“If I Don’t Hold It All Together, It Feels Like Everything Will Fall Apart.”

Makena: Welcome back everyone to another podcast episode! 

Today we’re going to talk about this feeling that a lot of women have that “If I don’t hold it all together, everything’s going to fall apart.”

This is an unconscious feeling for some people, but for some it’s very much what they say or what they feel on the surface. It’s like, “I’m juggling so many different things in my work… in my relationship, if you’re in one… with family or kids or other obligations.” 

It’s something that women often come to us and feel this way. And we really support them.

Gigi hugely supported me around this and continues to, but it’s been a very big evolution over the years – I really don’t feel that way anymore.

It’s incredible. Few years ago, it was crazy and it’s really, really changed. 

Gigi, will you just share a little bit before we get into this topic – because it can be a sensitive one for some women. 

Gigi: This topic is going to be a little self reflective. We are going to talk about some things that you might see yourself in these moments and it might be a little embarrassing.

How I came up with this early on is when I did my first workshop in 1987 or something. At that time, I really got in there and worked with women then saw what they were doing in their relationships with men.

I saw there were certain patterns that women had with men. I called them “the unproductive patterns” or “the unproductive games.” 

From this, I started to see the things that women did that didn’t work and were actually not getting them what they wanted – but they thought they were.That’s where these have evolved into the patterns that we’re going to talk about today.

As we go through this, if you see yourself in these patterns just get curious. 

You can use curiosity and go, “Oh my gosh, I do that.”

Then get curious about, “Wow, how could I do something different?” 

Don’t make yourself wrong. Don’t put yourself down. We’re all making mistakes and doing things. This is just a really powerful way to get a reflection so you can shift and start getting more of what you want.

That’s really what this is about. 

Makena: A little bit like we talked about in the last episode is “the awareness starts to create a change.”

Gigi: Absolutely. So I’d love to ask you right off the bat – you said I’ve helped you so much. What shifts have you seen and how did that come about? 

Makena: Well, first I should tell a story. Three years ago, somewhere in the middle of COVID, or in that timeframe, I remember very clearly having this realization.

I was working with a coach at the time. I sent them a voice note and I said, “I feel like if I don’t get my to-do list done, I will die.”

It was such a crazy moment because I felt the sensation in my body that if I don’t keep everything going, something’s going to fall apart.

We were going through a very stressful time in the world at that time. So that really contributed because I already had a huge transformation. I was no longer having anxiety and panic attacks since you really supported me to make the shift. But I was so wound up in go mode. This was before the second shift that you really helped me around this. 

I was just in go, go, go, go – trying to hold all these pieces together. 

It’s just crazy to think back on that moment now and go, “Wow, what a different space I was in.”

This is probably an extreme example, but I see so many women who are feeling like “if I don’t hold all those pieces…” 

I don’t think they actually think they’re going to die but there’s this feeling in our bodies, like, “AHHHH! What’s going to happen.” Somehow it feels like you can’t let go.

The evolution or how you really helped me is – the piece we’ve shared a lot about that first transition was huge. In terms of starting to unwind, to get more connected to my senses, to see the vision for what I wanted to step into. 

As I did that, I had this other moment of having health issues show up a couple of years ago. And you helped me see what my body was telling me at that time – it was a pushing energy. 

I remember very clearly it was this push, push, push, push energy.

We’re going to talk about a lot of different things today in the episode and in a couple of our future episodes, 

But seeing also what was underneath. What was the pattern underneath?

Gigi: Right. 

Makena: Mine was overwhelmed – my big one. 

You talked about in your workshops that you would see these patterns with women. You reflected to me that I was always in a state of overwhelm. This was one of those “awareness starts to create the change.”

But it doesn’t always happen overnight.

I had to really sit with the awareness of how much I would get caught up in this again and again and again. As it slowly unwound and started to let go. 

Do you want to share what’s underneath the overwhelm there? 

Gigi: I think a key factor that I shared with you was self importance. And you’re like, “Oh my gosh, no, I’m not self important.”

Makena: Me, never.

Gigi: Remember you said, “No one can do it as good as me.”

