118: Own Your Day and Crush Your Goals Without the Mom Guilt with Nikki Oden

Andrea Liebross: Welcome to the Time to Level Up Podcast. I'm your host, Andrea Liebross. Each week, I focus on the systems, strategy, and big thinking you need to CEO your business and life to the next level. Are you ready? Let's go.

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to today's podcast. A lot of you, listeners, not all but a lot of you are moms. When we chat about your goals, ambitions, and priorities, there's a lot of interference from all things related to being a mom.

Now, I'm all for moms and family coming first but I often see that that thinking is getting in the way of you being the woman you want to be, that ambitious woman you want to be. I also am a proponent of the fact that you can be both ambitious, go after dreams, and have an amazing professional and business life, AND be a mom.

So today on the podcast, I am talking to Nikki Oden. Nikki Oden is a lawyer and a mom mentor who helps working moms battle burnout by teaching them how to own their days and crush their goals without mom guilt. Sounds like our kind of girl, doesn't she?

She walked away though from a lucrative career as a commercial litigator from a prestigious international law firm to become a stay-at-home mom. In that time, she really learned firsthand how easy it is to completely lose herself. She had to do something about it.

Eventually, through a lot of trial and improvement, she figured out how to harmonize what she wants as an ambitious woman with who she wants to be as a mother and is passionate about teaching other working moms how to do the same. Her mission is to help those moms love their mom lives and a little more and love themselves.

Nikki is the founder of Your Ideal Mom Life, host to the Love Your Mom Life Podcast, and author of But Definitely Wear Mascara. Welcome, Nikki Oden, to the podcast.

Hey Time To Level Up listeners. Welcome back to the podcast and I today am so thrilled and happy to have Nikki Oden with me. I'm going to let her introduce herself but I do want to let you know that she came to me through a mutual friend and when I told her, the friend, “Hey, I would love to have an expert come on the podcast to talk about all things being a mom,” my friend Angie said, “You must have Nikki.” So here is Nikki. Welcome.

Nikki Oden: Well, hello. Thank you so much, Andrea. I love that story. It was an awesome way to meet you.

Andrea Liebross: Yes. Tell everybody who you are, what you do, who you are a mom to, all the things.

Nikki Oden: I'm a happy wife and mom of two. I have a little boy who is 9 and a daughter who's 10, so 17 months apart, I'll let you imagine what that was like in the beginning. I am also a lawyer and a mom mentor. I have a podcast called Love Your Mom Life and I recently wrote a book called But Definitely Wear Mascara, which is full of hacks to help you Love Your Mom Life and yourself a little more.

I just have a huge heart for working moms, being one myself, and helping them battle burnout by teaching them how to own their day so they can crush their goals without the mom guilt.

Andrea Liebross: I love it. I love it. I have a handful of attorney clients so if you guys are listening, this is especially for you.

Nikki Oden: I get it.

Andrea Liebross: Yes. I recently had a client get on a coaching call and she said to me, “I am just tired of making dinner and it takes a lot of time,” her kids are like teens and preteens, “and half the time, no one wants to eat it and it makes me feel horrible. I really think I should be working on my business instead. But if I tell that I'm not making dinner, then I feel guilty.” What do you have to say to that?

Nikki Oden: I have so much to say.

Andrea Liebross: I know, just tell us.

Nikki Oden: The first thing I want to say is I feel you, girlfriend. I hate when I spend time making dinner and I get the nose turned up, “I'm not eating that,” I literally want to walk out of the room. Number one, you're validated. I totally hear that and you're not alone.

Now, I get the desire to want to make your kids dinner and I do think it's important to have meals together and to cook them or otherwise, we're spending money maybe needlessly. However, you can set yourself up for better success by just taking some time on one day of the week, maybe on a Sunday to plan the menu and involve your kids in that. So if they don't like it, well, you chose that, honey.

