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“I’m feeling overwhelmed with so much to do at home and work. I have a big proposal that needs to be in tomorrow and then I have a presentation to prepare before Tuesday with Monday already full with stuff, so if I don’t get a move on I will be working the weekend which I haven’t got time for, as lots on at home with kids’ social schedules, building work and a poorly husband who can’t drive. I so need to be super efficient and effective right now, but telling myself that still isn’t getting me there! I just can’t mentally apply myself to anything important and I am procrastinating a lot and making lots of cups of tea!”

This is a quote from Eleanor, one of my clients. She’s not alone in feeling overwhelmed and the description of her week echoes those I’ve heard from most of my clients at some point. If I had a pound/dollar/euro for every time I heard the word “overwhelmed” from my clients over the past 16 years, I’d be a rich woman by now!

90% of the women I’ve worked with over the years have had caring responsibilities – usually for children, sometimes for ageing parents, sometimes as carers, and increasingly – as I get older! – I am noticing that many of my clients have both children and parents to look after. 21st century life is busy for most of us, but for women who are mothers or carers, ‘busy’ is taken to a whole new level.

I get the “jugging act” and “balancing act” of work, life and family. I get it because I speak on an almost daily basis with my clients who are striving to master that juggling act. I also get it as I’m at the sharp end myself! as a mum, with a coaching practice and a new business, maintaining a house, raising 2 energetic boys (and of course my 4-legged “boy”, Ernie) I often wonder how on earth I keep going! And just like my clients, I’m keenly aware of the dangers of burnout and conversely, the importance of carving out time for my own health, wellbeing and happiness. But how do we carve out that time when we have so much on our plate?


Of course, the more we have on our plate, the longer it takes to clear that plate. And the plate is never empty. Just as soon as you’ve cleared a space, something else appears on it. Looking at that plate, piled so high that you don’t know where to start, can be completely overwhelming!

But here’s the issue: For the most part, we are loading up that plate ourselves. We are largely responsible for our own tendency to fall into overwhelm, as we are so busy trying to be Superwoman.

Are modern women a “generation of control freaks”? Judith Warners, in her New York Times bestseller “Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety” thinks so – and control freaks who are unable to say “No” to boot: In “Perfect Madness”, Warners cites an article from Redbook, a women’s magazine about the cult of busy-ness amongst modern women:

“What has modern woman done with the four or five hours she used to spend at the wash line? Chances are she has let herself be dragooned into doing something that is just as tiring and time-consuming. She is working on one more committee, helping out at a pre-kindergarten art group or collecting furniture or clothing for the town swap shop.. permi(ting) the time saved by (the) mechanical devices to be wiped out by increased standards of performance”.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is a description of a stay at home mum: The “modern woman” described above is also highly likely to be building a career, as well!

Here’s the rub…

“The obligation for working mothers is a very precise one: 
The feeling that one ought to work as if one did not have children, 
whilst raising one’s children as if one did not have to work”

There are 8 main reasons for overwhelm in talented women that I have observed over many years of coaching. Only the first two are external; the other six are about talented women getting in their own way by trying to be that mythical creature – Superwoman:

1. Information overload
2. Volume of work
3. High expectations of myself
4. Putting too much pressure on myself
5. Trying to be perfect
6. Needing to live up to other’s expectations of me
7. Taking on too much
8. Needing to do it all, “because nobody can do it as well as I can”

HOW TO STEP UP

One of the best ways to let go of the habit of being Superwoman is to get real on your expectations of yourself. Superwomen with control freak tendencies tend to have unrealistically high expectations of ourselves. This inevitably leads to overloading your metaphorical plate which in turn leads to you becoming overwhelmed. Getting into a cycle of coping-overwhelm-coping-overwhelm is not, as you might have already suspected, a sustainable one. Ultimately it leads to burnout and this has some serious health implications.

Checking in with your expectations of yourself is simple, but not always easy. Simple because you just have to take a step back and ask yourself, “What am I expecting myself to do here?.. Is this realistic/reasonable?” However, it is not always easy – because you are likely to be so ingrained in the habit of handling everything and getting things done that your default position is to respond to each challenge with

“How can I fit this in?”

rather than

“Where are my expectations unrealistic?”

