The Still Space Podcast Episode #7 When You Are Exhausted on the Treadmill to Nowhere – My Mom’s Story by Executive Coach Mary Lee Gannon
While I was “DO”ing everything I could think of to improve my sense of accomplishment as a working single mom, I was getting farther and farther away from noticing the toll it took on my peace, my leadership, my relationships, my sleep, and my family. I played to my strengths, had a dedicated work ethic and always measured my successes which communicated my value. I was working long hours, was detached from my children and friends, and never really felt that I deserved to be happy. I was exhausted from continually having to prove myself on the treadmill to nowhere.
Please affirm to yourself right now that you need not prove anything to anyone anymore. Read that sentence again. People who need to prove themselves are the people at meetings who speak to be heard, have to control the conversation, get jealous, or repeatedly try to convince others that they are right. Truly they are mostly trying to convince themselves of their value.
You were already “proven” worthy the day you were born. Imagine a big sign in front of your eyes that blinks the word “Proven”, so you don’t fall into this trap of overcompensating – the trap of having to constantly prove yourself on the treadmill to nowhere. You are not less valuable than anyone else. You are not more valuable either. We are all walking down the same road in life. Sometimes we need a hand to help us and sometimes we are the hand that reaches out.
I was living for the perception of others - my children, my boss, my board, the community, my parents, my friends, my colleagues. I wasn’t living for me. I had lost “me” in the shame of not being a good enough wife to keep a good husband. What a train wreck that statement was. My ex-husband was an alcoholic and nothing I did would ever make him a good husband. None-the-less my denial of his alcoholism kept me there far longer than was healthy. Denial is a symptom of the treadmill to nowhere.
After I filed for divorce, I thought my success would earn me favor – would eliminate the shame. I used hard work to cover up my depleted sense of self-worth. I became a workaholic. Deep down I was embarrassed that my marriage failed, that my life ended up in anguish, that my children had to live in poverty, and that I wasn’t good enough to make it all work or to be loved by anyone nice.
Confidence is being competent and effective. I was indeed career confident. I secured jobs I was never qualified for because I got things done. My reputation preceded me. I knew what to measure and had a reputation for exceeding any goal set before me. It wasn’t long before recruiters were calling me. I turned down prospective positions twice where counteroffers were made to secure me in place. Yet I did not have the self-esteem to feel I deserved to belong and be loved.
By all accounts I was triumphant over tragedy. I bought a home half a mile from the one we lost in Sherriff’s Sale in the most affluent suburb of Pittsburgh. We went on vacations. The children were in sports and activities. They went to camps. We got a dog. We got another dog. We got two cats. I had finally arrived at the destination of what seemed like success. But it didn’t feel that way because I didn’t feel worthy to be happy. Worse yet, at the time I didn’t realize it. I was not self-aware. I was soul vacant. I had happiness scarcity.
Why should I be comfortable with happiness because surely another challenge would rise up and swipe it away. Of course, I didn’t deserve happiness, or all this suffering would never have happened.
I lived with a finance scarcity mindset too. No amount of money would ever be enough because I always felt one step away from the pain of poverty – the despair of not having lunch money for my children, wondering when we’d be thrown out of our house, figuring that my children would never go to college. I didn’t want to ever experience that fear of the future again.
I remember the day the children and I got home from the pool and a Sheriff’s Sale notice had been taped to our front door where all the neighbors could see it. We had paid nearly 10 years on a 15-year mortgage. After I filed for divorce my husband stopped paying the mortgage and the home went into foreclosure. He subsequently filed his businesses into bankruptcy whereby all the home equity went to his business debt because I had personally co-signed the business loans. “All wives in business do this, Mary Lee.” I knew better but was afraid to do otherwise. Denial…..
I saw peril coming and was not at all surprised at the Sheriff’s Sale notice on my door. I never read the notice either. I ripped it down before my elementary school age children could see it and threw it away. I remember standing in my hall looking past the door into the neighborhood with shame and an overwhelming feeling of determination.
I was done living at the whims of someone else. I was totally committed to my own autonomy and in that instant where I looked from my doorstep toward my neighbors’ homes I made a promise to myself and my children that we would prevail.
Survival at all costs had become my mantra. The corporations valued my results. Corporate America is very happy to eat up your dedicated work ethic. But results came at a price back then. I often saw my community, my friends, my staff as a cog in the treadmill to survival. I sometimes failed to see them as people with emotional needs. I was in survival mode.
I had difficulty seeing people as individuals with fears, intimacy, needs, wants and souls. I had difficulty seeing my children as individuals too. Everybody and every action had become a path to survival. In survival mode I neglected myself as a person with feelings, emotions and needs as well. Everything was shrouded in the fear of not being able to hold the family together and ultimately losing the respect of everyone I valued most.
I remember one afternoon at the local swimming pool my eight-year-old daughter, Brianna, came up to my chair and said, “Come on, Mom,” as she pulled my hand. “Get in and have some fun with us.” I couldn’t move. I didn’t know how to have fun. And worse, I didn’t think I had earned fun, so I didn’t know how to accept it when it was inviting me in.
That’s when I began to understand the power life messages hold on us.
Life messages end up being your life story until you purposefully re-write the narrative. Adopting life messages as core beliefs when they are merely perceptions is unfortunate because life messages bring with them bias. When you didn’t fit in in junior high the overarching feeling at the time was that you weren’t normal or good enough. Or if your parents got divorced your story might be that you learned at an early age that you’re different and not to trust love or commitment. Or if you’ve been terminated at work you may have adopted a story of mistrust in corporations or of doubt in your ability.
