Being overdrawn. And what it's teaching me about leading.
The last time an email from me landed in your inbox, I told you that energy is your first currency.
I meant it. Because at the time I was listening and making adjustments to my life to ensure I was giving myself the space in my calendar to put me first.
What I didn't know, at that time, is that I had been living in overdraft for a very long time.
In January I went back to work a week earlier than usual.
And something that had been quietly building for years finally arrived at my door and refused to be ignored.
The fatigue wasn't tiredness. It was the kind that sits in your bones, where taking a shower feels like a project, and by the time you've finished, you need to lie down.
The brain fog meant I couldn't hold a thought long enough to act on it.
And the anxiety was the cruel companion to both, because there was work to do, and I simply could not do it.
So I took myself off to the doctor. 🩺
I don't have an official medical diagnosis to hand you.
What I have is research that lines up precisely with my experience, and the absolute clarity that comes from finally being still enough to see the truth.
Everything points to ‘burnout’.
And I've come to understand it as the sum of many years of spending energy I didn't actually have.
There have been many threads to this season of my life.
Loss. Transition. Grief.
The kind of accumulation that doesn't announce itself all at once, but builds quietly in the background while you keep showing up, keep delivering, keep pushing through.
And then one day, your body simply stops negotiating.
Since then, I've stripped everything back to baseline.
I'm only adding back in what feels genuinely manageable, and I'm doing something I haven't done in a very long time.
I'm listening to my body. 🌿
Each day I track my bio-rhythms across three dimensions:
📊 Physical energy
🧠 Cognitive function
💛 Emotional bandwidth
On a simple scale of one to five. And I make decisions based on what I'm actually hearing, not what I think I should be capable of.
Because that kind of thinking, the "I should be able to handle this" thinking, is exactly what landed me here.
I'm still in it. I want to be honest about that!
But I'm writing to you again, adding the newsletter back to the baseline. And that is a step in the right direction.
What I'm learning, slowly and imperfectly, is that leading differently has to start from the inside. Not from a list of external 'shoulds'. As a daily, sometimes hourly, practice.
That's what this season is teaching me.
And I wonder, if you're honest with yourself, whether it might be trying to teach you something too.
🧠 THINK (mindset shift)
The version of you that keeps pushing through is not the strongest version of you. She is the most conditioned one.
💡 DO (practical action)
This week, track your energy across one full day, physical, cognitive and emotional, and notice honestly where you are spending from overflow and where you are spending from empty.
🌱 HAVE (expected results)
A clearer, more honest picture of what your business actually needs from you, and what you actually need to sustain it.
💬 Your Turn
I'd love to hear from you.
Not about business. Just, how are you?
Where are you really at as we move through this first quarter of the year? Especially as we transition into the year of the fire horse.
Hit reply and tell me one true thing. I'll read every single one.
And if something in this newsletter landed for you, if you recognised yourself somewhere in this story, know this:
You are not alone. You are not behind.
You are exactly where you are. And that is always the only place we can begin.
💛 Sandra
