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Holiday Mom Guilt for High Achievers
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In this episode, Leanna dives into one of the most persistent and painful emotions ambitious moms face this time of year: holiday mom guilt. Whether you’re listening while wrapping gifts or squeezing this in between meetings, you’ll learn why guilt tends to spike during the holidays and the three core places it comes from: unrealistic expectations, comparison overload, and the pressure to show up “perfectly” in both quantity and quality with your kids. Leanna offers practical tools to bring you back to presence when your mind is trying to distract you. If you’ve ever felt torn between being the leader your team needs and the mom you want to be, this episode will remind you that what you’re doing is not just enough but also deeply impactful.
Join Leanna’s free Seasonal Support Session this Friday, December 12, at 2 PM ET to recharge, connect with other high-achieving moms, and enter the holidays feeling supported instead of stretched thin. REGISTER NOW!
Full transcript available here.
Connect with Leanna here.
Sign up for Leanna’s email list at coachleanna.com/connect for the latest information on her third annual January Reset for High Achieving Women!
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to the Executive Coach for Moms podcast, where we support women who are attempting to find balance and joy while simultaneously leading people at work and at home.
00:00:14
Speaker
I'm your host, Leanna Lasky-McGrath, former tech exec turned full-time mom, recovering perfectionist and workaholic, and certified executive coach.
00:00:27
Speaker
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for joining me today in the middle of the holiday season. We're in mid-December, and you are probably listening to this while you're doing something else. Maybe you're wrapping some presents or unloading the dishwasher or... doing some cleaning or something to get ready for the
Understanding Mom Guilt
00:00:48
Speaker
holidays. And so I just want to thank you for allowing me to join you this holiday season and be a part of it. So today I want to talk about mom guilt and in particular mom guilt around the holidays, because I think this time of year, it can soar to new heights and And from working with so many ambitious, high achieving women, i hear about mom guilt a lot. I coach on this topic a lot. And I also hear about it just in conversations with my friends. And so I would like to talk about it today.
00:01:18
Speaker
i think there are three main places where mom guilt comes from. And so I want to talk about those. Number one, guilt often comes from us having unrealistic expectations of ourselves. We have extremely, extremely high expectations. We expect ourselves to be able to do everything perfectly. We should stay on top of everything at work, never drop a ball, be a perfect boss and support our team and our people. We expect ourselves to have
00:01:53
Speaker
a perfectly decorated house, a perfectly organized calendar with the perfect amount of holiday activities and gifts that are not too much and not too little, all while keeping ourselves looking perfect, not upsetting anybody and in perfect shape.
Societal Pressures and Social Media's Impact
00:02:10
Speaker
We set the bar extremely high. Even if when I was going through those, you're like, yeah, I don't worry about that perfect house or there's something on there that I've not prioritized at the top. A lot of times still we have that inner critic coming in and judging us for it and reminding us about it pretty often.
00:02:31
Speaker
I think we expect so much of ourselves. And I think the reality is like when we were in school and we expected ourselves to get straight A's, we could get straight A's because we had seven or eight subjects.
00:02:44
Speaker
We could get A's in all seven or eight of those subjects. But now we have so many more subjects on our report card and we're still expecting ourselves to get perfect grades and all of them. And then we feel guilty when we don't. I think especially the mom guilt comes in when we don't get an A plus in motherhood. and all of the subcategories that come along with it. That's one place that mom guilt comes from are our expectations of ourselves. And I want to be really clear that this is not an individual problem. This is not like you are failing because you have too high of expectations of yourself. It is absolutely a societal thing because if this were just one person, then i wouldn't see this across all of my clients, right? We are expected as women to do so much more. We are expected to have a really high bar for ourselves. And when we don't, we can be really hard on ourselves and society can be really hard on us too.
00:03:49
Speaker
So I just want to make sure that that's clear, that these expectations weren't placed there by us. They were likely internalized from messages that we've gotten over the years, whenever we have either not measured up ourselves and the feedback that we got from that, or whenever we see that another woman isn't measuring up and we see the feedback and the judgment that they get.
00:04:14
Speaker
The second place that mom guilt comes from is comparison, comparison of other people, comparison to our childhood of what our parents created for us in the magic of the holidays and comparing ourselves to that comparison and our expectations of ourselves in these lofty visions that we have versus the reality Lots of different ways that we can use comparison against ourselves. And as if comparison weren't bad enough already, enter social media. Where we see only the best versions of everybody. Have you ever noticed how your brain only compares you to people who you believe are doing better than you?
00:05:00
Speaker
It somehow glosses over everybody else or gives them a pass or tells you like, oh no, that's not in your benchmarking category. And then it redirects you to somebody else doing a plus work in one area of their lives that you're paying attention to.
