The Hidden Weight of Competence

From The Welltality Edit™

Originally published as Edition #21 of The Welltality Edit™.

By Gabriella Testa, MS, NBC-HWC, FMCHC, CLC

Founder, Welltality Coaching® | Creator of The Welltality Method™

Written for The Welltality Woman™—a woman who believes a life of significance deserves to be experienced with vitality, presence, purpose, and the freedom to keep becoming.

✦ Where Biology Meets Becoming™

Editor's Note

There is a particular kind of woman I've come to recognize almost immediately. Perhaps it's because I know something of her myself, and because I've seen her in women I've coached. She's the one people trust when something important needs to get done, not simply because she's willing to take it on, but because experience has taught everyone around her that she probably can.

Over time, that competence becomes part of how others experience her and often part of how she experiences herself. She knows how to solve the problem, navigate complexity, make the decision, absorb the unexpected, and keep moving when circumstances require more of her. She's built a life of substance, shaped by the things she's chosen to pursue, create, lead, and care deeply about.

Competence can create an interesting assumption. Because she can carry a great deal, everyone around her, including the woman herself, can begin to assume she has the capacity to keep carrying it.

There is a difference between being capable of carrying something and carrying it without cost.

For high-achieving women, that distinction can be particularly difficult to recognize because the signals we typically associate with having too much on our plates may never appear. She isn't necessarily overwhelmed, and she may not identify with burnout. From the outside, much of her life may still be going remarkably well. She's showing up for what matters, meeting responsibilities, making decisions, pursuing meaningful goals, and continuing to perform at a high level where it's required of her.

By almost every visible measure, she's handling it.

What those measures can't tell us is how restorative her sleep feels, whether her energy lasts throughout the day, how easily she recovers after a demanding week, how much mental space remains when the work is finished, or whether the life she is so successfully managing still leaves enough of her available to actually experience it. Nor can they tell us whether everything she has become so capable of carrying still belongs in the life she wants to create next.

Our physiology is influenced by the whole of our lives: the shortened night of sleep, the difficult conversation carried into the next part of the day, the responsibility of making decisions that affect other people, the workout squeezed into an already demanding week, the concern occupying space in the background, and the dozens of small things we may be anticipating before anyone else realizes they need attention.

None of this means there's something wrong with ambition or with having a full life. Quite the opposite. I don't believe the answer is to ask accomplished women to want less, do less, or make their lives smaller.

The demands of a meaningful, ambitious life still have to be carried by a human body.

And our ability to continue performing tells us something about what we're capable of producing. It doesn't necessarily tell us what producing it is requiring of us.

When you're exceptionally good at carrying the load, it can take a long time to notice how heavy it has become.

What Competence Doesn't Tell Us

Competence is visible. We can see what a woman accomplishes, how she responds when something is asked of her, the responsibilities she manages, and whether she continues showing up for the life she's built. What is much harder to see is what all of that requires from her.

And the answer isn't the same for every woman.

Some women are carrying remarkably full lives and genuinely feel well doing it. They have energy, resilience, strong health, and an appetite for what comes next. Their desire isn't to retreat from ambition or reduce the richness of their lives. They want to preserve what is working, strengthen the foundation beneath it, and continue expanding without assuming that today's capacity will simply take care of itself for the next twenty or thirty years.

For another woman, something has begun to shift. She can still do what she has always done, but it may require more effort than it once did. Perhaps recovery takes longer after a demanding week, sleep feels less forgiving, energy is less predictable, or the margin she once had between what life asks of her and what she has available feels narrower. Nothing has necessarily fallen apart. She may simply be recognizing that the way she supports herself needs to evolve alongside the life she's asking her body to sustain.

And sometimes the shift has very little to do with whether a woman is capable of carrying the life she has built. She can. She's simply beginning to question whether she still wants to carry all of it.

There are responsibilities we choose because they matter deeply to us, and there are others we continue carrying because we've become the person who always has. The same can be true of expectations, commitments, standards, and even definitions of success. Competence can make it possible to continue long after something has stopped feeling particularly meaningful.

I don't think the answer is simply to ask women to do less. Less isn't automatically healthier, more aligned, or more fulfilling. Greater health may allow one woman to pursue even more of what excites her. Another may need to reconsider how she moves through an already-full life because something in her health, circumstances, or needs has changed. And another may realize that what she wants from the next chapter no longer looks exactly like what she wanted from the last one.

The more useful question is not simply how much a woman can handle. It's whether the life she's carrying is being supported by her health, energy, and resilience, and whether what she's giving herself to still belongs in the life she wants to live.

The Difference Between Functioning and Having Margin

One of the reasons competence can be so deceptive is that the human body is remarkably adaptive. We can accommodate demanding seasons, disrupted routines, emotional strain, travel, challenging work, hard training, changing hormones, family responsibilities, and the ordinary unpredictability of life, often while continuing to function quite well.

That adaptability is one of our strengths.

But functioning and having margin are not quite the same thing.

