Ambition And Motherhood Are a Magic Combination with Dr. Anne Welsh

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2:31When I'm with an audience giving a talk, I often ask them to give me the first word that comes to their mind when I show them this sentence. People expect me to be. What do people expect you to be? And especially if I'm with a female audience, although I get it with men and women, it's always terms like professional, competent, the place to go for answers, capable, compassionate, responsible, right? Really adult and not too joyful expectations. Today, I interview Dr. Ann Welsh, who is a therapist, a psychologist in private practice. And she has written a great book called Ambitious Mother. And it is about motherhood and ambition, which is a tough sell because most of us are sort of taught that it is very hard when you're a mother.

3:37to have a career that's super ambitious and that you totally love and we're not, you know, stressed and miserable. Like the narrative around working motherhood is kind of crap. Well, she's here to change all that. And we talk about it. And I want to start the show with an exercise that she offers. And it is about reclaiming your identity from all those expectations. So we'll start with that exercise and then get into my interview with Dr. Ann Welsh on motherhood and ambition. So many of us are walking around with a million shoulds, right? Again, I know you've talked about this a lot on your show, right?

4:15All the expectations that we have of ourselves. And I suggest that we do a closet clean out. So just like if you were going to do a closet cleaning out, you'd throw everything on your bed and you'd label, here's where I got it from. Here's what is itchy. I'm going to get rid of that sweater. These pre-pregnancy jeans don't fit. I'm going to pitch those, right? And the only things that go back in your closet are the things that actually fit you in your body right now and your life, right? Those are the only things that go back in. Everything else is out of the closet. It's just clutter in your brain.

4:45You can do that with your identity, right? So you write down all of the roles that you're holding, mother, sister, friend, daughter, spouse, leader, et cetera. And you write down every single expectation that those roles carry. And what I find is just doing that, there's usually like an exhale just of, oh my God, I'm lifting a lot of myself. And then you go through and you only circle the things that actually you believe are important for you to perform that role well. Not the thing that Aunt Susan said, not the thing that that grad school professor said, not the thing your mother said, or Pinterest or Instagram or whatever, what do you believe in the subjective state looking at it right now is actually true to be a good mother or to be a good sister or whatever it is?

5:34And those are the only things that go back in your closet. And then as the guilt and the judgment and self-criticism shows up during your week, if it's some of that clothing you got rid of, you just label it. Oh, right, that's Aunt Susan. I don't actually buy that. I don't need to handle that. And you kind of put it away. And again, it's easier for me to talk it through than to do. It's a little deeper than that. But I think the idea works, right, of just labeling all the garbage we're carrying around with us all the time. And particularly as mothers, there's a lot of it. I hope that exercise was helpful and I encourage you to do it.

6:10Now, on to my interview with Ann Welsh.

6:17How are you, Ann? It's great to have you on the show. I'm great. I'm really excited to be here today. I love your book, Anne. I have to tell you, I mean, it's so funny because it really is hitting me at a time where I am so struggling with my own ambition and my career identity in a way that I probably haven't, I'm not sure, ever. Oh, me. Um, and you know, I liked how you gave ambition such a, a redefinition. Um, it was really helpful to me. So thank you. Yeah. I mean, it's funny because I think that, first of all, I think even when our kids are older, mother, motherhood is so iterative that this is not just for new mothers, right?

7:09We go through this over and over and over again as our kids needs change and they grow and the develop and certainly teenagers throw you for a loop and other caregiving shows out. But I think with ambition, I know for me, it was really, really important because I had been so ambitious and really for achievement, like a very specific. Yes, me too. Right. Like I love an A. I still do. Right. But more letters after my name, the better. And so when I left Harvard and and wasn't was, you know, quote, just a private practice and had a handful of clients. I clung to that title of psychology, like I needed it because it felt so core.

7:50I didn't really quite know how to make sense of it. And so that was that kid that I left for is now a very large 15 year old. And I think that was when I really started to have to think about why, why are we calling ambition this one thing? Why can't we broaden it? Why can't we think about it differently. And, you know, it started really shifting how I approached it with all of my clients from there on out. Well, it's so great. But I want to start right up top with something that I think I know I believe in. I think a lot of my listeners do too. You may, I think. You have a client, a woman in your book, who says, my daughter is my secret career weapon.

8:35and um i i love this so much a because i have always felt that being a mother is my secret career ambition weapon um many of the people that i've hired to work for me over the past almost 20 years are mothers um and it's such a sort of f you to the storyline that we get fed so tell us about this woman and why her daughter is her secret weapon yeah I love this story so Max Amina is uh Justin is she's not a client she was someone I was connected with when I was researching the book and she's amazing and I talk about her as such an a great example of what I call the motherhood advantage right and so she's someone who pre-kids was a bass player and a spoken word artist, like super creative, but not the world's most stable career, right?

