Announcer,

hello and welcome back to Clover. This week's episode is all about the myth of balance. I know for many of you, balance is a four letter word that is really a 1234567, letter word. So let me walk you through a day that could be really any time during my career that I'm only slightly embarrassed to admit is not really unusual. It could start with a 7:30am zoom, call camera off, because I'm still in like, let's say I don't know an old concert t shirt. I have a green day one that I really love, hair in a bun that I might have slept in holding a mug of tea. I prefer Chai that I'll probably reheat three times but never actually finish. So while my team is doing their stand up, I'm texting back a pediatrician about a late last minute schedule. I might be answering a Slack ping from a VP who absolutely could have emailed and side eyeing the school newsletter my inbox that says we still need four more parents to volunteer for the fun run. So by 9am I've already failed that balance. I didn't meditate, I didn't journal, I didn't make the protein packed breakfast. I saw where I would eat instead of cold string cheese. I didn't respond to that one lingering email from my boss that now feels radioactive, and yet, I've somehow managed to lead a team, manage a few clients, triage a family calendar and figure out how to move a dentist appointment again, because the q3 strategy meeting got moved again. Does that sound familiar? Welcome to leadership in the real world. It's messy, it's reactive, it's probably over caffeinated and nothing close to the word balanced. And honestly, I'm done pretending balance is even the goal. So let's just say it out loud. Balance is a myth. It's a branding exercise. It's a pretty word slapped on an impossible standard. It's the glossy cover of a magazine that tells you how to manage it all with 12 time blocking hacks and a face mask that costs more than your weekly groceries. It's the corporate platitude tossed around and all hands meetings right before they give you five new projects and a 30 minute wellness setup number on your lunch break balance, as it's been sold to us, it could be seen as a gas light, quite honestly, and women, especially women in leadership, are the primary targets we're told to strive for it, schedule it, meditate our way into it. But no one tells us what it actually looks like when you're a founder, a director, senior exec, or a single mom trying to juggle slack notifications and daycare pickup without losing your mind. We're expected to leave like we don't have a personal life, and parent like we don't have a professional one, and if we drop any ball along the way, we feel like we've failed. I've been in rooms where women leaders apologize, actually apologize for being late to a meeting they scheduled because they were helping their team. I've seen execs give up PTO because they're afraid taking time off will make them look uncommitted. I've sat across from brilliant, burnt out women who asked me if they're doing something wrong because they can't find balance. So let me say this, clearly you're not doing it wrong. The system is just not set up for you to succeed at everything all the time with a smile on your face and a salad in your lunch bag. And more importantly, balance isn't the prize. It really could be seen as the trap. So in today's episode, we're going to unpack the whole thing. Not just talk about the myth of how balance hurts us, but get real about what women in leadership actually prioritize when they're thriving, not what the LinkedIn influencers say, not what the glossy profiles of female CEOs edited by their PR team say, I'm talking about the unfiltered version. We'll dig into how women leaders decide where their time really goes, what they protect, what they're okay, letting drop, and how they lead teams, raise families, build companies and live lives without trying to pretend it's all perfectly balanced. Because if you've ever looked at your calendar and thought, I'm holding it all together with duct tape and dry shampoo, you're not alone and you're not failing and you're not prioritizing incorrectly, and that's what real leadership looks like. So let's get into it. Let's talk about where this whole balance thing came from. Because the word itself sounds lovely, right? Like a yoga pose or a clean inbox or a neutral tone living room with no clutter and lots of natural light, serenity. Except most women I know don't live in a lifestyle blog. They live in spreadsheets, Slack channels, drop off, lines, meal prep, madness, endless meetings and emotional labor. No one put on the calendar, but somehow became their job anyway. So where did this whole balance myth come from? It came from the same people who sold us diet, culture, anti aging serums and effortless productivity. It's capitalism, maybe with a side of guilt, the myth of balance started to show up in a big way When more women entered the workforce. In the 70s and 80s, we were supposed to go to work and keep the house clean and raise kids and smile while doing it, and instead of the system adapting to support us, they just handed us a new expectation to