He thought he was just tired — until the questions started
Fatigue isn’t always about hours worked. Sometimes, it’s the weight of unasked questions.
He walked in convinced he just needed rest.
The long hours. The endless meetings. The constant travel.
It made sense to blame exhaustion on the schedule.
But fifteen minutes into our conversation, it became clear:
This wasn’t physical fatigue. This was more like identity fatigue.
When Tired Isn’t About Sleep
Executives often assume tiredness is solved with vacations or longer weekends.
But real fatigue comes from something deeper:
- Carrying roles that no longer fit
- Performing alignment when you’ve already outgrown the script
- Saying yes to expectations you’ve never paused to question
It’s the tiredness that lingers even after eight hours of sleep.
The Power of Honest Questions
We didn’t start with strategy. We started with silence.
Simple, disarming questions like:
- “What part of this success still feels like you?”
- “Who are you performing for?”
- “What would break if you told the truth?”
Every answer stripped away another layer.
Until fatigue wasn’t about workload—
it was about living someone else’s definition of thriving.
The Turning Point
By the end of the session, he wasn’t asking for balance.
He was asking for alignment.
And that’s the real shift:
When you stop treating tiredness as a time-management problem — and start seeing it as a signal for deeper recalibration.
Final Thoughts
If you’re tired and nothing seems to fix it, pause before you add another plan.
Maybe the question isn’t “How do I rest?”
Perhaps it’s “What am I carrying that was never mine to hold?
I read a book about this once. It’s titled “Body Talk”. Quite a good read but I reserve this conversation for another day.