This time of year reminds me of a post I wrote two years ago about doing or not doing things we want to do take care of ourselves and make us happy – because of what others will think of us. Let’s dig into it.
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Full Transcript
Ep 75. Wear The Dang Mittens
[Upbeat Intro Music]
Kelly Nolan: Welcome to The Bright Method Podcast where we’ll discuss practical time management strategies designed for the professional working woman. I’m Kelly Nolan, a former patent litigator who now works with women to set up The Bright Method in their lives. The Bright Method is a realistic time management system that helps you manage it all, personally and professionally. Let’s get you falling asleep proud of what you got done today and calm about what’s on tap tomorrow. All right, let’s dig in!
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Kelly Nolan: Hey, hey! All right, well, it is real fall in Minnesota when I’m recording this. The leaves look spectacular, and we’re in that weird weather period where it kind of ping-pongs between 80-degree weather and 50-degree weather or definitely cooler in the mornings. And this time of year, as we figure out what to wear every single day and throughout the day, really makes me think about a lightbulb moment I had about two years ago around this time. Now, it’s a bit tangential to time management in that it’s not directly about The Bright Method or time management strategies and calendars and all that kind of stuff. But it is about how we use our time and how we let ourselves use our time. And for that reason, I wanted to talk about it here.
Now, I wrote about it on Instagram two years ago, and so, what I want to do today is I’m, first, actually going to read the post because my thoughts are never as organized as when I actually write them and have time to revise them and make sure they’re clear, versus the jumble of thoughts that can come out when you’re just talking. So I’m gonna read it because I think, you know, at least I organized my thoughts well when I wrote it at the time. And then I want to discuss it a bit more with some examples that the format of a podcast lets us do versus the limited characters and space on Instagram. So here is the post.
The Instagram Post – 1:48
“Here’s something that’s super embarrassing to admit. So I got these massive mittens that Velcro to the stroller handlebar, and that’s not the embarrassing part. They are awesome. I put them on the stroller when it got cold. It has since warmed up a bit, and on a day it was, like, 40-ish I put them on and thought, ‘Man, these massive mitten things are cozy. But is it too warm to wear them? Will people looking out their windows judge me and think I’m weak?’ I know, I know. I’m embarrassed for myself. I wish thoughts like those didn’t go through my head, but they do. And as easy as it was to dismiss that thought — I mean, we are talking just about mittens here — I’m sharing because I think a lot of us live at least part of our lives like this, not wearing mittens for fear of what others might think of us.
For example, one: ‘I really don’t like this job anymore, but if I switch jobs or careers, will people judge me and think I couldn’t cut it, didn’t know what I was doing or am too wishy-washy?’ Two: ‘I really can’t take on anymore work, but if I say no will people think I’m soft, can’t manage my time well, or am not a good team player?’ Or three: ‘I don’t want to go volunteer for that thing, but if I say no, will people think I’m selfish or not a good parent or think that I think I’m too good for it?’
These thoughts, at the end of the day, aren’t that far off from me questioning whether to wear mittens when I wanted to because of what other people would think. But here’s the thing in using the mitten analogy. One, very few people, if anyone, are actually looking out their windows. They are busy inside their own homes. Number two, if they see you, they probably won’t even notice the mittens. And three, even if they do and judge you, it’s for maybe five seconds. Don’t make yourself cold for 45 minutes to spare yourself from the possibility of those 5 seconds of judgment. Same goes for life decisions. Wear the dang mittens.”
Letting Go of Societal Standards – 3:37
So that wraps up the post, and I kind of always come back to it because I think that especially we women, especially high-achieving women, especially women who likely have gotten very far in life succeeding by societal standards of definitions of what success are, it can be very hard to let go of those societal definitions of success and do something for you that other people might for the first time in your life be confused by your actions. I very much understand as someone who I thought myself I’d stay in law for my whole career. I think everybody else did too, and for me to let that go and start a pretty confusing little business in terms of I wasn’t quite sure what it was gonna be when I left law, that was kind of probably the first time that I had done something that truly confused the people around me and, candidly, even myself at times.
So I very much understand how hard it is. I’m not saying this from a place of, “You should just let it go because I’ve always been able to let it go.” I very much was of the school of doing things that made other people and myself happy. No one was pushing me into law. If anything, I think most of my family was like, “Ugh, lawyers.” But on the whole, the path I was taking, even if people weren’t fans of lawyers in my family or things like that, there’s a level of societal respect. Even people who don’t like lawyers, when you say, “I’m a lawyer,” there’s instant credibility in that because it is viewed as success in our society even if other people have different feelings about it. And I think that leaving a career or changing a career, changing roles or going back to an individual contributor role after you’ve been a manager, or declining a promotion to stay in an individual contributor role, whatever the things might be on the career side can really open you up to worrying about what other people will think about you.
