May 2, 2025 • 11 mins
We explore why common balance strategies fail for ambitious women despite our best efforts and reveal the essential missing ingredient needed to make them finally work.
• Meditation often becomes another opportunity to ruminate on to-do lists rather than finding calm
• Time blocking frequently gets pushed to late hours (10pm-midnight) due to constant interruptions and prioritizing others' needs
• The celebrated 5am routine rarely accounts for mothers' realities and can create resentment when interrupted
• "Pink care" activities like massages and spa days often generate more guilt than rejuvenation
• Boundary-setting becomes ineffective when undermined by FOMO and people-pleasing tendencies
• The missing ingredient isn't new strategies but the mindset that supports them
If this resonated, share it with a friend who needs to hear it today, and don't forget to subscribe to Balance and Beyond for full episodes and more of these bite-sized breakthroughs.
Thank you for joining us today on the Balance and Beyond Podcast. We're so glad you carved out this time for yourself!
If you’re keen to dive deeper into our world, here are our socials where you can discover more about the toolkit that has helped thousands of women create a life of balance.
Website: www.balanceinstitute.com
Podcast Website: https://www.balanceinstitute.com/podcast
Email: jo@balanceinstitute.com
LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/stonejoanne
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/betterbalanceinstitute/
Instagram: @betterbalanceinstitute
Thanks again for tuning in, and we'll see you next time on the Balance & Beyond Podcast!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Balance and Beyond Moments.
Your weekly dose of insight,wisdom and mindset shifts, all
in 10 minutes or less, whetherit's a powerful truth, a fresh
perspective or a spark ofinspiration.
This is your space to pause,reflect and reset.
Let's dive in.
Do you feel like you're doingall the things that you're told
(00:26):
are meant to work to help bringyou balance, Whether it's
meditation, getting up early,taking care of yourself?
You've got all the fridgemagnets, you've seen all the
quotes and yet, no matter howhard you try, they are not
giving you the results that theyare meant to.
Well, you are not alone.
I thought I had what was apretty good toolkit.
(00:47):
I was doing all the things thatsuccessful people were meant to
do, and yet I was feeling worseand nothing converted.
So today I want to share withyou what actually is going on
when you're trying to use thesetools.
What is going wrong for you and, most importantly, what is the
missing ingredient?
What is the missing shift that,in particular, I have found
(01:09):
ambitious women.
What are we missing that isstopping these working for you?
And the good news is, it'sgoing to be much simpler than
you think to actually make allof these strategies and tools
finally land.
So let me share with you someof the tools that I was leaning
into the most, and there's apretty good chance you've tried
some or all of these at somepoint on your journey.
(01:33):
It's one of the things that Ilent into pretty early on,
because whenever I did anyresearch on what successful
people do and how they livetheir lives and their morning
routines was meditation.
It kept coming up again andagain and again.
So that, right, I'm going to bestill with myself, I'm going to
calm my mind.
All that happened during those10 minutes was I was constantly
(01:55):
running through the list this iswhat I need to do, and I'd get
frustrated at myself because Iforgot to buy bananas.
And then I go oh my God, Iforgot to do this and I this,
and I thought why am I lyinghere remembering all the things
that I haven't done in a day?
Now I know that the whole pointof meditation is to become
self-aware, and I was very awarethat my brain was very busy and
yet, no matter how hard I lentinto it, nothing shifted.
(02:22):
Another strategy that I thoughtright, I'm a pretty efficient
person.
I can get more done than most.
Right, I'm going to block outmy time.
I'm going to you know, this isthe strategic work that I need
to do.
I don't know about you, but Ispent a lot of my life dealing
with things that were urgent andnot important.
I was constantly putting outfires and, yes, there was.
(02:44):
A part of my job as anexecutive was to deal with what
was in front of me, but I couldnever get to the stuff that
really mattered, to thestrategic work or the work that
I really loved, that I knew Ihad to get to because that was
going to stop the fires.
But my days were this constantstream of interruptions and
pings and notifications anurgent text message and an
(03:11):
urgent this, and so, even thoughI would say, right, I'm going
to block out time for myself.
