Podcast Episode #12
Embracing Your Unique Journey as a Working Mom
In this solo episode of the Feel Good Club podcast, Tia Graham tackles the comparison spiral that hits when you’re scrolling through polished mom content and suddenly questioning your own life. She explains that social comparison is a normal human pattern, but it can quietly turn into a self-worth measuring stick, especially for ambitious working moms. Even Tia shares how comparing herself to her sister’s schedule made her wonder, “Am I doing enough?” which is a reminder that comparison can sneak in no matter how self-aware you are.
The reset is grounding yourself in what’s true for you. Tia encourages you to identify your top core values and use them as your filter for decisions, your calendar, and your definition of “doing it right,” because it’s you versus you yesterday, not you versus someone else’s highlight reel. She also calls out the exhausting “shoulds” and the mom guilt that comes with them, and points listeners toward practical steps to release guilt and choose what aligns with how you want to feel, not what you think you’re supposed to prove.
HERE ARE THE 3 KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE:
1️⃣ Comparison is common, not truth.
2️⃣ Values beat “shoulds” every time.
3️⃣ It’s you vs you yesterday.
7 STEPS TO OVERCOME MOM GUILT
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“Every emotion, every painful emotion is information.”
Full Transcript
Tia Graham (00:05.44)
You can make the choice to focus on your growth and wins instead of constantly comparing yourself to other working moms and making yourself miserable by doing it. Ever feel that stab of envy scrolling past the perfect mom with endless energy, a spotless home, kids who
actually nap or kids who thrive on their sports team while you're juggling deadlines, laundry, marriage, and your own exhaustion. You're not alone. Ambitious working mom, it's time to stop comparing yourself to moms with completely different lives. We don't know everything about anyone else's
lives and even if it's a close friend you don't know everything and certainly on social media you don't know everything about their lives. The problem is that your brain constantly compares your life to the lives of other working moms and stay-at-home moms. So let's talk about this problem a little bit. Social comparison theory
proposed by Leon Festinger in 1954, explains that humans lack objective standards for self-assessment. So we turn to others as benchmarks. And in your case, another working mom or stay-at-home mom or maybe your mom or your siblings. And so we engage in upward comparisons.
to those perceived as better than us for motivation and self-improvement. Some of that can be good, maybe it inspires us. Or downward comparison to those worse off than you or I to boost our own self-esteem. These comparisons influence emotions, self-esteem, as I said, and our behavior.
Tia Graham (02:30.776)
Frequent upward ones often lead to envy, dissatisfaction with their own lives, guilt or lowered mood, especially to those working moms that have low self-esteem already or are prone to that. So I also wanted to look in a little bit into the neuroscience of this constant comparison.
So neuroimaging shows social comparisons activate the brain's reward system, particularly the ventral striatum, which processes relative rewards and prediction errors, reacting more strongly to outcomes compared to others than absolute gains. And additional reasons, sorry, additional regions like the medial prefrontal cortex
handle self referential thinking and social cognition, while the amygdala processes emotional responses during status threatening comparisons. So the amygdala, right, which is thinking threat. Biases such as overestimating R qualities involve reduced medial, orbitofrontal cortex activity.
making comparisons feel, listen to this, our brain makes comparisons feel automatic and even effortless. So it's just happening, right? Here's a quick story on comparison as a working mom. It is July 20th and my two daughters have been at a school for six weeks. We have gone on to...
week-long family vacations already, and we're just halfway through summer. My husband, thankfully, thankfully, gets a ton of airline miles with his company. And when we're in California, we're having a lot of family time in the evenings and on weekends. I'm an entrepreneur, so I always have flexible work hours. I make my own work schedule. So I'm also seeing my kids a lot, a ton.
