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When was the last time you went to bed with nothing nagging at you, no unfinished loops, no sense that you “should” be doing more? If your gut answer is a tired laugh, you’re not alone, and you’re not failing. I’m unpacking the uncomfortable truth behind why so many high-achieving women feel permanently behind: we’ve been playing a rigged game where feeling okay is conditional on getting on top of everything.

We pull apart the rules of that game, including the never-ending list that has to be ticked off before you’re “allowed” to rest. The kicker is that a huge chunk of the list sits outside your control: kids’ moods, bosses’ deadlines, hormones, family expectations, and the general pace of the world right now. When your nervous system is waiting for perfect conditions to relax, it never gets the signal that you’re safe. So we default to what we know: grip tighter, do more, go faster, and call it “coping” while our bodies quietly run on fumes.

I also name the three big control strategies I see again and again: the 3 am spiral and doom scroll, overcompensating through perfectionism and over-delivering, and the shutdown that looks like numb scrolling on the couch. Then we talk about the escape fantasy, selling the house and starting again, and why it doesn’t fix the internal rules you’ve been living by. There is another way out, and it doesn’t require burning everything down.

If you’re ready to stop chasing inbox zero as proof you’re worthy of rest, come join me for the Overdrive Reset starting May 29. Hit play, share this with a woman who needs it, and please subscribe and leave a review so it reaches the people it’s meant for.

That loop isn’t harmless. It’s conversation debt, and it quietly drains your focus, your sleep, your relationships, and your sense of self.

We talk through why these avoided conversations stack up with your boss, your partner, your team, your friends, and your family and why the weight is never just one chat, it’s the whole pile. We also unpack the shift that changes everything: by the time you finally speak, you’re often not starting an open conversation, you’re prosecuting a case. Your brain’s pattern recognition finds “evidence” on command, your words come out loaded with judgement, and the other person feels ambushed and gets defensive.

Then we go to the real core. Under the accusations is usually something tender, vulnerable, and deeply human: I’m exhausted. I want to be seen. I want to matter. I don’t know how to say this without falling apart. When you’re running on fumes, it’s easier to wear armour through overfunctioning, people-pleasing, and mind-reading, but your body keeps the score through tension, 2am ceiling stares, and that low-level simmer that leaks into everything.

If you’re ready to break the rumination loop, I also invite you to join me at the Overdrive Reset, a free eight-day reset starting 28 May (link in the show notes).

Subscribe, share this with a woman who needs it, and leave a review so it reaches the people it’s meant for.

Episode Transcript

INTRO: Welcome to Balance and Beyond, the podcast for women who've outgrown the old model of success. The ones who look fine on the outside but know the way they've been living no longer fits. If you're standing in the space between who you were and who you're becoming, this is for you. I honour the space you've created today. Let's dive in!

The Rules Of The Rigged Game

The Impossible List You Live By

Validation, Exhaustion, And Moving Goalposts

Spiralling, Overdoing, And Shutting Down

The Escape Fantasy And The Real Exit

Overdrive Reset Invitation

Share, Review, And Close

I want to ask you a question. And I ask you to be really, really honest here. When was the last time you actually felt on top of things? Not for a blip or an hour. I mean an entire day. Perhaps even a day where you went to bed and there was nothing left undone, nothing nagging, nothing that you should have done.

I'm hearing a whole lot of what the fuck, Joe, are you kidding? Maybe 1985? I know you always feel behind no matter how much you get done in a day. And even though you may call bullshit on me, I want you to entertain the thought, what if you're not actually behind? What if you've been playing a rigged game your entire life without knowing it?

The one keeping you feeling behind no matter how much you do. Today we're gonna strip it all back and show you the way out. So let's talk about this game. It's actually quite simple. Get on top of everything, be ahead, and then you're allowed to feel okay. You've been playing this game since you were about nine, get the grades, get the job, get the partner, get the house, get the body, or try to get the kids and try to get the body back, get the title, climb the ladder. Once it's all in place, once you've got it all, once you're on top of everything, then you can relax. Then you can relax, then you can rest, then you can enjoy it. But you've been playing this game for decades.

Have you ever reached the now you can relax and now you can rest part? You've done enough. No. If you listen to this podcast, hell no. Because the goalposts move every single time you even get close. And you've been moving with each of these goalposts, not noticing that the line was never going to stay still.

The reason you never get there isn't a discipline problem. It's how the rules of the game work. And spoiler alert, you made up the rules. So, what the rules are is there is a list that you have decided have to be ticked off in order for you to feel okay. Ultimately, to feel safe enough to relax, to stop, to switch off.

