Erica: Hey, girl. By now, you know I have Her Collective, my online community for ambitious women who are done doing it alone. Her Collective is for the women who are smart, capable, and driven, but they find themselves stuck on the sticky floors like self doubt, burnout, and waiting for permission that quite honestly never comes. Inside HER, you get more than motivation. You get real support, real strategies, and real momentum.

Erica: We work on things like clarifying what you want now and what's coming next, building confidence without burning yourself out, navigating hard conversations, career moves, and leadership moments with clarity, and surrounding yourself with women who actually get it. This isn't about hustling harder. It's about moving intentionally with the right tools and the right people in your corner. If you're ready to stop spinning, start choosing yourself, and build a career in life that actually feels aligned, I'd love to welcome you inside her collective. You can learn more and join us at www.joinhercollective.com.

Erica: Because honestly, girl, you were never meant to do this alone. Recently, y'all, I have had some really hard days. Like, really hard days. Tears streaming down my face, anxiety waking me up at night, hungry but too stressed to eat hard. And if I'm honest with you and if I'm honest with myself, these days that are like this, it's a signal.

Erica: It's a signal that I'm usually doing too much. Now, as a driven ambitious woman with two small kids who are off for the summer no less, I sometimes bite off more than I can chew. I wanna be all things to all people all of the time. I wanna make people happy. I wanna just do as much as possible.

Erica: But that's not just the reason for this anxiety. Right? And today, I wanna go deeper than that with you. I wanna peel back the onion and I wanna talk about why many women, myself included, feel that we have to do all of these things at the expense of our mental and our physical health. And I wanna talk about, of course, what we can do about it.

Erica: And y'all, that starts with understanding that you are enough. Now because this is a podcast and you're likely listening to me with an earbud in your ear, you can't see how I actually have this written out. But you must know that enough is actually an acronym for this process that I work through when I am feeling overwhelmed with all of the things. I'm gonna put this in an email for everybody and I'm gonna blast it out.

Erica: So, number one, if you haven't signed up for my email list, make sure that you do that so that you can get this handout and see exactly what I'm talking about. But of course, I'm gonna fill you in here. So, the E in ENOUGH stands for embrace your limits. N is for nurture your well-being, O is for optimize your priorities, U is for understand your worth, G is for grace over guilt, and H is for honor your progress. Now just remember the word enough, and you will be able to take the breath to reset and to recognize that you're good.

Erica: You are enough. You don't have to be all these things to all people all the time, and you are exactly where you need to be. You are listening to the Glass Ceiling and Sticky Floor podcast. The podcast that will empower you to shatter limiting beliefs and toxic behaviors to uncover infinite possibilities, so you can live your best life. I'm Erica Rooney and I'm on a mission to bring more women into positions of power and keep them there.

Erica: I'm obsessed with all things growth and abundance, and I'm here to talk you through the tried and true secrets to get you to level up your career and your life. We talk about the hard stuff here. Imposter syndrome, perfectionism, fear, and burnout. So pull up a seat, pop in an earbud, and let's dive in. Alright, friends.

Erica: If I'm gonna be really honest with you, and I'm gonna be really honest with myself, and peel back that onion, open up the kimono, I've gotta be honest about why I feel the need to be all things to all people all the time. Why do I take on this pressure and this feeling that it's my responsibility to be that person that carries all the weight, that takes on the responsibilities for other people's happiness, for their results? And if I'm honest, I think it goes back to growing up in a split divorce, different expectations, different ways of living, and different personalities. Because y'all, I would learn to quickly adapt myself, to adapt my way of being, to fit into whichever home I was at, my mom's or my dad's. And that whole act of me molding myself to fit the environment I was in is what I think started my personal sticky floor of people pleasing.

Erica: Now I wanted so desperately to keep the peace, to feel loved and accepted wherever I fit in, and that meant at one house that I had to be the kid who did A, B, and C. But then the next day when I went to my dad's house, I was X, Y, and Z. So I felt internally like I had to shift who I was to be a good daughter who was loved, who was praised. And that meant being all things to all of my parents, and y'all, I had four of them. So as I grew older, that belief, that sticky floor, really solidified for me.

Erica: And I continued to search for the love and acceptance by continuing to mold myself, being whatever they wanted me to be. Even if it wasn't the best for me, even if I didn't want to, even if I didn't like it. Now over time, I've reclaimed my agency. I have grown, y'all, but because this is something that started back when I was probably two years old, subconsciously, this idea of being all things to people everywhere all the time without regard to what I needed or wanted, sometimes it still rears its ugly head. I mean, that's the thing about sticky floors, y'all.

Erica: This is always a work in progress. But my job now, now that I'm an adult, when I've got the knowledge and the education and the tools, my job is to remember that I am enough just as I am. And that first step is to embrace my limits. There are only twenty four hours in a day. Y'all, I need at least eight hours of sleep, eight hours for work, and then I have eight hours to do all the other things.