When I say write your life story – I mean write it down – either long hand or on a computer. Start at the beginning and just write about your entire life without worrying about grammar, context or punctuation. Just write. In that stream of consciousness, you will start to realize themes, your strengths, your interests, your resilience, your realizations. Include the subtle lessons you may have overlooked. You can do this by designating quiet space to write or tell talk through your stories and prioritizing the process of doing so.
The process of writing your story or saying out loud gives you the opportunity to look for the lessons you’ve learned and the assumptions or biases you’ve adopted along the way. Celebrate the “Aha” moments. Include them
Surely there is a notebook nearby that you can now dedicate to your stories. Or use a Word document. Past stories almost always include insight and regret. Regret isn’t necessarily bad unless we get stuck on it. It is a piece in the learning puzzle. As you pay attention not only to what you did in your life, pay attention to how you interpret what happened when you had courage. As you organize your thoughts keep this in mind:
1. Forgiveness has to do with the past.
2. Reconciliation has to do with the present.
3. Trust has to do with the future.
I used to think my story was that I was a stay-at-home mother with four children under seven, one with a developmental disability, living the country club life in an unpalatable marriage who filed for divorce and within six months was on welfare, food stamps and medical assistance, homeless and without an automobile. I reinvented my life to support my family.
I’m pretty proud of that story. But it isn’t the whole story. And I didn’t realize that until I started to write down my story. Your story begins at the beginning – when you were a child. Not when the biggest drama occurred. What you learned before the drama is what shaped you and gave you perspective and context.
My mother, though well meaning, was very insecure due to early childhood trauma. This took its toll on me, the only daughter, my brother and my father. We all found ways to cope but it left us all on constant edge in fear of her outbursts and wrath. This led to a lifetime battle with anxiety for all of us. Despite her insecurities she led many organizations in a volunteer capacity.
My father was my stabilizing rock with sound character, a simple perspective and servant leadership. He was calm in the face of turmoil. He was my True North. I homed into him for consistency.
When I understood the power of The Three Things I realized I had learned more form my mother than anxiety. I learned how to organize people around a cause, how to speak in public, how to have presence, how to project confidence. Eventually, the resentment faded as I became curious about how she had become so insecure. That is when I learned about her childhood.
With vulnerability to explore this not knowing how she would react I came to understand many things. While I knew her father had died when she was eight-years-old I never realized that the day he died she had to hide in the closet because children were not allowed in hospitals at that time.
The family’s Italian grief was histrionic with lots of blame, crying, anger. My uncle grabbed the surgeon by the throat. In all of this my mother simply was not seen - literally and figuratively. Her eight-year-old mind only processed how she watched her family grieve. She had no memories of anyone asking her how she felt or shielding her from the drama. The hour ride home in the car was only focused on how angry everyone was. She sat silently in the backseat, unseen and unheard. Worse yet, she doesn’t even view this as her having been marginalized, unnurtured or seen for her own grief. She just remembers it without feeling – from a storyteller perspective. She holds no resentment – or self-awareness. It makes me very sad to think of her in that situation.
It took me putting my hurt and childhood wounds aside to want to heal – to hear this story. It took humility to find compassion for her. I’m glad I risked no longer defending myself against her accusations of how I never was doing enough for her to be genuinely interested in what happened to her. It took The Three Things to get me there. Now I love her with no expectations – without hurt or resentment. My heart is much lighter.
Healing takes work and a willingness to let go of things whose time has passed. Resentment is a heavy weight to drag forward. Healing takes necessary endings. Be gentle with yourself in the quiet space as you unpack what needs to be healed. It’s hard. And totally worth it.
Everyone is doing the best they can.
I learned things spending positive time with my Grandma, Aunt Sissy and Uncle Jimmy in their work. They had their flaws. We all do. No expectations. I learned about entrepreneurship, business, and building relationships. I discovered who I wanted to be and how I would show up. That environment taught me how to stand on my own in the face of adversity, have confidence and focus on what is necessary to succeed. I applied insight to find courage, relatability, and meaningful executive positions. My tutelage paid off. Your self-development will too.
Put this book down for a while and start writing. You can start with your childhood or by answering these open-ended questions:
• What am I passionate about?
• What code can I live by no matter what the situation? When did I learn this?
• What are my five top values – the qualities that drive my decisions?
• What is my signature strength? How have I used it?
• When have others looked to me for guidance?
• When was I a good listener?
• Who taught me the most important lesson in life?
• When was I funny?
• When do I have fun?
• When do/did I feel I belong(ed)?
• When am I most trusted?
• When am I compassionate?
• What was my biggest challenge in life and what did I learn?
• Who do I want to emulate, living or dead?
• How do I show up when someone is in pain?
This is an exercise in building self-awareness of your thoughts and how you interpret them.
good at schoolwork - the value might be a love of learning. You might be very creative - the value could be helping people. You might be a great painter - the value could be expressing yourself through creativity. The point is you don’t have to do what you value in only one way. ‘Where’ and ‘when’ doesn’t matter as much as ‘why.’
Write down your values in the same place as Your Story and Signature Strengths. Use them as your roadmap for sound decision making. Trust them. They are your core.
