4: When High Performance Becomes Self-Avoidance

In this episode, we explore the way high performance can feel like success, but may be helping you avoid what feels challenging or uncomfortable.

You’ll begin to see how constant productivity can become a coping system that keeps you from creating space to question your reality, and what you’re really avoiding.

In this episode, you’ll explore:

• How staying busy can pull you further away from yourself
• That what you are avoiding may be the very thing that frees you
• Questions to help you uncover the root of your overworking

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to perform. But when doing more becomes a way to avoid yourself, something needs to change.

If you’re ready to slow down, face what you have been avoiding, and move forward with more intention, explore your next step at TheActionWithin.com.

Find the full transcript at: TheActionWithin.com/4

Transcript

Hello and welcome back. Do you pride yourself on getting things done? On being the reliable one, the productive one, the person who always delivers? 

If being busy makes you feel capable, valued or even safe then this episode is for you. 

Most careers begin in a fairly standard way with first jobs, learning the rules of the office and figuring out how to perform well. 

But somewhere along the line your personal performance changed, you ramped up the productivity and eventually hit a high-intensity state that became your new normal.

That state can be powerful. But it can also become a way to avoid yourself. 

Today, we are exploring how easy it is to fall into the trap of doing more and achieving more. And how that constant motion is avoidance, disconnecting you from what you really think and feel about your work and life. 

The full transcript is available at theactionwithin.com/4.

Working hard and performing well are qualities you’re likely proud of. Being reliable matters to you. Doing your best, even when you don’t feel 100%, feels important. The idea of letting people down, or lowering your standards, doesn’t sit well with you. So you increase your hours, expand your effort and are the person who always says yes. 

And what happens next is predictable. More responsibility. More dependence. More proof that you are capable. 

But slowly, almost without noticing, you begin to disappear from yourself. You move into autopilot. Each day feels heavy before it’s even begun and by evening you’re drained and exhausted.

That exhaustion serves a purpose. When you’re depleted, there’s no energy left to question your life. No space to confront the truth you might be avoiding. So you rest, recover just enough, and begin again. 

It’s a failing coping system, keeping you disconnected from yourself and depleted of energy.

I remember being in this state. 

Constantly doing and justifying. Always moving to avoid myself and question what was really going on. 

As with me, you didn’t go from starting out to overdrive overnight. It’s a slow creep. 

Like a project that grew arms and legs and, of course, you put your hand up to take on more. More work, more people, more responsibility. It builds over years.

I get it. It feels good to move through intense workloads and achieve the results expected of you. There is satisfaction in that. 

But at what cost?

At what point did stop putting yourself first? When did your employer’s needs become more important than your own?  

From what I have seen, the shift often begins in the moment you feel you have to try harder to make it work. 

The desire to prove you can deliver places a heavy weight on your shoulders. In many cases, that expectation is self-imposed. But it feels real.

Proving becomes the goal:

• I’m right where I should be
• I’m capable of taking up this space
• I’m the person they think I am

And those thoughts drive you beyond what is reasonable.

You have your reasons for losing yourself. 

Facing them is tough. It’s not an easy conversation to have, but it may be the one that frees you from a burnout state that will eventually catch up with you.

What is motivating your performance? 

What triggers your incredible drive to override what you know feels right, in favour of what you think is required?

I was scared to admit I didn’t like what I was doing, because I had no idea what I would do instead. It felt easier to keep going than to consider I am in the wrong line of work. 

So I overworked to stay distracted. I used performance to numb what I didn’t want to feel.

And what’s surprising is that I found myself in burnout twice. The same pattern, nine years apart. 

What unsettled me the most the second time was that I didn’t see it coming.

I was so deep in delivering, head down, just getting through it, that by the time I finally paused and looked up, it was too late.

The interesting part is this: between those burnouts, one thing hadn’t changed. 

I was still working in a sector that I was never fully at ease in. I had learned lessons and made adjustments. But I hadn’t addressed the core issue. 

I was so focussed on delivering that I had stopped seeing and listening to myself.

My workload became my identity. It was how I measured my value. 

Does any of this sound familiar? 

It’s actually very common to avoid yourself by staying productive. 

There are a few terms for it. I quite like toxic productivity because it calls into question whether the effort is good for you.

Now I don’t want you to burn out to the point where you have to step away completely just to recover. There are exits you can take long before it gets to that stage.

Knowledge, self-awareness and self-kindness are powerful tools here.

You being here right now is already building your knowledge and awareness. 

The next step is kindness. 

This means taking the time to understand your behaviour, by questioning the pace you’ve been operating at, and slowing things down enough to give yourself space to think.

To help you explore this, here are few questions that can help you understand what you’ve been avoiding for so long.

Ask yourself:

How do I really feel about the work I do? 

Think about your emotions, thoughts and the feelings that come up when you consider your day-to-day.

What am I avoiding by keeping myself constantly busy and overworking? 

Be honest here and allow the uncomfortable truths to surface.

Who benefits from me operating in this constant high-intensity state? 

When you reflect on the people around you, it often becomes clear who gains from this and who loses.

Challenge your answers, don’t settle for first responses.

Sit with what you uncover. Consider what this means for you.

Socrates once said “Beware the barrenness of a busy life”. That line has never felt more true than when you find yourself living that exact life. 

Take your time with this. Reflect on what comes up and notice how it begins to shift the way you see yourself, your work and your days.