Are you a high achieving woman that feels overwhelmed by stress or on the verge of burnout?

Are you checking the boxes of success yet missing out on what’s really important?

Have you ever been crippled by anxiety or felt chronically depressed?

Have you been diagnosed with a mental illness and been handed pills and talk therapy as the only solutions, with the end goal only being to ‘survive’ it?

Or do you have unexplained health issues popping up yet none of the right tools to take control of your own health?

If you can say yes to any of these, you are not alone! High achieving woman are hard wired to burn out. To overwork and put ourselves and our health last as a ‘normal’ consequence of success. To sacrifice important relationships and miss out on the things we value most. To feel overwhelmed, anxious, depressed or lacking in energy……But wait!.What if there was another way?

Through my own mental health journey and from what I’ve learned through almost 20 years of consulting and mentoring women in high impact, male dominated industries, it is possible to crush your achievements while thriving. Here are 4 holistic steps to get you started:

1. Retrain Your Brain – We are all exposed to some type of unconscious programming. Whether it be generational traumas, unhealthy relationships, toxic workplaces or even the media that have pushed us in that direction, we can sometimes find ourselves living lives that look good on paper but are not in alignment with our true selves. The first step in retraining your brain is to get clear on your values and figure out your purpose or “’your why’ and then take sometimes radical steps including hiring a coach to become accountable for reshaping your life so that it aligns.
2. Optimize Your Health – Mental health and physical health are fully intertwined, not isolated. We are either healthy or we are not. Metabolic health + gut health + brain health all drive mental health. Treating them separately, as if any pill and some talk therapy will heal us without addressing underlying traumas, conditioned patterns or nutrient deficiencies is very Western world thinking. So is thinking that simply being high performing will allow you to flourish when in reality you must create sustainable (doesn’t have to be perfect!) habits around nutrition, movement, sleep and reducing stress.
3. Cultivate Your Community – Human connection is pivotal for our health and wellness. This was never made more apparent that through the state of mental health coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic where our access to connection was either restricted or polarized. We all have varying types of connections – some familial, relational, professional or work colleagues, friends and different communities. There are those people in our lives that can energize us, those that can be energy vampires or toxic, and usually a whole spectrum in between. So become aware of your patterns, trust your gut, create healthy boundaries and find a few of those people and communities that help ‘fill your cup’.
4. Rejuvenate Your Environment – It is nearly impossible to thrive in a toxic environment. As a society (especially western world), we’ve moved away from our connection with each other and nature, we spend more time indoors, in our workplaces and in cities, we’re now exposed to 18,000+ toxic chemicals in what we eat, use in our households or put on our bodies, and we live in a capitalistic, ‘buy more stuff’, ‘pillage the earth’ society. None of it is making us happier or more connected. So, my final holistic tip is to find ways to reconnect with nature and create your own healthy environment by spending more time outside and in sunlight, declutter your spaces and buy less, surround yourself with plants, move away from toxic workplaces and people, and start paying attention to what you put in and on your body.

So, I’d like to challenge every high achieving woman out there to really ask yourself who’s in charge of your own life & who’s in charge of your health. If it doesn’t feel like it’s you right now or even if there’s just room for improvement, there’s no better time to start becoming an advocate for yourself. It’s never too late to go from surviving to flourishing. And if you’re looking for more tools and a like-minded community to help you navigate your achievements with confidence, while prioritizing what really matters, or looking to help others do the same, please consider our Certified Flourishing Wellness Coach™  and Certified Flourishing Workplace Coach™ trainings or feel free to reach out to find out more.

About the Author

Allison is a former professional engineer and management consultant turned integrated wellness consultant and transformation coach. She has a Masters in Sustainability and spent over a decade solving complex business problems for high impact energy companies while mentoring young women in a male dominated industry, before transitioning to the wellness space. Through her own mental health journey including multiple concussions and burnout, she developed many holistic tools and a voice as a mental health advocate.

She has levelled up her mental wellness toolkit by becoming a Functional Nutrition Counsellor, Metabolic Balance Coach and Flourishing Leadership and Workplace Coach. Her new company, Evolving Equilibrium, set to launch early this year, will coach high achieving women heal their lives and reclaim their magic, through an evidence-based, mind-body-environmental approach to health and wellbeing.