Burnout does not always look like falling apart.

Sometimes it looks like answering every email.

Making the meeting.

Hitting the deadline.

Showing up prepared.

Remembering everyone else’s needs.

Leading the team.

Making the decision.

Getting through the day.

From the outside, everything still appears to be working.

Inside, something feels increasingly unsustainable.

That version of burnout can be especially difficult to recognize because there is no obvious moment when everything stops.

You’re still performing.

You’re still producing.

You may even still be succeeding.

But according to leadership coach, retreat facilitator, and IAW Influencer Janelle Burkle, functioning well and being well are not the same thing. Burkle’s work with high-achieving women grew from her own experience of leading at a high level while becoming increasingly disconnected from herself.

“I was achieving, performing, and delivering, but I wasn’t rooted,” she says. “I ignored the signals from my body, my intuition, and my values until the misalignment became impossible to outrun.”

That experience eventually became the foundation for Root & Rise, her approach to sustainable, values-aligned leadership.

And it begins with a deceptively simple idea:

You cannot evaluate your wellbeing based solely on how much you are still capable of accomplishing.

High Performance Can Hide a Lot

Many accomplished women have become exceptionally good at functioning under pressure.

They know how to compartmentalize.

They know how to push through.

They know how to make the presentation even after barely sleeping.

They can absorb another responsibility without letting anyone see how full the load already is.

Those skills can be valuable.

Until they become the reason you miss the warning signs.

If your definition of “not okay” is that you can no longer do your job, you may wait far too long to notice that something needs to change.

Instead, the signs may be quieter.

You’re more irritable than usual.

You dread things you used to enjoy.

Small requests feel disproportionately exhausting.

You have difficulty concentrating.

You’re constantly tired but struggle to truly rest.

You feel detached from work you once cared deeply about.

Your calendar is full, but your life feels strangely empty.

Or perhaps the clearest sign is simply this:

You don’t feel like yourself anymore.

Burkle describes a season in her own career when the organization around her appeared aligned on paper, but the lived experience told a different story.

The values were there. The mission statements were there. The right leadership language was there.

But the culture did not reflect them.

“I felt myself shrinking a little to fit into a system that didn’t reflect who I was or what I stood for,” she says.

She kept pushing.

And for a while, she continued performing.

But performance couldn’t resolve the deeper problem.

Your Body May Know Before Your Brain Admits It

We tend to think of leadership as an intellectual activity.

Analyze the situation.

Review the information.

Develop a strategy.

Make the decision.

But Burkle encourages women to pay attention to another source of information: the body.

She describes embodied decision-making as learning to recognize the physical and intuitive signals that accompany our experiences—not relying exclusively on logic. That might sound abstract until you consider how often you’ve already experienced it.

You walk into a meeting and immediately feel yourself tense.

You think about a particular commitment and your stomach drops.

You notice your shoulders rising every time a certain name appears on your phone.

You imagine saying yes to an opportunity and feel depleted before you’ve even accepted it.

Or you consider a decision that looks risky on paper and, underneath the nerves, notice a sense of relief.

Those reactions aren’t always instructions. Feeling anxious doesn’t automatically mean something is wrong. Feeling comfortable doesn’t automatically mean something is right.

But your body’s responses are information. And repeatedly overriding them deserves attention.

Ask: What happens in my body when I think about this situation?

Then: What might that reaction be trying to tell me?

The goal isn’t to abandon logic.

It’s to stop pretending logic is the only source of useful data.

Ask Whether You’re Tired—or Misaligned

Not every difficult season means you need to leave your job, change careers, or rebuild your life.

Sometimes you’re simply tired.

A demanding launch ends.

A difficult quarter passes.

A family situation stabilizes.

You rest, recover, and begin to feel like yourself again.

But some exhaustion doesn’t disappear after a weekend away.

That’s when another question becomes useful:

Am I depleted because I’m doing too much—or because too much of what I’m doing conflicts with who I am?

Burkle learned that distinction personally.

“One of the hardest lessons I learned came from staying in a role long after my body and my values were telling me to leave,” she says.

For her, the issue wasn’t simply workload.

It was misalignment.

And misalignment can create its own kind of exhaustion.

Maybe you’re constantly being asked to lead in ways that contradict your values.

Maybe you’re in an environment where you have to repeatedly minimize yourself to fit.

Maybe the company talks about collaboration but rewards internal competition.

Maybe you value transparency while operating in a culture where information is used as power.

Maybe you’ve become professionally successful in a role you no longer want.

Nothing may be dramatically “wrong.” Yet something still isn’t right.

That’s worth examining.

Being in the Room Is Not the Same as Belonging in the Decision

For women in leadership, misalignment can also be structural.

Burkle recalls a boardroom meeting that fundamentally changed the way she thought about inclusion.

The leadership team was reviewing annual goals and initiatives when she realized that many of the significant decisions had effectively already been made the night before—while several of the men had been socializing together at one of their homes.

The women had not been invited.

They were present for the formal meeting.

But they had not been present for the conversation where influence was actually happening.

“We weren’t just excluded socially,” Burkle recalls. “We were excluded strategically.”

