WHO WILL YOU BE IN 2023?
Welcome to the Small Jar Podcast, where we moms of teens find the power to step off the emotional rollercoaster between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Episode number 31.
Hello, friends. Here we are. Another year has passed.
And if you're anything like me as a mom of older kids, and let's be honest, if you're a mom of kids at any age, there's this sense of relief that comes at the end of the holidays. Whatever plans you've had, whatever holiday you celebrate, whatever preparations you've had to make for your kids, whatever you've done to get ready for the holidays, most of it is behind you, except for maybe the mess. And you're in this really interesting lull of time between Christmas and Hanukkah, and then the start of the new year.
There are many people who work over the holidays, but many of us get to experience life that kind of slows down. There's no school. Most of us, we're able to take vacation days.
Many non-retail businesses shut down. We just don't have as many expectations for ourselves or others. So with this increased sense of time and space, we have the luxury of being able to contemplate the year ahead.
Almost any podcast you're listening to right now is most likely addressing this topic. And I want to address it from the perspective of a mom with kids leaving the nest. And there are a few reasons why I think that our perspective during this time of life is somewhat unique.
And so I thought I'd share my thoughts on this. Now, I wonder if at this point you even bother with new year's resolutions. In my conversations with clients, they tend to fall into three main categories in terms of their approach to new year's resolutions.
The first category is women who are focused on addressing a goal that has eluded them for a really long time. Maybe it's weight loss or cutting back on drinking, getting to the gym. Often these goals are health related.
The second category is women who no longer bother with new year's resolutions. There could be many reasons for this. And maybe for some of us, it's because life is so great.
No changes are needed. But more often I think it's because we often tend to associate new year's resolutions with health goals. And some of us think why bother? It's just not worth setting myself up for inevitable failure or pretending like this year will be any different.
Or in the words of one of my dear friends, I am not giving up my wine. I find that another reason women might forgo pursuing a new year's resolution is that they feel stuck in some kind of pain in their life. And so their main focus and hope for the new year is just to feel better, less anxious, less frustrated and stuck, less sad.
So many of my clients come to me from this place. And the difficult part is that it feels hard to free ourselves from these recurring negative emotions. They kind of overtake our lives and they don't leave much room for ambitious goals.
The third category of thought on resolutions is women who have a big dream. It's less of resolution than a major personal goal, maybe getting a job or getting a new job, writing a book, starting a nonprofit, finding new love. These goals tend to feel much bigger and much more complicated to pursue.
When it comes to health related resolutions, we often know the steps we might need to take. For example, if we want to lose weight, we intellectually know we need to eat fewer calories. In contrast, for these bigger goals, the how feels much more elusive, complicated, and maybe even overwhelming.
So whichever of these buckets you might fall into, let's dive into our unique perspective in terms of how we're approaching these goals. And I'll simplify it in this way. The goals are one, to get healthier, two, to feel better, and three, to pursue a big dream.
I want to offer that we as women in our 40s and 50s are up against some particular challenges. The first is that our life with our teen or young adult is complicated. So maybe you're a mom with kids in high school, you've spent the past year running them around to activities, cheering them on at games and sports events, or watching performances.
You still feel some obligation to support them in their academic goals and staying on top of their schoolwork. The college process is looming, or maybe you have a junior or senior in high school who was totally enmeshed in the college process. In fact, as I record this, you could have a child furiously finishing up their regular decision college applications before the January 2 deadline.
Or your college kids are home. You've missed them terribly and they're finally here. You've of course worried about them while they've been gone, but now that they're back home, it feels like all of the old triggers are back.
So whether your kids are home for college or just home more often now that they have a break from school, it's been amazing to have the chance to spend more time with them. And it's also been awful. I'm just going to say it.
It's been hard. We have the precious time in December when we get to spend more time with our kids. We desperately want to be with them and have looked forward to spending time with them, but that often doesn't look quite like what we thought it would look like.
We tend to have great expectations, fun times over dinner, games, adventures, and we've certainly had some of that over the past few weeks. But there have also been the other times. The door is always closed.
Kids in and out of the house at all hours. We're not sure of their plans until the last minute. They stay out late and we're not sure where they are or when they'll come home.
They leave food everywhere, their dishes piled up in rooms, tons more laundry. They ignore you or have an attitude. They seem distant or sad and rebuff all of your efforts to connect with them.
We love them, but it's hard. There are certainly those kids who are always open and friendly and responsive to our affection. But I found for many of us, even if our kids are lovely people in many respects, as we interact with them and they increasingly exert their independence, we can start to feel frustrated, anxious, worried, and even angry.
