The Perfection Pressure

“You can do it all!”

“You can have it all!”

“You can be anything you want to be!”

How do you feel when you read these statements? Empowered? Motivated? Or something else at the same time?

Let me start by saying I recognize the privilege that comes along with having these options in our lives. AND, I am 100% sure this applies to people who are not parents, people who are dads etc. as well……I am simply speaking from my own experience here.

That said, it is time to bring to light the dark side of these statements because I see these decimating the wellness of women every day. Don’t see it? Have a look at those who are moms right now in the middle of this pandemic. Many of us are not ok. The fine balancing act between career and family we somehow figured out before, is gone. 100% gone. Work, home and family are collapsing on us all at once, and it is a lot to handle.

Still don’t see it? I invite you to recognize the subtext beneath these above statements…..for many women in my generation (I'm in my mid-40s) we were raised with these messages. Which are empowering and awesome AND are insidious creatures that say “because you can be the CEO AND a mom, you must”, AND “if you’re a CEO, you must put in that 80 hour work week, oh and if you’re a mom too, you also must be dealing with the doctor’s appointments, cooking meals from scratch, volunteering for the PTA” and on and on and on. I love being a parent. And, for me, that is why the stakes are so high. Our kid’s wellness is at stake here too.

The result of it all? Overwhelm. Feelings of failure. Parenting might be suffering. Our careers and businesses might be suffering. And our wellness……lost.

So, what now? My job as a coach, and something I know I lean on my own coach to assist me with, is to figure out how to keep moving. And not just how to survive, but how to thrive. Because moms, YOU deserve that!

So, what do you want? What do you need? We will dig into those questions in blog articles to come. And today, I am going to bring up something that is getting a lot of eye-rolling from the moms I know right now, self-care.

Did you roll your eyes? It’s ok? I get it. You’ve defined self-care as "bubble-baths and manicures”, yes? Well, let me tell you, self-care is NOT ABOUT BUBBLE BATHS! I feel so strongly about re-framing the image of self-care. Next week’s blog article will dig in further here, but for now, let me leave you with this to get you started on healing from the perfection pressure:

Self-care is also:

-asking for help

-saying no

-letting go of trying to do it all (Spoiler alert-the people you see doing it all, have a staff team to help them).

Until next week, be kind to yourself everyone.

Deanna