I would say, “Let’s let this person do it. Let’s bring in someone.” 

“No, no, no. They can’t do it this good. It takes too long to train them”

And on, and on, and on…

But when you really let in the self importance of what you were doing there, it started to change you.

You saw when you would click into that – you were the most important person in the world and your overwhelm was the most important thing in the room. 

That’s a pattern that gets set up in us. It was in you physically.

To unwind that was to face it and see, “This is what I’m doing.” 

On the outside, there is the factor that you had a lot to do. But the way you were handling it and what you took on is you were over exaggerating it.

Makena: Yeah. It did not feel that way at the time.

I want to speak to where women are when they’re listening to this. You’re not going to feel like you’re over exaggerating it. And we don’t mean over exaggerating like you don’t have a lot to do, but it was to realize that…

Just to back up a little bit to what we’re talking about here in these patterns – Gigi’s been talking about some version of these for many, many years and in her books and everything. 

Then we developed it out into something we call the “Pattern Interrupt Process” – which is quite an extensive process. It goes into 12 different patterns. We’re only going to touch on a couple of them today. 

But it’s really about becoming aware – What is the conscious pattern? What is the one that you see and experience all the time? And what is the – we call it the “gremlin” underneath. 

A gremlin is a mischievous little sprite. You can Google it, there’s cute pictures showing these little gremlins. That’s what it is.

There’s this gremlin underneath, which is this unconscious part. And when we make that unconscious part conscious, That’s the beginning of the shift.

That’s what you did for me. You said, “Self importance… you’re being self important.”

So much of your coaching I’m like, “This is really hard to look at.”

But in that, what I really saw was – I felt I’m the only one that can do this, or I can do this better than everybody else. Which is pretty self important.

In some ways at that moment in time, that might’ve been true to some degree. We didn’t necessarily have the team or the people trained or have systems in place. I had been taking it on for so long and we see this a lot with women. 

They feel like “Nobody else can do it or nobody else wants to do it. I’m the only one that will or I’m too busy.”

What else do you see with women when they’re in this kind of energy around the overwhelm and everything? 

I think those are some of the big ones. 

Gigi: Yeah, I think that’s pretty much it. 

Makena: When I saw the self importance, it gave me that uncomfortable, a little bit embarrassing reflection. But every time it would come up, I would go, “Oh, wait.”

The other thing is I started to disconnect overwhelm from having a lot to do. You helped me realize that having a lot to do does not equal overwhelm. 

Overwhelm is actually an emotional state – it’s a reaction. 

That’s a really important distinction. You always talk about “We can have a lot to do, but the way we approach it can be so different.”

Gigi: This is what I tell women, when I’ve worked with them and coached them – is that I can get up in the morning and go, “Oh, my gosh! I have so much to do. It’s my list. I’m overwhelmed.” 

And I go into this kind of chaos.

Instead of getting up and going, “Oh, my gosh! I have a lot to do. I’m going to navigate this today and sit down and really look at it and start taking action.” 

It is the approach – how we approach it is huge. HUGE.

We always talk about going into ease. Even though it is stressful when you have so much to do and you feel like you can’t get it done. But if I can approach it from a state of ease and then know that there’s no way I’m going to get all this done.

So I prioritize and get done what I can and feel good about it. 

Makena: The illusion of overwhelm is that by moving faster or being more go, go, go, go, go about it – you’re going to get more done. 

But what I started to learn – I really grappled with this for years. 

Please know that we’re introducing a topic here and you get to play with it and see.

You would say to me, “Being more go, go, go – going faster. Doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to get more done.”

In fact, the opposite can sometimes be true. And I was like, “You don’t know, I can work this to-do list and I can.” 

But what I’ve seen over the years, what’s really changed in my perspective is that – even if I got more done in the short term by being in that go go energy, there was still some kind of longer term effect of me getting so exhausted that I had to stop everything. Or me having health symptoms that slowed me down.

Even just by taking on everything on my own and not getting support, I was not moving. We were not as effective as we could be. 

As I really learned to – we’re not going to go deeply into this in this episode – get support and lean on my team and all of that. I grew a team in the first place. We were able to do so much more with so much less effort from me.

