If you feel overwhelmed and guilty juggling work and family responsibilities, you’re not alone. Many women entrepreneurs and corporate professionals find themselves neglecting their own self-care as they navigate the demands of parenthood. Aimee Greczmiel has been there and has some tips to help you create harmony at home and in the workplace.
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Show Notes | Transcript.”I see so many women give their power away… many women make excuses or blame the lack of time, or blame their boss, or blame their husband, or blame their kids. But the reality is we are responsible for our own well being and we are also responsible for our own healing and so nobody else can do those things for us.” – Aimee Greczmiel
Aimee Greczmiel is a former Fortune 500 vice president turned mental and emotional wellness coach for working parents. With 18 years of corporate experience under her belt, Aimee understands the challenges faced by working parents in managing their personal and professional lives. After becoming a parent herself, she realized the need for a mindset shift to find balance and fulfillment. Aimee guides parents to prioritize self-care and cultivate a more patient, present, and feminine energy to navigate the demands of parenthood. Through her own journey and working with multiple coaches, Aimee has developed a wealth of knowledge and tools to help working parents overcome the “terror barrier” and create a more harmonious life. Her passion lies in empowering parents to leave a lasting legacy for their families while making an impact in their careers.
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Discover practical strategies for achieving balance and fulfillment as a working parent.
- Shift your mindset as a working parent to prioritize self-care and create harmony between your personal and professional life.
- Explore the powerful benefits of meditation specifically enhancing focus, reducing stress, and finding a sense of calm in the midst of a busy workday.
- Overcome the guilt associated with motherhood and find confidence in your choices.
- Embark on a personal development journey to become the best parent you can be.
Related Live. Love. Engage. episodes you may enjoy:
Spiritual Parenting with Randy Rolfe
Renaye Thornborrow’s Movement to Bring Life Coaching to Kids
How to Prioritize Well-Being and Find Harmony in Business with Christine Franklyn
From Heartbreak to Healing: Embracing Self-Love in the Journey
Resources:
Connect with Aimee here
Join the Soulful Women’s Network here
Send me a message here
☕ Support the podcast here
❤ Love this episode? Leave us a review and rating here
Connect with Gloria: LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter
TRANSCRIPT
Gloria Grace Rand
Namaste. I’m so glad that you are joining us for another episode of Live Love Engage. And whether you are a first timer or you’re a regular subscriber, just know that I am delighted to be with you. I am Gloria Grace, the light messenger and spiritual business coach, and women entrepreneurs hire me to help them leverage their intuition, wish in to break through their revenue ceilings and achieve sustainable business growth. And I’m looking forward to a wonderful discussion today. I’m just setting the intention right now that it’s going to be a wonderful discussion with our guest today. Her name is Aimee Greczmiel and she is a former Fortune 500 vice president who now helps working parents manage their mental and emotional wellness in their daily lives. And Aimee guides parents to get clear on their desired outcomes so they may leave a lasting legacy for their family and make an impact in their career. And so I want to now officially bring Aimee on and welcome you to Live Love Engage.
Aimee Greczmiel
Hi, Gloria. Thanks so much for having me.
Gloria Grace Rand
I’m glad to have you because I was going to say I’m a working parent. Well, I’m a parent who works, but my kids are not at home anymore, so I guess I’m now into that empty nester phase of life. But I know that I’m sure there are still quite a few people who are subscribers of this podcast who are in that vein, whether you are an entrepreneur or whether you are working for somebody else, but that you do have kids at home no matter how old they are. And I love that this is your focus because we do need support from time to time. But I’m curious to know if you well, I know a little bit because I’ve researched you, but for those in our audience who don’t know about you, can you share with them a little bit about what prompted your pivot, if you will, from being working in a Fortune 500 environment to now working with parents?