This is the piece that I haveto work on.
Sometimes, you're right, I'muncontactable.
This afternoon, non-negotiableThings always interrupted my
calendar, things always poppedin.
There was always something, youknow, something would come from
the CEO and I'd be like, oh, Ican't really say no to that.
And in the end, the only realtime I ended up blocking out
(03:35):
ended up being 10pm to midnight,on the couch, and that was the
time where nobody else was home,nobody else was awake and I
could actually do some properdeep thinking.
The challenge was, I wasexhausted, usually at that point
in time because I'd been up andhad a very busy day, and so,
(03:55):
while I thought I was doingstrategic work, it was never to
the quality that I'd hoped, andI was then up late, and then I'd
finish about, I don't know,midnight or 1230 sometimes, and
then I go oh, I just need sometime to me, and I would end up
scrolling social media for 20minutes or half an hour and
being, oh my God, it's 1am, I'vegot to get to bed, I've got to
(04:15):
get up, and that was this cycle.
Another thing that I tried todo which is very difficult when
you're up till midnight or 1amwas right, I'm going to wake up
early, I'm going to get up at5am, I'm going to have some time
to myself before everybodywakes up.
This is what I'm going to dofor myself.
Everybody swears by the 5 amclub.
(04:38):
They called it.
And yet, as I started lookinginto all these routines of let's
call them the rich and famousor the successful, you hear
about these mornings where theywake up and they meditate and
then they journal and then theydo some exercise and then you
know they have a check-in withtheir team and then they you
know they might I know somepeople bounce on trampolines or
they have a cold shower and theyhave a green smoothie.
(04:59):
You look at all of theseroutines and pretty rarely does
making lunch boxes, getting kidsout of bed, finding socks for
crazy sock day, finding a goldcoin for some donation and
digging out a rat-eared notethat you have to sign that day.
That doesn't ever reallyfeature in their plans.
(05:22):
And many of these morningroutines that we see of the rich
and famous and the successfulare men.
Very often, if they havechildren, they seem to have
either a stay-at-home life who'sdoing all of that?
Or they have nannies andcaregivers, or their kids are
much older.
And here I am trying to modelwhat I think is something that's
(05:43):
going to be good for me, basedon somebody who has a completely
different life.
And when you get woken up by achild thinking, right, I'll get
up early, this is amazing.
And then you happen to make abang and a child wakes up and
you end up then gettingincredibly grumpy at that child.
It's like how dare you wake upbefore 6.30?
(06:03):
This was my time, and so Iwould find that, even though I
was trying to wake up early, ifsomebody dared interrupt that
time, I'd be resentful, and thatwasn't the way I wanted to
start my day, and very often,because I'd been up late the
night before, I'd been fallingbehind with things rather than
actually doing things that Ineeded for me.
(06:25):
I'd be like, right, I'm goingto jump on the treadmill, let me
just stick on that washingfirst, because then, when I'm
done with the treadmill, I canthen put it in the dryer.
And all I ended up doing wasdoing an extra load of washing
which didn't have to be done.
Then, like, okay, this wholewaking up thing early,
especially when I'm in bed atone not working for me and then
(06:45):
one Mother's Day, like we all do, you know, you get a fridge
magnet.
Take care of yourself.
Self-care is the best gift ever, right?
No, I need to do more of this.
I know I need to make time formyself, and my version of what I
thought I needed to make timefor myself was what I often call
the pink care, where it's abouthave the massage, go and get
(07:06):
your nails done, go and spendthe day at the day spa, and it's
these big gestures that areoften, you know, half day, go
away with the girls, and that'sall wonderful.
And don't get me wrong, I lovea massage.
I am all for weekends away withthe girls, do whatever you need
to do.
However, in those moments, Iactually found that I was
feeling more guilty.
(07:27):
For taking the time or theeffort it took to actually get
out the door made the massagenot worth it, whether it was all
the logistics and the stuff Ihad to do just to get away for
an hour or then.