I just want to throw that little nugget in there. Because I know how it feels to feel like, “Well, this is the most effective way or this is the way it has to be.” 

I promise you there is a different way.

Gigi: When you’re in the middle of it, I get it. It feels like there’s no other way. It feels like there’s not a way out. And if you listen to this and play around with starting to find ways… I’ve had many clients that in the beginning – same thing. 

They were like, “You’re crazy. I can’t change. I don’t have the help.”  Sometimes people can’t afford the help or they can’t find the help. There’s all kinds of reasons. 

But when we sit with it, and I say, “The only way out of this is you have to get the support.”

I’ve had clients who have very successful businesses. They went into their business to grow a great business and before long they’re doing all the work – all the work they don’t like to do. They don’t hire support. They tell me they can’t find support. 

It’s wanting to make this change and being willing to make it. It’s finally that reflective moment of, “Oh my gosh, I am a little bit taking this all on and not allowing for anything.” 

Because with you, I finally said “We bring this person in and you start training them.” Then this is the way you start to get relief. That was a transition as well. 

Because you were like, “Oh, no, I don’t have time to train. I can do it better. It takes too much time to train.” 

I said, “No, no, no, no. You take the time and you train.”

Makena: That’s when we brought in a full time VA. At first I spent four hours a week with her. She was full time, but four hours a week on calls with her. Now, I talk to her maybe half an hour a week and she’s just incredible.

We have an amazing team, but she’s been with us for years. I can’t do it better than her in so many areas now. She whips these things out. She has different strengths than I do, but we’re such a great team because I slowed down enough to take the time to really, really, really train her.

If I hadn’t done that, and for us to find our way to work together, then we’d be in a very, very different place with that. 

It is that slowing down to speed up that you always, always talk about.

There was something else I wanted to share about the overwhelm. I’m sure it’ll come back to me.

The other pattern that we see a lot is “Overgiving.” Sometimes it’s overwhelm. Sometimes it’s over giving. Or you might have a little of both going on. 

I see the over giving come in a lot with all kinds of women. I think about it with a lot of moms in my life. It often shows up where they get into this pattern of doing all the things for everyone else. 

It’s like they’re doing all the things they were doing before they became a mom and then they add being a mom on top of that and everything and all the expectations of what they think they should be doing.

So what’s the gremlin underneath overgiving? 

Gigi: That one becomes a martyr. Which is funny, because then it feels like “Oh my gosh, I’m doing all this and what about me” kind of thing happens in there.

Again, looking at these reflective things is not to make yourself wrong. It’s to be very loving to yourself. Because this is just a way that you’ve been navigating what’s going on there. 

It’s just a reaction, like you said. 

And the awareness of knowing that – where are you showing up as a martyr by overgiving. Where are you really doing things that you don’t want to do? Or not setting up systems and asking for support in certain areas in such a way where people want to support you. 

Because when we get to that point where we feel like, “Oh, nobody’s helping me.” And then we go ask for help, then nobody wants to help.

Because it is kind of this feeling of, “Oh, I feel wrong because I’m not helping.

But if I get to a point and I go, “Listen, I feel like it’s too much. I’m giving too much. I’m going to shift and I would love my partner’s support over here.” 

Then you go to him/her and you say, “Listen, I would love to get some help in this area. Would you be open to helping me?”

Or say, “I’m feeling a little bit overwhelmed and too much. Is there an area in all these things – here’s the list – that you would love to get in and support with? because I’d love your support.”

Makena: I think it is a great question to ask… 

If you’re listening to this and you’re going, “Well, I’m not self important, or I’m not a martyr, I don’t want to look at that.”

Ask yourself the question again, “Is there anywhere in which I see that I’m maybe being a little self important?”

Just get curious. “Is there anywhere in which I’m being a little bit of a martyr?” 

I was just thinking as you were talking – overwhelm compounded over time becomes exhaustion – often burnout. Sometimes health issues eventually.

Overgiving compounded over time often becomes resentment – also sometimes can turn into health issues or other things.

That’s something to notice if you don’t relate completely.