9:29She voiced that she's living kind of paycheck to paycheck and she's in her twenties and that's working and it's all fine. And then she gets pregnant. And I think the story so often from the outside is we would look at that and instantly write her off, right? She's got to get a job, pay the bills, or there's poverty, or we dismiss it somehow. And what happened is she got super clear on what it is she needed to do. And she gets the job eventually at Mattel in part because they had childcare. And she was brilliant when it came to tech, starts doing all sorts of development for them. And then she gets put on developing, I think it was a like online, the website, online games for Barbie.

10:13And she happens to have a daughter, right? All of a sudden, And her daughter is her beta tester. And she does so well because of this, right? And it allows her to bring in all that creativity that she had in her previous life and fold in her daughter to work and really excel and build a huge career there. But the thing they think is so cool is it didn't actually stop there either, right? That she got really inspired by being a mother to make an impact on the world that her kid is living in. And so she starts understanding the political system. And eventually she makes a documentary about the Electoral College and its roots in slavery and like all of these amazing things that she goes and it's won an award.

10:56It's called One Person, One Vote. And now she goes into classrooms and tries to get high schoolers involved in voting and voting and interest in the political system. And so she's like impacting this huge change again, all because of her experience as a mother. Right. So often we think motherhood is the end of the story. And what I find is it's usually the beginning. I find that, too. And I and I think that, you know, one of the things I've tried to do in my career is is help women feel not so guilty about the fact that they still love to work, even if they're moms. you know I because we again we kind of fed that it's this double it's the double bind of like you know you're going to be miserable and struggling if you're a working mom and you're always going to want to be with your kids and so you're always going to have the tug you know and sometimes you want to be a work yeah yeah that was one that I felt a lot of guilt around and I had been raised by working mom.

11:58So I was kind of surprised by how it hit for me. Like my mom was a doctor. She had four kids. She worked far more than 40 hours a week as well do, you know, as a physician, especially as a female physician in the eighties, just to like go up and be respected. Um, and I thought I would work full time and not feel the tug. And then I was almost like the messaging around me was like, don't you miss your kid? And quite honestly, when I went back with my first, there was a huge part of me that was relieved because it was like, well, here I'm competent. I know what I'm doing. And at home, I feel like a total idiot half the time.

12:34But I think the thing that I was missing there was that there was a dominant narrative that working is bad for your kids. So the doubt was coming from that. And that was really hard. And I think the data has moved away from that, but the story hasn't. I think right now we still hear a lot of pushback and social media around work being bad for kids or daycare being bad for kids or whatever. And yet the data is pretty clear. Like if, if it's good quality daycare, there's no difference in kids that are in daycare versus kids are at home in terms of wellness outcomes. And the amount of time you spend with your kids is irrelevant to their wellness outcomes as well, right?

13:17As long as the time you do spend with them is quality. So I think a lot of the guilt for me came from these stories. And that's why it was so important to me to challenge these stories super directly so that women who are enjoying work don't have to feel guilty about that. I appreciate it. So you have a term in your book, the ambition paradox. paradox. Define it for us. And tell us why you think it's escalated so sharply in recent years. Yeah. So what is a paradox, right? It's an unsolvable problem. And we have put work and motherhood as opposing forces. One robs the other. And so cannot show up at work and be a good mother and you can't be a mother and show up while at work.

14:09That's the story that we have right now. And so it feels like what women I see doing are trying harder and harder and spreading themselves thinner and thinner between these poles. And they're actually just getting transparent in their own lives, right? They'll even know where they exist anymore because it's just these two things. And that doesn't actually solve the problem, right? That just makes us miserable. And it actually disconnects us from ourselves, our wants, our needs, our desires. It makes us either really unhappy or really numb out. And guilty. Yes.

14:49I think guilt is such a prevailing emotion for so many mothers, whether they have paid employment or not, to be honest. And, you know, I am, I feel like at least I had a little bit of the benefit, you and I are probably around the same age, of not parenting during social media mostly. So that I had that, that one less sort of echo chamber of guilt to make me feel bad. I had a, you know, I sort of had an analog little kid'sdom, which I'm grateful for, because I think that the constant discussion and fetishization of motherhood online probably leads to more guilt. I don't know what you think about that.

15:32Absolutely. Right. I think so. Two thoughts. One is, you know, I had my first social media didn't exist, but the Internet did. right yeah oh yeah and there I remember and this was partly being a working mom was that I couldn't join a mom's group there were no mom's groups that weren't met outside of like nine to five so I didn't have access like the only access I had especially because I had my kids younger and was the first in my group of friends so I could look things up on the internet and it was a scary place then too right I mean every question I had it was like somebody was lambasting you for even asking the question, let alone doing it maybe differently than they did.

16:11And it was really hard. I remember in particular around questions of formula feeding, this was like very challenging. I remember being shamed at a La Leche League meeting in Arlington, Massachusetts, so badly that I burst out in tears and left. Maybe it was the same one because I had a very similar experience of like, I'm getting up every hour to feed and I'm back at work and this is really hard. And I was just looking for advice. And it was kind of like, suck it up and keep doing what you're doing because formula is awful. That's what I had admitted to them that I was breastfeeding, but I was supplementing with formula because my baby seems so hungry.

