How to Perform at a High Level Without Burning Out

You are working hard, you’re doing all the things. You’re meeting deadlines, juggling responsibilities, and staying on top of everything. But you’re also running on fumes. High performance is rewarded, but no one really talks about the cost. In today’s episode, we’re talking about how to perform at a high level without burning out, because being successful shouldn’t come at the expense of your wellbeing.

I’ll be sharing practical research informed strategies to help you stay effective and care for yourself at the same time.

Welcome to Calmly Coping. I’m Tati Garcia, a licensed therapist and speaker here to help high achievers stop overthinking and finally feel calm and confident. If that’s what you need, then hit subscribe. Let’s dive into the episode. High performers are especially vulnerable to burnout and often the last to see it coming.

They tend to have high expectations of themselves, put pressure on themselves to excel, and often equate their productivity with their worth. If this sounds like you, you’re not alone. There can be this underlying drive to always be doing more, giving more, and pushing harder. And while that may lead to success in the short term, over time, it can become a direct path to burnout, which stems from chronic stress and results in mental, emotional and physical exhaustion.

It’s a lot. What makes this harder is the fear that comes along with stepping back. I’ve worked with so many clients in high level, high visibility jobs that are completely unsustainable, but they feel they can’t leave or even shift how they’re working. They’re afraid of losing what they’ve built. Afraid of being judged and afraid of not meeting expectations.

The job looks great from the outside. Great pay, great title, but on the inside they’re stuck, exhausted, and spent. And one of the biggest things I see is that high achievers. Often don’t recognize the early warning signs of burnout because they’re just so used to pushing through. They ignore the physical tension, emotional exhaustion, irritability, or loss of motivation, and convince themselves that the solution is to just try harder and push forward.

But those signs can really be your body and brain. Asking you to slow down, not to push more. I’ve been there myself personally. Years ago, I hit a wall in a previous role, and from the outside, everything probably looked fine. Nobody had any idea what was happening, but internally I was overwhelmed putting intense pressure on myself and not coping emotionally with what the job demanded of me.

It wasn’t a good fit for me and I didn’t realize at the time just how unsustainable it had become until I reached a breaking point where it just became too much. So I wanna talk about an important mindset shift that can make a huge difference when you’re somebody who’s. High achieving and in a high pressure or high stress role and tend to put self-care on the back burner, and that is that rest and self-care aren’t distractions from high performance, rest and self-care fuel high performance.

Let’s think of professional athletes. They don’t just train hard, they also rest hard. They have recovery routines built in, and that’s because performance requires energy recovery and balance. And we tend to realize that when it comes to physical performance, but forget that it’s the same when it comes to mental and emotional performance, whether you’re a CEO, a parent, a creative, or all of the above, when you’re constantly in go mode trying to keep up.

It’s easy to believe that more effort is the answer, but that is the mindset that often leads straight to burnout. And when you start thinking about performance from a place of sustainability and intention, everything can change. It starts to become more about fueling yourself. Mentally, emotionally, physically, so that you can do your best work without sacrificing your wellbeing.

So a reflection question to explore is, are you properly fueling your performance? The more responsibilities you carry, the higher stress, visibility, or intensity of your role, the more care and time to restore you need. But so often the exact opposite happens as responsibility and pressure increase.

Self-care decreases, and that’s when your performance actually declines because you’re not taking the proper time to fuel and care for yourself. Research shows that chronic stress and sleep deprivation impair cognitive performance. Decision making and emotional regulation, all of the things that we rely on to show up our best, whether it’s at work or in our personal lives.

One study found that just five nights of partial sleep deprivation led to increased risk taking and impulsive decisions, not because people didn’t care, but because their brains were simply exhausted and couldn’t process information as effectively. And another study looked at the long-term impact of chronic stress and found that it disrupts attention.

Working memory and emotion regulation, all of which are essential to lead, create, and connect meaningfully. And my intention here is not to scare you or shame you. It’s more about to empower you to recognize that rest, care, and emotional support are not just nice to haves. But they are your fuel. They are essential.

And when you give yourself permission to prioritize them, you protect your performance and your mental health. And if you’re somebody who struggles with sleep, even taking the time to rest your body, practice relaxation techniques or setting small. Sleep. Supporting habits that can help you to get more rest over time can help to restore your capacity.

Now here are six specific strategies that I use with clients and personally recommend to prevent burnout while still allowing you to perform at a high level. Number one is foundational self. Care. I like to call this just focusing on the basics. This includes things like getting enough quality sleep, eating balanced meals at regular intervals, and just tending to your basic overall needs.

As a human, it might seem obvious, but high achievers often skip meals. Run on caffeine or jump right from bed into work without giving themselves a moment to pause or prepare for the day. And this can build up to create chronic stress, so it can help to start with small changes in doing what works best for you, listening to your body.

