GET OUT OF "DOING JAIL"
Welcome to the Small Jar Podcast, where we moms of teens find the power to step off the emotional roller coaster between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Episode number 44.
Hello, my friends. I want to share something with you that's been on my mind a lot lately because I've been juggling a lot, pursuing some big goals, but not wanting to drop any balls, still wanting to show up in all of the other areas of my life. And I have to admit that my brain still often offers me the thought, I have so much to do.
I wish I had more time. These thoughts used to be like mantras for me. In the past, I've taken pride from how busy I am, but this has also had a really big downside in so many areas of my life, particularly because I used to feel so constantly stressed and frazzled.
So I want to ask you a question. How often do you find yourself overwhelmed with the number of things on your list of things to do? I think for many of us, this comes with the territory of motherhood. There's so much to do.
And this list, whether you work inside or outside of the home, doesn't ever seem to get smaller. Or worse, the minute you complete some of the home-related tasks, like making dinner or folding the laundry, the tasks end up right back on the list because there's always another meal, another grocery run, another pile of laundry. There never seems to be enough time to do everything because on top of the household chores, there are other things we feel like we need to do to support our kids.
Just this week, I was running to the driving school to drop off paperwork for my son who's getting his learner's permit. And somehow I mysteriously checked the yes box that says, are you in this country illegally? So great news. I got to go back to the driving school to fill out a new form.
There's so many other things that come up with the kids, the forgotten musical instrument or in my son's case, the forgotten insulin pump, the bass guitar I could make him suffer without, but the insulin pump, not so much. So then another trip back home and back to deliver the insulin pump to him. I thought having my older son drive would take some of the pressure off, but his schedule and my younger son's schedule never lined up.
In New Jersey, where I live, you have to be 17 to drive. So it feels like a really long time before you can take the carpooling chore off your list. It's interesting to consider that when my boys were younger, I spent quite a bit more time taking care of them, making all their meals, watching them or playing with them, keeping them engaged.
But now that they're older, I don't make nearly any meals for them. I certainly don't get to play with them anymore. I don't have to drive them around nearly as much.
They're independent. And yet I don't feel as if I've gotten any time back. You see, all of us fill all of our time.
We all have 24 hours a day and we all use every bit of it. While our kids are home, it can seem like there's never enough of it because we're so busy doing, taking care of things. But when the last child leaves the nest, we can feel this emptiness that we feel pressure to fill as if there's something wrong with not doing.
One of my mentors recently shared a concept of doing jail. And the minute she said it, I thought, yes, that is me. When you think about jail, aside from the aspect of having committed a crime, which I'm not suggesting I'm doing, but when you're in jail, you're stuck or confined to a space that you can't get out of.
The concept of doing jail is that you're stuck doing. There are two aspects of this I want to explore. One is the concept of needing to do, and the other is the discomfort of not doing.
There are two sides of the coin really, but I think it's interesting to explore both. Let's start with the concept of needing to do. I often coach clients who will describe themselves as type A personalities.
On the one hand, type A personalities are typically achievement oriented. So they often exhibit high levels of motivation, self-control, and the ability to multitask. From this standpoint, for someone who has type A tendencies, the concept of doing is a good thing.
And if doing some is good, then doing more is even better. In fact, type A's are often in a hurry to get where they're going. So they might feel the added pressure of doing more to achieve faster.
The downside of being a type A is that you can tend to be stressed out quite a bit of the time, impatient for successful outcomes, and easily frustrated if the action you're taking doesn't lead to results. So for these types of people, there's an underlying belief that doing equals accomplishment, with the counter assumption that not doing equals lack of accomplishment. And because accomplishment is considered a valuable goal, not doing can feel like the equivalent of giving up or failing to take the goal seriously.
For many of us as moms, whether you're a type A or not, our children's achievements are our achievements. Meaning really, if our children are successful, then we get to give ourselves permission to think we've done our job, that we're successful as moms. And if our children aren't finding success in some way, or maybe not pursuing success in the way we think will be the most likely to get them to their goal, then we can't be successful.
