Hi, I'm Sam, your inner voice and self trust coach for women who refuse to choose between career success and being fully present with their kids.

This is Journal Entries where we break free from self sabotage, reconnect with our inner wisdom and live truly fulfilled lives in both of our roles.

Let's dive in.

Welcome back to Journal Entries.

Today we're diving into part 33 of applying the Let Them Theory to your life.

In part one I gave you a recap of the Let Them theory, which is the idea that letting people be who they are instead of trying to control them creates freedom and peace.

And I shared my unique approach to actually using it in real life to create more energy.

Step one was catching yourself when you're trying to control others in real time.

That's the whole noticing and becoming aware.

To do that you can pay attention to your physical cues, thought patterns and emotional signs.

I'm always thinking about how our energy and capacity each day is limited and we are choosing where to invest it.

So step two is my energy audit.

This is assessing what this control attempt is costing you.

So asking yourself is this worth my limited emotional energy and what am I sacrificing by focusing here instead of on myself?

Whether it be what that person is thinking of me or what that person is doing.

And then step three is the redirect.

So this is shifting the focus to your response, not their action.

This is the Let me moment.

Today we are going tactical.

I'm giving you specific scripts, strategies and solutions for for applying the Let Them Theory during your most triggering moments as a working mom.

The morning rush of trying to get everyone ready and out the door, the transition from work and then back to home at the end of the day, and even partner expectations.

I felt like those were the top three that were probably the most triggering that I will give you some solutions for and by the end of this episode you will have a practical toolbox for those situations where your energy just feels like it gets hijacked by other people and their personalities or expectations in your life.

I will also be sharing my Peace and Confidence collective which is opening for exclusive pre sale spots during my social media break.

I'll mention all the details at the end, so click the link in the show notes to fill out an application and learn more about it.

After submitting that application you will receive personal insights from me about your goals and your subconscious self sabotage fingerprint that's making it so that you're stuck in overwhelm and not following through on the things that you know you could logically do to make your life better and to feel better.

But you're not doing it, so I'll be giving you that regardless of whether you join us or not.

Let's talk about why mornings are such a such a hotspot, Triggering time for control issues.

There's actually solid science behind this.

Your body's cortisol levels naturally peak in the morning, and it's actually designed to energize us.

But for working moms especially, it's colliding with the time pressure and the mental load that I almost said all of us, but most of us are trying to coordinate with multiple people's needs in the mornings.

Our brain's executive function, which is the part responsible for planning, prioritizing and emotional regulation, is literally working against a ticking clock while managing unpredictable variables.

Like a seven year old who suddenly can't find their favorite shirt or shoes, or your four and a half year old who still makes you get them dressed in the morning.

When these biological brain factors combine with the very real consequences of being late, like missing meetings at work or school tardiness, your nervous system registers this as a threat.

Your fight or flight mode kicks in, and your brain's automatic response to a threat is control seeking behavior.

So you're not imagining it.

Mornings are literally a perfect storm of biological, psychological and practical pressures that trigger control mechanisms.

You're not a control freak.

It's kind of wired within you.

And it's not a parenting failure.

It's your nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do under pressure.

Understanding this doesn't mean that you are stuck with it.

Okay, so you're not doomed.

Take a nice deep inhale and exhale and know that just by recognizing this pattern, you can work with your biology and your brain instead of against it.

Which is exactly why the let them approach is so helpful in these high pressure morning moments.

Here are three specific morning moments and simple ways to use the let them theory.

So first, if you have dawdling kids that are taking forever, you can think.

Let them move at their pace.

Let me prepare the night before.

If there are forgotten items in the morning, you can think.

Let them experience natural consequences.

Let me create a visual checklist.

Maybe work preparation.

You can think.

Let them have their morning chaos.

Let me carve out 10 sacred minutes for myself.

The key here is come up with what you are comfortable with letting them experience and with what you can do in advance, during or afterwards that feels energizing or at least is protecting your peace if it helps you feel better.

Holding boundaries like this versus controlling everything and doing everything in the morning just to get out of the house quicker is actually super helpful.

Research from Harvard's center on the Developing Child indicates that children develop stronger emotional regulation when parents model healthy boundary setting rather than attempting to control all aspects of behavior.

Their studies show that children develop greater resilience when they experience appropriate natural consequences within a supportive environment too.

