The burnout-courage connection hiding in plain sight

THE ART & SCIENCE OF LEADING SELF
The Power of Courage

My friend, over the past two weeks, we've explored courage through the lens of nourishment, sparked by Calle 13's profound lyric 🎤: "Si mi valor tiene estómago vacío" (If my courage has an empty stomach).

First, we identified 3 key nutrients of courage. Next, we examined how unfed courage can lead to reactivity. Today, in our final look at courage (through this particular lens, not forever 😉), I want to explore another crucial connection: the relationship between unfed courage and burnout.

Think about this: Just as your body can only sustain itself without food for so long, your courage has limits when it runs on empty.

When you fail to nourish your courage, you're not just risking reactive responses – you're pushing yourself toward a breaking point.

This breaking point has a name: burnout.

The Courage-Resilience Connection

Resilience is your capacity to adapt well in the face of adversity, trauma, or significant stress.

But here's what often gets overlooked: resilience requires courage. Every time you face a challenge and choose to adapt rather than break, you're exercising courage.

But what happens when that courage is unfed?

When courage runs on empty, your resilience suffers. You might still push forward, but each step becomes harder. Your capacity to “bounce back” diminishes.

Your vital ability to adapt well – the very definition of resilience – starts to fade.

Lady Gaga: When Her Courage Needed Nourishing

In 2015, after years of being overworked, Lady Gaga announced her retirement from the music industry.

“For a long time, for most of my career,” she said, “my life was controlled by this business: what people wanted from me; what they hoped I could achieve; how to keep me going. And that can be a lot of pressure and it’s scary.”¹

Lady Gaga’s experience mirrors the circumstances that lead to burnout.

As the challenges and external demands stacked up, she pushed harder. Her beliefs that other people controlled her career led her to center industry demands over her own well-being. Those disempowering beliefs prevented her from taking the courageous (but necessary) steps to establish healthy boundaries and reasonable expectations.

👉🏽 The courage she lacked to enforce healthy boundaries was also absent from fueling her resilience.

She found herself pushing harder while trying to navigate challenges.

However, the absence of courage made adapting well in those circumstances an increasingly difficult proposition. Her experience is not foreign to most people. That said, it is an accelerated on-ramp to mental, physical, and spiritual burnout.

When you fail to properly advocate for yourself long enough, your mind, body, and spirit eventually take action to protect you from yourself.

They amass ‘stray remnants’ of your courage on your behalf.

Then, they use it to force you “out of the game” and “onto the sidelines.” It typically comes in the form of a “surrender” (which ALWAYS requires courage). This “surrender” is what is sometimes termed an emotional breakdown, physical collapse from exhaustion, an adrenal crash, or chronic fatigue episode.

In Lady Gaga’s case, she announced her retirement from music.

When My Own Courage Ran Empty

During the second year of the pandemic, I experienced the connection between unfed courage and burnout firsthand.

As uncertainty mounted, I stopped distinguishing between random thoughts and core beliefs. Fear-based thoughts about scarcity started driving my decisions, pushing me to do more and more in a futile attempt to create security.

While all of this was unfolding, I started observing gaps in my support system.

The painful realization that many of my friendships relied heavily on my initiative initially led to increased activity. I used busyness to avoid fully processing my disappointment. I started overcommitting my time, which just further depleted my internal resources.

The result?

Burnout.

Allowing my courage to run on empty was a costly decision. One that I paid for in mental, spiritual, and emotional well-being for many months.

Honestly, it was a close-up of my self-leadership (at that point in time) that I did not want to see.

One enduring lesson that came from this experience: it takes courage to establish and hold healthy boundaries.

Your beliefs about your self-worth, who is responsible for your well-being and happiness, the role of healthy boundaries and more influence your courage to establish and enforce boundaries. Once I realized this, I spent time in deep personal reflection. I identified the beliefs that were disempowering me.

As I reframed those beliefs, I developed the courage to implement boundaries and change the behaviors that were eroding my resilience and ensuring my burnout.

Your Journey: Mapping Burnout to Courage

This pattern – where unfed courage leads to burnout – isn't unique to pop stars or executive coaches. It's a human experience that manifests in predictable ways:

1. Your courage runs low on critical nutrients (beliefs, values, support systems)

2. Rather than replenish, you push harder

3. This pushing depletes your resilience

4. Burnout becomes not just likely but inevitable

Take a moment to reflect on where you see some of these patterns in how you lead yourself.

Key Insights About Courage

Quick recap of what you've learned about courage through this lens:

• Courage isn't infinite – it needs regular nourishment

• When courage runs empty, resilience suffers

• Burnout isn't just about work overload – it's often a symptom of unfed courage

• The path back requires nourishing courage before tackling other challenges

• Nourishing courage requires investing in 3 key nutrients: beliefs, values, and support systems

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FROM INSIGHT TO ACTION
Putting It Into Practice

Your Reflection Guide

Think about a time you've experienced burnout. Using the framework we've explored:

1. Identify which courage nutrients were running low:

   • Were your beliefs shaky?

   • Were your values unclear?

   • Was your support system weak?

2. Notice how this affected your resilience:

   • How did your capacity to adapt change?

   • What patterns emerged in your response to challenges?

3. Map your path forward:

   • Which courage nutrient needs immediate attention?

   • What small step can you take today to begin replenishing it?

DEEPENING YOUR KNOWLEDGE
Resources for You

 🧠 Want a peek into a key secret to building resilience? This deep dive breaks it down into actionable bites. (Link)

💪 Ready to build sustainable resilience? These research-backed strategies can help. (Link)

 🔑 Want robust, science-backed resources to help you address burnout? Explore the abundant resources here. (Link)

EXCELLENCE UNBOUNDED
How I Can Help You

🚀 Leadership Solutions as Unique as Your Organization

Leadership challenges are never the same for two organizations, so why should leadership programs be? My bespoke leadership programs are designed to empower organizations by cultivating leaders who thrive in today’s complex and unpredictable world.

With a modular design, each program is tailored to address your organization’s unique challenges and goals - whether it’s navigating uncertainty, building resilient teams, driving innovative solutions, enhancing emotional intelligence or deepening cross-cultural competencies.

Let’s partner to create a path to leadership excellence, together.

🎤 Speaking Engagements: My mom can attest to the fact that I LOVE to talk. 😂 Now, I put that talent to work delivering talks on Mindset, Courage, Resilience, & Innovation.

A few past clients include KraftHeinz, Amazon Women @ Payments, PAHEi, & the Panamá Chapter of the International Coaching Federation (I delivered this talk in Spanish).

If you are interested in having me speak at your event, please fill out this form.

Until next Sunday,

Shawnette