199. Your Life Is What You Tolerate: The Mindset Shift That Changed My Summer

If you've been white-knuckling your way through a season and calling it productivity, this one is going to hit. Sometimes grief isn't about loss… sometimes it's about the story you've been telling yourself so many times it started to feel like fact.

A few weeks into summer, I caught my own brain running a narrative I didn't even realize had taken over. I was ending every day feeling like everything was too much and the issue wasn’t my schedule but instead the stories I was telling myself. In this episode I'm sharing exactly what I shifted and how to do it yourself. 

TOPICS WE EXPLORE

• The mental load that doesn't show up on a calendar
• How I caught myself in a spiral I didn't even know I was in
• What my inner voice has been dictating in my life  
• Why your structures and systems can be working and you can still feel like you're drowning
• The story your brain tells before you even open your eyes
• How to get back in the driver's seat when your mindset has taken over
• Why this is a practice && not a one-time fix

THE POINT

You have the life you're willing to put up with. The circumstances don't have to change, but the story does.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• Ash's new website and brand relaunch
• Work with Ash (Studio Session, Deep Cuts, The Green Room, MIXTAPE waitlist)

MORE ABOUT ASH

I'm Ash McDonald — the Entrepreneur's Therapist. Trained therapist, seasoned entrepreneur, mom of 3, && the person you call when your business coach doesn't get your brain && your therapist doesn't get your business.

I built the thing I couldn't find anywhere else: whole-picture support that holds your strategy && your humanity in the same conversation at the same time. 

LINKS:

• Work with me 1:1 → Deep Cuts
• Fast-track your results → The Green Room
• Solve one thing right now → Studio Sessions
• Burnout-proof your life && business → Mixtape
• Get your free podcast playlists → The Soundcheck
• Weekly emails that tell you what your business coach won't && your therapist can't → Subscribe to The Beat
• Website: ashmcdonaldmentoring.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, friends. Welcome back to the Shamelessly Ambitious Podcast. We are taking a quick pause from the grief series today because I wanted to share something that's been coming up for me in real time. I wanted you to hear it in real time. And honestly, this was not originally planned to land here, but honestly, the more I sat with it, the more I realized, in my humble opinion, it really does fit perfectly in the middle of a grief series. Because while grief can absolutely be about loss, it can also be about the stories that we are telling ourselves and the seasons that we are resisting with all of our might and the ways that we make our current reality harder than it needs to be. And a few weeks ago, I had a pretty significant wake-up call around exactly that. I was feeling so stressed, so overwhelmed, so like I can't sit it in. Even though, yes, I mean, you know, this podcast is incredibly uncensored and unscripted. I don't plan. I just like right now, I'm literally driving to the airport to make up a friend who's coming to visit me. And I'm in my car. So we always have prayers up that the audio actually works, but very unscripted and therefore very uncensored. And so you've probably heard a little bit of me complaining, if I'm gonna be honest, about how crazy and wild it is and the sport schedules and all the things. And hear me when I say none of that has changed. None of that has changed. And you also heard me talk about the summer structures that we had. And they are great. They're still working great. The same structures that I began with, I'm still utilizing and I still love. And this isn't about that. This isn't about that at all. This is about how I was feeling. At the beginning of this past week, I really was just like, woof. I feel like I'm falling behind. I was getting the majority of my work done, you know, first thing in the morning and then a little bit throughout the day. But just still felt I felt a lot of things. And overwhelm is like the best word to describe it, which is very true. And I went on my walk. So I I like to, especially in the summer, go for a walk in the morning. And I've been doing hour-ish long walks every single morning, usually between like four and five thirty in the morning, which I know is crazy to some people, but I'm up anyhow. And I'm really grateful for these walks because on this walk, this particular walk that I'm referring to, I thought to myself, I'm not gonna listen to anything for a while because I am not in a good headspace. I have, you know, enough awareness to go, huh, something is just not cooking right. I am ending the days in an old sort of paradigm that I haven't had in a while, which is feeling just like the best phrase that comes to mind is it's too much. It's too much. It's too much. And I had a friend send me a video, which whenever my friends send me videos that are like social media related, I'm like, ah, I gotta go on my desktop and I gotta open it. I still want to see it, but I don't have any of the apps on my phone. But I go and I open this video, and it's this woman who's essentially saying, No one talks about the grief. So that goes with this past series, but the grief of having a really, really great husband and still feeling all alone. And it's actually has nothing to do with a husband or a partner or anybody that you might have in your corner. It was more about being the person who carries the majority of the mental load. And I think it's important that I know I have a husband who is active as a father. He is active in our chores, he is active in our finances. We do have a lot of equality in how we operate in our home. And yeah, I just I think of more, whether it's my son getting allergies and starting to research, like what could I do to support him naturally, or my own symptoms and issues that I deal with, or oh my gosh, somebody ate the last of that part of the meal without realizing that that was planned for a meal. And now I gotta find a way to get to the store, or the meal planning in general, or the grocery shopping in general. A lot of these things. Okay. So there is truth to that. And she sent this to me, and I was like, woof, I feel that so deeply. Like it can be really isolating. And maybe something that you might have noticed if you listen to a lot of episodes of mine is that there has been just an undertone of I feel like I'm really throwing myself under the bus, but I think that's okay. An undertone of like whining and complaining, whether it's about not having any support or it's about having too much on my plate or the kids' schedule, even though there's always, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, this like I literally wouldn't have it any other way when it comes to the kids' sports schedule, for instance, for instance. Like, I love it. I am deeply, deeply enjoying this season, even if it's a bit frantic and busy. And by frantic, I'm sure you can relate to this in some way. It's like we have sports every single night. And so there's a lot of brain process required. I I think it's really funny because I was thinking about like, I the amount of times a day that I'm like, okay, we have to be here at this time, so I have to leave at this time, so I have to make sure that we are eating at this time, which means I need to be cooking at this time. And when you're playing this game of like all the things that have to be done, you can get really, really hyper focused on what you don't have, on the negative, on the, oh my God, I just wish I had help. I just wish, I just wish whatever. So, anyways, I'm on this walk and I'm thinking, okay, I don't love this, I don't love the way I'm ending each day, I don't like the way that I'm feeling. I need to just really tune in. I have to listen to myself. And as I was walking, the voice that kind of came out okay. So if you really want to know what it said, I was gonna, I was gonna totally censor it a little bit, which was hilarious because I just said uncensored. But the truth is the voice that came out is like, you're being a whiny bitch. Not super therapeutic, but for me to me, like you're kind of being a whiny bitch. And it's funny, you know, because obviously I'm a therapist. I've been doing this forever. Mindset work is so much a part of my everyday, and yet I am not perfect and I am still human. And really, what this inner voice was trying to tell me is like you are spending so much time complaining about the hard that we all know is not going to change the heart, right? It is 80% of the time about what we believe and what we think, period, and how we operate. If we're spending all this time complaining to friends or bitching to our partner or whining inside our head, because you have to know we are constantly talking to ourselves, even