Moment: Mindset Before Methods

Strategies for balance don't work without the right mindset to support them. No matter how many wellness tools you try, they'll only become effective when paired with crucial mindset shifts that ambitious women often miss.

• Meditation works when you shift from trying to stop thoughts to letting go and processing your day
• Time blocking requires detaching from the belief that busyness equals importance
• Waking up early needs preparation and clarity about why that time matters to you
• Self-care becomes possible when you separate your self-worth from your to-do list
• Boundaries only work when you know who you are and what matters to you
• Small acts of self-care can be as valuable as grand gestures
• Learning to tap into what you actually need rather than what you think you should do
• Letting go of guilt which robs you of joy

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Balance and Beyond
• 0:35 Why Your Strategies Aren't Working
• 1:52 Meditation: Letting Go Not Trying Hard
• 4:11 Time Blocking and Early Rising Mindsets
• 6:28 Self-Care Beyond Spa Days
• 9:05 Setting Boundaries and Knowing Yourself

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Welcome to Balance and Beyond Moments. Your weekly dose of insight, wisdom and mindset shifts, all in 10 minutes or less, whether it's a powerful truth, a fresh perspective or a spark of inspiration. This is your space to pause, reflect and reset. Let's dive in. Do you feel like you're doing all the things that you're told are meant to work to help bring you balance, Whether it's meditation, getting up early, taking care of yourself? You've got all the fridge magnets, you've seen all the quotes and yet, no matter how hard you try, they are not giving you the results that they are meant to. Well, you are not alone. I thought I had what was a pretty good toolkit. I was doing all the things that successful people were meant to do, and yet I was feeling worse and nothing converted. So today I want to share with you what actually is going on when you're trying to use these tools. What is going wrong for you and, most importantly, what is the missing ingredient? What is the missing shift that, in particular, I have found ambitious women. What are we missing that is stopping these working for you?

Speaker 1: 1:15

The good news is, there's nothing wrong with your strategies. Meditation works. Time blocking works. Waking up early works. You can take care of yourself. However, if you do not have the mindset that supports your strategy, no amount of strategies are going to work. And this is the piece no one is teaching us. No one is teaching us, as a woman who's working, who's juggling, kids and family and four-legged friends and the rest of it what is the mindset that you need to ensure that any strategy for you is actually going to work?

Speaker 1: 1:47

Let me talk you through each of these five elements that I've tapped into and what is missing from a mindset perspective that's going to allow you for that strategy to now implement. And the good news is, when you start to really understand yourself, you build this self-awareness and you can learn to shift your mindset. Any strategy that you pick up, whether it's from a podcast or a leadership program or a friend or something you've read, it's actually going to land. And this is the most frustrating part is women come to me saying, jo, I've tried everything, I've read every podcast and I'm trying and I'm trying strategy and I'm trying to do it and it's not working. And it's not the strategy, my friend, it is your mindset. You need to learn how to shift your mindset around all of these pieces or it's never going to change. So let's talk about meditation and how meditation is actually going to work for you.

Speaker 1: 2:45

Now again, it's not the strategy of sitting down and trying to get quiet for five minutes, for five or 10 minutes. What actually needs to shift here is your mindset that meditation isn't about trying to stop your thoughts, because I don't know about you, but I found that impossible. My brain is very, very busy. But meditation works when you see it as an opportunity to let go and process your day, when it becomes an opportunity to tap into your body and see what is there and get beyond the thoughts. So they just become like annoying clouds that are floating across the sky and you can detach yourself from that.

Speaker 1: 3:21

Some people will say you just need time, you need to continue to sit on the cushion and or, you know, lie from that. Some people will say you just need time, you need to continue to sit on the cushion and or, you know, lie down, or and just persist and persist and persist. But I gave meditation a darn hot go. I did it for months, I think I even because I'm competitive got myself up to like a hundred day streak and it still wasn't doing what it was meant to for me, and usually that's because I was trying too hard. So again, it comes down to what is the purpose of this. What is the mindset I'm taking to go into meditation?

Speaker 1: 3:50

Time blocking only works when you have detangled yourself from the feeling that being busy equals important and when you stop prioritizing everybody else's stuff, whether it's their laundry or whatever it is, over your own. Because when you do not have agency over your own time, when you don't think that your time matters, you will continue to give it away. And this is all about saying no. Usually, it's not about saying no to others, it's about saying yes to you. It's wine with a friend, or a walk or a nap, or to sit and read your book, or for somebody else to pick up the laundry for that day. But until you're able to really disentangle, to detach and shift your mindset that being busy does not make you important, you will only ever want to put out fires. And even though I have people all the time saying to me Jo, I don't like doing this, I know this doesn't serve me, and yet, from a mindset perspective, on a subconscious level, you have not yet cleared those blocks. So while logically, intellectually, you know this doesn't serve you. You haven't yet done the mindset work deep enough to better stop these patterns happening.