16:47And they looked at me like I was, they said, well, we do not endorse formula. Like I was poisoning him and it was just, yeah, so painful. Yeah. But I will say that has escalated with social media a hundred percent. Right. And I think the thing about motherhood is no matter what you do, someone's going to disagree with it. Right. If there were one right way to mother, we would not have a bazillion books on the topic. Right. And so there's a lot of disagreement because babies and families and mothers are not one size fits all. And what works for one family is not going to work for another family.

17:29But you wouldn't know that looking at the internet. And I think what happens with social media in particular is we we kind of can't escape that judgment like it used to be you could at least close the door of your home just like our kids are I think our man these days right you go home you're in your safe little bubble and you can kind of close it off and you it's very hard to do that um in this day and age and I've had clients where they've actually really had to just get rid of social media because it just was so toxic to their own motherhood experience and so destabilizing. And once they got rid of that, like completely took it off their phones, they actually felt better.

18:04They were more able to listen in of like, what does my kid need? What do I need to do here? As opposed to doing that through the filter of a thousand other voices in the room. I completely support that decision, not just in motherhood of shutting down the social media, you know. So you name three culprits that sort of plague ambitious mothers, perfectionism, people pleasing and pretending. Okay, all of these, given my audience will feel very familiar. Certainly, certainly to me, how do the three Ps color the paradox of ambition? Yeah. So I think about the ambition paradox as living at the nexus point of those three things, right?

18:55It's a kind of a Venn diagram and it's like right in the middle. And all of those things are a fear-based response. Perfectionism is a fear of mistakes, right? I know you've gotten into this on your show in previous episodes that there's the, you know, it's not necessarily I have to get the A plus, but it's that black and white thinking about success and failure, right? It's like, Well, I didn't need the A plus, but that B is still equivalent of an F. Like I might as well have failed at that point. I just have to tell you right now, and I had such a motherhood anxious achiever fail because my son just texted me and said he's ending the year with a B plus in honors chemistry.

19:37And I was so upset and so disappointed in him. And I almost texted, is there anything you can do about that? But I stopped myself and instead I texted, how do you feel about that? I had to really catch myself because my first instinct was a B plus. That is not good enough for you, mister. It was like, ugh. This is an ad for a book, but not just any book. It is a book that will change the way you think about business and maybe how you run your business. It's called Life at the Speed of Play by Mark Pincus. I want to tell you about one of my favorite concepts in the book. It's called the abyss. You've all seen the visualization from Anthropic, right?

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24:12You can write your own money story with Monarch. Use the code achiever at monarch.com and get your first year of Monarch Core at half off just$50. That's$50 off your first year at monarch.com with code achiever. I can so relate. I mean, our kids bring up so much of our own stuff over and over again. And it's funny with perfectionism because I had really done a lot of work on it in graduate school and like really like thought I fought those demons. And then you have a kid and it brings it all up again. And part of that is that the stakes feel so high, right? Like you just love this kid so much and you want the best for them and you want them to be happy.

24:56And so you want to be the perfect parent. And you also kind of, our kids somehow become like a report card on our parenting too, which is really - On ourselves, to be honest. Yes. And so it just gets like stirred up at such a fervor once again, and you have to kind of work on it all over again. Particularly what I love about clinically working with motherhood, but it's painful to experience it yourself as I know firsthand. But yeah, so there's the perfectionism. And then there's people pleasing. And that one's fear of disappointing others, right? And I hadn't thought of myself as a people pleaser.

25:34But I so was if I look back, right? I mean, it's, I always like to joke that most of us that then in my audience were the pleasure to have in class, right? Because you're exactly what the teacher was asking of you. You didn't even have to think about it. You just intuited it and you did it. Did your homework. Right. Exactly. It would never occur to you to not do something that someone asked of you because you wouldn't want to upset them. But it might also be in your social relationships and it can be part of the parenting too, right? If I don't say no, or I don't ask for my needs because my needs are inconvenient to other people.

26:13And certainly this is one that, again, I've had to like deal with even, even now as I'm working on this book and promoting it, I'm having to make some big asks of my partner and my kids in terms of thinking about my time and availability differently. And while cognitively I'm okay with it and I'm doing it, I still have that inner initial response of like, Ooh, are we allowed? Is this okay? They're going to be disappointed. Are you sure you can handle that? And like talking myself through it, right? It's stuff that shows up. It's deeply ingrained in particular for women. How does that power the paradox?

26:49Because the paradox, as I understand it, is these joint messages that work and mothering are at odds with each other. Does perfectionism and people-pleasing and pretending, is it the behavior that furthers the paradox? Explain that relationship a little bit more to me. Yes, exactly. Right. So these are the things that we're socialized to do. in particular as women and that have succeeded in getting us where we are right I mean let's be honest my perfectionism and my people pleasing and my pretending that everything's okay on the outside got me into medical school it got me a job at Harvard right like it gets me what I want from an achievement oriented point of view in a socially acceptable way exactly right I haven't like ruffled too many feathers along the way either.