Maybe that looks like eating meals with protein and fiber to sustain your energy, drinking enough water regularly throughout the day. Or giving yourself a morning routine that involves more than just jumping outta bed and opening your laptop or your phone. Tip number two is to ask yourself, what do I need to perform at my best?

And this is a powerful mindset shift. Instead of focusing on how to do more, focus on how to support yourself better, it can feel counterintuitive if you’re first starting to do this. But maybe that means a 10 minute walk after lunch or going to bed earlier, or setting limits on how many meetings you’ll take in a day.

It can feel uncomfortable at first, but in the long run, this will fuel your performance and your productivity. And here’s an important reminder from what I mentioned before, the more stress and pressure you’re under, the more self-care you need. So remember that when you’re thinking of what will fuel your performance, it’s about tuning into your actual needs.

So you can show up with more clarity, energy, and focus. Tip three is to set internal boundaries. Internal boundaries are about. Managing your thoughts, emotions, and energy, especially when you’re off the clock and not working. This might mean not checking email or mentally rehearsing to-do lists after work, letting go of the pressure of perfectionism or the pressure to be constantly productive.

I have an episode on that. I’ll link in the corner on YouTube and in the description. If you’re listening to the podcast and telling yourself it’s okay to rest, I’ve done enough for today. These boundaries are about how you relate to yourself and your work. Internally, it’s about positive self-talk, emotion regulation, and letting go of pressure and perfectionism.

Tip four is to set external boundaries. So external boundaries are the limits that you communicate with others. They can protect your time, availability, capacity, et cetera. So this might look like not answering emails after a certain hour, saying no to projects that exceed your bandwidth. We’re blocking off time in your calendar for focused work or breaks.

There’s so many types of boundaries that you can set with others and these clear external boundaries allow others to respect your limits and give you the space you need to do your best work. Tip five, I kind of hinted to this a little bit before, but it’s too specifically check in with your emotions.

So emotional check-ins help you prevent burnout before it builds. It’s a way of helping you cope with stress. So this can look as simple as asking yourself, how am I feeling right now? What’s coming up for me emotionally? What would help me cope in a healthy way? Some examples of ways to cope could be journaling out your emotions and what’s coming up for you.

Taking a walk, talking to someone that you trust, or to a therapist, or just taking a few deep breaths, whatever it is. Practicing emotional coping skills that support regulation and help to reduce stress. So often we can rush through our days just going through the motions. And not taking time to check in with ourselves and how we’re feeling.

And many times our emotions just want to be acknowledged, recognized, and named, and that can be a big part of the process to processing and working through them. My next tip is to reconnect with meaning. Sometimes we can burn out, not just because of a heavy workload, but also because we’ve lost the why behind what we’re doing.

A way to reconnect with this, why is to reconnect with your values. Ask yourself what kind of impact you want to make and whether the way you’re working aligns with that, or just asking yourself what is important to you and whether what you’re doing allows you to focus on those values or even helps to support you.

Focusing on those values in your personal life. For example, if a value is family and your work allows you to support your family financially or to have time to spend with your family because of the boundaries, then you can set or maybe your work itself connects to a value. For me, a value of mine is being able to help others to understand themselves better, so my work directly allows me to do that.

If you’ve been feeling exhausted or overwhelmed, I want you to know this. There’s nothing wrong with you and it is possible to learn ways to manage stress. And improve your performance, and it all happens one small step at a time. The thing is that high performers are often praised for pushing through and for doing it all, but there is a cost to continuing to do that and ignore your limits.

And it doesn’t have to continue to be this way. So just imagine how your life could feel a year from now if you had the energy, clarity, and emotional capacity to not just function and get through your day, but to thrive in your work, your relationships, and in yourself. That future is entirely possible.

It starts by giving yourself permission to approach performance in a different way and through a different lens. If you’re interested in getting access to trainings, specific resources and practices to help you to build emotional resilience, calm your mind from within, and improve your performance as a high achieving professional, then the common ambitious vault is perfect for you.

This is a resource that is a culmination of five years of trainings and support that I’ve provided to those with high functioning anxiety, and I’m going to be launching this to the public this fall if you want to be the first to find out when it is open and to get exclusive discounts. Then you can sign up for the wait list.

You can go to calmlycoping.com/vault or click on the link in the description. And in addition, if you’re a team leader or HR professional or somebody else in just working in a corporation and you’re looking for a speaker to support your organization’s mental wellness and high performance, I’d love to connect.

I speak to companies and organizations about how to manage stress. Prevent burnout and create sustainable success for individuals and for teams. You can reach out at [email protected] or click on the Send a message to the podcast link in the description to contact me. And if you found this episode helpful, I’d love for you to share it with a friend or leave a review to help this message reach more people.

Thanks so much for listening, and remember, it is possible to succeed without burning out. You deserve to take care of yourself, feel supported, energized, and aligned in the work that you do. While you wait for the next episode, I have other episodes about calming your mind, improving work-life balance, and feeling more confident from within.

So be sure to check out these episodes here. Thank you so much for tuning in today, and until next time, be calm.