When Your Wellbeing Depends on Everything Going Right

Have you ever noticed how difficult it can be to feel okay when something in your life or business isn't going the way you want?

Perhaps your business isn't performing as well as you'd hoped. A team member isn't meeting your expectations. Someone you care about is making decisions you disagree with.

You know you can't control everything. Intellectually, you understand that.

But knowing it doesn't necessarily stop you worrying, feeling frustrated or spending more time than you'd like trying to make things better.

And somewhere along the way, you begin to feel as though you can't properly relax until the situation is resolved.

For many capable, ambitious women, this becomes such a familiar way of living that they barely notice it happening.

Your sense of wellbeing has become dependent on circumstances you can't fully control.

And while that might seem like a personal issue, it can have a significant impact on how you work, make decisions and lead.

When Feeling Okay Depends on Someone Else:

I was recently coaching a woman who runs her own business.

Most of our conversations focus on her work, but lately we'd been talking about her teenage son.

She was increasingly frustrated by some of his decisions. She worried about his future, felt disappointed when he repeated mistakes and found herself spending a great deal of time thinking about what he should be doing differently.

She loved him deeply and wanted the best for him. But as we talked, she began to recognise something important.

She didn't simply want him to make good decisions.

She needed him to make good decisions so that she could feel okay.

When he behaved in ways she approved of, she felt more settled. When he didn't, she worried, became frustrated and found it difficult to concentrate on other things.
Without realising it, she'd made her own wellbeing dependent on the choices of a teenager.

And that's a fairly unreliable arrangement.

Through our conversations, she began to see that she could still love him, have expectations, maintain boundaries and care about his future without allowing every decision he made to determine how she felt.

Interestingly, her son hasn't changed very much.  But her experience of their relationship has.

She's less consumed by frustration, more able to have constructive conversations and better able to return her attention to her business.

Not because she's stopped caring.

But because she's beginning to recognise the difference between caring about something and needing it to be a certain way before she can feel okay.

It's a distinction that matters just as much in business and leadership.

Why Hardworking Women Feel Responsible for Everything:

Many successful women have spent years developing the ability to anticipate problems, manage competing demands and take responsibility for outcomes.

You're often the people others rely on.
You notice what needs doing. You think ahead. You follow through. You hold themselves to high standards.

These qualities can be enormously valuable.

They help women build businesses, lead teams, establish reputations and achieve things that matter to them.

But sometimes, without noticing, responsibility begins to turn into something else.
Instead of recognising what you can influence, you begin to feel responsible for ensuring that everything works out.

And eventually, your ability to feel settled becomes dependent on how well everything around you is going.

The business needs to be performing.
The team needs to be delivering.
Clients need to be happy.
The people you care about need to be making sensible decisions.

Only then, it seems, will you be able to relax.

The difficulty is that there's almost always something that could be going better.
And when your wellbeing depends on everything being okay, there's very little opportunity to experience it.

The Hidden Connection Between Control and Overwhelm:

It's easy to assume that overwhelm is simply the result of having too much to do.
And sometimes it is.

But for many hardworking women, there's another source of pressure that isn't always obvious.

It's the feeling that you need to keep everything under control in order to feel okay.

Consider a business owner whose team member isn't performing as expected.
She might need to have a difficult conversation, clarify expectations or make a decision about the person's role.

Those are legitimate leadership responsibilities.

But alongside the practical problem, something else might be happening.

She may be worrying about what the employee thinks of her. Questioning whether she's failed as a leader. Feeling frustrated that she has to deal with the situation at all.

Perhaps she starts checking their work more frequently, taking tasks back or spending her evenings thinking about what might go wrong.

At that point, she's no longer simply managing a performance issue.

She's also trying to manage the discomfort of having a performance issue.

And the two can become difficult to separate.

The more uncomfortable the situation feels, the more she tries to control it. The more she tries to control, the more responsibility she takes on. And the more responsibility she takes on, the more overwhelmed she becomes.

What looks like a workload problem may partly be a pattern of responding to uncertainty by trying to control more than is necessary.

This is one reason women can feel overwhelmed even when they're objectively managing their businesses well.

The pressure isn't always coming from the amount of work.  Sometimes it's coming from what you believe needs to happen before you can stop worrying.

What Happens When Your Wellbeing Depends on Business Outcomes?

There's nothing wrong with wanting your business to succeed.

Of course you want clients to be happy, revenue to grow and your team to perform well.  These are reasonable ambitions and responsibilities.

The difficulty arises when your sense of wellbeing becomes too closely tied to whether those things are happening.

