Maximum Impact, Minimal Stress: In My 50s, I Discovered A Better Way To Succeed

Welcome to a world where you depart from struggle and achieve success without falling over. Where ambition is embraced healthily. Where you attain your goals without squashing yourself in the process. Because once upon a time I did fall over, ambition used to derail and time and time again I contorted myself into ridiculously stressful life squeezes. I constantly strived, achieved, celebrated, and then collapsed. Or sometimes I broke mid-cycle, burning out and melting into a pit of embarrassed inertia.

Oh my, did I hurt myself along the way, pursuing my dreams with a fervour that was inspiring on the one hand but impossible to maintain on the other. I didn’t know how not to give my all. 

I thought ruthless pushing was the only way to succeed. That without pain, there would be no gain. I subscribed to the myth that having it all meant doing it all.

And that’s the crux of the problem for the modern woman today, really. Those of us with big dreams are taught to chase them with passion and determination, but never taught about the pitfalls we may trip into along the way.

About the fact that time is fragile, that energy needs nourishing, that the task list won’t in fact ever end. That the ethereal tomorrow where we’ve ‘nailed it’, isn’t actually on the horizon after all.

Success Without Self-Sacrifice

In my twenties, I set up my first business whilst raising my young family. By my thirties, I had four children under 7 years old, a thriving personalised gift empire and a husband who kept losing his job.

By my forties, I had sold the business, was rapidly scaling the corporate ladder with ever-growing budgets and teams, and was alone, solo-parenting those kids, divorced after twenty-six years of togetherness.

By my fifties (now), I had published several best-selling books, toured the world teaching energy management, fallen in love with my soulmate and pivoted back to entrepreneurialism.

On paper, this reads like a magnificent career and life expansion sparkling with bigger and bigger impact at every life phase, but the reality is that I was crashing and burning for two decades of this ascension. And only in 2015 did I finally stop the spirals of boom and then bust and learn how to succeed without stress crippling me.

Finally, I understood the delicate blend of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual self-mastery to thrive. At last, I cemented how to succeed with grace and sustain maximum impact with minimal stress.

So, this column is dedicated to empowering you with ways to make your boldest wishes come true, without the self-compromise that creates inner turmoil and hurt.

My articles will be written from the heartfelt perspective of a woman who has lived the struggle, trying to be everything to everyone, crushing myself in the process.

I intend to inspire you with ways to avoid the mistakes I made so repeatedly for so long, desperately wishing for that knight in shining armour to swoop in and rescue me, white stallion, gleaming smile and all. He never came.

But I gradually realised that he, or better, the pulse of my vibrant saviour, was within me all along. And all the serenity and big impact without burnout I so frenziedly craved was possible once I took accountability for myself and truly started putting my oxygen mask on first.

This did not come naturally. This took decades of experimentation and diligent study of various healing modalities, from hypnotherapy to leadership coaching to energy management to NLP to nutritional health. Deeper and deeper went my certifications, and on and on went my big impact life experiments.

I dabbled with how to modify my life and myself, redefining success day by day, until eventually I cracked the code to hitting all my most yearned-for goals without compromising my health.

The major revelation to me? That until we honour our true spirit, aka your soulful self, your sacred centre, that which we value most and need – physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, we will not be fulfilled, and we will not soar. But once we learn to operate from our unique source of integrity, we become unstoppable.

Today, I proudly and lovingly parent my four children, still work hard and have more responsibilities than ever including a large one-hundred year old mansion in the British countryside, a bouncy Dalmatian, two businesses, social-media-influenced disruptive teens, the dynamic fizz of all kids still living at home with me, a long-distance love relationship (London and Amsterdam), and macro and micro economic uncertainty every day.

But, I relish this abundance with a luminous joy in my heart that means energy effervesces, and my work enriches my soul as bountifully as it impacts the world. Yes, stress is woven into life’s tapestry, but I harness it as invigoration and a chance to course-correct moment by moment. I’ve finally learned the harmonic balance between stress and rest to sustain success.

So, get ready to journey with me into your personal integrity, finest impact and learn to savour life without the strife.

Bianca Best, author of 'Big Impact without Burnout', teaches ambitious women to master their energetic frequency so they can flourish in life and business. Through Maximum Impact, Minimal Stress, she shows women how to honour integrity, essence, and soft power to manifest dreams. | Views expressed by the author are their own.