find balance translation, make it all work, but quietly and with a really good planner. And here's the truth, no one likes to say out loud, balance is often a code word for don't let anything slip. To be excellent at work, be available at home, be present, professional, polished and preferably not complaining. And if you can't, well, you must not be managing your time right. Maybe you need to wake up earlier. Maybe you need to do more self care. Maybe you should just try harder to be less overwhelmed. It's not just condescending. It's weaponized wellness, and it's exhausting, especially for women in leadership, because not only are we juggling all the regular life stuff, we're also managing teams, making decisions that affect people's livelihoods, and often doing it in environments where we're still outnumbered or underestimated. Let me tell you how this shows up in real life. You're in back to back meetings all day, finally getting five minutes to pee and check your text and there's a message from your kids' school asking if you can just swing by to help with something because you're so good at organizing things cool. Love that for me, or you're reading a high stakes project, leading high stakes project and crushing it, but someone still mentions that you seem a little distracted lately because you didn't attend a happy hour or missed a Slack thread about team trivia night. You're expected to perform at full throttle professionally, be totally present personally and still show up like you've got it all balanced. It's unrealistic, it's unfair, and it's boring, right? Because the truth is, no one, no man, no woman, no non binary. Magical Unicorn is balancing all of it all the time. We're all making trade offs every day, consciously or not. The real harm of the balance myth is that it makes us feel like we're doing something wrong when we're actually when we're actually making really smart, value based decisions. You chose to stay late and finish that deck so dinner was frozen pizza. That's not failure. That's a choice. You skipped a networking event because you wanted to lay in bed and watch trash TV and sweat pants. Again, a choice. You said no to a stretch assignment because her calendar already looks like a game of Tetris on fire. That's not a missed opportunity. That's capacity management. But the myth of balance doesn't leave room for that. It tells you you should be able to do all of it seamlessly with dewy skin and a great attitude. And if you can't, then something must be wrong with you. That's the scam. So let's just clear the air right now. You're not broken, you're not bad at balance, you're not behind. You're living in a world that still hasn't figured out how to support ambitious women with complex lives, and the sooner we let go of the lie that we're supposed to juggle everything perfectly, the sooner we can start making smarter, more sustainable choices without guilt, because balance might look at on an Instagram infographic, but in real life, what we're actually aiming for is clarity, capacity, intentional trade offs, and those don't come from a color coded planner. They come from knowing what matters and what you're willing to let go of. So let's talk about what actually matters when you're leading, not just surviving, and you finally accepted that balance isn't the goal, because once you stop trying to make your life look symmetrical, you get to make it intentional. And that's when things start to shift from burnout to clarity, from chaos to something that looks like alignment, not ease, necessarily, but alignment. I've talked to dozens, probably hundreds, of women in leadership, and the through line isn't that they've hacked some magical version of balance is that they figured out what to prioritize on purpose. So let's walk through a few of the things I hear over and over again, the stuff women leaders actually double down on when they're thriving. Number one, energy over time. First big mindset shift is prioritizing energy, not time. We're taught to obsess over our calendars, time blocking, optimizing, stacking meetings, like we're playing scheduled Jenga. But time is a fixed resource. Energy is not it ebbs and it flows. It's affected by sleep, by stress, by that weird, offhand comment someone made in a meeting three days ago that you still haven't let go of. Smart Women Leaders know this, they ask, what drains me, what fuels me, what deserves my best energy and what can't get my good enough. It's not about doing more with less. It's about doing the right things with the energy you actually have. Here's a pro tip, block your highest energy hour of the day and use it for what matters most, not just what's loudest. Number two, quality over quantity. Let's kill the myth of doing everything well. Women in Leadership don't do everything. They do the right things with excellence, whether it's meetings, clients, time with family or friendships, what matters is the depth, not the volume. That might mean a. Attending fewer meetings, but being fully present in the ones that count, spending one tech free hour with your kid instead of three distracted ones saying