The Business Of Thinking

Too Resilient? Finding Balance and Beating Burnout, with Ali Cammelletti

• Richard Reid • Season 1 • Episode 2

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In this episode, leadership coach and keynote speaker Ali Cammelletti shares her powerful personal backstory and philosophy on resilience. Ali discusses her upbringing, which led to high-achieving traits like perfectionism, hypervigilance, and a drive to earn self-worth through her career, ultimately taking a toll on her health. 

She shares candidly about managing life-altering stress - including a major health crisis, family loss, and divorce - and how these experiences forced her to create crucial daily tools. Learn how to identify when you're being "too resilient," distinguish between actions driven by love vs. fear, and apply mindfulness and gratitude practices to build sustainable high performance.


Key Takeaways

  • Cost of Hyper-Achievement: Unsafe environments can lead to perfectionism (stickler), hyper-achievement, and hyper-vigilance (anxiety) as defense mechanisms.
  • Health as a Red Flag: Neglecting self-care manifests in serious health issues; the body shouts louder when you're not listening.
  • The Worth-Production Cycle: Many high achievers unconsciously try to earn their worth through their production—a sign they may feel unsatisfied elsewhere.
  • Mindfulness in Nature: Daily rituals like spending time in nature without earbuds are powerful for balance and reducing anxiety.
  • The Secret Sauce of Gratitude: A daily gratitude practice is important for resilience, especially when negative feelings arise.
  • Love Over Fear: Ali's core personal value is ensuring all her actions are out of love, not fear.
  • Values as a Compass: Feeling like something is "not right" is often a sign your actions are not in alignment with your core values.


Episode Breakdown Highlights

  • Ali’s challenging upbringing and the development of high-achiever characteristics.
  • The warning sign: How Ali’s lack of self-care led to a massive liver tumor.
  • Hitting a wall with anxiety and depression during the four-year adoption wait.
  • Actionable Tools: The importance of self-care, exercise, and gratitude practice.
  • Living by the personal value: All actions are out of love, not fear.
  • Current work: Developing a core value alignment survey for companies.


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Thank you for joining us on The Business of Thinking podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe and leave a rating! It helps us bring more insightful content on the psychology of high performance. You can find more of Ali's work at sparkyourmindset.com or on LinkedIn.