EP 140 Why Women Are Stuck

If you feel like you’ve tried everything - books, courses, therapy, church, conferences - and you’re still feeling stuck, overwhelmed, and unsure of yourself, this episode is for you.

In this episode, we explore why so many sincere, hardworking moms feel and you still feel stuck, overwhelmed, unsure of yourself, and frustrated…

and why it’s not because you aren’t trying hard enough. 

We talk about the difference between advice and principles, why modern self-help often leaves us frustrated, and how learning to discern truth can radically change the way you see yourself, your relationships, and your direction.

This episode is an invitation to stop outsourcing your life, learn how to think differently, and step into your role as the expert in your own life.

I’m so glad you’re here.

Enjoy the episode! 

INTRODUCTION: THE MISSION-DRIVEN MOM PODCAST

Welcome to the Mission-Driven Mom Podcast. This podcast is for moms just like you who want to learn how to glorify God through finding and embracing true principles, discovering and developing your greatest gifts, and using them to serve your family and community.

WHO THIS PODCAST IS FOR

Welcome back to the podcast. I’m Audrey Ocker, author of The Mission-Driven Life and founder of The Mission-Driven Mom. If you are a woman who has tried everything—if you feel like you’re doing everything right to the best of your ability and trying really hard—if you’re reading books, signing up for online courses, in therapy, or going to conferences, and you still feel unsure of yourself, stuck, frustrated, and overwhelmed, then I want to tell you—I want to reassure you—that it is not your fault.

Most women don’t struggle because they don’t try hard or because they’re not sincere. Most women actually try genuinely really hard, and they’re quite teachable and ready to learn and ready to change when they just know the right path to take. It’s not because of your lack of effort; it’s because you don’t have the proper tools.

WHY TRYING HARDER ISN’T THE ANSWER

And I know a lot of people tell you that, and I know that sounds like the song and dance of so many people online. But I’m here to tell you there’s something very ancient that’s going to feel very new—something that can radically change your trajectory in life because it radically changed mine, and it’s helped hundreds and hundreds of women who have gone through our program.

I’m going to explain why you’ve done all the things you knew to do and you’ve given life your best effort, but you’ve been left very unprepared. And if you’re anything like me, you feel cheated—because you genuinely tried your best, and life has just left you hanging. You just don’t feel prepared for this super important moment in your life.

And you probably feel powerless, even though you’re trying super hard.

THE SEARCH FOR ANSWERS

So recently someone asked me, “Why do women feel so stuck? Especially moms—why do we feel like this?” And if you’re anything like I was, you keep waiting for the next resource, and you have tried so many things. You’ve probably tried spiritual things—not to say that God wasn’t there or didn’t love you, and not to say that going to church isn’t incredibly helpful.

You absolutely need those things, and you’ve tried them, and they’ve helped—but you’re still not there. Maybe you tried the next level of education, but you’re still not there. And you get to this point—you kind of hit this wall like I did—where you realize it doesn’t work. I keep doing all the things that the world tells me to do, and they just don’t help.

In fact, sometimes they can actually make things worse.

WHEN ADVICE FAILS: A PARENTING EXAMPLE

I knew a group of women who wanted to improve their parenting. Things weren’t going well at their houses, so they found a parenting book, and they all decided to read it and do whatever the book said. And I don’t know exactly how this author said it, but one of their primary takeaways from this book was that if their children fought with each other and struggled, they should simply ignore them—that if they left it alone, somehow the kids would just work it out.

And guess what? Things got worse at their houses because they didn’t have the ability to discern—to discern truth from error—and to live according to principles.

WHAT WE ACTUALLY NEED: DISCERNMENT

Now, you and I both know that what we really want is the ability to discern, to discern truth, to have confidence in our own decisions, and to be able to look out into the culture and not be repeatedly overwhelmed and confused by it. And what happens is we go out there, we try to find answers, and the world says all sorts of things.

It says, “Follow your dreams.”

It says, “Do what you love.”

It says, “Ask yourself what you want.”

And those are all the wrong answers. I’m telling you.

A REAL-LIFE EXAMPLE: ASKING THE WRONG QUESTIONS

In fact, I’ll give you one quick example. My daughter is a senior in high school, and she’s making decisions about what’s coming in her future. And some things didn’t work out in the last couple of years the way that she hoped they would have. So she’s not where she thought she would be, and that’s been overwhelming and frustrating.

We were having a conversation about something in her life, and she was trying to make an important decision about what she’s going to do. And her comment was, “Well, I just don’t know what I want.”

And I know she’s getting that everywhere in the world. Everybody’s asking her, “What do you want? What do you want? What do you want?” And I said, “You know, that’s not a very good question because it’s not a principled question.”

The right question is, “What could I do that would make me feel good about myself?”

That’s a way better question.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF FOLLOWING THE WORLD

So when you listen to the world and follow its advice, it often wreaks havoc. I mean, there are people in my life right now that I can think of—either they or someone they know made decisions based on those questions: “What do you want?” “Who are you?” Blah, blah, blah. And it did not work out well. In some cases, it really shattered lives.

That’s so unfortunate.

SALLY’S STORY: WHEN LIFE LOOKS PERFECT BUT ISN’T

But there was a woman who, a few years ago, knew about the Academy. She didn’t really want to do it. And she had someone in her neighborhood who did the program, and this friend had mentioned to her a couple of times, “You know, this is really benefiting my life. I’m really learning to think differently. I’m really learning to see the world differently.”

And this woman—we’ll call her Sally—told her friend, “You know, I don’t need more self-help in my life. I don’t need more people telling me what to do because all I do is try stuff, and then it doesn’t work. And every time I read that stuff or try that stuff, it just makes me feel worse about myself.”

