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🧠 Opening: The One Thing
The week between Christmas and New Year's has a strange quality to it, suspended between what was and what's coming, when the world slows down but your mind doesn't quite know how to follow.
If you're someone who runs fast all year, this stretch can feel disorienting. You might find yourself checking email when no one's responding, organizing things that don't need organizing, or planning next quarter when you're supposed to be resting. There's a low-grade hum of anxiety that settles in when the structure falls away, even when you desperately need the break.
This week's insight: If rest feels unsafe, your relationship with work is already unsustainable.
For high achievers, rest often triggers a quiet but persistent form of identity threat. When you've built your sense of self around productivity and results, slowing down can feel like losing ground. Your nervous system has learned that achievement equals security, and over time, rest starts to feel like risk.
📊 The Pattern I'm Seeing
This week: Grounding
Real rest isn’t about doing nothing, it’s about releasing the internal monitoring system that stays activated even when your body stops moving. Grounding asks you to trust that your value doesn’t disappear when your output does. It’s the practice of being enough without proving it.
Try this:
When the urge to check email or start a project arises this week, pause and ask:
“Is this actually necessary, or is my nervous system trying to self-regulate through productivity?”
Name what you notice without judgment. Awareness alone often loosens the grip.
🔧 The Identity G.A.P.™ Framework: Grounding in Focus
This week: Grounding
Real rest isn’t about doing nothing, it’s about releasing the internal monitoring system that stays activated even when your body stops moving. Grounding asks you to trust that your value doesn’t disappear when your output does. It’s the practice of being enough without proving it.
Try this:
When the urge to check email or start a project arises this week, pause and ask:
“Is this actually necessary, or is my nervous system trying to self-regulate through productivity?”
Name what you notice without judgment. Awareness alone often loosens the grip.
💼 What This Looks Like in Leadership
When you close the gap between who you are and how you lead:
You stop treating rest like a strategy problem. Instead of asking "How do I rest efficiently?" you recognize that restoration isn't optional, it's the foundation that makes hard work sustainable.
You notice productivity bargaining without obeying it. You catch yourself negotiating ("I'll rest after I finish just one more thing") and recognize the goalpost will keep moving unless you choose to stop.
You practice being inefficient on purpose. You read a book with no takeaways, take a walk without tracking it, cook something that takes longer than it should—allowing yourself to do things that produce nothing measurable.
🧩 This Week's Reflection Prompt
What would have to be true for you to believe you're still valuable when you're not producing anything?
🌿Behind the Work
I'm sitting with the reality that the leaders who burn out aren't the ones who work hard, they're the ones who never learned to stop without losing their sense of self. That pattern doesn't shift through willpower. It shifts through practice, awareness, and the gradual rebuilding of trust in your own worth beyond what you produce.
📌 One Way to Go Deeper
If you're realizing that your relationship with rest is actually a symptom of a deeper pattern, one that shows up in how you lead, decide, and define success, join me for a free live webinar on January 8th: The Inner Advantage — How to Lead with Clarity When Everything Feels Uncertain.
We'll walk through the Identity G.A.P.™ Framework and what it looks like to make decisions, set boundaries, and build momentum from alignment instead of survival. If this holiday season is surfacing questions about what comes next, this is the conversation we'll be having.
1 More from this week:
📖 Read: What Rest Actually Requires: Why High Achievers Struggle to Stop Working — The full piece on identity, productivity, and what it takes to actually unplug.
💬 Join the conversation: Join The Conversation
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Shakirah Forde, LCSW
Licensed Therapist | Executive Coach | Alignment Strategist
13+ years supporting leaders through burnout, identity shifts, and aligned decision-making
👉 Work with me: 1:1 Coaching | The Inner Advantage | Speaking
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