Ep 146: Why You Don’t Need To “Handle It Well” To Grow—And Other Self-Development Lies We Believe : Business Streamlining For Work-Life Balance
Episode Summary
Why do your best mindset tools seem to disappear when you need them most?
When challenges hit hard, many high-achieving women feel blindsided by their inability to "handle it well." This episode uncovers why that reaction is not a failure, but actually a crucial insight into your personal development—and what to do with it.
In this episode you will:
Uncover a game changing reframe for your most challenging times
Learn the two self-development lies you're probably believing that are getting in the way of your growth
Find out why I'm talking to you about this even before I've really figured it all out for myself
Press play now to discover how to mine your toughest moments and reveal next-level growth.
Episode mentioned:
Ep #71: How I Structure My 33-Hour Workweek
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This podcast dives into the challenges of leadership, decision making, and delegation, helping women business owners and mompreneurs overcome overwhelm, decision fatigue, and the guilt of working less. Learn to build powerful habits, embrace smarter working, and master time management by streamlining tasks, implementing business systems, and even prioritising self-care. We explore efficiency, productivity, and automation to create passive income, reduce overworking, and finally take time off—without the fear or shame. Say goodbye to imposter syndrome and people pleasing while running a small business: It's time to shift your mindset, reclaim your work-life balance, and thrive!
Full Episode Transcript:
Jenna Harrison: [00:00:00] In this episode, you'll discover a self-development myth about hard times that's blocking real growth. Welcome to the three day work Week, helping women entrepreneurs run profitable, meaningful businesses in just three days a week if they like, without stress, guilt, or sacrificing growth. I'm your host, Jenna Harrison, sharing practical strategies, mindset hacks, and even some woo, to help you work smarter leap boldly and find true balance.
Let's dive in. Welcome, welcome back to the three day work week. Today I've got a short but powerful episode for you where you will uncover a game changing reframe for your most challenging times. You'll learn the two self-development lies you're probably believing that are getting in the way of your growth.
And you'll also find out why I'm talking to you about this even before I've really figured it all out for myself. This episode is unscripted. I wanted to come to you kind of when I'm in the middle of this and [00:01:00] just tell you about how I was having a conversation with a client of mine, and I've been going through a lot of things lately.
There's been a lot going on just in the period of the last couple of weeks, and the same for her as well. And what I've come to understand for myself is that these periods are really critical in helping you understand which mindset, tools, or self-development growth tools you have really, really integrated and live by, and which you just knew conceptually.
You also get information about what tactical changes you need to make for the future. Maybe you make a week of meals ahead of time if you're gonna be solo parenting. And you can even get more clarity about a pattern that's repeating. You're seeing how this reminds you of other times in your past, and it helps you finally get to the root or get closer to the root.
Like I'm suspecting my current moment has a lot to do with an upper limit or success intolerance, and that [00:02:00] hadn't become clear to me until this moment, but it makes a lot of sense. We've just bought this home. I'm really living a really wonderful life in so many ways. My friendships and my son is feeling very settled and we have this beautiful home and we live in this beautiful place and I've been having a lot of chaos in my personal life, and much of it I have to admit now, is self-created, like deciding to buy the house right after we had settled in to the new country.
My client was lamenting the fact that we'd done a bunch of work together, but then when she entered this really stressful period, so much of it just seemed to go out the window, and it really made her question everything, even about the bigger questions of life. And while she was definitely handling it better than she would've in the past, she wasn't handling it as well as she wanted to.
And doing all the things that she'd, and when I say all the things, I [00:03:00] mean all the mindset things and the self-care things that she thought were now part of her everyday routine when times were quote unquote good. And when I shared with her this concept that I have about how this is actually an information gathering time when you see, okay, these are the things I absolutely lean on, but now these are the ones that kind of went out the window in that period of stress.
And that's actually amazing because I can see what I've fully integrated and what I haven't. She used the term stress test and I thought that is so perfect. If you don't know, a stress test is something that they'll do, for instance, to judge cardiovascular health. So your heart may function perfectly when you're at rest, but when you really increase the stress, you may start noticing abnormalities, but we wouldn't know that.
If we hadn't gone through that stressful period, so think about how differently [00:04:00] you would move through challenging times if you were telling yourself, oh, I'm not supposed to get it all perfectly right now. This is a stress test. This is just giving me information. It could really help us see our difficult periods, not as setbacks, but as opportunities as stress tests.
I think there's a big self-development lie, which is that we're supposed to always handle it well. And another lie is that we're supposed to look like we always have it all together. Neither of those are true. In fact, if they are true, it means you are not growing and perhaps that you're avoiding the duality of life or even gaslighting yourself.
Gas lighting is when you try and tell yourself that it's not really that bad or it's not really happening, but meanwhile your emotional body has a completely different perspective and then that creates a clash. My son [00:05:00] was doing some like a times table online thing, learning his timestables, and he came and showed me really excitedly that he got all of the answers correct.
