Hey Reader,

Imagine you’ve invited a close friend over for dinner. Even though you text most days, you haven’t seen each other for months because they’ve been so busy. You’ve been trying to make this dinner happen for weeks now, wanting a chance to sit down and enjoy each other’s company. You cook (or order) something you both love. You open a bottle of wine.

When they walk through the door, you notice the dark circles under their eyes. Their smile seems a little tired. They take a long sip of the drink you offer. Over dinner, the conversation drifts to work, as it always does. Even though they’re right in front of you, their mind seems elsewhere. You’re close enough to ask what's going on, and something in them gives way. They tell you they're near the breaking point. They've been running so hard for so long that they can't remember what it felt like not to be tired. They're not sure they can keep going like this, but they don't know how to stop either.

Now imagine that friend is you.

Most senior leaders don’t know how close to that edge they actually are. They’re not weak or reckless. But the culture that got them here doesn't have much room for that kind of honesty. They start to justify every small sacrifice they make. There’s always a reason to push through this stretch. They keep moving the goalposts for when it’s time to rest and don’t notice it’s been moving for years.

A few years ago, researchers from Yale, Wharton, and the University of Illinois published a study on what constant executive stress actually does to the human body. They analyzed over 3,000 photographs of Fortune 500 CEOs and tracked mortality data across careers. CEOs exposed to major industry downturns aged visibly faster – appearing about a year older in post-crisis periods. The same stress exposure reduced life expectancy by roughly one-and-a-half years. In contrast, company changes to reduce performance pressure told the other side of the story: less pressure was associated with about two additional years of life expectancy.

Think about it. Two years of your life can be added or taken away depending on how much pressure you’re carrying.

And that’s just in response to the major external shocks. What the study doesn’t capture is the slow buildup we face: the years of poor sleep, all the lunches eaten at our desks, the workout that gets skipped for the fourth week running, the back pain that’s just a part of life now. These small problems appear one at a time, until the person in the mirror looks a lot like the friend who turned up at your door.

There's a quote I think about often. You can have a hundred problems, but as soon as you're sick, you have only one.

Underneath all of this is a belief that I see in almost every senior leader I've spoken with: slowing down is the same as falling behind. Rest has to be earned. The body can wait. This is what I call the Speed Trap. And it's worth naming because it's not a personality flaw or a lack of self-awareness. It's a belief that was reinforced for decades, every time pushing harder delivered results. The trap isn't the pace itself. It's the assumption that the pace is non-negotiable.

How to escape from that trap isn’t by downloading a meditation app or taking a two-week vacation. It's an honest look at what the pace is actually costing you, and whether those costs are ones you've chosen or ones you've simply never stopped to examine. If you want a structured way to get started, I put together a short worksheet designed for exactly this kind of moment.

Have you been treating yourself the way you'd treat a friend in this state? Hit reply. I'd genuinely like to hear where you are with this.

From one human to another,

There are five traps that keep leaders stuck – Which one is driving your pace?

• ​The Speed Trap – "If I slow down, I fall behind."
• ​The Identity Trap – "I am this role."
• ​The Title Trap – "I can't step down from this level."
• ​The Alignment Trap – "I'm excellent at something I don't believe in."
• ​The Metrics Trap – "If I can't measure it, it doesn't count."

Click the statement that feels most true. Each one takes you to a short guide to help you understand the trap and what to do about it.

Or take my free quiz to find out which one fits your situation.

These ideas are part of a much bigger conversation about success, identity, and what it means to be human again. That's the conversation I bring to organizations through my keynote. If you'd like to learn more, click the banner below.