Somehow in my head there was arandom point system that I
(07:47):
counted between my husband and Iand I hear this from women all
the time and it becomes this ohokay, I've had this massage, but
now I've had some time away,now I'm going to have to give
him some time away and I don'tknow if I want to do that.
And so we beat ourselves up andnever actually enjoy the thing
that we're meant to be doing forourselves.
Does this sound familiar?
(08:09):
That you're trying to take careof yourself, but sometimes the
effort or the guilt that goesalong with that because then you
feel selfish eliminates any joyor filling up of your cup that
you get from that activity andyou start to wonder well, it's
not worth it.
It's just not worth it, I'm notgoing to bother.
Oh no, let me just stick onanother load of laundry.
(08:30):
That's one less thing off mylist.
And that suddenly becomes howwe're going to take care of
ourselves.
And then one of the last toolsthat I tried to implement and
you could call this a tool, youcould call this a way of living
was I knew that I needed to holdbetter boundaries and whether
that was better boundaries forself-care, boundaries for my
time.
And yet I always tiptoed aroundthis line between wanting to
(08:57):
yes, I want to, I don't.
I want to say no, I want timefor me.
But then what if they think I'mrude?
Or what if I'm a B-I-T-C-H,what if I miss an opportunity?
And for me, very often, when itcame to saying no or saying yes
to an opportunity or a socialevent, I have always suffered
(09:18):
from a very big case of FOMO.
And I love opportunity, I lovenew things, I love excitement
and for me, often the saying nowasn't the hard part.
I said yes because I wasexcited about it.
I was like yes to that project,because that project sounds
amazing.
What I was never very good atis saying okay, I'm going to say
yes to that opportunity.
That also means now I have tosay no to something else I've
(09:40):
already picked up, and I couldnever do that because I worried
about letting people down, or Iworried about not being asked
again to come and join thatproject or come out for dinner
or whatever it was, and so I wasconstantly torn between this
line of well, I want to beinvolved and I want to
participate, but oh well, oh,I've got so much on.
(10:00):
And then we'd go around andaround and around these circles.
So I hope there might besomething familiar there for you
in what was actually going onwith my toolkit.
And if you suffered from any ofthese, if any of these examples
ring a bell, well, what I had tolearn the hard way and I'm
hoping I can spare you all thepain is the missing ingredient,
(10:24):
especially for women, that wasstopping all of this working.
The good news is there'snothing wrong with your
strategies.
Meditation works.
Time blocking works.
Waking up early works.
You can take care of yourself.
However, if you do not have themindset that supports your
strategy, no amount ofstrategies are going to work.
(10:44):
Thanks for taking this momentfor yourself.
If this resonated, share itwith a friend who needs to hear
it today, and don't forget tosubscribe to Balance and Beyond
for full episodes and more ofthese bite-sized breakthroughs.
See you next time.
Welcome to Balance and Beyond Moments.
Your weekly dose of insight,wisdom and mindset shifts, all
in 10 minutes or less, whetherit's a powerful truth, a fresh
perspective or a spark ofinspiration.
This is your space to pause,reflect and reset.
Let's dive in.
Do you feel like you're doingall the things that you're told
(00:26):
are meant to work to help bringyou balance, Whether it's
meditation, getting up early,taking care of yourself?
You've got all the fridgemagnets, you've seen all the
quotes and yet, no matter howhard you try, they are not
giving you the results that theyare meant to.
Well, you are not alone.
I thought I had what was apretty good toolkit.
(00:47):
I was doing all the things thatsuccessful people were meant to
do, and yet I was feeling worseand nothing converted.
So today I want to share withyou what actually is going on
when you're trying to use thesetools.
What is going wrong for you and, most importantly, what is the
missing ingredient?
What is the missing shift that,in particular, I have found
(01:09):
ambitious women.
What are we missing that isstopping these working for you?
And the good news is, it'sgoing to be much simpler than
you think to actually make allof these strategies and tools
finally land.
So let me share with you someof the tools that I was leaning
into the most, and there's apretty good chance you've tried
some or all of these at somepoint on your journey.
(01:33):
It's one of the things that Ilent into pretty early on,
because whenever I did anyresearch on what successful
people do and how they livetheir lives and their morning
routines was meditation.