no to one more coffee date that feels like a drain and yes to the one friend who always tells you the truth. Women leaders learn how to edit. They know their attention is currency, and they stop handing it out like coupons and then number three, one is boundaries over availability. You cannot lead from burnout, and if your calendar looks like a crime scene every week, it's probably not your to do list. It's your lack of boundaries. Women leaders who last know how to say no, not because they're mean or cold or unhelpful, but because they understand their capacity and boundaries aren't just about protecting your peace. They're about protecting your impact. That means you don't answer emails at 10pm unless you choose to. You decline meetings without agendas. You don't justify saying no with a monolog about your personal life. That doesn't work for me. Is enough. Boundaries create clarity, and clarity creates trust, and trust makes you a stronger leader. Number four, alignment over achievement. This one's big. When you're climbing, it's easy to chase achievement, titles, promotions, accolades. It's what we've been conditioned to do, checks all the boxes. But the women who feel the most powerful in their roles, they don't just ask what's next. They ask, Does this align with who I am and what I want? Now, because Leadership isn't just what you do, it's really about how much of you is actually in it, and sometimes alignment means stepping away from a role that looks great on paper. Sometimes it means saying no to a seat at the table that no longer fits the way you want to lead. Sometimes it means choosing rests instead of another stretch goal. And it's not always glamorous, but it's real. Alignment doesn't always feel exciting. Sometimes just feels like breathing easier. So the through line is women leaders aren't doing it all. They're choosing what to do and what to let go of with intention. They've swapped guilt for discernment. They've stopped asking, How do I do everything? And started asking, what's worth doing? Well, they're not striving for balance. They're striving for clarity. Then they've learned that dropping the ball doesn't mean you failed. It means you're human, you're strategic. You decided which balls are rubber and which ones are glass. So if balance is the scam and clarity is the real goal, what does it actually look like in practice. I mean, it sounds great to say I prioritize energy over time, or I lead with alignment, but when your calendar looks like a game of Whack a Mole, and your inbox has become its own species, you need something concrete. So let's talk about five strategies to ditch this balance myth. So number one is redefine balance as integration, not perfection. So first we need to reclaim the word. Let's stop thinking of balance as the perfectly divided pie chart where your career, family, health, hobbies, friendships and hydration all get exactly 16.6% of you every day, forever. That's nonsense. Instead think of integration. What parts of your life support each other? Where can you combine instead of divide? What season are you in and how can your priorities shift accordingly? Some weeks your work is in launch mode and you're all in other weeks, you pull back and focus more on home or health or creativity. That's not failure. That's strategy. Balance says do it all. Integration says do what matters most right now and adjust when it doesn't. Second one is identify your non negotiables. This one's personal and powerful. Your non negotiables are the things that, no matter how chaotic life gets, you protect. These are the anchors of your leadership and your life. For me, it's things like time alone in the morning before I pour into anyone else, creative time without meetings because I'm useless if I'm just in reactive mode, phone off at dinner, or at least face down and guilty about it. Your list might include movement therapy, family dinners, creative play, spiritual practice, or just not being in meetings past 4pm on Fridays. Whatever it is, name it, write it down, put it on your calendar like it's sacred, because it really is. Number Three practice, saying no without the apology paragraph. So let's talk boundaries. Boundaries aren't just about saying no, they're about what you say yes to instead, here's a phrase I love that doesn't work for me right now, not I'm so sorry. I just have a lot going on, and I really wish I could help but not. Maybe next time, let me know if you still need me. Just that doesn't work for me right now, period. No justification, no emotional labor, no guilt trip. A simple sentence is a leadership skill, so use it number four, use the 8020 rule like a ladder, not a martyr. You've probably heard of the Pareto Principle. 