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How to Overcome Resistance to Change and Finally Start Putting Yourself First (Taking Care of Yourself #6)
10 Plays42 minutes ago
In this sixth episode of the Taking Care of Yourself series, Leanna gets personal about the resistance so many working and executive moms feel when it comes to making positive changes in their lives. Even when we know what we need to do to feel better, our brains often keep us stuck in old patterns, convincing us it’s too hard, won’t make a difference, or that we’ll fail if we can’t do it perfectly. Leanna explores why that happens, how to recognize the thought errors that hold us back, and what it looks like to move forward with small, meaningful steps instead of waiting for the “perfect” moment. If you’ve ever felt like taking care of yourself is just one more impossible thing on your to-do list, this episode will remind you that change doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing, and that even 1% shifts can create lasting transformation.
Catch up on the Taking Care of Yourself series:
#1 The Mindset Shifts Every Executive Mom Needs to Balance Ambition and Well-Being
#2 Empowering Executive Moms to Recognize Your Own Needs Without Guilt
#4 Advocating for Your Needs at Work and at Home
Full transcript available here.
Connect with Leanna here.
Strong leadership starts with strong foundations. The Executive Mom Reset Foundations begins October 2025. Join us to gain the tools, strategies, and support you need to thrive at work and at home without burning out.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
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.
00:00:15
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.
Episode Context and Personal Connection
00:00:30
Speaker
Thank you so much for being here today for the sixth episode in the Taking Care of Yourself series. I had the first five episodes completely mapped out and I decided When it comes to the sixth one, I want to see what's happening and see what I'm hearing from clients and feedback from listeners to create the sixth episode.
00:00:57
Speaker
I always write episodes with you in mind. I take specific scenarios from coaching conversations with clients, casual conversations with friends, other moms at the pickup line, or situations I've experienced myself. And I like to write about what I've learned or what my clients discovered.
00:01:17
Speaker
And then I like to share it with you to spread the wealth. For today's episode, this one feels really personal because I have actually been feeling what I'm about to talk
Barriers and Resistance to Self-Care
00:01:30
Speaker
about. I've been experiencing it myself. So I am writing this episode just as much for you as for me, because over the past five episodes, I've been sharing about how to take care of yourself.
00:01:43
Speaker
I talked about some of the barriers that keep us from taking care of ourselves. and I've brought on two amazing guests who shared their stories of what it was like before and after they started taking care of themselves.
00:01:59
Speaker
When I asked myself, what does everyone need to know that I haven't shared yet about taking care of themselves? And i think it's the idea that if you're having resistance to making a change, if you're having resistance to actually starting to take care of yourself, if that's something you've never really done before, or you haven't done since becoming a mom, you can actually make a change. And that making a change
00:02:30
Speaker
will make things better in your life. Because i think that our brains do so much to keep us in the place where we are now, even if it's super uncomfortable.
00:02:43
Speaker
I've shared so many different ideas, techniques, and tools, and my guests have as well, for how you can take care of yourself Then our brain discounts it or tells us we can't do it or that it's not going to change anything. It doesn't matter. So why would we even start?
00:03:03
Speaker
right? So whether you're wanting to try one of those things, or if you're interested in joining my executive mom reset program starting soon, whatever it is that you might want to be doing to take care of yourself that you're not doing right now, I just want to say there's not a right first step.
00:03:27
Speaker
I think a lot of times our brains will search for that and say, I have all this information. Now I have to pick the best one or the right one. The only right, I'm doing air quotes thing, is movement, is to move in the direction that you want to go.
00:03:42
Speaker
So today I want to talk about what keeps us stuck, what keeps us from making positive changes in our lives. And I'm going to talk about it in the context of... taking care of ourselves and prioritizing ourselves and meeting our own needs if we're not doing those things right now.
00:03:58
Speaker
But I really think this could be some very helpful awareness for any change that you might want to make in your life that could be a positive change for you, but for whatever reason, you're not
Understanding and Challenging Thought Patterns
00:04:11
Speaker
making it. Why don't we make changes in our lives when we have all the information and we No, we should, or we want to, but we don't.
