Not Feeling Good Enough as a Working Mom?
You can rebuild success that feels sustainable, not suffocating.
Here’s how.
In this episode, Rachna Jethwani speaks to the high-achieving moms who keep pushing because “not enough” feels like a permanent default. She shares how achievement can become a survival strategy, and how motherhood can expose the breaking point fast, when the old way of proving yourself stops working and burnout takes over. The shift starts when you recognize the pattern: overworking to feel worthy, spiraling when you can’t keep up, and assuming the struggle means you’re failing.
Rachna reframes that “breakdown” as an identity inflection point, not a personal flaw. Instead of trying harder, she encourages a deeper reset: name the beliefs tying your worth to output, invest in support and practices that bring you back to yourself, and redefine success by alignment, not applause. When you start celebrating small wins and choosing fulfillment over constant proving, you don’t lose your drive, you gain a steadier way to lead your life.
HERE ARE THE 3 KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE:
1️⃣ Your worth isn’t your output.
2️⃣ Burnout is a signal.
3️⃣ Redefine success by alignment.
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“Unconditional self-worth is a skill that gives you the stability that external achievement never could.”
Guest Appearing in this Episode
Rachna Jethwani
Rachna Jethwani is a coach for high-achievers who helps ambitious leaders build sustainable success without burning out. She works with entrepreneurs, executives, and driven professionals navigating internal inflection points where the old “push harder” identity no longer fits. Her work focuses on deep internal evolution, so clarity returns, momentum becomes easier, and fulfillment isn’t postponed for “someday.”
Full Transcript
Tia Graham (00:02.712)
Hi, Rajna, welcome to the show.
Rachna Jethwani (00:06.275)
I'm so happy to be here Tia and I just want to say all the work that you do uplifting and supporting and inspiring working moms is absolutely incredible. Thank you for what you do and for who you are.
Tia Graham (00:19.406)
Oh, my pleasure. I'm so glad that we're connected. So can you share a little bit about your story and how you came to be doing the work that you're doing now? So tell us a little bit about your career, personal history.
Rachna Jethwani (00:23.747)
and
Rachna Jethwani (00:36.611)
Absolutely. Satya, unfortunately, this feeling that I am not enough as I am might be the most quietly destructive lie that high achievers carry around with them. And it's this feeling of not enoughness that drives like ambitious women like us to maybe many times overwork, over optimize, over prove when it actually is a primal fear that if we stop achieving.
we stop mattering, that our worth lives in our output, that all of our core human needs of love, belonging, safety, it is something that we have to earn, like one accomplishment at a time. So we push, we deliver, we carry on until something breaks that equation. And it's something different for everyone. For me personally, that break came as like
very clear rupture. When I look at my life, there's like the first three decades filled with like accomplishment, achievement, accolades, appreciation. I walked into a school, formal school environment at the age of four and from the beginning, like back in India, you're like ranked. So was like ranked number one year after year. I graduated college with a 4.0 GPA. I was extremely successful in my corporate career.
from a young age, being in rooms with senior leaders and being the one shaping the direction. And all of that was that achievement, giving the proof that I am enough until overnight it all evaporated. For me, it happened when I became a mother. Emergency C-section, some other complications, and just a very brutal start to that journey. that early childhood days were very rough on me.
Tia Graham (02:30.072)
Yes.
Rachna Jethwani (02:30.191)
And I decided to take a career pause and I thought I'm just going to be a great mother excelling at that. And I felt like a failure every single day. So I did what I had done always in the past, just do more, push more. But the more I tried to do, the less it felt. The more I put effort in, the more stuck I felt. It almost feels like
You know, being in quicksand and you're like flailing and that's not going to get you out. So I kept carrying on that way until it's like I remember it was something my mom said that made me realize I am at rock bottom. This is like I'm exhausted and burnt out. This is not working and. So it was it was actually what she said was, Rachna, the way you're working right now, one plus one can add up to two.
Tia Graham (03:14.67)
Wait, what did your mom say?
Rachna Jethwani (03:25.933)
But there's a different way of being that allows one and one to come together and become 11. Now, this moment was not a moment of great, like, aha, there's a different way. It was a moment of like everything feeling even more intense and worse than before. Because in that moment, I realized my one and one was coming together to become
0.11. Like I was just like trying, struggling, and it's just like I had become a shell of a person and you know, Tia, it's like if we are in that place, nothing good is going to flow out of that into our families and what we create around ourselves. So it was, yeah, it was that realization that I'm at rock bottom and this pushing harder is not going to solve the way it had solved everything else in my life. It was just like work more, do more, achieve more. It all worked out.