So if this is you right now, you might be more focused on surviving the next few days or weeks with kids at home than planning goals for the new year. But I want to make the point that this time in our lives as mothers offers us circumstances that are triggering. Our kids are desperately trying to be independent and for so long we've been responsible for them and helped them in so many ways.
And let's be honest, they don't seem entirely ready for the independence they so desperately want. So we feel constantly torn and guilt-ridden about how much support to give them, how much to ride them and nag them and remind them, and how much to let them fail, how much to let them try it on their own. It's hard to let go.
And so I find that one of the challenges we face when approaching any goal as empty nesters or women approaching the empty nest is that life with our kids happens and we find ourselves caught up in so much negative emotion that we can't find a way to move past this to approach our own personal goals, whatever they may be. As a simple example, how many of us have found ourselves pouring another glass of wine or eating another cookie or doing some other thing to try to make ourselves feel better just because we're stressed about something that's happened with our kids? I'm guessing the answer is many of us, maybe all of us. The second aspect of our lives right now that makes accomplishing personal goals challenging is that our bodies are changing in ways that get in the way.
It goes without saying that as we approach menopause, health goals become an increasing challenge. If weight loss was difficult before, it seems impossible now. What's probably even worse is that the hormonal shifts in our bodies often leave us feeling completely out of control emotionally or uncomfortable physically.
And notwithstanding all of the supplements and other strategies that promise to make going through menopause easier, I'm not sure there's a silver bullet. It's interesting to point out that in both of the circumstances I've just mentioned, both our kids and our bodies, many aspects of our children's lives and the changing hormonal state of our bodies, both are completely out of our control. That's not to say there aren't things that we can do, but often the things we try to do to help and connect with our kids can backfire despite our best intentions.
And it seems everything we try with our bodies doesn't work in the way we hope. So here we are with two huge aspects of our lives out of our control. It's hard to sit with that powerlessness, especially when it comes to our kids.
So the physical issues just compound our frustration. The emotional symptoms of perimenopause, if you look them up, they include irritability, sadness, lack of motivation, anxiety, aggressiveness, fatigue, mood changes. Not exactly the best place to start when we're dealing with an already moody or distant teen.
It's literally a perfect storm. And when you look at it this way, it seems obvious why we're not pursuing big dreams. Okay, the third thing that makes this time in our lives challenging, and I've got a few.
Okay, so the third thing that makes this time in our lives challenging when it comes to new goals is that we've compiled a really long history of not accomplishing our goals. Let's face it, the past 15 or 20 years, our primary focus has been on our children. Even if we've worked full time or had other responsibilities, motherhood has been on the top of the list for a really long time.
I'm not saying that we haven't accomplished much over the past 15 or 20 years, but so often we put ourselves last, or at least close to the bottom of the very long list of to-dos. There was one day a few years ago when I watched my kids excelling at music and learning new things at school all the time. They'd come home so excited to share their knowledge.
Even my husband pursued his passions and joined a band. I found myself without a hobby or any personal interest beyond trying to squeeze in time with my girlfriends when possible. It's like I spent so long supporting the dreams of my kids that I forgot that I got to dream too.
And it's not like I didn't have goals. I've always worked, but not necessarily in a field that I considered a passion. So I spent the majority of my time managing my kids' schedules and calendars, working, worrying about dinners, whether there was food in the house, cleaning, laundry.
Where exactly was I supposed to fit in dreams of my own? And let's add the fact that for us as women in midlife, the concept of the New Year's resolution is fraught with a history of disappointment. There have been too many Januaries when we've planned to lose weight or stop drinking or get to the gym or take on some other personal goal and it just didn't happen. Or we made some progress but eventually slipped back to our old habits.
I can't tell you how many times in past years I've lost weight in the first few months of the year only to gain it back and then some by the end of the year. So we're not exactly practiced in either goal setting or accomplishment, if we're honest. Our busy lives have made it almost impossible to dream big for ourselves.
And even health goals, which would seem on their surface to be somewhat easier to achieve, they just aren't. So depending on where you are with your kids right now, you could still be in the thick of momaging, helping manage your kids' lives. But if you're beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel or frankly if your kids are starting to drive, all of a sudden some of the past responsibilities you've had are starting to free you up a bit.
You're on the brink of having more time to focus on yourself. This can be a scary prospect for some of us. There's the loss of the purpose of being a mom that many of us grapple with.
Our lives have been caught up so much in our kids' lives in a good way. It's kept us focused, feeling like we're needed. It's given us a schedule, a reason to get up early and get the day started.
And of course over time we've experienced so much love and joy and pride in watching our kids grow up and achieve new goals. There are so many little things we begin to say goodbye to as our kids get older. No more talks in the car once they're driving.