This is why it is helpful to speak regularly to a good Coach or a friend, to get them to reflect back to you. You need someone who can pull you up short and point out the obvious…

“Hang on, you’ve just told me that today you are going to do A, B, C, D and E at work. That’s going to take you at least ten hours, and you’ve only got six working hours in the day!”

Gina had a big list of “must dos” in her week but she was frustrated with herself, as she wasn’t achieving them. She said:

“There’s no reason I can’t do all of these things. I just need to be more efficient with my time”

We drew up a grid and sectioned into days of the week and waking hours in the day. We walked through every single thing that Gina wanted to achieve in an average week.

Gina had a picture of how her life was going to be completely perfect with every element of a balanced life incorporated. She believed that the only thing that was stopping her was her own lack of time management. She believed that, if only she could get it right, she would be able to “do it all : Time for work, time for the kids, time for herself, time for her community, time for her hobbies and time for many other projects she was trying to juggle.

As we listed all the elements of her ideal week, I asked Gina how many hours per week she wanted to spend on each activity in her life. As we went through every element of her week, I asked the same question and quietly added up all the hours.

She was shocked when I told her the total hours: In order to achieve everything, she needed to have over 130 waking hours per week. There was no room in Gina’s week for the unexpected curve balls that have a habit of popping up regularly and certainly no room for anything to deviate from plan. Most of all, there was no room for sleep! It left her with just over 5 hours per night. Hardly a perfectly balanced life!

This was a reality check for Gina and it was a useful exercise. But she was only doing what millions of women do – over-estimating what she could achieve in the time given and setting expectations that only Superwoman could meet!

You might have a to-do list, and you beat yourself up because you haven’t achieved it, try this exercise yourself. Get real about how long things take – by underestimating you will feel constantly disappointed with yourself and constantly anxious.

This is a painful way to step up – no doubt about it! Looking at how long things really take is uncomfortable. However, this is the only way to prove to yourself that you are setting your expectations too high.

The “bedtime story”: An unfortunate series of time drains

My friend Chris says it’s because I have a lot of fire energy…

But for whatever reason, I seem to have been plagued with more than my fair share of technical failures recently.

In the past two months alone I have faced hard disk failure TWICE, keyboard failure and now, the latest technical misadventure is that my brand new Apple MacBook has developed a mysterious, intermittent fault with the space bar.

Always looking for ways of logistically maximising my time, yesterday I decided I could fit in an appointment to get this issue fixed after a meeting in London.

After my meeting in South East London, I headed to the West End to the nearest Apple store – Regent Street.

The underground line that should have taken me directly there broke down and a 30-minute journey turned into a one-hour journey.

I finally arrived at Piccadilly and discovered the Regent Street Store was closed for refurbishment. So I identified the next nearest store, Convent Garden, and started walking there. I got lost – because that’s how I roll – so the half mile walk became 1 mile.

I arrived at the Apple Store and booked my appointment. Despite having a business service plan for technical support, which is supposed to guarantee me an appointment within 15 minutes of requesting it, the Convent Garden store was so overwhelmed with people that the guarantee failed to deliver.

I waited as long as I could, eventually giving up as my time ran out: I had a train to catch home.

The naughty space bar magically started working on the train home – hence me writing to you now – but I’m sitting on a time bomb until the problem re-occurs. So after writing this, I will have to drive to my nearest Apple store – a two-hour round trip.

I am not holding my breath for an instant fix when I get there. The riveting saga of the dodgy space bar, will, no doubt, be continued…

Sh1t happens… for all of us

You might be thinking of a similar experience you’ve had: Something “small” goes wrong in your life and the solution never turns out to be quite as simple or as quick as you’d hoped.

This kind of “spanner in the works” inevitably happens when you’re busy, when you’ve got an important and urgent deadline; when you really cannot afford the time.

Let’s face it: Sh1t happens.

