25 - How You Can Feel More Successful More Often as a Mom and Business Owner

Have you ever done all the things you thought would make you successful and still felt like something was off?

In this episode, we're diving into one of the most important (and most overlooked) conversations in the world of ambition and personal growth: Where does your definition of success actually come from, and is it even yours?

From the beliefs we absorbed in childhood, to the success stories modeled by the people we looked up to, to the way our education system quietly shaped what we thought "making it" was supposed to look like---most of us are running a success operating system we didn't consciously install. And when that goes unexamined, it can quietly derail our peace, our joy, and our sense of fulfillment in ways we can't always put our finger on.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why so many ambitious moms feel like something is off even when life looks good on paper
• The Success Alignment Spectrum (and where you might currently fall on it)
• How external validation and inherited success stories keep us from unlocking our most fulfilled path
• The process of success recalibration and why it's some of the most important work you'll ever do

Get access to the incredible tool I mentioned in this episode!

Download the Success Recalibration Ritual, a powerful guided experience for ambitious mompreneurs who are ready to stop chasing someone else's version of success and start feeling good about their own.

 mom boss, success mindset, regulated ambition, success recalibration, mom entrepreneur, working mom podcast, alignment, ambition for moms, mompreneur mindset, redefine success, mom burnout, personal growth for moms, Mom Boss Freedom podcast, success beliefs, external validation 

Are you an ambitious mom looking to start or grow your business in a way that feels aligned? Here's what to do next:

1. Follow me on Instagram @MomBossFreedom and subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss the newest episodes! If this content really resonates with you, be sure to leave a review and star rating as well<3
2. Schedule a 15-minute clarity + connection chat to share more about your business and the vision you have for what's next. (I do currently have 1:1 business coaching spots open!)
3. Access the Success Recalibration Ritual so you can start feeling more successful more often as a mom and business owner!
4. Head here for freebies and to learn how to get nervous-system-safe coaching as an ambitious mom building a meaningful business.

