When Effort Stops Working

Erica, welcome to the show.

How are you? I'm great.

How are you?

Great.

Well, let's start where all good stories start.

At the beginning, I know you describe yourself as a recovering overachiever.

So give us a little bit of background.

I know you have a really dynamic story, a lot of highs, some lows in there.

So bring us up to speed.

What got you to where you're at right now so that we can have a little context to get into the deeper parts of your story?

Yeah, I'm someone who has always loved to achieve.

And I was raised very much by an athlete.

My mom was also someone who loved to achieve, but she did it because she loved the game, loved the sport.

I didn't get her athletic talent, unfortunately, but I got her drive.

And so I used her drive in any place that made sense to me.

So I did it in school.

I did it in business.

And to me, that was the game that I learned to play.

And I loved to play it.

But I also learned that some of the rules there is that game doesn't necessarily have a start and an end time.

And so I just always kept pushing and kept playing until I got to the point that I had a burnout so intense I wasn't functional.

And so that's why I say recovering overachiever because I thought kind of for a long time that math was, I mean, life was just a simple math problem.

Like give your best and then push a little bit more.

Cause you know, you gotta go just a little bit further.

And then long as you're doing that, things work out.

Erica, welcome to the show.

How are you? I'm great.

How are you?

Great.

Well, let's start where all good stories start.

At the beginning, I know you describe yourself as a recovering overachiever.

So give us a little bit of background.

I know you have a really dynamic story, a lot of highs, some lows in there.

So bring us up to speed.

What got you to where you're at right now so that we can have a little context to get into the deeper parts of your story?

Yeah, I'm someone who has always loved to achieve.

And I was raised very much by an athlete.

My mom was also someone who loved to achieve, but she did it because she loved the game, loved the sport.

I didn't get her athletic talent, unfortunately, but I got her drive.

And so I used her drive in any place that made sense to me.

So I did it in school.

I did it in business.

And to me, that was the game that I learned to play.

And I loved to play it.

But I also learned that some of the rules there is that game doesn't necessarily have a start and an end time.

And so I just always kept pushing and kept playing until I got to the point that I had a burnout so intense I wasn't functional.

And so that's why I say recovering overachiever because I thought kind of for a long time that math was, I mean, life was just a simple math problem.

Like give your best and then push a little bit more.

Cause you know, you gotta go just a little bit further.

And then long as you're doing that, things work out.