27:43The problem is then enters motherhood and these things do not work and we keep doubling down on them. And that's what's making us miserable, right? We're, we're using these solutions that don't fit motherhood, don't fit working motherhood, really don't fit humanness long-term, but more often than not, it's like motherhood is the thing that tips us over into recognizing something's off or that it makes it very obvious that we can't keep this up anymore. Yes. And that's kind of the big reckoning, right? It's like all of these things that like my go-to pre-kids was outwork any problem. Something comes at work.

28:23I need to stay up till two in the morning. Okay, I can do that. And then I'll show up at work the next day and keep going. That does not work with motherhood. It is not effort in outcome as a result. and you can't outwork because you have to be present and available for this human that you are taking care of as well. And it can be, it can really turn your world upside down, I think, in a lot of ways. Right. And a lot of this stuff is habitual, right? So you have to sort of learn, talk about pretending. Yeah. So this is the one that I kind of had to work the hardest to wrap my head around how I want to articulate it, but it's really pretending both inside and outside.

29:05And so I have a lot of clients who come into my office and if you were to look at them on paper or even when they walk in appearance wise, do not look like a person that's struggling at all. Right. And, and, and if you were to talk to them at the PTA meeting or the school pickup or whatever, you'd think she's got it all together. She's the one that's got this figured out. I want to be her when I grow up. Right. For sure. And the problem is that all of these people, and I think what I realized was, Ooh, I think sometimes I'm even that person that's walking around with this veneer of everything's fine.

29:44I'm handling it. And nobody's actually articulating what's going on underneath. But when we're all pretending, then we create this story that keeps us all isolated and keeps each individual person feeling like, well, I must be the only one failing. And there's a layer where I think sometimes we're pretending to ourselves. And that's the clients who come in and tell me, everything's fine. I have everything I wanted. And they're like numb. And it actually takes a while because they're in the office for a reason, right? But it takes them a while to actually let that break down a bit and say, well, but I'm totally numb and I don't know what it is to feel happy.

30:24Or sometimes like I'm actually incredibly miserable. I just have not acknowledged that to myself in years. What's, what is the risk that you think people perceive of admitting to themselves that everything's not okay? I think there's two main ones. And one is as a mother, I think there is a fear that if I say I'm not okay. I'm somehow saying something bad about my kids or about motherhood, right? That if I'm unhappy and I wanted my kids, then there's something wrong with me. And I literally will get that pushback even on, you know, as someone who is on social media, if I post something about being ambitious outside of motherhood or wanting things in addition to motherhood, I often get someone responding and saying, your kids should be enough.

31:12Like our kids should be - Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like somehow your kids should be enough to make you happy. And why would you want more? And so I think there's this risk of if I say I'm not happy, then I'm somehow failing my kids or making them feel responsible when our own mental health is separate from our children. They're related, but they are not the same thing. And I also think there's a fear of if I acknowledge that I'm not happy, I'm going to have to blow up my life. Yes. I feel that one. I've been through that. I've been through that I want to burn it all down but oh my god I can't do that and the reality is I think the hopeful message that I have to that in particular is that it's usually not true and in fact if you try if you try to solve it by blowing up your life you usually end up kind of close to where you started right like the person that like oh the job is awful I'll switch jobs and then you switch jobs four times and then you realize, oh, maybe it wasn't the job.

32:17Wherever you go, there you are. My favorite therapy saying of all time. Exactly. Right. And more often than not, like that big shift feels terrifying. So we don't do anything. Right. We get stuck or we do that big change. And what happens is our nervous system doesn't register that as safe because it's too much change. And that makes us feel more dysregulated and more upset. And instead, what I really advocate for is the one degree shift. Okay, things are awful. You don't feel happy. Let's figure out one small change. And those small changes allow your nervous system to feel safe and to regulate.

32:57And it also can start to create a positive feedback loop. It feels slower at first, but it's much more sustainable and more true. I want to, I'm writing this down, actually, I want to pause on the small change because, you know, everyone I know, my friend, my friend group, we're pretty much in perimenopause and we're having, and our, so our kids are teenagers or, you know, heading to college mostly. Although we have some younger ones too, right. And the sentiment I just was having, I was it was a client not a friend but you know and she said I just I mean I have the perfect life but I'm just so restless there's just a piece of me that's so unsatisfied and I said do you feel bored

33:54and where we got to is she felt she felt lonely and she felt bored even though she was busy every moment of the day and had her husband and kids around her all the time and then I have other friends who want to blow up their marriages and you know who god love us in perimenopause we're angry at things you know our instinct is just fuck this you know um I myself have been through that battle for a few years, although I'm in a good place now. So I love the small change. Can you go just a layer deeper into that and how we might think about what small change would give us that sense of forward movement?

34:40Yeah. So first, the analogy, I think I shared this in the book um but remember but you know um the analogy i use is this a compass right so my oldest is a boy scout and they like go orienteering in the woods and if you like take you know if they tell you go at 10 degrees for 20 paces and you're off by a few degrees at 20 paces you're going to still land at the same end point like one three is what you're aiming for and you're fine but if my airplane pilot is off by a few degrees, I'm going to allow me to get my country, right? Like it's a lot more important over the long haul. And that's what I'm trying to get people to understand that you don't have to blow up your life to end up in a very different place.

