If exhaustion is your default setting…

That’s not ambition. That’s your body begging for a reboot.

Summary

We’ve been sold a lie about exhaustion. Society tells us that bone-deep tiredness is a badge of honour, proof of our dedication and ambition. But what if that isn’t true? What if it’s your body’s desperate SOS signal, begging for the reboot you’ve been denying it? This article explores the dangerous myth of productive burnout through the lens of one woman’s wake-up call, offering practical strategies to distinguish between healthy challenge and harmful depletion. It’s time to stop wearing exhaustion like a medal and start listening to what your body is trying to tell you.

The Ambition Illusion

Picture this: It’s 3 AM, and you’re still answering emails, telling yourself this is what success looks like. Your coffee mug has permanent residence on your desk, and you can’t remember the last time you felt genuinely rested. Sound familiar?

Here’s the uncomfortable truth we need to face: If exhaustion has become your default setting, you’re not ambitious—you’re running on fumes while calling it fuel.

We live in a culture that has weaponised tiredness, turning it into social currency. We compete over who got less sleep, who worked longer hours, who’s more “dedicated.” But somewhere between glorifying the grind and celebrating the hustle, we lost sight of a fundamental truth: sustainable success requires sustainable energy.

Your body isn’t a machine that runs better when overheated. It’s a complex ecosystem that needs cycles of challenge and recovery, output and input, doing and being. When exhaustion becomes your baseline, you’re not optimising—you’re operating in survival mode.

Alex’s Wake-Up Call

Alex Collins thought she had it all figured out. At 34, she was the kind of woman other people looked up to—a marketing director at a prestigious firm, marathon runner, volunteer board member, and the friend everyone called when they needed something done. Her calendar was a masterpiece of colour-coded efficiency, every minute accounted for, every goal meticulously planned.

The first warning sign came on a Tuesday morning in October. Alex was rushing through her usual routine—black coffee gulped while checking emails, protein bar eaten while reviewing quarterly reports, sneakers laced while mentally rehearsing her presentation for the 9 AM meeting. As she grabbed her car keys, the metallic jangle seemed unusually sharp, almost violent against the morning silence.

Her hands were trembling.

Not the gentle shake of too much caffeine, but a deeper tremor that seemed to originate from her bones. She stared at her fingers, willing them to be steady, but they continued their rebellious dance. The scent of her vanilla candle, usually comforting, suddenly felt cloying and overwhelming.

“Just stressed about the presentation,” she whispered to her reflection in the hallway mirror. The woman staring back had hollow eyes rimmed with concealer that wasn’t quite doing its job anymore.

The presentation went well—Alex always delivered. But as she sat in the conference room afterwards, the congratulations from her colleagues sounded muffled, as if she were hearing them underwater. The fluorescent lights felt harsh against her skin, and she could taste something metallic in her mouth that had nothing to do with the coffee she’d been sipping.

That evening, Alex collapsed onto her couch with her laptop, ready to tackle the evening’s work. But as she opened her computer, the screen’s blue glow made her head pound. The soft cushions beneath her felt like they were swallowing her whole, and for the first time in months, she closed the laptop without opening a single document.

She sat in the growing darkness, listening to the hum of her refrigerator and the distant sound of her neighbour’s television. When had silence become so foreign? When had the simple act of sitting without productivity become so unsettling?

The breaking point came three days later. Alex was in the middle of her morning run—her sacred time, the one thing that always cleared her head—when her legs simply stopped working. Not gradually, not with the familiar burn of a good workout, but suddenly, as if someone had pulled her plug.

She found herself sitting on a park bench, watching joggers stream past her, their rhythmic footfalls on the asphalt creating a percussion she’d never noticed before. The autumn air carried the earthy smell of decomposing leaves, and she realised she couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually noticed the changing seasons.

A woman about her age stopped running and approached. “Are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Alex almost laughed at the accuracy of that observation. She had seen a ghost—the ghost of who she used to be before exhaustion became her identity.

“I think,” Alex said slowly, tasting each word, “I think I forgot how to rest.”

That stranger’s kindness—offering water, sitting with Alex until she felt steady—was the first genuine human connection she’d experienced in weeks that wasn’t transactional. As they talked, Alex found herself describing her life as if it belonged to someone else: the 14-hour days, the weekend work sessions, the pride she took in being the person who never said no.

“But when do you rest?” the woman asked simply.

Alex opened her mouth to respond and realised she had no answer. Recharge? The concept felt foreign, almost selfish. Successful people didn’t recharge—they powered through.

Walking home that morning, Alex noticed things that had become invisible in her perpetual rush: the way morning light filtered through her neighbour’s wind chimes, creating dancing shadows on the sidewalk. The smell of fresh bread from the bakery she’d been meaning to try for two years. The sound of children laughing in a nearby playground.

Her body had been begging for this reboot for months, maybe years. The trembling hands, the constant headaches she’d attributed to “seasonal allergies,” the insomnia she’d tried to solve with melatonin and blackout curtains. Her exhaustion wasn’t a badge of honour—it was an alarm bell she’d been ignoring while turning up the volume on everything else.

That night, for the first time in memory, Alex went to bed before 11 PM. She didn’t check her phone, didn’t review tomorrow’s to-do list, and didn’t feel guilty about the emails that could wait until morning. She simply lay in the darkness, feeling the cool cotton sheets against her skin, listening to her own breathing slow and deepen.

Sleep came like a wave of mercy she hadn’t known she was drowning without.

Five Key Exhaustion Takeaways

1. Exhaustion Is Not a Status Symbol

Chronic tiredness isn’t proof of your dedication—it’s evidence that you’ve confused motion with progress. True ambition includes the wisdom to sustain yourself for the long haul, not sprint until you collapse.