Weekends with kids out of the house, spending time with friends. Less predictability. Then eventually they're gone to college.
The house is quieter. The transition is significant and one that inevitably comes with feelings of grief and loss. So although we might have more time to be able to focus on ourselves now, we're not quite sure how.
I can't tell you how many of my clients I've asked, what is your dream? What do you want to create for your life? So often what they tell me is that they just want to feel better. They haven't even spent any time thinking about what they actually want, what they want to create. They're not ready to dream big.
Which gets me to my last reason new goals are challenging. Given all of the things I've mentioned, life with kids being complicated or changing bodies feeling out of control, a history of not setting or accomplishing goals, we feel stuck, unmotivated. Even if we were to think of a goal, it's hard to even contemplate how we motivate ourselves to move forward given all of these other obstacles.
It's just too much. Honestly, it seems easier to not dream big and save ourselves the disappointment. So I want to give it to us.
These are circumstances facing most of us, if not all of us, mothers in midlife. I haven't even mentioned other circumstances that some of us may be facing on top of all of this. Ailing parents, loss of a parent, divorce or issues in our marriage, stress at work, financial stresses, home repairs.
The list could be endless. And all of these circumstances make approaching our goals challenging for one very important reason. And it's really just one.
Whether the circumstances are kids, our bodies, our past, our future, our parents, husband, boss. Right now in this moment, the only reason these things are obstacles to us is because of our thoughts about them. It seems too simple and maybe also a little too idealistic to say it's just our thoughts.
But let me share an example of why this is true. If I tell you I have two kids, two boys, I could tell you their names, their ages, other facts about them, and you would likely think that's nice. In fact, you might not think much of anything.
Millions of moms have two boys. Millions of moms have young adult children. There's nothing inherently stressful or anxiety producing about the fact that I have two boys, other than all of the stories in my head about my children.
You don't have those stories about my children. So the fact that I have kids means nothing to you other than maybe we share motherhood in common. But I could bore you for hours, days even, sharing all of the stories about my kids, why I've been terrified, angry, frustrated, and of course out of my mind with pride, love, and gratitude.
All of these emotions are driven by a countless number of stories I could tell you about my boys. Some of the stories turned out to be terrible projections of a future that never happened. And some of the stories are still kicking around in my head.
Some of the stories I can laugh about now, like how I thought I was a terrible mother because my son couldn't sleep without a swaddle when he was one. I remember my mother telling me, you probably won't have to tell his wife how to swaddle him. I didn't actually think that was funny at the time, but now it's hilarious.
Now, when I say the circumstances of our kids' lives or our bodies or any of the other things going on for us right now, when I say they're challenging because of the way we think about them, I'm by no means suggesting that what we're thinking is wrong. In fact, if you and I were sitting down for coffee and I told you all my stories, you would probably agree with me that they were challenging. You might even feel some sympathy for me or even empathy for me.
I'm sure if we sat down as friends and you told me everything going on in your life, I would say to you, I hear you. I would probably agree that what you're going through is challenging. We don't even need to have the most challenging circumstances.
Whatever's going on for us right now, we can't help but have an opinion about it. And when the circumstances trigger us in a negative way, meaning the circumstances cause us to perceive the situation negatively, then we can't help but feel terrible about it. When our kids are out late and we're thinking they might be drinking, the roads are unsafe.
We're not sure who's the designated driver. We feel anxious. Of course, we're worried.
When we come home to a mess in the kitchen, again, we think I've told her a thousand times to clean up after herself. We feel frustrated. These are completely natural reactions, thoughts, feelings.
We can empathize with each other as mothers because we've all gone through it. Or we can imagine similar circumstances in our own homes. The same rationale can be applied to the way we think about our bodies.
Hot flashes. We don't want them. We feel annoyed and sleep deprived.
Unexplained weight gain. We can't help but think I'm eating the same and for some reason I'm gaining weight. We feel helpless.
Again, all of these reactions and feelings make perfect sense to us. You could be thinking, yeah, me too. When we think about our past history with New Year's resolutions and we reflect that we haven't had success before or haven't been able to maintain our commitments over time, we feel disappointed in ourselves.
When our kids leave home and we think the house will be empty without them and I'm not sure what I'm going to do with myself, we feel lost, empty. It's completely understandable. So the issue isn't that these thoughts and feelings aren't valid.
The issue is when you dig deeper and explore really what these thoughts create for us, that's when you begin to develop a bit of an aha moment. Here's some examples. Kids are out late.
We're anxious because we're thinking about all of the what-ifs. In fact, we're driving ourselves crazy with the what-ifs. In our minds, we're playing and replaying a hundred different terrible scenarios, living them out in our minds.
