You love your kids. You want to be present with them, enjoy your time together, have more patience, and feel good about the mother you’re becoming. But at the end of another long day, you find yourself wondering where all the time went and why, despite your best intentions, you spent so much of it doing things that weren’t particularly important to you.
You answered a few work emails even though you were supposed to be done for the day. You rushed your kiddo through bedtime because you still had things to do. You spent half an hour cleaning the kitchen instead of sitting on the couch with your family, and then stayed up late trying to get ahead of tomorrow.
Now you’re exhausted, feeling guilty, and promising yourself that tomorrow will be different.
Relatable?
What’s interesting is that if I asked you why you made any one of those decisions, you’d probably have a very good explanation. You weren’t being careless with your time. You were doing what seemed to make the most sense in the moment.
So how is it that you can spend an entire day making what seem like good decisions and still end up feeling so far away from the life you want?
The Problem With Making Good Decisions
Think about how many choices you make in a single day.
Should I answer this email now or later? Should I finish cleaning up or go play with my kids? Should I say yes to this request or tell someone I can’t do it? Should I spend another 20 minutes researching my child’s sleep, or should I go to bed?
Most of us make these decisions one at a time. We look at what’s happening right in front of us, decide what seems most important, and move on to the next thing. And most of the time, we don’t give those decisions much thought.
But consider this for a moment… What if the decisions that make the most sense to you in the moment are actually getting in the way of what you want most?
You want to spend more time with your kids, but when work needs your attention, you keep working. You want to feel rested, but when you see everything that still needs to get done, you stay up late. You want to be more patient, but you spend your days rushing from one task to the next, trying to make sure everything gets done.
There’s nothing particularly unreasonable about any of these choices. The problem becomes clear when you look at what happens when you make them over and over again.
You can make decisions that seem right in the moment and still end up creating a life that doesn’t feel right to you.
Why Do We Keep Doing This?
One reason is that we’re often more focused on what we might lose than what we could gain.
Let’s go back to that work email. You know your kiddo wants your attention, and you know the email can probably wait. But there’s a part of you that’s worried about what might happen if you don’t respond. You know, all the What Ifs.
What if someone needs something from you? What if your boss thinks you’re not working hard enough? What if you fall behind?
So you answer the email, and for a moment, you feel better. That’s one less thing to worry about.
Now think about the mom who wants her child to grow up feeling confident and capable but can’t seem to stop stepping in whenever her kiddo is struggling. Her child is upset about something that happened at school, and before she even realizes what she’s doing, she’s offering advice, asking questions, or trying to come up with a solution.
She loves her kid like crazy and wants to help. Of course she does. But there’s something else happening. Watching her child struggle is uncomfortable, and when she steps in to fix the problem, some of her own discomfort goes away.
In both situations, the mom gets some immediate relief; the email is answered or the child’s problem is being addressed. But there’s a cost that isn’t as easy to see in the moment.
The mom answering emails is missing another opportunity to connect with her kid. The mom who keeps fixing problems may be taking away opportunities for her child to discover what they’re capable of handling on their own.
Neither mother wants those outcomes. In fact, both are working incredibly hard to create the exact opposite. They’re just so focused on avoiding something uncomfortable in the moment that they’ve lost sight of what they want in the long run.
Sometimes the Thing You’re Trying to Avoid Is Just a Feeling
After more than 20 years of working with high-achieving mothers, I’ve come to recognize how often this shows up in their lives. These are women who are used to being capable, responsible, and successful. They’ve learned how to work hard, solve problems, stay organized, and figure things out. And for the most part, those skills have served them really well.
But then they become mothers, and suddenly they’re in a world where so much is outside their control. They can’t always make their children happy. They don’t always know the right thing to do. They can’t possibly finish everything on their to-do lists, and no matter how hard they try, they can’t control how other people feel about their choices.
For a woman who has spent the majority of her life learning how to stay ahead of things, this can be super uncomfortable. So she does what she’s always done. She works harder, looks for better strategies, tries to get more organized, and puts even more energy into making sure everything and everyone is okay. And usually, without realizing it, she starts making decisions based less on what she actually wants and more on what will help her avoid feeling worried, guilty, uncertain, or out of control.
Think about how much time and energy can go into trying to make sure you never disappoint anyone, never fall behind, never make a mistake, and never have to watch someone you love struggle. It’s exhausting. And what’s particularly frustrating is that the harder you work to avoid those experiences, the less time and energy you have for the things you actually care about.
Avoiding discomfort can become more important than creating the life you actually want.
What Happens When You Look at the Bigger Picture?
