How Do You Recover?
When was the last time you took a nap? Played? Ate lunch away from your laptop? (Crumbs in the keyboard don’t count).
We’ve all bought into the same toxic productivity myth:
”If I just work a little harder and a little faster, I’ll get it all done and THEN, I can take a break.”
I hate to break it to you but…you probably won’t ever finish your To-Do list. It regenerates like a Marvel villain on ketamine. But the good news? You can choose to recover anyway. Daily, even. Or at least weekly.
Recently, I was coaching a C-suite client who had just canceled a trip to Spain - because of work. Her sleep was wrecked, her brain was stuck on a 24/7 strategy loop, and her life was starting to resemble a TED talk about burnout.
When I asked her to list the what energized her instead of drained her, she had a revelation:
She was spending all her time putting out fires. And the resentment was creeping in - especially toward the other execs who weren’t working weekends. It had started to feel like she was the only one holding the company together. If she didn’t do it, it wouldn’t get done. If she stopped, the company would fall apart.
(If this sounds familiar, congratulations: you’re in the burnout danger zone with 98% of other high-functioning leaders.)
Yes, you could keep doing it all yourself. But that doesn’t make you a hero. It just makes you exhausted.
Delegation, collaboration, and asking for help aren’t signs of weakness. They are signs of resilience in action.
When that same leader came back for her next coaching session, she was different. She’d stopped waiting for a two-week, fully unplugged, all-inclusive fantasy vacation that would inevitably get canceled. Instead, she made space for the little things now:
Morning play time with her puppy
Dinner on the porch with her husband
Mini weekend trips that didn’t require a passport or PTO approval from five people
And - shocker - she started enjoying work again.
Because she stopped resenting it.
Because she started recovering.
The four-step resilience process - react, reset, respond, recover - isn’t just about surviving chaos. It’s about creating conditions where people can show up fully, screw up safely, and support each other like actual human beings.
When teams practice resilience together, they get better - individually and collectively. Trust builds. Judgment drops. Ideas flow. And it all starts with one leader deciding to stop being a martyr and start being well.
So: What did you learn about yourself over this four-step journey? And what’s one small thing you could do today - to recover, reset, and keep going? Go take that lunch break. Seriously.