104 How to stop living in fear of dropping a glass ball

A grounded episode for overwhelmed women on why the fear of “dropping a glass ball” creates burnout, and how to replace fear and self-judgment with self-compassion, conscious thinking, and love.

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Welcome to the Great Leader Great Mom podcast, where we trade in mom guilt and burnout for courage, calm, and a whole lot more joy. I'm your host, Liz Jolley, engineer turned life coach, mom of three and founder of School of Courage. And today we're on episode 104 and we are going to talk about

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something I coach women on all the time, which is the fear of dropping a glass ball.

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And it looks like this when you wake up and your brain is already running a million miles an hour thinking, okay, what's on the calendar today? What did I forget?

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What

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do I need to make sure I do today? And you're juggling work at the same time, and your kids and your spouse and your house and your school stuff and emails and all the kind of deadlines.

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And there's all the invisible things that aren't actually on your calendar, but that you're holding throughout your day. It's like the grocery store list. So it's unending. And underneath all of it is this quiet rumbling, this fear, this pressure of, you better not mess it up. You can't drop any of those glass balls. And if you do, it's going to really matter.

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And often we don't say that out loud, like we don't put words to it, but we feel it. And I think we show up in our day from that place, and it affects us way more than we realize.

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Many of us think that we're overwhelmed or burned out because we have too much on our plate, or we're just juggling a thousand balls.

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And listen, you may have a lot on your plate. I totally hear you.

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And it really is a lot.

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But underneath all of it is usually something that's driving our pain point, our suffering, our burnout. And it's something like,

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I can't drop any of these things because if I do something important, it's going to break. I drop a glass ball and everyone's going to know it's my fault.

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And this is what creates fear for us in our day, not just

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the amount of things before us, not just what's in our calendar or our list, but it's this story our brain tells about all those glass balls we're juggling.

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And then if we miss one of them and it falls, or we make a mistake that we're failing, that we're careless, that we're not as capable as everyone thinks we are or should be. And that

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we should have known better. We should have planned better. We should have been able to handle this. How on earth could this have happened for somebody so capable?

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And here's the thing we're all human. And so yeah, we're going to drop some of the glass balls sometimes. Nothing's gone wrong. But that fear that shows up in our day from dropping a glass ball, it doesn't come from making the actual mistake. It's the story we make up about it. It's the sentence that runs through our brain when we drop something

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And I was coaching a client recently and she was telling me about leading a team, and they have way fewer people now than before. Bigger expectations, bigger challenges before them, things they've never done with this small of a size of team. And logically, she told me, you know, this might not be possible. And so all we have to do is just gather the data and present it to management.

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And they would agree with us. But what was running the show in her brain was what if we fail? What if we dropped something? What if this proves I'm not a good leader? What if this proves I deserve a low performance rating?

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So it's not about the actual work or the challenge ahead. It's about the story she's making it mean about.

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If it doesn't go perfectly. And this really does happen at home as well, where one example I heard from someone was a double book to their calendar, so they had date night on the same night that they had a kids school event. And then you just feel so guilty. You have to cancel your date night and your brain goes, I should have checked the calendar.

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I should have known better. I should have

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not let this happen. Now my marriage is going to suffer. My husband's going to think less of me. I'm just failing at everything. This week. And just like that, in one moment it turns into a full identity crisis. You made a mistake. It's totally okay.

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So what's actually happening here? When there is a glass ball, quote unquote, that we drop that is neutral, even probably calling it a glass ball may feel heavy for many of you, but this is what we do as humans. We don't do anything perfectly. Only on Instagram. And the problem is not the dropped ball or the mistake we made.

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The problem is how we treated ourself in that moment. What is the story we told about ourself? It goes from. I just double booked my calendar. Oops, that happens too. Now, I'm not a good mom. I'm not a good partner. I'm an idiot. I should not have let that happen. And if that thought goes unexamined, if we just let those ones that are unconscious take root in our brain, then we will not just feel disappointed.

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We're going to feel shame and fear and pressure and absolute exhaustion.

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And that's not what you deserve in your day.

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This is the part that breaks my heart. So many women walk around all day long and we live in this fear

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Not because we will drop a glass ball, but because if we do, how are we going to talk to ourselves?

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What is the story? We make it mean about us. If we think this is just my life,

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If they think this is just my life, this happens.

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This is

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what I should expect when I have 300 things that I'm juggling all at the same time. But instead, from a place of fear it ends up being

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you mess us up. Now there's something wrong with you.

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You're doing it wrong. You should be better. And that alone feels terrible. That'll burn you out faster than any giant to do list ever would. So what do we do with all this? We often try to outrun the fear. We try to perform more. We try to take on everything we can perfectly. We work harder. We try to be more organized.

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We double check everything. We hold ourselves to some crazy high standard. And just even saying all that makes me feel heavy and stressed out.

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And with all of that, we often think, if I can just not drop anything and get everything done, I will finally feel okay. But it just doesn't work that way because the fear that's showing up in your life during the day isn't coming from all those balls you're juggling. It's coming from your thinking. That single sentence in your brain.

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So if we want to make this shift, we have to look at what's causing us to show up from a place of fear. Because in those moments when something does go wrong and it will remember we're human. There's this lovely concept from Marianne Williamson that says the opposite of fear is love.

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So instead of asking, how do I not mess this up, I want you to ask instead what would love to hear? So here's what this actually looks like in real life. Say you've double booked your calendar and your brain starts going. I should have known better. That's when you slow down and create more space. And you ask yourself instead, what would love do here?

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And love might say something like, hey, you're human. That's okay. You have a lot going on, love. This doesn't mean anything about who you are or what you're capable of. You can still show up fully for your child right now, and your spouse's going to be there to make that an amazing connecting time together. You can reschedule your date night, and it's a totally different experience, same circumstance, totally different way of showing up and at work.

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The project that is at risk. That's a huge challenge before you. Yeah, things might fall short. I feel like majority of the time they do, right?

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We can plan as much as you want, but there's still going to be things we don't know. Things don't turn out according to the plan on paper that you put out there.

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And so when that happens, don't make it mean that you're not a good leader. Instead, ask yourself, what would love do even here at work?

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Because love would probably say you're leading in a hard situation. You can be honest about what's possible.

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How are you the perfect person for this to show up as your authentic self?

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To support your team, to have your own back no matter what?

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This is what it means to truly belong to yourself. To not

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beat yourself up. To not wallow in self-loathing. And it's not waiting until everything goes perfectly to get to the point where you feel lovable and you're kind to yourself. But you decide I've got me. Even when it just doesn't feel that way.

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Because you drop some glass pulse. So here's what I want you to notice this week.

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where are you living? In fear of dropping a glass ball that you're juggling. And more importantly, what are you making it mean about you? What's that one sentence in your brain that's causing you to show up

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as a person who's afraid and burned out?

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Instead, ask yourself, what would love do here? You don't need fewer balls to juggle. You don't need somebody to come juggle a bunch of balls for you.

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You don't need to live your life perfectly.

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You need to

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examine what you're thinking and how you're feeling and choose consciously.

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We want to be grounded in every room we go to, and when we're not, we need to ask ourselves, what's going on, love? And really examine the thought you're human. You're going to make mistakes. It's okay to drop a glass ball. Truly, it's going to be okay.

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if you're interested in ending overwhelm in your life. Even when you drop a glass ball, you can join my free and overwhelm workshop. Go to [Lizjolley.com/overwhelm](https://www.google.com/search?q=https://Lizjolley.com/overwhelm) and check out for the next workshop. Hope to see you there. With that, everybody have an amazing week!

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Take care.