But if you can see, is there anywhere where you’re starting to feel a little resentful or you are feeling exhausted and all these things.

Those are indicators of something underneath there that gets to really shift. 

The other thing I remembered I was going to say earlier was with overwhelm it’s like your to do list, all the different pieces – it’s not going to get done most of the time.

We are living these lives. It’s never ending. There’s always going to be more.

I think when I finally relaxed around, “I can do as much as I can do. I can learn to ask for and lean on and get support and set up systems” – which we’re going to talk more about.

At the end of the day either it gets done or it doesn’t get done. 

And if it doesn’t, then okay. Maybe there’s a bigger thing that gets to shift here. I have to let go of some things. Or certain things have to shift in the way we approach them. 

I think it’s allowing for that natural consequence a little bit when you’re not holding it all together sometimes things will shift a little bit too.

Gigi: You’ll have to create change.

You might not be able to do everything. So you have to prioritize and see “What can I do?” Over this next month, maybe you focus on this particular area. And say, “This is what I can do and ask for support.”

And then when you do reflect, you change your attitude and you ask for support, then your approach is very different.

The same thing when you slow down to move faster. 

Let’s say in a parenting situation, if you have children and it’s overwhelming… 

I was with my daughter who just had a new baby and she has a two year old and it was a lot.

In that – choosing where you’re going to say, “Where are the things that really need to get done.”

Then the other time is slowing down and being present with your child and enjoying your child and letting some things fall apart – the house might not be as clean as it’s supposed to be, or whatever.

Here’s the thing about children when you stop and you attentively spend time with them – it doesn’t have to be huge amounts of time. They calm down. Then they allow you to do the other things.

This is what I see sometimes when we’re going, “No, no, I can’t.” Then the child feels that and then they’re grabbing more and more.

It’s really stepping back and looking – What’s important here? What’s important for you? 

Because your energy is extremely important. 

What do you want? And how do you want this experience to be? 

And then going, “Okay, how do I create that in the world where I am right now? What do I need to do?” 

Makena: Yeah, I love that. 

And you have a great story too on this topic around delegation. When you went into a company and supported a woman. Can you share that story? 

Gigi: One of my contracts was with JPMorgan Chase and it was only with the women in the organization who are senior VP and up. 

One of the women, a very successful senior VP – she was one of those clients I loved working with. She was so dynamic and tough. When I would give her feedback, she’d listen. She had a great team, but she was always controlling everything and she knew it. 

She said, “I decide how everything goes. I can’t let anyone else hold the ball because they’re not going to do it like I do. What if they drop the ball?”

And I reflected to her, I said, “As long as you’re doing that, you’re always going to be exhausted.”

The other thing is she really wanted to advance and that’s a whole other story. But in it, she was controlling everything. 

She wasn’t learning how to be a great leader. Where she could start to honor her team and give them certain jobs. Then train them, make sure in the beginning that they would follow through and everything.

I said, “Why can’t you just give it a shot? Let’s try it.”  And she was like, “Okay.” 

So she went in and she did it.

She started tapping into her team and asking them, “What do you see in these meetings? How do you think we should approach this? And what would you do differently?” 

And her team started giving her feedback and she was in shock. 

She was like, “Oh, my gosh, I can’t believe how many different things they see, and they want to participate.”

She started giving them jobs and allowing them to take on a lot of the responsibility. So she could stand up and see what needed to happen instead of being in the weeds, trying to make everything and everyone do everything exactly the way she thought. 

When she did that, she came back to me and was like, “Wow. My experience of my work is so different and my team is so much happier. We now are dialoguing. We have meetings where everybody’s participating.” 

The other thing, it became very obvious – the people that weren’t going to be part of the team. It became so obvious who wanted to be on the team and who didn’t want to be on the team.

All of that came from her stopping, trying to hold everything together.

I’ve had that experience with so many of my clients and many of my clients are very high powered business women that are very, very successful. They got there because they were “Make-it-happen Ladies”  and I get that.

But there comes a point where you have to build the systems and rely on other people like you’ve done and start to experience something different.

Makena: What’s that saying? 

