For decades, we’ve been sold a carefully packaged illusion that with enough effort, organization, and willpower, we can achieve the perfect balance between our professional ambitions and our personal lives. Books line the shelves, seminars fill our calendars, and apps promise to help us master this elusive state of equilibrium. 🔄

Stephen Covey, author of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” once said, “The challenge of work-life balance is without question one of the most significant struggles faced by modern man.” My counter? “The challenge of work-life balance is, without question, one of the biggest myths sold to modern women.”

You probably don’t need me to tell you this yet it’s important we admit this to ourselves and each other: “work-life balance” is a lie.

It’s a well-funded illusion complete with testimonials and enhanced photographs from famous and not-so-famous women. And because we keep trying to achieve this impossible standard, we end up internalizing this “failure” as our own personal struggle or inadequacy.

This is not our fault.

In truth, nothing about the actual conditions of our lives as women will be questioned, challenged, or changed as long as we remain distracted by this impossible pursuit. Someone must be benefitting by keeping us distracted, wasting precious resources trying to achieve something that doesn’t exist. I can promise you this: it’s not us women.

The Gendered Nature of Burnout

The result of wasting precious resources trying to achieve this illusory state? Burnout.

Burnout is not an equally gendered phenomenon.

According to recent research, 43% of women leaders report feeling burned out, compared to 31% of men in similar positions. While work-life balance is a lie for all leaders, let’s take a look at the “life” end of this equation first.

In heterosexual relationships, women handle a majority of the domestic work—some studies suggest more than twice as much 😱—including child raising, elder care, grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, planning vacations, and celebrating birthdays and other life events. This disparity stems from sexism. But it’s not just the amount of time women spend on domestic labor that’s inequitable; it’s also the type of household work. Most “women’s work” consists of time-intensive daily tasks that require emotional attention and relationship skills, while “men’s work” tends to be intermittent tasks (weekly or monthly) like yard work, car maintenance, or taking out trash and recycling—tasks that can be done without interacting with others or adhering to hard deadlines.

Furthermore, women manage the home and family. In the workplace, project management is its own job—project managers aren’t expected to complete the tasks themselves. This isn’t the case for domestic work. There’s no one else coming to complete the tasks. Women are doing both. In fact, men are less expected to even try to attain “work-life balance” because it’s assumed someone else at home is handling the “life” part of that equation.

The split in perception has real impacts on women’s lives. A recent Institute for Women’s Policy Research report found that in the US, employed mothers were paid 62.5 cents per dollar paid to fathers in 2022. Even mothers who worked full-time year-round were paid 71.4 cents per dollar compared to fathers.

So even in the “work” part of this equation, there’s discrimination. Women not only get paid less for similar work performed by men, women with families are viewed as less committed workers, often passed over for promotions and not viewed as “leadership” material. Conversely, men with families are seen as more loyal employees and therefore given more opportunities for advancement.

In the workplace, women are expected to bring “soft skills”—such as conflict management, relationship building, listening, and caring—into their jobs. Yet these skills are not named, valued, or compensated. This emotional labor falls disproportionately on women, often without necessary support because the labor itself is invisible. The toll is real and can lead to emotional pretense and exhaustion.

Women are expected to be all things to all people, all of the time. We’ve moved beyond “multi-tasking” to “multiplied-tasking.” Meanwhile, we keep buying books, seminars, apps, and the latest devices, hoping someone will reveal the secret to having “balance.”

These inequities won’t change until we stop pretending they don’t exist. Understanding these material realities in women’s lives—both professional and personal—isn’t meant to be discouraging. It’s meant to be validating and, hopefully, invigorating. We can change these systems and take on the inequities at every level of society. But first, we need to acknowledge the imbalance that already exists by design in our current society. Then we can decide to stop trying to reach some individual “balance” in our lives.

What Becomes Possible When We Let Go

So what becomes possible when we face the fact that work-life balance isn’t real?

We free ourselves from feeling bad about not being able to figure this out in a system designed to keep us out of balance, isolated, numb, and working until we can’t any longer. When we let go of this impossible standard, we can shift our attention to building a life we want—grounded in our values, our purpose, and our self-described priorities. We can join with other women and male allies who also understand how liberating it is to let go of this lie and are ready to change the systems we’re all part of and can therefore impact. A side benefit? We release the guilt that so often accompanies this journey.

I’m not pretending it’s easy. There is significant emotional content we’ll have to climb through (not skip over or numb out!) to clarify what we want outside of societal expectations and our own internalized hurts and organize our lives to reflect that.

What do you want? This is not a question many females are ever asked, let alone expected to know the answer to. How do you want to set up your life to go well?

