick it off? Like some of the things that you've been able to flick off your plate or change. And then next week, part three, it's the final part, and we're diving into when the things that you actually love, you enjoy doing certain things, when they become heavy.

and how to recalibrate instead of just muscling through and burning out. Thank you for tuning in today. I hope you had some aha moments. If you did, feel free to send me a message on social media. You can find all the links for that in the show notes. And I'll see you in a couple days.