And also at this time, think I read a quote that goes something like this. If you judge a fish by its ability to fly, it will spend its whole life believing that it's a failure. So I think the coming together of these few things, I made that choice to shift, to shift from trying to fly to let's start learning how to swim. And for me, that was diving into the world of.
Personal development, it's like all the books that I used to see on my bookshelf growing up as a child, where my dad was very much into that world. And it started with, you know, trying to improve myself, trying to fix myself. And then I realized that it's a journey of understanding yourself and discovering yourself. It started with trying to like, in true hyper-independent fashion, trying to be like, I got this, all the information is out there, I'll do it on my own.
to then investing in mentors, guides and coaches. And I know I've heard you say that many times before that you're a big proponent of that and it truly is life changing. I'm so deeply grateful for every person who has supported me on the way. And it's like through that consistently showing up, going deeper, uncovering the different layers. I started reaching a point that felt so out of reach in the beginning with where I was like.
Rachna Jethwani (05:48.439)
This I am enough as I am wasn't just a belief. It wasn't just an understanding. wasn't even just a knowing. It was this felt embodied sense that I could access. And so that's how it has, it was my greatest struggle. It became my most meaningful mountain that I feel like I have climbed so far. And now it has become my contribution back to exhausted high achievers who are like,
Tia Graham (06:11.459)
Yes.
Rachna Jethwani (06:17.874)
out there trying to earn what is already theirs and especially for like working moms who have been handed achievement as that yardstick and been asked to go achieve in 12 different directions all at once and then are like left feeling and questioning themselves day in and day out. So I guess that that is my journey.
Tia Graham (06:36.088)
Right.
Tia Graham (06:39.902)
thank you for sharing all of that. And I know that now you coach people one-on-one and you also speak on everything that you have learned and the tools that you have. So when you were at rock bottom, were you feeling that way because you were giving so much, like you said, you were trying to achieve and be this good
great, maybe even perfect mom, and were you at rock bottom because the feedback that you were getting from your child was not giving you the sense that you were this great mom? guess what was happening that made you feel rock bottom, and also do you think it was because you weren't working, that you were parenting full time?
Did that make you feel a rock bottom too? So those are my two questions.
Rachna Jethwani (07:39.427)
Yes, absolutely. And I think that's such a great question in terms of like what caused this like extreme burnout. And I think it was a combination one I remember distinctly and I realized how silly it is now that I was like, I'm going to be such a great mother that my baby is never going to cry because I will always know exactly what they need and be there for them. That's the metric. Yes.
Tia Graham (08:01.901)
my gosh, your measuring stick was my baby will never cry.
Rachna Jethwani (08:06.434)
And my first son was one who cried all the time. Day in, day out, I could be holding him, I could be doing absolutely everything and it just wasn't enough is what it felt like. So it was that? Yes. And then I think you hit on it right because I made the decision to take a career pause given how rocky it had been and how much my son needed me.
Tia Graham (08:21.848)
So you could never be successful based on what you were trying to do. Okay, so that's one. Okay, what else?
Rachna Jethwani (08:36.192)
So I was in this position where I was not juggling a high power career and motherhood. I was dedicated to motherhood and I was failing at it. It was how I felt. And it's a choice that not a lot of people, no one else really around me had made. So it does bring on that feeling, right? That everyone else is still out there in the world achieving, accomplishing. So for me, that break in the equation, as I mentioned, was a complete unraveling. It was...
three decades followed by there is no accomplishment, there's no achieving, there's a lot of giving and burnout is a problem of over giving and not receiving back. And what I wanted to receive back, looking back was this like perfectly happy baby, but I was this like great mother. So yes, that is what caused that feeling of rock bottom.
Tia Graham (09:24.078)
Right.
Yeah. Where do you think this concept of my baby's not gonna cry, where do think that came from?
Rachna Jethwani (09:44.299)
I think it was self created in terms of like, that was my idea of being a connected mother that I'm taking such great care of my child. And I hadn't been around many, or maybe like one baby. I really hadn't been around a lot of babies. So I was like, if I'm a great mother, I'm taking great care of them. They're just going to be this like happy, happy child. Yes. Yeah.
