Latest / The Feel Good Club for Ambitious Moms of Neurodivergent Kids / Self Improvement for More Calm
Transcript
- ROCKY: We think more creatively, we make better decisions, and we become more aware of who we want to be. When you or I are in a state of chronic low-grade stress, even functional high-performing stress, our brains are in a narrowed state. It's in the safety and regulation of your own nervous system, and everything builds from there. Welcome to the Feel Good Club podcast. This is the place where ambitious working moms learn how to elevate their well-being, increase success in all areas, and create a positive, aligned life. Whether you're here to hear expert interviews or inspiring talks, this is your space to learn and grow. I'm Tia Graham, keynote and TED speaker, best-selling author, and founder of the Feel Good Club Community for high-achieving moms. I am an expert in the science of happiness. This show is here to help you feel grounded, happier and connected to yourself and others. I know you are going to love it. Thank you for being here. Let's dive in. back to the feel good club, the podcast for ambitious working moms. I am so glad that you're here. Whether you are listening while you're driving your kids to school or squeezing us in between back to back calls, or maybe you're on the elliptical machine, like where I like to listen to podcasts. First of all, I see you. And second of all, you are exactly in the right place. This is the show for ambitious, big-hearted, successful, high-achieving women who want to feel good on the inside and feel as good as their lives look from the outside. We talk positive psychology, personal growth, and what it actually takes to thrive, not just perform. In this full... beautiful, demanding season of life. I'm your host Tia Graham and today's episode, she is a good one. You're gonna wanna stay with me. Let me ask you a question and I want you to answer it honestly to yourself. When was the last time that you felt genuinely calm? Not I finished the to-do list, not. The kids are finally asleep. I mean that deep, settled, I am okay in my body, inner peace, calm. If you had to think about it for more than one or two seconds, this episode is for you. Here's the thing. We are living in the age of self-improvement. There are more books, courses, coaches, routines, supplements, journaling prompts than ever before in human history. And yet, so many brilliant, accomplished working moms that I speak with feel more wired, more reacted, and more depleted than ever. What if the problem isn't that you need more self-improvement? What if the way you've been approaching it has been quietly working against you? Today I want to introduce you to a completely different way of thinking about growth, one rooted in positive psychology. and share the turning point that changed everything for me personally as an ambitious working mom with two pretty challenging kids. Let me paint a picture and tell me if any of this sounds familiar. You wake up before your alarm, not because you're arrested. Not because you're rested, but because your brain is already running with everything that you have to do for the day. And that super crazy heavy mental load. You're a great mom. You're a fantastic partner. You deliver at work. From the outside, everything looks incredible. The house, the career, the kids, the trips, the relationship. But underneath there's this hum and it's a low grade tension. that never quite switches off. You snap at your kids over something small and then you spiral into guilt. You get into bed exhausted because your mind won't stop. And you lie there with this highlight wheel running with everything that you didn't do well that day, with everything that didn't go perfectly as a mom, as a wife, and at work. And you're consistently investing in yourself. You're reading books, you listen to podcasts, and maybe you even tried coaching and you're growing. You generally are committed to becoming better. But here is what I want to name today. For a lot of high achieving women, self-improvement has become another performance, another place to prove yourself, another standard to meet. And when you're approaching growth from a place of, I am not enough yet, your nervous system knows, your body knows. The research in positive ⁓ in positive psychology is crystal clear. Sustainable growth, genuine wellbeing, and lasting change does not come from pushing harder from a deficit mindset. They come from something else entirely. And I know this not just because I studied it. I know it because I've lived the alternative for years. So here's what I want to offer you today. By the end of this episode, you're going to understand why the nervous system is the missing piece in most women's self-improvement journeys. You're going to walk away with a simple three-part framework and three simple behaviors you can start using, none of which require more time, more willpower, or more doing. This is not about slowing down your ambition. It's about building the intentional foundation. that actually makes your ambition sustainable. And it's about growing from the inside out. And it starts with my story. A few years ago, I reached a point where I could not keep going the way that I was going. On paper, on LinkedIn, life was extraordinary. A career I had built with intention. I was impacting. thousands of lives every year, a marriage to a brilliant, supportive, incredible man, beautiful children, and everything that I had worked hard toward. And I was grateful. I honestly was genuinely grateful. But I was also running on a frequency that I could only describe as permanently braced, constantly anxious, waiting for the next thing to go wrong with work and with my kids. I have a really, really challenging older daughter and I was always living in this place of hypervigilance. I had done cognitive behavioral talk therapy. I had attended the World Happiness Summit and even spoken at it. I had taken positive psychology courses. I was teaching the science of happiness. I was writing. and speaking on it constantly. But that's when I was introduced to two approaches that I had never heard of and never explored before. One was EMDR, which stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, and somatic experiencing therapy, which works with the body's sword stress, not just with your mind. Let's take a quick pause for something that can really support you. If you constantly question if you are good enough as a working mom and desperately want to feel happier, I'd love to invite you to a complimentary discovery call with me. In 45 minutes, we'll get clear on what is out of alignment, what you want your days to feel like and two to three simple changes you can make immediately to feel calmer and more confident. It's completely free and it's a chance for us to connect and see if the Feel Good Club for Working Moms or One-on-One Coaching might support you. To grab a spot, go to tiagram.com forward slash discovery call. That's tiagram.com forward slash discovery call and pick a time that works for you. And I want to be honest with you. I was angry. I was frustrated that here I was as the working mom having to do more so that I could show up as a calmer, more regulated mom. My husband was not doing anything. I felt angry that I had to give more of my working time to growth, to healing, to