35:24And so an example, I can use examples for my own life really easily, right? When I remember I'd had my second kid and I have four now. And prior to my first, I had been an avid yogi. Like I every week had done yoga for For years, it was really stabilizing. I loved it. And I just completely stopped when I had even my first and hadn't been able to go. And at some point I was, you know, I was really struggling after my second with all sorts of things. He didn't sleep. And my husband was like, why don't you go to yoga? And I was like, I can't. He was like, just go. I've got the kids. And I went for that hour.

36:02And the whole drive over there, I was anxious. And I felt like I can't be doing this. what is is he going to be okay with the kids even though he had the kids before I had all sorts of feelings and I went and it felt okay but it wasn't like life-changing in that one hour and to be honest I came home and the kids were crying because they were zero and two like because kids cry a lot um but I had gone he went and then I went again the next week and then I went again the next week And it was a gradual unfolding of returning to movement in my life, which was really good for me, and returning to mindfulness in my life.

36:41Like all of these things kind of came back. And, you know, eventually that built up also from someone who had never really left her kids to being able to go away for the weekend with my friends and like do all these things. But it was that one yoga class that was the degree, one degree shift. Yes. Sicking with that. Right. And so I can look back and tell you that one class didn't do anything. And if I had never gone again, it would have been, I wouldn't even remembered it. But I let it become and grow over time. I didn't look for the one class to be the difference. And I think that's kind of how the book came to be too, which is funny, right?

37:17Like it was, I remember COVID, you know, like we're all trapped at home, but we had a puppy. So I was out walking the puppy a lot. And like a sentence at a time would bubble into my head. And for years, it was like, I can't write a book. I don't have time. But these little set, like it was these little glimmers of sentences that would show up. And I started writing them down a little bit. Again, not really thinking I was writing a book, but it would become a paragraph. and eventually it was like oh I really like writing I forgot I used to do this a lot pre-children in my like more academic life this was a part of it that I enjoyed um and then it was like as I connected with the joy I was able to make the bigger goal and eventually start going after that but even then it wasn't I'm going to write a book it was like, well, let me write an essay.

38:10Okay, maybe this could be a book. I'll just outline it, right? So it's like really one step at a time that actually has radically shifted my career in terms of being more public facing and my advocacy work. But it all started simply by I'm walking a dog and letting some sentences bubble into my head and not ignoring them entirely. Tuning in. Exactly. I mean, I think the process of tuning into joy is to me so transformative, especially at midlife. You know, I think you get to a point where you may have foregone joy in favor of being the human doing, you know, for everyone, which you talk about in the book.

38:56And so even just thinking about like you did, like what, what used to give me joy? Yeah. For me, the thing that I did years ago now that so radically shifted everything, even though it felt so selfish at the time, was I actually started indulging my hobbies again. I, I, I had no, like most working moms for many years, what was it? It was work kids, work kids, work kids, work kids, work kids. And then about 10 years ago, I was like, I really miss playing tennis. I want to do this. I want to do this. I want to travel. I want to. And honestly, it's I think that that for me kind of healed me. Well, especially because a hobby, the whole point of it is that it is for you and it is for enjoyment.

39:52Right. We're not modifying it. It's not about achievement. I think for me, that's part of what the joy that yoga brings. Right. Is this I'm not I'm not doing headstands. Right. You're not going to be a professional. I fall down a fair amount. Like I just like doing it when I'm doing it. That's kind of the extent of it. Yes. Yes. And, and homies don't have to be expensive. They don't have to be extravagant. You know, they can be incredibly niche. But I think that's beautiful. I want to talk a little bit about the different kinds of ambition that you list in the book and why it's so important to think more broadly.

40:33Can you can you tell us about the different kinds of ambition? And then maybe we can like zone. I know there's a lot we can zone in on a couple. Yeah, for sure. You know, so I love to talk in metaphors. I do it with my clients all the time because especially for those of us that are really verbal analytical thinkers, self-included, a metaphor can sometimes, like a visual metaphor can get in where words can't. And so the metaphor I use is a ladder versus a web. So we all know what a ladder model of ambition looks like, right? We talk about climbing the career ladder and there's really evenly spaced rungs.

41:09and there's only room for a few people on it at a time. And really the only thing you get to be ambitious for. And if you fall off it, you're in big trouble. You failed, right? It's black and white. You're either on it or you have fallen into disgrace. That's right. On it means you're going after power, title, maybe money. You know, I do a lot of work with folks in like consulting and big law and these places have the classic ladder model, right? That up or out mentality of a workplace. But I advocate that we think about ambition as a web, right? And honestly, this came to me many years ago, watching my kids, another point from a rabbit, on one of those playground webs.

41:51There's one that's not too far from our house. And it was like swarming with kids that day. They love those things. And they're like dangling by their toe, like sitting on the top eating a snack. And like someone is climbing up and down and sideways. There's all sorts of ways to be on it. And there's room for everyone on it. And there's room to rest because people can move around you. You can change directions, right? And if we think about web ambition in that way, it's so much more expansive, right? Because now we sure we can still be ambitious for money or power title, but we can also be ambitious for connection or creativity.

