Wow. What an experience. Clarity Coaching just attended an expo for the first time – the 50+ Lifestyle Exo. It was well received. Quite a number of people signed up to receive regular newsletters. I better get going and make sure it’s worthwhile.

A big thank you to all of you who visited our stand to explore how health can be improved by coaching and energy treatment. We have drawn 3 winners who will soon experience what’s it like to be more positive and active.

A number of retired people find the idea of the working mother workshop useful for their daughters for stress and guilt relief. Several people working in health and daycare centres want to encourage their patients or centre parents. Fantastic. Let’s get out and make a difference.

Participants of the 5 week Switch Workshop for Working Mothers completed the survey again. The purpose was to investigate some pre- and post workshop effects to see whether the coaching workshop had any effect on stress and guilt.

The data received from  the post workshop survey shows that working mothers were now making more time for themselves and for their children. Children’s behaviour had improved; in particular no more extreme bad behaviour was reported. Stress and guilt dropped considerably*. Mothers who considered themselves in the high level of guilt group now no longer existed (where it had previously measured 12% of mothers). Mothers were not blaming themselves as much for being a ‘bad’ mother. Extreme high level stress sufferers reduced to 5% (previously 21%). Mothers were making more time for exercise and felt more energetic which, hopefully, will have a beneficial effect on their general health and wellbeing, both mentally and physically. Now, 95% of mothers reported having effective coping mechanisms in place. They keep reminding themselves of how they can effectively use the tools they learned through the workshop. In general, women were also displaying healthier food habits.

However, some mothers reported spending slightly less time with their partner and said that feelings of anger and irritability towards them had slightly increased. (This might be contributed to the fact that they realise they need more ‘me’ time which could in turn affect the relationship). A few were still experiencing feelings of resentment. Some reported experiencing a slight increase in the incidence of feeling sick, however, this could be season related as the post survey took place in winter.

What impact did the workshop have on the workplace?

Overall relationships with colleagues at work improved as women noted they felt less anger, irritability and impatience towards others. About 22% more people report ‘no relationship problems with work colleagues’. Generally, participants said they were enjoying work more than they were prior to the workshop, feelings of stress and guilt interfere slightly less with their focus at work, efficiency increased and errors have reduced. In fact, repetitive errors no longer occur and the rate of occasional to more often occurring errors dropped by almost 50% (from 82% down to 47%).

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* Stress and guilt were also measured at onset of the workshop and weekly at the beginning of each workshop session. Over the 5 week period, stress dropped across the groups on average by 30.5% and guilt by over 47% with the highest drop measuring 57% for stress and 78% for guilt.

Survey Result

How Stress and Guilt affect the Working Mother, the Family and the Workplace

Quantitative Data Analysis

The initial survey was conducted on 201 working mothers. The average age of the participants was 39 years old. Approximately 50% of the respondents had 2 children, 28% had 3 children and the rest had 3 or more children. The total travel time to and from work per day ranged from nil (as working from home) to 3 hours per day with the average being approximately one hour travel time.

The majority of working mothers who participated in this survey (three quarters) work for financial reasons.

The survey results showed that 71% of women were experiencing moderate to extremely high levels of guilt with 91% experiencing the same intensity of stress and approximately every fifth working mother was suffering stress on the extreme end of the scale.

One attributing factor to these feelings of guilt and stress is the lack of time. Generally the respondents stated that they give priority first to work, second to the children, third to their partner and last but not least – if possible, to themselves. Their relationships with their children and partner were suffering. Many responded that their children regularly demonstrate behavioural problems and that they were experiencing relationship issues ranging from moderate to very severe which were affecting their marriage. The findings showed that up to 15% of these working mothers also had moderate to high relationship problems with work colleagues.

The survey found that  90% of working mothers blame themselves for being a bad mother (every second mother felt very strongly about this), guilt leads many of them to experience feelings of depression, anger and resentment on the moderate to extreme end of the scale.

In relation to lack of time, they demonstrated the least anger towards their work colleagues and most against themselves (almost three-quarters of women experienced high to extreme high level emotions), children place third and partners second on the list.

How do stress and/or guilt affect the workplace?

More than 50% of working mothers felt occasional or regular anger, irritability and impatience towards others at work, with 17% saying they are affected moderately to strongly, and only a quarter not being affected. Every second mother felt that stress hinders her ability to enjoy work very strongly and every third mother’s enjoyment of work is negatively influenced by guilt. However, despite these feelings, the majority (82%) definitely choose to stay in their job. It can be assumed that this is mainly for financial reasons as more than three quarters of working mothers stated that this is the main ‘reason’ for working.

