📍 I've ever felt like no matter how much you do, there's always more to do and it's never enough. At the same time, find yourself worrying if you don't have enough time or energy to find the success that you want. 📍 today, we're going to unpack how that conditioning happens and more importantly, how to reorient that narrative through somatic trauma healing. So if you've been wondering why resting never seems to fix your exhaustion or why stepping back from work makes you feel guilty, you're in the right place.

Hustle culture is intertwined with patriarchal culture because it is enforcing the value and behavior that says outpour credit and productivity or competition or even self sacrifice. comes out first. It's come from the Industrial Revolution where a lot of the work was labor oriented, meaning that literally if the work didn't get done, it didn't get done.

And patriarchy is kind of doubled down on that, where it has kind of assigned value to individuals based on your ability to contribute and provide and produce for the economy, rather than the intrinsic worth that we have as human beings and also the value that can be put on soft skills. And it's out of alignment with today because now, Today's work, most of your value comes actually from your presence or your creativity or your innovation.

And so as females who are living in a world where most of our work is kind of mental work, but our nervous systems are taking information from that patriarch. What female nervous systems often have to do is kind of prove that they can keep up because we have different fluctuations in our hormones that was not considered in the industrial revolution where it was about providing in a 24 hour time period or an 8 hour workday.

So, for example, we're expected to work in a similar way as men in professional settings. While also carrying mental and emotional loads that men may not carry. There's a lot of nuance over this and there's been a lot of change. But the ultimate understanding is that so many of us operate in a 9 5 or a 24 7 work culture.

Even if you're not working those hours, you probably think that you need to. You think that you need to work nine to five and you feel guilty or you feel like you should be working that amount of time. And now there are times where that's helpful, but it disproportionately, um, creates a reinforcement of a fear or trauma based.

And I'm going to be talking about how to create a working pattern in the body as a female, which means that you operate more from a place where you're not in contact with your intuition. And if you think about it, it's been ingrained since we were really young, right? Like you're praised because you're a good helper or you're expected to be accommodating and, um, charismatic because that makes you a team player or always available.

And then as female entrepreneurs. You know, female entrepreneurs receive less funding than males and we feel like we have to grind or prove ourselves. We have to find this like, how much space do I take up or how much do I do I not wear? I don't want to be too bold and assertive, but I also Don't want to be a people pleaser and be a pushover and we're constantly managing this mental load of figuring out the Expectations that we have of ourselves and other people and it creates stress In fact, it actually puts our nervous system in a state that Becomes familiar where we're always trying to figure this out.

So when we experience this ongoing pressure Our bodies release cortisol and adrenaline, keeping us in a heightened state of alertness, right? We're kind of looking for things, we're micromanaging, it makes us really emotionally intelligent, but it makes us really tired and not so good at our job. Over time, over time that chronic stress response becomes the default setting and we feel restless when we slow down and anxious when we're not overachieving and we feel guilty when we take breaks and we always wonder if we're doing enough.

It's not It's a really deep somatic pattern, and unless we are very conscious in the way that we reorient to it, we are going to repeat a cycle of burnout that creates more scattered thinking, more scarcity, more fear, and it creates a really difficult pattern where less people want to work with you because they don't trust you, um, and you kind of end up reinforcing all of that.

So let's look at how we're going to change it together, because for many of us, this pressure to hustle, it's not Oh, it's tied to so many other past experiences, moments where you did fail, you didn't do enough. It can even be tied to generational trauma, things that your ancestors have passed down to you.

It could be trained, chained to being fear of being seen as lazy, or be, or even, Um, very, very deep trauma what's coming up for me as a client who's working through some sexual trauma and her way of dealing with that at the moment is to work really hard and work really long hours, which doesn't have to feel what's deep down inside, where we, when we grow up in environments for love, validation, safety, we're all conditional on how well we were doing at school or how we could manage mom and dad's moods.

Our body begins to think that productivity management is safety. We don't just want to succeed, but we actually really need to because it feels like survival and like you can't stop. And that's why a lot of traditional self care strategies don't work. Like I did all of it. I've done the grounding. I've done the grounding.