Involve them in the menu, let them know what's coming because kids like to have that structure and view of you, they like to be involved and they like to feel like they were consulted. Then just get things to a point where maybe you just have to stick it in the oven or you just have to compile a few things. That doesn't have to be every night. It can just be some of those maybe it's a Monday, Wednesday, Thursday kind of thing. That's one thing you can do.

Then another thing you can do is just remember that actually cooking a home-cooked meal is what I would consider a rubber ball versus a glass ball. This is what I do with moms all the time is we talk about the different areas of our lives representing different balls that we're juggling and if we need to drop a ball, we always drop the one that will bounce versus dropping the glass ball.

Your important relationships are a glass ball, absolutely, so your relationship with your children, making that time to sit down with them, be eyeball to eyeball, talk about your day, that is a glass ball. What you eat is a rubber ball. If there are some nights where you've got to phone it in and order something, it's okay. Give yourself that permission.

Andrea Liebross: I love that analogy, the glass ball versus the rubber ball. Yeah, I was coaching her, I said, “Well, what happens if you don't make dinner? What's going to happen? Is anything going to happen?” “Well, they might make something from the freezer. They might order it, okay.”

In my view, the most important part of mealtime is just the togetherness. It's not the meal. But I love that glass ball, rubber ball. What do you think are some other rubber balls that moms could potentially have permission to drop, we'll say, that make that work-life balance more balanced? What do you think?

Nikki Oden: I think we put an impossible standard on ourselves sometimes as moms, especially when we're running a business or even when we're employees and just working towards a goal. Some of those impossible standards include things like home-cooked meals or just being that sort of perfect-y mom who's going to volunteer at every single event at school or be at every single party.

It would be nice, sure, but if you can't, it's okay. You have to let go of the guilt. I want to talk about the guilt in a second because it's a choice, we gotta let go of the guilt. Think about all of the good that we're creating with our kids.

“Okay, I can only volunteer once this entire quarter or maybe once this last half of the year, but at least I'm here this one time. I'm going to make the best of it and treat that time as a glass ball. I would be totally present, all in, I'm not checking my phone, I'm not looking at email, not wondering when it's going to be over. I'm there for my kid. Then when I'm not there, I'm not there and it's okay. They're going to survive and they're going to relish that time they had with me.”

Things like volunteering for the bake sale or being a room mom. If you don't have the bandwidth for that, don't break yourself because you don't. You're still creating amazing things for your kids and they're watching you. They are absorbing more than they let on and they watch you go for big things, do hard things, and achieve goals. That is really important too. It's just as important as showing up for the bake sale and all those other things you're mad at yourself for not doing.

Andrea Liebross: So true. It's funny you brought up bake sale because sometimes I say to my clients, “Do you want to be a cupcake mom or do you want to be a real mom?” The cupcake moms, what is your quest in life? I don't think cupcakes are the most important, and maybe it is the most important to you but probably for people listening, the cupcakes are not the most important, just saying.

Nikki Oden: And it’s okay.

Andrea Liebross: It's okay, it's okay. Tell me about guilt.

Nikki Oden: Guilt, such a thing. It's real, I will say it's real, and so many of us go through it. As someone who has recovered from being a guilt-written mom, I'll say that it's not easy to shake off but it is a choice. We are choosing to wallow in that emotion. I understand that your first thought isn't always easy to control, but take responsibility for your second thought.

Be intentional about how you treat yourself in those moments because we really should be speaking to ourselves the way we would speak to someone we love. I don't know about you, but I would never tell my daughter that she wasn't good enough. I would never tell my son that he doesn't matter and so why would I do that to myself in those moments where maybe I did forget to send them picture money on picture day or to send the money for book fair and I feel bad because I feel like my kid missed out on something.

But how is feeling bad about it going to change something that's already happened? I'm going to take the lesson, give myself the win, “Okay, next time, I know what I'm going to do differently, give snuggles, kisses, and apologies, and let it go.”

