Why all female leaders and entrepreneurs need therapy and life coaching
If you’ve listened to our podcast and our guests, or read any of our work you’ll know that I’ve often spoken about leadership, starting a business and entrepreneurship are one of the ultimate forced personal development undertakings you’ll ever do. If you’re in business and leadership you probably also have heard that business success is often reflective of the people within the business. Whether you are a leader in your organisation , a thought leader in your field, a solopreneur or an entrepreneur one thing we have so often seen if that your vulnerabilities and old wounds will show up at some point. And a really common phenomenon we see in people who come to therapy or life coaching is people are often unaware of their true core vulnerabilities. For example, someone may come to therapy because of work stress and burnout, only to realise over time that they have a deep core belief from childhood of people being untrustworthy, which causes them to often question others’ intentions and gets in the way of forming good working relationships, which leads to the original stress and burnout they came for.
In therapy our goal is to bring the unconscious, conscious.
In other words, our goal is to get you aware of the automatic programming you’re running on. We are all products of our environment and our developmental childhood years play a part in who we are today, whether we like to admit that or not. And I can tell you from working in the field, that every single person on the planet has beliefs, insecurities and past experiences that hold them back with or without their awareness. What we often find with leaders and entrepreneurs is that the pressure cooker, high performance and fast paced nature of the work often leads to situations where these old wounds present themselves in many different ways, from burnout, to health issues, first time panic attacks, anxiety, depression, conflicts with work colleagues, difficulties in maintaining relationships and generally losing passion for life.
Female leaders and Entrepreneurs are still expected to manage the home and chase work/life balance
If you’re a female leader and in a relationship, whether that relationship is child-free or not, there is an unconscious bias in our society that women will take charge of a lot of the systems that help the household keep running. These often include getting groceries and meals planned and sorted, ensuring the house is clean and beds are made, keeping tabs on where everyone’s items are, being in charge of the social calendar and socialising with friends and family, organising holidays and gifts, keeping on top of appointments - and that’s all without all the child-rearing errands that come if you do have kids (mamma I feel you!). Often as women, we have grown up watching our mothers do these things, and have often also unconsciously downloaded this idea that it’s our job to be in charge of all of these areas of life on top of being a leader and entrepreneur, all the while not having the family and community support system that women used to have.
Women of the past often had a tribe of women we could lean on, neighbours to help pick up the kids, friends we saw through the week to help take the stress away through socialising and support, and family members to help out with the household chores and making meals. Women have never had so much on their plate, with such little support, like what we see in the individualised western world we now live in. We live in a capitalist society that has a survival of the fittest mentality that leaves us all feeling burnout and anxious about the future and our place in the world. Sadly rest, love, and connection are not valued in a society where the GDP is a measure of growth and success and this translates into our psyche as female leaders and entrepreneurs. This focus on growth actually can have a surprisingly detrimental effect on business, because growth at all costs doesn’t stop to apply sustainability and create good systems.
“You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems” - James Clear.
As mentioned above, the focus on growth in society and business not only leaves us burnt out, stressed, and anxious, but also leaves ourselves and our businesses unstable as the focus on sustainable systems has been missed. This idea of changing your lens to a focus on sustainability rather than just growth can feel like a large shift at times, and this is often another important reason why therapy and life coaching are so crucial for female leaders and entrepreneurs.
Often when leaders and entrepreneurs are growing and feeling success in life and business, there has been a period of “hustle and grind”, and what is often missed is the support systems needed to keep this level of success and integrate key learnings. The key behaviours to stay at the top of your game are missed, and much like a structure without key engineering supports in place, things can tumble and fall pretty quickly.
Therapy and life coaching for leaders and entrepreneurs ensures that you have the ability to maintain your performance- personally and professionally
Getting a great psychologist, social worker or counsellor to do therapy and life coaching is vital to ensure that you have the right systems and supports in place to maintain the growth you create. Some high rise buildings take longer to build, but they are built to withstand anything thrown its way, earthquake, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fire, which ensures that they can continue running in all conditions literally rain, hail or shine. This is the same for building habits and structures as a leader and entrepreneur to ensure that whatever is thrown at you in your business and career journey you can handle it both personally and professionally. Through coaching and therapy you can learn about your triggers both unconscious and conscious, and learn about what your strengths and areas of improvement are, which are often in your blind spot so that when you continue to reach another level of success you can maintain what’s important to you without the stress, anxiety and burnout you may be used to in the “hustle and grind” growth at all cost mentality.
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