Tia Graham (10:01.42)
Yeah.
Tia Graham (10:07.032)
Happy baby, yeah, happy baby all the time. And how long was your career pause? Because you were working, like taking care of a baby is so much work. That is just unpaid work, right? And then there's the emotional load, the mental load of childcare and taking care of a home. How long was your paid career pause before?
Rachna Jethwani (10:22.306)
Yes.
Tia Graham (10:35.182)
before you started, because really you've become an entrepreneur. So how much time was that?
Rachna Jethwani (10:41.77)
It was a little over four years. started with, it was intended to be two years and then COVID happened and then that extended things. So it ended up being a little over four years.
Tia Graham (10:53.974)
Yeah, yeah, okay. So many, many high achieving working moms and many humans, like eight billion of us, feel that we are not enough, right? This is a very common human experience. So can you walk us through what you did that helped you go from feeling not enough
and having your enoughness be tied to achievement or accomplishment, whether that be your career or what your child or baby is doing, right? Because that's a different achievement or accomplishment. How did you go from not feeling enough to knowing and just reconnecting to your enoughness? Walk through what you did to get from here
Rachna Jethwani (11:34.978)
me out.
Rachna Jethwani (11:49.474)
Yes, I would absolutely love to do that. I ended up in true life strategy consultant style. have like a whole framework step by step of how I got there. Would it be okay, Tia, if before we go into that, if we address maybe a little more of this fact that you said that it is something that we carry as humans and unfortunately, it is like an almost universal struggle.
Tia Graham (11:52.579)
to hear.
Tia Graham (12:12.376)
Yeah, sure.
Rachna Jethwani (12:17.633)
that a lot of us think is an individual problem that we are struggling with. I don't know if you saw recently. Yeah. Yeah.
Tia Graham (12:23.106)
Yes, yes, yeah, talk about that and then talk about your yeah what you did sure.
Rachna Jethwani (12:28.459)
Yeah, but it's like recently I saw that Blake, forget his last name, the founder of Tom's Shoes, the donate one. He has started an initiative called Enough or something, because he went through this journey himself of like, he created Tom's like an incredible, like service driven, mission driven empire, and then went through depression and then realized that we tie our enoughness to achievement. So it's it's amazing. It like, it impacts everyone. Yeah.
Tia Graham (12:35.726)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tia Graham (12:43.414)
I'm so excited.
Tia Graham (12:54.626)
You know, no, I think of Jamie Kerlima, who she sold her company for over $1 billion and still didn't feel worthy. so, yes. Yeah, let's talk about this universal lie is kind what I want to say, but yeah, something about your perspective on it.
Rachna Jethwani (12:58.667)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yes.
Yes, so yeah, so that's it.
Yeah. Yeah, it's a lie and it's this fear. Yeah, and it's like fear and fear is like false evidence appearing real. So just feels so real. But what I really want to offer to working moms who might not, who might be feeling not enough is that when you're in that space, it feels really hard. And what I want to offer to you is that it feels like a crisis, but it is not. It is a season.
What I mean by that is just like we understand this about the world around us, right? I'm on the East Coast. I'm in New York. There are very clear seasons. Right now it's winter. The trees are bare. It's cold. Nothing is growing. And yet we know that come spring in a few weeks, we haven't declared the trees dead. We know that they will start sprouting. They will be covered with blossoms and new leaves. So we don't panic. We're like winter. We're in winter and it's going to be spring outside.
Rachna Jethwani (14:12.321)
But when we personally as humans enter a season of life that feels like winter, which is part of human development, this will happen. When things feel hard and heavy, what we do is we catastrophize. We think this is it, this is forever, something is wrong with me, I am broken, I am failing. So I just want to offer that this is not forever. This is probably your winter.
and spring is coming. And this is what human development says. And this is what I have seen over and over again and working with people in this space that the season tends to arrive around the age between like 35 to 45. And it's right when your career is probably pretty stable and you're doing well and you are probably in the middle of parenting for many of us. And when you feel like you have everything, instead of it feeling good, it starts feeling
like everything is shaky and that not enoughness gets really loud. And the fact that this happens over and over again with different humans in different phases of their life is because this is a signal. What is it a signal for is what I would like to share. So think of it this way. Let's imagine there's a first grader and she has learned addition and she's feeling like really great with her ability to add.