42:35Space is the one that I love that you talk about to pause, rest, impact. And we get to choose over and over and over again. Right. So it's not like, you know, you pick your ambition at 20 and you're locked in. Right. You can pivot multiple times through the course of your life and you don't have to leave behind the identity of ambition to do so. I love that. It hit me also. I mean, I've been, I'm very, I'm just going to say it. It makes me sound like a jerk, but I'm very motivated by money. And I, for many years, like really worked hard and I made a lot of money. And my life has totally changed in the past two years.

43:21and I am making a lot less money than I have in decades. And when I was reading your book, I've been using this metaphor, I like metaphors too, that I'm slowly, almost like when you buy sponges at the grocery store that are all shrunk down and you put them in water and they slowly inflate, I kind of feel like that's me or I'm like unclenching very, very slowly. and it's been painful and it makes me anxious and it makes me feel bad about myself and I have so many feelings but I also realized that if I didn't unclench if I didn't take space like that sponge I was I was not going to be in good shape yeah um and it's been it's been really hard because my classical ambition for achievement and money just has gotten totally, it's, I don't know, I literally don't know what it is right now.

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47:13If you're ready to launch your business before Black Friday, go to shopify.com slash anxiousachiever and start your free trial. shopify.com slash anxiousachiever to hear your first. You know, the other day I was talking with my friend who is both certified financial planner and a financial therapist. We were talking about money and emotions. Money is way more than dollars and cents. It's emotional, right? And I'm trying to teach my kids to have healthier emotions around money than I did. But I'm getting better every year. And part of it is that I use Monarch. Monarch simplifies, identifies, and helps me have a plan for my money.

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48:45That's$50 off your first year at monarch.com with code achiever. I would say money is the hardest thing that people come into therapy to talk about. Harder to talk about than sex. Like it is. I think it is the hardest thing for people to really put language to. I've had clients who have been more afraid of telling me how much they make than issues with their romantic partners. I believe it. Because we have such complicated, deep-seated stuff around money. And I also want to make sure to say it's okay to be – it's not that ambition for money is a bad thing. And actually, that's why I was so grateful to have Rachel Rogers interview with me for my book because she shared how her ambition for money came out of motherhood and wanting to provide a stable income for her kids.

49:36And then that motivation became about impact, right? But that's all okay. But I think maybe part of what you're articulating is that achievement and money were locked together too. Oh, 100%. Yeah. 100%. And I think for a lot of us anxious achievers, it's a type of behavior and it becomes intertwined. And we don't know how, like you said before, we don't know how to separate from it. It's like painful. It's like giving up a piece of yourself. I said that to my husband. I said, I don't know who I am if I'm not successful. You know, it's been my, yeah. Well, and that's where I think if we really shift how, how are we defining successful, right?

50:28And money can be a piece of that. And certainly I think money has for, again, for those of us that are achievement oriented, we don't get grades anymore, but we get salaries. nice little number for you, right? It's not the 100%, but it's whatever number comes after that. And, you know, as I've been working on the book, my income has come down because I'm not doing as much client facing work. And I had that same like, oh, is this okay? Like, and even a temptation to find another numerical metric to look to. Oh, interesting. Like what? Like, you know, not that I'm paying too much attention to social media likes and, but to like, is this book going to sell well?

51:07And is that going to be a verdict on my ability and my worth as a human being, right? And working ahead of time, because I don't have those numbers yet, to separate those two things, because it's really hard. It's almost like, it's like this well-worn neural pathway, right? And whenever we have a well-worn neural pathway, we have to really actively work to change it. And essentially we have to give it a new story and be very, it's like, you know, I always use the analogy of sledding, right? If, if, if it's a well-worn pathway, it's kind of like, um, a sledding hill and 20 million other kids have gone down before you.

51:45And so there's like one path and your sled's probably going to go down that path, no matter what you do. And you have to pick up the sled and like walk it to a whole nother part of the hill and kind of like wiggle it in the snow and might be kind of slow and awkward getting down. And eventually with enough runs, that will feel easy, but it takes a lot of work to get there. And it sounds like you're in the like, I'm standing at the top of the hill. I'm like, it'll pass right there. And you're telling me I have to go down this other side. And I kind of don't know how to, or what that's going to feel like.

52:14That's a real, it's a great, it's a very Northeastern metaphor, but I think most people will get it. Yeah. I mean, because I think that, I think that ambition is also a social construct. Yes. A hundred percent. Right. And so in our society, you and I both live in a very sort of hard, we live in New England, right, with like super high achieving, hardworking, like kind of push through mentality, which is so aligned with achievement, with income, with status. this, I often when I often feel like telling people to not care about that is like telling people to not blink. It's not realistic, you know?

52:59Yeah. Maybe it's like a both and. I think so. Right. I think it's not don't care about that. And also it's really privileged to be able to say, oh, I don't care about money. Yeah. You don't care about money. I have enough to not care about money. So let's like acknowledge that that's part of it. But it's more, can I separate my worth as a human and the permission I have to exist on this earth from these other things. Yes. It's a little bit like widening the aperture of how we define worth. It's beautiful. Let's talk about, let's talk about a favorite topic of mine before we round out to some of your, your solutions and your path forward that you author.

