The Self Love Shift
The Self-Love Shift: 3 Pillars for Ambitious Working Moms
Self-love isn’t a spa day or a personality trait you either have or don’t have. It’s a shift in how you speak to yourself when you’re tired, behind, and doing your best. For ambitious working moms, self-love often gets buried under expectations, comparison, and the belief that you need to “earn” rest, ease, or kindness. This episode reframes self-love as a practical daily practice that supports your wellbeing while you’re building a full life.
The foundation is three pillars: growth, gentleness, and grace. Growth means giving yourself permission to evolve without turning every mistake into a character flaw. Gentleness is catching the harsh self-talk and speaking to yourself like you would to a friend on a hard day. Grace is allowing yourself to be human, imperfect, and in progress, including taking rest without attaching guilt to it. When these three work together, self-love becomes less about “fixing yourself” and more about creating an inner relationship that actually helps you thrive.
HERE ARE THE 3 KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE:
1️⃣ Self-love is a daily practice.
2️⃣ Growth, gentleness, grace.
3️⃣ Rest is part of thriving.
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“Imagine that you’re carrying this really, really, really big heavy bag of perfectionism and of self-criticism and of guilt and just put that bag down right now.”
Full Transcript
Tia Graham (00:04.502)
If you've ever felt like being kind to yourself, feeling like you're good enough, loving yourself, comes last on your to-do list, or maybe isn't even possible, this episode is for you.
I remember when I was leading a team at the London West Hollywood Beverly Hills with a toddler and a baby and feeling like I wasn't enough at work because I was leaving at five, I wasn't able to work on weekends, I wasn't able to go on as many sales trips, et cetera, and feeling like I wasn't enough at home because I would...
dropped my daughter off at preschool and she would be the first one there and I always felt so much guilt and sadness and confusion dropping her off and saying goodbye to my little baby even before I drove my older toddler to preschool, having the nanny come, pumping at work throughout the day and rushing home at five o'clock and feeling so
time crunched and again feeling so much guilt and confusion and stress in that like 5 to 7 p.m. with dinner and trying to play and then do bath time. I felt like I was failing in every single area and I was not giving myself self-love at this period.
It was like I was on a fast, fast train and I was on car 19. I was the not the driver of my life. And I was also beating myself up for like not going to the gym as much, not seeing my girlfriends as much, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I can share so many stories of just rushing through chaotic mornings and realizing now,
Tia Graham (02:23.06)
you know, how I talked to myself and how I treated myself was really an afterthought. I was just trying to be this fantastic hotel executive and this amazing mom and in the whole process was just beating myself up every single day. So I'm really, really passionate about this subject. Today we're talking about the self love shift.
and what it really takes to move from self-criticism to self-love while juggling motherhood, work, and everything in between. I'm now an entrepreneur, and so the juggle is different, but it's still there. Both of our daughters are neurodivergent. One is autistic and ADHD.
The other one's dyslexic in ADHD. And so the juggle of kids always feels really, really big. And I'm so passionate about work. And I'm still passionate about marriage and health and family and friends and everything else.
So this shift from self-criticism to more self-love is not about perfection and it's also not about pampering yourself like self-care, like going to get your nails done or having a bath. That's not what it's about. It's about this daily internal realignment.
with how you think about yourself, how you treat yourself, and just how you design your days and your life. And it's about intentionality. And it's really about a choice. Just like happiness, it's about a choice. So we're gonna talk about three pillars. Number one, growth.
Tia Graham (04:34.154)
letting yourself evolve without judgment. Number two, gentleness, speaking to yourself daily with kindness, especially when you mess up. And three, grace, allowing yourself to be human and releasing guilt and embracing rest and stillness. So,
Think about updating your phone or your laptop software. The self-love shift is your emotional software update. This is less about changing who you are. There is nothing wrong with you. It's about upgrading how you think about yourself, feel about yourself, and treat yourself.
Ambitious working moms face many challenges and struggles. We are constantly comparing ourselves to other working moms. Social media exasperates this. There is this internal guilt for wanting me time, wanting to take care of yourself. There is time poverty.
where our calendars and our days are just so full. We have high expectations of ourselves in many different areas of life. You could say we are type A working moms. We have really, really big, full, invisible mental loads. And we are also bombarded with
messaging about leaning in and doing it all, which can be really, really toxic and negative for us. And so all of the challenges that you face do not mean that you are failing. It means that you are a human in today's busy world doing a lot.
Tia Graham (06:58.282)
So let's break down this three part framework, which is a shift into more self love, a conscious intentional shift that you're choosing to do. So number one, growth, giving yourself permission to evolve.
So let me share a little story of a small personal growth moment. Now, on Monday night, so here's a story of actually this week. I was feeling very overwhelmed with everything that was invisible, especially when it came to the emotional load of my two daughters. I am
an empath, self-diagnosed empath. I am a deeply feeling person and I'm very attuned to other people's emotional state and we all have mirror neurons. Emotions are contagious for everyone, but maybe you're like me where you feel your kids' emotions a lot. And so on Monday night after the kids went to bed, I
just was communicating to my husband how overwhelmed I was with the kids, with the emotional and the invisible and then also the physical load, like just all of it. And I very clearly asked him for more help. And my husband does help a lot, but for me, for loving myself,
I need more help. And so this is a continuous growth area for me. And again, my husband does do a lot, but in order for me to evolve, I need to ask for more and more help. And so what does growth look like for you this season?
