Are You Giving Away Your Power? (Vault)

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I’ve just come off three and a half weeks of single parenting and it shows me exactly where I wobble and what actually helps me stay steady. I share the tools that keep my personal power, cut the guilt, and make life feel lighter even when the load is heavy. 
• noticing how quickly doomscrolling creeps in under stress 
• stepping out of the victim story to keep personal power 
• adjusting the bar so perfectionism doesn’t run the week 
• simplifying food and routines without beating myself up 
• raising the bar on self-care to stay patient and focused 
• practising acceptance to reduce suffering and obligation fatigue 
• investing in yourself as the best support for your kids and your work 
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.

The Balance & Beyond Podcast Hosted by Jo Stone, founder of The Balance Institute

For women who are already succeeding, but beginning to wonder if they're willing to keep losing themselves in the process.

We know high achievers, because we are one. This podcast draws on Jo's 20 years in global leadership and thousands of hours coaching executives and ambitious women: the patterns she sees, how to untangle them, and what it actually takes to keep your success without paying for it with yourself.

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Transcript

Welcome And Quick Reset

Jo Stone (Host) 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

Three And A Half Weeks Solo

Jo Stone (Host) 0:19

reset. Let's dive in. I have just come off the back of three and a half weeks of single parenting, and I wanted to share some of my observations and share what really caused me to wobble, but at the same time, it is a great cause for celebration. I know they sound counterintuitive, but trust me, there's going to be some gems in here for you regardless. So my hubby has just returned from three and a half weeks in the UK. It was a work trip, the trip for his health, and it was very much going to become a rite of passage for him to have some time to do what he needed to do. So I knew straight away that I wanted to support him, but I also knew the moment we planned the trip that it was going to be challenging for me. We have a life that is built for two parents. I've got very active children who have tons of activities, and our life is set up at the moment. Meek tends to do a lot of the pickups,

Stop The Victim Story

Jo Stone (Host) 1:20

particularly in the afternoon, and he does a lot of the afternoon running around. My diary is built around me working from 9.30 onwards, and he picks up 3 to 6, 7 p.m. shift, which is, you know, activities and getting dinner prepped. So how we would continue to keep this rhythm of daily life without significantly impacting my business was going to be the challenge. It's a very easy trap for us all to fall into. But when I become a victim of my circumstance and do the poor me and I can't, and because of, while some of that may be true, the moment I become a victim of my circumstance, I give away my

Doomscrolling And The Wobble

Jo Stone (Host) 2:00

power. And I don't want to do that. I want to retain my personal power. So the first observation that I noticed was that my social media usage went through the roof. I used to look at my feet and that's not interesting. But as my usage went up and the doom scrolling, it got better and better, which made me feel despite working all day long and being busy all day long, I'd get to bed and go, oh, I didn't actually achieve what I wanted today. And found myself in this doom scrolling loop again. I don't live there anymore. And I know a lot of my clients that have been working with me for a while also don't feel that way. So I know many people come to me saying, oh, we need more family time. And we on the weekend have to take the whole day and have a family day and go for a bike ride and get a 30-minute trip with a grumpy teenager in the front seat who's on their phone and me on a work call is not good. And so we didn't do that. Now I have this concept that I call adjusting the bar. And as high achievers, as recovering perfectionists, it can be very easy for us to say, right,

Adjusting The Bar At Home

Jo Stone (Host) 3:10

I'm single parenting now. I'm going to prove I can do it all. I'm going to cook everything from scratch. The house is going to be perfect. And we hold this crazy bar so high that we can never meet it. And we end up beating ourselves up the whole time. So I look at my week every week and went, right, where is the bar for, as an example, what we're going to eat? Those of you that know me know that I hate cooking. It's one of the last things I want to do. So I went, you know what? Cooking is the one thing that can go. If I'm short on time, that can go. There was very shortcuts. I'd bulk cook on one night and we'd eat it for three nights. And the girls go, sausages again. Yes, because I cooked double batch last night and I'm not cooking again. So was it the most balanced of menus for the week? We ate vegetables a couple of times. They ate fruit, but it was probably a nutritionist would look at our diet for the week and go, hmm. But there were some bars that I decided not to adjust, or I adjusted in the counterintuitive direction. And that is adjusting the bar up when it came to my self-care. This may be counterintuitive to you because usually what happens is we go, oh my gosh, it's so busy. And I normally work more than 20 hours a week, which is pretty much all I had between school hours. So you would think, all right, well, she's going to spend every waking second working when she's not driving

