In this episode of The Modern Mom’s Roadmap to Balance, Kayla challenges the familiar “New Year, New Me” mentality and offers a different way to approach the year ahead. Instead of believing you need to become an entirely different person to create meaningful change, she explores what can happen when you become more connected to yourself, your needs, your intuition, and the life you actually want to build.
Kayla breaks down seven habits she noticed among people who successfully follow through on the goals they set. It starts with the people you surround yourself with. Having friends, mentors, or an accountability partner who genuinely supports your goals can make a huge difference, especially when self-doubt starts creeping in. She shares how her own accountability partnership has helped her recognize internal blocks, work through challenges, and continue moving toward goals she may have struggled to pursue alone.
The episode also explores learning to trust your intuition, blocking out outside noise and negative self-talk, and investing in yourself even when doing so feels uncomfortable or uncertain. Kayla discusses why protecting your energy requires more than finding an empty space on your calendar. Your mental capacity, physical energy, and actual desire to take something on matter too.
You’ll also hear about the importance of listening to your body, recognizing what helps you feel your best, and creating space for your own needs instead of constantly giving your energy away to everyone around you.
As you head into a new year, Kayla encourages you to reflect on what worked, what didn’t, what those experiences taught you, and what you’re ready to leave behind. You don’t need to reinvent yourself to create a different life. Sometimes the bigger shift is learning to trust, support, and make decisions from the person you already are.
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About the Podcast Host
Thank you so much for joining me this week on today’s episode.
I love hearing about your insights and aha! moments from the show.
Kayla Nettleton is a TX-based licensed therapist, business owner, and mom of 3.
In her private practice, Kayla helps women break free from cycles of anxiety, perfectionism, and people-pleasing. Her holistic approach guides clients toward authentic, fulfilling lives by reconnecting with their intuition, setting boundaries, and building confidence.
Kayla also works with couples, especially parents balancing marriage and family. She offers both traditional couples therapy and focused intensives (6 to 18 hours) to help partners address key issues like communication, trust, and intimacy.
Through empathy and effective therapeutic tools, Kayla helps couples reconnect, thrive, and create healthier, more supportive relationships. Her practice transforms self-doubt and disconnection into growth, healing, and lasting change.
Find Kayla on
TikTok: therapy.with.kayla
YouTube: The Modern Mom’s Roadmap to Balance Podcast
Email: kayla@kaylanettleton.com
Free Consultation: Schedule a Free 20 minute therapy consultation here.
Episode 14
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► Click to Read the Full Episode 15 Transcript
Kayla: Hello, hello everyone, and welcome back to the Modern Moms Roadmap to Bound’s podcast. I’m doing something a little bit different today, because I normally release my podcast episodes on Tuesday, but this week I’m releasing it on Friday because Friday is the cusp of the start of the New Year’s.
From this release of this episode, new Year’s Day will be on Monday, so I hope you all have had a fabulous holiday season and have been at least trying to get in the rest that you absolutely deserve. As moms, we do not give ourselves enough time to rest because we are so focused on having everyone else around us have a great time and have a restful experience, and we oftentimes forget about ourselves.
And today I really wanted to talk about the New Year, new Me stuff, because I wanted to let you know that you don’t have to be an entirely different person to thrive in the New Year. It’s not about becoming a new version of yourself. It really is more about being more in tune with yourself and who you really are, because a lot of the times we don’t show up as our true self.
Many of us struggle to do that. We show up as versions of what we think people want us to show up as. So, instead of showing up as our true self, we’re worried about how other people are going to perceive us. We’re worried about that they may judge us for our decisions or that we might be too much for them.
So we hide the true side of ourselves or we tow the waters, trying to test out whether this is a person we can trust with our true self or not, which is fine, but you really need to be surrounding yourself with those people that you can actually show up as your true self as. And going back to this New Year, new Me thing, I don’t like that saying you don’t have to be a brand new person to have an amazing 2024.
And I want to talk about this statistic that I recently found. It said that only 8% of people actually reach those New Year goals or resolutions that they set in the year, at the beginning of the year, and when I first saw that it blew my mind. Like only 8%, really, that is not a lot, I mean, when you think about it, 92% of people don’t meet their goals that they set in the New Year.
That’s mind blowing, and I was really thinking about this and I figured these people aren’t some special unicorns. They’re not people who have, like, tons of money or special focusing skills. These people are actually people that are just like you and me those 8%. They’re just like you and me, but I realized the difference after reflecting on my own year and in conversations with friends and colleagues who also have had amazing, transformative experiences in the last year, and I found that there are 1, 2, 3, 7 differences. I wrote them down but I didn’t number them, so there’s probably about 7 differences. So I wanted to talk about those differences today.