53:41You talk about unhealthy striving, right and healthy striving this is probably a term that listeners have heard what does what does how what does healthy striving look like in the context of the motherhood paradox how do you know it's healthy yeah it was really important to me to find some labels that worked here because especially with working motherhood we are given two solutions typically lean in or pause or leave Yeah. Yeah. Right. It's very black and white and it doesn't leave us with actual choice. Right. And we can get into the systemic piece of this and some of the stuff that was coming out in late 2025 around women are opting out.

54:27Right. When the reality was they were being pushed out and not supported. but I think in terms of the striving piece, we're so, so often what we tell women is just be less ambitious, just want less. That's the solution. And that's just another way to keep women small, right? We don't tell dads to want less. We don't tell men ever to want less or to take up less space. And so I really wanted to find a way to articulate this taking up space and wanting, but doing it in a way that is sustainable. And the huge unlock is around what you're going after and why. And so it's not just what, it is that why piece.

55:11So with unhealthy striving in relation to the ambition paradox, it's driven by others. It is externally motivated. And I described the feeling of it as fear. It is that, again, remember I said perfectionism, people pleasing, pretending, these are all fear-driven emotions. and unhealthy striving and really classic ambition is a little bit like FOMO, right? Like I am afraid of what's going to happen if I stop. Right. I'm looking over my shoulder. I'm looking around, making sure. Yeah. It's hypervigilance, right? And when we are in a hypervigilant state, we cannot rest. We cannot relax because we're scared all the time, right?

55:47Because the titer is about to eat us. And so you got to keep moving. There's no room for joy. Like to back to the question of, you know, noticing joy, you can't do that if you're hypergiblet. Your brain can't access it, literally. When we actually stopped to question, what is it that I want, which is a big question and a hard one in particular for women and mothers, and we name that, then all of a sudden, instead of running away from the tiger, we're running towards the ice cream truck is my joyful moment, right? Of like, I really want this thing. And it's kind of fun to just be going after it, right?

56:27Like, I don't know, put yourself in your like eight-year-old kid's shoes. Like the music's tinkling and your friends and all the neighborhood kids are running after the ice cream truck. You're all together. You know you're going to get there eventually. It tastes amazing. And it's just enjoyable. And if you have to stop and catch your breath for a minute, it's fine. Ice cream truck's waving for you when you get there. and so with healthy striving it's the sense of I'm going after this thing that I want that feels interesting to me that feels worthwhile to me I'm not equating my value as a human with whether or not I get it right and I can stop and rest and set boundaries and limits around it I can include other people there's room for community and connection it's not a competition And all of that then feels so much better.

57:17And there's room for the inevitable caregiving interruptions that happen as part of our lives as humans. I think it's a great message because it's not saying if I want to make law firm partner, that's unhealthy striving. No, make law firm partner. but and but again i do think that when the rubber meets the road most and talk we'll get to and here's the systemic piece i find that many people the high achievers that i meet they are acting from a place of hypervigilance and their body is in a threat response because that's what work does to people in 2026 and that's what the economy in the world does to people in 2026 it's like really hard to get out of a threat state, to be honest.

58:08Yes. Yes. I think there's like a both and here, right? Because to your point, you know, I can think of a client who's in, you know, private equity and a lot of our work was just get it. She had the financial means, but getting a house manager, getting extra help with the right help everywhere else so that she could make her goal at work because she really wanted it. And so we figured out what are the pieces we need to do to do that and it felt aligned and okay. That's not everybody's goal. But yes, I think that's part of my point was it's not about the size of the goal or the ambition. Isn't the problem?

58:43That's right. The problem is whether or not you want it. And then also some of the systemic and cultural constraints that we have around it. Yes. Which are, which are many.

58:58um as we as we close out here you know the personal versus structural is where we always end up in the U.S. right where you you make the point that we're told that the village that we are all promised that will make motherhood and working easier for most of us it's just that's not going to happen. Yeah. And largely, you know, parenting has become about, you know, how much, how much help can I afford to hire? If you want to make time for yourself, it's, it's really hard. So what, what do we do about that? So A, I'm really glad you asked this, because this is the reason I almost didn't write the book.

59:41Yeah. Because I knew that as one author and one book, I could not solve every systemic inadequacy that we are dealing with as a parent. And that if I, but I also knew if I only focused on the individual, that I didn't want to add to the language of like, women just need to do it differently. Yes, lean in. That didn't feel fair either. And I actually really, again, I got a lot of pushback from publishers about including the systemic piece in what is more classically like a self-help book. And I refuse to cut it out. Now, the fourth part that talks about the systemic change at workplaces and men need to shift, it's one section of one book.

1:00:22So it is limited in its scope because of the amount of space I had to include it. And there's lots of great scholarship out there. I mean, we know what needs to be done. It's not like it's a mystery. Exactly. Like I interviewed David Smith, who I know you just had in your show and had an amazing interview. Right. And so I kind of point people to some resources and also approach it. But I think it's one of those things where two things are true right now. If we tell women the system needs to change and just wait for it. You know, we've been waiting for a long, long time. And that doesn't help anybody actually in this moment because we're all exhausted right now.

1:00:58And it's the same dynamic I hold with any therapy client or a lot of my coaching clients of here's the reality. Let's name the water you're swimming in so you don't internalize it and see it as a you problem. And simultaneously, what can we shift? How have you internalized that system and how can we challenge that? So what are the narratives that we need to change for you? And what are the skills we need to embrace? And then simultaneously, I'm doing advocacy as much as I can right on the workplace front and going in and talking to workplaces to make those changes. It's kind of that you have to take the multifaceted approach.

1:01:34Yeah. And I feel this way about mental health and neurodivergence at work where, you know, my new book that's coming out next year, The Atypical Achiever, is very personal. It's very much from the what can I do perspective. And I also, as a longtime progressive political consultant and organizer, felt a ton of guilt. And I was looking at my speeches for the past couple of years and noticing how much it's shifted away from an understanding that workplaces will change, that people will respect your boundaries. and I've really shifted to like how do I help myself in this horrible system and I think it's again it's so sad but we have to we have to protect ourselves while keep fighting for the legislative and policy change frankly that it's going to take because I don't think companies are going to do it on their own they've proven to us that they won't yeah yeah and I think you know I'm I am hopeful I think you can't be a psychologist if you don't have some degree of hope about the capacity of people to change right so it's not like I'm giving up and so much has changed I mean so much has changed right I look back at my mother who graduated med school in 1969 and she was one of 10 women in her class and her report card would talk about how well she combed her hair, her medical scorecard.

1:03:10Yeah. Right. And so I look at her experience and then to my experience in science and graduate school, and clearly so much has changed. If you take the Zoom now view, there's been a lot. If we Zoom in on the past couple years, it's easy to get really down about it. But I think I do have hope that we will make those changes. I do see some companies making changes for the better and adding in support and really recognizing some of the stuff that I'm talking about. And at the same time, you know, my heart is as a clinician and working with individuals on what they can do. That's what I'm trained at.

1:03:47That's what I'm good at. And so I wanted to give something that could hold that complexity for women, but also give them tools that they literally can use the minute they pick up the book. All right. So give us, as we close out last question, give us a tool. My favorite, I think, easy one to do is I call it the closet clean out for your identity, which is really corny. But again, it's like a visual that you get instantly. So so many of us are walking around with a million shoulds. Right. Again, I know you've talked about this a lot on your show. Right. All the expectations that we have of ourselves.

1:04:26and I suggest that we do a closet clean out. So just like if you were gonna do a closet clean out, you'd throw everything on your bed and you'd label, here's where I got it from. Here's what is itchy. I'm gonna get rid of that sweater. These pre-pregnancy jeans don't fit. I'm gonna pitch those, right? And the only things that go back in your closet are the things that actually fit you in your body right now and your life, right? Those are the only things that go back in. Everything else is out of the closet. It's just clutter in your brain. You can do that with your identity, right? So you write down all of the roles that you're holding, mother, sister, friend, daughter, spouse, leader, etc.

1:05:03And you write down every single expectation that those roles carry. And what I find is just doing that, there's usually like an exhale just of, oh my God, I'm lifting a lot of myself. And then you go through and you only circle the things that actually you believe are important for you to perform that role well. not the thing that aunt susan said not the thing that that grad school professor said not the thing your mother said or pinterest or instagram or whatever what do you believe in the subjective state looking at it right now is actually true to be a good mother or to be a good sister or whatever it is and those are the only things that go back in your closet and then as the guilt and the judgment and self-criticism shows up during your week if it's some of that clothing you got rid of, you just label it.

1:05:51Oh, right. That's Aunt Susan. I don't actually buy that. I don't need to do that. And you kind of put it away. And again, it's easier for me to talk it through than to do. It's a little deeper than that. But I think the idea works, right, of just labeling all the garbage we're carrying around with us all the time. And particularly as mothers, there's a lot of it. I always ask audiences to tell me the words that spring to their mind when I ask the question, people expect me to be. And it is almost always a variation of on top of it, professional, compassionate.

1:06:39The place to go to when you need an answer. You know, all of these really kind of like good girl expectations. Oh, I love that. I love that exercise. Yeah. And I think with mother, right, so often the words that we think of are martyr, right? Those are synonyms. And infinitely patient. I'm not, right? I'm a human being. I'm not infinitely patient. I wish I were more patient than I was. and these are things that like nobody is all the time. And in fact, with motherhood and martyrdom, it's actually not so good for our children in the end. Turns out it actually does matter that you take care of you.

1:07:23Yes. Well, Anne, thank you so much. Thank you. This was lovely.

1:07:32That's it for this week's show. If you like the show, follow us and tell your friends. And please leave us a review. It really helps the anxious achiever get found by people just waiting for our content. I'm your host, Maura Aarons-Mele. Lots more to come in the next episode.