What I really want women to know
(because you think you're not doing enough...)
We’re ridiculously capable. Maybe…a little too capable.
Our society banks on us doing more than our fair share.
The experts, scripts & systems will just give us more to manage.
No one is coming to save us, so we must save ourselves.
I also believe:
It’s easier said than done to go your own way.
It’s more ambiguous to figure out what is actually going to work for you.
The answer to a capacity problem is not about what you should add to the equation in an attempt to balance it.
You’re the expert on your own life. You just need to trust yourself enough to believe it.
I’m hardly going to tell you that I can be the expert on your life or how best to navigate it. What I can do is share what I’m noticing, in hopes that it helps point you in a direction that makes things a little bit clearer as you figure out your next move.
Usually, it comes down to the beliefs you’ve been holding onto that truly aren’t serving you. That it’s all yours to handle. That if you’d just try a little harder things will click into place. Or that just because you are capable, you should.
Life isn’t something meant to be managed. And this is where we stop believing that our success in life is measured by how much more we do. More capacity, more systems, more deference, more output, more visibly holding it together.
Despite what society wants us to believe, we are not falling short of a reasonable standard. It’s the standard that’s failing us.
Talk soon,
Erin
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I’m Erin, a former teacher, wife & mom of two in Boulder, Colorado. This is where I write about what it looks like to stop running my life the way I was told to & start trusting what I know is right for me instead.
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I said a few days ago that so much of what gets called clumsy, stupid, inconvenient, or judged is actually just very human. It’s human to make mistakes, and it’s crazy that we’re all expected to be perfect.