Aimee Greczmiel
Yeah, great question, and it’s one I love answering. So I spent 18 years in the corporate space, kind of working my way up the ladder, and I really enjoyed it. I really love my career and I was very much goal oriented and achievement focused, like I think most men and women in corporate are, right. And so I was always kind of looking for the next thing, the next promotion, what’s the new certification I could get or the new thing I could learn. And it served me very well up until a point I say it served me well until it didn’t. And for me, that point was when I became a parent at the age of 35. So that’s kind of I mean, they consider that like on the older end, I guess, the advanced maternal age. But at that point, I had a pretty established career and now I was entering into this new role as a mother. And I felt like the pace and the energy and everything that goes with it was completely opposite. Right. I was very much addicted to the achievement and the go-go mentality. That worked well for me in corporate, but I found that as a parent, that model didn’t really work. And so I knew there had to be a different way. Right. And so I didn’t know it at the time. I know now, though, but I was very much in this masculine energy, this masculine corporate energy that women can find themselves in and almost to a point where it can be very toxic, right, where you’re putting yourself last. You’re doing all the things. You’re staying up till 11:00 p.m., sending emails like I was one of those people and then pivoting into motherhood. And it kind of requires a different energy, which is a more patient, a more present, more feminine energy that I really had to cultivate. I had to cultivate that at the age of 35. And so that’s when I started working with coaches myself. A friend had recommended general life coach for women that she had worked with, and so I started working with her. I was learning some mindset tools. I found them to be really impactful. And then I signed up with another coach and another coach, and another coach, and the next thing I know, I was like, hooked on coaching because I was having just tremendous results in my own life. I was feeling better. I felt like I was managing both my work life and my home life. They were much more balanced, and that’s really what I set out to achieve. And so it became obvious to me that not many people were aware of the tools, the mindset tools that I was learning. And then I just started casually speaking about them to other people, friends, colleagues, coworkers. And then I just realized, you know what? I think I really want to do this as a profession. I’m being called into doing this. And so I decided to leave my corporate career and become a life coach for working mothers.
Gloria Grace Rand
Well, I’m glad that you did that, and there’s a couple of points in there that I just want to highlight that I think are really important for our listeners to notice. And certainly I picked up on when I was reading your bio was the fact that you didn’t just work with one coach, you worked with several coaches. And I know I’ve done that myself. And I would love for you to share your perspective about why you decided to do that and what were the benefits of that.
Aimee Greczmiel
Yeah, I think I’m a lifelong learner, and when I dive into a topic, particularly one that I wasn’t that well versed in, I wanted to just learn everything I could about it. And so coaching is a lot of mindset work, and unless you have a background in psychology or human behavior or maybe even like competitive sports, you don’t really talk about or learn about mindset and the importance of it and how it all works and how to use it to benefit yourself and your family and all these things. And so when I started learning about it, I was just really fascinated by it and I wanted to learn as much as I could. And so I started diving deeper and each coach kind of offered something different, like a different lens or a deeper perspective. And so that was something that I really valued and I just dove into learning as much as I could about it and how I could then apply this mindset work to working motherhood.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah. Because I know for me this has been my experience is that each person is unique. And especially if you do find people who maybe approach, maybe they’ve got a different modality that they teach or a different focus. And so it really does help you then to be able to get as much information as you can and apply different things and even possibly somebody might even teach something, but you don’t pick it up the first time, but then maybe you hear it from somebody else and then how it sinks in. I don’t know if you’ve experienced that exactly.
Aimee Greczmiel
Yeah, that’s how we learn through repetition. So we do have to hear things more than once right, to truly master them. Absolutely.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah. Now, when you were submitting your, we were talking about having you on the show, one of the things you talked about is the topic you wanted to focus on today was something called overcoming the terror barrier as a working parent. And I was struck by that phrase. So I wanted to see if you could, first off, explain what do you mean by the terror barrier and then why do we need to overcome it?
Aimee Greczmiel
The terror barrier is basically pushing outside of your comfort zone, whether that’s in your career or doing something new in your life or having a difficult conversation, whatever the case may be. But it’s really around going outside of your comfort zone because you don’t grow where you’re comfortable. You have to lean into the discomfort in order to grow and kind of get to the next level, whatever that is for you. And so I refer to that as the terror barrier. So when you kind of bump up against something that’s challenging or hard or feels scary right. Oftentimes our initial reaction, and this is brain based, is to retreat. We retreat because our brain likes what is safe and familiar, regardless of if it’s healthy or not healthy for us, if it’s toxic or not toxic for us. Right. You see what I’m saying? Toxic or healthy. So our brain just likes what’s familiar because it likes what’s predictable. Right. And so when we go to make changes in our life, whether that’s in motherhood, in our career, making a move, whatever it is. When we go to make changes in our life, our natural instinct is to actually be scared about it. We’re almost terrified because it requires energy to do something different. And our mind and body likes to preserve our energy for just keeping us alive. And so to do something different requires a tremendous amount of energy. And so our body tries to talk us out of it a little bit and that’s that terror that comes up. But the reality is nothing changes if nothing changes. Right? So if you want something to change in your life or if you want to make shifts as a person or as a mother or in your career, right, you have to think and do things differently. And at first that’s going to feel uncomfortable because you’ve never done them before. So I help my clients really lean into that discomfort, push past it anyway. It’s like this saying from Nike, just do know, just do it. And to push past that temporary discomfort because it really is just temporary. It doesn’t feel like it at the time, but it really is temporary. And when you push past that temporary discomfort, you then are on the other side, which gets you closer to your desired outcome.