Andrea Liebross: Let it go. I think I liked how you said the first thought, I can’t remember, your second thought, be more intentional with your second thought, the first thought happens, I call that your brain on automatic and then your brain with intention.

It's so true because yes, I think automatic, we're human. Even sometimes people say to me, “I'm not really good at feeling things.” I always say, “Yeah, you are because you're human. That's not a good or a bad. You're not good at feeling or bad at feeling, it's just feeling.”

Yes, you're going to feel but then you can be intentional by what you're thinking, your thought can then direct or trigger how you feel. I love that. Here's another aspect of guilt that has to do with moms that sometimes comes up that I'd be curious about your perspective on.

As the moms that I coach become more involved in work or business, sometimes their mom friends change. They don't enjoy hanging out with the same mom friends, maybe, that they enjoyed hanging out with a couple of years ago. There's something about that that then starts to make them either feel guilty, less than, or too grandiose. Thoughts on that? What do you think?

Nikki Oden: I think it's very common as you grow for the people around you to change because truly, you are the average of the five people you hang around the most. As you are going for bigger things and focusing on your goals, you want to be around other women who are doing the same.

Otherwise, it's hard for you to break out of the space you were in before. We won't be talking about the same things, you won't have the same kind of mindset, and also they will be encouraging you and calling you out the way the women who are in the same mindset would be. It's totally okay.

It doesn't mean you axe them from your life, maybe when you see them, it's still friendly. It doesn't have to be awkward, you can still be loving and bubbly with them. But your time is limited. In my opinion, you should be very intentional about who you're spending your time with and who you're listening to, who you're leaning on, who you're venting to.

Andrea Liebross: That's so true. Kid’s friends change, our kid’s friends change. Yes, maybe you have the one buddy that you've had since kindergarten, but as they grow, their friends change so why wouldn't ours?

Nikki Oden: Absolutely. As our interests change, that's naturally going to happen. But that doesn't mean, “You're all dead to me if you're not in my inner five circle,” we can still be friendly and still have a great relationship. I just probably am not going to call you when I'm upset about something or to celebrate with you because I have a more aligned group, and that's okay, you probably do too.

Andrea Liebross: So true. I think it's hard sometimes to decide how, almost like when you decide how much freedom you're giving your kid, if you're going to let go of this friendship, are you completely letting go or can you just loosen it a little bit? They're still there but they're not as closely tied to you. That's okay if they're not super tied to you.

Nikki Oden: I think it's also okay for it to happen naturally and slowly versus you being like, “We are not hanging out anymore.” I don't think that needs to happen. I have some friends who I still consider very dear to me who I never really talk to or hang out with anymore because my priorities have changed, but I still feel great feelings towards them. I don't feel any ill will toward them and I don't think they do towards me either. It's a classic “we grew apart” and that's okay.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah, and actually, any relationship, romantic or friend, really the relationship is comprised of what you're thinking. You could still think of them as one of your bestest of friends even if you don't talk to them that often because it's really just comprised of what you think. That's an interesting point too.

I think as we grow as moms too, where our time goes changes. I remember back in the day, I spent a lot of time on the driveway or I spent a lot of time walking around the block. Now, I don't spend any time on my driveway and I only walk around the block when I want to walk around the block, right now, when I want to push a wagon.

You're in different environment. The circumstances are different. Of course, things are going to change. The bottom line is going to look different because you just have different circumstances.

Nikki Oden: Yeah. Like the mommy and me friends might not be the friends you're hanging out with today.

Andrea Liebross: Yes. If you said, “Alright, moms of the world, here are five things that you definitely need to do in order to keep yourself sane,” what would those things be?

Nikki Oden: Okay, number one is a mental dump, an intentional weekly dump of everything that's going on inside your brain. It can be business related, it can be related to kids, it could be related to spouse, your own like “I really want to clean that closet out” kind of thing, whatever's floating around in your brain, write it down.