And I of course told him that's great. But I also have this ongoing thing with him where I'm letting him know if he's getting them all correct, then chances are he's not really stretching himself. And I said, do you think that might've been what was going on? And he looked at me and he is like, actually I was doing only tens, you know?
And yet we all wanna be at a 10 all the time in life, especially us high performers. People socialized as women who are supposed to be able to do it all. Plus, of course, it's human nature to jump through loops to avoid the negative. It's how we're wired. But A, that only keeps you repeating exactly where you are now, and B, completely avoiding challenging [00:06:00] circumstances and emotions is unfortunately unrealistic.
And your attachment to perfection actually brings you out of flow with the universe. There's just no way that you can be learning new tools and then be able to access them perfectly in a time of stress. And in fact, part of the neurological change that happens in our brain is this thing, this kind of, uh, feeling that happens.
Afterwards, when you look back in hindsight and you're like, oh my gosh, I forgot to do X. That is part of the learning mechanism that helps us access those tools or those resources more quickly next time. Now, I'm just realizing as I'm talking here that I'm almost taking this position of. Being on the other side, and I'm like telling you how it goes, but the truth is I'm maybe a little over halfway through the [00:07:00] hump.
And the reason I'm choosing to come on now and talk about it is because of the lie that we have to look like we have it all together or we have to look especially in business or as coaches that we're already on the other side of it and can go back and tie everything up in a perfectly neat bow. And I really wanna let you know that wherever you are in your journey, I'm right there with you.
It may be about different topics or kind of at a different level, showing up in a different way. My capacity for stress might be higher than yours. I'd hazard to save for business things, but that doesn't mean I never arrive at a level that exceeds my current capacity for handling it to the best of my ability.
So you and I may be going through different things, but I am still going through periods just like you are with the same kind of thoughts that come up and the same kind of overwhelm and overwhelming emotions that come up. And then of course, [00:08:00] conversely, your capacity is likely higher than mine for certain situations or emotions, but it's not a race, and this is why we find people that have more of what we're looking for to help shorten our timeline.
And to provide us some support and direction and cushion throughout the process rather than taking the slow route. So I am not done. I am fully learning. So to get specific, when I was going through this really challenging times, that kind of the culmination of it was a kind of life or death situation with somebody that I love a lot.
And luckily everything turned out to be okay, but there was a period where things felt very uncertain. And that was happening simultaneously with several other things as well. And I realized that in hindsight, I was able to look back on it, that I was really from a mindset and resilience perspective, handling quote unquote, handling that well.
And I was [00:09:00] really allowing myself to feel emotions, be with emotions, tolerate them, and not shame myself because of them. And even not shame myself for not being able to, quote unquote, keep it all together. I was giving myself grace with dropping balls. But you know what I wasn't doing? I was rushing around from one thing to another.
I wasn't doubling down on the need in that period to take micro breaks and to take to reset my nervous system. Now, this is something I've known about for a long time. I've worked on a lot. I've done, I've worked through many tools and I teach this stuff. If you go back and listen to an episode that I did maybe a year ago about how I structure my then 33 hour work week, I talk about this concept about how even when things would get a little crazy in the business, I felt like it was a good day because I would take [00:10:00] these.
Mini vacations, right? Or these breaks throughout the day to really recenter myself. And that completely opened up new problem solving and new ideas. And I talked about how this was like a discipline that I had learned, but what we get to see is to what point, right? And this was really helpful for me to see this stress test was really helpful for me to see.
What isn't fully integrated yet, and not to shame myself because of it, but just to be able to access it more quickly last, next time, and to be able to see kind of progress that I have made, growth that I have made and celebrate that. But we know when we get into a head space of I have to handle it well, and I have to keep it all together and I need to look like I have it all together.
People will judge me and I will judge myself. That totally blocks our [00:11:00] access, our visibility on what we actually need to know, and chances are we're repressing our emotions and we're driving ourselves harder into the ground and all the things that are always setbacks. And this from someone who just did that very thing last week.
So my friend in this episode, you've learned really, I believe, life-changing. Reframe that you can put a little post-it note onto your laptop screen to remember about your most challenging times, the two self-development lies that really get in the way of your growth, and that I'm talking to you about this now when I'm still in the middle of it, because I don't wanna perpetuate.
The lie that we have to look like we have it all together or that it's only worth talking about once it's tied up in a pretty little bow at the end. Alright, my friend, I hope you enjoyed this [00:12:00] episode. If so, please share it with a couple of your friends that need to hear it today. Let's talk again on Tuesday.
Thanks for joining us here at The Uncommon Way. If you want more tips and resources for developing clarity in your business and life, including the clarity first strategy for growing and scaling your business, visit the uncommon way.com. See you next time.
