Why Exhaustion Is Not Evidence You Are Doing It Right
There is a teaching that circulates widely in personal development and business coaching circles.
Growth is uncomfortable. Discomfort means you are doing it right. If it feels hard, lean in.
I do not disagree with that teaching entirely.
But I want to add a distinction that changes everything for the high-achieving women I work with. Women who are already overworking, overfunctioning, and over-extending themselves every single day.
Because for these women, that teaching has become a trap.
Two kinds of discomfort
The first kind is the discomfort of growth.
It feels like lifting a weight that is slightly too heavy. Like stretching just past your edge. Like showing up before you feel ready and discovering you were more ready than you thought.
It is uncomfortable. And underneath the discomfort there is something alive. Something that says I am moving. My edges are shifting. I am becoming someone slightly larger than I was before.
This kind of discomfort builds capacity. It uses energy and creates more of it. It leaves you tired the way a good workout leaves you tired. Satisfied. More than you were.
The second kind is the exhaustion of depletion.
It feels like fear. Like anxiety. Like a low hum of urgency that follows you from the moment you wake up. Like needing to prove something to someone who keeps moving the finish line.
It is also uncomfortable. But underneath it there is nothing alive. Just dread. Just the need to keep moving so the feeling does not catch up with you.
This kind of discomfort shrinks capacity. It uses energy and creates none. It leaves you emptier than when you started. And no amount of sleep, rest, or vacation fully restores what it takes.
Why high-achieving women confuse them
Here is the problem.
For women who have been running on fear and anxiety for years, both kinds of discomfort feel like hard work. Both feel like effort. Both can be mistaken for the discomfort that growth requires.
Because they have been uncomfortable for so long that discomfort itself has become normalized. It is just what working hard feels like. It is just what ambition requires. It is just the price you pay for building something.
So they keep paying it.
Even when the price is their health. Their relationships. Their joy. Their capacity to actually enjoy what they are building.
My own before and after
I used fear and anxiety to drive my goals for years.
I moved. I built. I proved. And I was exhausted in a way that never went away.
Then one day the fear dropped away.
And I panicked.
I thought I had lost my drive. My ambition. The thing that made me capable.
What I had actually lost was the noise.
And underneath it was something I had not let myself feel in a long time.
Desire. Purpose. A compelling reason why that had nothing to do with proving anything to anyone.
The real reason I had chosen this work in the first place. The clients I wanted to serve. The life I wanted to create. The contribution I genuinely wanted to make.
That reason had more energy in it than years of anxiety ever did.
And it built something the fear never could.
Not just a business. A life that felt like mine.
The question that changes everything
The goal is not to avoid discomfort.
The goal is to know which kind you are sitting in.
Is this uncomfortable because I am growing? Because my edges are moving? Because I am becoming someone new?
Or is this exhausting because I am depleting? Because I am running on fear? Because I am trying to prove something to someone who will never be satisfied?
One energizes you. One exhausts you.
One grows your capacity. One shrinks it.
And for the women I coach, learning to tell the difference is one of the most significant shifts they ever make. Not just in how they feel. In how their business grows. In what their income does. In how sustainable their success becomes.
Because you cannot build a life you love from fuel that burns you down to use it.
Where to start
If you read this and something recognized itself, that is information worth paying attention to.
My quiz will show you exactly what is driving your overworking. Not the surface behavior. The root.
"What's Really Driving Your Overworking." Three minutes. Link below.