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. Cool. Use that like a laser pointer. What are the 20% of actions that drive the biggest impact in your work, your leadership, your life, which meetings actually move things forward, what tasks are truly tied to your goals and what's just busy work? Who are the one to two people who always pour energy into you versus drain it? Start filtering everything through that lens. Ask, is this high impact or just high effort? And then act in core. Finally, number five, let the ball drop. On purpose. This might be the most radical thing I say today. Let the ball drop. Not every ball is glass, some are rubber. They'll bounce. Not every opportunity is urgent. Not every ask deserves your Yes, not every moment needs your perfection. Sometimes clarity means choosing what not to do and yes, someone might be disappointed. Someone might think you're not doing at all. Someone might even judge you for being less available than you used to be. Let them their expectations are not your priority. Look leading with clarity instead of balance. Doesn't mean you've got to all figure it out. It doesn't mean your calendar is pristine, or your house is Instagram worthy. It just means you're making decisions based on what actually matters, not what looks good or keeps everyone else happy, and that kind of leadership doesn't burn out, actually builds. So I hope you take these, you know, musings to heart, and like once you've ditched the myth we've reclaimed our priorities, we'll let some of those rubber balls bounce right? Let's talk about the ripple effect, because this isn't just about you. When you lead with clarity, when you stop chasing balance and start making intentional, human, sustainable decisions, you give other women permission to do the same, your choices signal what's normal, what's allowed and respected, and that's leadership in its most powerful form. We've all seen what happens when leaders pretend they're perfectly balanced. Teams feel pressure to over perform and under rest. Burnout becomes a badge of honor. Taking PTO becomes a sign of weakness. Everyone's smiling through gritted teeth and answering emails at midnight, because that's just how things are done. But when a woman in leadership says, No, I don't do back to back meetings all day, no, I protect my time for deep work and deep rest, no, I won't apologize for being unavailable when I'm with my family. It shifts the room, because that's not flakiness, that's clarity, that's the kind of leadership that creates culture, not just deliverables. So think about it this way, when you model boundaries, your team feels safe setting their own. When you drop the balance performance, your colleagues feel less pressure to pretend. When you lead from alignment, you inspire trust, not just compliance. That's how you build healthy teams. That's how you build resilient organizations, and that's how you build careers that don't chew people up and spit them out. And no, it won't always be easy. You will have moments where you feel guilty, where you wonder if you're doing enough, or where someone expects you to be available, 24/7, and you have to disappoint them. Or some guy named Greg tells you he just manages his time better, and you want to scream into a throw pillow. But you also have moments where someone on your team says, Hey, I noticed you blocked him off to work uninterrupted, and I started doing that too. Or thanks for encouraging us to take real vacations. I finally did that's impact, because balance was never the goal. Sustainability is clarity is showing up with a whole human who makes smart, value based decisions. That's really the work, and that work, especially when done publicly, consistently and unapologetically, is the work that changes the system. So the next time someone asks you how you balance it all, you have my full permission to laugh and say, Oh, I don't. I just prioritize like hell, and I'm really good at letting go of the rest, because you're not here to do it all. You're here to lead. So here's the big truth I want you to walk away with today. You're not feeling at balance. You're succeeding at prioritizing even when it's messy and imperfect and it doesn't look professional on the outside, because the women I admire most in leadership are not juggling everything flawlessly. They're letting go. They're saying no, they're dropping the balls that don't matter and they're catching the ones that do. They've stopped chasing balance, and they started chasing clarity. And that's your invitation today. Here's your challenge. What one thing this week can you let go of without the guilt. It could be a task, a meeting, a self imposed rule, a piece of emotional labor you've been carrying that it's even yours. Let it drop. Watch what happens. Spoiler alert, the world will keep spinning and ask yourself, What's one thing you're going to protect like it's sacred, your workout, your family, dinner, two uninterrupted hours of work time. Protect it like the CEO of your life. You don't owe anyone balance. You owe yourself. Clarity. If this episode resonated, send it to a woman who needs to hear that she's not behind. She's just building her leadership on her own terms. And next time on clover, we're going to dig into something I know you've experienced, what it means to be the only woman in the room and how to lead when all eyes are on you. It's more about being ready than it is about being fearless. But until then, drop the guilt. Hold what matters, and lead like it's yours, because it is you.