How Highly Successful Women Avoid Burnout
(Yes, it really is possible)
What if you could reach your next level of career success without sacrificing your health, peace of mind, or the relationships that matter most to you?
If you’ve ever thought “burnout is just part of the deal”- that to succeed at a high level, you have to pay the price with exhaustion, stress, and overwhelm- you’re not alone. Many ambitious women leaders believe this myth because it’s all they see all around them.
(And yes, I’ve been there)
It’s why so many of us ignore small health issues and hits to our emotional well-being. We’ve come to see living in this constant state of stress and burnout as normal.
But here’s the truth: it’s not normal. And…
Success without burnout IS possible.
In fact, it’s not just possible, it’s NECESSARY to keep moving forward in your career.
—> If you want long-term career success and to grow in your role as a leader, you need the long-term energy and capacity to do that!
And here’s the other thing: what good is success if you’re too depleted to savor it? If your health is damaged, your closest relationships are strained, and you’re exhausted in every sense of the word, what sort of success have you achieved?
My guess is, that’s probably not the “success” YOU want.
In this blog, I’ll show you why it’s so easy to buy into the myth that burnout is the price of success. I’ll make it crystal clear how this myth has been holding you back, and what’s actually true instead.
(Trust me, it’s gonna be all good news for you!)
*Plus, I’ll share what you can do differently starting NOW to build success in a way that’s sustainable, energizing, and aligned with your vision and values.
Ready? Let’s dive in!
WE’ve all been sold a lie
You’ve internalized the idea that burnout is the price of success, and it makes perfect sense!
When you look around your office, or even just scroll LinkedIn, it seems like all the “successful” people are hustling their lives away. Long hours, no breaks, always available—it’s celebrated as dedication and grit.
If your boss or colleagues are all working this way, it’s easy to assume you have to do the same.
“Take the example of my client, Nicole. She’d been promoted to a new role with new challenges, and felt intense pressure to perform. She admired her boss- a successful woman who’d risen the ranks in her industry and wanted to mentor Nicole.
But her boss had nothing in life other than work. She’d work long hours and on weekends, was always stressed, and had seemingly no work-life balance.
This made Nicole feel even MORE pressed to drop everything for her new job. Even if it meant seeing her physical and emotional wellbeing go down the tubes. She lacked any alternate role models to show her how to be successful and not burn out.”
But it’s not just your immediate social or work environment reinforcing this message.
It’s also society in general. Women are told (explicitly and implicitly) through our entire lives to equate our worth with:
How much we achieve
How productive and hard working we are
How perfect of a partner and parent we are
When you’re raised to believe that your value depends on what you can do and what you can produce, of course you’ll try to push yourself to the limit- and interpret the consequences as “normal” and acceptable.
So if you’ve thought, “This is just how it has to be,” it’s not your fault. And you’re NOT alone.
The Truth: Burnout severely limits your success
Here’s the problem: buying into this belief doesn’t just drain you. It stunts your career growth.
That’s because burnout shrinks your CAPACITY on every level.
When you’re exhausted, anxious, and living in survival mode, you simply don’t have the energy, focus, or creativity to keep climbing higher. Instead of opening doors to new opportunities, burnout quietly closes them, often without you even realizing it.
Pssst: I know this from personal experience.
When I was a sociology PhD student and later a professor, my entire life revolved around work. Nights, weekends… everything went into my career. And with time, I paid the price for it- with damage to my body, my friendships, my mental health, and my work.
(Read more about my story in THIS blog post.)
But here’s what I couldn’t wrap my head around: while I was working myself to the bone and quietly burning out, some of my grad school colleagues and professors were absolutely thriving!
They were publishing their research and taking on exciting new projects, and they still had time for their health, families, and hobbies.
They’d figured out something I hadn’t yet: taking care of yourself doesn’t hold you back. It actually propels you forward. It makes you better at your job and allows you to spend less time doing it.
Honestly? Although there were multiple reasons I pivoted my career, I do still wonder what more I could’ve accomplished if I’d known back then everything that I know now about how to balance career success and life success. Maybe I would’ve made the same ultimate decision to leave academia, but it wouldn’t have been from a place of rock-bottom burnout.
