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There is a particular kind of exhaustion that doesn’t show up on your face.
It lives somewhere deeper. In the tightness in your chest when you wake up at 5:00 in the morning. In the way you move through your day, getting everything done and feeling nothing. In the quiet voice underneath all of it that you keep pushing past, because there is always something else that needs your attention.
Most leaders I work with know that voice. They just don’t talk about it.
I was no different.
From the outside, I looked fine. I was the navy-suit girl. Buttoned up, professional, capable, reliable. I was getting up before the sun, going to the gym, advancing my career, showing up for my family, supporting my husband’s business, staying involved in my community, and keeping every ball in the air at the same time.
What most people didn’t see was that I was slowly falling apart.
My heart would race. My left hand would go numb. My chest felt so tight I couldn’t take a full breath. I had lost my sense of joy, though I couldn’t have told you exactly when it left.
And one day I found myself curled up on my bedroom floor, sobbing.
Not because one terrible thing had happened. Because I had spent years carrying things I was never meant to carry, and I had no capacity left.
I stayed there long enough to think one clear thought.
“Something has to give, because this isn’t all my life can be.”
I want to be honest about what that moment was and what it wasn’t. It wasn’t a breakthrough. It wasn’t clarity. I didn’t get up off that floor with a plan. I got up exhausted and determined, and those two things were sitting side by side in a way that didn’t quite make sense yet. Determined with no direction, but determined nonetheless.
What I know now is that the decision came before the direction. I decided that where I was is not where I was going to stay. And when I was finally ready to move, the path started to reveal itself.
What I discovered, eventually, was that the weight I was carrying wasn’t just workload. It was meaning. I had attached my worth to what I could carry, what I could do, what I could accomplish. If I was getting ahead, I was doing something right. If people depended on me, I mattered. If I could keep everything moving, I was successful.
It sounds exhausting because it was.
And here’s the deal: we don’t simply respond to our circumstances. We respond to what those circumstances mean to us. Two leaders can carry similar responsibilities and experience them completely differently. One feels challenged. The other feels crushed. The difference isn’t always what’s on their plate. It’s what they’ve decided it means about them.
For me, carrying more had become proof of my value. When your worth is tied to what you can achieve, achieving more never actually fixes it. You just raise the bar and keep going.
And the impact doesn’t stay with the leader.
When I’m solving every problem, who learns to solve problems? When I’m making every decision, who learns to make decisions? When I step in every time someone struggles, who learns resilience? The intention is good. We want to help. But over time, carrying too much creates dependence instead of growth. The leader becomes exhausted. The team becomes dependent. And the organization loses the chance to develop people who are ready for more.
The shift for me came when I stopped asking how to keep carrying everything and started asking a different question.
What is actually mine to carry?
Not everything deserves equal weight. Not every problem belongs to you. Not every outcome is yours to own. Different seasons call for different priorities. There are times when family needs more of you, times when your work does, times when your health has to come first. The pressure builds when you try to give everything equal weight all the time.
So when I feel that pressure now, I pause. I get curious. What’s really important right now? What season am I in? What am I carrying that was never actually mine?
Your Next Clear Move is this. If you’re reading this and you’re already in it, already stretched and tired and trying to figure out how to keep going, I’m not going to ask you to make a list. Just take this one question with you. The next time you feel that pressure building, before you pick up one more thing, pause long enough to ask yourself: is this actually mine to carry?
That’s it. That’s where it starts.
The goal was never to carry everything. It was to carry what was yours and trust others to carry what was theirs.
And the relief in understanding that, I promise you, is real.
Related: Clarity, Not Praise, Determines Who Stays and Who Leaves