In 2019, I hit a brick wall.

After 20 years of business leadership…

Of serving as CEO for several high-profile companies throughout my career…

Everything came tumbling down around me all at once.

•Cognitive breakdown

•Fired as CEO

•Forced to build myself from the ground up

How did this happen?

Simply put: I was burned out.

Throughout my career, I have always been a professional person first. I had put my career above all else and poured 100% of my being into creating industry-shifting results for the companies I worked with.

Until one day, I simply ran out of steam. After burning the candle at both ends for several years and neglecting my own internal well-being – I was sidelined.

The people I worked with saw I was losing momentum and delegated work away from me.

This crushed me. The last thing I wanted was to lose the responsibility impressed upon me and especially, the respect of my team.

Even worse: I had withdrawn from my personal life and was “sidelined” in that realm.

My relationships on all sides of my life were collapsing under the constant pressure of my work.

My life was completely out of balance. But I tried to fight it.

After 6 weeks of rest, I ignored the inner resistance and pushed even harder to meet my professional goals…. to no avail.

The board of my company saw how frayed I was. They saw I was at the end of my string.

So they sidelined me for another 6 weeks. And then I was fired.

More stressed than ever, I suffered a physical and mental breakdown. My body put a firm stop to all my resistance and the cognitive decline I experienced was so severe I was worried I’d never perform at my best again.

So I took a much needed break. What other choice did I have?

Shortly after having the most important sphere of my life (work) ripped away, I faced a series of uncomfortable questions.

I had held a specific identity for 20+ years: a highly competent, fast-moving business leader capable of revitalizing any industry I applied myself to. I could make things happen. I could inspire people and energize every company I worked with.

Now what was I?

Unable to work…

Suffering from brain fog…

Uncertain about my future…

I had no choice but to address my mental and physical health.

I returned to the drawing board and dropped everything I thought I knew about myself.

I developed a personal management approach that put myself first.

And within a matter of months, I learned what it was like to be truly happy.

Eventually, I packaged up this approach to help other struggling CEOs and founders undergo the same personal evolution I created for myself.

In this newsletter, I’ll be walking you through what I did to rescue myself from the depths of professional burnout.

I call it the Whole Human Approach.

Today, I’ll be quickly going over the first Tenet of the Whole Human Approach:

Nothing is Divided, Everything is Everything

The first principle I had to realize within myself was the interconnectedness of life.

I had been trying to live separate lives: work was work, personal life was personal life, and time for myself… did not exist.

The reality is:

Every aspect of our physical and psychological existence interacts with each other.

Our physical health impacts our emotional health – and vice versa. There’s no way to function with any degree of success if any of the core elements of life are out of balance:

When we recalibrate ourselves to see the intersectionality of our world consciously…

We’re inclined to take care of ourselves across all domains rather than prioritize one of them at the expense of the other.

I’ll give you an example:

As a CEO, I was responsible for embodying the values I wanted from everyone working for me. To foster a culture of hard-working, high-achieving individuals – I had to become that person myself. I had to inspire the people around me on a daily basis.

And when I became consumed with drudgery and failed to take appropriate care of my emotional health, I stopped embodying the values I sought from others. I became a bad leader who gives orders without living up to their own standard.

Because my inner world suffered, my business suffered. Which in turn, led to more suffering on my part. A vicious cycle.

Nothing is divided; everything is connected.

So what actionable steps can we take to address this interconnectedness and succeed happily in all areas of life?

These are the two central areas of focus I applied to myself when recovering from my collapse and what I help other burned-out CEOs and founders with.

That’s all for today, my friends.

That wraps up Tenet #1 of the Whole Human Approach.

Stay tuned for Tenet #2 next week!

Talk soon,

Peter Sorgenfrei

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