Resilience Debt: How Borrowing Against Your Well-Being Leads to Burnout & Four Buffers That Protect Your Energy

“Burnout doesn’t book a slot in your calendar. It just shows up and takes what it’s owed.” 

Are you living on resilience credit—spending today’s energy while expecting tomorrow’s self to pay the bill?

In this solo episode of It’s an Inside Job, I explore the idea of resilience debt—how constantly borrowing against our well-being leads to burnout, illness, and disconnection. I share practical strategies and tools to help you build buffers, protect your energy, and turn resilience into a renewable resource.

Key Takeaway Insights and Tools

• Resilience Debt as Allostatic Load (00:34 – 02:27)
  Resilience debt builds when we keep borrowing from our well-being without recovery. Science calls this “allostatic load”—the cumulative wear and tear from chronic stress.
• The Interest Rate on Stress (03:07 – 06:26)
  Stress compounds like financial debt: it shows up as decision fatigue, emotional reactivity, health breakdowns, and flatness. Burnout and illness don’t wait until it’s convenient.
• Why We Keep Borrowing (06:26 – 08:13)
  Present bias, hustle culture, and a false sense of invincibility trick us into ignoring the long-term costs of overextension.
• Four Buffers to Protect Energy (09:02 – 11:45)
  1. Recovery budget: Treat sleep, nutrition, and connection as non-negotiable.
  2. Micro-recovery habits: Small daily practices build compound interest over time.
  3. Energy tracking: Notice what charges or drains you.
  4. Boundaries as investments: Every thoughtful “no” is a deposit that protects your energy.
• Resilience as a Renewable Resource (11:45 – 12:49)
  Real resilience isn’t endless toughness—it’s renewal. Like solar energy, it regenerates daily when you maintain the system.
• Practical Exercise: The Credit/Debit Ledger (12:49 – 13:36)
  Draw a line down the center of a page. On one side, list credits (what restores you); on the other, debits (what drains you). Then ask: Where am I borrowing? Commit to making one deposit this week.

If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might be running on resilience credit. And don’t forget to subscribe to It’s an Inside Job for weekly insights on resilience, leadership, and well-being.

Host Bio

Jason White Birkevold Liem is a resilience coach, author of Seeing Sideways, and host of It’s an Inside Job. He helps leaders, coaches, and professionals strengthen resilience, improve communication, and build clarity from the inside out. Connect with Jason at www.mindtalk.no or follow him on LinkedIn.

