You Were Never Meant to Live Like This

I keep noticing something in the women I speak to. They are tired. Not just physically tired, although that’s part of it. It’s a deeper kind of exhaustion, the kind that comes from trying to keep up with a life that never really felt like yours in the first place.

The early mornings, the perfect routines, and the constant pressure to do better and do more. We’ve all seen those people who tell us to wake up at 5am, meditate, journal, and exercise, and maybe we’ve even listened to them.

Somewhere along the way, this ‘optimised life’ became the standard. If you can’t keep up with it or your body and mind resists it, you start to believe there’s something wrong with you. But what if there isn’t? What if the problem isn’t your lack of discipline, but the life you’re trying to force yourself into?

There’s a particular kind of hardness that women have been taught to aspire to. “Push through. Don’t be lazy. Be productive. Stay positive. Keep going, no matter how you feel.” It’s often dressed up as empowerment, independence, and strength. But when you look a little closer, it’s just another form of conditioning. Another way of teaching women to override themselves, ignore their bodies, distrust their emotions, and measure their worth by how productive they are.

We’ve been so conditioned to push; when we’re exhausted, when we’re overwhelmed, and when every fibre of our being is asking us to rest.

I’ve done this. I’ve read the books, followed the routines, and tried to mould myself into the version of a woman who “has it all together.” I told myself it would fix everything.

That if I could just be more disciplined, more focused, more consistent, then I would finally feel better. But instead, I felt worse. Because I was forcing myself into a way of living that wasn’t aligned with who I actually am.

Getting up at 5am didn’t make me powerful, it made me exhausted. Trying to follow rigid routines didn’t make me successful, it made me feel like I was constantly failing. Underneath it all, I kept asking myself, ‘Why can’t I do this? What’s wrong with me?’ Nothing was wrong with me, I just wasn’t designed to live like that, and neither are you.

Trusting that you know what you need

There’s a different way of being that doesn’t get talked about nearly as much. It’s softer, less performative, and harder to turn into a checklist. When I say softness, I don’t mean weakness. I mean the kind of softness that comes from actually listening to yourself. That notices when your body is tired and chooses rest without turning it into some sort of failure. That says, “Today I don’t have the energy for that,” and doesn’t feel guilty about it.

Real strength isn’t forcing yourself to override your needs, it’s trusting them. It’s choosing to listen, even when everything around you is telling you to ignore what you feel. Because we live in a world that benefits from your disconnection. A world that needs you to keep striving, keep consuming, and keep believing you’re not quite there yet. So of course the message is always, ‘Do more. Be more. Fix yourself.’

But sovereignty doesn’t live there. Sovereignty lives in the moment you pause. The moment you notice the impulse to push yourself past your limits and choose differently. This doesn’t mean you stop showing up for your life or that you never do hard things. It means the place you move from changes. You’re no longer driven by fear, inadequacy, or the need to prove yourself. You’re led by something much more inside, almost like a still, small voice.

Most of us don’t need more discipline, we need more honesty. We need to admit that a lot of what we’ve been striving for doesn’t actually feel good and the routines we’re trying to force ourselves into don’t fit our lives. We need to admit that the version of “success” we’ve been sold is built on constant productiveness and very little care.

Living the soft life

A soft life isn’t about doing nothing, it’s about doing what’s true. It’s about recognising that rest is not something you have to earn. That you don’t need to become a different version of yourself to be worthy of your own care. That you are allowed to move at your own pace, in your own rhythm. Letting yourself be human, listening to your body, and stepping out of feeling like you have to perform feels like rebellion, and in this life, it is.

Because you were never meant to live like this, and the moment you stop trying to force yourself into it is the moment you start coming back to yourself.