The Mental Offload Podcast

For many, October means the start of pumpkin spice season. But if you're in the corporate world, it means something else:

Year-end review season.

Along with it comes something most of us have a complicated relationship with: feedback.

We all love positive feedback.

But the prospect of critical feedback?! Let's keep it real: wouldn't you be happier to just skip it?

Feedback – especially the 'constructive' sort - can bring up fear, anxiety, and stress. Just thinking about it is enough to bring on dread.

And let's keep it really real: women and people of color often need to contend with biased performance feedback.

There's that old management saying, "feedback is a gift." But sometimes, that gift can feel like it's laced with poison.

In this week's episode of The Mental Offload Podcast, we'll deep dive into how you can receive feedback with more grace and confidence, while still advocating for yourself.

What You'll Learn:

• Why moving beyond the "A-student" mentality is key to receiving feedback well

• Techniques to stay calm, ask smart questions, and handle difficult feedback

• The art of pushing back on biased or unfair feedback

• The top quality to cultivate to receive feedback better

To learn more, visit The Mental Offload.

Ever feel like managing your family's calendar is a part-time job?

You're not alone.

Modern parenting = calendar chaos.

Your commitments, kids' pickups, drop-offs, activities, medical appointments, parties—everything competes for your time.

It's not just the physical running around. It's the mental gymnastics of squeezing it all into the few precious hours left after work.

And even in 2024, women are still often the default family calendar managers.

Even the best calendar app won't calm the chaos. Managing family time takes smart decisions and strategic planning:

• What deserves your family's time?

• How do you share responsibilities?

• How do you create downtime in a busy life?

Today on the podcast, I'm joined by clutter coach and home organization expert Amelia Pleasant Kennedy, to delve into how to better manage the family calendar, in a way that balances family responsibilities and downtime.

This episode is full of mind-blowing gems that will radically shift the way you think about organizing your family time – and your role within it.

What You'll Learn:

• The essential step to prevent overcommitment, before you pull out your calendar

• Strategies to encourage your partner and children to participate in family scheduling

• How to use your calendar to set a more relaxed pace at home

• Setting "on- and off-duty hours" at home, for better boundaries and more downtime

To learn more, visit The Mental Offload.

The worst time to be a working mom?

It might be 3am, when you bolt awake with anxiety.

What is it that's got so many of us waking up in a panic in the middle of the night??

For too many of us, it's the weight of the mental load. Those I-shouldn't-forget-this tasks that your brain decides to alert you to in the middle of the night.

And although the mental load isn't the only "sleep stealer", it's rarely addressed as a cause of sleep problems.

The 3am wakeups wreck your sleep. Night after night.

And it's a downward spiral.

Because the worse your sleep gets, the fewer things you can actually do well the next day.

And this opens up a crucial gap in our ability to do the work and caregiving that we want to do in the world.

Learn how to tackle the 3am wakeups, for more restful nights and more productive days.

What You'll Learn:

• The mental load vs. common sleep stealers

• A pre-bedtime routine to prevent wakeups

• What to do when you wake up at 3am

To learn more, visit The Mental Offload.

Any way you slice it, Back-to-School is a sprint.

The extra load?! It's real. And working mothers typically feel it extra hard.

And yet, there can be an unhelpful temptation the moment that back-to-school week is over…to immediately jump back into "real life", without a moment to recover.

This will leave you spent. And contributes to burnout.

You might think "recovery" means preparing well for back-to-school. Reducing the load of back-to-school week itself. Promising yourself a vacation next spring as a reward.

And while none of these things are bad, they're not exactly what's required to recover.

You might think that taking any time at all to recover is precious time you don't have.

But failing to plan a proper recovery can leave you operating in "survival mode" for months. Who has time for that?!

Let's cut that whole process down to a week or two, shall we?

Whether your kids went back to school last week or last month, you'll learn what you can do now to get your mojo back.

What You'll Learn:

• Why recovery time is vital to preventing burnout

• What Paralympic runners can teach us about the recovery period

• The best short- and medium-term tactics for getting back in gear after the back-to-school "sprint"

To learn more, visit The Mental Offload.

After a summer break, we're back with Season 3 of The Mental Offload Podcast!

Mid-career is a challenging, and pivotal, point in almost every corporate career.

It's the point where most companies decide who has the potential to break through to the top. Some people will be tapped to ascend to the top levels of the organization, and others will stagnate…or fail completely.

For working mothers, the challenge is clear.

The demands of mid-career tend to hit at exactly the point when the demands of childrearing are at their peak.

What's an ambitious woman to do?

Do you take your foot off the gas at work, even if it's work you love and have trained for your whole life? Do you give less than 120% to the family you love and for whom you want the best?

It can feel like there are no good choices.

This leaves many high-achieving mothers stuck, confused, and conflicted. Perennially thinking about how to move forward, and second-guessing every step they take.

Call it Mid-Career Malaise.

It can pull you in multiple directions. It can last for years. And it can leave even the highest achievers tied in knots, if it's left unaddressed.

In this episode, we'll address the phenomenon of Mid-Career Malaise, and how to move through it without losing your mind…or your career momentum.