It seems that life conspires to see how much more nonsense you can take. And the less time you have, the more time the issue will take. It’s almost as if there might be an additional Newtonian Law we haven’t yet proven: For every problem, the amount of time it takes to resolve is in inverse proportion to the time available.

Not so long ago, this series of time drains would have made me into a foul, angry, bad-tempered, slightly unhinged, highly stressed harpy. My knickers would have been in a right old twist.

However, I have *mostly* kept smiling…

Amanda, are you on drugs?

I believe that there is ONE thing that has made a HUGE difference to me being a less stressed out woman. Whilst I’m certainly not sitting here with a beatific smile on my face, a halo over my head and a zen-like aura of calm, I AM taking most of this in my stride.

For example:

• I was able to be philosophical about the train that broke down, doubling my journey length.
• I was able to laugh at myself and appreciate the extra walk after getting lost even WITH the aid of Google Maps.
• I refrained from taking out my annoyance on the guy in the Apple store because the service I’m paying for failed to deliver
• Whilst the LAST place I want to be today is in a large, windowless shopping centre trying to get the problem fixed, I’m looking forward to borrowing the bloke’s car (decent acceleration) to drive there: Silver lining!
• And I’m very aware of how LUCKY I am to have a problem like this : First world problem, innit?!

So what has made me calm and philosophical about a frustrating series of time drains?

And do *you* want some of what I’ve been taking? 🙂

Drum Roll Please…The best thing ever for stressed out women is…

No, it’s NOT drugs. Or Prossecco. It’s not even coffee.
And no, it’s not regular……………exercise.

The one thing that is the best thing ever for stressed out women is **meditation** – also known as mindfulness. I’ve been practicing meditation reasonably regularly for about 2 ½ years.

In the past couple of months, I resolved to make my meditation practice the ONE SINGLE HABIT that I do, without fail, on a daily basis.

And I’m convinced that it’s changing my brain for the better!

What if this could help YOU to cope better?

If a barmy, fiery, electrical-breaking disaster-zoned fruitcake like me is able to remain calm(er), then how might meditation help YOU?

• What if this made you less critical of yourself and more accepting?
• What if this helped you to shout less at your kids and feel like a better mum?
• What if this helped you to remember more and forget less? And let’s face it, you have a lot to remember!
• What if this helped you not to take a snide comment from a co-worker to heart and you were able to shrug it off more easily?
• What if this helped you not to wake up at 3am worrying about your project deadline?
• What if this simply helped you to roll with the punches more?

The Scientific Proof That This Works

The Washington Post published a fascinating article last year showing how meditation not only reduces stress, but also changes your brain. A neuroscientist from Harvard conducted brain scans demonstrating the changes that meditation makes to many areas of the human brain.

Long term meditators have increased amount of grey matter in the insula and sensory regions, the auditory and sensory cortex, the frontal cortex and the prefrontal cortex.

None of which will mean much to you unless you’re a neuroscientist! However, what all this does mean is that meditation can improve your memory, your sense of equanimity, your sense of perspective and your ability to empathise, to name but a few.

And as for the impact that meditation might have on your stress levels: The area of the brain associated with stress – the amygdala, responsible for our fight or flight response – got smaller for the people in the group who went through an 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction programme.

You can read the whole article here.

“But Amanda.. I don’t have time to meditate”

Wrong, rubbish, incorrect! If I have time, so do you!

We carve out time for the things we value. If you think you don’t have time to meditate, it’s because you don’t value it.

The tricky thing is, you won’t value it until you experience the benefits. And you won’t experience the benefits if you don’t carve out the time on a daily basis and do it for several months. Bit of a catch 22, isn’t it? I completely understand that, as it’s taken me years to get to the stage of committing to meditate on a daily basis.

Which is why I’m writing to you about it today. I’m hoping to convince you.

If you read the Washington Post article, you might think that you need to find a meditation teacher and carve out 40 minutes a day. This is not my experience. I meditate for 15 minutes a day. When I’m really pressed for time, I reduce that to 10 minutes.

And as this Buddhist Monk will tell you in a 90 second You Tube video, you can spend just a minute meditating and still experience benefits.

