The Myth of Having It All: Redefining Success as a Mom with Jo Stone

Welcome to the Real Life Momz podcast. It is time to take a break from all our to-dos and carve out this time to focus on ourselves. I'm Lisa Foster, your host, and today I am here with fellow mom and founder of The Balance Institute, Jo Stone, and we are discussing the myth of having it all. So this is a huge topic, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Thanks for having me. Great to be here. . And I mean, having it all, like what does that even mean to have it all? And the second part of that is, is it even achievable to do so? Well, I have an interesting view on this one, and that is that we've all been sold a lie. We were told that we could have it all, and people turn around and say to us, you can have it all, but just not all at once is another common thing that's said.

But I believe that we've been sold a lie that, that all that most of us are looking for is not actually [00:01:00] our real all. And by that I mean so many of us are almost parenting like we don't work and working like we don't parent. You can't be a 1950s housewife and crush it in the boardroom and crush it in the bedroom and you know, have friends and exercise and it's just not possible.

But what I have found is that for most women, they don't actually want all of the things that they're being told that they should want. So I find that freedom and empowerment really comes when you are able to decide what your all is. What does having it all mean for you? And for some people that might be a big job.

For others it might not. For some it might be, you know, baking cookies with their kids and for other parents, it's not. So that is what I have found is, is the true path to freedom is really redefining success and defining, deciding what matters to you. Yeah, that's such a good point because I think we get ideas of what it all [00:02:00] is from other people, but rarely do we ask ourselves like, what is it that we want?

And I know that you have your own story with this that kind of led you on this path. So I'm gonna ask you to . Share a little bit of it because it's, you thought you had it all right? You were married kids. I think you even built your dream house. I may have read somewhere. Yeah, you had a really great position in a job, but yet you found the missing link, which I think a lot of us have is that we're not happy.

Like we have all these things that we may say we want, but then when you really think about it, it's like you don't have that happiness. So maybe share a little bit about your story in this discovery of. Thinking you had it all, but it wasn't true. Yeah, so I would've sworn that what I ended up having was what I wanted.

I had a corporate job. I climbed a ladder quite quickly. My career goal was to get the word chief in my title. So I was a chief marketing officer in a US listed company with an Asia Pacific role. I [00:03:00] had staff in five countries, big responsibilities. It was on a not-for-profit board as well. So that was another sort of career goal that I had.

I had two kids. I had a husband, and I'd built my house from scratch. So I'd literally ticked off, and this was about 32, 33. It's like tick, tick, tick, tick. Okay. I was doing triathlon, so I was super fit and healthy. Okay? So I, I have it all. I, this, this is everything that I said I wanted. So why do I feel miserable and what's wrong with me?

Because. Is this all there is like really something's missing and there was an emptiness buried under the exhaustion and the guilt and the running and the list and all of the things. So I was the type of person who, , I'm quite inquisitive and curious by nature. So I remember sitting back and it was as my body started to give way, and I ended up checking myself into the hospital for [00:04:00] what I thought was an incurable autoimmune disease.

That I've gone, okay, something, something's wrong here. My body is trying to give me a signal that I'm, I'm off. Something's misaligned. And it was in that hospital bed that I decided, all right, well, let's blow it all up. If, if, if it is making me happy. Maybe I need to change it all. So I my husband and I used to dream about moving to the country and, opening an antique store or doing these things, but I knew that when you are a high achiever and you're that way inclined, give me a couple of months, I'd be beating, , bestselling lists of my antique store.

I would've replaced the point of sale system. I'd be on Instagram, I'd be doing sourcing trips overseas. Not earning very much. So when you've got that type of personality that follows you everywhere. So we decided that, all right, the only way that we could find happiness and fulfillment was to change everything outside.

So we sold the dream house. That was the first domino to fall [00:05:00] because because of the big house, they had a big mortgage, which meant I had to keep my big job. I was trapped in this cycle of keeping up with the Joneses and the cars and on the holidays and all those things. So decided to sell the house.

And that then allowed me to quit my job. And then we, but bought a house a little further outta the city that was older, that wasn't brand new with a pool and huge, huge house. And then I started, repairing my health and realized even after all of that, so I'd moved house, I'd quit the job. Oh, that lack of fulfillment is still there.