Chapters

• 0:16 Introduction to the Podcast
• 1:42 Practical Tips for Everyday Challenges

Transcript

0:04

This is It's an Inside Job, and I'm your host, Jason Lim. This is the show where we explore the stories, strategies, and science behind growing resilience, nurturing well-being, and leading with intent. Because when it comes down to it, it's all an inside job. Well, today we are going to talk about resilience, debt, and that's when we borrow against our own well-being. You know that moment when the credit card bill shows up and it's bigger than you thought? You've been swiping a little too freely, telling yourself, I'll deal with it later. And then it lands with interest. Well, resilience works very much in a similar manner. you can keep pushing, you can keep borrowing against yourself, but eventually the body, the mind, or your relationships, they will send you an invoice. And unlike a bank, you can't negotiate with your nervous system. So let me ask you right at the start, are you living in resilience credit right now? So what is resilience debt? Well, most people think resilience means toughness. It's about powering through a situation, powering through a difficult moment. But it's more useful to think of it as a balance sheet. Credits are the things that restore you, such as sleep, exercise, downtime, connection, hobbies. Debits, well, they're the stressors. They're the deadlines. They're the conflict. They are the long, tedious hours. Now, the real trouble comes when you're not just withdrawing, we're borrowing, running on credit per se, telling ourselves, you know what, I'll recover at the weekend. I'll rest after this project. But recovery never comes. And the interest, well, it just keeps stacking. Well, as you might imagine, science has a word for this. It's called allostatic load. Now, allostasis simply means achieving stability through change. It's your body's ability to adjust when life throws something at you, raising your heart rate, your blood pressure, releasing stress hormones, sharpening your focus. Now, these changes are useful in the short term. They help you get through the meeting, the crisis, the hard workout. But when those systems are activated over and over without recovery, well, they stop being helpful and they start wearing you down. That cumulative wear and tear is called allostatic load. It shows up as elevated cortisol, a weakened immune system, memory lapses, even higher risks of chronic illness. Your body is essentially carrying the weight of all those unpaid loans. Think of it like a phone battery. At first, it charges to 100%. But after too many drain and recharge cycles, it only charges to 70%. Of course, it still works, but it empties faster every day. Well, that's resilience debt in action. How we borrow against ourselves. We borrow in subtle ways. For example, checking emails late at night, convincing ourselves it's just five minutes. Or skipping lunch because a meeting overran. or perhaps living on coffee to stay awake and a glass of wine to fall asleep or perhaps promising ourselves a vacation when things calm down, even though life never does. And then there are the bigger loans, putting relationships on the back burner for work or ignoring our bodies until illness forces us to stop or perhaps treating recovery as optional instead of essential. Each loan feels small in the moment, but stacked them together over weeks, months, even years, well, the repayment can be pretty brutal. The interest rate on stress. Debt always carries interest, and resilience debt is no different. The longer you delay repayment, the more expensive it gets. That interest doesn't come as a bill in the mail. It shows up in your body, your mind, and your relationship. It shows up as decision fatigue. You can carry a boardroom strategy session without breaking a sweat, but then stand in a supermarket aisle staring blankly at pasta sauce because the simplest choice feels impossible. Laziness. It's your brain running out of fuel. Research has shown that our ability to make good decisions, while it declines the more choices we've had to make in a day, it's why judges hand out harsher sentences in the afternoon. Your brain is like a muscle. It tires out. Then there's emotional reactivity. When you're deep in debt, the smallest things can set you off. You snap at your partner for leaving dishes in the sink or you bark at your kids for dragging their feet. But it's not really about the dishes or the shoes in the hallway. It's the accumulated weight of stress spilling over. Resilience debt shortens your fuse. Then there are health breakdowns. The body always collects what it's owed. Research from the University of Chicago shows that just one week of sleeping five hours a night slows your reaction times as much as being legally drunk. And if that becomes your norm, then chronic sleep loss raises your risk of heart disease, diabetes, depression, and even memory decline. Add in stress hormones that never switch off, and you've got a system primed for illness. Then there's flatness. This one's harder to measure, but you feel it. You're going through the motions, doing the work, showing up for family, keeping busy but there's no spark you're always on but really never alive joy feels muted creativity runs dry and life feels more like survival than living. And here's the reality. You don't get to choose when the debt collector arrives. Burnout doesn't book a slot in your calendar. An illness, it doesn't wait for a quarter to close. Disconnection in your marriage or your friendships doesn't politely hold off until work slows down. They just show up, unannounced. And then they take what they're owed. That's the interest rate on resilience debt. And the longer you ignore it, the higher the payment when it comes due. So why do we keep borrowing? Why do smart, capable people run themselves into the ground when the warning signs are right there? Well, one, there's what's called present bias. Our brains are wired to chase short-term relief and discount future costs. Finishing an email at 1 a.m., well, it feels good in the moment. It gives us that quick dopamine hit of achievement. But the cost comes the next morning, grogginess, short temper, slower thinking. We fall for the illusion of now being more important than later. Psychologists call this temporal discounting. It's the same bias that makes people choose $20 today over $30 next week. When it comes to resilience, we're choosing one more task today at the expense of tomorrow's energy. The second is culture. We've been trained to applaud hustle. A colleague who brags about being up at 5 a.m. Firing off emails is often praised as committed, when really, they're just running on fumes. We're cultures that