From workaholic to wonderful: my story of redemption

I’ve been blessed to be called a high performer throughout my career. After getting into a top university I sailed through a number of jobs in my 20s, rapidly getting promotion and finding myself with increasingly high workloads, targets and pressures.

Before I was 30 I was promoted to be the youngest be Senior leader at the University where I worked. I completed a PhD in an innovative new field before moving into the e-learning industry. Within a few years I was a Director of Learning in a leading consultancy and was charged with creating and leading a new team of learning consultants.

Whatever I did, I threw myself into it, 100%. I worked really long hours, pushing myself to the limits of exhaustion. I felt excited and on a high when I got recognition and results; it felt like something to chase. I loved how it made me feel, being successful, in demand and respected.

There was a downside though. There were times when I felt resentful and frustrated at how much my work was pulling on me. I began to feel hollow and angry that I seemed to be doing more than my fair share. I felt taken for granted, and that sometimes my employers were taking advantage of my willingness to work so hard for them.

Some bosses were sympathetic, but even when they supported me with a few changes when I looked to be teetering on the edge, things quickly slid back into how they’d been and I would find myself sweating with impossible deadlines and the most demanding clients.

At 35, I’d had enough of being someone at else’s command. I took a massive leap of faith with 3 other friends to create our own e-learning business. We set out to do things differently. Four (later 5) high performers with a vision to stir things up in our market place.

I remember the enormous excitement and thrill of being in charge of our own destinies.

It was incredibly hard work. Dealing with everything from what products and services to offer to buying the coffee, tea and office stationary. But it was also really exciting, choosing how we would work and with whom. I felt like there was finally a channel for my high performance, free of the constraints of bosses, organisational demands and targets. 

Things took off and we were blessed with a fantastic range of clients, keen to buy our services and products.We started to grow very quickly, quicker than I had ever imagined and by the end of the 3rd year I found myself managing our biggest account, not only selling but also project managing around 40% of our revenue.

The workload and pressure was enormous, way beyond one person’s. I stubbornly stuck at it, not wanting to show I was vulnerable or couldn’t cope. I wanted to show how much I was contributing to our success, and I was getting loads of kudos from my partners, which drew me like a moth to the flame.

I never knew how to switch off, would find myself working at weekends and evenings to keep on top of it all. Waking crazy early with my head full of work, I’d find myself on my laptop at 4 or 5am just trying to keep on top of it all or taking conference calls on the beach while on holiday, trying to ensure a troublesome project didn’t go off the rails. I felt a mix of thrill, because I had so much skin in the game, but also a feeling of dread and emptiness, the more demands my business seemed to make on me.

My partner was tolerant and supportive, but after a while she started to mention how I was never there, how I was always in my laptop or phone. I started to feel enormous guilt and even greater pressure for not staying on top of things. I didn’t know which way to turn, and I’m ashamed to say, I often prioritised my work over my relationship.

Then something broke. With all the projects, proposals and account management, I was starting to feel right on the edge. I’d started working with a client whose attitude and communication style had me waking up in cold sweats. I’d been telling everyone it was fine.

But it wasn’t. I was running on empty. I woke up one May morning feeling physically unable to get up for work. I couldn’t take it any more. I felt the pressure was unbearable and I was in danger of going under. The mix of shame and stress was toxic. I didn’t know how I could go on and I felt so bad, letting my colleagues and clients down, I didn’t know how I could look them in the eye. My thoughts were very very dark.

In desperation I told my business partners I just couldn’t go on like this. I hated showing that I couldn't hack it. It went completely against the image I had of myself. Of course, they were very supportive and I think surprised that I hadn’t said anything clearly before about my struggle. They told me to take the week off and I headed for a retreat to try and put myself back together. I knew if I didn’t, then I could lose it all.

When I came back, I decided enough was enough. Things had to change. We started taking the financial risk of hiring more people, I offloaded some of my work and was determined to set better boundaries. I looked into my nutrition, spoke about my issues in counselling, took up yoga, meditation, exercised more. The relief was immense. I didn’t feel like I was stuck between two impossible places - wanting to be the best at my job and hating what it was doing to me.

All those things I tried helped somewhat, but nothing created lasting change. I still found myself with sleepless nights or feeling of complete overwhelm. There were times when I felt I had lost myself, lost my joy of work and my business. I longed for the days when I didn’t dread Sunday nights or working with certain clients.

We sold the business in 2012 and by the summer of 2014 I was ready to leave, and focus on new interests in the world of personal development and mental health. It was also the year that my son was born.

Somehow in the conjunction of those 3 events - leaving behind what had been nearly 10 years of the most intense period of my life, starting a new business and becoming a parent - alongside a decision to move across the country for a fresh start, set me back on the road to burnout.

I under-estimated the enormous emotional and physical demands of parenthood, and birthing a new business. I assumed my energy levels and capacity to overcome all obstacles were the same as they had been in my early 30s.

They weren’t. And that, allied to some really tough times in my personal life including losing a close friend to suicide, took me right back to the edge again.

It was like ground-hog day. Back in therapy, clinging on for dear life at times, I did a lot of soul-searching. My patterns of over-committing in work, getting caught up in ideas of wellbeing being attached to output and what I created, avoiding confronting what was really needed in my life (stillness, slowing, self-care) all resurfaced.

I despaired, thinking that I would be doomed to replay this pattern in my life time and time again.

Then I discovered something that changed everything permanently.

I came across a new understanding about how life works. It was both a psychological and spiritual explanation that rang so true for me, that it catalysed the deepest change I’d ever experienced in my life.

It completely shifted my understanding of the cause of stress, overwhelm and burnout. Within weeks, my whole perspective of my world had changed. I found a resilience in me, I never knew I had. Things that stressed and worried me before, seemed easy to ride through. I saw the source of what drove me, and how that created more stress and overwhelm.

My creative output increased and I learnt to ride my natural rhythms and moods without judgment.

I know it sounds too good to be true. It’s the sort of thing I would have scoffed at, and yet here I was, transformed. Not immune to life’s bumps, but able to ride them so much more gracefully, without getting caught in stories about what these things meant about me and my world as I saw it.

As I delved deeper into this new world, I found countless stories of these transformations, from top business people to those battling with addiction. And my own insights and understanding have deepened with time.

Now I’ve made it my mission to share this understanding with others, with anyone who’d benefit. But there are three groups of people who are really close to my heart, and with whom I love working the most:

• High performers / high achievers who want to create an enormous impact in the world but who are vulnerable to burning out by being so demanding of themselves. I help them realise their dreams while pointing them towards their infinite capacity for creativity and performance when they get out of the way of themselves.
• Those who had a tough start in life, experienced emotional neglect or abuse and whose experience of life is seen through the lens of anxiety, depression, fear, restriction. Those who make themselves small, hide away, find it difficult to participate in life fully, who use people pleasing as a strategy to feel loveable while not truly feeling they are. Helping them re-emerge, fully engaged in their lives and ready to create the life they long for and deserve.
• And finally, my big work in progress: dads. Dads who want to show up and be present with their kids, who want to find balance between their needs and their family’s needs without sacrificing one for the other, who want to fulfil their mission in life without screwing up fatherhood or their kids.

If any of those is you (or all 3), let’s talk.

I can shine a beacon of hope, point you towards your innate brilliance and offer to walk alongside you on your journey to live your life as it was meant: whole-heartedly, lightly, joyfully, creatively and to make of it, what you deeply and truly long for.

#coaching #vulnerability #mentalhealth #highperformers