Tia Graham (15:15.128)
Mm-hmm.
Rachna Jethwani (15:38.732)
She can do like seven plus seven, no problem. She's crushing it. Okay, great. And one day she walks into the classroom and now she is handed a worksheet. In the past, for seven plus seven, she's got it, she's crushing it. Now today she's walked into the classroom and that worksheet that she's handed is seven plus seven plus seven plus seven plus seven and it just goes on. The whole page is filled with seven plus seven plus seven and she flips it and it keeps going and it goes on.
Tia Graham (15:38.894)
Yeah. I have a first grader, so I'm a sixth-grader. Yeah.
Rachna Jethwani (16:08.395)
How is she going to feel? She's going to feel lost. But what did... Yes. Yes. But what really is happening is she is ready for multiplication. And because what addition got her this far, but now if she were to learn multiplication, she could solve that sheet much more easily.
Tia Graham (16:13.346)
Yeah, she's going to feel overwhelmed. She's going to feel like she doesn't know what she's doing insecure.
you
Rachna Jethwani (16:35.339)
So that is what is happening to us as humans. The skills that got us here, the drive, the discipline, the ability to push through, it got us this far. But like they say, what got us here won't get us there, right? So now, unfortunately, life doesn't come with a clear worksheet and a teacher that guides us through, it comes through confusing messages and signals.
But when this feeling of not enoughness starts coming up again and again, this is life not punishing you. This is life inviting you for a promotion. It is inviting you to learn a new skill that will serve you really well. And one of these new skills is unconditional self-worth, right? Where you know you are enough. It does not.
Tia Graham (17:01.144)
Bye.
Rachna Jethwani (17:30.517)
depend on your outcome or what's happening outside you. It does not get touched by a bad day. It does not ride the roller coaster. It is steady. And it is this skill that gives you the stability that external achievement never could. Because with that comes a short dopamine hit and then the goalpost moves and then we're on the hedonic treadmill and all that good stuff. With unconditional self-worth, you are resilient. You have this groundedness that
Tia Graham (17:54.776)
Right.
Rachna Jethwani (18:00.235)
people can feel just by being in your presence and you have this piece that ambitious people try to chase through doing more, but you can only ever find it by going inward. Alan Watts has this beautiful quote that has always stayed with me where he said, the only piece that you will find at the top of a mountain is the one that you take there with you. So I feel like, yes, it is.
Tia Graham (18:26.03)
That's a beautiful quote. So if someone I'm picturing this beautiful woman listening to this who is thinking like, yes, that sounds wonderful, but I don't have that. I don't have unconditional self-worth. I don't feel enough because of marriage or my career or kids or my financial situation.
Rachna Jethwani (18:40.799)
Yes.
Tia Graham (18:55.224)
who knows, maybe my physical appearance, on and on and on, and social media makes everybody's lives look better. And so for someone who's saying, yeah, and maybe who has never really felt enough and has always had this questioning inside, what can this person do?
Rachna Jethwani (18:55.966)
Yes.
Rachna Jethwani (19:17.746)
Yes, absolutely. Now we get to how do we get to this what feels very out of reach, honestly, because we usually, yeah, we are in that place of like, some Dutch judgment and self doubt and unconditional self worth is up there, right. So it's like going to the gym. If you walk in the first time, you're not going to walk over to 100 pound weight and try to lift it and then feel like why can I not do this and walk out disheartened.
Tia Graham (19:23.362)
Yes, let's get practical.
Tia Graham (19:32.291)
Right.
Rachna Jethwani (19:42.901)
You're going to gradually build up the reps and muscles. Same thing. It's like you need to build up the emotional strength. So to get to unconditional self-worth is again, there's, it's a staircase that you have to climb. And this includes starting with self awareness. And then from there, moving on to self connection, which means connecting to all these other parts of you that you tend to like ignore or not even realize how amazing you are.
Moving on to self acceptance, bringing in parts of you that you have pushed aside, you don't like, you don't appreciate. And I heard your episode with Stacey on the inner critic. It's just like there are parts of you that you push aside. I've worked with a woman once who was like, I hate my inner critic. And there was just so much like passion in her about it, right? We have all these parts of us that we push aside. So self acceptance has to come in. From there, you can then start reaching and
Tia Graham (20:38.776)
Yes.