My Personal Journey

I’ve been committed to the theory and frameworks I teach for more than 30 years, and I’m still on the journey. This is worthwhile work that brings about lasting change.

Thirty years ago, I began a profound transformation:

🌱 I reclaimed my female body and began to understand the importance of cherishing her for the long-haul

💪 I began weight lifting in male-dominated spaces and training for endurance sports, shifting my mindset from “sprint” to “endurance”

🌍 I set the big gnarly goal to end oppression for my purpose-focused life

🧠 I engaged and began to lead others in emotional healing work as essential to social justice

These parallel journeys reinforced and are linked with each other in powerful ways I couldn’t have anticipated. Through them, I’ve gotten clearer that my purpose is to equip women leaders to address leadership fatigue with sustainable practices that create lasting transformation both in themselves and in the world.

The just and joyful world you envision will need your leadership, and millions more. Never before has this been more true as we face of rising global forces of oppression and repression. This is a long game. We need you healthy, well-supported, healing, and connected for the long haul!

There are more options than burning out or opting out.

Four Fundamental Principles for Authentic Leadership

From my decades of work with women leaders across various sectors, I’ve identified four fundamental principles that have transformed both my life and leadership:

1. ✨ Recognize your significance. Your needs and well-being matter.
2. 👥 Cultivate authentic community. None of us can go this distance alone—we need each other.
3. 🔍 Understand the role of oppression and societal expectations. You are not imagining the inequities, and it’s not your fault they exist.
4. 🌿 Develop sustainable practices. Meaningful change requires us to be in this for the long haul.

These principles are all necessary to go the distance. Even if we won’t be around to see our purpose and vision realized, we want to have as much impact as possible and not get taken out earlier than necessary from the meaningful, purpose-filled life we have created. I walk this path alongside you as companion and guide, not as someone who has it all figured out.

The practices and frameworks I offer are ones I continue to use myself. And yes, I sometimes still struggle with them. This is ongoing work for us all. What makes this approach different is that it’s about presence and persistence, not perfection.

Finding True Balance

While we’ve exposed the myth of “work-life balance,” I want to acknowledge that balance does exist, just not in the way we’ve been sold it and definitely not within our current society.

Nature shows us that balance isn’t a permanent state but rather a brief, beautiful transition on a continuing journey. For those in the northern hemisphere, we are moving toward winter solstice, a time when nature invites us to follow its wisdom, to turn inward, to be with the darkness, to rest and reflect.

This natural rhythm isn’t about “balancing” opposing forces. It’s about honoring each season’s purpose in its time.

One practice I offer instead of chasing work-life balance is what I call “balance of attention.” This means that even as we unnumb and face the very real challenges in our world and lives, we simultaneously and intentionally put our attention on what’s benign, good, and precious about being human in this very moment in history.

Holding these in balance, we can:

• Recognize joy when it arrives.
• Cultivate meaningful connection.
• See ourselves as part of nature’s cycles.

This balanced attention allows us to acknowledge both struggle and beauty, not as competing forces that need equal time, but as integrated parts of a whole, authentic, human life.

The question isn’t “How do I balance it all?” but rather “How do I move with intention through each season of my life and leadership, savoring the beauty of each?”

Transforming Together

I’ve seen firsthand the impact of these principles in action. One of my clients, Julieta, shared how she experienced our Healing-Engaged Leadership approach with her team. She shared, “I feel like I’m 10 years younger and rejuvenated just because I’m able to show up so much more fully. And I think in the back of my mind, I’m always hearing my Listening Partner, and when times are hard, and when stress appears, which it does, I have that person who has my back and just knowing that has made me feel stronger each time.”

This transformation ripples outward—touching your relationships, your work, your sense of self. When you stop chasing an impossible ideal and start building a life aligned with your values, everything shifts. You show up more fully. You lead with greater clarity. You reclaim the energy you’ve been hemorrhaging in pursuit of a myth.

This isn’t about work-life balance. This is about liberation.

It’s about joining a movement of women leaders who refuse to keep playing by rules designed to exhaust us. Who are building something better—together. Who understand that sustainable leadership isn’t a solo act but a collective practice rooted in mutual support, shared wisdom, and fierce commitment to each other and the world we’re creating.

Your leadership matters. The world needs what only you can bring. And you don’t have to figure this out alone.

I invite you to take the next step with me. Whether that’s joining our community, exploring the Healing-Engaged Leadership approach, or simply deciding today that you’re done chasing balance and ready to build something real—start now.

Because the just and joyful world you envision? It’s waiting for your fully resourced, sustainably supported, authentically connected leadership. And it can’t wait much longer.

Are you ready? Let’s do this together. 💪✨