If you do nothing with the list, even if you do nothing, it will feel so good to get it out on paper. There's something very cathartic about releasing it from your brain. I am definitely an old school pen-to-paper gal, but if you wanted to type it out on the notes on your phone, whatever it would take for you to just get it out of your brain, I recommend not on sticky notes.

Andrea Liebross: Well, you're speaking my language because I always say you need to do what I call thought downloads. Download everything that's in your brain or if you're going to do it once a week, I'd say you need to do a weekly preview on Sundays, so you were speaking my language on that.

Nikki Oden: Yes. I totally agree with the Sunday thing. It tends to be slower, quieter. People can be occupied with football and not so needy of you, of your time and you can take those moments for yourself, which leads me to my number two which is you've got to take time for yourself every single day, and you are not too busy and the world is not going to stop for you to take even if it's just 10 minutes.

I wake up before my kids do. I actually have worked my way up to an hour before they wake up but I know for some people, that's like, “Are you kidding me? I can't get out of bed any time before my alarm goes off.” Just slowly start inching your alarm clock 5 minutes earlier, 10 minutes earlier, and in that time, you do something that's just for you for nobody else, you're not folding laundry unless you find that cathartic, you're not cleaning anything. You are meditating, reading a novel, or having your first cup of coffee by yourself. You're taking those moments to center yourself and just get grounded before you hear, “Mom! Mom! Mom!” all day.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah. When your kids are teeny weeny, the wake-up time might be different than if they're teenagers. You have to give yourself a little grace there but you made me giggle when you said, “Mom!” I get that now in text, “Mom! Mom!” that's the stage I'm at, the texting, “Mom! Mom! Mom!”

Nikki Oden: Yeah, I'm starting to enter that stage.

Andrea Liebross: Oh, it's super fun. Well, we could have a whole discussion about what happens after that stage, FaceTime, and other ways of communication. Alright, so what's number three?

Nikki Oden: Number three would be to be very intentional with your time. I love the idea, what I do is I do the mental dump or what do you say, the brain thought download?

Andrea Liebross: Thought download, download all your thoughts, like the computer is downloading the documents.

Nikki Oden: So I do the download and then I take it a step further and I go back through what I wrote down and I prioritize it. I decide, going with my gut, what must I do, what should I do, I don't love the word should because it feels a little guilty but whatever, what should I do and what would I like to do? I categorize them as ABC. Self-care is always a must-do, can't wiggle out of self-care.

Then I calendar it accordingly. The most important things are going in my calendar first, which means that some of those B and C items are going to be left on the paper and they're not going to make it to the calendar. But when I am working and I'm focusing on what I calendared, I'm hitting the most important things, the things that are knocking down my lead dominoes, that are moving toward the goalpost or moving the chains as they say.

That makes me feel at the end of the week like I'm winning because although I didn't get everything done, and I never will, I got the most important things done. I think being intentional with how you spend your time is very important when you're a working mom because if you are not, somebody else will absolutely tell you what to do with your time.

You will find yourself putting out fires, playing whack-a-mole, and at the end of the week feeling like, “What did I do? What did I accomplish this week? I'm exhausted and I was running around but nothing really got done.”

Andrea Liebross: Yeah. I call that like what's your weekly big three, like what are the three most important things that you want to do this week and then each day, I have a daily big three. Those are the things that are the As in your book.

Nikki Oden: Yes, exactly.

Andrea Liebross: 100%. Okay, I can do that.

Nikki Oden: Of course, you can.

Andrea Liebross: What's number four?

Nikki Oden: Number four is to make your life a little bit easier by planning out your mornings the night before, really plan them out. I'm talking put the coffee grounds in the filter, have the water in there, and the cup under the spout so that all you have to do is press the button in the morning.

Or for me, I love smoothies so I'll put all the ingredients together, the dry ingredients are in a little mason jar, the wet ingredients are in the fridge, and I dump it all in the blender and I press the button. I plan out my outfit down to the accessories and then I even have a sort of rotating uniform.

