How a 400-Year-Old Belief System Taught Us to Earn Our Worth Through Exhaustion
I didn’t realize I was carrying the weight of my ancestors until my body gave out.
At the peak of my marketing career—climbing fast, hitting every milestone—everything collapsed.
Not the career itself, but me. My body said no. My mental health said no. And suddenly, I was facing a mirror I’d been avoiding: a woman who’d built her entire sense of worth on productivity.
The guilt hit immediately. Here I was—a wife, a mother, surrounded by people I love deeply—and still feeling hollow. What kind of person isn’t fulfilled by their family? What was wrong with me that I needed more?
I love my husband and kids with everything I have. But there was this persistent pull, this voice insisting I needed to contribute something bigger to our community.
Even as I juggled the endless demands of family life (especially with a husband who travels frequently for work), I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was supposed to be doing something more.
Maybe, I thought, I’m just wired differently. I’ve always been driven, competitive to a fault, the kind of person who gets a dopamine hit from finishing the dishes.
Accomplishment gives me energy, confidence, joy. Surely that’s just… personality?
Plot Twist: It’s Not Just Me (Or You)
Turns out, we’re not broken. We’re haunted.
In Before You Know It, social psychologist Dr. John Bargh reveals something that made my entire crisis make sense: we’re carrying cultural DNA from people who died centuries ago.
Specifically, many of us in America are operating under what’s called the “Protestant Work Ethic”—the belief system brought here by Puritans and Protestants who broke from the Catholic Church with one radical idea: hard work earns you eternal salvation.
Read that again. Our ancestors literally believed that productivity determined whether their souls would be saved.
That drive we feel? That gnawing sense that rest equals failure? That’s not a personality flaw. It’s inherited cultural programming, passed down through generations who genuinely believed their worth—their eternal worth—depended on constant labor.
(Side note: the second major value they brought was “Puritanism,” which condemned sexuality and casual intimacy. So if we’re also carrying shame about pleasure in general… well, that tracks.)
When Your Body Becomes the Whistle-Blower
For those of us with autoimmune diseases and chronic conditions, this inherited work ethic becomes especially dangerous.
Our bodies are already dealing with more than the average Joe. Add the Protestant Work Ethic on top, and we’re pushing through pain, ignoring warning signs, operating on the belief that rest is moral failure.
The crash becomes inevitable.
Here’s what I’ve learned: when we constantly push through, we don’t just miss the joy—we erase our ability to even notice it.
We stop seeing the small moments of beauty (what some call “glimmers”) scattered throughout our days. We become machines in service to a 400-year-old value system that was never designed for bodies like ours.
But knowing this—really understanding that we’re hardwired this way—gave me something unexpected: permission to step back.
5 Tactics to Get Off the Hamster Wheel (Without Guilt Eating You Alive)
The question becomes: how do we actually stop when there are work deadlines, household chaos, and a nervous system that screams “productivity equals survival”?
Here’s what’s actually working for me—not the generic “practice self-care” advice that makes us want to throw our phones, but concrete tools:
1. The “Good Enough” Audit: Write down every recurring task in your life. Now ask: what would happen if I did this at 70% instead of 95%?
For most things, the answer is “literally nothing.” The dishes don’t need to be Instagram-perfect. The email can be clear instead of eloquent.
This isn’t about lowering standards—it’s about redistributing our limited energy to what actually matters. (Spoiler: most things don’t matter as much as we think.)
2. The Ancestor Acknowledgment: When that voice screams “you’re lazy/worthless/failing,” try this: “Thank you, Puritan ancestors, for trying to keep me safe. But I’m not earning salvation through spreadsheets.” Sounds ridiculous, but externalizing that voice—recognizing it’s not really ours—creates distance. Some of us even name the voice.
Mine is Margaret. Margaret is exhausting.
3. The Energy Accounting System: Track your energy like money for two weeks. What activities give deposits? What creates withdrawals? Be brutally honest.
For many of us, things we think “should” energize us (like social events or certain hobbies) actually drain us, while “unproductive” activities (sitting in silence, rewatching comfort shows) restore us.
Build your life around actual data about your body, not inherited beliefs about what should work.
4. The Anti-Calendar Block: Schedule time for absolutely nothing—and protect it as fiercely as we protect work meetings.
This isn’t “self-care time” (which somehow became another task to optimize). This is a blank space where nothing is required.
No improvement. No productivity. No output. Just existence.
Research from UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center shows that unfilled time—what they call “psychological white space”—is essential for emotional regulation and actually improves our decision-making later.
5. The Glimmer Journal (But Make It Low-Pressure): Keep a note on your phone. When something gives you even a micro-moment of peace, pleasure, or presence—add one word.
Just one. “Sunlight.” “Cat.” “Silence.”
On hard days, scroll through it. Not to practice positivity, but to remind us that these moments exist, even when productivity tells us we don’t deserve to notice them.
The Permission Slip We’re Writing Ourselves
We’re not failing at modern life. We’re succeeding at dismantling a 400-year-old operating system that was never meant for bodies that need rest, minds that need slowness, and lives that need meaning beyond output.
We know better now.
The most radical thing we can do—especially those of us with bodies that literally cannot sustain the grind—is to rest without earning it.
To find worth outside of accomplishment.
We should allow ourselves to be whole exactly as we are. We are wives, mothers, friends, daughters, sisters. And yes, sometimes, we are people who just need to lie down.
The Protestant Work Ethic served its purpose. It helped people survive. It built nations.
But it’s also breaking our bodies and stealing our joy.
Maybe it’s time to let it rest, too.
Dance on, friends,
Karin
Sources:
Bargh, J. A. (2017). Before You Know It: The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do. Touchstone.
Greater Good Science Center, UC Berkeley. “The Science of White Space and Mental Health.” https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/
National Institute of Mental Health. “Chronic Illness and Mental Health.” https://www.nimh.nih.gov/
The Arthritis Foundation. “Fatigue and Autoimmune Disease: Understanding the Connection.” https://www.arthritis.org/
Weber, M. (2002). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Penguin Classics. (Original work published 1905)
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⚠️ DISCLAIMER: This content is for general education and shared experiences only and is not medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your care or treatment plan.
Karin W





