Have you ever crushed one part of your job and completely dreaded another? Felt energized by a project one day, then wiped out by a different one the next? And then wondered what’s wrong with you?
Here’s what most high-achieving professionals don’t realize:
That uneven energy isn’t random. It’s a signal.
So many successful people aren’t unhappy because they’re failing. They’re unhappy because they’ve normalized tolerating work that doesn’t match how they’re actually wired to thrive. And over time, that looks like burnout, anxiety, a loss of confidence, or wondering why the success you worked so hard for doesn’t feel the way you thought it would.
In this episode, Blake explores why stress is often friction, not failure, and what it really means when work feels harder than it should. She explains why being adaptable can quietly become self-abandonment, and the personal story from her Stitch Fix days that changed how she understood misalignment for good.
Many successful leaders and professionals assume stress means they need better time management, more discipline, or greater resilience. But often, that is not the real issue. Sometimes the drain you feel comes from succeeding inside work that does not match how you naturally solve problems, make decisions, or create value.
Blake shares how hiring a new team member and reviewing her Kolbe results sparked a powerful realization: being adaptable and capable can sometimes hide the true cost of misalignment. When you can do many things, it becomes easy to say yes to work that quietly drains your energy, confidence, and productivity over time.
She also shares a personal story from her executive career at Stitch Fix. While launching a new business line energized her because it aligned with her natural strengths, later responsibilities that required a very different type of thinking created intense stress. What felt like inadequacy was actually mismatch.
This episode will help you understand why some work feels natural and energizing while other tasks feel disproportionately heavy—and how small shifts in alignment can create more energy, stronger performance, and sustainable success without blowing up your career.
In This Episode, You’ll Discover
- Why work drains you even when your workload seems manageable
- How misalignment—not motivation—causes stress and exhaustion
- Why being highly capable can hide the real cost of your work
- What it means when some tasks energize you and others deplete you
- Why struggle at work is often misinterpreted as inadequacy
- How your natural strengths shape how you create results
- Why adaptability can turn into self-abandonment over time
- How to recognize the difference between burnout and misalignment
- What small shifts can reduce stress without changing jobs
- How aligning your work with your strengths increases energy and performance
Episode Highlights
Why Work Drains You: It Isn’t Always About Workload
[00:45] – Tolerating misalignment looks like burnout, frustration & numbness
[02:10] – What the Kolbe assessment reveals about how you naturally solve problems
[03:30] – When adaptability becomes self-abandonment
The Hidden Cost of Being Highly Capable
[04:55] – Why capable people get handed more and carry it silently
[06:20] – How performing well can hide the real cost of misalignment
[07:40] – The Stitch Fix story: same title, completely different energy
Misalignment vs. Inadequacy
[09:00] – “It felt like a fish trying to climb a tree” and what that actually means
[10:15] – Why “I should be able to do this” is often the wrong question
[11:30] – How understanding your Unique Fingerprint for Success™ changes everything
Strategic Realignment (Without Blowing Up Your Life)
[12:20] – You don’t have to quit- you need alignment, not a reset
[13:10] – Clients see meaningful shifts in 4–6 weeks
[14:00] – In alignment, you’re two to three times more effective
Powerful Quotes
“Adaptability without self-awareness very often becomes self-abandonment.” — Blake Schofield
“I thought the stress meant something was wrong with me. But it didn’t. It meant there was a mismatch — misalignment, not inadequacy.” — Blake Schofield
“The people who will continue to thrive are not the ones trying to be everything to everyone. It will be the people who deeply understand how they create their highest value.” — Blake Schofield
Resources Mentioned
Let’s explore what’s possible for your team: If your company is investing in burnout, wellness or adaptability initiatives, but seeing rising burnout, disengagement, or retention risk, it may be time to address the root cause.
We identify & diagnose organizational risk – surfacing the key drivers of burnout, leadership capacity and adaptability strains impacting your team; reduce leadership attrition, disengagement and preventable turnover; equip your leaders with the skills to increase their productivity & lead effectively during pressure and uncertainty.
👉 Explore Workshops, Leadership Capacity Risk Assessments, Leadership Development or Consulting athttps://impactwithease.com/corporate-training-consulting/
Executive Coaching: For founders, executives, and senior leaders who are successful but feeling drained, stagnant, or uncertain about their next step. Whether you’re burned out, standing at a crossroads, or simply know you’re meant for more—you don’t have to figure it out alone.
👉 Go toimpactwithease.com/coaching to apply!
Discover what is driving your burnout: In just 5 minutes, learn your unique burnout type™ & how to restore your energy, fulfillment & peace at www.impactwithease.com/burnout-type
Transcript
Blake Schofield (00:03.598)
Real leadership. Real life. Real impact. No more choosing between your career and your life. Here you’ll find honest conversations, science-backed strategies, and inspiring stories to help you thrive at work and truly enjoy your life outside of it.
I’m your host Blake, and I’m honored to help you create more impact with ease.
Blake Schofield (00:36.91)
Today, I wanna talk about tolerance. What are you tolerating right now that you’ve normalized so much you don’t even realize what it’s costing you?
Because in my experience, so many successful people are not unhappy because they’re failing. They’re unhappy because they’re tolerating misalignment. They’re tolerating work that drains them and success that costs too much energy and too much of their life.
They’re tolerating ways of working that were never meant for how they’re naturally wired to thrive. And over time, that can look like burnout, frustration, anxiety, a sense of numbness or disconnection, a loss of confidence, or wondering, why doesn’t the success I worked so hard for feel better than this?