The good news is, if you’re reading this, you’re already a few steps ahead of where I was. And you have the opportunity to change course, starting TODAY.
the most successful high-achievers don’t burn out
Success without burnout is possible and necessary, full stop.
In fact, reaching your highest level of success REQUIRES that you be at your very best in your physical and mental health and emotional well-being.
Think about it: when you work yourself to the bone, trying to prove to yourself, believing that more work and more productivity makes you a more valuable person… then you’ll become drained, and your capacity will shrink.
Think of your CAPACITY like a battery. You’ve got:
Physical capacity: how long you can stay awake, how long you can go without food or water, how strong your body feels.
Mental capacity: your memory, ability to focus your brain and solve problems.
Emotional capacity: your motivation, creativity, ability to communicate, and ability to handle stress without spiraling into fight-or-flight.
Achieving your highest level of career success, whatever that means for you, requires that you consistently operate at a high capacity in all three ways.
Here’s the catch: it’s really tempting to hustle, push yourself hard, and ignore your actual capacity in the name of getting ahead… because at first, you’ll be rewarded for doing so. You’ll get a lot done!
(Btw, this was me in the first year of my PhD program. For months I was spending all my time on campus and barely sleeping, but I couldn’t even believe how productive I’d become!)
The problem is, you can only maintain that level of hustle for so long. And by “so long", I mean a few weeks or months at best. You can’t go at 110%, 100% of the time. Frustrating, but true.
—> Because when you keep pushing yourself hard, your capacity SHRINKS.
⭐️ Think back to that battery metaphor. When you’re at full capacity, your battery is fully charged. But when you push yourself too hard for too long, your battery is no longer fully charged AND the entire size of the battery shrinks. It’s like you went from a car battery to a AAA that’s barely charging.)
This shrinkage doesn’t happen all at once, of course. That’s the sinister part. It occurs gradually, over time, till you wake up one day and realize you’re running on empty and no amount of rest can revive you.
At first, it looks like afternoon crashes, restless nights, or little health issues like headaches, digestion troubles, or irregular cycles. Nothing “serious”.
But with time, if you don’t pull back, you’ll become more exhausted. More overwhelmed. You’ll feel like you’re living in “survival mode”, constantly putting out fires. Little things that never used to bother you will send you off the rails.
Eventually, you’ll feel too depleted to enjoy your life, be fully present with friends and family, and too drained to bring your best self to work. Your rock hard drive and motivation will start to tank.
And here’s the kicker: when your capacity shrinks, your output at work shrinks too. You get less done but in more time.
So what do most women do at this point? They push harder, work longer hours- and spiral deeper into burnout.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Real, sustainable success means honoring your capacity, recharging regularly, and defining success on your own terms. When you do that, you don’t just avoid burnout—you actually perform better, lead more powerfully, and feel more fulfilled in every part of your life.
Let’s talk about how high-achievers like you can do that.
2 big shifts that’ll put you on the path to success without burnout
Success without burnout doesn’t just happen by accident. It requires intention and strategy. And it starts with two big shifts.
1. you need to Shift How You Approach Work
This means evaluating your mindset/beliefs about work, your boundaries (or lack thereof) and your routines so that you can get more done, in less time, and with more ease.
You’ll want to adopt SUPPORTIVE MINDSETS like:
My work should fuel my life- not the other way around.
It’s OK for me to set boundaries to protect my time and energy at work.
Everything doesn’t need to be done by me. It’s ok to delegate or ask for help.
I’ll be a better leader if I regulate my nervous system so I’m calm and clear-headed.
Taking time for rest and foundational self-care makes me more productive.
You’ll want to SET BOUNDARIES that help you work within your actual capacity, like:
Turning off email and other work notifications after hours.
Being intentional about how quickly you respond to emails and when you agree to meetings.
Saying “NO” to work requests that are outside your scope and won’t advance your career.
Taking time for lunch and small breaks throughout the day so you can stay focused and energized- and protecting that time ferociously.
Leaving your laptop closed on the weekends.