2. Your Body Keeps the Score

Physical symptoms like trembling, headaches, insomnia, and digestive issues aren’t just inconveniences to power through. They’re your body’s early warning system, and ignoring them leads to bigger problems down the road.

3. Rest Is Productive

Recovery isn’t the absence of productivity—it’s what makes sustained productivity possible. Your brain consolidates learning during rest, your muscles repair during sleep, and creativity flourishes in moments of stillness.

4. Boundaries Are Life-Saving

Learning to say no isn’t selfish; it’s strategic. Every yes to something that drains you is a no to something that might energise you. Protecting your energy is protecting your ability to show up fully for what matters most.

5. Sustainable Success Requires Sustainable Practices

The most successful people aren’t those who work the hardest—they’re those who work most sustainably. This means building rhythms of effort and recovery, challenge and restoration, into your daily life.

Journaling Prompt

Write about a time when your body tried to tell you something important, but you ignored the message in favour of pushing through. What was happening in your life? What were the physical sensations you dismissed? How might things have been different if you’d listened?

Then, imagine writing a letter from your body to your mind, explaining what it needs to support you better. What would your body ask for? What wisdom would it share about the difference between healthy challenge and harmful depletion?

The Energy Audit: For one week, track your energy levels hourly on a scale of 1-10. Note what activities, people, or situations drain you versus those that restore you. Look for patterns—you might be surprised by what you discover.

The Boundary Practice: Choose one small boundary to implement this week. Maybe it’s not checking email after 8 PM, taking a real lunch break, or saying no to one commitment that feels obligatory rather than energising.

The Rest Ritual: Design a 10-minute daily practice that helps you transition from “doing” to “being.” This might include deep breathing, gentle stretching, journaling, or simply sitting quietly without an agenda.

As Maya Angelou wisely noted, “Every person needs to take one day away. A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future. Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence.”

Further Reading

• “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle – Essential reading on presence and the dangers of living in constant future-focus
• “Digital Minimalism” by Cal Newport – Practical strategies for creating space in an overwhelmed world
• “The Body Keeps the Score” by Bessel van der Kolk – Understanding how stress and trauma live in the body
• “Essentialism” by Greg McKeown – The disciplined pursuit of less but better
• “Rest” by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang – Scientific exploration of how rest enhances performance
• “The Gifts of Imperfection” by Brené Brown – Letting go of perfectionism and embracing worthiness

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: But what if I really do need to work this hard right now? What if it’s just temporary? A: “Temporary” has a way of becoming permanent when we don’t set clear end dates. If you’re in a genuinely short-term, intense period (launching a business, finishing a degree, caring for a family member), build recovery time into your schedule and set a firm completion date. True emergencies are rare; most of what feels urgent is actually just poorly managed priorities.

Q: How do I know if I’m being lazy or if I genuinely need rest? A: Laziness feels sluggish and unsatisfying. Genuine rest feels restorative and leads to increased energy and clarity. If you’re asking this question, you’re probably not lazy—you’re likely someone who’s been conditioned to view any non-productive time as suspicious.

Q: What if my workplace culture doesn’t support work-life balance? A: Start with what you can control: your responses to emails outside work hours, how you use your lunch break, and whether you take your vacation days. Model sustainable behaviour, and you might be surprised how many colleagues quietly follow suit. Sometimes change starts with one person refusing to participate in the exhaustion Olympics.

Q: How can I tell the difference between healthy challenge and harmful stress? A: Healthy challenge energises you even when it’s difficult—you feel engaged, capable, and like you’re growing. Harmful stress depletes you, makes you feel overwhelmed or hopeless, and often comes with physical symptoms. A healthy challenge has recovery built in; harmful stress feels endless.

Q: What if I feel guilty about resting when others are struggling? A: Your exhaustion doesn’t help anyone else’s situation—in fact, it makes you less capable of offering meaningful support. Taking care of yourself isn’t selfish; it’s the foundation for being able to show up authentically for others. You can’t pour from an empty cup.

Conclusion

Alex Collins learned something that took her 34 years to understand: ambition without sustainability isn’t ambition at all—it’s a slow-motion crash disguised as forward momentum. Her body’s rebellion wasn’t a sign of weakness; it was an act of wisdom, forcing her to confront the difference between being busy and being purposeful.

The most radical thing you can do in a culture obsessed with productivity is to remember that you are not a machine. You’re a human being with natural rhythms, legitimate needs, and the inherent right to exist without constantly proving your worth through exhaustion.

Your body isn’t begging for a reboot because it’s defective—it’s begging for a reboot because it’s designed to thrive, not just survive. The question isn’t whether you have time to rest; it’s whether you have time not to.

True ambition honours both the vision and the vessel. It recognises that sustainable success requires sustainable practices, that the most productive thing you can sometimes do is nothing at all, and that your worth isn’t measured by your tiredness but by your wholeness.

The reboot your body is requesting isn’t a luxury—it’s a necessity. And the sooner you give it what it needs, the sooner you can discover what you’re truly capable of when you’re running on restoration rather than depletion.

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Ready to give your body the reboot it’s been begging for? Join us for a transformative stress-relief walking retreat along the ancient Camino de Santiago path in the stunning southwest of France. Away from the demands of daily life, surrounded by lush vineyards, rolling hills and ancient medieval villages, you’ll rediscover the rhythm of sustainable living. Our small-group retreats combine gentle daily walks, mindfulness practices, and storytelling workshops to help you reconnect with your natural energy cycles. Because sometimes the most ambitious thing you can do is learn to rest.

Learn more about my upcoming retreats here.