199 | How Pressure is Blocking Your Business Growth

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What if success didn’t have to come from pressure, overworking, and always being “on”?

In this episode, we dive into the hidden cost of high achievement and the way many women have been conditioned to tie success to discipline, hustle, seriousness, and constant connection. From running businesses to carrying the mental load of everyday life, so many women are operating in survival mode while disconnecting from pleasure, presence, and peace.

This conversation explores the relationship between pressure and achievement, the guilt that can come with slowing down, and what it means to redefine success in a more sustainable and fulfilling way.

I also share a personal update about returning to YouTube and why creating deeper connection and continuity across platforms feels so aligned in this season.

If you’ve been feeling exhausted by the constant need to perform, produce, and stay connected, this episode will help you reflect on what success actually means to you and how to create more space for joy, presence, and pleasure in your life.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why female entrepreneurs often struggle with pleasure and rest
• The hidden pressure behind always being “on” and constantly connected
• How hustle culture disconnects us from peace and presence
• Redefining success beyond discipline, productivity, and achievement
• The emotional cost of carrying everything in business and life
• Creating deeper connection, balance, and sustainability in your daily life
• A personal update on returning to YouTube and expanding the podcast experience

If this episode resonated with you, be sure to follow the podcast, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs this conversation.

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Transcript

Welcome And The Case For Joy

Erin Gray 0:00

Welcome back. I am so glad you're here. Today I want to talk about something that is really near and dear to my heart, something that I'm very passionate about. I have spent the last seven years becoming very intimate with this activity because it was missing in my life, and I believe that it is missing in a lot of women's lives, especially high-achieving women, women running businesses and carrying all the things, and that is play and pleasure. So let's dive in. I wanted

YouTube Return And Thursday Releases

Erin Gray 0:25

to share a quick little update with you. I am coming back to YouTube. It feels really aligned for me where I am right now. I have someone that I'm super excited about that's helping me edit and put everything up there for you guys. You know, as a consumer, I love to watch people on YouTube, you know, when I listen to podcasts. And also, you know, for me being on there to connect with you. Like I love connecting. Video is another way that I love to connect so that you can see me face to face and have these conversations in a deeper way. I want to say that the episodes will be released on Thursdays. This is going to allow more continuity across all of the platforms and everything that I am giving and sharing with you guys. So I just want to say thank you for being here, for listening, for growing alongside me, for all of the changes that I've made along the way as I've, you know, learned and iterated and refined. I just want to say thank you. If you're new here, I want to say welcome. So you can listen to me here like you continue to do. And if you want to, come visit me and join me on YouTube. I'll be there as well. You

Success Built On Being Always On

Erin Gray 1:35

know, many of us have been conditioned to believe success, or we've even accomplished or or achieved success through pressure, through discipline, through seriousness, through pushing what I call being always on and always connected. Like my two-year-old, which is, ugh, I just, I still have a little bit of guilt when it comes to this, cringe a little bit when she knew my phone number because I was always on the phone talking to employees. I was always on, always connected. A two-year-old knowing my phone number. Like it's crazy to think about that. But I think a lot of us are always on, always connected. And if we aren't physically talking, we're in our heads thinking about our business. And we have had a lot of success from this energy, right? We have a mountain of evidence because we have created the success in our lives from this place. I know I resisted play for so long because I just had so much evidence that, you know what, it it worked this way. And I want to say here that there isn't a right or a wrong way. Like anything that I give you, this is the way you actually have to do it. What I always want you to come back to is how does this actually feel in my body? When you are prioritizing play, when you are prioritizing pleasure, that feels so much better in the body than it does pushing and forcing and not allowing yourself to have fun. So that is what I would encourage you throughout this podcast to really think about is there is no right or wrong here, but what actually feels better. And I want

Defining Play Versus Pleasure

Erin Gray 3:01

to define play and pleasure because they are different and I know we can use them interchangeably, but play is actually the act of doing and pleasure is the act of receiving, which I think we as women can get so much better and building that muscle. So play is you're actively engaged for enjoyment, recreation, amusement, spontaneous exploration rather than for what they call a practical or a serious purpose. It's often characterized by freedom, by imagination, and fun. And pleasure is a feeling. I think about play as like the action and pleasure is like receiving the feeling, right? It's a feeling of enjoyment, of satisfaction, of happiness, of joy, of sensory delight. Experience when something is enjoyable, comforting, and or rewarding. So just remember, play is like what we do, and pleasure is what we, it's like an internal feeling if it's what we receive.

