From Burnout to Breakthrough
How I Found Peace by Redefining Success
Did you know they lock your head in a cage when they do an MRI of your neck and skull for over an hour? It was some of the most horrifying hours of my life and where my burnout truly began. As a born over-achiever, I would have told you that burnout was for quitters prior to that experience. I also would have told you I wasn’t claustrophobic — but much to my dismay, I am. Today I’ll tell you that burnout is a massive red flag in your life, a calling to stop and rethink your trajectory before you wind up extinguished — figuratively or literally.
The Kindling
I launched a business in food well over a decade ago with my heart in the right place. I was curious, ambitious, and a bit naïve — a good combination of characteristics to get started but not what I’d choose today to shield myself from the multitude of challenges in business. Being ever the optimist, I felt sure that my passion alone would carry me up and over any hurdles that sheer grit and determination could not. And while it carried me pretty damn far, I found myself in the business of responding and reacting rather than charting my own success. Flash forward a handful of years from the start and we had found ourselves with some sizable clients, a consistently increasing amount of money and a growing staff. Everything scaled faster and faster. Where we once balked at $1000 purchases we were looking at equipment in the six and seven figure range. We whipped through excitement, work, effort, agonizing hours, vacations, money, being on the receiving end of law suits (the real sign of success, a seasoned entrepreneur told us), and then a buyout; exchanging years of excruciating work for invisible equity that panned out poorly.
The Spark
Like I said, I was naïve. The buyout entailed going to work for a larger company — I thought it would be a little break, someone else paying insurance, a salary, a safe haven with expanding growth opportunities for staff, and a moment to pause after so much work. Boy, was I wrong. Moving from our start-up to someone else’s larger start-up was simply a process of magnifying all of our problems, challenges, struggles, pain, and suffering by the same factor between our two companies’ gross sales. Problems intensified, to put it mildly. Now I had someone else’s unrealistic expectations, profit margin targets, a board of advisors, and I was boxed in by a limited ability to perform in the way that had made us so successful. It was like being hired to perform the most intricate ballet in the world and having your feet tied together. And your legs broken. Simply put, it was an awful experience.
The Burn
Everywhere I looked around me, I saw humans pushing forward, relentlessly up the corporate ladder. Work hard, play hard, make more money, work longer hours, add more meetings, lay off staff, pick up their work, same pay, on and on. I found myself consistently on edge, small things would make me jump out of my skin and I was unable to sit still. My brain was no longer equipped to separate small problems from large, so everything became slated as a panic. My back hurt incessantly, the tension began to put pressure on nerves and my arm would go numb. My thumb would twitch or my eyelid, or a muscle in my side. I felt like I never could get a full, deep breath of air. I had vertigo, waking up I’d feel the ground under me was rolling, I was unsteady and off-kilter. What the mind ignores, the body SHOUTS.
The Aftermath
I sat in the emergency room hospital bed of Hoag Hospital, Newport Beach waiting for the doctor to give me the report from the MRI on my brain and spine. The triage team assumed the worst case scenario was a stroke and the best case was a diagnosis for MS. The doctor was stumped. There was absolutely nothing wrong — no white spots, no damage, no abnormalities. He looked at the laptop bag I brought with me (You know, just in case I had some down time, I would answer a few emails), and he advised me to change my life. He told me to drastically alter what I was doing or the next time I’m in the emergency room, I’m going to have a real problem.
It took me awhile to stop moving at that speed, but I did. I realized as I slowed down, I had this deep seated fear screaming up from the depths inside:
I knew if I kept going this way, I would die.
What terrified me more was the fear that if I stopped, I’d never be able to start again.
What if I never felt motivated? What if I lose my hustle, my connections, my income? What if I run out of ideas? What if I forget how to suffer long hours and push past discomfort to get shit done? What if I become soft and weak? What if I become lazy?
My heart and my body knew continuing this way couldn’t possibly be the answer. There was no way that my success was on the other side of a mountain of sleepless nights, anxiety, xanax, changing my values to fit board members margin targets and ER visits. And if it was? I don’t want it. What if I could look at success differently? What if I could show others to do so as well?
The Recovery
As I stopped hustling so hard, I had more time to listen to my intuition in every single other area of my life. Nothing stayed the same — not my home, my marriage, my friendships, my income, my goals, not even my hairstyle. Being busy was a great way to dull out the sound of what I wanted and what was truly bothering me. When you’re too tired and too stressed to handle one more tiny thing you are certainly not rooting through the most vulnerable parts of your life to find out the real discomforts.
Stopping felt like silence. You know in movies when people die and they show them going to heaven through this quiet, serene, light-filled space? That was me, in my own home, by myself, doing whatever pleased me for the day. No alarm, no sleepless nights, no prescriptions for anxiety or muscle spasms or tension, no raised voices, no arguments, no ten hours of meetings, no circling back and synergizing and jargon-bullshit-talk, only peace. I spent hours digging my rocky back yard up to make a level space for my patio furniture. I logged hundreds of miles on winding forest trails. My skin deepened to a dark gold, dirt caked into my shoes and my heart beat joyfully for the first time in a long time. I said No to some big opportunities. I turned down a lot of money. I made time for friends — new and old. I let myself reconsider long held beliefs that may not be serving me so well.
Downtime, Unscheduled
Like any good Type-A person I set deadlines on this bliss. I’d be back on track by May. By August. By December. Okay, the first of the year. I finally released myself from that self-imposed grip and told myself, “When I’m ready, I will begin again.” Recovering from burnout takes an unmeasured amount of time and there is no rushing it. I tried to hop back into a high-paying corporate career right after exiting the buy-out company and it was awful — I was awful. I was an unmotivated, uncaring employee, and absolutely allergic to the environment. When I left that position, the VP and COO both surprised me by responding with envy when I mentioned that I wasn’t moving up and on from their company, but rather unplugging entirely for an undetermined time. As I’ve recovered from burnout, I find myself learning that more friends and acquaintances are going through the similar arc of “Why am I working so hard and feeling/making/living worse?” The overarching feeling as we approach, hit and surpass our supposed peak earning years is; That’s it? This eternal grinding? Isn’t there more?
I strongly believe there is a different way of doing things. I’m writing this now from the balcony of a home in the capital of Türkiye, after leaving our home in a tiny village on a Greek island. I rose with the sun, spent time leisurely waking up with my partner, and started working only after I worked out. I will pause shortly and have tea, then dive back into working on my coaching website. Despite the time it took to unwind from the grip of pursuing a success that took more from me than it gave, I understand that the best paths aren’t linear. Sometimes it is only through difficulty that we find clarity, but it is mandatory to listen to your body when it’s raising those red flags. If and when burnout happens, learn when to pause (and perhaps stop), and consider carving a different path forward.
