Strive, Deliberately.

Inching away from performing, perfecting, and people pleasing (because it's no longer necessary, and makes life far less enjoyable).

Mar 12, 2026

Hi! I’m Kara, a Registered Psychotherapist who works with Strivers, people whose superpower is getting things done and making things happen. When you need help, you turn to productivity and optimization for relief. I’m here to help you see this: The challenge you face is not a lack of discipline, it’s that you strive automatically, based upon learned (and limiting) beliefs and behaviours. Our work together is to help you learn how to strive, deliberately.

Also, a quick note: I am practicing what I preach and taking the next two weeks off. Looking forward to seeing you again in April.

I work with capable, driven people who often feel overwhelmed and anxious. Their superpower is getting things done and making things happen, no matter how impossible the ask or how intractable the context. When they struggle, they turn inwards asking, “How can I improve myself and my processes?” Invariably, they look to productivity experts, peak performance literature, and optimization hacks for relief. The challenge they face, however, is not a lack of discipline. It’s not their systems or their inability to ~~bend~~ manage time ~~to their will~~.

The challenge is how they strive: by performing, perfecting, and people-pleasing (the 3Ps). They reach by denying, ignoring and repressing their own needs. While incredibly compelling as strategies for external accomplishment, these patterns of behaviour (and the beliefs that underpin them) are doomed to fail over the long term.

Eventually, our needs have a way of making themselves known. Consider when you:

Don’t acknowledge to themselves, let alone anyone else, that they are struggling → and you snap at your partner over unloading the dishwasher (hint: it’s not about how they are unloading the dishwasher)
Skip lunch (or eat it standing over your keyboard) → You now have digestive issues, and frequently struggle with a 3 pm crash that requires at least two more coffees and no longer recognize your body when you look in the mirror
Don’t cry at the funeral because there are emails to answer → You lose it in the car in a parking lot three weeks later for “no apparent reason”
Ignore the tension headache that’s been building since Tuesday → And wake up Saturday, unable to move your neck
Push through exhaustion instead of sleeping → until you can’t fall asleep when you finally get the chance, too wired
Deny the persistent sense that something is wrong → so anxiety follows you like it’s your shadow
Sit for nine hours without moving → and now struggle with chronic back pain
Never take a real vacation (laptop comes to the beach) → and find you can't be present anywhere, work or the beach
Don’t say no → End up sick with panic, anxiety, and dread
Stay in the job that stopped meaning anything two years ago → depression sets in*
Optimize every hour → forget what it feels like to be delighted by something, anything

What’s killer is that these strategies (and the behaviours that follow) often feel as natural as breathing. They are second nature to Strivers, not a choice they make after careful consideration. The 3Ps, performing, perfecting, and people-pleasing, are patterns of behaviour that operate automatically and largely outside our awareness. At one point in our lives, they were not just a means to success, they were the only means available to ensure our survival**. Having needs and preferences was dangerous to our existence. Our bodies brilliantly reordered around that reality, making the 3Ps the familiar, go-to, natural response to every interaction. Especially the high-stakes ones we care about.

It also means any other response (congruence, authenticity, boundaries) feels mighty unsafe. Risky is a tame word for what happens when some Strivers attempt to stray from the 3Ps. Anyone who learned to live by the 3Ps knows how physically terrifying it is to even consider not taking all the responsibility, disappointing someone, making a mistake, coming up short, failing to do something exceptionally well, and on and on. It’s beyond guilt; it is a visceral rejection of every cell that constitutes our being. An all-hands-on-deck attempt by our bodies to keep us safe, by making us so uncomfortable, capitulation to the 3Ps seems like the only viable option.

The challenge: the 3Ps don't actually relieve the pressure. They create it. If your default setting is to deny your own needs and preferences, productivity, peak performance and optimization will only exacerbate your stress. The problem isn’t how you block time, it’s how you conceptualize responsibility. It’s not your system for tackling to-dos, it’s the stories fuelling what you think is yours to carry in the first place.

