98 Barely Holding It Together? How to Feel More Grounded at Work and at Home

Welcome to the Great Leader Great Mom podcast, where we trade in mom guilt and burnout for courage, calm, and a whole lot more joy. I'm your host, Liz Jolly, engineer turn life coach, mama three, and founder of the School of Courage. Here we talk about leading at work and at home. home without losing your sanity, your sense of humor, or yourself. This is episode 98, and today's episode is all about how to stop barely holding it all together and live from a grounded place. For a lot of women, holding it all together, it doesn't look dramatic. It looks so normal, so everyday. It looks like Answering emails while mentally tracking the permission slips for the kids or the grocery list or the school event or what's for dinner. It looks like smiling on a Zoom call right after a frantic drop-off where You're acting like you're fully present, but your mind is split into six directions. It looks like moving straight from work into homework, snacks, laundry, dinner, baths, bedtime, and Then looking up and realizing the whole day is gone and you still haven't taken a breath. It looks like being the one who remembers everything, the one who keeps the wheels turning, the one who anticipates the needs before anyone says them out loud It's the one who looks capable, dependable, and very high functioning. And yet on the inside, you feel so different. On the inside, you feel like There's this pressure that never fully goes away. It feels a lot like low-grade resentment that you don't want to admit. It feels like being needed from every direction. It feels like never quite being actually done with anything. It's lying in bed exhausted after doing a thousand things and still feeling like it just wasn't enough. It feels like opening the fridge and feeling irrationally offended by the lack of food or how you have to probably go to the grocery store again. It looks like someone asking what's for dinner and wanting to cry. It looks like your child trying to tell you about their day while you're mentally writing a grocery list in your head or wondering if you actually answered that email that your boss sent you. It's being physically present but emotionally so fried you can barely access yourself. That's what holding it all together often feels like. And for many, especially women, that becomes the backdrop of everyday life. It's not really a crisis, it's just this constant state of surviving. And what makes this so hard is that it's not actually just the logistics. It's not just the calendar. It's not the number of things on your to-do list or your plate. What makes it so heavy is that everything is layered underneath it. There's the guilt, the people-pleasing, the over-responsibility, the perfectionism and fear of dropping a glass ball It's the constant habit of making sure everyone else is okay before you even dare to consider yourself. You say yes when you really want to say no, you do things because you should or to prove you could, you over-explain all kinds of simple decisions. You carry things that were never fully yours to carry, and you apologize for all kinds of things that you shouldn't be apologizing for You try to make sure no one is disappointed, no one's uncomfortable, no one questions you, and no one thinks you're selfish, lazy, difficult, or not enough That is exhausting. But now you're not just doing a lot, you're emotionally managing the whole room at the same time. You're trying to keep the peace, keep performing, keep proving, and keep everyone else happy. Little by little you have abandoned yourself. You've stopped asking what it is you even want. What is it you would choose or decide to do You start living by this default for everybody else. And so much of this is our conditioning. It's all these inherited rules we have. It's the silent expectations running in the background of our brain. And that's why so many of us can look incredibly competent on the outside and still feel like We're drowning on the inside. But there really is another layer that makes this even more painful. So you have the overwhelm, but it's not just the overwhelm, it's what you make it mean about you You're thinking at the same time, I should be handling this better. I should have figured this out. I should be more organized, more patient, more on top of things. I shouldn't be impacted so greatly by all these normal things that everybody else seems to have figured out This is what causes the extra layer of suffering in our life. It's now self-judgment on top of everything else and the shame and the comparison. and the quiet belief that everybody else has figured this out and they're doing better than you are. Like you missed something, but that is absolutely not true. You are not failing. This is what so many high capability This is what so many capable, high-achieving women spend an enormous amount of time and their life doing is we're trying to be everything for everybody while criticizing ourselves for being tired or not doing it right Not doing it perfectly. This is a terrible, brutal way to live. And the answer is not becoming better at overriding yourself. It's not to push harder, smile more, or be more perfect It's to find your way back to who you are and what you really want to create more space. This is personal for me because in my own life there was a season where I was super pregnant. I had two kids under four. I was working full-time in a leadership role And I was just literally trying to do everything at home. Trying to cook all the meals, stay on top of work, be a good mom, be easygoing, grateful, capable, strong. Work out, do