Why Rest Feels Unsafe

Erin Gray 3:55

And I think so many of us have learned that if we relax too much, it's it's coming from this energy of fear. If we relax too much, if we enjoy ourselves too much, if we have too much fun, right? Or we rest too much, somehow we're gonna fall behind, we're gonna things are gonna fall apart, they won't get done, or insert whatever your brain is trying to give you to not allow yourself to have fun and pleasure. And what I have actually come to realize in my own life and in helping clients actually leaning to this more is that we're not actually underperforming or feeling the way that we feel because we need to do more, right? We feel this way because we have become disconnected from our bodies, from joy, from having fun again, right? Like when we started our businesses, I'm sure most of, if not all of you, started your business to make more money than wherever you were at and to have fun and to enjoy your life. And along the way, somewhere we have become disconnected, disconnected from our body, from joy, from spaciousness, from luxury. And I don't mean luxury as in the handbags. If that's something that you love, great. But what I mean is like allowing your nervous system space to be disconnected for things that actually like what are we doing all of this for? Like, what actually makes life worth living? Like we have a business, we're generating income to have fun, to enjoy ourselves. So when we disconnect from pleasure, what often happens is business feels heavier than it actually needs to be. That's like what I call like living in our heads, not actually in our bodies.

Feminine Energy And Business Magnetism

Erin Gray 5:31

So, how that actually shows up, because we are living in our heads, we start forcing things, we start trying to make analytical, logical decisions. We overwork, we create things from pressure. I talked about this, the root center in a couple previous episodes. I'll put that link in the show notes. Like we're creating things from a forcing, pushing, go get it energy versus and more so masculine energy versus this feminine energy of receiving, of allowing, of having fun, of enjoying ourselves. And so we aren't actually stepping. I don't think that we are actually stepping in into our most powerful selves because I think our true power actually comes. And yes, we dance in the feminine and the masculine energy, but I think a lot of our power comes from that very feminine energy, that receiving, being regulated, having your nervous system feel calm, feeling open and creative, like safe and connected. When we feel joy and when we feel freedom, when we feel fun, like that's life force energy. It's coming from within us. It wants to be birthed and you know, come up and out of us, right? It's not something that we are trying to like seek and get from somewhere else outside of us, which I think a lot of us are doing because we feel so depleted on the inside. So when we are telling ourselves, oh, well, when our business hits X or when profit does this or when whatever, insert whatever it is for you, then we can actually relax. We are moving the goalposts, we aren't actually enjoying ourselves

Simple Practices To Receive More

Erin Gray 7:03

now. And so I want to say that play matters, pleasure matters, having fun matters, laughing matters, walking outside, grounding yourself. Like it's been so beautiful outside the last couple of weeks. Like I've been living in the hammock. Like, what are the things that you love to do that are so fun and joyful for you that aren't attached to some money number, that aren't gonna get you to some place? You know, I think a lot of times we even take play and then we make it have to have like an ROI. It doesn't need to have an ROI. The ROI is I feel good in my body. I feel rejuvenated. Like there isn't a number, and although it can, right? But that's not the goal. The goal is just to have fun and enjoy yourself and to feel pleasure and receive and to have fun. So I also want to say here that sounds so simple, but like taking a lunch with no phone, whether it's taking yourself out to lunch or if you work from home, eating at the kitchen table, away from your desk, not answering any phone calls, not reading a book, not watching a YouTube video, not listening to a podcast? Like, can you just sit and enjoy yourself and enjoy a good lunch for you and nourish your body? Really start to become more present in your body and allow and notice the sensations that you feel. When are you contracting? When are you feeling tightness in your chest? When are you feeling that pressure? When are you feeling more relaxed? When are you feeling more in your feminine energy, allowing and receiving? So these are all things that aren't distractions in our business, which comes from a very lack energy. This is play actually adds to. It is an addition to. It is coming from a place of abundance. And what I want to say here too is that when we are connected to our bodies, when we are connected to pleasure, we are magnetic, right? That is something that like oozes out of us. People sense that because our nervous system is calm, because we're having fun, because it feels good to be around people that like to have fun and they are enjoying themselves and they're not taking themselves so seriously. Think about when you are in your feminine energy, how much I downloads you receive and ideas come and intuition gets stronger. And I don't want to say necessarily louder, but it definitely gets stronger. We get tapped into our intuition. I definitely get more downloads when I am playing and when I'm just being in my natural state, which I think a lot of us is our feminine energy. It's not to say that we don't go in our masculine, right? There are things that we do in our business that are very masculine energy, but a lot of it is more so in it. Our baseline needs to be more in that feminine receiving energy. So we can stop gripping so tightly. We can become more available for different solutions and ideas and our creativity. And this matters in our business. I think that the business world, you know, I grew up in the financial industry, I grew up, you know, in the construction industry, which is a very masculine dominated, those two industries were very masculine dominated. So I grew up in very like pushing and outward masculine energy. And I've had to retrain myself and my body to be in more of this feminine. And I think we have been kind of sold a bill of goods that like that's what business is supposed to be about. I don't think it actually is. I mean, I've worked with a lot of men that felt very stressed, even though that's the way that we've been taught to be, to go, to do, to, you know, constantly be moving for something, towards something. But even with them, I could see it in their nervous system, how they felt stressed. So, how can we be more in our feminine flow? How can we be playing more? What can we be doing?