I’ll be more specific:

Do you genuinely believe you have agency in your life?
Do you look at your schedule and know you have choices?
Do you feel authentic (like yourself) as you strive?
Do you feel congruent (like your insides match outsides) as you strive?
Do you feel in control as you strive?

(1) Yes, answering in the affirmative is possible; and (2) This isn’t about right and wrong or good and bad; it’s about moving away from what used to work (because it is no longer necessary) towards what will actually give you the control you are seeking. Your needs are making themselves known, and it’s time to honour them, not only so you can enjoy your life but also so that you can point your brilliant effort and talents towards what genuinely matters to you. You are limited. It’s time to be discerning. To be deliberate as you strive.

Deliberate striving is being able to see all the different parts of you, including your needs and preferences, and choosing which you will satisfy and which you will soothe. It’s about intention, after attention (and a boatload of radical honesty and gentleness). There are four broad principles you can use to being to practice:

(1) Regulate your body

Your body is a part of you. Stress accumulates and compounds inside, dictating how much space you have for complexity and trying new things. To step away from the 3Ps, you have to get your body metabolizing all that pent-up stress. Move, laugh, cry, hug your friends, breathe, dance, sleep, rest, bath - it all helps. And if you are thinking, “sounds great, I’m hear because I don’t have time for these things and it sucks,” toggle to another principle until this feels accessible.

(2) Recognize your multidimensionality

There are many different parts of you, and all of them belong. Try identifying them regularly, and especially when you feel like things are out of or beyond your control. You can focus on only feelings (part of me is frustrated, part of me is insecure and worried, part of me is grateful), on relational roles and feelings (the mom part of me feels guilty, the ambitious professional feels obligated, the partner part feels annoyed), or on past and present (little me feels scared, adult me feels capable). There is no right or wrong way to do this, so whatever comes naturally to you is great. Start using “part of me” language and explore your inner experiences of striving.

(3) Make Ruthless Choices

When we automatically strive, the dominant belief is: we have no choice, it’s our responsibility. As a result, we continue to do what we’ve always done: ignore and deny our needs and satisfy the part of us that feels safe when it does. When you are an adult, though, that is a choice to satisfy one part of you: the little inside, who learned it was necessary to survive. Not choosing this part can send our body into a tizzy, but that doesn’t mean we are actually unsafe, bad, wrong, or in trouble. It just means we are oriented to the realities of the present. Very rarely as adults are all of the parts of us satisfied at the same time. You have to choose: which will you satisfy, and which will you soothe? Sometimes this is easy (I will book that vacation!), other times less so (Should I stay and make everyone else happy and rich, or should I go and see what it’s like to honour myself?).

(4) Relate with Love

The principles (to regulate, recognize and make ruthless choices) are all pretty simple, but it is a mistake to think they are easy. As a result, it is imperative to move to and from love as often as you can. That looks like kindness (remembering that you make sense), compassion (your struggles are common, and do not define you), perspective (you are learning and trying), and gentleness (not too much too quickly, or too little too slowly). We want to, as often as possible, create a felt sense of love here.

Here are a couple of examples of what this looks like in action:

This is all practice. It’s a college dorm room poster that says, “It’s about the journey, not the destination.” Who you become as you try to strive deliberately is the point. God willing, life will go on for you. That means, you will never simply “arrive” at “I’ve got this all under control.” You will change, the context will change, and the world will keep changing. So, trying and continuing to try in perpetuity is the point. That’s being alive. It’s punishing if you are striving automatically, and liberating if you are striving deliberately. The difference is between a life you manage by denying yourself, and a life you experience by embracing yourself. I don’t know which one you’ll pick, but I do know: the choice is yours to make, again and again.

As always, be gentle on yourself and with one another.

I’m curious what’s coming up for you as you read this. What landed, what stung a little, what did you recognize in yourself? Would love to hear more below.

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