00:04:23
Speaker
Number one, first and foremost, is that our brain does not like change. Our brains are amazing tools. They are wired for safety, right? to keep us safe so that we can keep our species alive and well.
00:04:39
Speaker
And so our brains usually perceive any change as risky because we know what's here. Even if it's very, very uncomfortable, even if we do not like where we're at, we know it.
00:04:55
Speaker
And we know how to deal with it. And our brain does not like the idea of the unknown. It does not want to go there. And so what it does is a lot of times it will discourage you. It will come up with all kinds of reasons why you shouldn't make a change, or it will go to worst case scenarios to keep you stuck.
00:05:16
Speaker
And it's really about the motivational triad, our ancient brain, the part of our brain that is responsible for fight or flight for keeping us safe, operates on the motivational triad.
00:05:30
Speaker
And that is to seek pleasure, avoid pain and conserve energy. So even when we're uncomfortable, There is a comfort in the known where we can probably find some pleasure here and we can avoid the pain of change and uncertainty and we can conserve energy. It's so much less work to keep doing what we're doing.
00:05:53
Speaker
Even if it feels like a lot, our brain believes it's less work than making a change. Even if the change would make our lives easier, a lot of times our brain will tell us making that change is way too hard.
00:06:07
Speaker
So we're comfortable overworking and we're comfortable prioritizing everybody else. We're comfortable in our routines and our default ways of operating. Even if they don't feel good, they feel a lot safer than the unknown.
00:06:21
Speaker
So I want you to ask yourself, if you're feeling resistance to making any kind of positive change, and here we're talking around taking care of yourself, ask yourself the question, what would happen if I started taking care of myself?
00:06:37
Speaker
Pause this for a second and actually think about it and see what your brain offers you. Because I think a lot of times our brain will go to the worst case scenario that everyone around you might suffer, the kids wouldn't have anyone to take care of them, all of your work would fall to the wayside, you'd probably get fired, right? All these terrible things might happen. So your brain might do that.
00:07:00
Speaker
Or your brain might tell you something like, well, it it wouldn't change anything. Nothing would be different, which I'll talk about more in a second. Or it may tell you, well I don't even know how to do that.
00:07:13
Speaker
My brain loves to offer me confusion. Like you don't know how to do that. So don't even try. These are all thought errors. They're all things that our brain is telling us to keep us where we are.
00:07:26
Speaker
Remember the saying, don't believe everything you think, because just because your brain thinks it does not mean it's factually true. And i think we have the opportunity question question Is that true?
00:07:41
Speaker
Is this really true? Is this really going to happen if I start taking care of myself? What does it even mean to take care of myself? but Let me get really specific on that. What is it that I want to do And then go into what does my brain think about that?
00:07:53
Speaker
The solution here is to notice when your brain is doing this. acknowledge its efforts in trying to protect you. I say a thousand times a day, thank you so much brain for trying to keep me safe.
00:08:06
Speaker
I really appreciate your perspective and I'm considering it. And also I'm going to consider these other perspectives as well. And then also maybe allow yourself to imagine best case scenarios. If your brain's going to the worst case or even just better scenarios, doesn't have to be the best case, but Just better scenarios than the horrible ones that your brain might offer you.
00:08:29
Speaker
The second reason that we don't make positive changes in our lives, and i touched on this a little bit, but it's another thought error. We don't believe that it's possible.
00:08:41
Speaker
Or if we believe it is possible, we don't believe that it will make a difference. So therefore it's not worth the effort. And again, this goes back to our brains trying to keep us safe and trying to conserve energy.
00:08:54
Speaker
But i was thinking about this one specifically, because I think this is something we tell ourselves so often. Well, it's not going to make much of a difference anyway. It's not really going to help.
00:09:06
Speaker
So like, why even and bother?
Martin Seligman's Resilience Framework
00:09:08
Speaker
Martin Seligman is a leading researcher on positive psychology. And he came up with the three Ps of resilience. Even though this episode isn't necessarily about resilience, I think one of these especially really applies here.
