Will You Choose You?

Will you choose YOU?

“I feel that I have so much more to offer, but it just doesn’t seem to come to fruition”, Monique said to me the other day. “I work my butt off because I want everything to run smoothly at home, and yet I always have the feeling of falling short because I’m only doing half of what I need to do”.

She is well educated, has a demanding job and a family with two young children. Apart from going to the gym once a week, she doesn’t get around to doing things for herself. In her experience, her life feels like a rat race, leaving her exhausted and deflated.

She has set the bar high for herself. Her perfectionism, sense of responsibility and ambitions have taken her a long way, AND they are also her biggest pitfalls. 

She is tired, her fuse is getting shorter and shorter and she’s no longer enjoying the work that she once loved. She’s often asking herself, “Is this how I want to live the rest of my life? Am I really living my fullest potential?”

Does Monique’s story sound familiar? Are you also finding it difficult to juggle it all, and asking yourself the same questions?

Sadly, I see this a lot!

As a woman you have your own unique challenges. You often have a lot of things to take care of when it comes to the home front and your business or career. You struggle with your ‘self-image’, to hold your own in a male (business) world. Add to it the desire to make sure everything runs smoothly at home, whether or not you’re caring for children or possibly parents.

You want to do the personal growth work, exercise to stay healthy, find fulfillment in the work you do and be in service to others. You want to have a nice income so you can enjoy a vacation now and then and have a nice social life. 

Your plate is beyond full, and the pressure and expectations (which you mostly impose on yourself) are sky-high. Having to meet the demands and pressure of creating your ideal life takes a lot of energy. 

This perfectionism, a great sense of responsibility, setting the bar high, needing to be some sort of superhuman are known characteristics for many smart, ambitious women. 

There are demands coming from all directions, and setting clear boundaries and taking time for yourself to relax are a huge challenge. You have the tendency to take care of others first, thereby neglecting your own needs. And that leads to a lot of pressure, stress and the feeling of never measuring up. 

Like Monique, you may be wondering “Is this how I want to live the rest of my life?”.

Unfortunately, for many women these questions and patterns lead to burnout or other (serious) health issues in the long run.

Here’s the tricky part…

No matter what choice you make: family, career or self-care, either way you feel guilty. You may feel like you can never do it right. There is always that nagging feeling of not measuring up, fear of missing out, and the endless guilt.

The solution is actually pretty simple but not always easy.

If you want to live your fullest potential, it starts with taking care of yourself first. You know what they tell you on the airplane, right? Exactly! You put on YOUR OWN mask first, before you help anyone else. And that’s how it works here on the ground too ;-).

From this space of proper self-care, everything else will fall into place more easily. When you choose to take care of yourself, you’ll have clearer guidance on what is really important in your life. And that’s how you will be able to set the right priorities, so you can feel good about yourself and the choices you make.