I want you to think about the decisions you make every day, especially the ones you barely notice anymore. When you feel behind, do you automatically choose work over rest? When your child gets upset, do you feel like you have to do something to make it better? When someone asks you for something, do you find yourself saying yes before you’ve even considered whether you have the time or energy? And when you finally have a few minutes to yourself, do you fill them with another task because sitting still feels uncomfortable?
I’m not suggesting that any of these choices is necessarily wrong. Sometimes you really do need to work, sometimes your kiddo needs your help, and sometimes saying yes to someone is exactly what you want to do.
What I’m asking you to consider is whether you’re actually making those choices or whether you’ve become so used to responding in certain ways that you no longer stop to think about them. Because when you look at each decision on its own, it might seem perfectly reasonable. But when you look at what all those decisions are adding up to, you may realize that you’re spending your days in ways that don’t reflect what’s most important to you.
And that’s worth paying attention to.
Your days are your life. How you spend them determines, in large part, what your experience of motherhood will be.
You Don’t Need to Stop Being Ambitious
I want to be very clear about something because I think this is where so many conversations about working motherhood go wrong. The answer isn’t to stop working hard, lower your goals, or spend every free minute with your kids. I don’t believe women should have to choose between being ambitious and being deeply connected at home. You can love your career and love being a mom. You can have big dreams, take your work seriously, and still create a close, secure relationship with your children.
There will be times when work needs to come first. There will also be times when your children need more of your attention. And there will be times when the most important thing you can do is take care of yourself.
The issue isn’t which of those things you choose. It’s whether you’re making that choice because it’s what you want or because you’re afraid of what might happen if you do something different.
That’s a very important distinction.
How Relational Intelligence Changes the Way You Make Decisions
This is one of the reasons I’ve become so interested in relational intelligence.
Relational intelligence is your ability to stay connected to yourself, to other people, and to what’s actually happening, even when things feel uncertain or uncomfortable. And while that might sound straightforward, it’s something many of us have never really learned how to do.
When you’re used to solving problems and staying in control, discomfort can feel like a signal that something needs to be fixed. Your child is upset, so you need to make them feel better. Someone is disappointed, so you need to change what you’re doing. There’s unfinished work, so you need to keep going until it’s done.
But what if the discomfort you’re feeling isn’t actually telling you that something is wrong? What if your child can be upset and you can still be a good mother? What if someone can be disappointed in you and you can still feel good about your decision? What if you can leave work unfinished, go to bed, and trust that you’ll figure things out tomorrow?
Relational intelligence helps you develop the ability to stay present with those uncomfortable feelings long enough to recognize what’s actually happening. And once you can do that, you have more freedom to choose how you want to respond.
You might decide to let the email wait, even though you’re worried someone will be disappointed. You might sit beside your struggling kid without offering a solution. You might leave the kitchen messy and spend the evening doing something you enjoy.
Or you might decide that answering the email, helping your child, or cleaning the kitchen is exactly what you want to do. That’s the point. You’re no longer making decisions just to get rid of uncomfortable feelings. You’re making them based on what you value and what you want to create.
The more you practice doing that, the more those individual decisions begin to add up to a life that actually feels like yours.
Two Questions I Want You to Start Asking Yourself
The next time you feel pulled to do something, especially when that choice doesn’t seem to match how you want to spend your time, I want you to get curious about what’s driving it.
Start by asking yourself: What am I afraid will happen if I don’t do this?
You might discover that you’re worried about disappointing someone, falling behind, making a mistake, or feeling out of control.
Then ask yourself, If I keep making this choice, is it going to help me create the life I want?
I’m not suggesting you need to stop and examine every little decision you make. That would be exhausting, and it’s definitely not the goal. But I do want you to start paying attention to the choices you make over and over again, especially the ones that leave you feeling frustrated, disconnected, or disappointed in yourself.
Recognizing those patterns gives you an opportunity to do something different. And I want you to understand that doing something different may not feel good at first.
You might have to let someone be disappointed in you. You might have to leave something unfinished. You might have to watch your kid have a hard time without stepping in to make it better. If you’re used to avoiding those experiences, choosing differently can feel surprisingly difficult, even when you know it’s what you want.
That’s why changing these patterns takes more than knowing what you should do. You have to develop the ability to stay with the discomfort that comes with doing something new. Over time, you may discover that many of the things you’ve been working so hard to avoid aren’t nearly as dangerous as they feel. And that realization can change so much.
You don’t need to make every decision perfectly. You don’t need to give up your ambition, and you don’t need to spend every waking moment focused on your kids. But I do want you to consider whether the decisions that feel safest in the moment are actually helping you create the life you want.
Because you deserve to enjoy the life you’re working so hard to build. And you can learn to make choices that help you do exactly that.