So just think of the way this shows up when our kids are in high school or in college, and we're focused as moms on our job to help them be successful. We're constantly on the lookout for indicators that our children are successful or on the right path. We're looking for signs they're studying, or getting enough sleep, or working on projects well ahead of due dates.
We want to be sure they've signed up for the right activities or enough activities. So we're looking for signs that they're doing these things that we consider important. And when they're not, or when we haven't seen evidence of progress, then we think we need to step in.
That it's a problem that they're not doing whatever it is they need to do. And so it's our job to make sure they don't fail to do the project or take advantage of the opportunity, because their failure feels like our failure. If you feel this way, and not all moms do, but if this resonates, I want to assure you that you are absolutely not alone.
I've coached so many moms on this topic, and I have to admit, I've struggled with it myself. There was even a point when my oldest son said to me, Mom, I feel like you're so afraid I'm going to fail. Maybe you have to let me do this on my own.
It was a pivotal moment for me because here I thought I'm helping, I'm doing an important job of making sure my kids don't fail. But here was my son telling me he could see how much I needed to do my job as a mother, doing jail. Despite evidence I could actually see that he was telling me he was capable of pursuing his goals without my reminding and nagging and stress.
Despite all of this, it was hard for me to let go of my doing the job of reminding because his success was still is so important to me. But it's hard for me to understand not doing was actually going to help him be successful. Clients have told me their kids have said similar things to them.
Mom, you have to trust me. Mom, I wish you would stop reminding me. Mom, I can do this on my own.
You don't need to worry so much. Our kids can see it. They might be annoyed by it, or they might just realize how much we're stressed about their lives and they want to let us off the hook.
But the bottom line is there is something in our heads that's telling us that they're not ready to be on their own, that it's important for us to keep tabs on them to make sure they don't fail because God knows failure is going to be disastrous. One C on the report card, God, one B even, and they're not going to get into the right college, we think. Not making the honor society is going to look bad on the college application.
The bar of success can feel so high and it's our job to help our kids rise to the occasion. And let's face it for our kids' entire lives so far, it has been our job. But there comes a time when we need to let go of the reins and stop doing.
And it's hard because doing is success, doing jail. You might see this in other areas of your life, maybe at work, maybe in your volunteer pursuits. We all find ways to fill each and every hour of our day.
And we tend to fill our time with activities that we prioritize based on how important or pressing we think that activity is. So obviously we have to sleep and then we have a certain number of hours we spend at work or taking care of other scheduled commitments. And then there's the time we spend focused on our kids and families, whether that's active time, cooking dinner or helping our kids with something specific, or if it's just time spent thinking or worrying about what comes next.
Maybe I should research SAT prep. I think I need to look into college counselors. Let me reach out to my daughter's teacher to address some issue that came up.
I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't be doing any of these things, but I want to invite you to bring awareness to these actions. How often does what you do in any area of your life come from a true and deep desire to take that action versus something you think you have to do to move some aspect of your life or your kids' lives forward? Because here's one thing that happens when we keep thinking the doing equals achieving. We have to keep doing in order to feel the thing we want to feel, to feel accomplished.
So it's not only that you have to do in order to accomplish something, which we can all agree is probably true. If you don't take any steps toward a goal, then you won't move toward the goal. But what I'm talking about here is why the goal is important to us in the first place.
And for many of us, the goal is important because of the feeling we're trying to create when we get there. So when it comes to our kids, we think that when we help them achieve success in whatever way we define it, then we'll finally get to feel proud of ourselves as mothers because we did it. We often don't think about it this way, but consider this.
As you're helping your child achieve any goal, I'm willing to bet that you love them the whole time. And there might be times when you're disappointed in their effort or some outcome like a test grade, but you're always proud of who they are as people. I imagine your children don't need to earn your love or pride in who they are as people by doing.