The first one is they surround themselves with people who support them and cheer them on. Support them and cheer them on. Think about the people that you surround yourself with. Do they support your dreams and desires, or do they shoot them down, or do they say those are ridiculous dreams that you have?
Well, the 8% they surround themselves with the people who actually believe them, who actually cheer them on and really want them to attain this goal. If you want to be a part of the 8%, you need to surround yourself with people who are achieving the dreams just like you are.
The five people we surround ourselves with are actually gonna be the five people that we act like. Their behaviors, their routines, their dreams, their goals. They’re gonna rub off on us and we’re gonna rub off on them. So are the people that you surround yourself the most with? Are they dreamers too? Are they go-getters? Are there people who are reaching goals, or are those people living in a belief system that’s not quite aligned with yours? Are you giving more than receiving from these people? Think about that.
Number two the 8%. They block out the extra noise that leads to the negative self-talk. Now, this can be difficult blocking out that extra noise, those internal voices or even the outside voices, meaning from other people that are telling you that you can’t achieve these goals or that they’re too big of desires to actually achieve.
When you can block out all that extra noise and believe in yourself, believe that you can do this, believe that if this is a desire in your heart, it’s there for a reason. These things don’t just pop into your mind or your heart just because they’re there for a reason. Are you willing to take the invitation? Are you willing to block out that extra noise and test these waters?
Number three these 8% have an accountability buddy or group. Accountability buddies and groups are amazing, and I can tell you from experience that this is really, what can push you over the edge, into actually reaching the goals that you set in the new year?
I meet weekly with an accountability buddy and she is someone that I really, really connected with. We met in another program that I had done and we were both gonna do a different program after, and so we decided to meet once a week and talk about things going well and things maybe not going so well in our businesses, and this relationship has really expanded into an amazing friendship and we’ve gotten deep guys.
We tell each other everything and so because of that, because of that relationship that we have, we are each other’s cheerleaders and there is nothing like having another mom, friend or just a friend in general who really gets you, who really believes that you can do amazing things, that you are here for a specific purpose, and figuring that purpose out is what they wanna help you with.
If it wasn’t for my accountability buddy, I don’t think I would have gotten this far. I mean, really it’s the accountability buddy. He or she is the one who’s asking you all those right questions, really helping you to get past any of those blocks that you might have.
I’m lucky enough that each of us are both therapists. We happen to be therapists and so we get to really ask those really great questions to help us get over our own internal blocks that we might have not just get over, but even to acknowledge those internal blocks that we have.
Sometimes you don’t realize that there was a block there or that maybe your fear of I mean for me, for us, for example, we had Maybe I think what was it? I’m trying to think it was around some clients that were graduating and for her she was a little bit nervous about those clients graduating because she had all this free time.
Well, it happened to be that that was not anything related to our business, but it ended up being something related personally that she was worried about. I’m not going to get into the details, but having accountability partners can help you figure that stuff out and it’s really powerful not just in reaching your goals but in helping you see what might be getting in the way of you reaching them. What’s blocking you?
Kayla: Next, number four these 8% trust their intuition. They’ve figured out how to trust themselves and you might have gone through some things that lead you to believe that you can’t trust yourself, and there are ways to gain that trust back.
But one thing I want you to know is it’s not that you can’t trust yourself. Your intuition is there, it’s within you, it is trying to guide you, maybe sometimes just don’t listen to it. I mean, think about it. How many times have you maybe done something that you regretted and then looked back and went, oh, I should have noticed those signs, or yep, those signs were there, I just didn’t listen to them.
Think about those things, think of a specific situation for you, and there are ways to test out what’s your intuition or what’s those voices that are trying to keep you in your quote. Unquote.
Safe place meaning you’re comfortable, knowing place, because our safe place, what our body deems a safe, is not always actually safe. It’s really familiar. There we go. Familiar Our body deems what’s safe are the things that are familiar to us.
So what actually might be safe and actually might be comfortable and more meant for us, we might not deem as safe At least our body isn’t and it’s going to take some time for it to recognize that this, that is a safe space for you and it takes listening, getting back to knowing, believing that you do have this intuition there that is trying to guide you and following it.
One thing that struck me in terms of kind of trying to test out your intuition was, if you have like a very free day or maybe a big block of time that you have a day to yourself, go out and take a walk or take a drive and just see where your intuition takes you. It’s not going to seem logical, it might not make sense, but just see if you can tap into that internal voice that wants to guide you, if you would allow it.
Next, these 8% invest in themselves. They invest in themselves to learn new things, learn new skills, learn new ways of being and thinking. When we invest in ourselves, we get to grow. We get to meet people.
My accountability buddy and friend I met her in a course that I had invested like $2,700 in. I met her there. We are not always in positions to meet a bunch of amazing people who we might connect with, but when we invest in ourselves, it puts us in positions to meet people who want to grow into amazing people who want to contribute.