Almost every second working mother feels regularly irritated by their work colleagues and is critical towards them. Feelings of stress or guilt affect moderately to strongly almost every second mother in terms of their focus and their efficiency at work which results in one third of employed mothers demonstrating regular errors, and the other two thirds making errors at times.

How does it affect their lifestyle?

There is no doubt that stress and guilt affect a mother’s emotional wellbeing. Two thirds said they are affected very strongly. More than a third of mothers responded that they often feel ill. One third hardly finds time to exercise and feels low in energy. Lack of time leads to unhealthy eating habits in over 50% of working mothers. It is assumed that poor diet and lack of exercise are part of the reason for poor health and lack of energy. ‘ME’ or leisure time is low on the list of priorities with only two thirds of women managing a little occasionally per week. A few lucky ones get regular time out to recover.

Qualitative Data Analysis

The survey also collected some qualitative data. We wanted to know what sort of coping mechanisms people have in place (if any), what other negative feelings they experience alongside stress and guilt, other ways in which stress and guilt affect their lifestyle and what they considered their ideal work- life balance to be.

When it came to coping mechanisms the mothers listed exercise, relaxation time, certain behaviour and attitude practice, as well as time management tools. For most, exercise consists of walking or running, going to the gym and yoga. Relaxation time means reading a book, meditation, having a sleep or taking a bath or pursuing hobbies. In addition, they listed practicing emotional distance, remaining cool or calm and demonstrating positive attitude as effective stress management methods. Time management means being organised, arranging flexi work hours, making lists and prioritising.

However, many mothers also listed some negative coping mechanisms that might potentially make matters worse rather than better. Some resort to taking drugs, drinking alcohol or coffee, smoking, binge or overeating, and making poor food choices such as getting takeaways.

On the other hand, as a result of emotional imbalance and depression, some get help through counselling, cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), psychotherapy and coaching. They seek support in partners, friends, socialising and by having a nanny or a cleaner.

Other negative feelings they experience are helplessness, feeling overwhelmed, exhaustion, lack of self confidence, worthlessness, anxiety, tiredness and sadness. In addition, they feel resentment, frustration, anger and irritability.

Their lifestyle is affected by lack of sleep, poor physical health, weight issues, social withdrawal and hibernation. Stress and guilt affect relationships with all people around them. It seems to be a cycle: ‘feeling stressed – work more – less exercise – bad eating habits – more guilt – more stress’. At work, they are abrupt in conversations, make poor decisions, are less organised and focused, demonstrate poor performance, lack concentration and “everything takes twice as long”.

The ideal work/life balance would mean to either work near or from home, work school hours only and have a 4-day work week. Working mothers also prefer to not work on weekends or at night and request more support from both partners and employers. They would like to have more time for themselves, for the children and for their relationship.

Results showed that more than 85% of working mothers would take up wellness and/or life coaching if it were to be offered by their employer.

Post Survey Comment

The data confirmed my predictions and enabled me to put together a meaningful workshop. I am now passionate to help other working mothers get rid of the guilt and get rid of the stress.Nothing beats seeing the smile on their face and hearing their stories about the changes they made in their life to achieve peace within, peace in the family, and inner peace of mind going to work.

Several groups have now completed the Switch Workshop for Working Mothers. Workshop participants completed the survey again to measure a post workshop effect. The comparison data will be published soon.

The Working Mother Guilt – How to Cope

Working mother guilt is the biggest issues a mother has to deal with. As a working mother there are lots of benefits, such as feeling a sense of contribution, retaining your identity, or supporting your family. Still, a feeling of guilt is inevitable for most working mothers, especially if your children are very young. Here are some tips to help you work through the rough patches:

1. Trust your gut feeling that your choice was right for you and your family.

In recent years, there has been a bit of media frenzy over working mothers. Although some sources would have you believe that working mothers and their children are depressed, anxious and stressed, recent studies have shown otherwise. In fact, there are numerous studies on both sides of the issue, both for and against mothers working outside the home. Read research and commentary on both sides of the issue and make the choice that’s right for you and your family. No one else is just like you, and no one else can make the choice for you. You know yourself, your family dynamic and your kids.

It’s also important to be open to re-evaluate your choices as your professional and family roles continue to grow and evolve. With so many parents in the work force, this time in history holds unprecedented opportunities to craft a working arrangement that can work for you and for your kids. If your working mother guilt has become too much to bear, it might be time to take another look at all the various possibilities.