00:05:17
Speaker
and comparing it against that area of your life. Of course, you don't know what their grades are in all of the other areas, and you don't know how many courses they're taking this season. I'm going to go all the way with this metaphor, but they could be taking fewer courses than you, right, on their report card, and therefore it is available to them to get A's, or it could be that they're failing some courses and you're only seeing the ones that they are getting A's in because that's what they're choosing to show you. So I think the thing that we need to remember about comparison is that number one, we always compare their best to our worst because we know the full picture of us. And number two, we are only looking at one or two areas of their lives. Usually.
00:06:05
Speaker
So when we see it on social media, we're only seeing the perfectly decorated home. We're not seeing everything else, all of the other areas of their life. Because we compare ourselves and we say, this person's doing this. I should be able to do this. Why can't I do this? Their kids are so lucky. My kids are at a disadvantage because they have me as a mom.
00:06:25
Speaker
And then the third is not showing up how we want to. or how we believe a good mom would show up. And I think that's in both quality and quantity. And so I think in quantity, it happens whenever we don't spend what we believe is enough time, or maybe the school at the last minute decides they're going to do a spirit week for the last week before the holiday break. And you're like, I don't have all those outfits. I'm not going to be able to send my kid in with the reindeer costume because we just don't have that laying around. Maybe the school says, oh, we're having a holiday concert in the middle of the day. And you can't leave work that day because you've got a big report that you're giving. And so then we feel that guilt because i should be able to do everything.
Quality Time with Children
00:07:19
Speaker
I want to be there for all these things. I hear this from so many executive moms working 50 to 60 hours a week, not getting to see their kids as much as they'd like to and really feeling like they're missing out. And then there's the quality, not showing up how we want to from a quality perspective. And i think this mostly happens when we're not present with our kids because we're distracted by work or by other things that are like spinning in our minds. I hear this so often that like the time I do have with my kids, I want to cherish it and be there for it.
00:07:56
Speaker
But I feel like I can't because my mind is always going with all the things I have to do and the conversations I need to have. and It's just constantly running in the background and I'm not really there enjoying the time with my kids. And a lot of times the thing that we're thinking about is even related to them. We're planning the event that we're going to do with them in two weeks. Meanwhile, they're right there in front of us trying to tell us about their day or play something with us. And We aren't able to be present because we're planning out into the future.
00:08:31
Speaker
And so then we feel like we're missing out on that time with them. And so notice that both give that FOMO feeling and that FOMO feeling leads to mom guilt. Like I'm missing out on their childhood, whether it's because I'm not there enough or because the time that I am there, I'm not really there. Like I'm physically there, but not mentally there.
00:08:54
Speaker
So what can we do about this? Okay. So first off, in terms of the expectations, I think getting really clear on the report card and deciding what subjects are our core subjects. What are the ones that we want to make sure we get A on? We are so good at being strategic at our jobs, but sometimes we don't apply that to planning the whole overall thing. Right. And so we have that opportunity to do this year to really be strategic and say, which subjects are my core subjects that I want to really focus on and get A's. And then which ones am I going to be okay with getting a B or a C
00:09:40
Speaker
or maybe even failing in this season and making those decisions ahead of time, being very clear about the reasons why made that decision so that whenever I do get a failing grade or grade less than an A or a B, I'm going to have my own back and remind myself that no, no, no, I made that conscious decision. It's okay.
00:10:00
Speaker
I've decided that in this season, that's not my top priority and I'm okay not delivering a plus work in that area or those 20 areas, whatever it is for us.
Managing Expectations and Social Media Use
00:10:11
Speaker
Second, if scrolling other people's perfect holidays gives you anxiety, then turn off social media.
00:10:18
Speaker
Sometimes we do that to ourselves where we are scrolling. like It's called doom scrolling for a reason because it makes us feel terrible because we are seeing everybody else doing all these amazing things. And then we start telling ourselves a story that we aren't measuring up and we're not enough and we're not a good mother. It's not true.
00:10:37
Speaker
And none of those thoughts would be there if we weren't scrolling through social media. And looking at all these perfectly decorated houses with these perfect elf on the shelf situations happening and perfect advent calendars. So that's number one.
00:10:55
Speaker
If we are having a tough time with it, let's just remove the stimulus. And number two, i think it's important to remind ourselves that what I am doing is enough.
00:11:08
Speaker
And getting really clear on that. And I think whenever we get clear about our report card and how we're going to measure up, then that turns the focus back onto us instead of saying, what does this other person have on their report card? What do they think is most important And how are they prioritizing? That doesn't matter because it's different for all of us. What one person cares about is not what somebody else cares about.