Rachna Jethwani (20:42.546)
self-appreciation becomes available to you. And then from there, you can have self-respect and self-approval. A lot of times we feel like we want things from the outside world, but if we look within, are we truly respecting ourselves? Are we appreciating ourselves? And then you can get into a space of self-value. And then when you have climbed this ladder step by step by step, then it
that feeling of unconditional self-worth starts becoming accessible as a embodied and felt sense. But yes, if you're like at self-judgment and self-doubt, the next step is not unconditional self-worth. The next step that I would recommend is actually self-connection.
Tia Graham (21:27.022)
Right, right. my gosh, Rachna, this, this,
process, this path, this journey is so beautiful and I wrote it down is so clear when I think back on my journey from feeling not enough and you and I have so much in common because my first baby came flying into the world and she was early and she was in NICU and she didn't eat and she didn't sleep. She's 11 and a half. She's still a horrible sleep. She cried.
Rachna Jethwani (21:50.911)
Yes.
Rachna Jethwani (21:56.874)
Yeah, yeah.
my god, all the same things.
Tia Graham (22:03.118)
Same thing, and I was trying to be, I was trying to be this good mom, and it was like, no. For me, what I would put in there, what I would add, and this is just on thinking of my journey, something that was transformational, and maybe it goes underneath one of yours, but for me, a huge part of this, and I'm trying think of where I would put it, but a huge part of it was self-compassion.
Rachna Jethwani (22:09.311)
Yes.
Rachna Jethwani (22:15.21)
Yes.
yes, I know.
Rachna Jethwani (22:24.256)
And I know where that goes. know where you're going. absolutely 100%.
Tia Graham (22:33.44)
Yes, like I like learning how to, but I think it's under, it's like under acceptance, it's under appreciation, it's under, it's like connected to a lot of.
Rachna Jethwani (22:41.054)
So I actually see it as the container in which to do this work because it's like you're unraveling decades worth of patterns. So when you go into this work, go into it in that container of kindness towards yourself and self-compassion. Because what happens otherwise is you start at self-awareness, you start becoming aware of your patterns and you go straight back into self-judgment. So yeah.
Tia Graham (22:46.798)
I don't know.
Tia Graham (23:04.946)
Yeah, you're like, I'm aware.
Rachna Jethwani (23:08.684)
So, yeah, self-compassion is that foundation and the container in which to do this work so that you keep going up the ladder instead of beating yourself up along the way on the ladder and absolutely self-compassion. know you're a big proponent of it. It has been life-changing for you. I'm a huge fan of Kristin Neff. So, yes, it absolutely belongs there.
Tia Graham (23:26.604)
Yes, yes. my goodness. for, let me ask you a simple question. What do you think is one thing that someone can do? And if you can try and make it simple and easy, what's one thing they can do to start being a little more self-aware? What's one action they can take?
Rachna Jethwani (23:42.346)
Yeah.
Rachna Jethwani (23:52.673)
So I would say we as humans have a very strong negativity bias, right? So we zoom in and personalize everything that we miss, right? So start zooming in and personalizing the things that you are doing well. So at the end of the day, yeah, at the end of the day for the longest time, I used to end my day with a list of three things I'm proud of myself for. So it was just like taking ownership that.
Tia Graham (24:00.441)
Yeah.
Tia Graham (24:07.042)
Yeah.
Rachna Jethwani (24:20.596)
this is what I am doing and what I am creating in my life and I'm showing up. So like I started with gratitude list and then I actually moved on to I am proud of myself to build that inner sense of, yeah.
Tia Graham (24:33.646)
I love it, I love it. I'm gonna share this with everyone. Oh, Rachna, this was so great. Where can people go to find you and learn more? Where's the best place to send them to?
Rachna Jethwani (24:49.617)
Sure, the website is Rachana J 20.com. My Instagram, is where I think I will be most present is with Rachana and I'm on LinkedIn as well. Again, just my name. So say hello.
Tia Graham (25:01.582)
Perfect, perfect. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show and it's so great having you part of the Feel Good Club.
Rachna Jethwani (25:10.24)
Yeah, absolutely. And honor to you. Thank you for having me.