Long before I ever entered the corporate world, my relationship with work was f*cked. 

As a kid, I learned that being good was better than being myself. 

As a student in my teens, I learned that doing my best meant bringing home straight A’s.

As a waitress in my twenties, I learned that mistakes were unacceptable.

These lessons set the foundation for how I approached work.

When I got my first real job, I had already mastered perfectionism and people-pleasing.

They were so ingrained that it wasn’t until years later that I would even realize their role in my life. From there, I spent the next decade hustling for the approval, acknowledgement, and accolades of others. Not knowing any better, I thought that was my path to success.

Until one day, I found myself sobbing in the middle of a corporate training session.

We had just completed a visualization of our future retirement parties, and the facilitators asked us to envision the impact we had made. I burst into tears, feeling a deep sense of confusion, sadness, and emptiness around the world I had created. 

Everything in my life had taken a backseat to my career.

My relationship was on autopilot.

My family barely heard from me.

My health was questionable.

And I couldn’t come up with anything even remotely resembling a hobby.

I knew I wasn’t happy, but I only saw two paths ahead: quit my job and start over, or continue to hand over giant chunks of my life to my career. As the breadwinner, leaving didn’t seem like the best idea, so I stayed. 

Years passed. I continued to overwork, overcommit, and overdeliver.

I was miserable, highly irritable, and felt like I was carrying the weight of the world on my back.

I felt stuck and alone. 

I was waiting for someone to throw me a life saver. To rescue me from this toxic cycle of my own creation. To keep me from burning out, yet again.

But the truth was, people tried. Someone once offered me a $20 bill if I left the office. Others heeded warnings of burnout in my reviews or joked that “Steph’s working late again”. Managers frequently asked what they could take off my plate.

But for a lifelong perfectionist and people-pleaser, those offers just added to my frustration. The amount of time I spent at the office didn’t feel like a choice at the time – it felt like the only way I could hold everything together.

As much as I wanted to point the finger at the job, or my boss, or the industry, I later realized that I was both the source of the problem and the key to the solution. Though I struggled to accept that notion for a while, it was also the moment that unlocked everything for me. 

Through the power of coaching, I figured out how to stop burning out, without having to walk out the front door. I took responsibility for the beliefs I held that led to the hustle. I stopped caring if everyone liked me. I gave up on striving for perfection, and instead, focused on creating work that was good and enough.

Letting go opened the door to so much more. I still have a full-time job in advertising, I’m a first-time mom to an amazing toddler, I got certified as a life coach, I repaired my relationships, fostered new friendships, prioritized my health, and started a coaching business. I work less than ever before, make more money than I ever have, win awards I’ve always dreamed of, and recently got promoted. 

It took me years to figure this out on my own. I learned the hard way, you could say. And now I feel my purpose in life is to help others figure the same thing out for themselves