2. Make a list of all the advantages that working provides you with.

Create awareness of your motivation for workimg, it can be easier to get through those days when you may feel like you may have made the wrong choice. Your reasons will be very personal. Some mothers work out of financial need. Others feel they wouldn’t make good stay at home mothers. Still others want to set a good example of an independent working woman. Keep your list handy and pull it out anytime you feel that working mother guilt creeping up. Most of all list the benefits it gives, you, your children and others around you. If your children benefit by you working, you provide the best you can give them. So, where does this leave the guilt then?

3. Ignore negative comments and criticism of people who made other choices.

Whether it’s your mother-in-law, a stay-at-home friend, or an online message board, make the choice to avoid arguments with people who want to make you feel guilty about your personal choices. Know in your heart that your decision was based on what is best for you and what is best for your family. If someone presses you, just say that you are doing what works for you and leave it at that. At the same time, try not to be judgmental of mothers who stay home. We are all in this world together and each of us has a different path to walk. Be non-judgmental and open to other people’s choices. This may help you feel less defensive about your own.

4. Make quality time for your child and give them full attention.

One of the best parts of being a working mother is that the time you spend together during the weekend and evenings can be extra special. Plan special activities and really be in the motherent with your child. Sometimes this time together is all that you need to refresh your outlook and take pride in your choice.

It would be impossible to list all of the things people have considered crucial to success in life. Honesty, energy, bonding, modeling, control of fear…all are important. For my whole life, I’ve searched for the answers in this arena, and treasured the gems that have been revealed.

In July of 2005, I went back to Longview, Washington, where I’d lived for nine years, raising my daughter. When we left, we packed much of our house into two storage units, planning to return once we had our roots properly planted in Los Angeles. Going through the storage units was bittersweet—my wife and I didn’t have a huge amount of time to carefully examine every item in every box. But one book fell out of one box, almost as if it intended to jump into my hands, refusing to be junked. It was called MASTERY (now out of print), and its author was an old friend of mine, Tim Piering.

Tim was (and is) one of the best men I’ve ever known. A husband, a father, an engineer, a Marine officer, black belt in four martial arts, Tim is a gentle giant with a gift for teaching and coaching. During the 80’s, it was my honor to be part of a group with which he shared extremely high-level neurolinguistic and hypnotic patterns, advanced body-mind work that still, twenty years later, seems ahead of its time. Hands trembling, realizing how close I’d come to throwing away one of Tim’s few books, I opened it, and came to page 47. there, it said that if you only had two tools in the world to help you succeed, they would be:

1) Well defined WRITTEN goals.
2) The ability to take action despite the “Radio Voice” in your head.

And I was stunned. Never have I heard anyone, anywhere, state the secret to success more clearly, or succinctly. The impact of those earlier days flooded back to me in a moment, and I realized how much of my own accomplishment I owed to just this simple understanding.

Why are these so important, and what EXACTLY does it mean?

We all understand goal-setting, and most of us are aware that writing our goals down increases our odds of accomplishing them by at least 10X. There is a quiet magic in the act of writing goals, and anyone who has practiced this art will know exactly what I’m talking about. If you doubt it, just check around and find out how uncomfortable the average person is in performing this simple, basic act. They KNOW that a written goal, unlike a misty dream or hope, is a contract between your conscious and unconscious mind. A written goal is half-way between a thought and a reality, marking the way to the future.

But what is the Radio Voice? It is the voice in your mind that doubts you, that questions, that offers seductive alternatives to performing the daily tasks that make up our lives. You want to write a chapter—it tells you that your work is crap. You want to exercise—it tells you that it is too late, that your body is beyond repair, why bother? You want to find a healthy relationship, and the voice tells you that all the good men, or women, are gone.

Don’t believe you have one? Just sit quietly for two minutes and listen. Go ahead, use a kitchen timer. Listen.

Did you hear that voice saying “what voice? I don’t hear a voice!”

That’s the voice.

It is imperative to become aware of it, aware of its power, aware that it lies. Aware that the voice in your head IS NOT YOU.

No. You are not the voice. YOU are the one LISTENING to the voice. And this is so important to understand that I cannot overstress it. Please go back and read that again. And again.

All over the world, there are literally thousands of meditation techniques designed to “turn off” or “turn down” the voice of failure. The voice, composed of the memories of teachers, parents, friends, and our own past selves, can make us doubt ourselves even in the midst of victory.

Whatever you do, whatever you desire in life, you MUST find a way to either quiet or ignore those voices, or your results will suffer.

One of the most powerful ways to turn the voices off is physical flow. This is the state reached in Tai Chi or Yoga when your mental and emotional commitment to the technique becomes intense. You can find it in jogging, when you reach “runner’s high.”

In meditation, you can observe a candle flame, the smell of incense, or even your own breathing or heartbeat for 15-30 minutes at a time, on a daily or thrice-weekly basis. When you try to do this, believe me the voices will freak out and try everything in their bag of tricks to get you to stop.

