This episode examines the belief that success must come at the cost of exhaustion. Sara reflects on how high-achieving women often internalize the idea that effort and depletion are proof of meaningful work. Drawing from her experience leading retreats and building a business, she explores how this pattern develops and why it persists. The episode considers what it might look like to pursue success in ways that are sustainable and replenishing rather than draining.
In this episode, we explore:
- How early experiences and cultural models can fuse exhaustion with achievement
- The pattern of overfunctioning that many accomplished women carry into their businesses
- A reframing of leadership that allows energy to circulate rather than only flow outward
- The difference between caring deeply about your work and gripping it with overexertion
- A reflective question that can help shift how you approach your next project or milestone
Key takeaways
- Many high-achieving women internalize the belief that success requires depletion.
- Overgiving can become a hidden standard used to measure the value of one’s work.
- Leadership and facilitation do not require draining personal energy to create meaningful outcomes.
- Allowing yourself to receive from the experience you are creating can change how work feels.
- Sustainable success may involve leaving energy in reserve rather than giving everything away.
Episode FAQs
Why do many women entrepreneurs associate exhaustion with success?
Many people grow up in environments where hard work is modeled as relentless effort followed by collapse or recovery. Over time, exhaustion becomes interpreted as evidence that the work mattered or that one tried hard enough.
What does overfunctioning look like in a business context?
Overfunctioning can show up as anticipating every need, taking responsibility for everyone’s experience, overpreparing, and believing that the outcome depends entirely on one’s personal effort.
Does doing less mean lowering standards or caring less about the work?
No. The distinction is between care and overexertion. It is possible to bring skill, attention, and devotion to work without draining every available resource.
What does it mean to participate in the experience you are leading?
Rather than seeing yourself as the sole source of energy for an event, program, or project, this perspective allows the environment, the participants, and the structure of the work to also hold and sustain the experience.
How can someone begin shifting this pattern in practical terms?
A helpful starting point is reflection. Asking how a project might unfold if it were designed to leave you replenished rather than depleted can reveal assumptions, internal pressures, and alternative ways of working.
Read the Full Transcript
I remember in high school and college when finals would come around. I would go all in. I was never much of a late-night studier. I would study all day, go to bed at night, wake up early in the morning, and it was total tunnel vision. It was that final push right before a big break, whether it was the Christmas break or the summer break.
I always did well on my exams. I was a straight-A student, sometimes an A+ student.
Every single time I would leave—whether it was from Barnard in New York City or earlier when I went to boarding school at Taft in Connecticut—I would return to our family home afterwards completely wiped out. It would take me several days to recover.
I didn’t question that. It just seemed like the deal: you work really hard, you succeed, and then you collapse. That was the cycle. That was what success looked like.
That was also what my dad modeled. He would wake up every morning at 5 a.m., drive to the train station down the road from us, and take the train into New York City. He would come back in the evening, sometimes not until nine o’clock at night. On the weekends he would sleep in until around 11 a.m. because he was so exhausted.
Somewhere along the way—and obviously this started early for me—exhaustion and success became really fused together in my system. They became two sides of the same coin.
If I wasn’t depleted, I must not have tried hard enough. If it didn’t cost me nearly everything, then it didn’t really count.
I want to explore that today because I think so many of us are carrying this belief, and it’s running our businesses and our lives without our explicit, sovereign permission.
That pattern did not end in school. It followed me right into my work.
One example is that I’ve been leading retreats now for over two decades. About fifteen years ago, the same cycle was playing out in my retreats. I would lead a week-long retreat in some idyllic place like Thailand or Mexico and give it everything.
Every ounce of my attention, my energy, my care. I would hold space for every single woman there and leave everything on the dance floor, as the saying goes.
Then I would go home and completely collapse. I would need several days of recovery.
There was a part of me that wore that exhaustion as a badge of honor. It felt like proof that I had really shown up, that I had given enough, and that the women had had a profound experience. The retreat had been a success because look at how much it cost me.
At the time, I was working with a therapist who was also a retreat leader herself. She challenged this pattern in a way I’ve never forgotten.
She said, “Sara, what if you allowed yourself to actually participate in the retreat? To feel like you are part of the retreat field, not just the one making it happen for everyone else?”
She encouraged me to let the container be the container, rather than thinking that I alone was the container.
She said, “What if there’s a flow of energy going out from you, yes, but also coming back in so that you’re receiving too?”
Then she said something that really shifted things for me.
I had said something about always doing my best. She replied, “What if you didn’t always do your best?”
I want to let that land for a moment because that question disrupted something significant in me.
What if you didn’t always do your best?
For someone like me—and maybe for someone like you—that feels almost too dangerous to consider.
Many of us have built our identities around giving our all, around being the one who shows up fully, who overprepares and makes sure every detail is taken care of.
We’ve been rewarded for that our whole lives. Good grades, gold stars, certifications, successful businesses, people telling us how amazing we are and how much our work has changed their lives.
Underneath all of that is the belief that if we let up even a little bit, everything could come crashing down. That our worth is contingent on our output. That we have to earn our place through effort and exhaustion.
What my therapist was pointing to was something radical.
She wasn’t saying to be careless. She wasn’t saying not to care.
She was asking: what if the gripping, the overgiving, the leaving everything on the dance floor isn’t actually what makes it good? What if that’s simply what makes it too costly?
That conversation changed things for me.
I started transforming how I lead retreats. I began allowing myself to be held by the experience too, not just to be the one holding it. I started participating in the field, not just leading it.
I let go of the belief that I needed to pour every last drop of myself into the retreat in order for it to be successful.
The retreats were still wonderful—maybe even better—because I wasn’t gripping. I was more present.
I actually began leaving the retreats feeling better than I did going into them. I left feeling replenished instead of depleted.
I’ve carried that shift into other areas of my business as well.
For the work that I do, I don’t need to drain myself. I don’t need to pour everything into it. It can still be excellent. It can still be deeply impactful.
And I can walk away with something left in my tank.
Here’s what I want to name, though, because I don’t think this is just my story. In fact, I know it’s not.
So many of us as accomplished women are high functioning to the point of overfunctioning. We anticipate needs before they’re expressed. We take responsibility for everyone’s experience. We believe it all rests on us.
Often there’s a deep, unexamined belief that if we don’t exhaust ourselves—if we don’t give it absolutely everything—it’s not going to work.
I invite you to question whether that’s actually true.
You don’t have to leave everything on the dance floor. You can leave something in the tank.
You can show up with care, devotion, and skill and still have something left for yourself at the end.
Success that requires you to exhaust yourself is not success. It’s a pattern, and it’s one that we get to outgrow.
So here’s the question I want to leave you with this week.
What would your next big thing look like if it left you feeling replenished instead of depleted?
Whether that’s a launch, a retreat, a client day, or a project—what would it look like if you didn’t grip it? If you allowed yourself to be part of the experience instead of the one making it all happen?
Notice what comes up when you ask yourself that.
Notice which parts of you resist or don’t believe that it’s possible. Notice which parts of you feel some relief and an exhale.