Here’s how I make time to meditate…

And the only way I can possibly keep the promise to myself to meditate on a daily basis is by doing it first thing, before I get up. Before coffee, before kids, before anything!

The difference is that I’ve set my alarm 15 minutes earlier and I committed to myself. This happens, no matter what.

I open the blinds, sit up in bed, grab my phone and open an app. The one I use is called “Get Some Headspace” and I pay a subscription for it. However, you don’t have to pay for an app. Try a few of the apps for free or type in “10 minute mindfulness” into YouTube. You’ll find plenty of free lessons.

A Baby Step Challenge to help you get started

Tomorrow is the start of a new month, the perfect time to start a challenge.
Baby steps are always the best way to create positive new habits. So here’s my simple and gentle challenge for you:

1. Set your alarm 5 minutes earlier.
2. Sit up in bed
3. Set a timer for 5 minutes
4. Close your eyes
5. Put your hands on your belly and focus on your breathing for 5 minutes.
6. Try saying “in” as you breathe in and “out” as you breathe out.
7. Do it for 7 days straight, no matter what. Commit to it.

If you find this easy, try 10 minutes for the next 7 days.

Meditation doesn’t have to be hard – don’t overthink it and don’t worry if your mind wanders. All you need to do is gently bring yourself back to focusing on your breathing.

Let me know how you get on, and please share this post with all the busy, juggling stressed out women (and men) you know. It might just inspire them to give it a try.

And now, I’ll leave you, as – guess what? My space bar has started missing a beat again!

It’s off to the Apple Store for me…with an ever so slightly beatific smile on my face. 🙂

Last week, I presented a webinar on working parent guilt for a corporate client. It’s a subject I know only too well…

Having been a mum for 14 years and having coached so many mums for almost the same length of time, my old mate Guilt pops in for a cuppa and a chat on a regular basis.

The last time Guilt made a social call at my house was a week last Monday. I remember the visit very well indeed. The boys and I had returned from a wonderful holiday in Spain the day before.

I thought I was organised for their first day back at school and up to a certain point, I was. I’d managed to unpack the suitcases, a small miracle as it usually takes me weeks. I’d laid out their uniforms the night before and I’d made their packed lunches.

So far so good. Then it all went wrong…

We couldn’t find Freddie’s school shoes anywhere. We went from on time for the first day back to slightly late. Freddie had to wear a pair of grey and green shoes – the closest thing he has to formal black school shoes. I shouted at Freddie.

But it got worse…

We drove down to school. As we turned into the school road, I saw a child with a suitcase. He was in non-uniform.

I’d forgotten – it was his residential visit.

I uttered several profanities:

“Fred – it’s your residential today. Oh no (insert profanities here).. I’d completely forgotten”

And then, in front of my poor little boy, I burst into tears. I felt like the worst mother IN THE WORLD. And it wasn’t as if this was the first time I’d forgotten it was a “special day”. I felt GUILTY. I cried tears of guilt and shame – you can’t get a more toxic combination of those kind of tears.

I drove back home and raced into the house with Fred, giving him panicked instructions to take his uniform off.

I called my friend Claire to ask her what I needed to pack for the residential:

“Amanda, calm down” she said. “The Residential is next week”

I looked in my diary.
Oh.
So it was.

So I’d done a double cock up. I was convinced it was this Monday, had forgotten and then realised it had never been this Monday. Even more Guilt.

I felt guilty for:

• Upsetting Freddie
• Not being more organised
• Making him late

and on and on it went. Guilt. Guilt. Guilt.

I asked friends who are parents “When was the last time you felt guilty as a parent?”

Rachel said, “This morning as #2 daughter left for school and I realised I’d barely said 2 words to her, apart from the nagging to get dressed, brush teeth, hurry up etc.”

Another Rachel said, “I think the worst time in the last few months was just before Christmas when I got stuck on a train with no driver coming out of London (Southern rail contribute to many of my parenting fails) and I missed my youngest playing one of the lead roles in the school nativity. I was gutted.”

Gill said, “Yesterday when I was late for school meeting due to train arriving back from London 10 mins late making me 10 minutes late therefore enabling the parental failure button to be pressed.”

As I started writing this, my dear friend Claire, who to me is the epitome of Wonderful Mum, has just messaged me to say she felt guilty for not having done something earlier about an issue one of her kids is facing. I could wax lyrical about what a wonderful, balanced, kind, funny, simply gorgeous mum Claire is. Yet she said she felt guilty.

What was she guilty of?

Not being perfect.
Not being all seeing, all knowing
Not having the benefit of perfect hindsight

And who is perfect? Who is all seeing, all knowing? Who does have perfect hindsight?

I find that guilt had reduced its coffee dates with me over my years of parenting. However, it seems to have become a more constant friend since divorce. As I have more to do now, I inevitably make more mistakes, miss things or simply have to say no to many things. Guilt loves to keep me company every time I can’t be the perfect mum.

Hmmmm… now there’s a phrase – perfect mum. Perfect parent.

Of course, there’s no such thing as perfect, is there? yet we frequently expect perfection from ourselves, especially as working parents. We expect to be able to serve everybody, be in 2 places at once. We expect ourselves to be Super Heroes.

And Super Heroes are fictitious characters, so THAT ain’t working for us, is it?

Enough already. What do we do about it?

Well, there are several things we can do to discourage our old mate Guilt from calling in too often, but today I’d like to focus on the one that, in my experience, helps more than any other.

First of all, we need to distinguish between “healthy guilt” and “unhealthy guilt”. Healthy guilt can push us in a positive direction of change. When we are not living our lives in accordance with our values – what is inherently important for us – guilt can steer us in the right direction.

However, for the purposes of this post, we’ll assume we all know what unhealthy guilt is – a toxic emotion. In fact it’s not even a real emotion. In Transactional Analysis terms, it’s a “racket emotion”, meaning that there are emotions underneath it.

Unhealthy guilt can lead to stress, anxiety, depression and fear. We don’t want any of that, so we need to step back and learn a strategy for dealing with guilt.

Here’s the one thing I know for sure that will help you deal with unhealthy guilt:

**Look** for the GAP between your expectations and reality.**

Here’s how to do that in 3 simple steps:

1. Grab a piece of paper and brainstorm all the times when you have felt guilty. It might help to write “I feel guilty when” at the top of the paper
2. Now write all of the expectations you have of yourself. Think about what you expect of yourself at home as well as at work
3. Look for the gaps. If, like Gillian, you expect to be able to influence the train companies’ punctuality, you might want to adjust your expectations

In itself, this exercise is simplistic. It’s telling you what you already know. But the thing about guilt, is that we don’t see what we already know. By doing this exercise, you are using your rational brain to put things into perspective.

You might find, when you do this exercise, that there is still some nagging guilt left behind. Take that kernel of guilt and ask yourself, “Is there a change that I really want to make here?” If the answer is yes, then you have yourself a highly desirable goal. But be careful not to create “should” or “ought to” goals. Enlist the help of a friend or partner with a healthy dose of common sense and rational thinking to challenge you.

I’ll leave you with 10 things to remind yourself of next time you’re beating yourself up with guilt:

1. You’re not the first, you won’t be the last to feel guilty. You’re not alone in feeling guilty. We’re all in this together, muddling through life as best we can.
2. Stop striving for perfection – it’s a fool’s game, because it’s impossible.
3. You’ll never be guilt-free, as kids are great at finding the weaknesses in our defences. It’s par for the course.
4. Roll with the punches, go with the flow, bend with the wind (choose your metaphor!) It makes life a lot easier when you stop trying to control everything.
5. Get into the habit of forgiving yourself, no matter what. It makes you into a kinder parent anyway.
6. Remember that we often drop a proverbial ball because we are trying to juggle too many of them. When you next miss something (see my story above), see it as an opportunity to look for a way to simplify, rather than an opportunity to beat yourself up.
7. Surround yourself with supportive people who love you and who can put it into perspective.
8. And weed out the negative people in your lives. You know the ones – they delight in telling you how wonderfully perfect their life is, often in sly, insidious ways. Get rid. Life is too short for psychic vampires.
9. Don’t take yourself, parenting, work or any of it too seriously. Humour is one of the most powerful antidotes to guilt.
10. Good enough is good enough.

