If your business feels heavy and you’re always maxed out, it’s not you—it’s the way everything’s been designed to depend on your A+ version.
So I was listening to one of the Voxer messages from a student and found myself smiling because it was all just so familiar.
She was like, “I do whatever it takes for my clients. I’ll work weekends, wake up early, and stay late. I like my house looking a certain way, and want to make sure I’m keeping on top of things there, too, but I don’t know why my business always ends up on the back burner.”
(This is why I love coaching my students in Voxer because they get to share, stream of consciousness-style, what’s coming up for them, which allows me to feel into not only the words they’re sharing but also the energetics behind the words.)
Here’s what I shared with her that I want you to hear, too.
That, my friends, is exactly why you feel the way you do.
When you’re overfunctioning in every area of your life, of course your business is the first thing to go.
And that happens despite knowing that your business matters and you wanting to do the work.
It’s a byproduct of being maxed out and building your life around being everything for everyone else.
I totally understand why she couldn’t see this clearly.
When we’re internalised to believe that we’re expected to show up – and show up well – in all of the places, it’s only natural that we blame ourselves rather than the problematic ideals that we’ve been taught to strive for.
Therapist Diana Fox Tilson encapsulated this perfectly in a recent newsletter where she wrote:
“Have you ever heard a man say that he’s working on letting go of perfectionism? I have been a therapist for fifteen years. During that time, I have done psychiatric assessments for around a thousand people. I have never once had a man come into my office and identify perfectionism as something he needs to work on. It is one of the most common complaints for my female clients. Women develop perfectionism as a coping mechanism for meeting cultural expectations that are not placed on men.
I think this gets to why the mental load is so difficult to redistribute. Women are socialized to internalize the message that their worth is tied to how well they [hold it all], and are subjected to judgment when they fail.”
To give you a prime example in the midst of a full-on nervous system breakdown, with my doctor looking at me and telling me that I have high functioning anxiety – and probably have done since childhood – it almost made me laugh because, despite all of the flaring symptoms I’d experienced before the diagnosis, I genuinely believed that all I needed was a better system, a tighter calendar or a more efficient way of tackling my to-dos.
At no point did I consider that maybe I wasn’t the problem. That maybe I wasn’t failing; I was just carrying too much and that the structure I was trying to operate inside of was never built to support me.
It was built around this fantasy version of me — the one who never gets tired, never has needs of my own and who can and should do it all…
The one who shows up A+ at home, A+ for clients, A+ for the kids, and then somehow magically has space left to build a business sustainably, despite the absence of sustainability everywhere else.
That version of me? Of you? She doesn’t exist. And the most painful part is, we blame ourselves for not living up to her.
All of this to say, when you feel like you want to take action on your own stuff but somehow you freeze, or shut down, or go blank?
That’s not laziness, nor is it avoidance.
It’s a flooded nervous system.
That’s what happens when you’ve been spinning so many plates for so long that your body starts protecting you from more.
I see this all the time, especially in my students with a history of hyper-responsibility, over-functioning or being parentified in childhood.
That kind of shut down isn’t procrastination — it’s our body’s way of protecting us from doing too much when we’re already maxed out.
And what makes it harder to shift out of this is that we’ve come to believe that if we don’t hold it, everything falls apart.
We’re not just managing a life — we’re holding the entire architecture.
Anticipating every need.
Preempting every potential crack.
So when things feel shaky, we lean in harder. We over-function more. And the cycle just deepens.
But here’s the thing I want you to know: the belief that once you just “get everything in place,” the chaos will stop just isn’t true.
Take when I was channeling and creating Life-First Business, as an example.
I told myself it’s fine if I’m exhausted because once it’s done, then I’ll have space.
Then I’ll be able to breathe.
But you and I both know, there’s no magical finish line in business building.
Even when the thing is created, the systems are set up, and the offer is live, there’s always more to do.
Passive income isn’t passive.
Optimization mode requires energy – a different kind – but energy nonetheless.
And life still happens.
That part of you that feels the need to be in control and operate at 100% at all times will still be there.
So, too, will the lack of safety and hyper-independence that’s caused so much of your overworking.
As I lovingly reflected back to a student recently, thinking that you can outrun these underlying energetics by making more money is a fallacy. And that’s why you’ve felt, and operated the same way, even when you’ve reached massive milestones.
You look for strategy and ways to fix your business in these moments, because it gives you a sense of control, rather than really diving into what’s really happening underneath.
The version of you with the business and peace you desire still has problems and challenges. The difference is that she’s cultivated enough internal safety to confront and work through these dynamics, so that they’re no longer in the driving seat anymore.
There will always be a cap on what you can achieve, in the way you deeply want to, if you don’t learn how to call in more without all the self-sacrifice.
So I want to offer this:
- What if it’s not about finding a better system — but building one that doesn’t need the A+ version of you to function?
- What if your willpower or time management was never the problem? But instead, the reason you’re feeling this way is because of a design flaw in the way your business was created?
- What if the business you’re trying to build isn’t stalling because you’re flaky… but because your nervous system is waving the red flag?
You are not the problem.
The design is.
And you get to outgrow it.
And you get to decide that being held is safer than doing the holding.
You get to restructure. You get to exhale.
🔗 What to explore next…
✨ Feeling the gap between what you want and how your business actually feels?
Take the Business Archetypes Quiz—a 2-minute diagnostic to uncover what’s shaping your business decisions behind the scenes.
You’ll get your personalized archetype + tailored next steps to help you align your strategy with how you actually want to work.
📲 Stuck on a decision? Need quick clarity?
Book a Voxer Momentum Hour—a 60-minute private coaching session (via voice + text) to break through a challenge, untangle your next move, and get clear on what to do now.
Perfect if this letter stirred something and you’re ready to act on it.
