One of the things we hear often from women is that they feel a little at sea when it comes to doing all.of.the.things. It seems that things can get a bit choppy when we try to carry the entire load of running a household, having a career, raising kids and remembering to get a card for Aunty Dot’s 80th birthday.

For whatever reason, we often see that one person in a family takes on the job of being the organiser, orchestrator and general ideas person (and this means everything from which holiday to go on next, through to what to have for dinner). This little phenomenon is known as carrying “the mental load” and very often it falls to a female. And it can result in us feeling like we are being dragged under from the heaviness of the load.

If this is ringing some bells with you, then as we wrap up this month of ‘The New You’ we would love you to have a good old look at what your mental load entails. Start by being curious and ask yourself a couple of questions:

• Is this even my job?

• Can this job only be done by me?

• Would it be possible to delegate this job and let the delegate do it as they see fit? (Micromanaging someone else will probably end up being just as heavy!)

• Do you have some kind of secondary gain from being the person who “does it all”? (ie: being a martyr.)

So have a fun week having a look at why you carry the mental load and see if you can find a way to get rid of some that ballast and cruise through into the end of 2019 without having so much to carry.