Influencer, Anna Mathur says, ‘You can’t do it all’

Anna Mathur attributes her career as a psychotherapist to her mum, a Christian who showed compassion for others. She taught Anna to see beyond the behaviour of hurtful school friends to understand them. Also, her younger sister died from cancer when Anna was just ten; these experiences and many more have shaped her understanding of people. 

While other businesses might have begun with a carefully planned media strategy, Anna fell into social media when she started using Instagram to find decorating ideas for a new house. Bored with exploring paint colours, she decided to start creating posts to encourage other mums with her own experiences. As her account grew and people shared her writing, she was approached by two literary agents. A couple of years later her first book hit the shelves, but not every aspect of her work makes money. During the Covid-19 lockdowns, her free mental-health webinars were viewed by 10,000 mums and her online courses are often offered on a ‘pay what you can afford’ basis. 

Anna’s first two books made it to the Sunday Times bestseller list: Mind over Mother: Every mum’s guide to worry and anxiety in the first years (Piatkus) and Know Your Worth (Piatkus). The Little Book of New Mum Feelings (Penguin Life) draws on Anna’s experiences as mum to three children and covers everything from baby blues and anxiety to guilt, insomnia, stress, your inner critic and maintaining friendships. Her fourth book, Raising a Happier Mother (Penguin Life) is all about how to find balance, feel good and see your children flourish as a result. 

In these books Anna has been circumspect about her Christian faith, though they draw heavily on Paul’s challenge to “be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2). She is much more open about her faith in her next book: The Uncomfortable Truth: Change your life by taming 10 of your mind’s greatest fears (Penguin Life, due out on 8 August 2024). This book tackles the fears we have that are anchored in the unavoidable truths of life: some people don’t like me; I’m going to fail; life isn’t fair; bad things happen; we will lose the people we love and we lack the control we crave. 

I time-block everything instead of having a constantly rolling to-do list

Anna wrote the book in just two weeks, against the advice of everyone around her who wanted to guard her against burnout. “I’ve observed these ten things through years of working as a psychotherapist and also my own fears – the things that were holding me back,” she says.

The idea for the book is “God-given”, she explains. It came to her when she was preparing to give a TEDx talk. She wrote the titles and chapter headings in 30 seconds on her phone. Despite not having a book deal secured, the idea stayed with her. She had planned to write it simply as a passion project to get it out of her system, getting up at 5am every morning before her children were awake to write 2,000 words a day until it was finished, but she felt God tell her to write it in just two weeks. She finished it on a Sunday and by the following Thursday a crisis had overwhelmed her life and she knew she would not be able to write for the next year. But when her editor came to ask for her next title, she was able to hand over the finished book and they agreed to publish it, even though it is not on motherhood like the others. 

Learning boundaries between home and work life

Anna’s career started conventionally with a psychology degree. She then had to wait until she was 25 to qualify; the minimum age for accreditation as a psychotherapist. She gained a range of experience in the intervening years: marketing and advertising; working as student and women’s pastor for St Mark’s Battersea; placements in GPs’ surgeries and even earning some extra cash providing gel manicures. But she was approaching burnout with her self-worth coming from what she did: “I had no boundaries,” she says.

Since then she has learned to put strict boundaries between her home and work life; no phone messages or emails before 8.30am or after 7pm. Every task goes onto her calendar and if it doesn’t fit, she has learned to say no. “I time-block everything instead of having a constantly rolling to-do list. That has been life-changing for me,” she explains. 

She has also tackled perfectionism – advice she gives to others: “Know you can’t do it all; know your limits; value ‘good enough’ over ‘perfect’; address perfectionism and people-pleasing. Starting a business you never reach the limit of what you could do, especially with social media. Social media is a hungry beast! If you need to be on social media for work, find a way to be there without affecting your mental health.”

When Anna tried easing back on social media activity she found that interaction with her followers dropped dramatically. Delegation allows her to focus on using her skills where they are strongest. “A lot of my income goes to making my work sustainable,” she says. Anna pays for help to make the weekly podcasts and to support her social media presence, though she responds personally to the many direct messages and emails. “I recognise that I can’t do everything. If I say yes all the time the people around me pay for it.”

Finding connection

After Anna married and was expecting her first child, she and her husband moved to Surrey and joined the Guildford-based Emmaus Rd church. Her second child was unwell as a baby and Anna suffered from postnatal depression. “It was very humbling as a psychotherapist, but it was a turning point as I knew I needed other people to help.”

Having a creative brain can be lonely

Anna took on Ella Dibb, the 25-year-old founder of Rose Nannies, who featured in the May issue of Woman Alive, and Ella has helped for the past seven years with all three of Anna’s children – one of whom is autistic. As well as providing support for the children, Ella introduced Anna to Gospel Entrepreneurs (gospelentrepreneurs.org), which is filling a gap in Anna’s business life by providing a much-needed network for a potentially isolated creative; mentoring offers accountability, helping Anna to make wise decisions, and the gospel focus is challenging her to integrate her entrepreneurial life with her Christian faith.

“Having a creative brain can be lonely. Gospel Entrepreneurs is a network of people who ‘get it’. It gives me a feeling of being understood when I’m surrounded by people who are driven in a similar way.”

To find out more about the resources Anna offers, visit annamathur.com and follow her @annamathur

Words by Catherine Butcher