Gloria Grace Rand
I appreciate that. And one thing I started thinking about even as you were talking here is I’m wondering now obviously you’re a parent, that’s why you wound up coaching parents. But have you found, are there particular challenges that you see that come up again and again in the clients that you’re working with that maybe or maybe are not unique to working parents, but what are some of the common things that they’ve been bumping up against since you help them with?
Aimee Greczmiel
Yeah, I would say the two biggest challenges that the women I work with are against is doing it all and putting themselves last. And so there’s an element of that around letting go that I kind of help them with and that kind of feeds into the other aspect around mom guilt. Right. We feel that many times, many mothers, and in our culture, we feel like we have to do everything for everyone else right away and put ourselves last. And that’s become a pretty well adopted framework for mothers, which is also why so many mothers are kind of burnout and depleted. And so that’s really a mindset shift. It’s a mindset shift around saying like, no, when I put myself first, everything pours out from that. It’s like you put your oxygen mask on first before you help other people. But oftentimes mothers have that backwards. Right? We help everyone else first and then ourselves last. Only if there’s time and capacity, which oftentimes there’s not. Why? Because parenting is hard. Our careers are challenging. Right. So I find that so many women are putting themselves and their own lives on the back burner and as a result, they’re just kind of going through the motions and feeling very unfulfilled and unsatisfied in their own life.
Gloria Grace Rand
And it’s a shame. It’s interesting when you talked originally, when you first were talking about your experience in the corporate world and how it was very masculine and it does seem like men find it easier to be able to put themselves first and to be able to do that. And so it seems like even though our tendency, our tendency but that’s who we are, we are feminine and that we’re innately nurturers and all of that. And so we want to take care of ourselves, but we need to borrow a little bit of that masculine energy in order to be able to say, okay, let me take care of myself first, because that is how I can then take care of everybody else.
Aimee Greczmiel
Yeah, well, and here’s the thing too, about feminine energy. So feminine energy is all about receiving, right? All about receiving. And I think as a culture, women could do a better job in that, receiving help, receiving support. I think part of what happened is hundreds of years ago, children were raised in villages with communities, right? And that just isn’t the norm anymore. Right now it’s just basically two parents, sometimes one raising children with very little family or community nearby to help support. And so parents are left doing a lot, right? Parents are left doing a lot. And so I think creating a system and a village for yourself and your little people is really important and allowing that support, receiving that support from others that is so desperately needed. Especially when you first have a baby. When you first have a baby. I mean, in other cultures, there are examples where the mother doesn’t do anything for the first 40 days. Her sisters and her cousins and her grandmother, they take care of making the food and the cleaning and the things like that. Whereas here, sometimes women don’t even get maternity leave.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah.
Aimee Greczmiel
So much of it is culturally informed and I think we could do a better job supporting working mothers in that regard and kind of removing the stigma around doing it all yourself.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, absolutely. Wait. I had this thought of what I was going to ask you and it’s going to come back to me in a second, but oh, I know what it was. Is that for someone listening to this today and they’re a working parent and maybe they are feeling rather stressed and because they’ve been doing for others, what would be like the first bit of advice that you could give them? Maybe a first step that they could take to start reclaiming control or maybe learning how to receive.