I have like four dresses I know that I look good in, I don't have to think about that and if I don't want to get creative that night and what I'm wearing tomorrow, I’m like, “I'm just going to wear that black dress with the flowers.” Then the next day, I am cruising. I'm just pressing buttons, implementing going, and I feel like I'm winning versus feeling like, “Huh!” and frazzled and I'm already behind.

Even though maybe the time saved is 5 to 10 minutes, it's how I feel and then I'm starting my day feeling more powerful, more productive versus like I already want to go back to bed.

Andrea Liebross: Yes, there's something about the outfit. I really love the outfit one, the uniform. Our kids sometimes have uniforms. All moms really like uniforms, 99% of of moms like uniforms because it makes it easy.

Nikki Oden: It removes decision fatigue. We all have it.

Andrea Liebross: Totally. Actually, what we're really talking about here, it's funny you said that, I was like thinking if this is really about making decisions ahead of time, it's really what this all boils down to in making decisions ahead of time. I think when we have, I call it decision debt, like you're in debt because you have so many decisions you haven't made, like you have so many debts you haven’t paid off, in your business, it creates business lag but also in your personal life, it creates like life lag. This is when you feel like you're spinning your wheels and getting nowhere.

Nikki Oden: Yes, and it can be paralyzing, honestly.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah. Then that paralyzing is hard to break out of until you start to become more intentional.

Nikki Oden: Yes, totally, and why can't you be? There are so many things, especially when you think about your business self, that identity that I have to get stuff done, that person is very intentional, so why not? Why not just be intentional about everything else? It's totally available to you.

Andrea Liebross: And it's just as easy to make the decision as to not make it. It's not any easier to not make the decision.

Nikki Oden: Agree, just make the decision, and then the next step will reveal itself. If it was “the wrong choice,” okay, that's information you didn't have before. Now, you know you need to pivot.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah. That's another interesting piece of the puzzle is that sometimes we think, “Oh, it's just easier to think about it tomorrow.” Is it really easy to think about tomorrow? I don't know. I'm not so sure about that, not so sure.

Nikki Oden: I'm with you.

Andrea Liebross: Interesting. Alright, so what's the fifth thing?

Nikki Oden: The fifth thing is to practice your thoughts, just practice those loving kind thoughts because a mom who is working has tremendous opportunity to feel like she is not doing anything well. There is a lot of room for criticism, a lot of “I'm a mess. I can't do this. Other people are great at this but I'm not and I don't have what it takes,” yada-yada-yada, that's a story you're telling yourself.

Again, I know it's not easy to erase those years of self-doubt, we all have that, so just practice. Practice telling yourself a nicer story. Practice being kind to yourself. When you have those moments and you hear yourself saying, “Oh, I'm such an idiot,” for example, you can pause and then correct yourself in your second thought and just keep practicing that until it becomes your new story.

Andrea Liebross: Because everything really is a story.

Nikki Oden: Yeah.

Andrea Liebross: We just create stories in our brains about everything.

Nikki Oden: 100%, and we're so powerful with that. So let's harness the power instead of letting it run us on automatic.

Andrea Liebross: I recorded an episode a while ago, I don't know what number it is, but the title is something like if your life were a movie, and I think it's really interesting to think about if your life were a movie, what genre would it be? Would it be a comedy, a drama, or an adventure? Then you're the main character in the movie and the movie hasn't ended yet, so how do you want the next scene to go? Is it in color or is it black and white? What's going on?

Nikki Oden: Yeah. I love that, how do you want it to go? You get to decide.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah. I think sometimes we think we're in the audience and really, we’re the main character.

Nikki Oden: Yeah, life is not happening to you.

Andrea Liebross: It's not. On the flip side though, I think sometimes we think in our kids’ lives that we are the main character but they're the main character. We just get to be in the audience there. It's their journey. They're finding their way. We think we're up there pulling the strings but it doesn't work that way, does it?

