Are you tired?

As a life coach, women often come to see me in a state of exhaustion.

I’m so tired. Business has just been flat out, work has me doing crazy hours. I’m training and writing a book and completing my MBA on the side. The kids have sport and my partner’s travelling and I’m helping at school and I’m caring for my parents. I’m exhausted.

These women are smart and focused and committed to living and working well. But they feel like it’s all gotten to be too much – they have mortgages and work and volunteering and exercise and clubs and committees and boards and kids and partners and commitments. They’re scheduled to the hilt, balanced precariously and feeling as though if just one thing slips – if a kid falls sick or the nanny quits unexpectedly or work lets them go or the plane is late landing or grandparents forget pickup – then the life they have built will tumble, spectacularly and disastrously.

Their lives are so tightly woven that they feel there is no room for movement, no way to find some calm, some rest, some room to replenish their reserves, to rejuvenate. No room to get back to themselves and to the life they always intended to live.

When they come to coaching, these women often tell me that they just need to make a few changes to try and squeeze just a bit more in: maybe I should wake up an hour earlier to exercise; maybe I should study at night; maybe I should do a bit of work on Sundays.

To me that just seems like doing more of what isn’t working.

I gently suggest an alternative: getting back to what really matters and then refining life accordingly.

Tags: life-coaching, Melbourne