Tia Graham (09:18.922)
in shifting to more self-love. Maybe it's saying, no, I actually just got asked to do something for one of my daughter's school this week and I explained why I can't do it. And maybe the old me would have said yes to everything, right? So what does growth look like for you this season? Number two is gentleness.
And I talk about this a lot. I think this is something that's a daily practice and needs to be said over and over and over because our brains have a negativity bias. Speaking to yourself like you would a best friend. Negative self-talk, whether it's about our career, our bodies, our marriage, our parenting, our home.
Just last week, some of the members of the Feel Good Club of my membership were talking about how they have a lot of negative self-talk around how their home looks like, even though they're like, I don't even have a lot of people over. And how do you speak to yourself with more kindness, right? So here's an example of flipping internal dialogue. Instead of when you lay your head down on your pillow thinking,
I was a terrible mom today saying I had a tough day, but I'm learning, I'm showing up, I'm doing my best. So here is a micro practice, a gentle thought that can serve you. And the thought is I am a really great working mom.
Just that. I am a really great working mom. Because you are. You wouldn't be listening to this podcast. You wouldn't connect with me on Instagram or YouTube or all the places where people connect with me if you didn't care. And number three is grace. Giving yourself grace. And I struggled with this for a very, very long time. And it is letting go of guilt.
Tia Graham (11:41.303)
and leaning into rest. And I'll share with you, I thought that I was struggling with guilt and I was, right? I was feeling a lot of guilt for years, about nine years as a working mom. And a couple years ago, I realized, and maybe this will help you, I realized I wasn't actually struggling with guilt, because guilt is you feel like you are
harming someone or something. What I was really struggling with was inadequacy. And never once did I think, I'm feeling inadequate. I just always felt guilt. But I actually was using the wrong terms and labeling the wrong thing. I was struggling.
with not feeling good enough as a mom. Whereas pre-kids, always felt, well, mostly, felt really confident in my hotel executive career. Or felt really confident with being a keynote speaker, being a best-selling author, having a viral TED talk. You get this external validation from work. And with parenting, there's not a lot of external validation.
especially if you have challenging kids like me, right? So grace, giving yourself grace, this third pillar, is about letting yourself exhale.
Letting yourself accept what is. Letting yourself accept what you don't have control over, which is so much, so, much. So I want you to choose a little bit more rest, a little bit more slowing down without justification. It's not like you earn this, it's needed. Go for a walk.
Tia Graham (13:55.727)
read a book, close down the laptop, go out for dinner with a friend, watch a movie, order in pizza, don't worry about the super healthy dinner, whatever you need to do to rest. And the way that my husband and I recharge is we spend a lot of time traveling. My husband gets a lot of vacation points.
Sorry, a lot of airline miles through his work and which is a huge blessing. And we take several weeks off in the year to just recharge. And do I have thoughts like, God, should I be working? I could be more, absolutely. Cause I'm a type A high achieving person, but I give myself that permission to rest. Right? So imagine that you're carrying this really, really, really big
heavy bag of perfectionism and of self-criticism and of guilt and just put that bag down right now. Put it down today and put it down this week. And that's what grace feels like.
So here are a couple simple daily practices to increase self-love.
Write down what you're grateful for in a gratitude journal a couple times a week. Mine is right on my bathroom counter. And I pause and think about what I'm grateful for. I also have this new awesome practice of telling my husband the amazing great things that I did that day with the kids, with work, whatever.
Tia Graham (15:56.215)
And I'm just vocalizing.
impact, contributions, ways that I'm proud of myself showing up and saying that out loud and countering the negativity bias in my brain.
And the third thing you can do as a daily practice is to choose to take care of your body. To choose to do a 20 minute yoga video. Choose to go for a quick run. Choose to do a 30 minute weights video on YouTube and strengthen your body.
choose to invest in your physical health, which is a massive investment in self-love. And when you do it, you actually feel like you have more agency over your time. So I want to encourage you to think about self-love consistency over intensity. Because self-love grows in these micro
moments. Growth and gentleness and grace are not ideals. It's muscles that you build over time. You do not have to wait to be less busy, less tired, less full, less chaotic, or more perfect to show yourself
Tia Graham (17:43.661)
Love.
Shift now, softly, intentionally, and with grace and compassion.
If this resonated with you, share this episode with a working mom friend who could use this reminder that she's already enough and that she deserves so much love and self-love. If you are feeling a lot of mom guilt right now, number one, that's okay.
I see you and I've been there. What I want you to do is I want you to go to tiagram.com slash blog and go get my free seven steps to overcoming working mom guilt. And remember, prioritize your happiness. This is what we're doing every week inside the feel good club.