Speaker 1: 5:11

Likewise, we talk about waking up early. Well, what's the mindset that you need in order to get up early and actually block out that time for you? Well, first and foremost, you got to get to bed early. Getting to bed at 1am and then trying to get up at 5am is clearly not enough sleep. That's the first piece. The other piece is you need to really understand why is it that I want to get up early? And I really, really hope it's not to just get in an extra load of laundry.

Speaker 1: 5:41

If you're getting up early, how do you ensure that this time is for you and you are very, very clear on what you're doing and why? Because I don't know about you, but my brain isn't the most, let's say, firing or it's not, as its full capacity could be a better way to describe it at 5 am. So if I'm ever deciding to get up early, and pretty regularly, I do this, but the night before I've decided I'm getting up early. This is why, and this is what I'm going to do, so that I get up and there is no intellectual thought required, because that thought's going to go oh, snooze or no intellectual thought required because that thought's going to go oh, snooze or oh, and we're going to go straight into right. I've got to do this and this and this and this and say no. This time is for me, this is my time.

Speaker 1: 6:23

When we talk about taking care of yourself, we mentioned before. You know what stops us not doing this is the guilt and the hassle. The mindset that you need in order to actually take care of yourself and enjoy it is separating your self-worth from your to-do list, because you are more than just things that you can get done. You have nothing to prove, you have nothing to do and you certainly don't need to earn the time to take care of yourself. So many women tell me that I've only taken care of myself when things have started to break. I will only make the time to take myself to the doctor when I literally can't get out of bed. Or, you know, a friend will buy me a voucher because I can't bear to spend the money on myself because of the guilt and this is another piece. You have to learn to let go of guilt. It is an emotion that does not serve you and it will rob you of any joy.

Speaker 1: 7:19

The other mindset shift you need to make around taking care of yourself is to move beyond the grand gestures of the spa days and the massage and like to be clear. Go for it, my, my friend, as much as you can. However, how can you reframe taking care of yourself and it become about a nice cup of tea standing in the sunshine? How can taking care of yourself mean feeding yourself lunch? How can taking care of yourself mean space to breathe or to move your body, even if it's not a 45-minute sweaty workout, but you've only got 10? Well, taking care of myself is moving my body in a way that serves me in those 10 minutes.

Speaker 1: 8:05

Taking care of yourself is also ensuring that you ask yourself what you need, which is a very different mindset to right got to do this and this and this and this. For some mornings I wake up and think, okay, I really I need to go for a run. And I wake up and tap into my body and it says, oh, you're actually quite sore from the weekend. Why don't you do yoga instead? Do something a little more gentle, and I'm able to listen to that because I've shifted my mindset and go ah, because it's not about I have to sweat and I have to do 45 minutes. It's about what do I actually need? And sometimes 10 minutes of yoga, I feel fabulous because that is what I needed. So I've separated that self-worth from the list.

Speaker 1: 8:48

And then, lastly, the mindset shift here around boundaries is you can't boundary something that you don't know where it begins and where it ends, that you don't know where it begins and where it ends. I hear all the time that you know, jo, I don't know who I am anymore. I've become so defined by my labels call them mother, wife, ex-executive, ex-profession and I don't know what I enjoy. I've completely lost myself in taking care of others. So when you don't know what I enjoy, I've completely lost myself in taking care of others.

Speaker 1: 9:22

So when you don't know what matters to you, when you don't know who you are, is it any wonder you continue to look outside yourself for these reference points? We compare ourselves Ah, they're doing that. Do I want to do that or not? Instead of learning to tap into that innate wisdom that lies within? It only happens when you make the space to actually get quiet and when you know who you are and what matters to you, it becomes really easy to hold up a boundary about.

Speaker 1: 9:55

Do I really want to do that? Yes, okay, great, well, I'm going to do it and make that choice and move on, and then you can implement strategies around saying no, but if you don't know what you're saying no or yes to well, then nothing's ever going to stick. The boundary is going to collapse at the first sign of pressure. Can you see how mindset really is? Everything? Really is everything. Thanks for taking this moment for yourself. If this resonated, share it with a friend who needs to hear it today, and don't forget to subscribe to Balance and Beyond for full episodes and more of these bite-sized breakthroughs. See you next time.