3 Myths that keep high achieving women feeling stressed, anxious, and low on energy

Can you relate to this? 

I’m a successful person.  I have a wonderful family, and fantastic friends. I’ve achieved a lot of professional success, even with taking time off to have kids. I’ve put the time and effort into my studies and have the professional designation to show for it.   I know how to get things done, stay on top of work and the kids’ school and all of my other commitments. It works. 

Except, when it doesn’t.  

I’m stressed, I feel anxious, and I just don’t have the energy to do all the things I want to be doing. It’s not about time management, I have excellent time management skills. I don’t know why I feel this way, and why the strategies I use for the rest of my life just don’t work here. 

I’m successful at so many other things – why is this so hard? 

This. 

Over and over women have expressed to me the same sentiments. Why am I failing in this one area? Why do I still feel so stressed and overwhelmed? My thoughts cycling around in my head at night when I want to be sleeping? And I’m just so tired. 

If this is you, you are not alone. Everywhere, women are experiencing more stress, anxiety, low mood, and depleted energy at levels greater than ever before. 

The story we tell ourselves is that if we keep doing ‘all the right things’ it will get better. After that next deadline. Once that new staff member is hired. After the kids are in full time school/in high school/in college.

But here’s the truth. The lifestyle of women who do it all (and do it all well, I might add) is one that can be void of the building blocks required for a balanced  mood. A lifestyle that does not support having the energy to feel your best. And the hard truth is that unless something changes, it’s  going to get worse. 

These three myths can keep high achieving women feeling stressed, anxious, and always low on energy: 

Myth #1: Putting myself first is selfish.

Logically, we know this isn’t true. But in practice? Totally different story. I find this to be a classic ‘do as I say not as I do’ situation. 

Think about the last time a friend broke down about how stressed she was feeling, how overwhelming life has become. What did you tell her? That she needed to put herself first and take some time for selfcare. 

Right?

And then it comes our time. As women in the workplace, as a business owner, or a parent, putting yourself first sounds great, until it comes time to actually do it. Saying no to the extra hours at work might be a career limiting move. Not taking on that extra client might stall the growth of your business. Pulling out of yet another school fundraiser might look like you don’t care about your kids or their education.

Is any of this true? Well, that’s not really the point. What’s true is that putting everyone and everything before your own needs is not sustainable. Also true, there might not be an option for  putting all the things that ‘need’ to be prioritized, first, all the time. Something will need to come second. Or third, or further down the line.  Sometimes it will be work, sometimes it will be family and friends, and sometimes it will be you. 

Where this becomes a problem is when your needs are always at the back of the line. 

Prioritizing time to look after yourself can feel like ignoring responsibilities, or lack of commitment. But in the long run, it will allow you much greater happiness and sustained success in those exact things that might need to take a turn further  down the priority list. 

It can be hard to accept the idea that taking time away from work will make you more successful, or missing school events will allow you to be a better parent. But the truth is, it is hard to build a solid future on a crumbling foundation. And that foundation, it’s you. 

One of the most important, and also most overlooked, places women need to put themselves first is in prioritizing their sleep. This guide will help you shift the focus where it needs to go, and help you get better sleep. 

Myth #2: Doing less is just lazy

Even with the greatest time management tools, the number  of hours in a day are finite. No productivity hack can change that. Trying to make use of every moment we have available gives us no time to relax, to decompress, to process our experiences.

When this happens, it’s actually pretty difficult to learn, improve, and grow.

Being constantly busy is not sustainable for most people. Yet, we live in a culture that glorifies busy. Being tired and always running from thing to thing is almost expected of a successful woman. Especially a woman who is professionally successful AND has a family. 

Where there is a never ending to-do list running through your head, it can be very challenging to pullback and do less. 

Because those  things are still there. But the idea that if we just get one more thing done, it will all be better and less overwhelming is a myth. Prioritizing ourselves by doing less gives us room to breathe, reduce feelings of stress and anxiety, and is less draining on our energy. 

Modern society has perpetuated the idea that successful women are expert multitaskers. Which further reinforces the myth that if we are not trying to do multiple things at once, we are not really trying hard enough, not working hard enough, not being a mum hard enough. This myth can keep us in a constant state of disarray where nothing really ever has our full attention. 

The active choice to do less and say no can have a lot of resistance. But continuing to take on more in hopes there is light at the end of the tunnel is a myth. 

Myth #3: Healthy = Skinny 

Our society worships the false  idols of diet culture, and while deep down we know healthy does not equal skinny…. Here we are. As a woman there is constant pressure to be thin, or at the very least be working towards it.

The way our culture objectifies women’s bodies is a significant issue that is damaging the physical, mental, and social health of women everywhere. 

But it is also causing us harm in ways many don’t realise. Almost every popular diet on the market focuses on restrictive eating. I’m not going to name names and point fingers (cough, keto) but the health claims these diets make are at best unproven, and at worst untrue. In many cases, the only identifier of effectiveness is weight loss. For most of these diets, we just don’t have enough long term information to make the kind of health claims they advertise. 

Diet culture supports fad diets boasting hacks and quick fixes. But what it doesn’t address is that food and what we eat has a profound effect on not just our weight, but on our brain, mood, and energy.  About 20% of our body’s energy is used by our brain. And where does that energy come from? Food.

What we eat impacts how we feel. Most people would agree that eating crappy food can make us feel like crap. But it’s more than that. What we eat provides the nutritional building blocks for a balanced mood. The nutrients in the food we eat have a role to play in supporting our mental health. What we eat can impact our mood. How we experience stress. Our levels of anxiety. Our energy.

That sluggish foggy feeling? If we  ignore the role that food plays in regulating our mood and energy we are missing out on one of the simplests fixes when it comes to mental health. 

Food. 

All because the focus on food has become weight loss pretending to be ‘health’. 

The good news is that it is not difficult or complicated to get the nutrients we need to support our mood and energy from our diet. The bad news is, it gets a lot harder to do so when we start restricting food intake and removing key food groups. 

When diets replace eating to support our health, we lose an incredible opportunity to support our mental health with the nutritional building blocks for a balanced mood. 

The truth about fad diets is that over the long term not only do they not promote sustainable weight loss, but they can create a negative relationship with food and lead to disordered eating. They can also deny us the nutritional building blocks we need for a balanced mood. 

At the root of it, even with this information, many women do feel that being skinny will make them happy. And maybe it will. But what I do know  is that when we feel out of control of our emotions, it’s a lot easier to pin it on something that we  see as both a problem and  fixable, then something we might not have even realised was an issue.

Can you prioritize health, change the way you feel, while building the nutritional building for a balanced mood?

Yes you can.

What to get started? Book a free Mood & Energy Breakthrough Call today: