Ep #124: The Work-Wellness Imbalance: How to Make Time for Yourself

This is the Strong Is a Mindset podcast, Episode #124.

If you’re wondering what your career has to do with wellness, let’s talk about it.

This is the Strong Is a Mindset podcast, where you’ll learn how to build both a strong body and a strong mind by eating, moving, and thinking. I’m your host Physician, Personal Trainer, Certified Health Coach and Certified Life Coach, Carrie Holland.

Hey, how are you? What’s new? What’s good? So, what’s good here, we are going to talk about the intersection of career, family, and wellness today. This episode may be a little different because I’m not digging into the science today. As much as I love getting into the weeds about science and research, and studies and systematic reviews, that is not where we’re going.

Instead, I want to offer you some reflections and some realizations that I made recently about the connection between career and wellness. And what inspired this episode is the experience I had at two conferences I recently attended.

First, I had the privilege of being a mentor at the SEAK conference. This conference is all about non-clinical careers for physicians. I had the opportunity to talk with a number of physicians who are wondering what else they can do with their medical degree besides seeing patients.

And then, the following week, I had the opportunity to speak at the Mayo Clinic’s GRIT conference for women in medicine. GRIT stands for Growth, Resilience, Inspiration, and Tenacity. And I had the opportunity to speak about the power and utility of life coaching.

And at both conferences, I shared about how I left clinical medicine in order to become a full-time life coach. So I recognize I was taking a risk by sharing this. There are strong opinions in the medical world about people who leave clinical medicine. Because we are no longer in the trenches doing the hard foundational work of seeing patients. We are no longer doing the work of managing charts, inboxes, patient messages, insurance prior authorizations, and all the things that come with clinical care.

And I get that. Whether you work in healthcare or not, you might have opinions about doctors who decide to leave clinical medicine and no longer see patients. And I had to rectify that for myself too. To be fully honest and take it even further, it took me a minute to even be able to declare I am a life coach when people ask me what I do.

Because while there are opinions about physicians who leave clinical medicine, there are also most definitely opinions about physicians who become coaches. And not all of those opinions are kind. So I had to get over myself and get over my fear of other people’s opinions about my life and my career. I had to have my own back and know that my pivot from clinical medicine to life coaching is in integrity with who I am.

Both of these conferences reaffirmed for me that coaching is exactly what I meant to do. Coaching is where I belong. It was at the first conference that I had somewhat of an aha moment, and I want to share it with you. Because I was able to really clarify for myself the connection between career and wellness.

And in part, this understanding came from having the same conversation over and over again with so many of the women that I met at this conference. After hearing subtle variations of the same story from so many of these women, it became very apparent that there is a legitimate, important connection between career and self-care.

The women I met with were telling me they are exhausted, they are depleted, they are spinning in circles on autopilot, and it is wearing on them. And I could totally relate. And then, a few days later, I was in a room with approximately 300 physicians and other healthcare providers, as well as some of the Mayo legal team and other Mayo faculty.

The large majority of those attendees were women. And one of the other presenters at this conference asked, during her talk, she asked for people to raise their hands if they felt that they had a good balance between career and self-care. I counted one person who raised her hand. One.

I may have missed someone, but in a room of about 300 people, and for only one person to say that she has found a balance of career and self-care, that most definitely confirms that there is work to do. And so here’s what I realized. The unifying theme among the women I work with is that they are overachievers. They overachieve at home and the unpaid work that they do taking care of their families.

And they are most definitely overachievers in their careers, too. The women I work with, they do not mess around. They are physicians, allied health providers, nurses, business women, executives. They are judges and lawyers. They are innovators and creatives. These women that I work with, they are ambitious and they have the goods to back it up. They are smart. They are talented, gritty, and successful. You look at them on paper and they have checked all the boxes, okay?

But alongside their accomplishments and success, there’s another feature that unites these women, and this is key. These women have taken care of everything and everybody at the expense of taking care of themselves. That right there is the tie that binds them all together.

In the process of achieving success and nailing it at work and maybe raising a family and doing all the things, many of these women have not taken care of either their body, their mind, or both. And maybe you can relate. Maybe for you, wellness in the form of eating, moving, and thinking is the price you are paying for your career success.

But we need to fix that, because many of the same women who are killing it at work are burning out. They’re leaving the workforce early. They feel like machines. They go numb. And they can only do that for so long. The combination of high stress, demanding work, plus the responsibility of nurturing relationships at home or raising a family before and after work has left these women drained. They’ve got nothing left for themselves.

And while many of these women recognize it, they don’t always know what to do about it. Many of the women I met do not feel that they can cut back because they fear they’ll lose all the progress they’ve made in their careers.

So the women I met and the women I work with, many of them have created substantial careers for themselves. And the pressure to uphold and be at the top of their game is real, whether that pressure is external or self-induced.

At the same time, these women don’t want to ignore the important people in their lives so they give whatever they can to their families. And what often results is that these women give so much to both work and home that they ultimately ignore their own needs. And this might be you.

With time, you might have created a life for yourself that feels hectic and overstretched. But most concerning is that you may feel like there’s no way out. It’s all important and there’s nowhere where you can make any adjustments. You might start to feel trapped by the life that you worked so hard to create. You might feel trapped by a life you thought you wanted and you might feel stuck.

And how that often manifests is that things like eating healthy and exercise don’t happen with any regularity because you just don’t have the time or energy left for it. After work is done and all the fires are put out at home and everyone else’s needs are met, you’re left with no time to take care of your own needs because you need to get whatever sleep you can so you can wake up and do it all over again tomorrow.

That is the hamster wheel right there. And while you’re on that hamster wheel, you might tell yourself, “I’ll take care of myself when things calm down. When work gets less busy. When my kids start sleeping through the night. When they turn 16 and can drive themselves around. when my puppy gets a little older.”

You may be waiting for one or all of those things to happen. But that time that you can devote to yourself never comes because things don’t calm down, and you realize there’s always something that can potentially keep you from taking care of yourself. It becomes a vicious cycle.

You keep excelling at your career, which leads you to promotions, more responsibility, better titles, wider reach, and greater influence and impact. All of those things are awesome. And your family life doesn’t slow down because with every age and every phase, there is always something. And it all comes at a cost.

When you excel at your career and take on more responsibilities, it often means more time and energy at work. That cuts down on the time and energy you have left for the important people in your life. You may feel that whatever time you aren’t busy working should be given to those people. And once again, your needs go on the back burner. And it can go on like this indefinitely.

The more times I heard this same story from so many different women, the more I realized something’s got to give. And so here’s where I had the a-ha moment. What I realized is, for many of you addressing your diet and exercise is important but that’s treating the symptom. It’s a symptomatic treatment. That’s not getting to the root of the problem.

Stick with me on this. Here’s what I mean. You want time to exercise. You want time to plan meals and eat better. You want time to think. You need time to breathe. So many of you have told me that work and life and family responsibilities are so big and so time-consuming that you have no time for yourself, and you want to fix that by incorporating self-care, like eating healthy and exercising, into your lives.

To some extent, I agree. It goes without saying, I want every woman I work with, and every person listening to this podcast, to eat and move and think in a way that supports her wellness goals. But I realize now that for many of the women I coach, and for the women I met at these conferences, and probably for so many of you listening, that it’s a symptomatic treatment for a much bigger issue.

Here’s how I know that the issue is much more and much deeper than simply fitting in diet and exercise. I get confirmation of this every time I start working with a client and she comes up with all kinds of plans and systems and goals to start eating better and exercising. But then she is able to complete exactly none of her plans because she is just too busy.

She will tell me exactly that. She will say between her work hours and family commitments and her other important relationships, she just does not have time to eat healthy or exercise. She doesn’t have time to put her plan into action.

So that tells me that it’s not just a diet and exercise issue. That tells me that it’s a work and wellness mismatch issue. You are so busy and you are so time and energy depleted that there’s no time for diet and exercise. But on a deeper level, there’s no time for you in this equation.

And if you haven’t really thought this out, you may come at this problem thinking, “All right, I’m just going to start exercising. I’ll start cooking all my meals at home. I’ll start meal prepping on the weekends.”

But if you haven’t done the real work of looking at the logistics of it, looking at the hours and energy you spend at work, or the time you spend managing your family, you may end up short-changing yourself and setting unrealistic expectations because you haven’t given yourself any time to get these things done.

Because it is one thing to say, “I have to make time to exercise. I need to find time to eat better and make some more food at home,” but it is another thing entirely to give yourself that time to do what you said you’re going to do. That means actually making a change to your schedule and your routine so that you make time for exercise and make time for eating at home.

And the point here is that if you want to change your habits, you have to have systems in place that allow you to change your habits. Simply stating, “I just need to eat better. I just need to start exercising,” you know this already, but that is not enough. That doesn’t make the habit a reality.

So what do you do? Well, as a life coach, one of my objectives is to help you get to the root cause of your problem. I do that by asking you questions. And sometimes I ask hard questions. But by asking those questions, that allows you to come up with real answers instead of, “I just need to do it,” which does not work.

And the hard question that needs to be asked in these situations is, what are you willing to change? While that may be a basic question, I think it is really important to ask. This comes not only from my own life experience, but from seeing loads of women I coach do the same thing. Squeezing in exercise and eating healthy generally does not work for the long term. Squeezing those things into your already crammed life, it doesn’t work because you’re already strapped for both time and energy.

So instead of squeezing it in, you may find that you need to make a dedicated time for it. You may need to schedule time for exercise and time for eating healthy, whether that means grocery shopping, doing food prep, making dinner at home, or a combination of these. But these habits don’t just happen, you have to make them happen.

And if you have an already busy, full schedule, what that means is something has to change. How you spend your time will need to change. You can think of it this way. If you imagine the 24 hours of your day represented as a pie chart, those 24 hours are divided up between the various commitments that you have.

There may be a piece for sleep, a piece for work, commuting, shuffling kids, getting showered and dressed, etc. So if you’re going to add a piece to the pie chart that represents exercise or time to prepare food or time for self-care, it has to come at the cost of something else. If you’re going to add something into your 24-hour pie chart, that means one or more of the other slices of the pie may need to shrink.

So the question is, how do you do that? What can you change? How will you make time for yourself in your already full life? And so while asking what you are willing to change is an essential question, because it’s a logistical one and you literally have to be able to find time if you want to exercise or eat healthy, there’s more to it.

What are you willing to change is actually a surface level question with another bigger question underneath it. That bigger question is, how uncomfortable are you willing to get? How uncomfortable are you willing to get?

I shared that question while I was on stage at the GRIT Conference, and I think it’s a good one to ask yourself. Most of you who want to eat better, exercise, have time for yourself, time for self-care. Most of you know that in order to do those things, something needs to change. That is generally pretty easy for most of you to identify.

But where it gets sticky is actually executing that change. It’s putting the rubber to the road and actually doing the thing, even when it gets hard. It’s when you have to make the time to plan out your meals, or you have to leave work early enough to go for your run, or shut down your computer for the day instead of staying another 30 minutes and answering emails. That’s when it gets hard. It’s in the execution.

Because remember what we know about change, change is uncomfortable. Change does not feel good for most of us. Your brain does not like change. Your brain sees change as a threat to be corrected, so it will do anything and everything to avoid change and go back to the status quo. Even if that status quo is keeping you stuck right where you are.

Remember, your brain doesn’t care about anything other than this very moment. Your brain only knows that comfort equals familiar equals safety, right now. So even though you may recognize and believe that changing your life and making time for yourself will help you in the long run, your brain really does not give a hoot about it because it only cares about the here and now.

Your brain wants comfort now and does not care about a month from now, when you’re still winded going up the stairs because you still haven’t started exercising. Your brain does not care about three months from now, when your pants are feeling just a little tighter from eating fast food because you still haven’t made time to plan for eating healthier.