So it's interesting to ask yourself the question, why is their success so important to me? And again, at some level, I do think that we each have this vision of what success looks like and that somehow our kids' success will mean they're happy in their lives. And ultimately that's our goal. And since this is something so important to us, it's hard for us to let go of the doing to help them get there.
Because if we were to let that go, we'd have to let go of our feeling of accomplishment. I would even go so far as to say we would have to let go of our feelings of love and pride in ourselves as mothers if we didn't strive to help our kids be successful. So we have this driving need to do so that we can feel something.
When it comes to motherhood, we're driven by a desire to feel accomplished, maybe purposeful, needed, feel a sense of peace or relief that our kids are on the right track. When we work in a job or as a volunteer, we can feel a desire to feel recognized, appreciated, or like our contributions matter. We want to feel like our efforts have purpose and meaning.
Maybe we have health or weight loss goals so we can feel a desire to just feel better, feel better in our clothes, less tired, generally happier because we could stop beating ourselves up about how we look or feel. Notice in all of these examples, with motherhood and our kids' success, in our professional and volunteer efforts, even with our own health, we have this assumption that there's some set of feelings that we want to access that we don't have the right to access right now. If our child appears to be struggling, we want to fix the problem so they can stop struggling, and let's face it, so we can feel better.
If we're not getting the recognition we think we deserve at work or in other endeavors, we might try to work harder or do more to achieve that recognition, or we might bring this lack of recognition to people's attention so that we can feel appreciated. If we're not feeling confident or healthy in our bodies, we beat ourselves up with these crazy diets because we want to achieve confidence and feeling better faster. Or if you're like many of us, this is a battle you've been fighting for so long, you're now skipping the crazy diets and just beating yourself up mentally.
It's almost like we think if we hate on our bodies enough, we'll eventually beat ourselves into submission and then take the steps we need to take theoretically to feel better. Except this rarely works, and we never feel better. We feel resigned to feel miserable in our bodies.
The common denominator in all of these examples is there's something we need to achieve or do in order to feel something. Peace, happiness, appreciated, accomplished, and it seems like the only way to feel these things somehow is to take action. So this brings us to the flip side of the coin, which is it feels really uncomfortable to not take the action.
If our child appears to be struggling, how can we just stand by and do nothing? If we're not getting the recognition we think we deserve at work, it seems counterintuitive to not take action. If we feel awful in our bodies, well, if this is an area where you've struggled and menopause certainly hasn't helped matters, well, we know this discomfort firsthand. We're stuck in this place of not loving our bodies and we feel helpless.
There's just no way to feel better. It feels uncomfortable to not take action because then it seems like we're giving up on our goals. Okay, but here's the added rub.
Some of these goals are entirely out of our control or at very least are things that are impossible to achieve in the moment. With our kids, now that they're teens, we're increasingly helpless and powerless in our efforts to help them with whatever they're struggling with. They don't want our help or they have totally different ideas about how they want to move forward.
They might even have totally different ideas about what success looks like for them. We feel this driving desire, this urgency to step in and help, and yet even when we do, we're not successful or don't achieve what we'd hoped we might achieve in their interest. Ultimately, we can't feel better.
We're not only stuck in the cycle of doing, but our actions are often not producing the results we want for our kids, which is that they'd be happy and successful moving in the right direction. At work, our bosses don't always recognize us in the way that feels satisfactory to us. They either don't recognize us or they might do it in a way that we think is totally lame.
Volunteer organizations, volunteer board chairs, parent association leadership, they might not recognize us as volunteers in the way we want. And organizations might not recognize board chairs or PA presidents in the way they want. Just think about how many of us are out there in the world doing good things, and it's not like we're all out there patting each other on the back all the time.
There are certainly some people who are very good at taking consistent action in recognizing others and doing so in a way that people generally receive as positive. But I bet you could come up with a list of five to 10, maybe more people in your life who you think don't appreciate you in the way that you think that they should. You might start the list with your kids and your partner, but the bottom line is we want to feel needed, appreciated, like what we do matters.
