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Why You Keep Feeling Like You Have to Do More or Work Harder
- Antonie Kjosas
- 2 days ago
- 10 min read
I recently shared about the struggle so many people face these days with the "personal development" industry where we end up feeling like we're the problem and we're constantly fixing ourselves in the hopes we'll finally be ready enough, good enough, confident enough to actually live our truth. And then we wonder why we don't trust ourselves, how to step into our personal power, and feel like we can just be...
And today I want to discuss how the personal development industry has just created a new form of the good girl: Who you're told to be, so that you can be accepted, respected, and even just deemed as a human.
And this "standard" for how girls and women "should" behave has been a hot topic for quite some time... Such as what's discussed in Simone de Beauvoir's 'The Second Sex,' and Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez, about how the word 'human' has really just become a description for what we default into thinking of as man, men, and the male.
And that whenever we think about 'human,' we really just think about what it's like for men, and we neglect to think about what it's like for women and the feminine. As a result, we think for you to be a well-functioning 'human,' you need to be logical, reasonable, calm, grounded, maybe a bit rigid, and essentially masculine.
The reason this matters is because whenever you display traits of being wild, creative, passionate, alive, sensual - which includes feelings of anger and frustration - these things are feminine qualities.
And in a world that thinks of 'humans' as everything that is masculine, people look at the feminine and every trait that you have (that is feminine) and say "that's not human" and quite literally define you as inhuman for your natural, authentic, (very human) qualities. So for you to be considered human in this world, you need to be all things masculine, and only that.
But that neglects most of who you are.
The point with all of this is that you need to be really, really careful with this industry that sells you strategies and tips for healing your nervous system, regulating, keeping "calm," meditations, embodiment, 'quantum leaping,' and all of that.
You need to be really considerate of whether or not this comes from someone or something that really considers you (as a feminine human) with all your experiences.
So does it consider your childhood trauma? Does it consider that you're a feminine being? Does it consider your female biology? Does it consider that you've been conditioned to live as the good girl and grew up with different rules, conditions, expectations than men? Does it consider that everything in this world is mainly set up to support male beings?
If it doesn't, stop listening to it.
Just as a note, keep in mind that the largest percentage of consumers and customers in health, well-being, and personal development industries are women. It's not so surprising that the people who are most invested in "improving" and "fixing" themselves and becoming better people are women.
Does that come as a surprise? No, of course not. Because from birth, from your grandmother's birth (and beyond), you've been told that there is something wrong with you. You've been told that there is something for you to improve and for you to fix about who you are, how you think, how you move, how you dress, how much you eat, what you think about, how you solve problems, how you feel, what you need, what you say, how loudly you say it, how much space you take...
You've been told that you're a constant project to be "improved" because you never fit into the mold that was designed for male beings. But you were never meant to.
So what happens when we listen to all of these "strategies and tips" that are really just fundamentally based in trying to make you less of you and more of who you're not?
It's literally like the movie called 'Robots' where they have a slogan for old robots who are supposed to buy new parts instead of keeping the old ones: "Why be you when you can be new?" That's what the personal development industry is doing to us as well.
It's saying, "why be you, who's a feminine being, who's all deep feeling, creative, expressive, wild, free, passionate, and powerful beyond what we can fully even understand? Because we're so scared of it because we don't have that same power, we don't have the ability to birth children, to flow with the universe in the same way, to have deep, undeniable intuition, instinct, power, love, compassion, joy, community, connection... We're terrified of that. But instead of admitting that, we're just going to say that you're the problem. We're just going to say that you're wrong. We're just going to say that how you get "better" is to be more like us."
And so when you're following all of this "advice," you're not healing. You're not growing. You're not evolving. You're not embodying.
You are performing, pleasing, proving, trying to be acceptable, trying to be liked, thinking that "if I can just phrase things correctly, then they will finally understand. If I just set enough boundaries, but in a kind of compassionate way so that I don't upset too many people, I can somehow be whole again. If I can just learn to regulate enough, I won't ever get triggered. I won't ever get angry. I won't ever get frustrated."
But all of that is bullshit.
And all of that is just a new form of the good girl. It's an evolution of the expectation, pressure, the trap that's been created for you to be the good girl who never disappoints, fall behind, fails, or is inconvenient in any way.
And I want to bring something else up too, and I often bring this up when I discuss this topic, because I hope, in the depth of my being, that you will take a moment to consider what I've just written, and that you will take a moment to get pissed off about it.
Because that anger, that you've been so good at keeping composed, gathered, and suppressed, it needs to be let out.
And one of the things that I think should help you get it out, at least a little bit, is the fact that as long as women keep busy with all of these things that are based in not enoughness, in feeling like we're too much, wrong, lesser, inadequate, demanding... As long as we stay busy with that, we are handing away our power.
It's not because anybody else takes it. It's not because we don't have access to it, it's because we are repeatedly just handing it away.
When you're sitting in the classroom second-guessing yourself, thinking about exactly how to phrase the question so that you will seem more intelligent, because everybody needs to know that you're not as clueless as you feel right now, the guy next to you, he just raised his hand. He just asked the question. He just guaranteed himself the internship because the professor likes people speaking up, even if they make a complete mess of things. They didn't care about the perfect wording for the question. They just cared whether you raised your hand or not, whether you seemed engaged or not. But instead of taking a chance, you were busy perfecting, and as a result handed away your power.