Nikki Oden: It really doesn't. We can scream from the audience, “Don't go into the dark basement!” Do the best we can but that's all we can do is the best we can. They are humans with decisions to make and lives to live.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah. I guess you could also think of, “Oh, this is an amazing opportunity that we get to watch this unfold but we can't orchestrate it.”

Nikki Oden: No, we can't. But we do our best to guide them.

Andrea Liebross: We do. We do our best to guide them. I think going back to what you were saying in the very beginning, they're watching us.

Nikki Oden: They are.

Andrea Liebross: They are so watching us and seeing what we're doing and not doing, and how we're doing it.

Nikki Oden: Right. They notice also when we settle and we decide not to go after things. That's a mark though that we leave on them for better or for worse.

Andrea Liebross: Yes. One of my clients told me the other day that one of her employees said to her something like, “You seem exhausted,” and she was exhausted. But then she's showing up exhausted and she's showing up exhausted for everybody and that's not good for her kids. She would blame her exhaustion on what's going on at home and she would be bringing it into her business. It's not good for what's going on at home but it's not good for your business either. It’s interesting, people notice.

Nikki Oden: Yeah. That's where taking the time for yourself comes in, they are directly related. If you're not taking that time for yourself, you're not going to be at your best. Everyone in your life deserves your best, why not give it to them? You're not taking away from anybody by carving that time out for yourself. I think that is the biggest fallacy of our generation is that we think if we take time for ourselves, we're selfish. It's such a fallacy.

Andrea Liebross: It is. I always think like what do our kids want from us? They don't want us to be exhausted and overrun.

Nikki Oden: Impatient and irritable.

Andrea Liebross: And impatient, yeah. They just haven't figured out how to maybe make that happen in their own lives although they have. When we get mad at them for just vegging out, that's their self-care, right?

Nikki Oden: Yeah, we got to remember that.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah, we gotta remember that. How can the listeners find more of you? How can they get more of you and your amazing wisdom?

Nikki Oden: They can find me on Instagram. My handle is @nikkioden. My website is youridealmomlife.com, and the podcast can be found wherever you download a podcast. It's called Love Your Mom Life on Apple, Spotify, iTunes, is that the same as Apple? IHeart Radio, Amazon, everywhere, and the book as well.

Andrea Liebross: The book as well, okay. Super. Well, I will have all of that in the show notes. Is there one thing you want to leave everybody with? One intentional thought that you want to leave my listeners with?

Nikki Oden: I want you guys to all think and realize that you are the center of your household. When you feel fulfilled and happy, joyful, that spills over into everything you do: how you parent, how you show up, how your relationships evolve. Always remember that and give yourself that permission.

Andrea Liebross: Love it. Thank you so much. This has been super fun.

Nikki Oden: Yes, awesome. Thanks for having me.

Andrea Liebross: So Nikki and I were chatting before we started recording and she said to me, “I teach working moms how to make their lives easier so they can go after their goals without feeling guilty.” I think what we shared today is totally helping you make your life easier and realizing that everything doesn't need to be so hard, it's hard only if you make it hard. It's your thoughts around it being hard. You have choices.

I hoped you enjoyed this conversation with Nikki. Go check out her podcast, Love Your Mom Life, and her book But Definitely Wear Mascara, and if you want more help being the mom you want to be and running the business you want to run, I encourage you to go to andreaslinks.com, take one of the quizzes on there, and figure out what may actually be happening. Then reach out, let's have a conversation, you and I, let's chat about how you can change things because it doesn't have to be this way.

If you love this podcast, please share it with a friend. Let someone else know that there's a resource out there to help them level up their life. Until next week, remember, now is the time to level up. There's no better time. Stop waiting.

Hey, listening to podcasts is great. But you also have to do something to kick your business up a notch. You need to take some action, right? So go to andreaslinks.com and take the quiz. I guarantee you'll walk away knowing exactly what your next best step is to level up.