This conversation came up for me because I hired a new team member, Michelle, and I’m so excited to welcome her aboard.
One of the things we did during the process was I had her take a Kolbe assessment. That’s the only piece of what we use here at Impact with Ease that’s not proprietary.
And what Kolbe helps you understand is how you are instinctively wired to solve problems, make decisions, and take action. It’s one small piece of the larger work we do helping people uncover their unique fingerprint for success, which is the natural pattern behind every success you’ve ever had and how you create your best results.
How you think, how you solve, how you create value, and what actually gives you energy, drive, and momentum. What allows success to feel lighter, natural, more sustainable, and honestly more fun.
And why this matters is because most people have never truly learned this about themselves. They know their resume, broad-based skill sets, and responsibilities, but they don’t actually know how they work best.
And that lack of awareness is actually pretty expensive.
When I sat down with Michelle and walked through her results and really tied it to the experiences she’d had in her career, something beautiful happened. The light bulbs started going off.
She started realizing that simply being adaptable, agreeable, and willing to do many different things had actually cost her more than she realized. Time, energy, confidence, and productivity.
Blake Schofield (02:59.426)
Because some of the work she had been doing was not aligned with how she naturally works best, which means she had to work much harder than necessary.
And this is something I see all the time. People assume stress automatically means high workload. And sometimes, yes, that’s true.
But often, stress is friction and misalignment. It’s doing work in a way that’s not natural to you all day long. It’s like running a marathon and never taking a break.
Sometimes stress is succeeding inside the wrong way of operating for you.
Then Michelle and I talked about how I work and how we would work together. I shared with her what my Kolbe is and what that means in terms of my strengths and opportunities versus hers.
Where it’s likely going to be easy for us to work together, and where it likely will be challenging because we’re on opposite sides of the spectrum, and why that challenge is actually good.
And how, when you understand how people approach things, you can actually create better results because you can honor how that person works versus how you work.
You can talk about when and how the pace and rhythm of decision-making, brainstorming, and problem-solving can be partnered together in a way that creates the best results for everyone involved.
And we both left energized and excited about this partnership and how she can contribute to the mission we have here at Impact with Ease.
And she actually said to me, wow, just going through this, I’m so excited about this work because I can see how incredibly helpful this can be in your career and really understanding what your strengths are.
So many of us have been taught that we should just be adaptable and do a lot of different things. But often that is our downfall.
Because adaptability without self-awareness very often becomes self-abandonment.
You start saying yes to things that are not aligned. You become the one who takes on all the work for everyone else.
And you perform well enough that people keep giving you more. And because you’re capable, no one realizes the cost and what you’re really carrying. Sometimes not even you.
Blake Schofield (10:08.534)
Often, when you’re at this circumstance where it feels like what you’re doing isn’t sustainable, the biggest thing we tell ourselves is, I don’t have the time or energy for this right now.
And believe me, I understand this. And that belief that you don’t have enough time is actually one of the clearest signs that you need this work.
Because if you knew how to solve this, you already would have.
Think about it. How many times have you thought, it’ll be better when this project’s done, this next thing has happened, and yet the same cycle keeps repeating?
The amazing thing is one of the very first things in this work is actually about creating that space, reducing the stress, and reclaiming the energy, because alignment creates that space.
When you’re working in a way that matches how you naturally operate, you will become much more effective.
In fact, when you’re in alignment, you’re two to three times more effective.
You will be able to accomplish more in less time and accomplish it with less stress, and begin to start to see the ways in which you can make small tweaks and adjustments in how you’re leading and living that actually allow you to be empowered to create more of the life you want.
And this matters, especially in today’s world.
Because the world of work is changing fast. I don’t need to tell you that.
Priorities are increasing. AI is changing how we work and honestly creating more problems with the lack of certainty or lack of clarity around it.
Industries are shifting and roles are and will continue to evolve.
And the people who will continue to thrive are not the people trying to be everything to everyone.
It will be the people who deeply understand how they create their highest value, how they work best so they can optimize their time, energy, and state of mind, and impact, and how to be able to stay adaptable without anxiety, stress, or abandoning themselves.
The future belongs to people who know themselves and then use that knowledge to create better impact.
Blake Schofield (12:29.112)
So if you’ve been wondering, why does work feel heavier than it should? Why am I successful, but it doesn’t feel the way I thought it would? Why do I feel drained even when I’m doing well? And why do I keep thinking the answer is more effort or to push harder?
Please hear me. You may not be the problem.
It might be your toleration of misalignment and the beliefs that are inaccurate that are keeping you repeating this.
And once you see it and once you understand it, you cannot unsee it.
How simple and so much easier life can be when you get in alignment and everything starts to change.
If this feels like your story and you’d like help understanding your own unique fingerprint for success, identifying what’s draining you, and learning how to create success with more ease and less sacrifice, please schedule a call.
I’d be happy to help you identify that right next step.
We’ve helped hundreds of founders, leaders, and professionals dramatically improve their careers and lives in a matter of months, helping you understand how you can create success without sacrificing what you’ve worked so hard for.
It truly can be easier, more joyful, and you can reclaim that passion and that energy that you once had.
Most successful people don’t realize they’re in burnout, because stress and exhaustion have become so normalized, but burnout is actually a sign of deeper misalignment between how you’re wired to thrive and how you’re actually working and living. Fix the misalignment and everything changes.
Take the free quiz at www.impactwithease.com/burnout-type.com to discover your burnout type and get next steps to reclaim your energy, lead with confidence and create more ease in your life and career.