As long as you are sitting around until 2 a.m. at night tweaking your work presentation because you want to make sure that it's absolutely perfect and you're doing your research because you don't want your team or your employer or whoever to be able to find any flaw in your work. All of that time, your male co-worker is spending recharging his batteries so that he can actually deliver the presentation with confidence, ease, and trust in himself while you look exhausted and are on your third cup of coffee and your boss keeps thinking to himself "she's sick and out of the office every three weeks" because you keep failing to take care of your body because you're so busy trying to be the perfect good girl and so you get sick and so you miss out on opportunities that you were already deserving of.
Let me be clear: This is not your fault. You are not to blame for this.
The system is to blame for this. The stories you were told growing up are to blame for this. They are the problem and you never were.
And yet you get to choose now: Do you keep honoring the rules that are set against you, or claim your power back?
I could sit here for hours giving you these examples about every time you question yourself, second-guess yourself, leave yourself to perceive from other people's point of view of you come across, question the way you look, or you diminish, play small, perform, prove, hide, wherever it is, every single time you are giving away your power to other people and missing out on your own power.
And it's infuriating because it's the perfect setup. Can you imagine? Imagine you were playing chess with someone and you really wanted to win. Wouldn't it be so perfect if you could just guarantee that your competition was so distracted second-guessing themselves? And you can just lay out your strategy and you can beat them in no time because they're so busy second-guessing themselves, they're not even watching what you're doing. It's the perfect setup - for them.
I want to remind you again: I don't blame you, I don't blame me, I don't blame anyone, for behaving as the good girl. And you shouldn't either. And you can't really. There's no fault of you for doing this. I'm not saying get angry because you should start blaming yourself. This is literally what you were born into. And not only that, but it's what kept you safe. It kept you safe in the past. I need you to recognize that. It did keep you safe.
For me, the best way that I could protect myself from my mother's volatile and unpredictable attacks, was to prepare for them, was to sense them in advance. It was to manage her expectations and her emotions so that I didn't have to get the heat when things got too much for her. Or when she got too resentful over her past and she had to let off some steam, and the way she did that was to take it out on everybody else.
It kept me safer to do this. It's not like I was comfortable and well all the time, but it was a heck of a lot safer than just walking around in a world where any moment, any time, any day, I could just get run over with a truck (metaphorically speaking). It kept me safe, and it kept you safe, whatever it is that you've been doing to stay the good girl. It's kept you safe, and you need to recognize that, and you need to give yourself as much love and compassion you can for that, and that's a lifetime job.
And the reason I'm saying that is twofold: One, it's important that you're not twisting this into just yet another way to self blame and think about how you "shouldn't behave as the good girl" and then just getting caught in behaving as the good girl who "shouldn't," because that's an endless cycle that's never going to end.
Two, it's not something you can just step out of. It's not something that you can just go to the mirror today and say "I'm done being the good girl" and then walk away and everything changes. It's a great first step and I encourage you to do so. But you also need to recognize the fact that your body, mind, nervous system have been wired with the good girl that kept you safe.
So it takes a little more than just "okay, I'll stop now" for things to actually shift - because you need the space and time to heal. To be pissed, cry, unlearn, reclaim your power piece by piece.
And I'm only mentioning that because the "self-help" industry often neglects to mention the power in your coping mechanisms and therefore leave you stranded for months, years trying to claim your power back not realizing that part of you believes that's unsafe and does everything in it's power to protect you against it.
Not because you're the problem. Because the world you were born into had problems and instead of dealing with them, it placed them on you and said "you deal with it." And you did. Now it's just about realizing that you get to step out of managing everybody else's problems and live your life, purpose, truth instead.
It takes work and a lot of patience, help and support from other people, maybe from a therapist, from someone who can genuinely help you move through your unique situation and actually be there to speak to you directly, to understand you directly and support you directly. And that's why you can't just snap out of it.
That's why as long as you operate in the idea that you're "supposed to be able to just step out of it," because now you have this logical awareness of what the problem is, so now it's "easy for you to go and fix it," the longer you're going to stay stuck in the traps they've placed - but that you no longer have to stay in.
It's important that you don't step away from this trying to fix something that isn't broken. Something that just needs some tending, love, healing, patience, and a lot of support. And that's okay.
Human beings, especially feminine beings, are wired for connection, community, and support. I recently saw a post about the problems of the "self-care" industry and this idea that healing is based on self-care rituals. Which places the job entirely on you, when the truth is that these are collective wounds.
Every woman next to you will have some form of experience with behaving as the good girl. Every woman before you, at least for a long, long time, has been wired to believe that she is unsafe within herself. So the idea that this is something that you're supposed to battle on your own is just yet another way in which patriarchy can isolate you and keep you trying to do everything on your own, staying stuck in the same problems because you're solving problems that aren't the actual problems, and therefore avoiding the real ones - and your power.
And if you want to have a support system and community around you - with others walking similar paths - then perhaps Her Kind Collective is for you. This space is not about performing or improving ourselves. It's not about perfection or constantly doing things to get ahead or stay busy.
This is a space for us to connect and find like-souled people who are on similar journeys but completely unique, where we honor both our ambition and authenticity. It's for you who just wants that kind of sisterhood and support system to lean on, that maybe the people at your workplace, current group of friends, family, horseback riding class you go to... aren't really giving you.
The doors aren't quite open yet, but you can join the waitlist and stay in the loop. In the meantime, just know you're not alone and you're most definitely not a problem to be fixed.
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