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” – something like that. 

If we think about a great leader… we don’t think about someone sitting at the top telling everybody what to do and micromanaging everything.

We think about someone that knows how to empower other people to really bring out their brilliance.

In that, that leader, they get to sit back more and really step into their zone of genius.

So that’s great if you have a team – ask them for what they see or for their intelligence.

If people are listening and they have a team, either in their company, or a team that they’re working with on a job or something – how do people start to tap into the intelligence of the people on their team? 

Gigi: If it’s in a company, like a corporation, I would see what are the responsibilities. 

And then go and say, “You’re holding a lot of them and you would love to delegate some” 

Then really looking for yourself, if you know your team, and seeing who has the skills that could take on some. I would go to that person and really say, “I’m thinking about – I’d love to give more responsibility in this area. Is this something that you feel like you can do?” 

You could do a meeting and just say “In this project, there are a lot of things that I would love to start that many of us were doing and supporting each other. Here are the tasks or the parts of the project… Who would like to take these on and take responsibility for them?”

So that’s a way of doing it.

In a family, you can do the same thing. “Hey. There’s all these different things that I’m doing and I would love support. Because it’s just feeling like a little bit too much for me. Which areas would you like to support in?” 

If you have older kids, “Which areas can you take on?”

Usually people, when you ask them, are so excited to help.

Makena: How old is old enough for this? Because you just pushed a client around this recently and it was a big aha for her. Where she started to really get her family, her kids involved more. 

But people think the kids need to be at a certain age. When do you have kids start to take things on and support in that way?

Gigi: As soon as they’re up walking and saying, “No.”

Makena: I know the answer to this question. I’m asking for the benefit of our listeners. I very much remember pushing the grocery carts through the stores and getting the groceries. Helping with the cooking. 

And all these things that people would be like, “Oh my God!”

Of course we were with our nanny but we were always involved from a very young age.

Gigi: Because kids want to support. 

My daughter has a two year old and he started early. He loves taking the silverware out of the dishwasher when he was one.

Now he’s two and he’ll start taking it out. He’ll open the door. He’ll put this stuff up. He’s always helping. 

In fact, the school teacher said, “I’ve been in child care for 25 years. I’ve never met a child that likes to help so much.” 

But that again is part of our system. That’s something we always did. Because then you find the little jobs that kids can do and you ask them to support.

You sit down and say, “Hey, mommy’s got a lot to do here. I’d love to have you guys help. What would you like to do here?”  Or you just have them start doing it. 

That’s what the client you’re talking about – She has 3 children. The oldest is 10 and I think she has a 4 year old. 

I said, “Get them helping you. Help set the table. Help clean up afterwards.”

She was like, “Oh, my gosh! I never thought about that.” 

She started doing it and now the kids are so excited. 

They want to participate and when they’re done, they all do a team meeting. Everybody gets acknowledged and they all feel like they’re part of the system. 

Makena: Not only feel like they’re a part of it. I think they want their mom to be happy.

“Happy mom, happy life for everybody.” 

When you’re stressed and you’re overwhelmed and you’re doing all the things – that’s not the version of you your kids want, even at a very young age.

Now, if your kids are much older or grown – we were just talking to someone in our mastermind about this. She has kids coming home from school and they’re bringing friends and everything.

The tendency maybe would be for her to go organize everything and take it all on. 

And you were saying, “No, give everyone jobs.”

That’s what we would do if we’re going on a family trip or something. One of us handles organizing the meals or at least planning them. And we all pick different meals that we cook or pick the restaurant.

Then somebody else handles the outings and does the research on that. So everybody gets involved. 

This is really the antidote to both overwhelm and overgiving – is that starting to practice delegating and asking for and also receiving support.

Sometimes the support is there. And you’re just not saying yes to it. 

Gigi: When you get the offer for support – this is in your business, if it’s someone that you feel aligned with and then you say yes, yes, yes, yes.

And start opening up to that because that’ll open up more and more opportunities for you to see what’s next in your business. 

If you’re a solopreneur and entrepreneur and you have a sister that wants to help you, then let her come in and help you for a while. 