You know, I'm all about stronger emotional regulation for ourselves, but even more so for our kids.

So when we're practicing this for ourselves and our kids witness it, it's like a double whammy.

One of my private clients, Laura, she used to put on, I say put on her armor every morning before dropping her son off at the bus stop.

She knew that her son was going to be cranky and have a meltdown, but only for her, not her husband, by the way.

Of course, letting him have his big emotions didn't feel good for her because it was putting her in a bad mood or a stressed mood first thing in the morning.

And it didn't make her feel good.

It felt her, made her feel like a bad mom.

So during our coaching, I helped her realize that she was trying to get him to stop being cranky or stop being so emotional in the morning, and that she never actually asked him why he.

He felt the need to express these emotions.

And she was always in fix it mode.

So we came up with questions that she could ask her son to get him more curious about the situation instead of trying to control his emotions while feeling dysregulated herself.

Because of this, her son started opening up more, sharing more about his school day and feelings, and Laura was able to remain calm and curious herself.

What made the difference for Laura wasn't just letting him be cranky, as you might presume with the let them theory.

It was the strategic journaling and the coaching work that we did together to uncover her own emotional triggers around his behavior.

This is where my approach goes.

Beyond the basic let them theory.

We don't just accept situations.

We get curious about the deeper patterns beneath them through targeted journaling prompts that reveal our actual needs.

There's an emoji that is a hole.

If you type in hole, an emoji comes up and all it is is a hole.

But it's just, it makes me think of like a rabbit jumping down a hole and you really get to the depths.

I just think you, like, go down the rabbit hole and you get to the what's really underneath these thought loops and what we think we need or what we actually do need, but we're not doing it.

And that is what I think of my work.

It's, we go down that hole and once you become aware of that, then it's the actual work to implement.

And that's what I help my clients do, which is so fulfilling.

Now though, let's dive into the transition from work to home.

And I'll be sharing a ritual that you can do to help shift whatever energy you had from your workday and reset or recalibrate to the energy that you want to embrace at home.

The transition from work to home is particularly challenging for working moms because you're not just changing locations.

You are performing a complete neurological role shift that men typically don't experience.

In the same way, research from the Journal of Applied Psychology shows that women engage in what scientists call cognitive role transitioning.

This is literally switching mental frameworks up to 30% more frequently than men in similar positions.

And this isn't just a women versus men.

This also isn't just about multitasking.

It's about shifting your entire identity multiple times a day.

At work, you're operating from your prefrontal cortex.

Again, that's the analytical, goal oriented, results driven self regulation.

But the moment you step into your home, you're expected to instantly switch to what I've learned is the limbic dominant functioning, which is the emotional attunement, nurturing and present moment awareness.

It's completely different parts of our brain.

I actually love how Mindy Kaling once said it when she explained, what makes me a great boss is not what makes me a great mom.

I'm really efficient at the office and I think everyone respects that.

But then I go home to three kids under seven and if I value efficiency in that role, I'm going to go crazy.

I have to spend switch.

She calls it code switching.

But this role switching, if you will, isn't just mentally exhausting.

It creates what psychologists call role strain when the expectations of one role can directly conflict with another.

Take that efficiency, for example.

Being really efficient at work is great and you want to get things done efficiently.

But coming home and trying to get things done quickly and efficiently and in a timely manner just doesn't happen.

When you have kids, especially young kids, things take longer and you need to prioritize different traits of yourself, especially if you want things to try to go quickly.

Those skills that you earn praise for at work, like directness and focus and yes, efficiency can work against you at home, where presence and flexibility are definitely valued.

In my practice with coaching clients.

I found that working moms who try to maintain the same mental operating system in both environments end up depleted.

That's the biggest reason why they are depleted, is that they don't switch.

And that's why the transition ritual that I'm about to teach you isn't just about deep breathing.

It's about consciously choosing which parts of yourself to bring forward in each environment.

It's not about compartmentalizing, it's about.

It's recognizing that your worth isn't tied to maintaining the same Persona everywhere.

You don't have to be efficient everywhere.

Efficiency is not your why you are worthy in life, but it's consciously choosing which strengths to highlight in each context.

Here's a quick ritual you can do in your car after work and before coming inside, or before the kids get in the car, or if you work from home, you can do it before you open the office door at the end of the day for one minute.

