I am working on my first downloadable coaching product, and I’m learning so many great lessons along the way. Last week I learned that it’s better for everyone when I put my well-being ahead of everything else. Maybe you think this sounds selfish, but I learned that everyone benefits when we take care of ourselves first.

The product I’m working on is a collaborative project with my coaching friend Alison Horner. We’re creating a companion guide to Martha Beck’s Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live. It’s an audio and workbook set which covers each chapter in the book. Ali and I have been putting a good effort into it and having fun along the way. We both found this book useful for setting our lives on our “right” path and are excited to share it with our clients.

We were making audio recordings one morning recently, and after forty-five minutes, I was toast. I felt flustered and was ready to take a break. We had planned to work for another hour that day, but I didn’t have it in me. I was honest with Ali and said that I needed a break. I knew that we scheduled more time to work that day, but I feared that the quality would suffer if I kept at it. So we quit, and I worked on easier tasks that afternoon.

The next week, after Ali and I put more time into a recording, she said she needed a break. So we quit, and we both worked on other things for the rest of the day. No hard feelings either time.

By being honest about how we were feeling, we honored ourselves, each other, and our product. If we had pushed through despite our feelings, we would have felt drained and the quality of our product would have suffered. No one would have benefited from this.

Often I find it easy to just push through one more thing, ignoring how I feel and focusing on achieving a sense of completion. In the end, everyone suffers with that method. I suffer for pushing myself hard, and others suffer by dealing with an outcome that is less than perfect and was created with some negative energy.

Do you have a tendency to push yourself too hard? Can you call it quits a little sooner, and put yourself first?