And you’ll want to create ROUTINES to ground you and streamline your work. Some of the most common ones my clients use include:
Morning rituals that connect you to your personal goals and purpose.
Prioritizing key tasks at the start of your workday and workweek so you can be intentional with your energy.
Blocking out the first 1-3 hours of each day for uninterrupted “deep work” on your most important project(s).
Setting aside limited, specific times for responding to emails- and keeping that time limited.
An end-of-day shutdown routine to mentally clock-off from work and transition into your personal life.
But these new mindsets, boundaries, and routines usually aren’t enough. You also need to make another shift…
2. you need to Shift How You think about Success
Many women are pursuing a definition of success that was handed to us by someone else.
Maybe it was your parent’s dream that you become a corporate lawyer. Or your favorite teacher who made you believe it was Ivy League or bust. Or just “society’s” definition of success- which commonly revolves around money, material possessions, and climbing the corporate ladder.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting those things, of course, IF that is what you want.
But the key word here is “IF”.
You need to pause, get brutally honest, and ask yourself:
What vision of success have I been pursuing?
Does it actually make me happy?
What would success look like if I defined it myself—not just for my career, but for my whole life?
Once you can get clear on what success means for you- what’s going to truly make you feel happy and fulfilled- then creating it (without burnout) becomes so much easier.
I won’t pretend this is easy
It takes courage and faith that when you step outside your comfort zone, confront your fears, and take scary action… life is better on the other side.
But if I know one thing, it’s this: you’ve already achieved a great deal of success, career-wise. And you didn’t get this far by sitting on the sidelines or telling yourself “I can’t”. You already have the ability to make these shifts in your life.
*You just need a little support doing it.
When I work with women 1-1 in THRIVE, my private coaching program, our overarching goal is to help you define “success” on your own terms, and then take the action steps that will bring that vision of success to life.
I guide clients using a holistic approach that incorporates strategies to de-stress and re-fuel in mind, body, and spirit, so that they have the capacity and the calm mind required to take scary action and create the health, career, and life they desire.
“But what if I need to work 60+ Hours a Week to get everything done?!”
I get it. Many of the women I work with start out saying, “There’s no way I could work fewer hours—this is what it takes to get it all done.”
But here’s the truth: in almost all cases, it’s possible to shrink your work hours (without sacrificing your results) by increasing your CAPACITY to get stuff done, and expanding the TIME you have to focus on your most important work.
Here’s how my clients do it in THRIVE:
BUILD AWARENESS: First, I teach my clients a mind-body process for tracking exactly where their time and energy are going. What’s draining you- making you more stressed and exhausted? And what’s fueling you and increasing your capacity? The results are always eye-opening and often bring to light big changes my clients need to make in their lives.
OPTIMIZE ENERGY AND TIME: Next, we strategize specific ways to cut tasks and open up more time and space in your week. This might involve setting new boundaries, delegating, or eliminating tasks - both at work and at home. *With this step, it really helps to have a second, objective set of eyes and ears to help you figure out where you can cut- because your natural inclination is going to be to cut nothing and convince yourself that “everything I’m doing is necessary!”
OVERCOME YOUR SHADOWS: Perfectionism, people-pleasing, overachieving—these inner voices keep you stuck in overwork and overwhelm. I like to call these voices the “shadow sides” of high-achievers because while they may have helped you ascend to your current level in your career, they won’t get you much further- they’ll just make you burn out. In THRIVE my I help my clients acknowledge their shadow(s), work through them, and release them.
Through this process, you increase your capacity and productivity, you enjoy your work more, and you shave hours off your work week. And in those newfound hours of freedom? You live life as you choose.
how you can experience more success and eliminate burnout- for good
Burnout isn’t a badge of honor—it’s a barrier to your success and a wake-up call that the way you’re doing things right now isn’t working.
And now you know- there IS another way. So let’s make it happen!
To learn more about THRIVE and what it’s like to work 1-1 with me, click the button below:
And if you’re ready to have a heart-to-heart chat about working together, schedule your free 45-minute Burnout Breakthrough Assessment.
When we speak, we’ll get crystal clear on the root causes of your burnout and your vision of success, and we’ll map out a plan for creating it.