And others aren't good at giving us this feeling, meaning they're not great at doing the specific things that we would interpret as showing their appreciation. This extends to other big goals as well. Whether you're starting a business, maybe a nonprofit, writing a book, we can tend to hold out feelings of pride in our efforts or success until we've achieved certain milestones.
And when we don't reach those milestones, where it takes longer than we think it should take, we feel disappointed in ourselves. We hold out on giving ourselves the right to feel proud and accomplished because we haven't, in our minds, earned the right to feel this way. When it comes to weight loss, again, such an area of frustration for many of us.
Losing weight, it seems, has only gotten more challenging. In fact, we can feel like we're doing all of the right things or eating the same thing we've always eaten, and suddenly we're gaining weight out of nowhere. It can feel like an uphill battle, and our only options seem to be that we have to put ourselves through terrible diets and workout routines, or we're left with just feeling terrible.
Our only two options are A, feel terrible, and B, feel terrible. So we're in doing jail in so many areas of our life. We're stuck on this hamster wheel of doing so that we get to feel something, proud of ourselves as moms, happy and at peace because our kids are doing well, needed, purposeful, accomplished, confident.
I want to give you a get-out-of-jail-free card. You can give yourself permission to get out of doing jail right now. And I want to reiterate, I'm not at all saying we shouldn't support our kids, or go to work, or fulfill our commitments, but I want to invite you to consider that you actually get to feel whatever you want to feel without having to earn the right to feel that way.
You get to be proud of yourself as a mom without needing your child to be successful, to achieve anything specific. You get to be proud of yourself as a mom no matter what your child's outcomes are. But in order to do this, you also need to believe that there's nothing you have to do to feel proud of yourself, that you're worthy, you're enough, that you get to feel proud.
And I'm not talking about feeling proud of your child. We were proud of our children at the very moment they came into our lives. At that moment, they were enough.
They were perfect, just as they are, as people. And I can imagine for each of us, that really hasn't changed. Even if there are things your child does or doesn't do that you wish might change, you're still proud of who they are at their core.
And you get to feel that way about yourself too. You get to feel proud of yourself, that you're enough as a mom, perfect just as you are, flaws and all. You are enough.
How might you approach your child and their success differently if you already knew that you were enough as a mother, that there was absolutely nothing you had to prove or achieve in the name of your child's success in order for you to be enough, a good mom? If you want to feel appreciated, why are you waiting for other people to give that to you? Seriously, why give other people so much power over you and your life? Are you doing your best? Are you contributing what you think is important? Then appreciate yourself. You know you're doing a good job. You know how much heart and soul you put into everything you do.
Stop waiting for others to validate you, really. And here's the deal, if you want a raise at your job and you're not getting it, by all means, ask for feedback and find out what you can do differently to get that raise. If your boss is really a jerk, why are you staying in the job? He or she is not going to change.
So either stay and stop expecting something different from them or leave. Think about how powerful you would be if you didn't need to rely on other people to give you the feelings that you want. This extends to any feeling.
You get to give yourself pride, confidence, love, appreciation, gratitude, peace, purpose, knowing you are needed. You are in control of these feelings and you don't need to prove it to yourself through action. Start by feeling the feeling first.
I know I'm a good mother. I don't need to do anything to know I'm the right mother for my children. I'm enough, doing my best.
Now, how will I approach my children if I know that my success as a mom doesn't require them to be anyone other than exactly who they are, struggling, doing their best, figuring life out one step at a time? I am right there with them and I am enough. I feel accomplished whether I do everything on my list or nothing at all. I get to feel proud of myself for showing up to my life.
Sometimes that looks like massive action and sometimes that looks like sitting on the couch and binge watching The Last of Us. I don't need to check off a to-do list to feel accomplished. I love myself.
I don't need to do anything to love myself. Now, what will I do for myself from love? Break out of doing jail and allow yourself to feel whatever you want to feel right now.
Until next time, friends.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review and check out our coaching program, Mom 2.0 at www.thesmalljar.com. You have more power than you think, my friend.