There's something else. And that was when I realized it was me. I was the only thing that I hadn't actually changed. And so I then had to go on my own journey to say, well, what if the change doesn't come from outside of me to find that fulfillment and find that happiness? Yes, we think it can come from changing our circumstances.

I blamed a lot of it on my job or my boss, or you know, that's what's making me unhappy. But the [00:06:00] truth was, it was me. And so going on this journey of understanding how am I wired? Where did all this come from? Where did my definition of success even come from? Peeling back all the conditioning, learning more about my brain really allowed me to discern then actually what?

What do I want? Not what I should want, not what I think I should want, not what society tells me I should want and not my parents are encouraging what actually is mine? And then I rebuilt everything pretty much from the ground up. Wow. So it's like I feel like you had it all then you had nothing at all, but you still felt the same in either way.

Right? Like you didn't get happy either way. Right. So, so interesting. And I think that is so hard because I think the question alone of what do I want is a hard one for a mom, especially. You don't get used to asking yourself that. No one asks you that. It's rare, and when people do, it feels uncomfortable, well, we are taught that we can't have what we want, or we can have what [00:07:00] we want, but only when everyone else is taken care of, right? So you can have some time to yourself. When the dishwasher's empty, everyone's fed, the fridge is full, the meal plan sorted, your inbox is empty.

Everyone else is calm and asleep. And now you can have some time for yourself.

How do we start to unravel, almost like making a new definition of having it all for ourselves, what do people do to figure out how to feel fulfilled and how to feel happiness in what they have and where they are? I found a lot of it, and I guess that's, you know, I started up my business to help other people not have to go through the journey of blowing up their life to find this. I'm like, don't do what I did.

Let me give you the secret and the roadmap to not having to go through that and waste, you know, several years of your life and, and do all the things. What I have found is that particularly when you become a mom, your identity shifts a lot and suddenly now there's this little human who needs you to survive.

Moms are very much glorified [00:08:00] for putting themselves last, not being selfish. And when you layer in, kids start to get older if you're working. Some people run their own business, you start to become quite lost. You don't really know who you are anymore because the person who used to, I dunno, maybe dance on tables or go do this thing that often isn't possible anymore because you're tired and you have little people that need you.

So a lot of the whole, well, I'd love to just go live on an island in The Bahamas and you know, drink cocktails. Yeah. But I can't. There's all these. Yeah, but I can't. Yeah, but I can't. They need me. They need me. So you have to go on this journey. Of actually rediscovering who you are now in your current circumstances, so the kids don't go back.

So they're usually a one-way ticket. Once you have them, you have them. And so it's now, all right, well, who do I wanna be as a mom? Who do I wanna be as me? And separating out those parts of your life and working out what's really true for you, what really [00:09:00] matters to you. And really the only way to do that is to create space.

And I know all the moms are like, have you seen my list? Do you know how much I have to do? But a lot of the stuff that we are doing. I know everyone says it has to be done. Lunches have to be made. You know, kids have to be fed, but there's huge amounts of perfectionism. There's huge amounts of people pleasing and procrastination.

I call this the trifecta of self-sabotage. That AFF affects so many women, and when you are, worrying about making everyone else happy, when you want everything to be perfect, whether that's, , you refold the towels after the kids have folded them because they didn't do them right or you retack the dishwasher.

There is so much energy that we put into things just because we don't know how to manage ourselves.

I can remember times that it's like, oh, it's easier if I just do it. Mm-hmm. Because it's harder and it takes more time. To let them do it. But, [00:10:00] but you're right. Like even this morning, I mean my, my kids are older, thank goodness they're older. They're, it's like so much more space, so much more grace.

, but even this morning, we ran out of the traditional, my son makes breakfast every morning, which is great, but he makes eggs. We have oatmeal that you have to actually make not instant. And I was like, oh gosh, I have to get to work early today. And he has late start, so I'm not gonna be around for this oatmeal thing.

I can't make it early. Right. I'm like, he is like 16 years old, you know, like, what am I doing? I don't need to worry about this. So I just wrote the instructions down on the whiteboard and said, here's how to make oatmeal with this particular one. Uh, and he is like, great. Got it. You know? I'm like, of course you do because you're old.