Many women in my world, that looks like inbox zero, heaven forbid, was to say under control, knowing what's in it, no landmines in there. Kids are meant to be fed properly, not just toast, house tidy enough that maybe you might not die if someone dropped in. You need that project at work done well to its full potential, not just done a little bit. You want your body looking in a certain way. You've probably got aging parents, aging relatives that you might be going on with there. You're trying to keep up some form of friendship. You might have a partner that you're trying to keep, even just a little bit happy. You want to be in a good financial position, you want to make sure no one's annoyed at you. You've got to be exercising, you've got to uh make sure that you're having your protein, you've got to be hydrated, you've got to stay on top of your supplements. Oh my god. Oh my god. That's the list.

Tell me, have all of those ever at once been true in any way, shape, and form? Of course not. If you answered yes, I want to know who you are and which desert island you live on alone with a whole stack of protein, because that's the only way this is going to happen.

Now, let's just take a deep breath in and look at that list again. Now, I might have dramatized here. You know, I love a good bit of dramatics, but there's a very good chance that a lot of the things on your list about what has to be ticked off in order for you to relax or switch off or enjoy everything you've worked so freaking hard for is things that you don't control. Your kids' moods, what food they're going to eat, your boss's deadlines, the workload that comes your way, your mother's expectations, your bloody hormones, your partner's stress, the batshit craziness of the world we live in right now.

I know you're going, ha ha ha, funny Joe. Yes, I know it feels a little bit silly that these are all things on our list. Because you have built a system and rigged it that feeling okay depends almost entirely on things that you can't control. Now, when those things aren't met, which is most of the time, uh, probably all of the time, you do the only thing you know how to do.

A strategy that you've been employing in various ways since you were six. It looks like this try harder, grip more, control more, do more, faster, longer, better. Although without quite the Olympian ring to it. Now, the irony of this game that you have made up is that it's rigged. That's right.

You're playing a game you cannot win. The system itself guarantees that you will never feel done. Never, ever, ever. That's not a bug. It's how the system was built. Now, the really cruel part is the harder you play the game, and you listen to my podcast, so you're a high achiever, you're playing the game pretty hard. The more the game rewards you, and the more you get trapped inside it. So the game rewards you for never being done. You get promotions, praise, you build a reputation. You're probably doing three people's jobs right now. There's things people say about you at barbecues, you're the one who holds it together. I don't know how she does it all, the one who never drops the ball.

The game has been paying you in external validation and a whole other range of rewards, which is why you can't stop. Because little voice inside you says, Oh, this is great. I'm getting promotions, I'm getting the money, I should feel good. But on the inside, you are absolutely exhausted. You're running on fumes, your body's giving out. And even though something inside you knows this isn't sustainable, you keep going.

Now, you may be someone who's whispered, or maybe it's hitting you like a bold of those words, I can't keep going on like this. This isn't sustainable. It's one of the most common things women say as they come into my world. This isn't usually their first rodeo. It's not like the first time this thought of, oh my God, I can't keep going like this ever comes to them. But it's almost like every year they had that thought. January 1, they're like, I'm not doing another year like last year. I can't do it. But every year they continue to defy the limits of their own exhaustion, becomes a perverted feather in their cap. I did it on fumes and I still got promoted. I did it on fumes and I'm still married. I did it on fumes and I'm still standing.

Well, are you? Is this really the life that you want to be living? Because the great fear they can't name is if you stop winning at this rigged game that you're playing, who are you? Because that identity is what you've built everything on top of. Because you're stuck in this doing trap.

The more you do, you get this little tiny hit of I'm on top of it. Maybe, maybe it's I'm on top of my inbox or I'm on top of my notifications. I open my phone and I don't have any of those little tiny red numbers on anything.

Yay! And then ping, the bubble pops, and it's lasted about four minutes. And then if you've managed to get on top of it all, here's how the self-fulfilling prophecy plays out. Because you're a high achiever, you go, Oh, I'm kind of on top of it. No one's died yet. Hmm, I'm gonna move the bar subconsciously, because you've now proven to yourself and possibly your boss that you can deliver at this level.

So now the stretch, or what you thought was a stretch, is now the new baseline. And you always like to see what's possible because heaven forbid you be mediocre. Oh my god, that's so not you. So you continue to defy expectations to show what's possible. We see this happen at work all the time. People say, All right, so-and-so's left, I'll do it for a month.

They do it, kill themselves on the inside, but their boss goes, Oh, you're fine. You can cope. We don't need to replace that role now. And then they go, All right, I'll do it another month, and then someone else leaves, and then you push and you push, and you get an iron infusion, so you can push a little bit more and you hustle, but then you still can't get on top of it. It's like trying to keep pace with a treadmill that speeds up every time you do, and you've been on this treadmill for so long, you think running this fast is normal. It's not normal, it's just familiar.

Because under all this doing, all this pushing, all this hustling is control being the way you've tried to keep yourself okay your whole life. It's how you've stayed safe, loved, protected, valuable, and it worked for a really, really long time and got you so much. But it's not working anymore. Especially right now. The world's gone batshit crazy. Most women I speak to have impossible workloads. Your body's doing things that it didn't used to do. Your kids are unpredictable in ways that you can't expect.