Your brain does not care about five years from now, when you potentially have worsened overall health, both mental and physical, because you stayed comfortable and stayed stuck with the status quo. Your brain only wants to be safe in this instant. And that is often where change stops before it even gets started.

So the real question to ask then is, how uncomfortable are you willing to get? Are you willing to let the change to your schedule feel uncomfortable? Are you willing to make asks of your family or your work in order to change your schedule or change your house rhythm so that you can have more time for yourself?

Are you willing to feel the discomfort of declaring out loud that it is time for you to take care of yourself? And to take it a step further, are you willing to feel uncomfortable if other people have opinions about you when you go to bed early so you can get up early? Are you willing to feel uncomfortable if people have opinions of you when you decline to take on yet another unpaid committee role?

How uncomfortable are you willing to get in order to actually change the way your life works so that you have time for yourself? Honestly, I think that is the real question to be asking. And that is a question that only you can answer for yourself. And remind yourself what we know about discomfort, that’s where all the growth and change is.

So the founder of the Life Coach School where I trained, she said it best. She said, “Discomfort is the currency of your success.” So the more discomfort you are willing to feel, the more success you will have. And that’s true for fitness, career, relationships, all of it. Decide for yourself how willing you are to feel discomfort in order to change your life and take care of your needs. Okay?

Now that we’ve teased out what’s really at stake here, and I’ve given you some big questions to consider, let’s also talk about what you can do about this. What are some real, actionable things that you can start doing now in order to create time and space for you to take care of yourself?

Well, the very first thing I would suggest is to consider where in your life you need to set boundaries. Often, when a client tells me how overstretched she is and then we really dissect it, we’ll find that she has either not set or not enforced boundaries at home, at work, or both. So we’ve got to address that.

And to be clear, a boundary is not telling someone what else to do. Okay? A boundary is also not an ultimatum. It’s not saying, “Stop asking me to do stuff.” No. Boundaries sometimes get mistaken as being punitive or confrontational or even selfish, but that is not it at all.

Boundaries, at their most basic level, are limits or guidelines that you establish to protect and really maintain your wellbeing and autonomy in a relationship, whether that is with work, family, friends, or really anyone. To make this even more clear, boundaries describe how you will meet your own needs as an individual within the context of your relationship with another person.

The reason I truly believe that everyone needs to set boundaries is because having boundaries allows you to take care of your own needs. I’m going to say that again because it is just that important.

Having boundaries allows you to take care of your own needs. And I would argue that being able to take care of your own needs is an essential feature of being an adult, because no one can take care of your needs for you. No one else is responsible for making sure you eat healthy if that is what you want to do. No one else is responsible for carving out 30 minutes for you to get on your Peloton if that’s what you want.

As adults, it’s our responsibility to take care of our own needs, and boundaries will help you do that. At its core, a boundary describes how you will take care of yourself and create independence within your relationships.

For me, as someone who is generally afraid to have any sort of boundaries, I had to shift how I thought about them. And then, with work and practice, and of course, shifting my perspective. Now, instead of being intimidated by boundaries, I consider boundaries an essential means of giving myself personal agency. Boundaries give you authority over yourself. I would encourage you to give yourself permission to set them.

Recognize that as a human, you’ve got free will. And because you have free will, you always have the choice to think, feel, and act in any way that you choose. Always. But sometimes you don’t feel that way. Sometimes you feel that you have to agree to every volunteer opportunity, or say yes to every committee invitation, or go to every work dinner, or go to every kid’s basketball game, or say yes to all the things when really you want to say no.

Sometimes it may feel like you have no choice. But the reality is, that just is not true. Because you always have a choice, and boundaries are your way of communicating that choice. Okay? All right.

And so, while I just spent all this time talking about how a boundary is all about you, let’s also talk about the other person involved here, because your boundaries will most certainly impact someone else. And if you just cringed at that, like I did when I first considered the idea, I got you.