00:09:23
Speaker
So the three Ps are personalization, permanence, and pervasiveness. And i think permanence is the one that often keeps us stuck because permanence is when you feel like nothing can change. Like this state of being or how things are right now is how things will be forever or for a really long time, or maybe until your kids go to college or until they get out of this stage. It's like, we believe that
00:09:53
Speaker
Things are the way they are and it's beyond our control. And so if you ever find yourself thinking, I see no end in sight, I'm underwater and I can't get out. It doesn't matter if I make a change. It's not going to make a difference.
00:10:06
Speaker
You feel stuck here and you see no way out. I see this with so many of the women that I work with at the beginning of their journey. Because they come to me feeling like I want this to be better. I want it to be different, but I don't actually believe it ever could be.
00:10:23
Speaker
And a lot of times it's what keeps us from seeking out help from a coach or a therapist or doing anything to take care of ourselves because we don't actually believe that it could be different, that it could be better. We think as long as I have kids and a job, this is just how it's going to be.
00:10:44
Speaker
It's so hard to balance everything. And I'm always pulled in different directions and always feeling like I'm failing at something. And it's just never going to change. It's just my new state of being. And we don't believe that we can make a positive change. This is probably one of the biggest reasons why we don't make changes, even when we are unhappy because Because we believe our current state is permanent and that we don't have enough control over it to change anything without completely blowing up our lives and like doing an eat, pray, love tour through the world.
00:11:15
Speaker
So I want to be really clear. It is absolutely possible. to feel better, to feel different. I'm not saying that you should believe it's possible to always feel good and at peace 100% of the day. i think that Melissa's episode last week really highlights what it looks like to feel good.
00:11:37
Speaker
And also we talked a lot about what does it mean to feel good and what should our expectation be there? Because it is possible to feel more balanced, to feel more taken care of than you may be feeling right now.
00:11:51
Speaker
And the little things I have suggested will make a difference. I'm telling you that from my personal experience and from working with many clients and seeing them start to feel better.
Incremental Changes in Self-Care Practices
00:12:03
Speaker
You heard from Laura and Melissa about how starting to take care of themselves and prioritize themselves helped them to feel better as well. So if you can't get your mind to believe it, that's okay. Okay.
00:12:17
Speaker
just try some of them. Even if you're just doing it to prove me wrong, just try it and see what happens. Okay. And then the third reason, one of the other tricks our brain likes to play and that you probably have lots of experience with, I know I do, and it's all or nothing thinking.
00:12:36
Speaker
It's the idea that we are either all in or all out. We think it has to be this huge change in our lives. And so we've talked about all these different ways to take care of yourself. And i think there are some big steps that we've talked about, like believing you're worthy of having needs and having your needs met. You know, that's a bigger step.
00:12:56
Speaker
Or having conversations to set boundaries or to advocate for your needs. Maybe you've never had those conversations before or... That's something that's really hard for you. So those might feel like bigger things and you might not feel ready for some of those yet. And that is okay because there are so many other small steps you can take.
00:13:16
Speaker
Like some of the nervous system regulation techniques that Melissa shared, or simply checking in with yourself throughout the day and asking, what do I need right now? Just taking a breath.
00:13:27
Speaker
Whenever you start to feel tightness in your chest, just giving yourself a deep breath and doing things like taking a walk or standing up and stretching or getting a snack or taking a drink, just simple things to start to tell yourself, I am taking care of myself.
00:13:47
Speaker
I am taking care of myself in this way today. And so like I mentioned at the beginning, movement in the direction that you want to move is all that is required here.
00:14:00
Speaker
You do not need to suddenly become a person who takes care of themselves 24 seven and forgets about everybody else. And that is not what I'm suggesting at all.
00:14:12
Speaker
And i think a lot of times we have this mindset of like, I'm either taking care of myself or I'm not. I'm on a workout schedule or I'm not. I'm eating healthy or I'm not.
00:14:23
Speaker
And that's that all or nothing thinking. The question that you get to ask yourself is just right now in this moment, what can I do to take care of myself today? What's one thing I can do?