Investing in yourself can be scary, especially when there’s no guarantees, but when you think about all the people who have accomplished amazing things, I mean, think about one person right now in your life who you know is doing incredible things that you wish you could do, whether that’s a celebrity, whether that’s a friend, a family member, think of that person.
They have invested in themselves, because there’s no such thing as a self-starter. No one just knows how to do something and then just does it. These people have taken courses or classes, they’ve gone to college, they’ve paid money to teach them some skill that had helped them get there. Everyone gets help from somewhere.
So I think that’s another reason why investing in ourselves can be a little bit scary, because it’s admitting that we need some help in a different area and it’s also taking a risk on ourselves and that can be scary. But I’m here to tell you that is absolutely worth it. It is completely worth it to invest in yourself because when you invest in yourself, you invest in your future and the future of your family.
Number six the 8%. They guard their energy. They are not just saying yes to everything because they want to make people happy. They’re saying yes to the things that one, they actually want to do. Two, that they actually have time and space to do.
And having time to do something doesn’t mean you have an empty spot in your schedule so you can actually say yes to this. It encompasses a whole lot of different things. Do you have the capacity, the brainpower, to do this thing? That might be asked of you? It’s more than just the time aspect. Do you have the energy, or are you giving away your energy to other people instead of saving it for yourself, saving it for your family, saving it for doing what it is that you want to do?
Because the 8%, they guard their energy. They don’t just give it away and they set boundaries around it. They really think about how they want to use their energy day to day, because everyone’s energy fluctuates. As women, we have a monthly cycle that fluctuates our energy at a hormone level. Those hormones directly affect our energy levels.
One question for me that I love to ask myself is what do I feel like doing today and how can I do that thing? How can I honor that want in even the smallest way? The reason I like this question is because it reminds me to save that energy. Save some of that energy for myself or for my family, because sometimes we’re too focused on what we don’t want to do that we forget to think about what it is that we do want to do and when we finally remember we don’t have the energy to do it.
And lastly, these 8%, they listen to their body. So I know this probably goes hand in hand with the energy piece, but your body tells you a lot if you listen to it.
One of the things I learned about myself is that I have to have some kind of movement daily. That’s not exercise, just movement. I need to get outside, be in the sunshine or just out in nature and take a walk. My body thrives on that. It really sparks my creativity, it wakes me up.
It’s something that I need to do almost every day and if I don’t do it, I notice I feel really tired, I feel a little bit down and I just don’t feel the same, even if I do go and do the exercise piece, because for me, the moving my body and the exercise are two separate things.
So are you listening to your body or are you just pushing it aside? Because the 8%, they listen to their body. They’re attuned to the needs of their body and they give it what it needs. So, with all of that, how do you want to start the new year?
One thing that can be helpful is reflecting on the past year. What went really well in 2023? What didn’t go so well in 2023? And what were the lessons that were learned from those things that didn’t go so well?
When things don’t go our way or the way we hoped, there’s usually a lesson in there for us to learn, but it requires us to take responsibility for whatever our part was in the reason that something didn’t go our way or the way we had planned.
So again, what didn’t go so well and what were the lessons that you could learn from that? And then, what is it that you want to let go of? What don’t you want to bring with you into 2024? What do you want to bring with you in 2024?
I hope you take the time to reflect on those questions, because the answers to those questions will bring you closer to you the true you, the real you, the you who maybe you’ve been hiding from people because you’re afraid that you’re going to be too much. But let me tell you you’re not the people that think you’re too much are just not your people.
Well, as we end, I wanted to tell you about my new group coaching program, next Level Expansion, where I was going to be working with 20 women who are ready to start making their goals a reality. These women are tired of pushing themselves past their limits, tired of the hustle, culture mentality, and they are ready to try something different, something that will actually get them to achieve their goals without sacrificing their own needs.
And what is it? It’s those seven things that we just talked about, that we’re going to dive deeper. We’re going to figure out what your blocks are, what your true desires are, and how to tap into your intuition, how to trust it again.
And in this process, I guarantee you’re going to be surrounded by people who are going to cheer you on and who want you to actually meet your goals, and we’re going to be there to support you the entire way.
So if this sounds like something that you need or you’re ready for, I want you here, I want you to join, I want us to work together. The link for Next Level Expansion is going to be in the show notes.
So if you’re ready, go ahead, click and sign up, because the last day to sign up for Next Level Expansion is going to be January 5th or until we sell out. So if we sell out before January 5th, I will let you know, but the doors for Next Level Expansion will be open until January 5th at midnight.
So are you ready? Well, thank you. Thank you so much for joining me today, and I hope you have a safe and wonderful New Year.
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