MOMENT | Want to be ambitious and present? Listen to this - with Alexi Panos

0:03Hi everyone, welcome to this Motherkind moment with me your host Zoe Blaskey. This is your place on a Monday for Calm connection and maybe even a shift in perspective before the crazy week ahead. This week's moment is with the incredible Alexi Panos. She is a master coach and trainer. She has achieved incredible things in her career and she's also a mum of four. So in this clip I ask her about the ambition, presence, tension that she feels. It is something I think about all the time. How do I be in the world and in their world? I hope this answer gives you some food for thought to ask yourself, what does this look like for you?

0:51How do you grapple with this for yourself? Please let me know on Instagram or DM me or email me your thoughts on this. It's something I think about constantly. So I'd love to know your thoughts too. Here it is. How do you hold that tension between that part of you that so wants to show up and do more and serve more and the part of you that actually has this value, which is that family comes first. Where do you put that tension? Is it a tension for you? And how do you unpack that for yourself? That's such a great question. And I feel like I'm still learning. But one thing that helps me with that gap is recognizing that a big part, not all of it, but a big part of my desire to be successful on that drive and that motivating force that has been a part of my identity for my entire life.

1:45I'm really recognizing how rooted in the ego it is. Not that it's bad. Not that I'm like, oh, I want to be serving in order to be somebody, but my ego feels on purpose when I'm in service. It feels on purpose. It feels celebrated. It feels amazing. It feels like, yes, we're doing it. This is what you're here to do. And it's still this future version of myself, this vision of what I'm here to do and who I'm here to be that if it lives in the future, in the past, it's ego. And that's what I'm recognizing is the now moment, like who I am in the now moment, whether I'm on stage talking to thousands of women or I'm at home changing diapers.

2:28The now moment is all I have and it's all that matters. So it's really recognizing that even though my values and my drive are very altruistic and very much based in integrity of the work and service and education and changing the world, it also has a hinge of the ego. So I'm rectifying that by going, you know what? Yes to all of that. I still get to serve. I still get to do all the things that feel really juicy and inspiring and amazing for me and not at the cost of my family. It has to be in the amplification of my family. So how can those two play together at the same time? Again, that's that gray area where I'm still learning what that looks like on a day to day basis.

3:09But just asking myself every single day, like what matters most today? What do I want to achieve today with my family first? Then what do I want to achieve today for my mission second? and by putting that presence with your family first are you rewriting a generational pattern yeah big time big time like I love love love my family because my family has inspired so much of who I am today and like what I've created entrepreneurs workaholics immigrant mentality like build build build go go go and I love that I had that model because I learned so much from that. But I also learned that I wanted to be really present with my family because I was ultimately raised by my grandmother because my parents were working all the time and my parents instilled incredible values and did an amazing job where they could.

4:04But still to this day, work is a very strong value to everybody in our family. So for me, it does feel interesting because I am bumping up against a very generational identity, especially in women, which is not traditionally the case for women. So it's interesting because I want my kids to have a different experience where they see that their parents can be in the world doing big things up to an amazing mission, but never at the stake of what matters most to them.