00:14:36
Speaker
Maybe i haven't been taking care of myself nutritionally rather than feeling like I need to do a big meal prep and planning on the weekends and be this big thing that takes up my entire Sunday, I can just ask myself in the morning, what meal can I focus on today to be a little bit more balanced and healthy?
00:14:55
Speaker
Maybe I know that I operate better when I get fresh air. So maybe I can look at my calendar and see where I have some little breaks. I see that I have a big meeting at two. I'm going to block my calendar from 145 to 155 to go outside and take a walk.
00:15:11
Speaker
Maybe I want to start working out, but i cannot seem to find the time with everything I have going on in my life. So maybe I look and see that i have an hour free for lunch today. Maybe that doesn't happen every day, but maybe I do today or on Thursday.
00:15:26
Speaker
And so maybe I'll spend the first 20 minutes doing ah yoga video on demand and then have the other 40 for eating. We can do lots of but little things that move us in the direction where it doesn't have to be that we flip that on switch.
00:15:42
Speaker
And then I think we need to drop the expectation for perfection. If you have it in your mind that you're either taking care of yourself or not, I think it's important to get clear of what are your expectations of yourself that would put you into that category of a person who takes care of herself. I was speaking with a client the other day. She had missed an email from her daughter's school and felt so guilty, like a bad mom. She said, now I'm one of those parents who doesn't read their emails.
00:16:12
Speaker
What she realized was that she had two buckets, parents who read their emails and parents who don't read their emails. And essentially, Either she had to be reading 100% of the emails, or if she missed one, she was in this other bucket. It's interesting how our brains do this. This is one example, but I'm sure that there are lots of examples that you can think of of how your brain does this. It likes simple categories and dichotomies.
00:16:38
Speaker
And so first of all, I'm pretty sure every school these days sends way too many emails and messages through the portal and the app. So many messages from the school.
00:16:49
Speaker
And we need to really define what is the amount that is okay. If we expect ourselves to read 100% of those emails, then we are setting ourselves up for failure because no parent is reading 100% of the emails.
00:17:06
Speaker
Or maybe they are, but you get to decide if you are going to be the parent that holds themselves to that standard, or if you are going to accept that you are a human with...
00:17:21
Speaker
other things on your plate and you get to decide what is enough, what is okay. And then take some time to make peace with the imperfection of maybe missing an email here and there.
00:17:35
Speaker
I think what happens is our brains tell us like, oh no, I'm going to become one of those parents and I'm never going to pick up my kid and I'm going miss every dress up day and I'm going to forget to send in the snack, right? It's like our brains have this idea of a slippery slope No, you just missed one email because you're a human and you have a another job and your full-time job is to not read emails from the school.
00:18:00
Speaker
So in terms of taking care of ourselves, if your brain is telling you that you have to do it perfectly, that you have to care of yourself every day, work out every day, always put yourself first 100% of the time. And that's what it means to be able to put yourself in that bucket of a person who takes care of themselves.
00:18:17
Speaker
Then I invite you to re-examine your own definition. Because I think often the all in the all or nothing keeps us from doing it because we think we're committing to this major thing.
00:18:31
Speaker
No, I can be a person who takes care of myself and still puts others first sometimes. I can be a person who takes care of myself and still deprioritizes my own needs sometimes, whether on purpose and consciously or not.
00:18:44
Speaker
I can be a person who takes care of myself nutritionally and still goes through the drive-through sometimes because i didn't take the time to meal plan and prep. I can be a person who exercises and I can miss a week because i had so many other things going on at work and I can just pick it right back up.
00:19:00
Speaker
I think so often our expectation of getting it perfect keeps us from doing it at all. So we think we have to change our life all at once, but what if you just took a small step each day, check in with yourself one time per day, do one of those grounding exercises instead of changing our life a hundred percent overnight.
00:19:22
Speaker
We are incrementally making changes. What if each time we do that, it makes it 1% better? That's going to add up over time. So I invite you to examine this thinking and allow yourself to take one small step and be okay with that.
