Forbes Coaches Council Post: Ditching Mom Guilt At Work And At Home
Randi Braun is a member of the Forbes Coaches Council, where this post was first published on Forbes.com. Randi is the CEO of Something Major and the Wall Street Journal Bestselling author of Something Major: The New Playbook for Women at Work.
“You’re being way too hard on yourself. You are doing a great job.”
That’s the pep talk a Secret Service agent gave me on a recent Monday morning.
After living in D.C. for 15 years, I can tell you it was not the first time I had been too hard on myself. But it was the first time a Secret Service agent had come to my (emotional) rescue. Let me explain:
One of my most cherished self-care rituals is a Monday morning workout class, where a very prominent female figure in Washington, who requires Secret Service protection, also works out.
As class wrapped up, I was lamenting to the instructor about something I was being hard on myself about, three months postpartum with my third child.
That’s when the Secret Service agent chimed in with her pep talk, reminding me that I was being way too hard on myself. So now I’m here with yours, even if I don’t have a government-issued badge marking me as your protector.
The Crush Of Mom Guilt
One of the things we are hardest on ourselves about is our so-called “mom guilt.” It’s that nagging feeling that we’re just not good enough and the story in our head that we’re failing those around us: our families, our colleagues or ourselves.
As a mom of three and a leadership coach, I see this all the time, and I truly believe that “mom guilt” is one of the most destructive forces in women’s lives: It diminishes our success and invalidates our intuition. It wastes time and energy second-guessing our choices instead of celebrating our successes.
It’s time to ditch mom guilt, and here’s your guide to get started.
Decoding Mom Guilt
One of the top reasons we can’t get over our mom guilt is that we haven’t sufficiently “decoded it.” In other words, I find that women often label something as “mom guilt” that is really either their FOPO (fear of other people’s opinions) or regret.
Guilt is the feeling we have when we cross the line on our personal code of conduct or our values. So, for example, if I were to lie, I would feel guilty about that because being honest is a core value of mine.
Most of the time, however, we’re not even experiencing true guilt when we say we have “mom guilt.” In a world where we too often gaslight women on their emotions, I’m not saying this to invalidate your feelings but rather to empower you to look more closely the next time you experience that terrible feeling.
Understanding FOPO
Most frequently, when I hear somebody expressing “mom guilt,” they are experiencing FOPO. In fact, just the other day, a mom attending one of my speaking engagements asked me how to “get over her mom guilt about working out.”
Did taking time to run on a Sunday afternoon really make her feel guilty? If so, what core value was that hour-long run violating? These were the questions I asked back.
As we dove deeper, it turned out that what she was labeling “guilt” was actually FOPO. She was fearful she’d be viewed as “selfish” for taking this time for herself.
It’s something I see all the time in career-focused working moms who put so much pressure on themselves to be everything to everyone in the name of trying to “have it all.”
Solving for guilt (something we genuinely feel bad about) is a totally different ball game than solving for FOPO (not wanting to be viewed as “a bad mom” at home or a “slacker” at work), and the cost of living our lives from a place of FOPO are high: As performance psychologist Dr. Michael Gervais explains, when we make decisions based on FOPO, “we trade in authenticity for approval,” and that is no way to achieve our goals.
Guilt Versus Regret
Another thing I hear women describe as “mom guilt” is regret. If “guilt” is the feeling we have when we make a choice that’s out of sync with our core values, then regret is the feeling we have when we make a choice and then decide we actually don’t like our choice.
For example, a few years ago, I said “yes” to an extra stop on my book tour and found myself feeling “guilty” about being gone for it—or so I thought. As I dug into my sense of dread and frustration, I realized I didn’t feel “guilty” about being away. I regretted the choice of saying yes: After months of being on the road, I was exhausted, missing my family and my bed. I honestly didn’t think the juice was worth the squeeze on this engagement and genuinely didn’t like my choice after I made it.
When we call it “regret” instead of mislabeling it as “guilt,” we give ourselves a mandate to learn from our mistakes and choose differently next time. As author Daniel Pink writes in The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, “Regret makes us better. Regret makes us human.” Learning how to anticipate regret (making different decisions today from what we learned yesterday) and fix it when we feel it can seriously reduce the so-called “mom guilt” we feel.
It’s Not Your Fault
Whether you’re feeling guilt, FOPO or regret, the final thing I want to remind you is that the feeling of “mom guilt” is not your fault.
Moms are expected to do more now than ever before. A world that expects us to do it all (and that makes us feel punished when we don’t) isn’t your personal failure. It’s a systemic failure. Until our world recalibrates its utterly unachievable standards, I hope learning to decode mom guilt from FOPO and regret will help you reclaim the agency and satisfaction you so deeply deserve in your life.
Randi Braun is a certified executive coach and the author of Something Major: The New Playbook for Women at Work. Get in touch with Randi via email or social (below). Copyright 2024. All rights reserved.