We tend to notice health when something becomes difficult to ignore: energy drops, sleep changes, recovery feels slower, concentration becomes harder, strength declines, or we simply don't feel as resilient as we once did. Yet health isn't only reflected in whether we can continue doing what is required of us. It is also reflected in how well we recover, adapt, and return to ourselves after life asks more.

For the woman who already feels strong and well, this matters because resilience is worth protecting before she has a reason to miss it. There is enormous value in building and maintaining muscle, supporting cardiovascular and metabolic health, prioritizing restorative sleep, nourishing the body well, and creating enough recovery around the demands she chooses to take on. Healthy aging isn't only about responding to decline. It can also be about preserving the strength and vitality that are already there.

If her body begins responding differently than it did five or ten years ago, pushing harder against the change isn't necessarily the answer. Biology is dynamic. Hormonal transitions, sleep, nutrition, stress, activity, health status, and changes in life itself can all influence how we feel and recover. Recognizing that something has changed gives us an opportunity to reconsider what the body needs now rather than expecting yesterday's strategies to produce yesterday's experience indefinitely.

And there are times when the body may be functioning perfectly well while something else is asking for attention. A woman can have energy, strength, and resilience and still realize that she wants to direct more of them toward something different. Health gives us the ability to carry a great deal, but it also gives us choices about where that strength goes.

Capacity isn't fixed. Health can improve. Strength can be built. Recovery can become more supportive, circumstances can change, and the amount of support available to us can change too. There may be seasons when we need greater margin and others when we discover we are capable of considerably more than we assumed.

I think that's important in a culture that often treats health as the ability to keep doing more.

The goal isn't simply to build a body capable of tolerating an increasingly demanding life. It's to create enough health and resilience that we have room for the life itself: for ambition and recovery, responsibility and pleasure, contribution and connection, discipline and spontaneity, what matters now and what may be calling us next.

Because the fullest expression of health may not be how much we can continue to carry, but how much of ourselves remains available while we're carrying it.

The Load We Don't Always Count

When we think about what asks something of the body, we tend to think about the obvious things: a demanding workweek, a hard workout, too little sleep, an illness, or a major life event.

But much of what we carry is less visible.

There is the decision that remains in the back of our minds while we're doing something else. The responsibility we don't consciously experience as stressful because we've been managing it for years. The relationship that requires more emotional energy during a particular season. The standard we've set for ourselves that no one else is asking us to meet.

Even exciting things require something from us. Building a business, stepping into a larger role, traveling somewhere extraordinary, pursuing a meaningful goal, caring deeply about other people, or creating a life with more possibility can all place demands on our time, attention, and energy.

I think we sometimes make the conversation around stress too simplistic. A full life isn't inherently an unhealthy one, and challenge isn't something we should spend our lives trying to eliminate. Some of the experiences that ask the most of us are also the ones we would never want to give up.

What matters is whether we have enough around those demands to support them.

Enough sleep and nourishment. Enough physical strength and metabolic health. Enough recovery between periods of exertion. Enough space where our attention isn't required somewhere else. Enough connection, pleasure, meaning, and experiences that replenish rather than continually draw from us.

And what constitutes “enough” isn't static. A season that once felt expansive may eventually require recalibration. A responsibility that once felt heavy may become easier as our health or circumstances improve. Something that required tremendous effort while we were learning it may eventually become second nature. Life changes, and so do we.

Two women can carry what looks like a similar load and experience it very differently. Health, resources, support, physiology, experience, environment, meaning, and the rest of what is happening in their lives all shape what a particular demand requires of them. There is no universal number of commitments, responsibilities, workouts, meetings, or goals that tells us when a life has become “too much.”

Sometimes we strengthen what supports the life we're already living. Sometimes we adjust because our needs have changed. And sometimes we decide that being capable of carrying something is no longer reason enough to keep carrying it.

None of those choices makes a woman more or less ambitious. They simply reflect an understanding that our time, health, attention, and energy are valuable resources, and that a well-lived life asks us to be intentional about where we place them.

Capability Is Not an Obligation

One of the consequences of becoming highly capable is that there will almost always be more you could do.

You can take on the additional responsibility, solve the problem yourself, make room for one more commitment, push through the demanding week, help someone who needs you, or maintain a standard that would be difficult for someone else to sustain.

And sometimes you should.

There are seasons when giving more of ourselves feels deeply worthwhile. We stretch because something matters. We accept greater responsibility because we're ready for it. We pursue an ambitious goal knowing it will require more from us for a while. A meaningful life isn't built by avoiding effort.

But capability can quietly become its own expectation. When we've been the woman who handles things for a long time, I can and I should can begin to sound remarkably similar.

They aren't.

As a woman's life evolves, what deserved her energy ten years ago may still deserve it today, or it may not. The standards that helped her establish herself may continue to serve her, or she may discover that she's maintaining them largely because they have become familiar. A responsibility can remain entirely manageable and still no longer be the place she wants to invest so much of herself.

There is nothing inherently wrong with continuing to carry any of it. The point isn't to start removing things from our lives simply because we can. It's recognizing that competence gives us choices, and those choices deserve to remain conscious.

