Your business does not care that your mother is ill.
When your life changes, your business doesn’t pause.
It does not pause for the relationship that is changing, the child who has left, the body that feels different now, or the quiet voice asking whether this is still what you want.
Your business just keeps demanding like a toddler. And for every demand, you keep delivering. Why? Because that is what you do isn’t it?!
But deep inside something has shifted. Something you haven’t been ready to admit, but you know it.
Pressure Has a Disguise
Pressure doesn’t arrive in life with a banner or a T-Shirt slogan. It arrives looking like this…
“I’m just stuck.”
“I can’t seem to press the button.”
“I’ve lost my confidence.”
“I’ve got too much going on.”
“I’ll be OK when…”
Capable women are very good at making pressure look like competence. They still answer the emails. Still make the decisions. Still keep the business moving while life is changing in the background and they protect what’s going on in the background with their life.
But, silently and relentlessly the hidden cost accumulates. Then one day, it seems to arrive suddenly and with a fanfare.
What It Actually Looks Like
She has the experience, the shiny offer and the track record. She has invested her time, hard earned money and boundless energy into building something really worthwhile. But when it came to the edge, she couldn’t move it forward.
On the surface she was told it was a marketing problem, so more time and money was spent. Still no result. Then she was told it was a messaging problem, then a confidence problem. Every problem, more time, more money building more pressure against a narrowing time window.
Underneath everything her mother is declining.
The weight of impending matriarchal responsibility builds more pressure Her household feels harder than it used to be to hold together at the same time as her body develops a life of its own until she no longer recognises herself. But she keeps delivering against the backdrop and a real creeping sense that she had somehow become less visible in her business, in her own life and to herself.
She didn’t need another strategy. She needed to stop holding it all together alone long enough to see what was actually in the way.
She learned that life and business do not take turns. They play hard and run simultaneously. She’d been waiting for the right moment to deal with one or the other, but she’s come to accept that life will eventually make the decision for her.
The Risk of Waiting
The business does not get easier when life gets harder. There is instead even more urgency for consistent revenue. Clients need to be served in what seems like an instant, with no time to think. And the decisions? They still need to be made with her trademark clarity which is harder to find than ever before.
But decision making under invisible pressure looks to the onlooker a lot like indecision. Visibility under a weight you can’t name looks like hiding – that’s what people say. Momentum, when your energy is split ten ways, looks like spinning – that’s what it feels like.
And the longer the knot stays tangled with life, business, identity, money, responsibility all pulling in different directions, the harder it becomes to find the thread that actually needs to be pulled first.
The personal cost shows up in the business. It’s manageable at first, the plan seemed doable until the next unexpected event. Then, the revenue stalls, opportunities are not taken and the vision never quite reaches what it was meant to be.
Stop Holding It Alone
The answer is not another plan or another course or being told what to do next.
It is one proper conversation. Confidential. Without agenda. The kind where you say the truth out loud about the business, about what’s happening in your life, about what you actually want and in the moment, something becomes clear that wasn’t clear before.
Once the real problem, which is the problem invisibly buried underneath the visible problems is seen, it loses its stickiness. All the gripping, tightening, mind spinning like a washing machine stops. Shoulders drop, jaw softens, breath calms as the next step becomes obvious and that’s when the business turnaround happens and the revenues rise.
Let’s be straight about this, the problems have to be acted upon to make a difference, but when you stop carrying the weight of a pressure long enough you’ll see the next steps straight and clear.
Don’t wait for it to get worse.
Get in touch and let’s have a confidential conversation that costs nothing, but might change everything. 30 minutes for a virtual coffee. No script. No sales pitch. Just an honest conversation between two people. Nothing to prepare… just turn up.
Love. Gail.