Normally, if people are offering, they really want to do it.

Makena: A lot of times people don’t know how to offer too. Especially if they don’t feel the openness from you. If they feel you’re just taking it all on, they don’t see how to support. 

Sometimes if you just ask, if you have a thought like… 

This is really great for those of you who are in a position where you’re like, “Well, I can’t hire any support.” – not even a few hours a week or something like that. 

Then it’s really to look and see – is there anybody in your life that has offered. That you could really take them up on that and learn to practice receiving.

Or is there anyone you could ask? Most of the time people are happy to have the opportunity to help someone that they care about. They just don’t know how, unless you’re very specific in your requests, like, “Hey, could you come over for a few hours?”

We did that for friends recently, where we went over and said, “Hey, it’s Valentine’s Day. We don’t usually do a big dinner out on Valentine’s Day. Why don’t we go over there and watch their little boy.”

He was sleeping pretty much the whole time anyway. They get to go out and have a special Valentine’s day.

And that was such an exciting thing for them. I could tell they just would never have even asked. 

But for us, it was easy. We just had a nice evening in and watched some TV and hung out. And even if their kid had been awake, it would have been fun for us to do that for them.

So a lot of times support is right there waiting in the wings. And it’s just for you to really reach out and kind of grasp it. 

One last thing I wanted to touch on here is going back to when we talked about getting your kids involved.

But if you’re in a partnership, if you’re in a relationship and you feel like – I see this with women a lot – you’re the one… 

Even if your partner supports, or they support financially or whatever ways you guys have your dynamics set up. A lot of times there’s a feeling with women like they’re the ones holding all the pieces somehow. 

They are keeping track of what needs to happen with the kids, what’s going on with this or the household or whatever. I used to really feel that way in my relationship and I wanted to talk a little bit about that and what I did.

I had a little story there.

Sunny was – I think you’re the one that told me how to approach them. 

Something I saw was that – he didn’ get it because he functions differently than I do. He didn’t understand the impact of me holding all these different pieces. He would operate in a very different way. 

But I was able to go to him and say, “Listen, I feel overwhelmed. I feel like right now I’m keeping track of things that need to happen around the house and with the cars on top of my work.”

I just really shared something like “This is how that feels for me.” Not in a way of making him wrong at all. 

But saying, “This is my experience. I know you would approach things differently, but I’d really love these things to be done.” 

And then like you’re saying with the delegation – I really asked him. “Is there an area that you could really take on here and you could take on the responsibility for” 

And he was like, “Of course, I want to help.” So one of the areas that he took on was our cars. 

I was like, “I would love to not have to think about getting the cars fixed, getting the gas, the oil changed. All these different things.” 

He was like, “Okay, great. I’ll handle that. I’ll make sure it’s taken care of.” 

And I’ve never had to deal with any of that stuff again. 

That’s just an example of how sometimes people can also take responsibility in a certain area. 

I think you did that with us a lot too As kids. You would like give us an area that was ours to really own.

Gigi: Which is great – really, really great.

Makena: So thinking about that too and not just giving tasks. 

But really saying what area – can your kids or your team, or your partner – what area can they take on as their responsibility or their piece.

Then if they need support, they can come to you for it.

Gigi: That’s great because then there’s accountability there too. People know what to do also.

Makena: We’ve covered a lot here around this dynamic and there’s more to come. 

We’re really going to touch deeper into – in one of our next podcast episodes – how do you set up systems? 

Because this is something you say a lot, Gigi. 

How do you set up systems of support – also systems for breakdowns or pressures in your life or in your business? 

Thank you for sharing your wisdom and these patterns. We’re not going into the rest of them but it’s so powerful for people to start to self reflect. 

Gigi: Thanks for sharing your stories and everything too – and all your wisdom.

And everyone that’s listening again…

Be curious. Use your curiosity. 

Don’t make yourself wrong.

Get curious at whatever’s not working. Look and see what would work. 

Thank you so much for listening. Please, If you love this, go and rate the podcast – we’d love it if you do that.

Any kind of awesome comments – we’d love to have to.

Thank you so much.

Makena: See you next time!