It kept coming up again andagain and again.
So that, right, I'm going to bestill with myself, I'm going to
calm my mind.
All that happened during those10 minutes was I was constantly
(01:55):
running through the list this iswhat I need to do, and I'd get
frustrated at myself because Iforgot to buy bananas.
And then I go oh my God, Iforgot to do this and I this,
and I thought why am I lyinghere remembering all the things
that I haven't done in a day?
Now I know that the whole pointof meditation is to become
self-aware, and I was very awarethat my brain was very busy and
yet, no matter how hard I lentinto it, nothing shifted.
(02:22):
Another strategy that I thoughtright, I'm a pretty efficient
person.
I can get more done than most.
Right, I'm going to block outmy time.
I'm going to you know, this isthe strategic work that I need
to do.
I don't know about you, but Ispent a lot of my life dealing
with things that were urgent andnot important.
I was constantly putting outfires and, yes, there was.
(02:44):
A part of my job as anexecutive was to deal with what
was in front of me, but I couldnever get to the stuff that
really mattered, to thestrategic work or the work that
I really loved, that I knew Ihad to get to because that was
going to stop the fires.
But my days were this constantstream of interruptions and
pings and notifications anurgent text message and an
(03:11):
urgent this, and so, even thoughI would say, right, I'm going
to block out time for myself.
This is the piece that I haveto work on.
Sometimes, you're right, I'muncontactable.
This afternoon, non-negotiableThings always interrupted my
calendar, things always poppedin.
There was always something, youknow, something would come from
the CEO and I'd be like, oh, Ican't really say no to that.
And in the end, the only realtime I ended up blocking out
(03:35):
ended up being 10pm to midnight,on the couch, and that was the
time where nobody else was home,nobody else was awake and I
could actually do some properdeep thinking.
The challenge was, I wasexhausted, usually at that point
in time because I'd been up andhad a very busy day, and so,
(03:55):
while I thought I was doingstrategic work, it was never to
the quality that I'd hoped, andI was then up late, and then I'd
finish about, I don't know,midnight or 1230 sometimes, and
then I go oh, I just need sometime to me, and I would end up
scrolling social media for 20minutes or half an hour and
being, oh my God, it's 1am, I'vegot to get to bed, I've got to
(04:15):
get up, and that was this cycle.
Another thing that I tried todo which is very difficult when
you're up till midnight or 1amwas right, I'm going to wake up
early, I'm going to get up at5am, I'm going to have some time
to myself before everybodywakes up.
This is what I'm going to dofor myself.
Everybody swears by the 5 amclub.
(04:38):
They called it.
And yet, as I started lookinginto all these routines of let's
call them the rich and famousor the successful, you hear
about these mornings where theywake up and they meditate and
then they journal and then theydo some exercise and then you
know they have a check-in withtheir team and then they you
know they might I know somepeople bounce on trampolines or
they have a cold shower and theyhave a green smoothie.
(04:59):
You look at all of theseroutines and pretty rarely does
making lunch boxes, getting kidsout of bed, finding socks for
crazy sock day, finding a goldcoin for some donation and
digging out a rat-eared notethat you have to sign that day.
That doesn't ever reallyfeature in their plans.
(05:22):
And many of these morningroutines that we see of the rich
and famous and the successfulare men.
Very often, if they havechildren, they seem to have
either a stay-at-home life who'sdoing all of that?
Or they have nannies andcaregivers, or their kids are
much older.
And here I am trying to modelwhat I think is something that's
(05:43):
going to be good for me, basedon somebody who has a completely
different life.
And when you get woken up by achild thinking, right, I'll get
up early, this is amazing.
And then you happen to make abang and a child wakes up and
you end up then gettingincredibly grumpy at that child.
It's like how dare you wake upbefore 6.30?
(06:03):
This was my time, and so Iwould find that, even though I
was trying to wake up early, ifsomebody dared interrupt that
time, I'd be resentful, and thatwasn't the way I wanted to
start my day, and very often,because I'd been up late the
night before, I'd been fallingbehind with things rather than
actually doing things that Ineeded for me.