00:11:37
Speaker
And it doesn't have to be what you care about. You get to decide what you care about and what you prioritize. And then third, in terms of showing up, how we want to show up, I think that in terms of quantity, there may always be something there that makes us want to spend more time with our kids. And a lot of times it's like this weird thing where we want to spend more time with our kids and more time at work. Like we wish we had more time for both. I've heard so many women say, i just wish I could clone myself so I could do both because I really enjoy both. But but what I would encourage you to do is to focus on the quality.
00:12:12
Speaker
If quantity isn't something you can make a big change to then focus on the quality so that then whenever we are with our kids, we can make the most of that time and maximize that time together. And when your brain starts drifting off to another place, when you're with your kids, Bring it back to the present moment. So here are a few ways i like to do that. There are a few.
00:12:36
Speaker
Things I tell myself a few thoughts. So I'm going to share those with you in case any of those are helpful. One is the action is here. This is something that one of my coaches always says, the action is here. It's right here, right now.
00:12:48
Speaker
I choose to be present in this moment. I will sometimes find myself drifting into other places and then I'll catch myself and just say, I'm going to choose right now to be present in this moment. And then another really important one is I have time for this. I think so often we are rushing through our day because we're telling ourselves, I don't have time for this. I don't have time to do this. I don't have time for this meltdown. I don't have time for this argument. I don't have time for this conversation.
00:13:17
Speaker
And so we just need to change that story to like, this is my top priority or one of my top priorities. And I do have time for this because our brain likes to tell us that we don't have time for anything. Another thing you could do is you could set a timer. you don't have to tell your kids, but you can set a timer for yourself of like five minutes.
00:13:34
Speaker
Just tell yourself for five minutes. I'm not going to think about work. I'm going to focus and be here. And anytime my brain tries to offer me, Hey, Hey, here's a thought about work or Hey, Hey, you have this thing to do. I am either going have a notepad there to like write it down to parking lot it, or I am going to say, no, thank you. We'll come back to you later and redirect myself back to the present moment and to my kid in front of me.
00:13:58
Speaker
So those are a couple of different ways. Another way is breathing, like closing your eyes for a second, taking a really deep breath and then asking yourself, what do I want in this moment?
00:14:08
Speaker
and answering that question for yourself. And then grounding exercises. So sometimes whenever we get really up in our heads, grounding exercises can be extremely helpful. Like feeling your feet on the floor or feeling your seat in the chair, feeling where you are and getting yourself back into your body instead of up in your head. So I think that the more we can focus on quality and having the quality time with our kids, with our families, not that we're suddenly like, oh, I'm totally fine missing the concert in the middle of the day, but we can feel a little bit less guilt because we know that the time that we do get to spend with them is really high quality.
00:14:51
Speaker
And I just want you to remember that what you're doing is enough. It is more than enough. Your kids are so lucky to have you for a mom and your team is so lucky to have you for a
Support and Coaching Opportunities for Moms
00:15:03
Speaker
leader. Your partner is so lucky to have you for a partner. You are sitting here listening to a developmental podcast because you want to be better because you want to show up better for all of them.
00:15:13
Speaker
I hope you give yourself credit for that. And if you are wanting some extra support, I would love for you to join me in my seasonal support session happening tomorrow. If you're listening in real time, Friday, December 12th at 2 PM Eastern, it's totally free. I'm just bringing together a group of high achieving moms, just like you just to share some space and feel some community and support this holiday season. Because i think that we all need it. You can sign up over at coachleanna.com. And if you're really wanting to reduce the mom guilt year round and show up better than you ever have in 2026, I'm going to be offering my third annual January reset for high achieving women coming up soon here in the new year. So be sure to stay tuned for that. And if you'd like to receive more information, you can head over to coachleana.com slash connect. So you can sign up for my email list and I'll send you all the details and I hope to see you there.
00:16:08
Speaker
So I am wishing you all the best here in this holiday season. You've got this. And I hope that thinking about this allows you to release at least a little bit of that mom guilt, because i want you to enjoy the holiday season.
00:16:23
Speaker
All right, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in and i will see you all next week. Bye.
00:16:33
Speaker
If you're loving what you're learning on this podcast, I'd love to invite you to check out the Executive Mom Reset. It's my six-month coaching program for ambitious, success-driven, career-focused women who are ready to stop surviving and start thriving.
00:16:48
Speaker
Together, we'll tackle the stress, guilt, and overwhelm that come with being a high-achieving executive mom. You'll learn how to set boundaries, prioritize what truly matters, and build the confidence to show up powerfully at work, at home, and for yourself.
00:17:02
Speaker
Head on over to CoachLeanna.com right now to schedule a free discovery call. We'll spend an hour talking about where you are now, what you wanna create, and how I can help you get there. Because every woman deserves to live the life of her dreams.
00:17:16
Speaker
Let's create yours together.