We want to avoid the pain of our child being unsafe when they're out, but we're utterly powerless to keep them safe in the moment. So we just agonize. It's no wonder that we stress eat or drink or we can't sleep.
We torture ourselves because it's literally the only thing we can think to do. Here's another example. We come home to a messy kitchen.
We're annoyed because we're thinking things should be different. They should know better. Our kids shouldn't make a mess in the kitchen, but they do again and again.
Now, typically, we react. We yell at them, maybe overreact. We often find ourselves doing something we don't want to be doing.
Now, on to our bodies. In perimenopause, our bodies are doing what they're doing inexplicably. We have no idea why or how to deal with it.
We feel like we're losing control, getting older, getting softer, rounder, more tired. Again, we don't want this to be happening. We're fighting with the reality of it.
And often from this powerlessness, we kind of give up or we beat ourselves up on top of the physical pain or discomfort we're already experiencing. We assume that we can't fight the downward spiral, so we don't bother. We don't bother exercising.
We may overeat to feel better. We give in to fatigue. We give up and we beat ourselves up further.
When it comes to our goals, well, the past speaks for itself. We haven't accomplished them before. Think about how this sentence feels.
I've never been able to do that before, with an implication that now isn't any different. How does that make you feel? Unmotivated? Depressed? Stuck? Not capable? What I can guarantee is from these feelings, we're not likely to take the steps we need to take to move forward, to accomplish even the smallest goals. And certainly with this mindset, it's hard to imagine even starting to think big about the future.
We're still dealing with the loss of our kids growing more independent. And let's not forget the anxiety that causes us to torture ourselves, or the frustrations about our kids that lead us to overreact, or the changes in our bodies that lead us to give up and beat ourselves up. The stories about our past, we don't even bother to set goals anymore.
Here's what I want you to see. All of this is a choice. Now right now, it's an unconscious choice.
Right now, the way we're thinking about our circumstances, it's not conscious. This is the way we're reacting from an unconscious mind. The feelings we have, they're a hundred percent valid, understandable.
But when you're able to master the ability to see your own mind, and how it influences your perception of your life, and how that creates the results you get in your life, there is your power. That is how you gain power back over your life, your emotions, your goals. So that brings us back to our goals.
If you want to get healthier, whether by losing weight, or getting to the gym, or just dropping a few habits, we've talked about how we can let the circumstances of our lives foil our attempts to just eat better, or get to the gym. The interesting thing about goals related to health is that we probably know what we need to do. The how of how we get healthier isn't that much of a mystery.
I'm not saying at all that it's easy, but if I were to ask you what you're not doing that you would need to start doing to begin moving towards your health goals, I'm sure you would be able to tell me at least one thing. The how is not the problem. The issue is that we often give up too soon on the actions we need to take, or the habits that we need to form to be able to begin moving forward in achieving our goals.
We give up. We don't take the required action. I want to reiterate this point because it's so important.
It's never about the how when it comes to our goals. I could give you a very specific list of things that you should do for any goal. We could Google it together.
Thousands of experts online would be willing to give you advice, but we've learned from experience that when someone tells us exactly how to do it, it very often still doesn't work for us because it's not about the how. It's about who you need to be to achieve your goal. When I learned this as I became a coach, this point alone was mind-blowing to me.
I hope it is to you. It's one of those things that it's hard to get your head around because it's like, what? Who do I need to be? Here's the thing. When I say it's not about the how, it's about the who.
I'm not saying that you're not capable of doing whatever it is you want to do, that you're not capable of achieving your goal, not at all. The reason you haven't achieved it yet is because you're not yet the person who achieves the goal. You're not yet the person who's willing to overcome the obstacles in your way.
Many of these obstacles include self-doubt, self-judgment, stories about past failures, the stories about our kids, our bodies, our lives, this transition in our lives, all of it, the way we think about it. These are the obstacles that are standing in the way of you and your dreams. They may even be standing in the way of you having your own dreams.
So who do you need to be in the new year to start dreaming, to start moving towards the life of your dreams? And look, I can imagine that you have loved your life as a mother. You've loved the part of your life when the kids have needed you. You've had purpose.
But whether you like it or not, that purpose is changing, and we can either view this as an obstacle or an opportunity. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be diving in deeper to a number of different types of goals, and I hope you'll follow along with me. I'm thinking about this journey as creating Mom 2.0, the next version of ourselves, the version of ourselves who is capable of looking at this next chapter of our lives with excitement.
How many times have you told your kids that they can be and do anything that they want in their lives? When did we forget that this sentiment applies to us as well? Mom 2.0. Let's do this. Happy New Year, my friends.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review and check out our program, Mom 2.0, at www.thesmalljar.com. You have more power than you think, my friend.