Parents are probably getting older, and so now you're stuck, not just trapped in this game of I have to do more to catch up, to continually prove and try to feel like I'm done. But now you've got this added layer, you could say, of ways that you're trying to get control back in a life that feels out of control.

There are three key things that we see women do. Maybe you do all three. Maybe you've just got one favorite to try to get that feeling back of being on top of things. Who loves a good spiral? 3 a.m. wake up, catastrophizing about the thing that you didn't say or the conversation you've had four ways since Thursday, but not to the person. Maybe you're doom scrolling, adding to the list, just replying to the US while they're awake so that we can move faster on this thing at 3 a.m. Rehearsing tomorrow before you've even got there. This was one of my favorites. I spent a lot of time at 3 a.m. sending notes to London or New York or whoever else because again, I felt like I was trying to use the time at 3 a.m. to get ahead while I should have been sleeping.

Another way that we try to get our control back is we overcompensate, we over-deliver, trying to do more harder, whether it's the beautiful color-coded spreadsheet, our perfectionist gets unleashed here. Maybe we do a marathon meal prep session, so I'm gonna get ahead. But in reality, we're just doing more and more and more, hoping that at this magical end of the rainbow, if I over-compensate and over-prepare, then I will have felt like I've done enough to actually relax and enjoy my life.

Is at the other end of the spectrum, is the shutdown. Wine, Netflix, couch, numb time. Having your phone in your hand for three hours, doom scrolling, with no idea of what you were just looking at. You are just doing anything to escape your life and feel in control of the scroll or in control of that wine glass when everything else feels crazy.

Now, when all of this is going on, there is also a fantasy that sits in the background, running constantly. And maybe this wakes you up at 4 a.m. Pretty sure it certainly dominates your Pinterest feed. Sell the house, move to the country, run a bakery or an antique store, or start a nursery, get in the car and just drive like Filmer and Louise, leaving your life behind you.

Now, spoiler alert, the fantasy isn't really about the antique store. But who wouldn't love that version of Brad Pitt from Filmer and Louise to come along with this? Just saying, it's about an escape because somewhere in you, you already know this isn't sustainable, but you don't know what to do about it. So you either double down on your controlling mechanisms, you're spiraling, you're overcompensating, or you try to get more organized and do more and try to get ahead of things. Or then the escape hatch is this fantasy as the placeholder for an answer that you haven't found yet, but one that just feels like relief.

But here's the thing about the fantasy. And I know because I lived it and I hit the go button. I sold the house, I left the job, I blew it all up because I thought that that was the answer. I didn't know how to get out of this life that I'd built. And so that felt simpler. But the game that I'd rigged was it in the house, was it in the job?

The game of never feeling ahead and it never being enough and it never feeling like you're on top of things, that was still inside me, in the new house, in the new business, almost with the new husband. Like it was all there. It took the old beautiful saying, wherever you go, there you are.

The game took me with it. So no matter what situation I would be in, whether I was in that antique store in the beautiful house in the country, the game would have been, oh, this has got potential. We're gonna do up the house, we're gonna put in a new point of sale system, we're going to blow up on Instagram, we're gonna get new suppliers, suddenly I'll be going to trade shows overseas, and I'll be doing new stock, and then I'll be adding a cafe. And then because this is part of my high achiever DNA, but it also is what completely robs me of the ability to enjoy the life that I've built.

It's not the only exit, it's not the only way to feel like yourself again, but it's often the only one that you can currently see. But there is another way out. But you won't find it by playing harder, and you won't find it in burning everything down. Here is where you find it. On May 29th, the overdrive reset kicks off. This is where you're going to practice getting out of this rigged game in real time.

Not in theory, in your actual life, on Tuesday morning, Thursday in your 4 p.m. when it all goes sideways. This isn't just more insight. You've got enough stuff in your head. You're probably one of the most self-aware women that I'll ever speak to. You've done the podcasts. Hello, what you're listening to right now. Knowledge is not your problem. Practice is.

Eight days in WhatsApp. So you're gonna get my voice delivered directly to you every single day for free. Two live workshops where we're gonna go deeper than I can go on a podcast. The link is in the show notes. Get yourself in that room right now. Because the game isn't going to stop being read. The world is definitely not going to settle down and you are not going to catch your breath anytime soon.

The only thing that changes is whether you keep playing or you learn how to step off the treadmill without blowing your life up. So if you keep shutting down the I can't keep doing this thought, then I will see you on the 29th of May.

Links in the show notes to save your free spot. You need this more than you'll ever know. Thanks for joining me today. If this episode resonated, share it with a woman who needs to hear it. And if you want to be part of the Ripple Effect, leaving a review helps it reach the women it's meant for.