It’s an important distinction.

Being offered a seat at the table does not automatically mean you are being given equal access to the power around it.

And repeatedly navigating that gap can take a toll.

When women are constantly expected to compensate for cultures, systems, or informal networks that weren’t designed with them in mind, the solution cannot always be:

Become more resilient.

Sometimes the environment itself deserves scrutiny.

Stop Making Exhaustion a Leadership Credential

There is still a persistent belief in professional culture that pressure is proof of importance.

The busiest person must be the most valuable.

The executive who never disconnects must be the most committed.

The entrepreneur carrying everything herself must be especially dedicated.

Burnout becomes almost ceremonial.

Look how much I’m handling.

Look how much they need me.

Look how hard I’m working.

Burkle pushes back against that narrative.

“One misconception I often challenge is the belief that high-performing women can sustain their leadership by pushing harder, doing more, and sacrificing themselves in the process.”

Her philosophy is almost the reverse:

Sustainable leadership starts from within.

You root before you rise.

That means restoring enough internal capacity to lead intentionally rather than continually operating in survival mode.

It also means recognizing that wellbeing is not something you earn after all the work is finished.

Because for most leaders, the work is never completely finished.

Build a Practice That Brings You Back to Yourself

Burkle uses a morning ritual as an anchor.

Her ideal practice includes reading, journaling, movement through yoga or Tai Chi, and meditation.

She aims for approximately 30 minutes of each when time allows.

But the more important part of the practice may be what happens when it doesn’t.

“Even on the busiest days, five minutes can shift everything,” she says.

That matters because sustainable wellbeing is rarely built through perfect routines.

It’s built through practices you can return to.

Five minutes of journaling.

A short walk without your phone.

Three intentional breaths before entering a difficult conversation.

Stretching between meetings.

Eating lunch away from your computer.

Stopping long enough to ask how you actually feel.

These practices can seem small compared with the size of the responsibilities you’re carrying.

That’s exactly why they’re useful.

They interrupt momentum long enough for you to hear yourself again.

Try a Different Performance Review

Most professional performance reviews ask some version of:

What did you accomplish?

What goals did you hit?

Where did you improve?

What comes next?

All useful questions.

But if you’re evaluating whether your success is sustainable, add another set.

Ask:

What did this season cost me?

What required significantly more energy than I expected?

Where am I consistently overriding my own needs?

When did I feel most grounded?

When did I feel least like myself?

Which relationships or environments leave me restored?

Which leave me depleted?

Where am I acting from choice?

Where am I acting from obligation, fear, or expectation?

What do I keep telling myself I can tolerate that I no longer want to tolerate?

And perhaps most importantly:

If nothing changed, would I want to live and lead this way a year from now?

The point isn’t to make a dramatic decision every time you’re tired.

It’s to stop measuring success with only one set of data.

Your accomplishments matter.

So does your capacity to continue.

You Can Be Successful and Still Need Something to Change

This is where high-functioning burnout can become particularly complicated.

There may be a part of you saying:

But I’m doing well.

People respect me.

I worked hard to get here.

Other people would love this opportunity.

I’m still meeting my goals.

I should be grateful.

All of those things can be true.

And you can still need something to change.

Gratitude does not require self-abandonment.

Success does not obligate you to remain in every version of it forever.

And being capable of carrying something doesn’t automatically mean you should continue carrying it.

Sometimes the strongest leadership decision is not to push harder.

It’s to get curious.

What needs to be restored?

What needs to be renegotiated?

What boundary is overdue?

What value are you compromising?

What support is missing?

What truth have you been too busy to hear?

Root Before You Rise

Burkle’s Root & Rise philosophy is built around the belief that women lead more sustainably when they first reconnect with their own clarity, wellbeing, and internal capacity.

Not so they can retreat from ambition.

So they can pursue it without disappearing inside of it.

Because the goal isn’t smaller leadership.

It’s stronger leadership.

Leadership that doesn’t require constant self-sacrifice to sustain.

Leadership where wellbeing and impact aren’t treated as opposing choices.

Leadership that remains connected to the person doing the leading.

You may still be performing.

You may still be delivering.

You may still be the person everyone else assumes has it together.

That tells us something about your capability.

It doesn’t necessarily tell us anything about your wellbeing.

So don’t wait until you can no longer function before you give yourself permission to pay attention.

Your exhaustion is information.

Your values are information.

Your body is information.

Your sense of misalignment is information.

Listen before those whispers have to become something louder.

Because sometimes the question isn’t whether you can keep going.

You probably can.

The better question is:

Do you want to keep going this way?

About Janelle Burkle

Janelle Burkle is the Founder of Root & Rise, where she works with executive-level women and high-impact entrepreneurs navigating burnout, transition, growth, and the pressures of senior leadership. Through coaching, retreats, and leadership development, she helps women reconnect with their wellbeing, values, intuition, and internal capacity so they can lead with greater clarity and sustainable impact. Her Root & Rise framework is grounded in the belief that powerful leadership begins by rooting into who you are before continually asking yourself to rise higher.