Mindset Shifts for Self-Care Success
00:19:41
Speaker
And then finally, i think so often we believe that we need to change our external circumstances in order to change how we feel. We believe that if this isn't working, then we need to get a new job because it's just not feasible to stay at this company or to stay in this role.
00:19:59
Speaker
And if we change that, then we will feel better. This is why we see people jumping from relationship to relationship. You may have done this before, or maybe you're doing it now, or maybe friends who you see doing this, where we change out the person, but we don't change ourselves. And we see the same patterns repeating themselves.
00:20:23
Speaker
I think so often we change out the job and then we see the same patterns repeat themselves. We get burnt out and we're like, wait a minute, I wasn't supposed to get burnt out in this job.
00:20:36
Speaker
I only got burnt out in that other job. Maybe it's not the job. Maybe it's actually instead of those external circumstances, maybe it's our thoughts about those external circumstances that determine how we feel.
00:20:49
Speaker
And i just want to offer that we have the opportunity to feel so much better without changing anything externally. I'm not saying that things might not have to change externally.
00:21:01
Speaker
What I'm saying is that there is an opportunity to take care of yourself, even without getting a new job, new partner, or moving to a different state that has a slower pace, right?
00:21:17
Speaker
We might believe that the solution to our problems is to change something outside of ourselves. It might be... And also, we also need to change inside of ourselves because if we take our same brain and go into a new situation with it, we are going to repeat those same patterns.
00:21:41
Speaker
The opportunity here is learning how to change your thoughts and internal experiences to change how you feel. That is definitely a skill that they don't teach you at school. We spend a lot of time practicing it inside the Executive Mom Reset Program.
00:21:55
Speaker
But the first step is recognizing that changing something outside of yourself is not the only way to feel better. There are other ways to feel better with a lot of these tools that we've shared over the past five weeks.
00:22:10
Speaker
So I hope this helps if you have been feeling resistance to making changes and taking better care of yourself. I want to remind you that it's so human of you to feel that resistance when presented with a change.
00:22:25
Speaker
It's not a problem, but it may be keeping you from living the life that you want, but maybe keeping you from feeling better. So it's really important to notice whenever these thought patterns are coming up, whenever your brain's telling you that it's too hard or it's too much effort or it's not going to change anything or it's giving you worst case scenarios or telling you that it's this huge thing and that you're either taking care of yourself or not with the all or nothing thinking, or it's telling you that you need to change something outside of yourself.
00:22:58
Speaker
All of those are things our human brain does to keep us safe and stuck. And we have the opportunity to recognize what our brain is doing and then decide what consciously what we want to do.
00:23:11
Speaker
Do we want to believe that? Or do we want to tell ourselves a different story? We do not have to believe everything we think we get to decide what we believe and we get to decide what changes we want to make in our
Executive Mom Reset Program Overview
00:23:24
Speaker
lives. so So I hope this helps to encourage you to make some positive changes in your life and to be taking care of yourself If you're finding that challenging, I hope you'll come check out the Executive Mom Reset program.
00:23:39
Speaker
We have a new group starting next week, and we also have one-on-one coaching available as well. Head on over to coachleanna.com to find out more. And i hope to see you next week as we continue to talk about taking care of ourselves.
00:23:54
Speaker
Thanks so much, everybody. Have a great day. Bye-bye. If you're loving what you're learning on this podcast, I want to invite you to come join me for the Executive Mom Reset. We offer both one-on-one and group coaching formats, and our next group is starting in October 2025. I created the Executive Mom Reset to help high-achieving moms feel less anxious, more confident, and more in control of their lives.
00:24:18
Speaker
Instead of feeling like you're being pulled in a hundred different directions, you'll learn how to pause, reset, and approach challenges with clarity, and confidence. You'll stop running on autopilot, stop second guessing yourself all the time, and stop letting stress, guilt, and overwhelm dictate your day.
00:24:36
Speaker
You'll walk away with the tools and the confidence that you can use every day to feel stronger, more empowered, and more in alignment with the life you want to be living. Head on over to coachleana.com to learn more and to get signed up.
00:24:50
Speaker
I really hope to see you there.