Self-Care Goes Up Not Down

Jo Stone (Host) 4:40

around Ubering or parenting. But I went, I have to be more focused. And it's so important if I'm the only grown-up here, that I am whole and I am not grumpy and I'm not depleted because it is easier to do that when you are doing all the things. So I increased my bar for self-care. And by that, I meant I walk the dog every day, something that I got to do. I still played nipple on the weekends, despite the fact that I may have had to drop a child off to a party early and some other child had to go somewhere else. Didn't matter. I was gonna do my thing. I wasn't going to give up my things. I did a float tank at a local spa. I had wine with girlfriends. I enjoyed my time because I knew that this wasn't about sacrificing me for the sake of work. Because if I am no good, my work is going to be no good. And the last piece that pins these other tools around adjusting the bar and increasing my self-care is I lent really hard into the emotional state of acceptance. You may have also heard it called surrender. This doesn't mean I settled, that I became mediocre, or I gave up. I looked at my diary and went, okay, I can't do as many calls as I normally would do. I'm not going to fight that. I'm not going to make it mean that I'm going

Acceptance Creates Lightness

Jo Stone (Host) 6:05

backwards in my business or that it's all on me and I'm not going to have any time. I didn't really go into this big story and narrative because it wasn't going to serve me. When you fight, what is the definition of suffering? And it's so easy to fall into this trap of you know having to walk the dog every day and I've got to do it again and I've got to do it again. And then I have to drive the kids to dancing, and I have to do drop-off, and I have to do pickup, and I have to reduce my hours, and I have to, and this life of obligation is incredibly exhausting. And usually when we are suffering in our lives, it's because we're not accepting what is. That doesn't mean that in that moment I carried all that emotional pollution and made a whole lot of meaning out of it. So when you can learn to put these things down and accept your circumstance and hold that duality of yes, I can accept that I get to walk the dog and I get to cook and I get to do all these things with the kids. And I'm looking forward to the time when he's home and I don't have to cook and I don't always have to do pickup and I can lean more into my work. I can hold both of those. It doesn't make me mediocre. It doesn't mean that I'm settling. It doesn't mean that I'm not striving. It's a way to put things down and find lightness. It's a way to be present and it's a way to have a hell of a lot more fun because I'm not grumpy and nagging and short-tempered because I didn't want it to be this way. So they are some of my favorite tools that I lean into anyway, but they were ones that I absolutely, over this period, had to lean into more. So I had to adjust the bar. I increased my self-care. I invested in myself. And then I accepted my fate. I hope you've obtained a nugget out of this. It's a tough gig. So if you are a single parent, I salute you. It is not easy. But learning and having a toolkit that fuels you and makes sure that you have something left in the tank at the end of the day is even more important when everything relies on you. I get so many single parents, single women who come to me saying, Oh, you know, I need to put everything on the kids. Yeah, but if your health goes and you can't

Fill Your Cup For The Kids

Jo Stone (Host) 8:35

work, what happens? Oh yeah. If you're grumpy all the time, what type of relationship are you going to have with your child? Oh yeah. What happens if you get sick and your child has to go live with the other parents? Sometimes you don't want that to be the case. Oh yeah. So actually investing in yourself, putting time and energy and filling your cup is the best thing you can do for your career, for your kids, and most importantly, for yourself. So, regardless of your circumstances, take one of my tools or start observing yourself. Are you doom scrolling? Are you lacking creativity? Is there not enough fun in your life? And how can you use some of these tools and some of these tips to make a change today that's going to make your life better for you and everyone in it? 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.