Member Blogs

For those of us "high-achieving" women (I prefer that terminology over "over-achieving"), letting go of doing it all and doing it all really well can be challenging. One way I have managed to dramatically decrease my stress level and a process that I've taken many clients through is to get clear about how I really want my life to FEEL rather than what I want to achieve.

Start with the question: If I knew this was my last year, how would I want it to feel--both personally and professionally? Once you've gotten clear about how you want your life to feel (low-stress, fun, invigorating, connected, memorable, inspiring, relaxed, etc.), then you can focus on the things you want to do that align with those feelings. If you have projects or responsibilities that don't support how you want to feel, it may be a good indication to let it go or decrease your involvement or even just shoot for C+ work instead of A+ work.

For me I feel the stress level increase when I've over-scheduled myself based on a list of "should dos" rather than "want to dos". Many times this comes out of fear around money. When I am stressed about making more money and managing our financial situation I go into a manic "I must fix this by doing more" mode, which ends up being counter-productive. I have come to learn (but still don't always practice) that more of what I want easily flows into my life when I am more focuses on feeling good rather than achieving too many things.

nataly! sorry i didnt come back sooner to see this! thanks for posting the question for me!! now i will go check it out and figure out how to even post questions - it's one of the features on WIM i havent tried out yet!

Mandy is definitely on track about that need to control everything as a source of stress, even though we're not going there right now ;-). Anyone who claims they're not stressed is either too young, too old, lying through their teeth, or in denial.

Nataly's right about some of our stress responses being genetically hard-wired, and some of it's how we were raised - you learn to worry if you live with worriers, I think (I did, anyway). But we also make choices in our lives that feed the stress cycle. Some of Nataly's choices are too intense for me! :-D And I've found that the "once I do x, y, z, I will be less stressed/happier/whatever" thinking really isn't helpful, because you're getting even more stressed about when you can be less stressed (if that makes sense)!

I love Kate's "random silliness" idea - I don't do it often enough, but it really does help!

Good luck with this, Nataly, and you know we're all here for you!

let's do it! Top 10 stress-breakers - post it as a question in the Q&A and we'll see if we can't all come up with some:)

Oh, I love that! You should write an article for WIM titled just that:) and give us all some ideas!