So while it might be challenging to make your boundary known, you also may have to manage the reaction to your boundary when you do make it clear, and that’s where it can get messy. When you really boil it down, sharing boundaries can be a challenge because it essentially highlights the conflict between your needs and the expectations or the wants that people have of you.

And when you’re a high achiever or an overachiever, and you’re used to meeting and exceeding expectations, this can get hard. Most people don’t like not meeting expectations, but when this gets hard, and if you find yourself preoccupied with the other person’s reaction to your boundary, remember two things.

First, remember why you are setting the boundary in the first place. You are setting a boundary to give yourself the space to meet your own needs. It is not your boss’s responsibility to meet your needs. It’s not your co-worker’s responsibility to meet your needs. It’s not your partner’s responsibility to meet your needs. That responsibility is yours.

And second, when you create a boundary, recognize that you cannot control the other person’s thoughts, feelings, and especially their actions, related to that boundary. So even though your boundary may impact the other person in your relationship, you are ultimately not responsible for how that person responds to it. Okay?

You are not responsible for how the other person responds to your boundary. That is so very important to understand. To be clear, you’re not being rude or snarky or mean when you’re setting your boundary. You are simply communicating it. You’re sharing it, that’s it. And the person on the other end has to decide how to respond to it.

I’ll share something that I remind myself of commonly whenever I feel uncomfortable about establishing a boundary. The people who are most upset by you creating boundaries are often the ones who most benefited from you not having any in the first place.

And I remind myself of that because it helps me realize that I am the only one who is going to give myself permission to prioritize myself. So remember that boundaries are not an attempt to control another person. Instead, think of your boundaries as how you will control yourself. Okay? The boundary is really about you. It’s not about the other person.

Because people can and will ask you to do things. Your boss can ask you to take on another project. Your coworker can ask you to go to a meeting in her place, or ask you to join a certain committee. Your partner can ask you to pick up groceries.

You can’t control what other people do, and you can’t control what people ask of you. But your authority is in how you respond. You get to decide how to respond. Remember, you’re always in charge of yourself, no matter what anyone does or says to you, and no matter what anyone asks of you.

So if you get asked to take on something that is cutting into your already very scarce free time, you have a decision to make. And please remember that you always have a choice. That may mean that you make a choice to say no.

Okay, so I want to address something that comes up frequently when I get into this with clients, because you may have run into this too. And that is, what if you feel there is no way you can say no? What if you feel that there is no way you can set a boundary? What if there is no way you can come back at work, or rearrange your schedule, or change things at home in order to make time for yourself? Then what?

I bring this up because I’ve run into it. I will have a client tell me there is nothing she can change because everything is important. She’ll say there’s too much going on for her at work and at home, and there’s no way she can scale back or set boundaries. And that is where we have to have a real hard look at priorities, and look for what is possible.

So if you tell me that you really want to eat better, or exercise, or if you tell me you really want to make time for yourself, but you also tell me there’s nowhere in your life you can change in order to make time and space for those, well, then we need to decide if this truly is a priority for you. If taking better care of yourself is a true priority, then I would argue we need to get creative and find a way to make it happen.

At the same time, if changing your eating habits or establishing exercise is not a priority, then give yourself permission to state that instead of trying to make it a priority when in reality it’s not. Here’s why I say this. It is just as empowering to declare that something is a priority as it is to declare that something is not a priority.

The best part about this is that you get to decide. Just like boundaries, you get to decide for yourself whether exercise, eating healthy, and time for yourself are priorities. No one can decide that for you. And if you do decide that taking better care of yourself, through eating and moving, are priorities, then we have to commit to finding a way to make it happen.

It may mean that we take a very microscopic view of all the things you’re doing and how you’re spending your time so we can dissect where you can make adjustments to give yourself the time you need to take care of yourself. And as I say all of this out loud, I want to acknowledge that this is easy to say but it can be really hard to put into practice.

It can be really hard to prioritize yourself if you’re not used to doing it. And this is the case for most of the women I work with. Women are not taught to prioritize themselves. We are taught to take care of everything and everybody else first. But I would argue that there needs to be a paradigm shift, because subscribing to this belief that women have to be martyrs in order to get anywhere is leaving us fried.

We need to keep reminding ourselves, and we need to keep reminding each other that we have to find time to take care of ourselves. It really is essential, and so you may have some unlearning to do. You may have to really zone in and give yourself permission to prioritize yourself and prioritize your wellness, and then make the necessary changes to your life, your schedule, and within your relationships, to actually make that happen.

It will mean saying no. It will mean creating boundaries, and that will mean feeling uncomfortable. I would encourage you to consider how much short-term discomfort you are willing to tolerate as you make changes to your life and schedule so that you can have the longer-term comfort of self-care in its place. I can tell you that it is entirely worth it. All right?

Here are a few other things to keep in mind. When you prioritize your needs and work self-care into your life, you will not only feel better, but you will perform better. I know I said I wasn’t going to get into the science today, but there are scientific articles suggesting that people who exercise tend to have higher productivity and less absenteeism than people who don’t.

So if your goal is to be a high performer, honestly, it makes sense for you to find time to take care of yourself. And when I say this, I don’t mean you have to start exercising five times a week for 30 minutes at a time. You don’t have to sign up for a 5k road race. You don’t have to start eating nothing but tofu and salads.

If you have been around here at all, you know I am all about the slow and steady approach. This is especially true when you’re changing your schedule, changing your family rhythm, and changing your habits. You don’t need to do anything drastic.

Instead, look for what is possible and find the smallest shift you can make to give yourself time and space for you. Decide what it is. Is it getting up just a little earlier in the morning so you can stretch? Is it going to bed earlier and turning off your phone earlier and cutting off scrolling social media so you get a little more sleep at night so you can get up in the morning?

Is it that you set some time aside on the weekend to plan out your meals and grocery shop so you’ve got produce in your house? What is it? What is the smallest step you can take to get you moving in a different direction?

And remember, we are not aiming for perfection. We’re talking about creating new habits here. We’re talking about changing up your routine. It is not going to be seamless, okay? I will tell you that from the outset. It’s not going to be 100%, and that’s okay. You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be willing to try something new.

You may know this already, but let me shout it out because this is really what it’s about. You will feel so much better when you take care of yourself, okay? You will feel better at home. You will feel better at work. You will feel better about yourself because it feels good to be nice to yourself, okay?

So even though at the outset it may feel really hard to prioritize yourself, or it may be challenging to make your boundaries known, even though this may feel completely foreign to you, let it feel uncomfortable until it doesn’t. See it through.

I asked before how uncomfortable are you willing to get, but I should add that the discomfort I’m referring to is temporary. The discomfort of change is temporary. But if you’re willing to see that discomfort all the way through to the other side, there’s something really awesome waiting for you. And what’s waiting for you is your next best version.

In all honesty, that’s it. What’s waiting for you on the other side of the discomfort of establishing boundaries, prioritizing yourself, and changing your life to fit your needs is a new place of comfort. And that new place of comfort is where taking care of yourself is the norm, not the exception.

It’s a place where you’re no longer exhausted, but empowered. It is entirely possible. All right? If you want help with this, let’s go. When you coach with me, we will most definitely address the intersection of career, family, wellness, and we’ll work to optimize all of them. Check out my website.

Send me a message at www.CarrieHollandMD.com/contact, and let’s talk about how coaching will help you change your habits and change your life.

All right, thank you for hanging out with me, and I’ll catch you again next week.

Hey, if you’re looking for your next great read, I’ve got you covered. Head over to CarrieHollandMD.com/books and download my list of most favorite reads. I’ve got two collections waiting for you. One is all about work-life balance. The other is a collection of books that have changed my life.

I’ve referenced many of these books in the podcast, and now you can access those titles all in one place.

Again, that’s CarrieHollandMD.com/books. Check it out and find your next great read.

Thank you for listening to the Strong Is a Mindset podcast. If you want to learn more about how to build both a strong mind and a strong body by eating, moving, and most importantly, thinking, check out CarrieHollandMD.com.