Aimee Greczmiel
Yeah, I would say the first step is and it’s going to sound really challenging and really difficult because I don’t think we are taught how to really do this, but it’s essential, it’s essential to really reconnect with yourself and establish your own peace. And that is around getting quiet, so getting quiet, sitting with yourself, even if it’s just for five to ten minutes to start. But you need to filter out all the other noise because you need to recenter and reground with yourself first and set an intention, right? Set an intention of what you want for that day, what you want for that experience and intention setting is really powerful, as you and your listeners know. And when we do that as mothers, oftentimes we don’t give ourselves permission to do it. As mothers, we’re like, there’s so much to do, there’s so much to do, there’s so much to do. I can’t even take ten minutes for myself. But that’s what you have to do, that’s the starting point. You have to literally block ten minutes for yourself, then 20 minutes, then 30 minutes, right? Work your way up to it and establish some type of self-care routine for yourself. My preferred method is daily guided meditation. Meditation has transformed my life completely. I think it’s incredible. I think both men and women could benefit from it, particularly those in corporate who are always go, go. There’s tremendous scientific research around it surrounding the benefits. And so really, just setting up that routine or that ritual for yourself so that you have something that’s yours every single day. And I always say meditation is always easier than working out because you don’t need to put on sneakers or go to the gym or go out or take a shower after. Right. You can do it anywhere. You just need a quiet space. If you don’t have a quiet space, get some noise canceling headphones. That’s what I did when my kids were real young and there was often noise, which there is now, too, but noise canceling headphones and just establish that time daily for yourself.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, absolutely. And I know some people will say, well, I can’t carve out the time. Well, either get up five minutes earlier or maybe do it five minutes before you go to bed. Or I think I was listening to some radio show one time where someone said they would do it, they were in the car, they would sit in the park, sit in their driveway for like five minutes and do it there before they even got in the house.
Aimee Greczmiel
Absolutely.
Gloria Grace Rand
So you can find a way to do it. And I love that you recommend that because yeah, meditation has changed my life and I always recommend it to people. It is a wonderful thing. And there’s all different types of meditations, so you can Google it and find one that works for you.
Aimee Greczmiel
Absolutely. So many free apps, they’re on YouTube, they’re everywhere. There’s no reason we should not be meditating, right?
Gloria Grace Rand
Absolutely. I want to talk about your journey, go back to that a little bit more and talk about or maybe ask you if you would share what’s the biggest challenge that you’ve had to overcome and maybe even involved in changing over into this new line of work that you’re doing now.
Aimee Greczmiel
Yeah, I still would say that my biggest challenge was entering motherhood. That was my biggest challenge so far. They tell you your life is going to change, never be the same, but you don’t really know what that means until you’re in it. And it was a great growth opportunity for me completely because I had to completely cracked me open in a way and allowed me to see the parts of myself that basically needed improvement. But that was a great opening for me because then I was able to do the work on those things and I became really committed, I think as most mothers are deeply committed to the role as a mother. And so I wanted to put in as much energy, attention and focus into that just like I would in my career. But there was no guidebook, right? There was no training course I could take. I mean, I guess I suppose there’s books and stuff, but that’s largely around parenting and the baby and I wanted to know how to be the best version of myself, a great parent to these two little souls. I always say that was my biggest challenge but also my biggest growth opportunity and awakening.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, it’s a journey and a joy and a trial and all of the wonderful emotions that are associated with it. May I ask how old are your children now?
Aimee Greczmiel
Yeah, so they are six and four now.
Gloria Grace Rand
Lovely ages. Those are so good. Yeah. You’ve got lots of fun time ahead yet before we get into the more challenging stuff later on. No hurry, enjoy this time while you’ve got it because you turn around, you blink and they’re 30. What happened to my little girl? And now she’s 30 years old but she’s a joy and I love her and that’s the wonderful thing is oh, actually I want to ask your opinion about this too. I think one of the things certainly I know we’ve touched on it, I think a little bit, but so often we think that we have to do everything, we’ve got to be there for everybody. And then do you also find that then we tend to get down on ourselves because we’re not able to do that. So what’s your experience on maybe sometimes you beat yourself up because you can’t do that.
Aimee Greczmiel
Yeah, absolutely. But that’s where the mindset work comes in. So you need to learn to what’s happening there is anytime that you’re experiencing a negative feeling, there’s likely a negative thought or belief underneath that right. But oftentimes we’re unaware unconscious of what that is because we just feel our feelings. We’re not really thinking about thinking or what’s really going through our head that’s informing that. But when we slow down and create space for ourselves, we’re better able to notice how we’re feeling and what’s informing that. And once we can do that, you can then discern, like, okay, is this really a useful belief that’s serving me at this point in my life? Do I really want to feel guilty about this? Because it actually is a choice, but no one has really taught us the mindset work that goes into reframing your thoughts, which ultimately inform your feelings. And so that’s really what I help women navigate, so they can get unstuck out of the mom guilt or the negative thought loops or the negative feelings surrounding motherhood.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, that’s good. And I will tell you this from experience, is that you’re going to make mistakes and it’s okay. Most likely, you’re not going to do anything fatal, so your kids will survive. And I think for me, at least as long as I can do better at some things, that my mom was great, but she did make some mistakes. So I have consciously tried to improve on those areas. So I think as long as you are doing the best you can, setting that intention, as we talked about, then you’re going to be okay and your kids are going to be okay.