You know? Like, why am I doing these things still? Right. Feeling bad that my son was gonna go to school without eating anything. Yeah, and we do very much, hold on, especially depending on, you know, the ages of your kids and how old they are.

Their demands are different. So my two girls are almost 15 and she [00:11:00] reminds me every day and 11. And, as to your point, they're growing up and becoming more independent. But particularly when you have a younger one, you, you have to remind yourself, oh no, it's time for them to do that.

Themselves. So motherhood is this constant sort of helping show them and then letting go and helping show them and letting go. And it can be really hard for us, especially when our identities are wrapped around being a mother or we've lost ourselves in motherhood, can be really difficult to let that go because then you are left with this gaping feeling of, well, if the kids are down, or once the kids are at school.

Who? Who am I what? What do I do with myself? What do I like? What comes next? And that can be really daunting and scary. And I find women tend to hit this at several checkpoints along the way. Obviously when kids leave home as a big one. But earlier than that, when kids sort of start. Bigger school that, you know, in Australia we have two schools.

We have primary school and, and high school. But when [00:12:00] they are going for those longer hours, or even when you make the transition from kids being at home or in daycare to then starting school and now you're in the school system. So any sort of, of these major transition points, there's a oh oh, like where, where, where do I fit?

How do I now, in this new paradigm of activities and taxi services or, , wiping nappies or whatever phase you're in. You've gotta continually readjust and rediscover who I am. But a lot of that requires time. And it's time that you have to make because it will not magic itself. And there is time.

It's like there are these quiet spaces that you can do it even when they're young, right? I mean, when they're young, they go to bed earlier. Then you do Usually now everyone goes to bed later than I do. I'm in bed early, but that's okay. Um, 'cause I have other times. But yeah, there are these, the kind of little white spaces of time that you can find or all of a sudden your [00:13:00] kids are playing.

With toys, like toys independently, we're like, wait a minute, it's quiet. I can do something. Yeah. You know? Right. Yeah. And do something and not pick up your phone. Because you know most women, regardless of their kids' ages, I reckon you look at anyone's screen time and there's usually at least several hours there.

Yeah. And they'll say, well, it's five minutes here and five, yeah. But is there not? How do you not learn to find space for yourself within five minutes? 'cause again, the perfectionist has this view that. Will I need four hours to myself or I need an hour to myself. I need all of this stuff. And in reality, we often don't get that we need to learn to microdose, whether it's our self discovery or a time for ourselves or our self care or the space that we create.

How can you do that in 10 minutes rather than just picking up your phone and going to whatever your app of choice is to kill 10 minutes? There's definitely better ways that we can do it. And I think sometimes we need to feel busy, right? Like we keep ourselves busy because [00:14:00] then we don't have to deal with the thing that's really the issue, which is are we really happy?

Are we really creating the life that is our all right? And, and yeah, if we're busy, then oh, I'm too busy. I got, you know, and I'm distracted. I don't have to deal with it. So, so that brings me back, circling back to. How do we get to the place that we know what really makes us happy and, and, and create our all?

Well, like I said, it's this journey of creating this space for you and then really. I have found certainly my journey has been about shedding the conditioning, working out of the things that I want. What are the pieces that I actually want versus, I call it conditioning or society or gender says I should want.

So one of the big things I had to wrestle with, especially when I had my first, was I've always wanted to work. It's been a really important part of who I am. I've always been really ambitious and I still remember when I was. Going back [00:15:00] to work in Australia, we have quite generous maternity leave. So I took nine months off with my first, and my mom said to me at the time, are you sure you wanna go back?

Are you really sure now that you've had a baby? Doesn't it change things? I. And I said, no, I love her, but I'm going back. And then when I had my second, surely now when you've got two, don't you wanna, why don't you go part-time? Why do you have to work so hard? Why do you have to travel? Like, mom, I love my job.

It's who I am. And so really peeling back in, dealing with the mom, guilt and a lot of the shame that comes with doing something different from what other people expect. And so it's peeling back those layers. What is it that you really want? Where do you feel put upon or obligated to do things? And usually a really big, I guess you'd say, red flag that you can follow is resentment.

I. I always say that resentment is like the Las Vegas of when you're feeling resentment for doing something. [00:16:00] It's like, look here 'cause you're doing something that you don't want to be doing. Either you've said yes when you wanted to say no, or you've breached a boundary because you know, someone said, can you say later?

And you don't really want to, or you are doing all the things and then your partner's on the couch on their phone and you're resentful of them 'cause they got more sleep than you did. All of those resentments point to a need that you have. So if you follow the resentment map, that is a really good indicator of, okay, well that resentment says, don't like that.

I don't really like that. I don't really like that. Then you can start asking yourself, why? Why am I resentful of my boss? Or why am I resentful of that mom down the street? Or why am I resentful of that other thing? Oh, okay, 'cause I don't like it or, I really want that and I don't think I can have it. So following clues as to what's going on in your environment can be ways for you to focus in the little time that you have [00:17:00] your energies on.

What do I really want? And that's a brilliant clue to follow. I love that so much. I wish I, I wish I talked to you a few years ago. Um, but, but yes. I mean, because yeah, you feel resentment and it is like a negative feeling, but it's almost like turning it into a positive thing where you're like, okay, this is uncovering a clue of what.

What I really do want and and don't want. Right? Like, so that is, yeah. Feelings are so strong and there's such great clues to actually figure out what you want, right? Instead of just selling your home and moving and getting rid of all the things just to, just to say like, oh no, I'm still here and I'm still the same person.

I love the idea of first maybe follow the resentment that you're like, how am I feeling resentment about that? Yeah, and we've got really good at numbing our feelings, the resentment's there, but we will just, you mentioned be busy or someone needs us. Even though we are feeling [00:18:00] guilty, we are feeling resentment, we're feeling frustration.

We are grumpy, we're exhausted. We end up swimming and almost become chemically addicted to this, I call it our emotional home. That's full of resentment and guilt and shame and frustration, and then we wonder why, we dunno, what makes us happy because there's no room for that. It's almost like we're full up of all these negative emotions, but because we won't deal with them because we're not emotionally literate and we've never been taught how to handle our emotions, how to work through them, how to let them go, then it feels like there's no space.

For joy, you know, there's no time for joy if you've seen my list or you know, we've gotta get here. We've gotta get there. So you've got to learn, really build up your emotional literacy, learn to understand and to actually feel rather than avoid or escape. I. Then you can start making space for those two minutes of joy when a kid's, you know, depending on the ages of, you know, people's kids, there's nothing like seeing a [00:19:00] toddler like just barely laugh.

It's almost impossible, even just on a YouTube video, not to just see a kid laughing and just feel that joy, but to make the space for it because our nervous system literally are not capable of feeling joy because we've conditioned it out of our system. Yeah, we're so in survival sometimes. It's so true.

It's like joy is almost like, oh my God, I don't have time for joy. I don't have time for that. It gets almost frustrating a little bit because mm-hmm. You feel like you, if you do something more fun and joyful, it's taking away from all the things that you have to get done. And I'm just listening to myself and going like, why do I wanna even get any things done if they don't even bring me joy?

, I have a list of things that exactly you have to do, but most of those things can totally wait. No one's dying, and you can sit and watch your toddler. Laugh or do, or just be in the moment and have more fun than saying, oh my God, I gotta do the laundry, the dishes, [00:20:00] the whatever. That doesn't actually even matter.

So what, no one has clean clothes, big deal. Right? Like it's not like that's happened. Not happened sometimes to you or before, right. It'll be okay. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And that's what most women who come to me always say is, I've lost the joy. I dunno how to access calm anymore. I'm just constantly resentful.

Guilty, angry, exhausted. And that's what they want. They want more joy 'cause they're going, what's the point? Like, why did I have kids if I'm just yelling at them all the time and rushing them around places like that's, that's not what I had kids for. They've forgotten that side of them. They've become so identified with.

List and achieving things and ticking things off that their identity has become so attached to that they dunno how to let it go. Yeah. you're not really living if that's the case. No. You just, you're really just surviving. No, that's 100%, uh, uh, yeah. That's in existence, not a, not a living.

Yeah. [00:21:00] Now you do have a program you mix neuroscience, ancient wisdom, a little holistic practices. I can't wait to hear about that. Um, tell us a little bit about your approach in conquering some of these things we talked about. Yeah, I have found that my program is very much, uh, based on my own personal experience, so it's not a textbook, it's not somebody else's materials.