What You'll Learn:

• The 4 mistakes that derail women's careers and balance in mid-career malaise

• Re-thinking our beliefs around mid-career opportunities and choices

• The decision-making technique that cuts through confusion and creates confidence

To learn more, visit The Mental Offload.

Summertime, and the livin' is easy…said no working parent, ever.

Your kids probably see it differently. Summer time is more relaxed, whether it's days at camp, at the pool, or on the road.

You might have seen it differently in the B.C. (before children) era, back when Summer Fridays meant luxuriously long weekends to kick back with friends.

If we put aside the logistical nightmare which is summer parenting, there's a deep truth: having a slower "season" (shorter work days, less stress, more fun) is a great way to recharge.

At the end of a slower season, you come back refreshed and ready to tackle bigger challenges.

And yet, the modern world of work often treats you like you should be constantly producing.

The irony is that attempting to work like this is often terrible for your productivity and your motivation.

So, in this week's episode of the podcast, we'll explore the concept of Seasonal Productivity - of defining slower and faster-paced seasons within your work to create better work-life alignment and produce better results at work.

What You'll Learn:

• How "seasonal" work habits can prevent burnout and improve your productivity

• Working with the natural ebb and flow of your work and family "seasons"

• Managing perceptions around your work ethic

• My summer podcast break

To learn more, visit The Mental Offload.

In a busy world, where most of us are overstretched, it's easy to end the day feeling drained, guilty, and anxious.

You might hope that changing jobs, using your time better, or starting that exercise routine is the answer.

But Dr. Emma Seppälä, director of the Women's Leadership Program at Yale School of Management, wants us to address the deeper issues at play.

"You can have all the money and power in the world, and still feel bound on the inside…still be ruled by fear, still feel small."

People often stand in their own way without realizing it.

The answer, she says, lies in reclaiming our "sovereignty", that internal locus of power and control over our self, our emotions, our relationships and more.

It's not just a conceptual exercise. Becoming sovereign is key to everything from not taking on work that will burn you out, staying present at the end of a long work day, to how you deal with setbacks and fear.

In this episode, we'll explore what it means to be truly sovereign over yourself, and why this is the key to living the life you want and fulfilling your highest potential.

What You'll Learn:

• Why Dr. Seppälä says many of us are in a toxic relationship with ourselves, and the magic question to change that

• Conditioning your nervous system to calm down

• Crushers, Sacrificers, and Stars: 3 types of high-achievers, and how to turn yourself into a Star

• The link between intuition, authenticity, and heeding your "inner alarm bells"

• Becoming Sovereign over yourself, emotions, relationships, and more

To learn more, visit The Mental Offload.

Plenty of think pieces have taken on the tradwife trend.

And a fair bit of ink has been spilled over that Harrison Butker commencement speech.

And tradwives might be fairly compared to their vintage counterparts, the Stepford Wives.

And yet, there's something deeper…and maybe more sinister going on here.

It's an alarming notion that's sucking in plenty of high-achieving, feminist women. And driving us into burnout.

This episode is raw, thought-provoking, and real.

What You'll Learn:

• How the tradwife playbook is straight outta Stepford

• The alarming way high-achieving, feminist women can end up as Stepford Moms

• How we reclaim ourselves in a society that expects women to do it all

To learn more, visit The Mental Offload.

Ever struggled to get your message heard at work?

Maybe it's in your boss's leadership team meeting, where your input is minimized and the boys' club is busy talking over you.

Maybe it's when your voice shakes with nerves as you present the roadshow deck to challenging stakeholders.

Or maybe it's at your mid-year, where you get feedback that others don't see you as "presenting authoritatively."

Thanks, boss, for that ambiguous feedback…what do I do about that?!

Dealing with this stuff at work can throw your confidence for a loop.

If you're a leader, you want to sound like a leader.

Claire Fry has seen it all. As a voice actor and vocal confidence coach, she's an expert in how to use your voice to confidently get your message across at work.

She joins me on this week's episode of the podcast to break down a few simple techniques that you can use today to increase your confidence, improve your executive presence, and get your message heard.

What You'll Learn:

• Are women's voices heard differently? What's with the unhelpful feedback about how we sound?

• Secrets to communicating with more executive presence

• How to leverage the 3 W's for getting your message across more confidently

• Using your unique voice to get heard at work

To learn more, visit The Mental Offload.

In many companies, June means one thing: mid-year season is here.

Many leaders give mid year performance reviews short shrift.

It's easy to make this mistake. Mid-year doesn't feel as important as year-end, and yet it still has a way of weighing down your to-do list: there's plenty of paperwork, feedback requests, and the like to complete.

But it is a mistake to under-prepare for mid-year – both as a leader and as an employee.

Mid year performance reviews, from my perspective, is often more important than you might think.

Preparing well for your mid-year can change the trajectory of your year at work. Taking the time now to prepare for your mid-year review will pay dividends throughout the rest of the year.

What You'll Learn:

• The 3 things you should give as a leader and get as an employee at mid-year

• Why your mid-year is more – and less - important than you think

• How to use your mid-year to manage up

To learn more, visit The Mental Offload.