How has your week been? Has it been slow or fast? Hard or easy? Fun or downright NOT fun? Has it been a bit MANIC?!

I started writing this email to you yesterday afternoon on the train back home from London This week has indeed been manic: Jam-packed with great connections, opportunities, challenges and events. I have met some wonderful people, achieved positive things and worked really really hard!

Maybe, like mine, your life can often be a bit manic, packed with things like this..

▪ Meetings
▪ Client delivery
▪ Commuter chaos
▪ Organising extra childcare due to travel
▪ Ditto for dog care!
▪ Trying to figure out what you’re going to feed the kids at night
▪ Wishing your kids would get to bed so you can go to bed early

If any of these strike a chord, here are 8 of my own top tips that help me. And I share them with you in the hope that they will help to keep you sane, happy and healthy too, even when life is a bit manic!

1. Choose sleep!

One of the things you have to consciously make a priority as much as possible when life is manic is getting enough sleep as possible. I realise the irony of this, of course! However, lack of sleep causes cortisol levels to rise which increases stress. Apart from the more serious health risks of elevated cortisol over a long period of time, in the short term when you’re tired you eat more when you’re tired, you put weight and so on.

However…

2. Don’t get stressed if you’re not getting enough sleep!

According to one tabloid I glanced at yesterday, here in the UK we’ve had the “HOTTEST JULY EVER”. Us Brits tend to start melting as soon as we get a heatwave, we don’t cope very well. Which means we haven’t slept too well here this week. My point is this: Don’t sweat it (pardon the pun) if you have a few bad nights sleep. Seek opportunities for a few minutes rest throughout your day. You WILL get through that important client meeting even if you feel as if you’re an extra on the set of The Walking Dead. You WILL make it til the end of the day even though you are so tired your brain is addled. Remember what I said about cortisol levels? Well, you’ll raise them even more if you get stressed about not sleeping!

3. Accept that it IS hard

If you’re a mum or a carer, it is hard. I’m a single mum and it’s really hard sometimes. I can’t just flop on the sofa as soon as you get in from a busy day and there’s nobody else to do one thing whilst you do another. Many of you will know about that anyway with partners working away from home. Your kids will want your attention, kids are selfish and quite frankly they don’t really give 2 hoots about your problems. Try to be the “adult”, shrug your shoulders and remember why you love the little blighters!

4. Prepare some good stuff so you are reasonably well nourished

Easier said than done when you’re busy, I know! But we all know that what we put in our bodies has a big effect on how we feel. I’ve been carrying a bag of nuts around with me this week, a flask of iced mint tea and a bottle of water. I can tell you that these things were manna from heaven when I got caught in the worst “commuter chaos” of the year on Wednesday on “the hottest day of the year”.

5. Listen to your body

Right now I’m pretty tired and I’ve noticed a tummy ache which greeted me on Wednesday morning and hasn’t completely left yet. I know what this is – too much adrenaline coursing through my body, not surprising with all the things that are going on. But the point is this – be mindful of what your body is telling you. It has taken me many years to “get” this!

I’ve seen too many of my clients and friends literally make themselves ill by not listening to the warning signs. If something starts niggling, then think about what you can do to gently deal with it. For me, it means more mini mindfulness moments (meditation) each day, putting my hands on my tummy and constantly reminding myself that “this too shall pass”. Yep.. it can be that simple!

6. Do what you can when you can to redress the balance

I have decreed Sunday as a complete relaxation day. No rushing round, no extreme physical exertion, no work, just a complete wind down. If you’ve got a run of manic days, look in your diary for slots when you can just switch off and SCHEDULE THEM IN!

7. Look for EVERY opportunity for fun and humour

I save the best for last: I do this every day and I think it’s the most important tip! Life can be serious, which is exactly why you need to train yourself to see the funny side, look for the absurd, lighten up and go with the flow. Put a smile on your face and remember that, whatever your challenges right now, this is just another opportunity to build your resilience and look for the ridiculous, mad, daft or fun side.