Welcome to another episode of Inspiring Women, the podcast that celebrates the stories of extraordinary women from all walks of life. I am your host, Betty Collins. Join us for an inspiring conversation that will leave you ready to take on the world. So stress, not if, but when. Sound familiar to you? Does that sound like a phrase you don't want to hear? Today I'm going to talk a little bit about stress and what we put ourselves through. Because stress, stress, at this point, I think we find people who are like, oh, I just don't want to be having any stress. I'm just going to go on vacation for. And then my stress will be gone.

Vacation's two weeks out of the year, okay? There's 52 weeks in the year. So you got to figure out in those 50 weeks, you know, because in my life, for instance, it's really important what I do as a CPA from February 1 to April 15, right? It's a huge time. It's a huge time that CPAs are known for because of tax and year end and banking needs and all the things that we do. So we have always been a focus on that time period. But in order to get through 60 hour weeks, tons of work that you cannot even comprehend getting done because it all comes at once and you're tired and it's winter in Ohio and gray, you're just getting through that 12 week period. And unfortunately, we don't talk about then what are we doing from May 1 to December 1, because we need to talk about when we don't have the stress maybe, or when we're smoothly sailing, what do we do with that time so that when the boat starts rocking, we can get through it. So stress is not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. And most people really relate to it in the terms of, yeah, that phrase makes sense to me.

But here's some good humor one liners that I liked when I of course used my AI technology, right? I tried yoga to relieve stress. Now I'm stressed and I'm stuck in a pretzel. That sound familiar? Here's one that women can relate to. I have 99 problems and 86 of them are completely made up in my head. Okay, here's some good ones. I'm not stressed. I'm just, you know, aggressively overthinking everything. Or how about this one? Stress is when you wake up screaming and realize you haven't fallen asleep yet, right? And last but not least, and I love this one, I don't need a stress ball.

I need a stress Bat. Okay, so how do we deal with stress? How do we deal with it? Because remember, it's not if, it's when. So core stressors, these are things that in order to know stress and deal with stress and head on with stress, you got to know what, what causes it, right. What triggers it, what are those things that come to you? And for women, these are kind of the top ones. First of all, caregiving. Right now we have kids at home that should be on their own and parents at home. And then you are the middle one because you're the daughter of the parents, right? And you are the mother of the kids and the grandkids and they call it sandwich housing. But there is a lot of care today and stuff that has to be taken care of.

And it's generational sometimes that care, it's a big one for women. Secondly, guilt and burnout, the pressure to do it all be all can lead to a lot of stress and emotional exhaustion. And women are very guilty. I think we all are. We live in those worlds. There are people who I love watching the Facebook reels where they're minimalists living in the woods, literally building a tent out of tree branches in the cold winter, lighting fire and thinking I'm now in the woods with no stress. Look what it took to get through the woods. And look what it took right for building it.

So we tend to get burnout because we might burn out just to get stress free. Right. It's kind of crazy self doubt when we. Despite qualifications and our achievement, many women feel they don't deserve their success, which is just ludicrous. Or they don't even see themselves as successful. And so they're comparing themselves to other. Comparison is a huge stressor. It's a huge trigger.

Then you have the fear of anxiety, of course, high expectations, perfectionism, fear of that failure, isolation. A lot of times, you know, in my industry back in the 80s and even 90s, I was one of the few women in accounting. Now it's over 50, 60% of women are accountants, but only 21% of them are in leadership. So we still tend to feel isolated. When I used to go to retreat, I was one of the few women around the table for Brady Wear. Not a bad thing. Great group of men. But I didn't have, you know, that role model.