Aimee Greczmiel
Absolutely. We’re all human and we’re all here. We all make mistakes. No one’s perfect. No one’s expected to be except well, maybe sometimes our thoughts help make us believe that. But the reality is nobody is right and nor should we be expected to be. We’re human beings. We’re not perfect beings.
Gloria Grace Rand
Absolutely. Yeah. One of the questions I’d like to ask my guests, because I get such an interesting range of answers, is to ask you about what you are curious about right now.
Aimee Greczmiel
What am I curious about right now? Wow, I’m curious about so many things. So I went to a conference a couple of weeks ago, and there were a bunch of authors there, largely like personal authors in the personal development space. And there was one woman there who was an astrologer, but she did a real deep dive into the moon and the moon cycles, and I had always kind of heard about it, but I didn’t know enough about it. And I was like, well, let me just go to this breakout session with her. And I did, and it was fascinating, the things that she was saying around the moon, particularly as it relates to manifesting and women’s cycles and moods and all these things, and I found it to be very interesting. So I purchased her book and so that’s what I’m into reading right now and very curious about.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, I have been too, and I haven’t done any reading about it, but every so often I will hear somebody talk about it or do something. And actually I went to a sound healing, sound bowl thing about the full moon that we just had last weekend, and it was very cool. So I did get to learn some more about it. But, yeah, it is fascinating. I should have somebody on the show to talk about. I don’t think I have had a Moon expert on. Maybe we can chat later and you can tell me whose book that is and I can find is there anything else that I didn’t ask you about that I should have that you’d like to that was important to share with our listeners today?
Aimee Greczmiel
No, I think it’s just really important for women to remember how much power and agency that we really have. I see so many women give their power away. What do I mean by that? I see so many women make excuses or blame the lack of time, or blame their boss, or blame their husband, or blame their kids. Right. But the reality is we are responsible for our own well-being and we are also responsible for our own healing and so nobody else can do those things for us. So when you take full responsibility for the results in your life and you do the work necessary to really feel your best each and every day, that’s when you can create a life that is really fulfilling and satisfying to you. And that’s when you kind of get off the hamster wheel or the achievement mentality and really just stay present and at ease with yourself and with your loved ones.
Gloria Grace Rand
Well, good advice for anyone listening. I’m going to actually one other question. What have you found to be the most fulfilling about the work that you’re doing now?
Aimee Greczmiel
Most about it, yeah. I just love helping people shift their emotional state. I really do. I feel like it’s the single best thing to me. It’s so fulfilling to help a woman who is struggling, whether it’s in motherhood or in her marriage or in her career, if she’s stuck or uncertain or negative or down on herself or whatever it is, or the self-critic is loud, whatever it is. I just love helping people rediscover themselves and basically look at themselves again with a more positive light because it’s so easy to just get sucked into the day to day or the negative. And I just love helping women, helping reveal them to themselves back to their authentic awesome energy.
Gloria Grace Rand
Wonderful. Well, we are certainly glad that you are doing that type of work and I’m sure your clients appreciate it. And I’m glad that you were able to be with us today to share some of your wisdom. And I’m sure that there are people listening today who would love to get more information about you. So where’s the best place for people to be able to contact you?
Aimee Greczmiel
Yes, you can go to my website, corporatemomcoach.com. I have a freebie there. It’s my top 20 self-care activities for working mothers. You can also book a complimentary 30 minutes clarity call with me where we’ll talk about kind of where you are right now, where you want to be and the beginning steps of the roadmap to kind of get there and really just to help you get unstuck. So that’s all on my website at corporatemomcoach.com.
Gloria Grace Rand
All right, well, I will be sure and have that in the show notes for people listening today, so that if you’re somewhere you’re driving right now, go to Liveloveengagepodcast.com and you’ll be able to find this episode and get all the information. So thank you once again for being with us today. I really appreciate it. Aimee, it was nice getting to know you.
Aimee Greczmiel
Yes, thank you so much.
Gloria Grace Rand
And I want to thank all of you for listening and for watching. And I do encourage you, especially if this is your first time. If you enjoyed it, I hope you will subscribe on your favorite podcast platform or you can subscribe on YouTube @GloriaGraceRand. And until next time, as always, I encourage you to go out and live fully, love deeply and engage authentically.