change. And I felt like I was doing it more for my marriage than for my kids or for myself. And, you know, I was, I was resentful. I was like, here, mom has to do more again. But I decided, you know what? I'm going to give it a shot. What do I have to lose? Because I was being way more reactive in my home than I wanted to be. And that stress and that anxiety, that constant hum, to be honest, I was tired of it. And so I started working on my body and working on reprocessing overwhelming things that had happened when I was a child. And what happened next surprised me. When I stopped trying to improve my way out of anxiety and started actually regulating my nervous system, I became more creative, more present with my kids, more loving, more self-compassionate and more compassionate to my kids. And I became more effective in my work because I started really connecting to my truth. And This was despite slowing down internally and you know, because of it, I was changing for the better. And that's the paradox of genuine self-improvement. And it is actually what the science backs up. So positive psychology, which I've been studying for close to a decade, is the scientific study of what makes people flourish. And it is constantly found that lasting wellbeing and growth is not the result of eliminating your weaknesses or optimizing every single minute of your day. It's the result of building what researchers call psychological resources, things like emotional regulation, self-compassion, self-connection, and meaning. And here's the key finding that I want you to hold on to. You cannot think your way to a regulated nervous system. You have to feel your way there. And Barbara Fredrickson's broadened build theory of positive emotion tells us that when we experience genuine positive states, safety, joy, calm, connection, our minds literally expand and we can see different possibilities. We think more creatively. We make better decisions and we become more aware of who we want to be. When you or I are in a state of chronic low-grade stress, even functional high-performing stress, our brains are in a narrowed state. We're efficient, but we're not flourishing. We're managing, but we're not growing. What EMDR and somatic therapy taught me And what positive psychology reinforces is that the most powerful investment you can make in your growth is in the safety and regulation of your own nervous system and everything builds from there. Self-improvement is not about a list of more behaviors to add, it's an internal state to cultivate. So how do you actually do this? I wanna give you something practical, all right? So the three parts are regulate, reflect, and rise. Regulate. Before you can grow, you have to feel safe. It means getting into a calm state through simple, consistent practices. This is the foundation. Without it, all the journaling, goal setting, habits is just noise on top of the anxiety. Number two is reflect. From a regulated state, reflection becomes transformational rather than just analytical. You're not just listing what went wrong, what you need to fix. You're accessing genuine insight and clarity about what actually matters most to you as a working mom. And RISE is about growth. is the natural result of regulation and reflection. You take aligned action, not just that frantic frenetic action. and you move towards your life and career vision from a place of sufficiency, not scarcity. Rising is not striving, it's expanding. Regulate, reflect, and rise. So here are two behaviors. Behavior number one is the 60 second somatic reset. Once a day, it could be at your desk, in the car before you pick up your kids, before you are getting ready for bed, you place one hand on your heart and one hand on your belly. Take three slow exhales longer than the inhale. And as you breathe out, consciously release the muscles around your jaw, in your neck, in your shoulders. This is not mindfulness where you're just focusing on your breath. This is a literal nervous system intervention. You are telling your body, I am safe. And something I love to do is I also will pat my chest. Behavior number two is a micro moment of genuine connection. Connection is the most powerful predictor of flourishing. And for time poor women like you and I, connection often gets de-prioritized because we're so flippin' busy and it becomes a luxury. But it's not a luxury. This is your biological need. Your nervous system needs it. And so this week, I want you to identify one micro moment of genuine connection. This could be 10 minutes of phone free presence with your children, where you are looking at their eyes, you are noticing their eyelashes. This is warmth with your husband, where you are holding his hand after the chaos of dinner and you are truly focusing on connection. It can be a back rub to someone else. It can be holding your kid's hand or your husband's hand while you ask them a question. Small, genuine, consistent. This is how you build relational regulation. that high achieving women often sacrifice without realizing it. Not because you're doing anything wrong. It's just because you are time poor. If today's episode lit something inside of you, if you heard yourself in what I shared, I wanna invite you to go deeper with you. I am doing a free challenge, April 20th to April 23rd, and it's just 20 minutes a day. and it is called the 10 % Calmer Challenge. And it's okay if you miss the lives. They're gonna be at 11 a.m. and 8.30 p.m. Pacific every day. All the recordings are available until April 26th. And I'm gonna do a 10 % Calmer Q &A with me on April 26th. And you're gonna get a free workbook and you're gonna be in this community of hundreds of other high achieving moms. who want to be 10 % calmer too. All you need to do is go to tiagram.com forward slash calm dash challenge tiagram.com forward slash calm dash challenge and you're gonna join me in the 10 % calmer challenge. It is free, it is live, it is based on micro behavior changes. and it's going to change how you think about self-improvement and becoming calmer FOREVER. Before you go, let me leave you with this. You are not a machine that needs optimizing. You're a human being who deserves to feel good. Not as a reward for your productivity and your output and your success, but simply because you exist. Self-improvement and motivation and personal development are not about becoming someone different. It's about coming home to yourself more fully. You are already enough. And that journey, the one that starts in your body and your nervous system, in the quiet moments before doing, this is where the real transformation lies. Regulate, reflect, and rise. You've got this and I'm here with you. Thank you so much for being a part of the Feel Good Club community and podcast. I will see you next week for another episode. Until then, take care of yourself and remember, prioritize your capping. Thank you for joining me on the Feel Good Club show. I hope today's episode left you feeling inspired and equipped to take on your day with confidence, self-love, and joy. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with your fellow ambitious working moms. Remember, you are not alone on this journey. We're all here to support each other in feeling good, and living our best lives. Until next time, take care and be hopeful. And remember, prioritize your happiness.