idolize constant availability, reward overdrawn accounts. In some industries, exhaustion has even become a status symbol, as if the number of hours you burn is proof of your value, of your dedication. It's like clapping for someone who's maxed out all their credit cards. It looks impressive until the bill arrives. Then third, there's this illusion of invincibility. At first, the loans don't hurt. You skip one workout, one meal, one night of sleep, and you still function. So you think, you know what, I'm fine. I can handle this. while that false confidence it builds until one day your body or your mind simply says you know what enough then bang that's the crash the debt collector doesn't knock gently it kicks down the door so how can we try to counter this well it's about building buffers instead of borrowing. So the goal isn't to never borrow. Life does throw curveballs. It could be a sick child, an urgent deadline, an unexpected loss, something that just pops up unexpectedly. And this means that sometimes you're going to have to dip into your reserves. The key is to build buffers so you're not always one stress away from collapse. And so what I'd like to do is share four buffers that I have found that make a big difference for myself and for my clients. The first is what we can call a recovery budget. I want you to think of recovery the way you think of rents or groceries. Not optional, not negotiable. Sleep, nutrition, movement, and connection aren't nice to haves. They're non-negotiable deposits that protect your balance. Elite athletes know this. Recovery days are built into training programs. Their performance doesn't come from grinding harder. It comes from respecting the cycles of effort and rest. Leaders, professionals, and parents. Well, we all need the same principle. Without a recovery budget, every withdrawal digs deeper. Then there's two, what I call micro-recovery habits. Now, we often think of recovery as it has to be big. a vacation, a spa weekend, an entire lifestyle overhaul. But real resistance comes from tiny daily deposits. Five minutes of breathing between meetings, a 10-minute walk after lunch without your phone, eating your meal at a table instead of, well, over your keyboard. Researchers have shown that even brief relaxation practices can lower blood pressure and stress hormones. Micro habits don't feel like much, but over time, they're a compound interest. A third way of building buffers is through energy tracking. Think of yourself as a human battery. Now, some activities charge you up while others drain you, but most people never actually stop to notice. What I'm suggesting is start tracking. Maybe certain meetings leave you buzzing with ideas, while others leave you flat. Maybe one friend consistently energizes you, while another one leaves you tense or drained. Now, these patterns become your personal ledger. Once you see them, you can make better choices about where you want to spend your time and where you need to recover. Now, a fourth way of building buffers is boundaries as investments. So every unnecessary yes you say to, well, it's a loan. Every thoughtful no you say, well, that's a deposit. Now, boundaries feel uncomfortable in the moment because we're worried about disappointing people. But in reality, they're acts of preservation. Study after study shows that people who set work-life boundaries, well, they are far less likely to burn out. Boundaries aren't selfish. They're a type of insurance. They're what allows you to say a deeper, truer yes to things that matter to you the most. Resilience as a renewable resource. Now, again, many people may see resilience as pushing through, toughing it out. But I want to introduce a reframe. I'd like you to think about resilience as renewal. Debt thinking says, I'll recover later. Renewable thinking says, you know what? I'll build in small credits every day. So think of resilience less like a savings account that eventually empties, but more like solar power. With solar, you regenerate energy daily, but only if you maintain the panels. When you ignore them, the system degrades. When you care for them, well then energy flows. Now that's resilience, not toughness, not endless willpower, but a renewable system you maintain through your habits, through the boundaries you set, or through the time you invest in recovery. Now, what I like to do, especially these solo episodes, I like to give you a little homework to take the theoretical and make it practical and implementable for yourself. So here's a simple thing you can try today. I want you to take a piece of paper and then on that piece of paper, draw a line down the center. On one side, write credits and on the other side, write debits. And then I want you to jot down what restores you and what drains you. Then ask yourself, where am I borrowing? Where am I expecting future me to cover today's choices? Then what I would like you to do is to commit to one deposit this week. Just one. Maybe it's 30 minutes more sleep. Maybe it's a walk after dinner. Maybe it's saying no to a meeting you don't need to be in. You know, years ago, I used to say yes to everything, especially when I first started out on my own entrepreneurial journey, per se. You know, I wanted more clients. I wanted more workshops. I wanted to work more late nights and I told myself, you know what, I'll recover later. Then it hit me. I got sick and I stayed sick for a bit. I remember lying in bed thinking, you know what, I've been spending resilience like it was free. That was my debt collector. Since then, I've been much more deliberate about deposits. Now, maybe that comes with age and experience. But anyways, I made the change, and it did change everything. I still work hard, of course, and I still stretch myself, but now I have buffers, and I'm conscious to maintain those buffers. And that's the difference between breaking down and bouncing back. With money we all know debt piles up quietly and then suddenly overwhelms us well resilience is no different so as we close out today's episode i'm going to leave you with this what's one deposit you can make today not tomorrow not next week but today maybe right after you've finished listening to this episode. Because the earlier you notice, the easier it is to pay back. And when your balance is strong, well, resilience isn't just about surviving. It's about having the reserves to live with more clarity, with more presence, and with more joy. Well, thanks for spending some time with me today and allowing me to be part of your week. If you think this episode could be of benefit to someone, please share it with them. And remember, life is about leading from the inside out. And I'll see you next time on It's an Inside Job. Music.