Alli Worthington, founder of The Coach School and author of Fierce Faith, shares how anxiety has touched her life and how she has learned to acknowledge it and not let it deter her from advancing her career.

You can listen to this conversation with Alli on our podcast, Work, Love, Pray! Listen below or click here to find your preferred listening platform.

As you have created your business, how have you been affected by anxiety? 

The thing about being an entrepreneur is that it’s secretly just a self-development plan. When you go out on your own, whether you’re building your own company or you have a side business that you’re doing while you’re working full-time, you really get to know yourself when you put yourself out there. Every bit of anxiety that you have inside of you bubbles up to the surface. What if this doesn’t work? What if it all falls apart? What if people think I’m crazy? Every anxious thought can go through your mind as an entrepreneur, because you’re putting yourself out there in a way that is different from the “normal” career path or progression.

Whether you are starting a community bible study, or starting a business, or writing a book, as long as you take the right steps and you have great mentoring and coaching, and you do the steps that you need to do, it’s going to work. You’re going to do it! The one thing that will take you out of the game before you ever get a chance to play is your mind, which can quickly go to every worst case scenario and make you spiral and catastrophize. Many times, anxiety has tricked someone into thinking that they didn’t have peace about something so that meant they weren’t really supposed to do it. In reality, a lot of the time when you don’t have peace about something, it means you just haven’t worked through your anxiety yet. 

Science has shown that women are more prone to deal with anxiety. Do you agree with that?

I’m going to go out on a limb and speak to something that I have no business speaking about. On average, I think women pay more attention to things going on inside of them and around them than men do. It would make sense that we are taking multiple things on, especially if we have a family. Women generally carry the mental load of the family, shouldering keeping all of the details going the way they should. Men just have this ability to just go through life gloriously and not pay attention to details. Because women are carrying so much of that mental load (whether it’s in family life or work life) and we’re thinking through things and noticing things and staying ten steps ahead, of course we’re going to feel more anxious! It’s easier for women to work ourselves up because we’re processing so much information and trying to manage everything, all the time. 

As Christian women in the workplace, we have an intersection of faith and business. What does working and advancing a career look like for a woman who’s also navigating fear and anxiety? 

It’s really important for women, whether we’re entrepreneurs or we’re in the corporate world, for us to get the help we need. I remember at the end of 2020, beginning of 2021, I was burnt out, more emotionally than professionally. I was praying, ‘Lord, tell me what you want me to do. I mean, just help me.’ I knew that I was still performing with my company, and I was still a great wife and a great mom, but inside, I just felt numb. I didn’t feel joy anymore—I didn’t feel anything. I just felt anxious all the time. 

The Lord said very clearly to my spirit, ‘Get help.’ Sometimes, God will give you a word and He illuminates it so you understand all of the context of what He meant. In that season, when He told me that I needed to get help, that looked like getting the housekeeper again, going back to therapy, and getting a coach. I spend all of my time help helping give women the help they need, whether that’s with their business, their job, or managing their team or their colleagues as they climb the ladder. But I forgot to do that for myself and that’s so illustrative of what we all do in life. So I made sure that I got back in therapy. I hired a coach again. I made sure the house was taken care of.

For so many women, especially Christian women because we have such big hearts, we want to give and we want to serve. We want to do a great job, but we end up letting ourselves kind of die on the vine. As we are managing our career and managing our anxiety, we have to make sure we have good mental help. That’s good counseling to a good therapist. We should make sure in our career that we have a mentor or a coach—somebody holding us accountable. Find someone who has been where you want to go and can help you get to where you want to go. You need someone who can know you really well and be invested in you, while also sometimes call you out on the carpet and asking if you’re making a decision out of fear.? Are you making this decision because it’s right for you? Let’s talk through it.

We’re all leading such fast lives. No one’s really sitting around with a bunch of time for reflection and thinking through all their behavior and thoughts. I’m sure we would all love to have that time, but life is busy. So sometimes, we just need to get the help and have somebody invested in us to make sure that reflection time happens. 

And don’t forget: it’s okay if you need help. You’re not doing something wrong. You’re not being a burden. It’s in that moment when we don’t think we need help that our ego runs away with us. Our pride is what is thinking that if we need help, there’s something wrong with us. Whether it’s in our relationships or in our career, the correct and humble thing we can do is realize we aren’t made as islands. We are made to lean on each other and we’re made to get support from each other. Just having the thought that you don’t need help is a really dangerous place to be. 

Alli Worthington is the bestselling author of five books. She is the founder of The Coach School and is a speaker, podcaster, and business coach. 

Her goal is to help women reach the next level. Alli coaches individuals, small business owners, and Fortune 500 companies to be more successful. 

Alli’s no-nonsense, guilt-free take on business, family, and balance led to appearances on The Today Show and Good Morning America and in Forbes.

Alli, her husband, Mark, and their five sons live outside of Nashville, TN with a very pampered golden retriever.

You can connect with her at AlliWorthington.com and on Instagram at AlliWorthington.

This blog is sponsored by Integrated Life Podcast

Diana Romero, host of the Integrated Life Podcast, has created an incredible resource titled “Journey to Pentecost,” a 50-day mini-series that focuses on the coming of the Holy Spirit. She has created a devotional e-book as a companion guide to her podcast series, which is available to you for FREE.

Head to The Integrated Life Podcast website and click “JOIN THE COMMUNITY” to receive your free e-book!

This blog is sponsored by Seven Pathways

Seven Pathways is a new approach to strengthening your connection with God through ancient, proven Biblical practices, and many modeled by Jesus. Through creating a daily rhythm of the seven pathways: thanksgiving, silence, confession, song, prayer, Bible study, and Scripture meditation in a chapter-by-chapter study of the Gospel of John you will reset your day by fueling your thoughts with thankfulness, rediscover the luxury of silence, and the gift and power of prayer. Through Scripture you will be refreshed and rediscover the healing grace of God finding peace and purpose, joy and contentment while contending and hope and solace. Go to sevenpathways.com to purchase the book and Bible study and experience the new digital Bible study.