all the things, and yet I was miserable and exhausted and so resentful. I would say yes to everything because I didn't want to disappoint people. I wanted their approval. I wanted people to understand my choices that I was living this life out of guilt and performance and people pleasing and I was so disconnected from myself. From the outside, I looked very functional, but on the inside, I didn't feel grounded at all. And what changed for me was not a better planning system. It wasn't getting other people to change and do more around me. It was learning to create space. And when I say space, what I mean is There really is a space between what is happening around us, the circumstances, and my reaction. And that space helped me understand what it was I was feeling. And I could use that window in to figure out what am I thinking? What am I hooked by? Then I could question that thought. And I could ask, is that even true? How would I even know that's true? That's where the shift came in for me. Because when I was conscious enough and I slowed down, created enough space, I realized these unquestioned thoughts Don't have to stay. And they're not me. They're not something that I have to absolutely live by. Because it's beliefs like a good mom should be able to do all this or a capable woman should be able to carry more Or a good employee should always say yes, or a loving person should never disappoint anybody. A strong woman shouldn't need help or should never ask for help. And once you see these rules, then you can examine them. You can audit them. What is it I actually believe? What do I want to keep living by this? How is this serving me? Is this what love would do? It's not perfectionism at all. It's not controlling every variable, including the people around you. It's finally learning how to come back to yourself in the middle of all the mess of real life. That is where your power lies. And this is what I mean when I talk about becoming grounded you. Not the perfect you, not the polish you, not the woman who finally gets everything under control or finds that enematic balance. This is the grounded you, the woman who can be in the middle of a full life and still belong to herself The woman who can feel overwhelmed without turning into that self-judgment. The woman who can make decisions from love instead of guilt. The woman who can disappoint someone without collapsing. The woman who can say no without over-explaining or all the preambles. The woman who can be present at home, grounded at work, and connected to herself in both places. Being grounded doesn't mean life becomes easy. It doesn't mean there's no hard days. It means you stop adding unnecessary suffering on top of what is already real life. You stop making every hard moment mean that you're a failure. You stop measuring your worth by how much you can carry or perfectly accomplish. you stop living by the shoulds and you start making conscious choices. That's what changes everything. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, yes, this is me. Here is where I would start. First, get honest about what your days actually feel like. Not how they look, nor how you think they should feel But how do they really feel? Do they feel rushed, resentful, pressured, guilty, numb, constantly behind? Those feelings are not evidence that you're broken, they're data. They're your emotional window in to what's going on in your brain. Second, start noticing your shoulds. This is where we do the audit. You look at those thoughts that say, I should be handling this better. I should say yes. I should want to do this better. I should be more patient. I should be able to keep up. And every time one of these appears, pause and ask yourself, according to who? Do I actually believe that? Is this helping me become the person I want to be? And then ask one more question. What do I actually want here? That question matters so much because when a woman starts telling herself the truth about ones she wants, she can make grounded choices again. Maybe this is saying no without overexplaining. Maybe it looks like asking for help. Maybe it looks like letting dinner just be super easy and like soup from the can. Maybe it looks like leaving something undone or Not using your whole weekend to catch up at work on email. Maybe it looks like letting someone be disappointed without making it your job to fix their feelings. Those may seem like really small choices, but they're not small. This is how you build self-trust This is what steadies you and shifts your mindset. It's not perfect circumstances or waiting for other people to change. So if you have been barely holding it all together, I want you to know this. The goal is not to get better at surviving your life. The goal is to become grounded enough to live in who you really are and the life you want, to feel like you again, to be present at home, grounded at work. To stop living from guilt and start living from who you are in alignment with you. That's why I created the School of Courage And in this membership, this is the heart of what we do. We help women create space, catch those thoughts that hook us, and question those. All the shoulds. And I want you to make clean conscious decisions. no matter what is happening around in your life. So if this is what you're carrying, come and join us inside the School of Courage. You can learn more at LizJolly. com forward slash membership Because you don't need a better system for proving yourself to others. You need a better way of relating to yourself inside your real life. Then everything changes. With that, I hope everybody has an amazing week and I'll see you next time.