As I went on this journey of unpacking my life and working out what I really wanted, I was able to tap into one of my superpowers, which I didn't realize I had until this time. And when I was in corporate, my job, whether it was in marketing or as an executive, was to my, my superpower was to go into a business unit.

Or a marketing campaign or, and I would pull it apart and put it back together again in a way that made sense. So I would go in and run projects and pull them apart and put them back together again. Or I'd do marketing campaigns or products for customers. And I then basically applied that skillset.

To my life. So I [00:22:00] pulled my life apart and looked at all the parts and said, well, do I want that? No. There's this framework that I used to use. Is that useful gear? But no, I need to add this to it. Or I do this at home. Do I do, oh my god, I do that at work and at home. So what I then layered underneath that is a really strong understanding of neuroscience and how my brain works.

'cause I'm the type of person that if someone says meditate, I go, why? Like, why, why, why? I'm sure I drove my mom crazy. However, when I understand more about my, you know, I teach clients about their brainwave zones and how, , when you're in theta brainwaves, it's when the pathway to the subconscious mind is more easily open, and that's where the things that you don't want live.

So if you meditate in the morning or the evening, the doorway is gonna be more open. That's gonna be more efficient for you to change your beliefs to what you want. Ah ha. Okay. Now I get it. Why I might meditate before bed because you've given me a logical, rational reason that now [00:23:00] makes sense. And now I've bought in and now I'll do it.

So what was missing for me and anything I understood and I had to go and build myself was this really deep understanding of, I. What makes me a perfectionist? I know I am one. I used to be quite proud of it. But what are those traits and characteristics or what makes me a people pleaser? I never really didn't, I didn't resonate with that term until I found out all the characteristics of people pleasers and how it means I didn't have any boundaries and what is the boundary?

Oh my gosh, how do I understand what these things are? So I then went and built. Not just the neuroscience, but then blended, as you mentioned, some ancient wisdom. You know, I've trained in kinesiology a whole range of different modalities together to say, all right, well, what actually now is the roadmap? If you want to rediscover who you are.

I didn't want anybody else to go on a five year journey through the abyss like I did. How do I take what I did and lay it out in a way they can just follow step by step, and then they will. Learn how to find calm. They will learn how to access joy in a [00:24:00] way that their intellectual brain is satisfied. But also that fits in with a busy life.

'cause what I hated was, you'd go on these big leadership retreats. I was, you know, five days out of the office here and, or, , seminar there, and you'd go, this is great. You'd come back and go, uh, forgotten. No idea. Didn't change a thing, weren't practical. Or they'd say, I had a 1-year-old and a 4-year-old, and I was at this leadership retreat, right?

So you're gonna wake up in the morning and you're gonna meditate for an hour, and then you're gonna have a green drink, and then you are gonna journal for 45 minutes. I'm like, who's getting the kids up? Who's giving them breakfast? Who's packing the daycare bag? Oh, well, well, uh. Well, you just get up earlier.

No, I'm not getting up at 4:00 AM because then sometimes the baby would wake me up at 4:00 AM so nothing ever felt practical for our lives. It was either built for sort of more, I mean, even then they don't have more time, but people who aren't working. Or they were built for people who worked 80 hours a week and had nannies doing everything for them [00:25:00] and raising their children, and I didn't want either of those options.

There was no middle path. So I had to build tool. I had to build tools and frameworks and strategies that actually worked. When you're a busy mom doing all the things, when you're also working, when you also maybe are caring for elderly parents, you're maybe a member of your community or your church or your, so you wanna do all the things you don't wanna have to give, give everything up.

But you need tools that are gonna work within your life. So that's what I've built. So across 12 weeks, I give people this beautiful roadmap that helps them rediscover who they are and bring that version of themselves to their family and to their workplace and and to the community. Yeah. I love the word roadmap.

That sounds amazing. Can you, tell us maybe one of those tools or strategies that are within your roadmap that like maybe some parents could start trying to do? Yeah, so one of my favorite tools that I share with people is, you know, I mentioned the word calm, or you could even do it with joy.

Let's do joy 'cause we're [00:26:00] talking about it before, as when you learn more about your emotions, you realize that we create rules. For our emotions, and that is that I will feel joy when my list is done and when the kitchen bench is clean and when everybody else is in a good mood and in their pajamas and my inbox is under control and you know, I'm rested and resourced.

