When Hard Work Becomes Your Default Setting
The energetic pattern most women don’t see... and how to unwind it
A few weeks ago, I was hiking through the Redwoods with a friend, a fellow coach who understands the high-pressure emotional terrain of entrepreneurship inside and out.
We were mid-conversation about the ups and downs of building something meaningful…and then, mid-sentence, something stopped me.
I interrupted myself.
“Wait. Something just came through.”
And this truth landed so clearly I couldn’t unhear it:
“I’m a hard worker. So everything I do becomes hard work.”
It felt like that old saying:
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Except my hammer wasn’t a tool, it was a survival strategy.
Effort.
Intensity.
Seriousness.
Doing it “right.”
Doing it all.
Not because I wanted everything to be hard, but because hard became my default energetic posture.
My expectation.
My identity.
I said it out loud, and we both paused, feeling the truth and the invitation inside it:
What if it doesn’t have to be hard?
Something softened. A breath returned.
And then the next question arose:
What if EASE was the focus instead of hard work?
As the Redwoods held that moment for me, I realized something simple and true:
Life doesn’t need more effort from me. It needs more ease.
That moment in the Redwoods showed me something I’d been living for years without realizing it:
I wasn’t just working hard —I was defaulting to hard.
Approaching everything with the same energetic posture: braced, serious, effort-first.
And once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it.
It made me wonder how often we do this in our own lives?
Not because something is truly difficult, but because we learned to meet the world with effort instead of ease.
And how often that habit quietly shapes our days without us noticing.
Which brings us to this week’s Ritual. 🧡
The Heart of This Week’s Ritual
There’s a subtle shift that happens inside your system — and most women never notice it:
You move from working… to efforting.
From taking action…to making everything heavy.
This isn’t a mindset issue, it’s an energetic one. And it often means:
your body is tired
your nervous system is bracing
you’ve slipped into “prove mode”
your inner Perfectionist has taken the wheel
you’re carrying more than your system can hold
When this happens, even small things feel big. Simple steps feel complicated. What should be light suddenly feels loaded.
Not because the task changed, but because your internal posture did.
This week’s Ritual helps you recognize that moment, the instant you shift into unnecessary effort, and gently guide yourself back to ease.
Not through pretending.
Not through bypassing.
Not through “trying to relax” (which is just more effort in softer clothing).
But through remembering: Ease isn’t the absence of work. It’s the absence of unnecessary strain.
And your body knows how to find it.
This Ritual helps you listen.
The Ease Invitation
This is a gentle somatic invitation, a way to retrain your body to recognize ease as safe and available.
Here’s how to step into it: