Ch. 1
I’m Fine

Ch. 1

I’m Fine

Seems like lots of stories lately start with someone telling you about their big, life-changing keynote speech. There’s sweat and butterflies before walking on stage.

I was never on TEDx.

I was on stage with Jerry Springer.

If you came for the impressive resume or the “here’s how I made it” story... I actually don’t even have an “I made it” story, because I haven’t, yet.

I’m just someone who burned out. I wasn’t in a red circle talking about my journey. I was dancing badly for a live audience. I’m not a dancer. I’m not even a writer, but I did win honorable mention in a poetry contest freshman year of high school. Basically, I’m a regular person who became a contestant in the gameshow of my own life. My job, family, and social lives all felt like competitions. I had to perform. I had to win.

We played Monopoly when I was growing up. Raise the rent. Bankrupt your little sister.

That’s how we did family bonding.
But playing life like that didn’t feel like winning anymore. 

It took me a while to realize this.

“Real,” is something not imagined or supposed. From Latin, “res,” which means “thing” or “matter.” The job of “-ize” as a suffix is to turn our “real” into a verb. The “-ize” is how we turn a concept into something more. It’s our activator. The same way we modernize a bathroom for touchless faucets, or intellectualize a defining concept in a book’s opening chapter.

If you say you realize something, it means you just learned something. It might even sound like a confession: “I was wrong about this until now.” I just realized this: “Hang up the phone” comes from when phones actually hung on the wall. I’ve been “hung up” on thousands of times. That was my professional life: sales calls. Starting out, I cold-called from a garage. I was trying to sell long-distance cell phone plans to international numbers for a mom-and-pop provider. No one had heard of mom or pop, and most people hung up before they heard five words of my pitch. Then, out of a high-rise in downtown L.A., I called tech startups. I knew nothing about tech and could barely code in the four-digit sequence on the bathroom door’s keypad. The clients I called were programming robotic eyes and rocket launches. 

They hung up too.

I got another sales job. This time, I wouldn’t let myself fail. I was pitching my heart out. Day in, day out. Call after call. I made myself a machine. And people still hung up. But some of them gave me a chance. After 76,289 calls, I had figured a few things out. Pitches turned to yeses. Yeses gave me confidence. Confidence turned into a hall-of-fame closing rate. In most any area of life, 75,289 failures is incomprehensible. Here, it meant I won 1,000 times. And in sales, that makes you a legend. The rejection made me worthy. People hanging up became a part of me. I became numb to the survival instinct that surges before each cold call. But some fears are healthy, and I was losing my ability to realize when I was in danger. It was normal to start my calls with “don’t hate me.” These weren’t just cold calls. They were the frontlines of psychological sales warfare.

“All warfare is based on deception.” — Sun Tzu

And sales is a battlefield. 

But I deceived the system. 

I found a workaround. 

A way to be honest. 

That’s why it worked. 

Until I got caught. 

I had broken the rules of engagement.

When sales is a war the customer is the enemy. For my honesty, I went from a trusted trainer to a traitor. I tried to adapt, but their way to win celebrated confusion over clarity. That couldn’t work with my reality anymore. My 40th birthday was closing in. The thoughts wouldn’t stop. “You’re not young enough to be this numb. You’ve been around long enough to know the difference between right and wrong.” Mid-life crisis? Mid-burnout? I tried to prove myself to a friend...

Me: I can fix this… I’m a perfectionist.

Them: Really? What have you perfected lately?

…ouch. I started putting all of my imperfections on paper.

Before I realized it, I was writing my way out.

High Achievers Have a High Tolerance for Pain

If we burned out at the first sign of difficulty, we wouldn’t be here. We don’t take breaks lightly. We’ve developed an Olympic-level tolerance for chaos. We’re the ones helping Aunt Stacy alphabetize Grandma’s gun collection mid-conference call. Winchesters and sales quota questions. I wasn’t sure which ones were loaded anymore. 

Monday nights? Therapy.

Tuesday? Dentist @11:30am… forgot to cancel again.

Random Thursday? Brandon in town.

Every other Wednesday? Board meeting.

Next Saturday? Conference in LA.

Second Friday? Softball.

This Sunday? Father’s Day pickleball tournament.

Add your 9-to-5, a side hustle, or a relationship and we’re now doing emotional project management. There’s barely any time left to burn out. I’ve scheduled personal meltdowns around other people’s availability. Strategic collapse. We’ve made a career out of over-delivering and under-processing. Performance-based self-abandonment. And we never even got to see Brandon. We tell ourselves that career self-sacrifice is noble. Every time someone thanks us for holding it together, it reinforces the lie. We believe keeping quiet through the crisis is professional. Our high tolerance keeps us from quitting in a huff, or torching our careers with a final memo to the CEO cc’ing the whole company. Sometimes it’s simply saying “I’m fine” when we're really on fire.

I used to work for a guy who mastered the art of being fine when he was on fire. He was a vendor for lawyers, banks, hospitals, and all kinds of businesses. We hauled deliveries on and off of trucks all around town. The whole business ran out of that truck. HR, payroll, and customer service, all handled between stops. One afternoon, a call came from our biggest account. They called to cancel service for a more “sustainable offer.” I remember sitting there in the cab of the truck in disbelief. Ray said we have to muscle through. I’ll never forget walking into the next account like nothing had happened.

At the bank, we step behind the teller line:

Leanne: Hey Ray, how’s it goin’?

Ray: Good, how are youuu??

Sincere and automatic. His tone flips the interest back to her. That was business. Get over it. Move on. And he did it with dozens of people, every day for decades. No matter what. Because business is about problem solving, not talking about your own. Because business is about showing up, not showing how you’re feeling. Grit made him great. But grit grinds under pressure. Until it all falls apart. One day, it did. 

Ray slipped on a narrow staircase at an account and broke his neck. I couldn’t make any sense of it. The guy I always looked up to. I’ll never forget the day I heard this. All his sacrifice, and all his service. Was it all just too much to ask? Maybe nobody could sustain what his grit kept demanding. But emergency surgery saved him. I helped keep the business running while he recovered. He’d always said, “We just keep going.” Now he had to learn what it meant to stop. Life doesn’t always send a warning. Sometimes it sends an ambulance. But he survived it all, and now he’s back on his feet. Ray’s approach to work and life is different now. He sees business is about solving problems together, not pretending you don’t have any. 

◆ How are Youuu??

Which one most closely matches what you’ve been telling people lately?

“I’m fine.”

“Hanging in there.”

“Busy, but good!”

“Honestly? Not great.”

“I don’t even know anymore.”

Your score translated into burnout terms.  

Lower scores are closer to the truth.

“I’m fine.” +10

“Hanging in there.” +8

“Busy, but good!” +7

“Honestly? Not great.” +4

“I don’t even know anymore.” +2

“How long do you have?” +1

Your score __________

Bonus Round:  

If you’ve been on auto-reply saying, “Good, and you?” add +1.

If you hesitated before answering that, add another +1 to your score.

I got both bonus points. My go-to was, “Fine, how are youuu??” People say it’s just a figure of speech or we ask the question just to be polite. It’s more polite to go through the motions than feel our emotions. Too exhausted to feel, too painful to process. Exhaustion finally outweighs complacency. When no reward feels worth the effort to keep going. That’s when we know we’re over it. 

Part 1: We’re Over It

We can’t keep it in anymore, so we say, “Actually, I’m not fine with this.” Truth starts turning up. Indecision strikes. We struggle over the little things. Shopping for avocados, squeezing them all, trying to find the perfect one. Ten minutes later, you decide, but still get it wrong. Our minds aren’t ripe yet. Still hard, bruised at the edges. I’ve stood puzzled in the produce section too many times, wondering what I went to the store for in the first place. I’d been too busy to make a list. The moment I stepped through the door, I’d instantly remember the three things I was supposed to get. Clarity comes, but never when I need it. Too tired to make a list. Too scattered to go without one.

It’s hard to ask for help, and harder to admit we need it. It feels like giving up, and that’s not the kind of thing a successful person would do. My profession had me in a headlock. I tried explaining my situation to friends, but it burned me out to relive it. I could tell from the look on their faces. They were over it too. I knew I couldn’t stay where I was. But the fear of losing my paycheck paralyzed me. It felt like checkmate in my chest. The money queen advanced. I couldn’t believe I was still choosing to play the game. Forced into this corporate zugzwang, any move worsened my position.*

*A situation in chess (and other turn-based games) where a player must take their turn, but any move they make puts them at a disadvantage. For more, see Appendix: Zugzwang.

Part 2: We’re In It

Growing pains. 

It hurts to move. 

We’ve outgrown our circumstances.

Routines and relationships that don’t work anymore. 

We’re hitting our limit with the drama. We get the feeling that something’s not right. When I was in it, it felt like I was losing my mind. But sometimes breakdowns are boundaries in disguise. As perfectionists and high achievers we’re accountable in all areas of our lives, so we show up even when we’ve got nothing left to give. We’re the ones capable of lifting a room, guiding a group, or saving a meeting. We’re talented people, so we’re in high demand. Whether it’s passion for success or providing for our family, our purpose keeps us going. 

But when we’re always on for everyone else, we feel off for ourselves. Excellence can’t require endless availability, so we start protecting our time. The cost of our “yes” is higher now. We start writing our own mission statement, and working for our own dreams. The American Dream was our operating system. Instead of feeling inspired by it, we felt trapped in it. 

There’s a man holding a cardboard sign:

Living the American Dream…

Just missing the house, car, and job…

Work. Sleep. Repeat.

Work. Sleep. Repeat.

Pattern recognition requires presence. And presence gives perspective. The 1990s changed the way we see the world. The internet went public in 1993, connecting us in ways we’d never dreamed possible. At the same time, the 90’s gave us the Magic Eye poster, unironically titled A New Way of Looking at the World. There were instructions for seeing the bigger picture, but we were going cross-eyed following someone else’s mixed signals. We thought work is life, hard work is success, and success would make us happy. Like the hidden art in the Magic Eye, we couldn’t see it.*

*The Magic Eye became iconic in the 1990s. The poster used an algorithm based illusion that bent our minds. Around that same time, the World Wide Web was breaking through. Tim Berners-Lee originally invented the internet for sharing information among scientists. We were seeing the world through windows we never knew existed. To see the whole picture, see Appendix: Magic Eye.

Part 3: We’re Out

Quit what you don’t believe in.

Burn out the rest.

You, Version 2.0. 

You, Version Human.

My version 1.0 wasn’t unlocked. I was just unhinged. 

You don’t have to quit like I did. 

You’ll find your own way out.

◆ You, Version Human

What’s a human trait that makes you great?

What’s something you’re ready to be free of?

What have you measured your worth by?

I’m ready for what’s next. ☑

Nice, you beat me to it.