Do some deep breathing to release work energy or any pent up stress.

If you are in a position to do this, I encourage you to move your body, even if it's just shaking your limbs or flicking your fingertips, trying to move energy from within your body.

And then take a couple of minutes to set the intention for your home.

What energy do you want to prioritize today?

Maybe if you're exhausted, don't choose humor where you have to think of jokes.

You could choose creativity where you get play doh out before dinner time.

Or you could choose deep presence where no matter what is happening, you put your phone away and become fully aware of what and who is around you.

If this feels challenging, maybe take a moment to write down all of your strengths in different capacities.

This might be really interesting to do anyways because you might realize that you have a strength that you didn't realize was a strength because you always thought your strengths had to be in both environments and now you're realizing that you can have a strength in one environment and a different strength in a different environment and they both hold equal weight.

And the last part of this ritual is spending a minute or two visualizing a positive evening flow.

Positive interactions followed by releasing all expectations.

I remember when I was struggling with sleep issues with my son Griffin.

I would spend so much time during the day trying to control how the evening was going to go and I was doing this by taking sleep courses and learning what to do before bedtime to prep for bedtime and all of the things.

So that is not the lesson here.

Don't try to control soul much.

But what was so helpful was at the end of it all, right before I actually started bedtime routine and bath time, I would release any and all expectations that it would go as planned so that if it did go as planned, I was so happy that it actually panned out.

And if it did not go as planned, which was so much more likely, I wasn't frustrated, I wasn't thinking, ugh, just another night that I'm not getting the sleep that I wanted or the me time that I wanted.

So you want to visualize what you want to have happen in these positive interactions and experiences because that will hopefully help you manifest it and help you feel good, but then release the expectation so that you're not trying to control that and make it happen.

Including the let them theory during this work to home transition, I would think something like this let them behave how they behave.

Let me keep my phone in the other room to create mental space.

Or maybe the latter is let me go to the couch and take five deep belly breaths before starting dinner time, playtime or bedtime.

Hopefully the kids will even see you do those belly breaths and eventually incorporate that into their day as well.

But that's a topic for another podcast episode.

My former client Beth comes to mind actually when I'm saying this.

She was constantly checking her work emails after family dinner and she was creating disconnection from her kids.

We would have our calls at 4pm because that's when she had time right before she logged off from work to get her kids from school.

And then she would have some playtime with her kids, have dinner and then she would tell me that she would work for a few hours.

Not just check emails, but work for a few hours after dinner and during her kids bedtime routine.

Through our work identifying her specific self sabotage fingerprint, which is how all of her sabotage patterns play into each other, she realized that this wasn't actually about work demands, but about her own worthiness being tied to productivity.

Our journaling revealed that her evening email checks and physical full blown work hours were actually driven by fear and her trying to prove her capabilities, not necessity.

Now though, she has so much better boundaries that she actually uses that honors both her career commitments and her need for presence with her kids.

Finally, let's talk about common control patterns in partnerships, especially when both parents work and scripts for communicating needs without criticism, compassion for yourself and what your partner does do will make them feel seen and way more likely to hear what you're saying and follow through.

So I just want to say that first Besides compassion, the most important thing to include for communicating needs without criticism is saying I.

So you're not putting any blame on what has or hasn't happened.

You are sharing your perspective.

So here's two examples.

When I come home to X, I feel Y.

What I need is Z.

So I'll say that again.

When I come home to I feel blank.

What I need is.

Another example is I notice I'm trying to control how you parent.

I'm going to step back unless safety is involved.

So this is identifying exactly where you are now, realizing where you're trying to control and and giving your partner more opportunities to step up and show their responsibility.

Both compassion and using I with direct statements creates alignment without micromanagement.

I did find an interesting article.

It was about how to address genuinely unfair Household Labor Division Dr. John Gottman.

He did some research and found that 69% of persistent relationship conflicts so when you're just always nagging at each other are actually unsolvable perpetual problems based on fundamental differences.

His studies showed that couples who accept these differences rather than trying to change each other report significantly higher relationship satisfaction.

This is a direct validation of the let them theory.

If you are able to truly let them and then focus on the let me portion of what you can control, I now know that you also don't have to accept that behavior either.