This mental/physical practice is directly applicable to any other activity in your life. To large degree, your chances to succeed in life will be in direct proportion to your capacity to maintain “flow”, or relaxed concentration, under mental or emotional stress. The depths of this trance state vary, but we’ve all heard stories of artists, inventers, writers and poets so absorbed in their work that they didn’t hear the phone ring, or even a tree fall through a window! THAT is concentration. THAT is the ability to shut up “the voices,” and that is the state you must approach to find your own greatest genius.

Thank you, Tim, for reminding me of that lesson.

I’ve been coaching for a few years now, and the biggest thing I’ve learnt – both for me and for my clients – is that inner confidence is the key to it all.

There are all kinds of strategies, ways of thinking, patterns of behavior and practical tips for improving your life and feeling better about yourself, but they’re all redundant if the foundation isn’t there. That foundation is the real you, the you that you know deep down you are. The trick is that it takes confidence to find that and to bring out who you are – here are the three keys to real inner confidence.

1. Get To Know Your Values

Personal values are a big passion of mine and I often get carried away with myself when I talk about them. I make no apology for that though – they’re one of the most important things you can know about yourself and are vital in getting genuine inner confidence. Your values are ten thousand feet down inside you, right at the very core of who you are; and they’re the building blocks, the foundations and cornerstones for you. A value is something in yourself, in others or in the world that’s most important to you, and could include things like respect, progress, family, fun, nature, achievement or freedom.

Why is it that some people and situations leave you feeling angry, frustrated, demotivated or deflated? It’s because one or more of your values is being denied, suppressed or repressed – and we experience that as a negative experience because it’s denying a fundamental piece of who you are. You know those times when you’ve felt really alive, amazing or buzzing? Those are the times when one or more of your values are being honored, and you can get more of that by living according to them.

Your values are all yours, and no matter what happens, no one can ever take them away. You can have absolute confidence in them because they’re there all the time just waiting for you to notice them and use them. When you get to know your values, you can start to make choices and align your life around them. It’s so simple and it feels amazing because all that really means is that you’re allowing who you are to live in the real world.

2. Trust Yourself

People spend too much time looking for signs that they’re doing the right thing or on the right path. Sometimes we get that by hearing that we’re doing well at work, sometimes it could be encouragement from a friend or loved one, and sometimes we get that feedback by seeing our material wealth or possessions growing.

But rather than looking on the outside for those signs, how about looking on the inside at what you’re telling yourself? How about trusting yourself to do the best thing and make great choices? How about trusting your own insights and using your own intuition? I’ve seen those ideas scare the bejeezus out of people and you know why? Because it makes you accountable and responsible for what you get. If you trust yourself implicitly and you make the wrong choice, you’ve got nobody else to blame.

But the fact is that we all make mistakes and we’ll all continue to make mistakes. So how would it be if you could trust yourself to get through anything and trust yourself to continue making choices that serve you well – even if sometimes you screw up? That’s the kind of trust I’m talking about, and that’s genuine inner confidence.

Start by listening to yourself and noticing what your intuition is telling you. Be aware of that little voice inside you or those gut reactions you get and pay attention to what they’re telling you. Trust yourself to make decisions, trust yourself to adapt and trust that you’re good enough to have, do or be whatever you want. True confidence will follow.

3. Exercise the Muscle

Confidence is a muscle, and like any muscle you need to exercise it so that it doesn’t shrink and waste away. The problem is that unlike your biceps or glutes, which tend to stay in the same place, your confidence muscle can be harder to find. How do you develop your biceps or firm up your glutes? By doing exercises that are designed to work that muscle over a period of time until you see the results you were looking for.

It’s just the same with confidence. Let’s say that you’re the kind of person that doesn’t take many risks, the kind of person who goes through each day doing what needs to be done and doing it well, but not really stretching yourself. You might talk yourself out of doing something because it’s too scary or because you think to yourself ‘I’m not good enough,’ ‘that’s not who I am’ or ‘I don’t really want it anyway.’ That kind of person lives within what they know and what keeps them safe and comfortable. The fewer risks they take, the less confident they need to be and so the less confident they become.

To work your confidence muscle you need to be prepared to take risks – big or small. You need to be willing to stretch yourself in an unfamiliar direction, to try something new or try something in a slightly different way. You need to open yourself up to the possibilities around you and push yourself to increase what you know, what you do and who you are. The more open you are to risk, opportunity and possibility the more confident you need to be, and so the more confidence you’ll develop. That’s your confidence muscle – the question is, what are you going to do to exercise it?”