The invisible weight.
Most leaders don’t realize how heavy it’s gotten until they stop moving.
The late nights. The back-to-back calls. The decisions that pile up faster than you can make them. The constant feeling that if you let go, even for a moment, the whole thing might unravel.
I know that weight because I’ve carried it, too.
And, if you’re honest, you probably have as well.
You’ve learned to shoulder it so well that people think you’re fine. They see competence and control. They see strength. What they don’t see is the invisible load you’ve been dragging around for years.
And, here’s the truth neither of us like to admit: no one is fine when we’re carrying more than we should.
The world of leadership loves to reward the person who carries the most. You get praised for your endurance. Admired for your capacity. People say things like, “I don’t know how you do it,” and you take pride in the fact that somehow you do. But, endurance and resilience aren’t the same thing.
Research from the American Psychological Association shows that chronic stress reshapes both the brain and the body. It impairs memory, emotional regulation, and even the quality of your decisions. You may feel strong in the moment, but over time the very systems you rely on to lead, clarity, focus, emotional intelligence all start to erode. What looks like strength on the outside can actually be the slow leak of your effectiveness.
And, you don’t talk about it. Not really. You can’t vent down. It’s not fair to your team. You can’t always vent across. Your peers are just as overextended.
So you carry it in silence. But, silence isn’t neutral.
Harvard Business Review has written about lonely leadership, and the numbers are sobering. Nearly half of CEOs say they feel lonely in their role, and more than 60 percent admit that loneliness hurts their performance. And, if CEOs feel it, every other leader feels it too.
Loneliness and silence don’t make the weight lighter. They make it heavier.
Over time that pressure starts shaping your choices. You start reacting instead of leading. You avoid the conversations you know matter because you don’t have the energy for the fallout. You settle for good enough instead of pressing for great. And, you don’t even realize how much you’ve drifted until one day you wake up and wonder why the work that once gave you meaning now feels so draining.
Some leaders hit a wall hard. Burnout is real. The World Health Organization defines it as exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced effectiveness. That’s what happens when success on the outside collides with emptiness on the inside. Others don’t collapse all at once. They just slowly drift. The joy that once fueled them gets buried under obligations. And, they tell themselves this is normal. It isn’t.
Leadership was never meant to be a solo burden.
It was meant to be shared, tested, and refined in trusted conversation. The moment you finally set the weight down long enough to look at it, something changes. You see it for what it is. You decide what’s worth carrying and what’s not. And, for the first time in a long time, you remember what it feels like to breathe.
I’ve sat with leaders who walked into a conversation weighed down and walked out with clarity, perspective, and energy they didn’t know they still had. Not because the problems disappeared, but because the fog lifted. When you get perspective, everything shifts.
And, here’s the part that takes courage.
Sometimes the bravest thing you can do isn’t to push harder but to pause long enough to feel the weight you’ve been ignoring. That pause is where growth begins. That pause is where clarity emerges. That pause is where your future starts to look different.
Your team doesn’t need a leader who can carry more. They need a leader who knows what to carry and what to let go of. They need you at your clearest, not at your most exhausted.
If you feel the weight I’m describing, I want you to know something: You don’t have to carry it alone.
This October I’m opening a handful of spots for one-on-one coaching. It’s not for everyone. But, if you know the invisible weight is costing you, your energy, your clarity, your relationships, maybe even your joy, then this might be the moment to do something about it.
Coaching won’t remove the responsibility of leadership. But, it will give you back perspective, margin, and hope. It will help you carry the right things and set down the rest.
Because leadership isn’t about proving you can carry it all. It’s about creating the conditions where your best days are still ahead of you.
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Steve Knox | Houston, Texas
\\\ Appreciate your followership. Here’s to your leadership. If I can help, reach out. Until next week. Be honest. Be you. Much love.