In my teleseminar with Susan Falter Barnes (you can hear it at http://www.audioacrobat.com/play/WMsbdQ2k), she asked if all passionate, driven women are overwhelmed. We talked about childhood drivers, like trying to please dad or trying not to be mom. After the call, I went back to my research.

I found that due to the rising successes young women have in academics and sports coupled with being brought up in the self-help era where we were told we could do anything, many women between the ages of 30 and 55 have extreme confidence in their abilities to achieve. Add to this the desire for financial independence fueled by a sense of power and freedom, and hopefully, a clear purpose, and we are unstoppable (just try to stop us; we’ll go around you or take our talents somewhere else).

The light side of this is success. The dark side is:

• Taking on too many projects at once, creating stress and errors;

• Finally burning-out from taking on too much, then getting sick or losing interest;

• Not seeing other possibilities for solutions or courses of action while busily persisting down one path;

• Steamrolling a project without broadly looking at the total impact;

• Risking an addiction to work; making work the priority over family, friends and/or health;

• Avoiding projects beyond our expertise (not wanting to risk failure since we have no experience with it and don’t know we can survive it).

The problem is that we have a hard time separating our work from our identity. A strong sense of self leads to a natural resiliency and performance under pressure, yet also leads to taking ourselves too seriously. We passionate, driven women have trouble asking for help and struggle with turning off our brains.

The good news…we don’t have to change ourselves. The key to living with a “high-achieving self” is joy. We can still drive hard if we laugh throughout our day, take time to say thank you for our successes, let ourselves be proud of what we have done so far, allow others to appreciate and help us, and listen to others with curiosity. Oh, and eat right and sleep enough. Mom was right about that.

Here is something to think about:
“He who hurries can not walk with dignity.” – Chinese proverb