For one woman, that may mean continuing to build, lead, pursue, and expand while becoming more intentional about the health and recovery that allow her to do it well. Another may need to adjust how she supports herself as her body, circumstances, or priorities change. And another may realize that the next expression of ambition looks different from the one that created her success in the first place.

There is a particular freedom in knowing that we don't have to prove our capacity by continually filling it. We can be deeply ambitious and discerning, dependable without being endlessly available, and capable of more without automatically deciding that more is what we want.

Perhaps one of the privileges of becoming the woman who can handle almost anything is eventually becoming selective about what is worthy of being handled by her.

What Are You Building Capacity For?

We spend a great deal of time talking about how to increase our capacity. More energy. Greater strength. Better resilience. Deeper recovery. The ability to remain mentally sharp, physically capable, and engaged with life as we age.

I believe all of that matters.

But capacity becomes much more meaningful when we consider what we want it for.

For one woman, the answer may genuinely be more. She wants the energy to grow the business, step into greater leadership, travel more often, challenge herself physically, create something significant, or simply continue living an already-full life without feeling that she has to choose between ambition and well-being.

For another, greater capacity may feel less like expansion and more like restoration. She wants to wake up feeling like herself again. She wants more margin between what life requires and what she has available, more confidence in her body's resilience, and enough energy left at the end of the day for something beyond what needed to get done.

And sometimes what a woman wants isn't more capacity to sustain the life she already has. She wants the freedom to direct more of herself toward what is becoming important now: a creative pursuit, a different kind of contribution, deeper relationships, adventure, beauty, purpose, pleasure, or a new ambition she hasn't yet given herself permission to take seriously.

None of these is a better use of a woman's life than another. What matters is that the health we're working so hard to preserve is actually available to support the life we want to experience.

There is a different quality to life when enough of you remains available for it. You can finish a demanding day and still have energy for the dinner you've been looking forward to. Travel somewhere extraordinary and have the vitality to experience it rather than simply arrive. Give your full attention to someone you love. Follow the idea that keeps returning. Walk into a room where something important is being asked of you and feel that your mind, body, and energy are there with you.

Those moments rarely appear on a health dashboard, but they are part of what we're protecting when we invest in our health.

The hidden weight of competence, then, becomes about more than how much we're carrying. We can strengthen what supports the life we're already living, reconsider what we need when something changes, and recognize when something we've become perfectly capable of carrying no longer deserves the same place in the life ahead.

A well-lived life will ask things of us. If we're fortunate, some of those things will stretch us. Some will require courage, discipline, responsibility, and seasons of extraordinary effort. I don't want a life designed around avoiding those demands.

I want a life with enough health, vitality, and internal room to choose the demands that are worth it.

Because perhaps the goal was never to become capable of carrying everything. Perhaps it was to become capable of carrying what matters, while still having enough of ourselves available to experience the life we're carrying it for.

Closing Reflection

Competence is something worth valuing. It reflects experience, responsibility, resilience, and all the moments when we've discovered that we are capable of more than we once knew.

I wouldn't want us to diminish that.

But I also don't want competence to become the reason we stop asking what our lives require from us, what our bodies need in order to support them, or whether the things receiving so much of our energy still deserve it.

A woman can be thriving within the life she's built and want to protect the health and vitality that allow her to keep expanding. She can recognize that something in her body, circumstances, or needs has changed and respond differently rather than expecting herself to function exactly as she always has. She can also be perfectly capable of continuing on the same path and realize that she wants something different from the years ahead.

None of those experiences requires a crisis.

We don't have to wait until the body forces the conversation, until our energy disappears, or until something stops working before becoming more intentional about what supports us and what we're asking ourselves to sustain.

Our health, energy, attention, and time allow us to participate in our own lives. They make achievement possible, certainly, but they also make possible the things that will never appear on a résumé or performance review: presence, connection, curiosity, joy, creativity, meaning, pleasure, and the feeling that we are actually here for the life we're living.

Perhaps that is part of what changes as we become more accomplished. The question becomes less about proving what we're capable of and more about becoming discerning about what we want our capability to make possible.

Being capable of carrying a great deal is a strength. Knowing what is worth carrying may be wisdom.

A Final Thought

Before you move on with your day, consider the life you're carrying now.

Does it still feel deeply worth the energy it requires? Are you supporting your health in a way that allows you not only to manage that life, but to feel strong and fully present within it? Has something changed that deserves a different response? Is there something you're continuing to carry simply because you've become very good at carrying it?

And perhaps one more question:

What would you want more health, energy, and capacity to make possible in your life that isn't possible, or isn't receiving enough of you, today?

There doesn't have to be a problem before we ask.

Sometimes asking is simply how we make sure the life we're so capable of carrying remains a life we genuinely want to live.

✧ In devotion to vitality, expansion, and becoming ✧

 Gabriella Testa, MS, NBC-HWC, FMCHC, CLC
Founder, Welltality Coaching® | Creator of The Welltality Method™