If you're reading this, our paths were meant to cross :) I can't wait to support you in starting or growing your business as a busy mom!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey mama, welcome to the Mom Boss Freedom Podcast, where ambitious moms come to build and grow businesses that give them the freedom and flexibility that they deserve as both a mom and an incredibly talented human. Whether you're brand new to entrepreneurship or scaling a business you already started, you're in the right place. I'm your host, Paige Figaroa, mom of two and former English teacher turned online business owner. Around here, we talk about making space for both your big dreams and those little moments you don't want to miss as a mom. So reheat your coffee one more time and let's dive into today's episode. Welcome back to another episode of the Mom Boss Freedom Podcast. I'm really excited to have you here with me today for a solo episode in which we are going to be talking about how you can feel more successful more often as a mom and a business owner. And as I'm recording this right now, it's actually the night before I'm going to be running a workshop at an in-person summit for working moms. And as I was preparing for this workshop for all these incredible moms tomorrow, I had this overwhelming sense of like, I don't want other people to miss out on this magic. Because what we are going to be going through together inside of that workshop tomorrow, it's really transformative and powerful. And I didn't want those of you listening here to feel like you were missing out. Not that you would necessarily even know that you were missing out, but you would be. And I don't want to, I don't want to gatekeep here. And so I'm going to be sharing not all of the things that we're going to be doing inside of that workshop, but a little bit of it that I think is going to be really helpful and transformative for you. So inside of this episode, we are going to briefly chat about what's going on with how we are viewing success, how that's holding us back, and then how we can break through some of those blocks. When it comes to our definition of success, for many of us, it really boils down to a hodgepodge of beliefs that we adopted throughout our formative years, right? From our parents, from the communities we were raised in, also from the societal and systemic structures that we're surrounded by as well. I talk about that concept a little bit more inside of episode 22 when we dive into imposter syndrome. Then through our adolescent years, we end up also adopting a large portion of our definition of success through the people we spend a lot of our time with and from the people that we really look up to. For me, this meant that my definition of success was very much modeled by what I saw from teachers and from coaches in particular, because those were the people that I was spending the most of my time with and that I really looked up to. But those were also people that very much tended to bend over backwards to serve their students and their athletes, often at the detriment of their own personal life, which is a success story that I then struggled with when I myself was a teacher experiencing intense burnout. So you can see already a little bit how these stories that we grow up with about what it means to be successful can kind of infiltrate our lives. And then going through school obviously also plays a big role in molding how we perceive success. So as a former middle school and high school teacher for almost a decade, I will be the first person to point out that the way our education system was designed does not do a lot to honor the individual gifts and interests that so many students have. And I think there has been some positive change in recent years, but not nearly enough for what we need to do in order to allow humans and like blossoming young adults to really step into and take responsibility for what they view as being successful for their own unique life path. For example, I remember when I was in high school in the 2000s, it really felt like at that time there was this stigma for students who were wanting to go into trades as opposed to college. Then in my last few years in a classroom, around like 2022, 2023, I do feel like I saw that stigma melting away some. But even still, I feel like society puts such a pressure on young people to see college as one of these main pathways to success when in reality that modality of learning is not meant for everyone. And so many students would better serve themselves to explore other pathways of success that are more unique to them and their passions and what they, you know, came here to do on planet Earth. So I'm getting a little bit off on a tangent here now, but long story short, our definition of success can become a very tangled mess of beliefs that are intricately wired, like our perception of money and success, productivity and success, health and success, and so on and so on and so on. And so, with all of this going on in our subconscious, we develop this amorphous and eclectic definition of success that seeps into our daily actions and that influences our self-concept and self-perception. The danger here is that when these adopted success stories go unchecked and unexamined for too long in our subconscious, you know, they fly around under the radar without detection. That blob of success beliefs can completely derail our personal growth, our peace, our joy, and ultimately our sense of fulfillment. Because so many of us then end up measuring our success against values and metrics that aren't even ours to carry, right? Like we didn't a consciously, we didn't consciously agree to that version of success that we were striving for. And a telltale sign that this is happening, at least from my experience, is this feeling like you're doing a lot of things you thought would make you happy, but something in your life still feels off. Like something with how you are doing work or life or motherhood or anything like that just isn't quite clicking. A helpful way to imagine this is what I call the success alignment spectrum. And this sense of feeling off falls on the far left of that spectrum. This is when what you're striving towards is really someone else's version of success. And it might look like a good path to take on the outside, but something feels off for you on the inside. And nobody else really can determine that except for you, right? You're the one living your life, you are the one that you know can sense what feels good and what doesn't. And sadly, there are a lot of people who go through their whole lives on this side of the spectrum. Then as you progress more towards the middle of the spectrum, you land on a point where I call aligned but unsteady. And this is when you know what you want out of your life and like what you think it means to be successful, but the journey still feels a bit exhausting and shaky. Like you're