And then if it fits within this 10 minute window, then I will feel joy because it doesn't disrupt anything else. It's no surprise that when you put all those conditions on accessing an emotion, then it never happens. So what I do is teach people to access, and these rules apply to calm or confidence or joy or any emotion that you wanna feel.

And when you get to strip out those rules and change them to ones that serve you, such as, , I will feel joy anytime I smile. I will feel joy anytime I have more [00:27:00] than one second to feel joy. We then really are able to take our power back because when we outsource our power, , I'll only become when the kitchen bench is clean, when the fridge is full, when you know, we then spend our lives trying to control everything outside of us.

Because we wanna feel calm, so I can't feel calm until the house is clean, because you know, calm house, calm mind. But then you spend your life running around like your headless chicken, trying to clean everything and tidy everything because you. Can only feel of some way when something that's outside your control in your external environment is a certain way, and that's just a recipe for burnout and exhaustion.

So the more that you can recreate your rules for all your emotions, whether it's, you know, okay, you realize that you haven't felt any joy today. All right, well grab your phone for a good cause. Go and look up silly cat videos or silly kid videos or silly something, and within about 30 seconds you can actually [00:28:00] experience joy.

We have to train our nervous system to handle that, but for me, it started with rewriting the rules. Yeah. I love that. I hate the statement when I blank. Like, I hate when. Mm-hmm. You know, I, I want it now. Like, forget about the when, because the when never happens. Yeah. Something always happens and then it, you'll never get to that joy or calm or whatever it is.

You want it anyway, so yeah. So I love that. Now, if there's one thing you can tell a mom to do today, what would that be? I would say to recognize that you can have it all, but you need to decide what your all is. So go on that journey, be brave and look inside. Create some space because it is always there.

Even if it's just when you're on the toilet, you know, the, the space is always there. We just have to look for it. And the more that you can investigate, especially if you are feeling unfulfilled and you're feeling [00:29:00] empty and you're exhausted and any of. What we've been talking about resonates, which I know it resonates with most women I talk to in some way, shape, or form, that you have the responsibility to make yourself happy and it's a responsibility that can feel like a burden, but it can actually be the greatest gift.

That you give yourself is to work out who you really are, to work out what makes you truly happy, because then in you becoming the best version of yourself in really knowing who you are, you give your kids permission to be who they are. And that's usually all we say. We just want our kids to be happy. We want our kids to be authentic.

We want them to, you know, be who they are, but they are never going to be happy, and they are never going to be who they are if they've got no blueprint to go from. So that was one of my big motivations. My kids aren't going to learn to be happy unless I'm happy. They're not going to learn to be who they really are if I am teaching them that you can't [00:30:00] be who you are because it's not acceptable, or it's not safe, or it's not right.

So we have to go first. If we wanna break these generational chains that are often passed down in families, we get to be the ones who do the work. We don't have to. But we get to do it today for our kids so that they can be authentic, they get to be happy, they get to find calm, and it's a journey that you'll never regret.

Yeah. That ripple effect is so true, so real and so important. And I love how you said, you know, create our all. You can have it all. It's, it's your all though, not anyone else's. And that can look. So differently. So I think that is a huge thing to also think about. Like what is your all, well, where can the listeners find you?

So I also have a podcast if they're podcast fans, and uh, it's called Balance and Beyond. And you'll find it on Spotify and iTunes and all the places. Uh, and you [00:31:00] can also visit balance institute.com. Which is where I have more information about my story, who I am, what I do, and there's also a range of free master classes and, and various programs that they can come and learn more about their perfectionist or their imposter or whatever it is that, uh, plagues them.

Yes. Or stands in the way from figuring out their all. That sounds amazing. Exactly. Well, thank you so much for coming on and talking about this topic with me and just sharing your story.

Thanks for having me. It's always great to talk about this. We need so many women to go on this journey.

Thank you for listening to this episode, Joe, it was such a pleasure to talk to.

And if you wanna learn more about her and all the things that she offers, just click on the link of the show notes.

Until next week, keep carving out time for yourself. Keep creating that space that you need to figure out what your all is. 'cause you can have it all, but it's your all not anyone else's.

And of course, always make sure that you're putting yourself on top of your to-do list.