Erica: That's chores, kid responsibilities, fixing dinner, cleaning, working out. It's putting together the edits for my upcoming book, this podcast, the digital course, laundry, shopping, walking the dog. And I'm sure, as you can imagine, this feels like we've already used up the eight hours that I have already. So while I embrace my limits and I accept that I can't do everything, when I do this, I can step away from this idea that I have to be all things to all people. I know that I cannot get up every day at 4:30 in the morning, which y'all, that's my best time of day, and stay up until 10 PM watching TV with my husband.

Erica: I just don't have the energy. I can't do it. I have to pick one or the other. Now I love this quote. You can't ride two horses with one behind, sugar bean, and that y'all know it.

Erica: It's from the movie Steel Magnolias. And while that quote is more about making decisions and picking one course of action, it also serves as a reminder for me that I can't be in two places at once. I have to embrace my limits. N is for nurture your well-being. Now in these moments where I'm ping ponging from activity to activity, from work to kids to my to do list, it is so easy to get overwhelmed and then burn out.

Erica: But when you nurture your well-being, you can take the time you need to prioritize self care. And we all know the saying about the oxygen mask on the airplanes and how you have to put yours on first, and that's because your well-being is crucial for sustainable productivity. I also like the one that if mom ain't happy, nobody's happy, and it really is focusing on putting your needs first. Alright, y'all. O is for optimizing your priorities.

Erica: You have to focus on what truly matters. Now I tend to use the Eisenhower matrix when I'm feeling overwhelmed and struggling with prioritization. And if you're not familiar with what the Eisenhower matrix is, it is the four box quadrant that helps you identify urgent and important tasks versus urgent and not important tasks, or not important and not urgent tasks, and what do you do with those? Right? So, of course, you must focus on urgent and important.

Erica: That is done first, hard stop. Then you can move on to the important but not urgent, and, of course, use my four P principles to help you decide what you can perform, pause, pass, or purge. And if you're not sure what I'm talking about there, I want you to head to an earlier podcast episode where I go all in on my four P process. Use that method to help you identify those core tasks in your values and let that guide your actions. The U in ENOUGH is for understanding your worth.

Erica: Now this is a big one. Huge. You must know that your value is not tied to your output. Your value isn't tied to your weight or your looks or how much you accomplish. It's not tied to the size of your house or how many zeros you have in your bank account.

Erica: You are worthy and enough just as you are. You are just as worthy on the day you lay in bed struggling with anxiety and depression as you are on the days where you are rocking and rolling and getting things done. You are worthy. G is for grace over guilt. Be kind to yourself.

Erica: This really ties in with perfectionism, and do ambitious, driven women struggle with perfectionism. You will miss deadlines. You will forget a meeting. You will submit a document with a typo. It's gonna happen.

Erica: Just embrace it. We are human, and we are faulty at our core. But you know what the good thing about all that is? That you're gonna mess up. The good thing is no one's perfect, and that means no one likes perfect because it is so freaking unattainable.

Erica: So embrace that imperfection, embrace the mistakes, the failures, and hold grace for yourself. Replace your self criticism with compassion and allow yourself the space to make mistakes. And then, y'all, we just learn from them, and we move on. And then finally, H is for honor your progress, and y'all, dang, productivity coach that I am, I overschedule myself.

Erica: I miss meetings and deadlines, and I mess up all the time. This is a lifelong journey. But what I can do is reflect on how far I have come. I can reflect on the growth. I can think about how years ago, one simple mistake would totally derail me.

Erica: Now I can acknowledge the mistakes. I can take a look, figure out where it was I went wrong so that I can grow and I can fix it and try to prevent it next time. It's all about taking that miss, that mess up, that mistake, and reframing it, taking it from the negative to the positive. And here's the thing. I never want you to skip this step of honoring your progress because you deserve to celebrate your achievements no matter how small they are.

Erica: Progress is progress, and every step forward counts. So on the days that those tears come and the anxiety keeps you up at night, I want you to know that you are receiving a signal. It is your body telling you, slow down. Reassess, girl, and remember that you are enough. You are E N O U G H and us.

Erica: Embrace your limits, nurture your well-being, optimize your priorities, understand your worth, have grace over guilt, and honor your progress. I promise you if you pick just one of these steps, one, you will find more space in your day to actually make progress. You will rebound faster. You will go farther. So stop pushing yourself to the limits and celebrate all that you are and all that you've accomplished because, girl, you are doing the most.

Erica: Now if nobody's told you today, you are worthy. And I want you to sit with that, and I want you to think about that just for a minute because you are. Take that time. Do this for yourself. Alright, friend.

Erica: If you haven't already dropped that five star review, make sure you do it today. It truly helps it land in the hands of the woman that needs to hear it the most. And don't forget, jump over to my socials too, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and even TikTok. But until next time, remember, the only ceilings that exist are the ones we place over ourselves. Let's smash through them together.