The Fear of What Others Might Think in Personal Situations – 5:36
But I also don’t think it’s just limited to careers. As I mentioned, there are some other examples in there. But, you know, I think it goes back to outsourcing at home. I think that we worry about — we don’t do things that would give us support at home because of the fear of what other people will think, that people will think we’re too good for things, that we’re too bougie, “That must be nice,” all those kinds of thoughts. So we don’t do the things.
And I talked about that a fair amount in episode 29, I believe, about outsourcing and the complex feelings around it, and in that field, I luckily think it’s changing a lot. But even when you can afford to get support at home and essentially be able to put on mittens to help yourself feel more cozy and enjoy your life more, many people don’t because of fear of what it looks like on the outside. And I want to encourage people in that scenario to try to the best you can to let that go, realizing that other people aren’t paying attention as much as we think. If they are paying attention, they might not even notice that you’re doing that, and if they do judge you, even if they judge you multiple times for it, it’s probably for a cumulative amount of, what, five minutes? Where it could be giving you hours of your life back every single week.
Worrying What Others Might Think in Mental-Health-Related Situations – 6:49
In addition, I think that this can come into play on, perhaps, softer things. I don’t know if softer is the right word but not work and life logistics as much. But even just in our own mental health support. So, for example, struggling with parenting and not wanting to admit that for fear of what other people will think. I think that can be a big one.
And I just want to share, I mean, I see a therapist who helps me with the parenting stuff. Parenting is a massive life shift in our lives that I don’t think anyone truly understands before they go through it, and I mean that in the sense that I don’t think any of us gave total informed consent for how drastically our lives can change when we have kids. That’s not to say it’s all bad. I’m not ragging on it, but the loss of time freedom and the complicated need to keep your own emotions in check with dealing with little kids and manage those in a way that we probably haven’t before, especially when you don’t have total time freedom to step away and go handle how you’re feeling and release that, that can be really complicated. But I think that sometimes either we don’t know of the support out there or we worry what that support means and what other people will think of us if they knew we were getting that support.
I just want to share to the extent that it helps reduce any shame around it that I see a therapist who helps me with all those feelings and thoughts, and it really does help me a lot. It’s not like a magical wand fixing it all, but it really does help me manage the emotional side of things. And so, if you are someone who, similarly, wants to “put mittens on” in seeing someone to help support you and feel more cozy in the sense of managing your life — sorry, my voice is apparently going away. I’m not choking up even though I do have a lot of empathy around these feelings because I feel them too. But, you know, going to see someone to get support in those departments, to me, is not a sign of weakness. It’s very smart, and it’s hard to do from a time-management perspective. I also really understand that as well. Fortunately, we live in a time where so much can be done virtually, but it’s still really hard to set that time aside, and then also, sometimes you need to recover after those sessions, and that is time and energy as well.
This is a little bit rambly, and I know that, but I just wanted to play it out a little bit in different contexts. If you would like to do something and “put on mittens” because you know it would help you personally feel better, whether we’re talking in your career, in your life logistics, in your mental health, in any other area of your life, and you’re too afraid to do it because of what other people will think, I just want to encourage you to do it despite that. Because, as I said, people aren’t paying attention. They don’t even notice. Or if they do, it’s just moments versus your day-to-day life that you are living.
I’ll also throw out there that, in many ways, doing things like this could be a great Litmus test of friendships and family because if people are gonna give you crap for doing any of the things we’ve been talking about, it might help you just understand the role that they should have in your life a little bit better and how much time and energy you should be investing into them.
But regardless of what you do, I hope you take care of yourself. I hope you don’t judge yourself on what you’re able to muscle through. Like I could have gone on that walk and not worn the mittens, and I obviously would have been able to make that walk. My hands would have survived. I would have just been cold. I could have muscled through it. But to me, that is just not the point of life. Just because you could muscle through, why should you? What real honor is there in that? In my book, life can be stressful enough. I’d argue that enduring more suffering than necessary is, candidly, kind of silly and not honorable, and there will be plenty, sadly, of suffering that all of us experience in our life, and for the things that we can control, that we have autonomy over, use it. Wear the mittens.
All right, that’s it for this one! I know it’s short. I know it’s a bit random. But I think it’s a really important message that we all can remind ourselves of more often. Thank you for being here, and I’ll see you in the next episode!
[Upbeat Outro Music]