When revenue is strong, you feel confident.
When enquiries slow down, you begin questioning yourself.
When a client is pleased, you feel reassured.
When someone expresses disappointment, you find yourself replaying the conversation long after it's finished.
When the team is working well, you feel relaxed.
When someone makes a mistake, you feel compelled to become more involved.

Over time, this can make running a business exhausting.  Not because business is supposed to be easy, but because every challenge begins to carry an additional personal weight.

A disappointing result isn't simply information to consider. It becomes something you need to resolve before you can feel settled again.

This can affect the quality of your decisions.

You might say yes to work that isn't right for your business because you're uncomfortable with uncertainty about future revenue.

You might avoid a necessary conversation because you don't want someone to be unhappy with you.

Or you might keep yourself involved in decisions your team could make perfectly well because handing over responsibility feels too uncomfortable.

In each case, your actions may be shaped as much by the desire to feel better in the moment as by what's genuinely best for the business.

And that's an important distinction.

Because effective leadership isn't about making sure nothing ever goes wrong.  It's about being able to respond thoughtfully when things inevitably do.

The Difference Between Caring and Carrying Everything:

One of the concerns my clients sometimes have when we explore these patterns is that becoming less affected by circumstances might mean becoming less ambitious or less caring.

They worry that if they stop feeling so responsible, they'll stop doing what needs to be done.

But that's not what I'm suggesting.

You can care deeply about your business without allowing every fluctuation in revenue to determine your confidence.

You can have high standards without becoming consumed by frustration when someone doesn't meet them.

You can love your family without feeling personally responsible for every decision they make.

And you can take your responsibilities seriously without carrying the emotional weight of everything that happens.

The difference is subtle, but significant.

Caring allows you to recognise what's important and take appropriate action.

Feeling responsible for everything can leave you believing that you must keep taking action until the discomfort disappears.

Sometimes those actions are useful.

Sometimes they're simply attempts to make an uncertain situation feel more certain.

And learning to recognise the difference can change how you experience both your work and your life.

How to Feel More Settled When Things Are Uncertain:

The alternative isn't to lower your standards, abandon your ambitions or convince yourself that difficult circumstances don't matter.

It's to become more aware of the expectations and assumptions shaping your responses.

When something isn't going the way you want, it can be useful to ask yourself a few questions.

What am I expecting to happen here?
Why does it feel so important that things happen this particular way?
What am I afraid might happen if they don't?
And what is actually mine to do something about?

These aren't questions designed to make difficult situations disappear.  They're questions that help you separate the practical issue from the additional pressure you may be creating around it.

Perhaps your business really does need a different strategy.
Perhaps an employee needs clearer expectations.
Perhaps a difficult conversation needs to happen.

You can still address all of those things.

But you may discover that you don't need to feel anxious, frustrated or personally responsible for every possible outcome in order to take effective action.

In fact, when you're less consumed by the need to make everything okay, you may find yourself better able to see what actually needs doing.

You can make decisions without needing complete certainty.
You can have difficult conversations without needing everyone to be pleased with you.
You can allow other people to take responsibility without constantly stepping in.
And you can experience satisfaction in your life and work even when some things remain unresolved.

This doesn't mean you'll never feel worried, disappointed or frustrated.  Those feelings are part of being human.  It means they don't have to determine everything you do next.

You Don't Have to Wait for Everything to Be Okay:

Six years ago, when I was training to become a coach, someone asked me whether coaching was really just positive thinking.

At the time, I struggled to explain the difference.

Today, I understand it much more clearly.

Coaching isn't about convincing yourself that everything is wonderful when it isn't.

Sometimes circumstances are genuinely difficult.  Sometimes people disappoint us.
Sometimes our businesses don't perform as we'd hoped, despite our best efforts.

And no amount of positive thinking changes those realities.

What can change is how much up need those circumstances to be different before you can feel okay.

You can begin to recognise the expectations you've placed on yourself and others.
You can notice when you're trying to control something because uncertainty feels uncomfortable.
And you can learn to take responsibility for your decisions without feeling responsible for every outcome.

For goal-driven women, this can be an important part of building a business and a life that feels sustainable.

Not because ambition becomes less important. But because achieving meaningful things no longer has to come at the expense of your peace of mind.

This is part of the work I explore with my clients: understanding the patterns that create unnecessary pressure, and finding a different way to lead, work and succeed.

Because the goal isn't to create a life where nothing ever goes wrong.

It's to build the capacity to live and lead well, even when things don't go according to plan.

And perhaps the most useful place to begin is with one question:

What are you currently waiting to be different before you can allow yourself to feel okay?