when we don't know it. We are constantly talking to ourselves. And that's kind of what was coming up for me is like, wow, there is just this constant narrative, this constant voice in my head of like, it's too much. I can't do this. This isn't fair. I am never gonna get everything done. I'm so exhausted. Even to the point where I would wake up in the morning, refreshed, ready to go. And the voice in my head is like, I'm so exhausted. It wasn't even reality. It wasn't even my fact or my truth. It was just simply my brain was getting so used to telling this story. And it really only started since the summer began. Since literally, you know, the probably the week that summer was embarking because we decided to go camping, like the moment the kids got out of school. So, you know, prepping for all of that. I just had it in my head, this is gonna be super crazy. This is gonna be super busy. And that's not untrue, but who does that serve? Because it certainly does not serve me to have a narrative in my head that this is going to be an incredibly busy, incredibly hard, almost unbearable season. And that sounds dramatic, but when we hear it over and over and over again, that's what it becomes. And that's where things like doing daily chores, like getting your laundry folded or cooking a meal or going to the gym becomes what feels impossible is because there's a voice inside of our head that's essentially telling us it's impossible, right? Or it's too much or it's overwhelming or whatever the case may be. I am interrupting this episode just really quick, interrupting myself, if you will, because I have some very exciting news. If you've been around here for a while, you've probably heard me mention that I have been working on a massive, massive behind-the-scenes rebrand. And holy shit, it's finally live. Over the last few months, I have had the opportunity to work with some of the most extraordinary talented women to completely reimagine my brand, my website, and the way that I talk about the work that I do. And honestly, the work itself has not changed very much. I have been helping ambitious women navigate business, burnout, identity, pressure, success, motherhood, all the complicated emotional shit that comes with all of that for years and years. But for the first time in a really long time, I feel like my website really sounds like me and feels like me and really captures what I mean when I say I'm not really a therapist and I'm not really a business coach, and it's kind of all its own damn category. And so if you've ever listened to this podcast and thought, okay, but what does Ash really do? And how do I work with her? And is it a good fit for me? I want to invite you to go explore the new website. You can check it out, read through the offers, creep on the about page. And yeah, I'd just be really honored too, honestly, because I'm really excited and we put a lot of work into it. And one quick heads up while the website is new, the pricing is currently not. With the launch of the website, I wanted to sort of hold on to old pricing for a moment through the month of July and then increase the rates to what I want them to be and what they really should be, given the deliverables that I give come August. So if you've been considering a studio session or Deep Cuts mentorship or the green room, or even just wanting to hit yourself on the wait list for mixed tape, now is the time. Okay, okay, let's get back to the episode. You have the life that you're willing to put up with, regardless of your circumstances, regardless of your productivity, regardless of your finances, regardless of your time management skills. And so I had this kind of wake-up moment on this walk of like, oh shit. So here I have been just trying to figure it out and trying to utilize better systems and better rhythms. And again, like I said, the rhythms and structures that I created are great. They really are. But they aren't gonna change the fact that this is the season that I'm in, and I can choose to allow it to be unbearable or I can make it exciting, or I can make it exciting. And the fundamental difference between this is what I tell myself and what I say, right? And at the end of the day, or the end of this walk, I decided I'm no longer willing to put up with this negative talk bullshit. Like I'm here, this is my life. And as morbid as it sounds, I don't know how much time I have, right? I know as a mom that it is always very crazy to experience how quickly the kids change and grow. So I know that is fleeting. We all know that, right? Time is a thief when it comes to our children. And so what in what way does it serve us to think negatively or to believe negatively about the current circumstances that we're in? It doesn't. Newsflash, it does not serve us. And so yeah, I had that sort of epiphany, if you will, uh a handful of days ago. And started to sort of switch that up. I started to meet that instantaneous, very natural reaction. Ah, this is too much, and meet it with like, no, no. I am more than capable, I am enjoying the chaos. I am the person for this life experience. And it it didn't necessarily change the circumstances outside of me. It didn't change how much I'm getting done in any given day. It didn't change, you know, it didn't change the day-to-day logistics, if you will. But it certainly changed my experiences then. And only a few days into the shift, which is going to continuously be a job that I have to make sure that these negative words don't come back, right? Just a few days into it, and I feel so much better. I feel more rested in the mornings, I feel more energetic throughout the day. I I just don't feel that frantic energy that's kind of following me around. And the funny thing is, I have so done this before. I've had these epiphanies, I have switched these mental frameworks that were happening inside my head. And I think we all do, and we forget that you don't just do it once and it solves it because the seasons are constantly changing, whether it's in how old your kids are and how much support they need or where your business is at and how much you need to pour into it or what your marriage looks like right now, or what your finances look like, whatever the case may be. There's a lot of different factors that are constantly shifting. And if we're not careful enough, like I was not careful enough without me even knowing it, my dick brain took over and started to spew nonsense into my head constantly until I was a frantic, overwhelmed, stressed out mama. And now I'm not. And so yeah, on my way to pick up my friends from the airport, I thought I need to record this now before I forget because my new normal is joy and happiness. I need to record this now in case as you're listening, you go, holy shit, my dick brain is absolutely in charge, and I'm ready to get back in the driver's seat. So yeah. That's my little my little message to you. My little Saturday message as I drive to the airport. And I I hope that you love the series. I hope that you're ready for some more solo episodes. And I'm just really grateful that you're here and that you listened. And I hope that this serves you today.