Like accepting all of the unsolvable perpetual problems like Dr. John Gottman says doesn't need to be your story.

I think that there's a fine line and I just want to say to trust yourself.

When my former client Brittany came to me, she was separated from her husband and she was struggling with whether to salvage the relationship or not.

She constantly tried to control his perception of her and actually other people's perceptions of her too.

She was also walking on eggshells and trying to predict what he needed before he even asked.

Through our coaching together, Brittany uncovered something so profound she was measuring her worth against how her husband treated her and comparing her to other women she thought that he might find more appealing.

What made the breakthrough for Britney wasn't letting him in air quotes make his own decision about the relationship.

It was the deep inner work that we did to reconnect with her innate value and worthiness outside of his validation that like wasn't even a part of it.

By the end of our work together, we use strategic prompting techniques to identify when she first learned to source her worthiness from external approval, including her husband.

By our third month working together, Brittany had completely shifted.

It was so cool to see in front of my own eyes.

And I remember when she told me for the first time I'm making decisions based on what I want, not on how I think he'll react.

She was setting boundaries, calmly communicating her needs directly, and most importantly, she was becoming the mom that she wanted to be because she wasn't depressed, depleted and exhausted from constantly trying to manage her husband's emotions.

What I want you to take away from Britney's story, and the reason I'm telling you this, is that the let them approach in relationships isn't about becoming a doormat or accepting mistreatment.

It's about recognizing where you've attached your worth to someone else's behavior and reclaiming your power by focusing on what you can actually control, which is your own choices, your boundaries, your self trust and your self connection.

This goes way beyond basic I statements or communication techniques.

It's about fundamentally shifting where you source your value from.

And that's the work that we do together through targeted journaling and through my peace and confidence collective and private coaching that addresses your specific relationship patterns, but also the patterns between why you feel so burnt out, between work and being present at home and not having any time for yourself in between.

After you start incorporating the let them theory into your routines or even with specific people in your life, you will know it's working because you'll have reduced physical tension.

I know I hold my tension in my shoulders and I can actually feel feel less tension.

It's not as tight.

You'll also have more emotional bandwidth to connect with more people or just to take on more from your kids for meaningful moments as well.

And you'll have fewer conflicts and more connection.

I keep sharing examples from my clients in this episode, but it's just so like descriptive of how your life can change.

My client Jaz told me that she's been practicing being more present during her six year old meltdowns instead of trying to control them by making them stop ASAP and by letting him melt down and choosing to be present.

The meltdowns are so much quicker and they both feel more connected during them.

I thought that was amazing.

I want to pause here before sharing a 30 second reset with you because I need you to hear something that you might not want to hear, but I think you need to hear if the let them theory feels impossible or you've heard something I've said already and you think, ooh, that stung a little bit.

Maybe I do feel like I attach my sense of self to external people.

It isn't because you don't know how to not do that, or not know how to incorporate the let them theory into your life.

Or because you're failing at all of these things, it's because you're stuck in a pattern of what I call borrowed worthiness.

Here's what I mean when I say that as working moms, we've been conditioned to believe that our worth comes from how well we manage everything and everyone around us.

Like your boss's approval or your client's approval, your kid's behavior, your partner's participation.

You've attached your sense of self to all of these external validations.

We try to control even more because of that, thinking that that will help, but it doesn't.

Like we hire cleaning ladies or nannies, thinking it'll free up our time and then we'll be less overwhelmed.

But even then we'll have more free time, but we'll still feel busy.

We'll fill that time and we'll think, how did we ever do life without this help?

Simultaneously planning the next type of help, thinking that that will help us feel less overwhelmed.

Or we'll work harder to get a higher status at work or a raise, when there will always be another position or another person that makes you feel like you have to keep proving yourself at work.

You'll never feel peacefully satisfied or achieve from a place of fulfillment versus lack of.

We'll even try to reach a certain number on the scale, like weigh a certain amount.

But we could be the strongest, leanest version of ourselves.

And if we don't feel it internally, we will have body dysmorphia and always chase another fitness goal or follow another trend.

80% Of women don't think they're good enough in some capacity.

75% Of female executives deal with imposter syndrome.

91% Of girls and women don't love their bodies.

And here's the breakthrough truth bomb.