Finding Your Kind Of Play

Erin Gray 10:42

And if you're sitting here thinking, Erin, I don't even know where to start, that's okay. That's exactly where I was. I was like, what did I? I had to ask my mom, like, what did I actually like to do as a kid? And she was like, Well, you always like to swim, you like to be outside. And I think that this is a space for you to also allow yourself to try a lot of different things. You won't know until you like it, or you try it until I should say, do it, right? You won't know until you do it if you actually like it. So allow yourself one or two different activities a week to get into to see what do you actually enjoy doing? Maybe it's walking. Like for me, it's walking, it's traveling, it's being in nature, it's lying in my hammock, it's reading a book. And it doesn't always have to be a business book either. It's like, what are the things that you truly enjoy to do? Like allow just sitting on the couch watching the birds outside my backyard. Like, what are those things that bring you true joy and play with this and allow yourself to see what are the things that you actually like? And I think so many of us are actually trying to create or build and grow our businesses from a place of deprivation, right? You get to do that win, you get to have that win. You don't, you haven't earned that yet, versus from this place of true self-love, abundance in all areas, abundance with time, abundance with money, abundance with self-love for ourselves. And so when we are feeling deprived, when we are feeling less than full, right? Maybe even empty, we're trying to create overflow flow from this place, from burnout, from deprivation, from not allowing ourselves to have what we want along the way, which is such a sneaky little way that we beat ourselves up. So at some point, we have to start asking ourselves new questions, right? If we want to have a different outcome, we have to take different action, which is always going to come from a different way of being, our identity, which comes from our thoughts and our beliefs and our feelings, right? So, what

Questions That Rewire Productivity

Erin Gray 12:45

are some questions that we could ask ourselves? Like, what if joy was actually productive? Like, make your brain answer these questions, like this, I resisted this for so long, versus what if joy actually was productive? What if it actually allowed me to get me to where I wanted to go even faster than how I did it before? What if pleasure actually enhanced my business instead of stifling it? What if play was actually part of wealth? Because when you think about it, when you think about play, when you think about having pleasure, receiving pleasure, think about where you are on the vibrational scale. You are at a much higher vibration. So what if these things were actually true? What if this version of success that I actually desired actually required more softness, more letting go, less trying to control, more trust, less force. So today or this week, what I want you to do, and I invite you to notice is where in your life have you become too serious? And I want to say this here too. I always tell my clients where we notice where maybe we aren't, you know, like let's say you aren't being playful in your business, there are areas in your life where you are being playful. And what I always encourage my clients to do is graft from that place. So if you notice you are playful maybe with your partner or your spouse, your husband, use that, right? There's different thoughts and feelings and beliefs there that you're doing that with him that you're not doing in your business. So really sit down and think about what is the difference? What am I telling myself that I get to do that with him that I don't get to do that in my business? So ask yourself, where in my life am I being too serious? Where am I delaying joy or withholding? I should even say withholding joy until some later period of time. Where am I waiting to feel successful before allowing myself to have just pleasure? Like you don't have to earn, like I always say, you don't have to earn the fun. You get to have fun just because you're a human that exists on this planet. Where could you actually bring more play into your life next week? Like sit down and ask yourself, like, what are the things that I used to love doing as a kid? And start doing those things. Like schedule it in your calendar. If that's like that's where I had to start. I had to start scheduling fun. And I know it might sound crazy, but I had to start scheduling fun in my calendar. So start doing that because what I have experienced in my own life, the next level doesn't actually come through grinding harder. It comes from feeling more alive. And so if you are a woman who wants to have more fun in her life and her business, or if you're someone who's like, Erin, I don't even know where to start, that's okay. I didn't either. I had to like figure out how to play. And I know that sounds really crazy, but like that was an exercise that I spent time doing. Like, what does play even look like? If you're not trying to focus on making money, like how does that work? Like I really had to work on just having fun for the sake of having fun. I want you to

Weekly Challenge And Work Together

Erin Gray 15:26

know that I'm here for you. If you want a strategic partner, someone that can guide you in your business, help teach you how to have fun, enjoy this ride that we call life. You can apply to work with me. I put the link in the show notes for you. As always, you know, take what I tell you and take one little bit or piece or nugget. And like I said, journal this week. Like, how can I have more fun? What can play look like for me? How can I incorporate it into my business? And I'll see you in the next episode.