still pretty heavily reliant on external validation to feel like you're doing okay at life. You may have your success story somewhat tangled up still with long-term goals, which can make it challenging for you to fully enjoy all the ways you are being successful right now. And I feel like this part of the spectrum is where a lot of people find themselves when they get to like their late 20s through maybe their mid-30s, maybe even a little bit after that sometimes. Or once they go down one path for a career, usually, and realize that that version of success didn't pan out how they thought it would. Or even once they initially awaken to the world of personal development and they start, you know, reading the mindset books and doing more of that type of work and just really realizing that how they were spending the earlier part of their life is not actually, you know, in their best interest. And this is surely better, a better place to be on the success alignment spectrum than on the far left where you are totally misaligned. But where it feels the best for us as humans on this spectrum is the far right where we are aligned and regulated. This happens when you are striving towards your own consciously chosen version of success, and you've built the internal practices to help you feel good about it along the way. When you're here, you don't feel like you need external validation to know when something feels right for you. You feel good while you're still on the way to achieving those longer-term goals that you have. And look, with this success alignment spectrum, most of us move back and forth along this continuum depending on what season of life we're in, like our current role at work, maybe our stage of business that we're in, whatever is going on in our personal life as a human and as a mother. So the goal with our evolving version of success and where we find ourselves on this success alignment spectrum, it's not to perfectly land on the far right of the spectrum at all times, right? That's that's not a hundred percent possible all the time. But the goal is to be as close as we can to the right of the spectrum as often as possible because that's where we feel the most energized and the most fulfilled in our life. So as you can imagine, the cost of not taking the time to consciously think through this success business is high, right? Like when we allow ourselves to run an outdated success operating system that we ourselves did not intentionally install, we run the risk of living a life that's in accordance to what someone else told us it means to be successful. Whether they did that like outright telling us or they modeled it through how they celebrated us when we were younger or how they didn't celebrate us when we were younger. And that's a recipe for a lot of regret and resentment and just really not becoming our most actualized, happiest selves in this lifetime. So, what can we do about this? So, in my opinion, it is a bit of a process, but the steps themselves are not complicated. So, first, we need to open up the hood and see what's actually going on inside of our operating system. In other words, reflect on and be honest with ourselves in figuring out which inherited success beliefs we are carrying that are making our engine putter out, that are making us not feel good about how life is going. And then once we take a look at what we thought success meant to us up until this point, then we can determine if those are stories we want to keep or if those are stories we want to consciously let go of because we no longer want to carry the heaviness that they bring with them. And then, of course, we need to reinstall a new operating system and new success stories and beliefs in their place so that we have like a new guidance system to operate from. And this work of success recalibration is something I'm incredibly passionate about because for me it has been beyond transformative when I've actually dove into some of these practices. So I've learned bits and pieces of this process from mentors that I've had, from books that I've read, and a lot of it also just through my own trial and erroring. And I really wish that everyone on planet Earth made the time to do this very important work of success realignment and recalibration because our world would be filled with so many more happy and fulfilled humans who are operating as their most joyful selves. And like, wouldn't a world filled with people like that just sound so amazing to be a part of, right? I lived the first nearly 30 years of my life, I would say, without hardly any conscious awareness of the success stories that were operating in my own subconscious. And as a result, I always had this feeling of like, well, I did all these things and I thought they were gonna make me happy and feel successful, but somehow it doesn't feel right. Like it feels like I'm still missing something. Once I started digging in and rewiring my inner success circuitry, I could feel myself becoming more energized in my work, more relaxed in my personal life and like just my day-to-day way of being, more empowered with making shifts to put me on a more aligned path, feeling less anxious and heck, even being able to lay on the couch without feeling so darn guilty about it. So I actually didn't intend for this episode to be as long as it is. It's actually not even that long, but I wanted this to be like a nice quick, quick win for you to start your week here. But I hope that this chat has helped you kind of think a little differently about how you've been viewing success. And I want to invite you to download an incredibly helpful tool that I developed called the Success Recalibration Ritual. This ritual includes a collection of helpful reflections and practices to help you consciously choose a new version of success for your path forward. And the beautiful thing about the ritual that I created for you is you can keep coming back to it every few months when you feel like you've entered a new season of business or motherhood so that you can constantly evolve and update your version of success to make sure that you are operating as your most fulfilled and happiest and most peaceful self. So if this sounds super supportive to you, you can find a link to the success recalibration ritual in the show notes. I really hope you try it out and I hope that it helps you unlock so much more alignment in the way that you are doing business and motherhood. If you love this episode, this nice little short and sweet one, I'd love to hear from you. You can always send me a message on Instagram letting me know what ideas resonated with you the most. I'd also be so appreciative if you would rate the podcast and share it with another mama who you think needs these types of conversations in her life. Don't forget to check the show notes. I can't wait to see you inside another episode next week with an incredibly inspiring guest Montpreneur. Have an amazing day.