And she’s not the only one. A lot of women have said this kind of thing.

But luckily, her friend prevailed. Her friend was able to share enough information with her that it convinced Sally she should get involved.

And ironically, Sally was in a marriage and a life that actually, from the outside, looked very put together. Sally was the kind of woman who had been to quite a bit of college herself, whose husband was a brilliant and successful entrepreneur. They had several small, beautiful children. They were religiously affiliated. They were actually very beautiful people.

They had a lot of friendships. They had connections in the community. And even in their mid-thirties, they were very financially successful. They had a big, beautiful home and lots of extended family connections. Their life looked very put together.

It looked like they had everything going for them.

And yet this woman, Sally, was silently crying inside. She had been on the brink of divorce for years. The people closest to her knew this, but many other people didn’t. And she just kept saying, “He doesn’t spend enough time at home, and we just can’t get along. I just think divorce is the only answer for us.”

THE REAL ISSUE: EXPECTATIONS AND TRUTH

In the meantime, she had, unfortunately, these bad thoughts about herself—why didn’t she have her life put together when all these other people on social media looked like they had their lives put together?

And it was such a painful situation—to have everybody looking at her life thinking it was so perfect, and yet knowing that deep down inside there was real trouble. She didn’t know how to navigate it. She didn’t really like herself. She didn’t really know herself. She didn’t really love herself. And her marriage was unhappy—she was very unfulfilled in her marriage.

She got involved with the Academy, and as she learned to see herself differently, as she learned these tools that I learned, as she gained knowledge about what truth is and how it makes us free, she came to understand a very important principle.

That principle was that she was expecting her husband to meet needs that she could only meet for herself, and that she had been silently blaming him for many, many years for problems in their relationship where it was actually not his responsibility to fix those things for her.

In fact, he couldn’t do those things for her.

WHAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

As she learned to think differently about herself, to think differently about her husband, and to think differently about their relationship—as she saw truth and practiced it—everything changed.

Later on, someone in her life asked her, “How is your marriage?” And she said, “Oh, it’s night-and-day different. It is so much better, so much happier, and so much more fulfilling.”

And they asked her, “Why? What changed?”

She said, “I did this program, and I learned to see him and myself through the lens of truth.” She didn’t say it quite like that, but that’s essentially what happened.

And she said, “I learned that I need to care for myself and not blame him when I don’t feel the way I want to feel.”

So transformational.

PRINCIPLES VS. INFORMATION

That’s the difference between information and advice versus principles—because principles are timeless truths that work every time for everyone. And it’s so important that we understand the difference.

That’s how we learn to discern. That’s how we begin to understand how we can actually transform situations permanently—because principles are timeless. They never change, and they always work.

You and I are not above or below the truth. The truth is always available to us, and it will always make us free.

WHY WE FEEL SO UNPREPARED

We haven’t been given the tools. We don’t understand what they are. We don’t know how to identify them, how to latch onto them, and how to utilize them to be set free.

Our modern education and self-help culture really focus on tactics. They focus on coping and symptom management predominantly.

That’s not to say that these programs or therapists don’t ever say something that is true, timeless, and helpful. But their inability—and our inability—to properly identify principles, to call them out clearly, and to discern them for ourselves is crippling everyone.

Because principles actually help us govern reality. And they work even when we believe they won’t.

DISCERNING BETWEEN AUTHORITIES

Most women have never been taught this because our education system doesn’t teach it anymore. And we are outsourcing all the pieces of our lives to authorities. We can’t be the experts in our own lives if we don’t know how to discern what we’re being told—even by the best authorities in the world.

And I could tell you all kinds of stories. I think I recently told you—I can’t remember if I shared it on the podcast or not—the story of taking my daughter to two different professionals for her ankle when it was injured.

One doctor told us she needed major surgery—a false ligament put in—with a year-long recovery. The other doctor said he could do a quick cleanup, do PRP therapy, and she’d be back in the gym.

And guess what? The second doctor was right. And that’s the one we went with.

That’s not to say the first doctor couldn’t have been right as well. But how do you discern as a mom? How do you make the decision? How do you know who to listen to? How do you sort through all these authorities?

A CULTURAL PROBLEM

And I’ll tell you what—I’ve mentioned this before, and we’re going to talk about this more this year, and I hope to get some experts on the show to talk to us too—but the feminist movement did us very few favors.

You might make the case that it helped equalize some pay scales and opened up job opportunities for women. But fundamentally, it did a lot of damage to our psyche—to how we think about ourselves and how we manage ourselves in the world.

THE REAL SOLUTION

So that’s why I can tell you with absolute confidence: if you are feeling stuck and frustrated, it is not your fault. Even though you’re putting in all the effort and trying all these different resources, there are fundamental reasons those resources aren’t working for you.

You don’t need to be more motivated.

You don’t need to try harder.

You don’t need to overhaul your life.

You need to learn how to see and think differently.

WHAT COMES NEXT

In a few weeks, I’m going to be offering a free class where we’ll dive deeper into these concepts. We’ll have time for me to share key stories, teach important ideas, and show you how you can change your life—how you can really turn that corner you’ve been wanting to turn.

You can begin to feel powerful and like the expert in your own life through some small changes that I’m going to show you.

I would really love for you to be there. And if you’re not on our email list, make sure you get on it. You can get the free audiobook right now, or you can simply opt in so that when registration opens for this free class, you’ll be there.

We can spend the time we need to deep dive into all of this, and I can give you the tools and resources you need so that life can be better and this pain can end.

CLOSING

Thank you so much for joining me today, and I will see you next time.