Shortly after I started my corporate career, I fell in love with boxing.
Not the kind where you actually punch humans (because violence makes my skin crawl and I’m generally a pansy about confrontation) but the kind where you kick and punch at the air like a sweaty, aggressive breakdancer.
I loved kickboxing. It made me feel like a badass, left me breathless and flying high as a kite.
Each time I walked into the classroom, I and my fellow gym rats had a single goal: Do one better than we did last time.
The point of the push was to stretch ourselves just a bit further. To hit a little bit harder. To jump two inches higher.
Most of my clients are like this, too. They’re powerlifters, cycle junkies, marathoners, or yoga enthusiasts. We share this desire to push beyond our limits and savor the satisfaction of a really good stretch.
Naturally, this desire translates to business. Entrepreneurs and creatives must lean into their edges if they want to grow and thrive. If you’re committed to going the distance and achieving your goals, you’ll do the work to reach new levels of visibility and productivity.
In the process, you’ll feel stretched. You hit that sweet spot between comfort and catastrophe — a delicious rhythm and awakening you may identify as flow.
But then…
Quickly, quickly, perhaps without noticing, being “stretched” becomes “stretched too thin”.
When you’re doing the work to reach your next level in business, leaning into your edges and reaching for the stars, it’s easy to rocket past the reciprocal energy exchange we know as flow and land in exhaustion—a place where your resources are depleted, where satisfaction is limited, where overwhelm and fatigue wait around every corner.
I crossed that threshold after about six months of boxing classes. I’d settled into a weekly routine where I’d work a full day and hit the gym on the drive home. I’d been having boyfriend problems, and I found punching my way through the frustration was bringing me tremendous peace.
But then I bumped up my number of classes from three to four a week. At the same time, I started pushing harder in the classes themselves. Work was super busy, involving a lot of travel, and all of it made for a nice distraction from my disintegrating relationship—but I had zero downtime.
I didn’t realize something was wrong until I wrapped up class one day and had to lie down for 20 minutes afterward. I was so utterly spent I couldn’t walk to the parking lot. Once I made it to my car, I had to spend another 15 minutes staring out the window before I had enough energy to drive.
Over the next 24 hours, I realized my body was in terrible shape. The heated, jittery feeling I’d mistaken for an ongoing adrenaline rush were symptoms of an undiagnosed, slowly worsening infection. The doctor told me I was lucky I didn’t have to be hospitalized.
As I lay in bed, sweat-soaked and miserable, I reflected on the physical edge I didn’t know I’d crossed. How did this happen, exactly? Were illness and pain an inevitable byproduct of growth?
It took me nearly a decade to realize that NO, ambition doesn’t automatically require suffering. Whether you’re charging ahead in the gym or the boardroom, you can push yourself without hurting yourself.
In case you’re sitting there going “hell no, I can’t afford to take a break just because I feel like it”, here’s a hot tip for ya:
Hustle culture and pushing all the time is a product of capitalism—a system built for factory workers, punch cards, and robots. (Are you a robot? Of course not.)
As much as I love the adrenaline rush and techno beat of masculine hustle, it’s important to realize that the energy of “push” is only one part of the human equation. As beings, we also possess the power to pull, receive, and attract. You can use your feminine energy to draw in the results you truly want.
Yes, pushing and grinding will serve you well sometimes. Other times, it simply doesn’t. Learning to manage your energy for maximum productivity is a matter of quiet discernment.
So how do you prevent yourself from going over the edge? From pushing past “stretched” to “stretched too thin”?
Marry the ambition of your brain with the intelligence of your body.
When you’re a high-level entrepreneur, or woman in executive leadership, you do a lot of mental work. You get paid to use your brain. That’s awesome–except it keeps you operating almost exclusively from the neck up.
The truth is, your body fuels your brain and your business. If you take care of it, it will take care of you.
(Important note: When I say “take care of your body”, I don’t mean go down a doctor-provided checklist of healthy habits.
Of course you need to fuel your animal self, but if you want to access the intelligence of your body, you need to go a level deeper and actually LISTEN to what your body wants and needs.
So dialogue with her. Get quiet and get curious. Give her space and let your body speak in whatever language she chooses. Then do what she’s asking.
The next time you’re feeling stretched too thin, give yourself permission to rest. Whether that looks like going for a run, taking a nap, or making something with your hands, do a physical thing that nurtures your body in the way your body wants.
You will come back feeling stronger and sharper than ever. It’s the perfect example of slowing down to speed up.
One lesson I learned early on in boxing was this: If you want to punch faster and harder, you need to relax your muscles.
You take a deep breath, send ease down through your arms, and consciously release your shoulders. When you make that physical space, you inevitably hit harder and faster.
It took my run-in with a massive infection and years of cyclical burnout in business to realize the same is true for our bodies and brains at work.
As you get started or back to work today, be like a pro boxer. Shake out your arms and defog your brain. Tap into the wisdom of your body and ask what she needs. With practice, you’ll discover that stretching further, faster comes with more fun and greater flow that you knew was possible.