Tia Graham (04:48.958)
during the summer weeks. When we're here, my kids are in camps during the day and then of course there's activities, play dates, etc. And we have a nanny who supports our house and helps me with the kids as well. My husband and I the kids. We have no family in California at all. One of my sisters is an elementary school teacher and like most teachers,
She takes every summer off. She has two and a half months just off work. And she spends it with her daughter. Her daughter does not like going to camps and doesn't go to any camps. During the summer, especially when I'm working and my kids are at camp or maybe they're with a nanny, et cetera, regularly my mind drifts, thinks about
compares to my sister's summer. And I think thoughts like, hmm, am I spending enough time with my girls? She's spending all summer with her girl. Are my kids gonna remember summers as time with the nanny? Should I not be putting them in camp? I'm an entrepreneur, so.
Maybe I could be working early mornings and at night and work less in the day and am I doing enough? Am I doing it right? I compare, I compare, I compare. And I'm super close with my sister. We talk regularly. I love her dearly. I think she's a great human. Would I ever want to be an elementary school teacher? Absolutely not. That is not my path.
Would I want to spend two and a half months with my girls? Hell no, I wouldn't, that's not me. I also have two kids with their two years apart and so guess what? They fight a lot, they love each other, they play, but they fight. It drives me flipping crazy. Very different than having one kid. Whenever I have one kid, I'm like, my God, piece of cake, because I have two, right? You have that comparison.
Tia Graham (07:14.676)
If I took all summer off, I would literally go insane. I would not be happy. And I would be full of resentment and anger that my husband's like working and going on work trips and going up to LA and I'm like just kids for two and a half months. Work fuels me. Work is a form of self care for me. I love using my brain. I love talking to adults.
And so even though I question and I compare, I remind myself, no Tia, this is your journey. This is the one you want and you have reasons why, because it aligns with who I am, what's important to me and it aligns with my values. So what I want you to do is I want you to acknowledge your brain's comparison.
Acknowledge your brain does it. Everybody's brain does. Then ground yourself in daily improvement. Acknowledge your brain's comparison habit. Then ground yourself in daily improvement. It is you versus you yesterday. And it's also completely okay if you're not improving since yesterday. If you...
are at a plateau or if you're in a different phase. The point is, it's just you. That's what matters. Decide your core values. Let those values guide your calendar. No other working moms or stay-at-home moms calendar, your calendar. So what I want you to do
and I'll put this in the show notes. There's a whole list of values. Brené Brown has a great list. I'll put that in the show notes. I want you to print out this list and I want you to figure out what are your top five values if you don't know them. I have mine right here next to me in my home office and I know the five things that are most important to me. That's step one. Step two.
Tia Graham (09:40.595)
is get really clear on how you want to feel.
What are the emotions that you want to feel most of? And have clarity on that. Value is what's important. Emotions is how you want to feel. And this is probably going to bring to light some of the shoulds. Maybe it's family shoulds or your spouse, what he she thinks you should do or family, culture, whatever.
It might be time to let go of some of those shoulds. And you plan your calendar and you act accordingly to your values and how you want to feel.
Tia Graham (10:30.686)
And if you are feeling out of alignment, I want you to take time to reflect on this. How do you want to feel? What do you want? And are you living an aligned life that is what is purposeful and meaningful to you?
Tia Graham (10:53.428)
It is unfortunate that our brains are always comparing ourselves to other working moms. On the Feel Good Club call earlier today, there was a group of working moms of the members just talking about that. Someone said, my gosh, this mom that I know, created these beautiful, handcrafted Valentines for all the kids in her.
three children's classes. You might be the one that just gets it at Target or Amazon and that's perfectly okay. We have to acknowledge it and then live the way that we want to live. If you are feeling a lot of guilt right now, a lot of working mom guilt, you are not doing anything wrong. It is completely okay.
Every emotion, every painful emotion is information. I was riddled with guilt for almost a decade until I figured out the strategies and changes in beliefs so that I don't feel guilt or I rarely, rarely feel it. But if you are feeling mom guilt, I have a free resource for you. It's my seven steps to overcoming mom guilt.
It is a simple one page document, which are the seven steps that I took to go from being a lot of mom guilt to feeling really confident. And you can grab it for free at tiagram.com forward slash overcoming dash guilt. That's tiagram.com forward slash overcoming dash guilt. And remember,
I want you to prioritize your happiness. See you on the next episode.