Women Who Do Too Much: Five Tips to Stop Biting off More than You can Chew

Do you feel like there’s always too much work to do to relax?  Do you  find yourself rushing through life in a frenzied state, always trying to keep up but never quite feeling like you’ve got things under control?

There’s a very good chance, too, that when you bite off more than you can chew – which for many women is every day – that something has to give. Be honest, what usually “gives” isn’t that extra obligation you signed on for, it’s the time you need to sleep, eat, exercise and take care of yourself.

Busy Women Rarely Have Time to Take Care of Themselves

Women generally feel a need to take care of others. It’s one of their greatest gifts, yet one that can also be detrimental to the woman herself. Why? Because while women are busy taking care of others and all that it entails, they easily neglect to take care of  themselves.

In the short term this may allow you to get just one more thing done: one more run to the grocery store, one more hour at the office, one more activity to drive your daughter to.

In the long term, though, being busy to the point where you neglect your basic needs is entirely counterproductive and hazardous to your health.

When you rush and don’t take time for yourself, you burn out and actually get less done,” says Hale Dwoskin, CEO and director of training at Sedona Training Associates.

You also open yourself to chronic stress, which, according to a study published in the July 2004 issue of the American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin, is the worst kind of stress. Chronic stress is so hard on your immune system that it actually causes it to break down, leaving you vulnerable to many diseases.

Chronic stress leaves you feeling tired, irritable and overwhelmed; not the way you’d choose to live your life.

How to Stop Biting Off More Than You Can Chew

For those who constantly bite off more than they can chew (you know who you are!), there is hope. Use the following tips to get a handle on your responsibilities and still have time for yourself.

Allow yourself to believe you have all the time in the world. “There is always enough time for you if you allow there to be,” Dwoskin says. 

Allowing yourself to feel this way is simply a matter of letting go of the negative feelings, like anxiety, stress, fear, and perhaps low self-esteem, that are driving you to do too much. The Sedona Method is a scientifically proven tool that will show you how to tap into your inner ability to let go and allow you to feel the joy, freedom and relaxation that you deserve.


Do your best to allow yourself to let go as best you can, and have the inner attitude that you have all the time in the world. Then simply live your life at a speed that works for you,” says Dwoskin.

Establish your most important goals. When you get caught up in trying to be everything to everybody, you can easily remind yourself what YOU want to focus on.

Let go of things that aren’t making you happy. This includes organizations you don’t enjoy, clutter around your house that drives you crazy and relationships you find draining. When you begin to scale down, you’ll find that your life gets simplified very quickly.

Do one thing at a time. Studies show that when people multi-task they actually get less done. Your brain is meant to focus on one thing at a time, but when we try to do two (or three, or four) things at once, we force our brain to stop and refocus. The result is that we lose time while our brains try to regroup, and each task ends up taking longer. Meanwhile, what gets done isn’t done as well as it could have been had we just done one thing at a time.

Let go of the feeling that the more you do, the better person you are. Many women pat themselves and each other on the back for doing entirely too much. They look to those who do even more than themselves with admiration, saying “I don’t know how you do it!” The Sedona Method can help you to let go of this misguided mindset, so that you learn to pat yourself on the back for taking time to relax, and for slowing down enough to take care of yourself and enjoy the little things in life.

For more information on the easy to learn Sedona Method, visit our web site at: http://www.sedona.com.