The Achievement Trap
A CEO once told me she'd forgotten how to stop. Not just how to relax—how to actually stop. "Even on holiday, I'm optimising the holiday," she said. "I've turned rest into another performance metric."
Sooner or later, this pace leads to depletion, which can be cleverly disguised among high achievers. It doesn't always look like exhaustion. Sometimes it looks like relentless optimisation. Sometimes it even looks like success.
When Excellence Hides Exhaustion
The very traits that built your career—persistence, high standards, the ability to push through—can become the architecture of something unintended: reaching a point where there’s not much left. You've trained yourself to override every signal your body sends. You've made an art of functioning on empty.
"I realised I'd been running on fumes for a decade," a senior partner reflected. "But I was so good at doing it, nobody noticed. Including me."
Is this Success?
What makes executive burnout particularly complex is how it hides behind achievement. You're still delivering. Still leading. Still winning. But somewhere, a voice whispers: "Is this it?"
That question is important data. It's you, asking to be included in your success story.
A board director shared her moment of recognition: "I was in another awards ceremony, receiving another honour, and I felt... nothing. That's when I knew something had to change."
The questioning phase often begins with quiet realisations:
Success feels hollow
Achievements don't satisfy
The next goal looks exactly like the last one
You're tired in ways sleep doesn't fix
There’s More
Traditional advice—take a break, practice self-care, manage stress better—assumes the problem is imbalance. But what if the challenge is deeper? What if it's about meaning, not management?
"I didn't need a spa weekend," one executive said. "I needed to remember why I was doing any of this."
Feeling successful but strangely empty? Let's explore what's really asking for attention beneath the achievement.
Ready to go further?
These resources offer valuable perspectives, but nothing replaces a thoughtful conversation about your specific situation.
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