I often get asked about why I love serving as a coach.
This is why…
No one has a perfect childhood, including me—far from it, but one thing I did have growing up was strong female role models. The pursuit of knowledge, what interested and what was important to my own mother and other women around me, was a given.
They had parameters around their time.
They had purpose in their goals.
They had normal guilt and fears, but they did the damn thing anyway.
Which means...so did I.
At seventeen, I was already intrigued by human behavior, and wanted to work with people, so I studied psychology, got the MSW and spent a career working mostly with teens and women with depression, anxiety, divorce, trauma (typical life stuff). As I continued to work with high performing women doing deep work, making changes, breaking out of their predetermined molds, and reaching for more...
I realized a pattern,
A pattern of chronic over-responsibility. And we have history to thank for that:
Women worked hard in the 70s, 80s, 90s to increase women in the workforce and in higher education - we wore the pant suits, donned our shoulder pads (remember those?), played with our identity.
We learned to:
Take up space, but not too much space (and be sure to apologize if you do).
Be assertive, but don’t be bitchy.
Be confident, but don’t step on anyone’s toes.
Be strong, but don’t seem angry or bossy.
And in many cases, the mothering and the family raising existed, too.
I got curious. This game of, we can have it all, was translating for many women into, we should do it all.
Mind traps of guilt and trying to get it right got me and many others stuck.
And I thought, how can we change the way we play this thing?
Because this is a game we cannot win. And we know that now.
In our efforts to get it "right" over the years, we just ended up getting overloaded. We picked up responsibility without putting any down.
So what do we do instead?
We create breathing room.
Space to create a new way of being. Here are some ways I help clients achieve this:
Prioritize - instead of trying to prove yourself. Let go of the overwhelm, you’ll find it’s a peaceful place to be.
Commit to yourself - instead of over-committing and saying yes to everyone and everything. Setting boundaries and staying in your lane gets easier the more you practice.
Accept that you’re good enough - instead of insisting on perfection. You can want to expand yourself while being happy with who you are now.
Detach from everyone else’s feelings - instead of carrying the weight of how other’s see you. Walk in the world as a really empathic person, hold the paradox of strength and compassion.
Decide what lights YOU up and do IT - instead of fulfilling other people’s expectations. There is great possibility when you get out of your head, see your unique gifts and talents, and courageously offer them to the world.
We have to do this for ourselves. And we have to do it for the girls and women in line behind us.
In our current world full of women making waves and shattering ceilings - what is the overburdened, secretly exhausted Super Woman saying to younger generations of women? They're taking notice.
What is YOUR responsibility to yourself and to other women?
Mine is to mentor, coach and advise you on your growth journey and to transform the world of women (and ultimately the world at large) for the better.
Ready to create some breathing room in your hectic schedule? Give me a shout.