(06:25):
I'd be like, right, I'm goingto jump on the treadmill, let me
just stick on that washingfirst, because then, when I'm
done with the treadmill, I canthen put it in the dryer.
And all I ended up doing wasdoing an extra load of washing
which didn't have to be done.
Then, like, okay, this wholewaking up thing early,
especially when I'm in bed atone not working for me and then
(06:45):
one Mother's Day, like we all do, you know, you get a fridge
magnet.
Take care of yourself.
Self-care is the best gift ever, right?
No, I need to do more of this.
I know I need to make time formyself, and my version of what I
thought I needed to make timefor myself was what I often call
the pink care, where it's abouthave the massage, go and get
(07:06):
your nails done, go and spendthe day at the day spa, and it's
these big gestures that areoften, you know, half day, go
away with the girls, and that'sall wonderful.
And don't get me wrong, I lovea massage.
I am all for weekends away withthe girls, do whatever you need
to do.
However, in those moments, Iactually found that I was
feeling more guilty.
(07:27):
For taking the time or theeffort it took to actually get
out the door made the massagenot worth it, whether it was all
the logistics and the stuff Ihad to do just to get away for
an hour or then.
Somehow in my head there was arandom point system that I
(07:47):
counted between my husband and Iand I hear this from women all
the time and it becomes this ohokay, I've had this massage, but
now I've had some time away,now I'm going to have to give
him some time away and I don'tknow if I want to do that.
And so we beat ourselves up andnever actually enjoy the thing
that we're meant to be doing forourselves.
Does this sound familiar?
(08:09):
That you're trying to take careof yourself, but sometimes the
effort or the guilt that goesalong with that because then you
feel selfish eliminates any joyor filling up of your cup that
you get from that activity andyou start to wonder well, it's
not worth it.
It's just not worth it, I'm notgoing to bother.
Oh no, let me just stick onanother load of laundry.
(08:30):
That's one less thing off mylist.
And that suddenly becomes howwe're going to take care of
ourselves.
And then one of the last toolsthat I tried to implement and
you could call this a tool, youcould call this a way of living
was I knew that I needed to holdbetter boundaries and whether
that was better boundaries forself-care, boundaries for my
time.
And yet I always tiptoed aroundthis line between wanting to
(08:57):
yes, I want to, I don't.
I want to say no, I want timefor me.
But then what if they think I'mrude?
Or what if I'm a B-I-T-C-H,what if I miss an opportunity?
And for me, very often, when itcame to saying no or saying yes
to an opportunity or a socialevent, I have always suffered
(09:18):
from a very big case of FOMO.
And I love opportunity, I lovenew things, I love excitement
and for me, often the saying nowasn't the hard part.
I said yes because I wasexcited about it.
I was like yes to that project,because that project sounds
amazing.
What I was never very good atis saying okay, I'm going to say
yes to that opportunity.
That also means now I have tosay no to something else I've
(09:40):
already picked up, and I couldnever do that because I worried
about letting people down, or Iworried about not being asked
again to come and join thatproject or come out for dinner
or whatever it was, and so I wasconstantly torn between this
line of well, I want to beinvolved and I want to
participate, but oh well, oh,I've got so much on.
(10:00):
And then we'd go around andaround and around these circles.
So I hope there might besomething familiar there for you
in what was actually going onwith my toolkit.
And if you suffered from any ofthese, if any of these examples
ring a bell, well, what I had tolearn the hard way and I'm
hoping I can spare you all thepain is the missing ingredient,
(10:24):
especially for women, that wasstopping all of this working.
The good news is there'snothing wrong with your
strategies.
Meditation works.
Time blocking works.
Waking up early works.
You can take care of yourself.
However, if you do not have themindset that supports your
strategy, no amount ofstrategies are going to work.
(10:44):
Thanks for taking this momentfor yourself.
If this resonated, share itwith a friend who needs to hear
it today, and don't forget tosubscribe to Balance and Beyond
for full episodes and more ofthese bite-sized breakthroughs.
See you next time.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.