I did the Ayurvedic certification and the yoga. I was a yoga therapist, all of this stuff. And you can bubble bath and you can. Rest, but it won't undo years of nervousness and conditioning. Meditation doesn't make you feel safe taking a day off if your body thinks that rest equals failure. But what we can do is use the body based intelligence that's inside to retrain our bodies to feel safe in slowness.

To learn that ease doesn't mean laziness, and that success doesn't require struggle. It doesn't mean that it doesn't require hard work. It will sometimes, and you have to increase your capacity for that as well. It doesn't need to be painful. So here are three weird ways to start this process. Things that I haven't seen anywhere else on the internet and things that I've found particularly helpful for myself as I've unpacked this over many years.

Walked many clients through it as well. Number one, identify your burnout blueprint. So really just ask yourself, what was modeled for me growing up? What did I witness women in my life constantly doing? Um, was my value tied to my achievements? Just understanding it, it can be as simple as like, what was my mom's lifestyle?

Like, what were the expectations that she had of herself? What was her daily, um, Something that I've come to get curious about is the fact that I really like working early in the morning. And my mum used to do that. She used to wake up really, really early, walk to work, do a full day of work, then come home, pick us up from school.

And when I started working as a teenager, I started working really early shifts as well. So I do think that witnessing that Has kind of reinforced in my body that early work is, is like safe. Um, and it's something that I'm really mindful of and it's something that I, I still enjoy it and I allow myself to enjoy it.

I still, I do 6am calls and I really like it. I don't do them every day of the week because I get tired. Uh, but I, I still am, I allow myself there, but I carry awareness and compassion for myself of, uh, this is what my body equates with. Safety and process progress and I learned to work with that and we can go into that in another section But um, or if you join in the Academy or if you read the book we can go into that But let's move on to number two.

Number two is just stop before you're ready. Okay? You just have to stop before you're ready. There's always more to do. Your to do list will always get longer. Inside of our call in the academy this morning, we spoke a lot about how do you identify what is a priority? What is the absolute most urgent thing that you need to do?

And what else can you let go of? And it is uncomfortable I know, but sit with that sensation in your body. Allow it to be imperfect. Sit with it for 90 seconds and then move forward. Reorient to something that is pleasurable. Step up. Move forward. We can do this when we learn about focus in the body and focus in our life But we need to challenge this mindset that tells us that we always have to push past exhaustion And keep going until we collapse so many of us women have been told that We have to endlessly effort but What we actually need is to stop before we're ready to listen for our body's cues.

That might even mean just going to the toilet before you finish this task. It involves resting before you reach a breaking point, before you're irritable, before you're exhausted. It's taking breaks, because this practice prevents the nervous system entering that state of chronic stress, which is what leads to long term burnout.

Number three, ask, who gains power from this? My favorite one at the moment, guys. Us working to depletion and us people pleasing and us saying no, it doesn't empower us. It takes our power away. It empowers the people who want us to consume a thousand times or who want us weak. Us being in touch with what we want and having the power to go and get it empowers us.

Us being confident empowers us. We get to change the world. So just question every time you're in a thought loop, who is gaining power from this perspective? Is it somebody who wants me to think that I just need more and more and more and to do more and more and more and more and more? Is it you? Is it doesn't even matter who it is, just is this thought, is this practice, is it empowering you?

Is it? Giving you power inside of the academy. You will learn to understand what power feels like in your body and when to identify that sometimes it will ask you to stretch yourself. And sometimes it's being soft and nourishing and loving. You will create this business that will nourish you rather than drain you.

And you will be empowered by it. But if you are not ready to join the Academy, we have podcasts on this. You can, oh gosh, I cover this extensively inside of my book, Somatic Intelligence for Success. And it's available for 10, you can go and grab that. But just as you move through the week, notice Where this tension, where this force, where this push, where it lives in your body.

Where do you feel guilty for arresting? Where do you push through exhaustion and what would it feel like to build a business that nourishes you instead of drains you? What would you need to let go of? Who would you need to become to allow that to happen? If this episode resonated, send it to a friend so that we can unlearn this hustle culture in weird and wonderful ways and together we can take back our power as women and really actually change the world.

Take a deep breath. Trust your wisdom. Eases your birthright. Speak to you soon.