Why Women in Leadership Roles Struggle to Prioritize Their Health
Why high-performing women sacrifice wellness for work—and how to finally stop
Why is it that when work gets intense, health is always the first thing to go?
You say you value your health. But when deadlines pile up, projects explode, or your team needs you, work never slips—and wellness always does.
You tell yourself it’s “just a busy season.”
Deep down, you know it’s a pattern.
The Real Reason You Keep Defaulting to Work
It’s not that you don’t care about your health.
It’s that you trust yourself more with external accountability than internal boundaries.
In business, when there’s a deadline, you show up.
When there’s a meeting, you’re there.
When everything hits the fan, you’ve got it covered.
But when it comes to your health, there’s no built-in accountability system.
No boss checking in.
No performance review tied to your energy levels.
No metrics on your personal dashboard.
Just a to-do list that never ends.
So you do what most high-performing women in leadership roles do:
You prioritize what feels urgent over what’s important.
Until one day, your body, mood, or energy forces you to say the words:
“Enough is enough.”
The Turning Point
One of my mentors put it perfectly:
“I like to think I value health, but when things get busy, work never slips and wellness always does. At one point, I just hit a wall and said, ‘Enough is enough.’ I realized I didn’t trust myself to make it a priority anymore. So I hired a coach. For me, putting money behind something is how I signal to myself that it matters.”
That single decision changed everything.
She didn’t magically become a different person overnight—but she became accountable to her future self.
Two years later, she’s still consistent.
Not perfect.
But consistent.
And that consistency allows her to lead and coach teams of women into successful, female-led and owned businesses—with scalable revenue, real impact, and sustainable energy.
The CEO of Everyone Else
Most women in leadership operate like CEOs of everyone else’s priorities—except their own.
You wouldn’t let your business run without systems, accountability, and follow-up.
Yet that’s exactly what most women do with their health.
You can’t scale your success if your health systems are running on trust and wishful thinking.
If you lead others, your health deserves a leadership plan too.
Takeaway: 3 Ways to Build Accountability and Consistency
1️⃣ Attach accountability to your values.
Hire a coach, join a program, or invest in something that holds you to the same standard you hold everyone else. Find an accountability partner. Give yourself something meaningful to work toward.
2️⃣ Treat wellness like a leadership skill.
Schedule it. Measure it. Protect it.
If you schedule meetings and calls, schedule workouts, walks, grocery shopping, or meal prep. Then don’t schedule over it. If you wouldn’t cancel a sales call to serve someone else, don’t cancel time meant to serve you.
3️⃣ Start with consistency, not intensity.
The goal isn’t perfection—it’s follow-through. Start with one small habit at a time. For example, create a nighttime routine that helps you go to bed 30 minutes earlier for one week. Five out of seven days counts. Consistency builds momentum.
When you stop treating health as optional and start treating it as essential, everything changes.
Your energy increases.
Your clarity sharpens.
Your ability to lead at a high level multiplies.
You stop operating in survival mode—and start leading with strength.