Your worth isn't determined by how perfectly your morning goes, or if your kids are getting along, if your boss gives you a raise, or if your partner loads the dishwasher correctly or not, or if you're at your goal weight.

Every time you try to control these things, you're really saying, I need this to go well, to prove that I'm enough.

And that's the exhausting cycle that's burning you out.

Constantly proving yourself has a hidden cost.

It erodes your peace while validating your fear.

It's keeping you overwhelmed and exhausted.

The women that I work with who've truly transformed their lives didn't Just implement new techniques.

They've fundamentally shifted where they source their worthiness from.

They stopped borrowing it from all of these external validation and these places and they reclaimed it as their inherent right, their birthright.

This is why therapy, which I love, self care days and all the Google searching for how to be a better mom, how to be less overwhelmed aren't working.

They're band aids on the real issue.

And that issue is that you're trying to control others to validate your own worth rather than anchoring in the truth that you are already worthy exactly as you are in.

Even if you binge watched reality TV today and had a mental health day from work and did absolutely nothing and your house is a complete mess, you're also worthy if you had the opposite day and you slayed it at work and you also were right on time picking up your kids and you also made it to the gym and you made a home cooked meal.

Both versions of you are completely and totally worthy of all things in life and so deserving.

I know that this hits home because I have lived it myself.

During my divorce, I realized eventually that I was micromanaging everything.

I tried so many different morning routines, thinking that if I could just control enough variables like exactly what I was doing in the morning to have just enough energy, or controlling my work schedule or even all of those sleep courses to get my son to fall asleep quicker and then actually stay asleep through the night, it would prove that I was doing it right.

But the real sense of freedom came when I stopped attaching my worth to outcomes that I couldn't control because I can't control if my son sleeps.

I can try to support him in it, but I can't control that.

I can't control how well my morning goes and if my son was going to wake up during that, I can't even control my work schedule.

I can try, but you never know if a client is going to need to reschedule or if something else is going to pop up out of the blue.

Just the other day I had a dentist appointment scheduled and they texted me the day before asking me to come in early.

So we think that the perfect schedule is the solution and that is just a form of control that really is just a band aid.

It doesn't go deeper.

What do we believe about ourselves if all of that were out of control?

Sometimes I love flipping beliefs.

That's when you get to the real root.

So if you thought if my kids fought all of the time, if my schedule went haywire, if I skipped Work today, what would I believe about myself?

And that's where you start learning some of the maybe not subconscious and unconscious, but those lower level, lower vibration beliefs about yourself.

So today I'm challenging you to ask yourself if you truly believed that you could stop attaching your worth to outcomes and that you, you were worthy no matter what, what would change?

What would you start or stop doing?

What would change if you stopped sourcing your worthiness from your worthiness or feeling good enough from how well everything around you was going, from how well you could control everything, what energy would that free up?

Who could you be if you weren't constantly trying to prove yourself as being the best mom, the best employee, the best partner?

This is the work that we do together.

Not just implementing techniques and rituals, but the rewiring that deep belief system that's keeping you exhausted, resentful, and missing out on the moments that matter the most with your kids and in your life.

Thanks for that little TED Talk.

Now for the 32nd reset to go from feeling triggered to releasing control and reclaiming your energy.

First, name the urge to control.

So simply say, I notice that I'm trying to control this.

Then take three deep breaths while choosing one of your senses to focus on.

So while you're deeply breathing, look so intently at something or hear a sound, touch and really feel textures, taste something or smell a scent.

And then say internally, let them do what they're doing or think what they're thinking.

And finally ask yourself, what can I control right now?

And take one aligned action.

I think this is my last neuroscience tip that I'm going to geek out on with you.

Neuroscience proves that practices like this, like I just shared with you and the ones I've shared earlier on in this episode, these reduce control seeking behaviors, right?

This is what this whole episode is about.

And practices like this literally rewire the brain for greater calm and presence.

What I mean by that, it means that the next time that you come home from work, you will feel greater calm and presence.

Naturally your nervous system changes and it's because it activates that prefrontal cortex, which is for self regulation and planning, while decreasing the fight or flight response.

Because anytime you have that control sense, we trigger that fight or flight response.

So these practices might seem like fluffy, nice to have practices that we can do, but knowing that they truly are changing your nervous system and brain to become calmer and more present is so powerful because I think it'll get you to try it.

And once you try it, you will physically feel it and you're going to then want to keep doing it.

Here's what I know for sure.

When you stop attaching your worth to how perfectly you manage everyone around you, even to how perfectly you do these exercises, you don't even have to do them perfectly, everything changes.

Not just your mornings or your work boundaries, but your entire experience of motherhood and your career and even the depth of connection that you have with your kids and your family and everyone in your life.

The women that I work with inside the Peace and Confidence Collective are often tell me this exact same thing.

Jess, who I mentioned earlier, went from feeling powerless in a toxic workplace to setting boundaries with confidence and leaving on her terms.

And Laura, who I also mentioned earlier, transformed her son's morning meltdowns from battlegrounds into connection simply by shifting where they sourced their value from.

It's deep work, you guys.

And it's not about adding another technique to your already overflowing plate.

I get that you're busy.

This is about removing things.

It's about removing the exhausting pattern that's been draining you for years.

If you're feeling that internal yes right now, that recognition that this is exactly what you've been missing and you want more of it, I want to invite you to take the next step with me right now.

I have two different paths for us to work together.

The first is my Peace and Confidence Collective.

There have been four of us together in this group, and we are opening it up to accept five more ambitious women.

We'll spend our time together transforming this pattern and any other pattern that we identify that's keeping you stuck in overwhelm and burnout with structured support and a community of women walking the same path.

I was just talking to a fellow mom, also named Sam, actually, and she was saying that she never talks about this type of stuff with her mom friends because they all feel so guilty about feeling this way, about feeling this way about their spouses and their kids and their jobs that they don't want to talk about it.

And so the Peace and Confidence Collective is your safe space to talk about how you really feel and air it out, vent it out, and then actually solve it and create real change.

That your nervous system feels different and you start to shift the wiring in your brain to show up differently and actually feel how you want your life to feel.

This is so cliche, but we only have one life and you can choose to spend it how you currently are feeling and it's just going to multiply when you don't take action or you can start learning the steps and taking action and implement with a coach to feel a shift.

You will learn exactly what you need to do so that you can then take that with you forever.

I've designed this container specifically for working moms who are ready to do this type of work, to go deep, to go down that emoji hole, and to stop borrowing their worth and start reclaiming their energy.

I want you to feel so fulfilled in what you do at work and confident and proud of the impact that you're making and then come home and feel present with your family without fearing that you're being unproductive, but loving the moments that you have and feeling energized at the end of the day without feeling like you're neglecting one part of your life or the other at any given moment and going to bed feeling satisfied with a full heart, not wondering what you didn't get to at the end of the day.

All of this with community support.

If you are craving this type of support, check out the link for the Peace and Confidence Collective in the show notes or if you're craving more personalized guidance, I have two spots left for private coaching where we will dive deep into your specific patterns, create a customized roadmap, and work together side by side to break free from all of the things and create the life that you want and the feelings that you want.

And bonus, you get access to the Peace and Confidence Collective as well.

Click the link in my show notes for a link to a private coaching spot.

Either way, I want you to ask yourself what would be possible if six months from now, you are no longer exhausting yourself trying to control everything and everyone around you?

How would your mornings feel like?

Visualize this.

How light would they feel?

How would your work day feel?

How would you move about your day?

How would your precious evening hours with your kids feel?

What would you do with them?

That version of you is waiting on the other side of this work, including the work that you already put in today in this episode.

So I'm so proud of you and thank you for showing up today.

This is your final reminder that you are already enough and already so worthy exactly as you are.

I will see you on Thursday for our journaling session.

Have a great rest of your day.

Thanks for joining me for today's journal entry.

If something resonated with you, I'd love to know about it.

Screenshot this episode, share it on social media and tag me at Samantha S Stat says or even leave a review which will help more women find this podcast to create more fulfillment in their career and as a mom.

And hey, if you're thinking I wish I could get more of this, I've got you covered, click on the link in the Show Notes, which I customize each week based on what we're talking about.

And I always include the link to the Calm Mind Blueprint, which are my five journal prompts to go from overwhelm to inner peace in two to ten minutes a day.

So subscribe so that you catch my Thursday Five Minute Journal with Me episodes and next week's full episode where we will continue this journey together.

I'll see you then.