What happens when the strategy that built your success is the very thing that breaks you?
For a long time, I thought I was doing what strong women do.
You keep showing up. You keep delivering. You keep supporting the people around you. You keep the business moving, the family functioning, and the commitments honoured.
And then one day, your body has a different opinion. 
Over the past year, some of you may have noticed that the podcast episodes became less frequent. The Momentum Shift newsletter shifted from weekly to fortnightly to monthly. Social media became a little... quiet. Okay, a lot quiet.
There was a reason.
What happened behind the scenes: the hidden cost of keeping going
While it might have looked like I simply got busy, the reality was much bigger.
As business owners, we're often rewarded for being the woman who can handle everything. The problem is that eventually (and so I learnt), that approach comes with a cost.
Over the past few years, I navigated menopause, lost my mum, relocated to support my brother, travelled between cities to keep everything afloat, sold the business I had spent 25 years building, and then lost my dad.
Each event on its own would have been significant.
Combined, they created a level of emotional, mental, and physical load that I didn't fully acknowledge at the time.
Because I did what many women do.
I KEPT GOING.
I told myself I could get through one more season. One more project. One more commitment. One more challenge.
Until January arrived and my body finally presented the bill.
No cognitive capacity. No energy. No motivation. No ability to push through.
For the first time in my professional life, I had to step away from client work because I simply had nothing left in the tank.
It was confronting.
It was humbling.
And if I'm honest, it was embarrassing too.
But it was also necessary.
Because sometimes what looks like resilience on the outside is actually survival mode on the inside.
That's the hidden cost of keeping going that many business owners never talk about.
When burnout finally caught up with me
You’ll be pleased to know that almost four months on from that point, something started to shift.
I'm not going to tell you I've figured it out. I haven't. I'm in the middle of a becoming that I don't have full words for yet. But this podcast, and everything I do, has always been about real leadership. And real leadership starts with telling the truth.
Here’s the good news. I can now say that the moment that felt like a crisis, I've come to understand as an invitation to build the next chapter differently.
My body had been trying to tell me something for a long time. I kept negotiating with it. I kept saying not yet, not now, just one more thing, just get through this next season.
Eventually, the body stops asking. It just acts.
Practical lessons for female business owners
For a while, recovery looked a lot less like progress and a lot more like rest. Almost four months later, something began to shift.
So what did I learn about the hidden cost of keeping going that I can share with you now?
1. Listen to your body. What is it telling you?
The challenge is that many of us are so accustomed to carrying everything that we barely notice the warning signs until they're impossible to ignore.
That's the hidden cost of keeping going.
Not just the physical exhaustion, but the disconnection from ourselves that often comes with it. So I want you to think about this:
What has your body been trying to tell you that you keep negotiating with?
It's not meant as a rhetorical question. I want you to genuinely sit with it.
Because the wisdom we need is often not in another strategy or another plan. It's in the signals we've been overriding for months, sometimes years.
2. What recovery taught me about self-leadership
One of the biggest lessons from this season came when I sat my ICF Associate Certified Coach (ACC) credentialing exam in April.
After everything my body and nervous system had been through, I knew I couldn't rely on my old strategy of pushing harder. Instead, I had to practice self-leadership.
I accepted where I was rather than where I thought I should be. I created simple anchors to keep myself grounded: I am well prepared. There is no rush. You can only do your best today.
During the exam, I read some questions multiple times, flagged the ones I wasn't sure about, and worked at the pace I needed. I didn't fight my reality; I worked with it.
Within minutes of finishing, I learned I had passed. 
The result was exciting, but the bigger lesson was “self-leadership”.
Self-leadership is the practice of knowing yourself: your patterns, your nervous system, your inner voice.
- It's not a productivity strategy. It's not a morning routine or a better calendar system.
- It’s knowing yourself well enough to make intentional choices even when you're not at your best.
- It's the difference between surviving what your life is throwing at you, and actually leading yourself through it.
So let me ask you:
Are you leading yourself right now, or are you simply surviving?
There must be a better way
That brings me to what's next.
Over the coming weeks, I'll be releasing a special mini-series on the podcast called There Must Be A Better Way.
In this series, I'll be exploring questions I don't have fully answered yet:
- What if success doesn't require sacrifice?
- Can we avoid exhaustion if we want to grow our business?
- What if there really is a better way?
I don't have all the answers yet, and that's exactly why I want to explore the question.
You'll also continue hearing from me through the Momentum Shift newsletter (subscribe below). Right now it's landing in inboxes monthly, and my intention is to gradually move back to a fortnightly rhythm as my capacity returns.
Because if this season has taught me anything, it's this: The hidden cost of keeping going is too high when it comes at the expense of your wellbeing.
For years, I thought strength meant keeping going. Today, I think real strength is knowing when not to.
And perhaps that's where a better way begins. 
