If You’re Still “Pushing Through,” You’re Probably Stuck
Flexibility isn’t weakness. It’s the strategy that keeps you in the game. If you’re exhausted but still pushing, read this.
I looked at my to-do list this week, and my brain slid straight into oh f*ck mode.
Blank screen.
Big sigh.
That weird cocktail of resentment and resignation settled in.
Buzzz. Another notification. Another expectation.
“How is this still my life?”
You know that feeling.
When your brain is flicking through 36 mental tabs like a browser on the brink of crashing, but your body’s screaming for rest… but you keep going anyway.
Not because you want to.
Not even because you can.
But because stopping feels more dangerous than pushing through.
Because if you drop the ball, who picks it up?
And what does that say about you?
We call it resilience or grit.
But let’s be honest here.
Sometimes it’s just survival mode dressed up as progress.
And it’s quietly eroding your capacity.
When strength becomes a trap
One of my clients - let’s call her Asha - said something that still echoes in my head:
“I keep thinking if I can just hold on a bit longer, things will calm down and I’ll catch up. But it never does. I don’t know how much longer I can hold on.”
Asha’s a textbook high performer.
Smart. Steady. Solution-focused.
Promoted fast. Trusted by everyone.
The safe pair of hands. The fixer. The glue.
But when she came to me for coaching, she wasn’t falling apart but was fraying at the edges.
Her sharpness had dulled.
Mind? Focus was foggy. Self-doubt creeping in.
Sleep? Inconsistent and light.
Food had become a way to self-soothe, in particular, biscuit binges in moments of stress, snacks as fuel and comfort.
Exercise? A distant memory, and with it, any connection to her body.
She was still delivering (over-delivering) for her clients but getting irritated with her team.
Stuck in decision loops.
Behind on tasks that used to be second nature.
She was regularly working past her own boundaries.
This meant getting home late, missing moments with her young children, and feeling quietly sh*tty and sad about it.
And then, she’d stay up.
Scrolling. Reading. Dabbling in hobbies.
Not because she had the energy.
Because she needed to reclaim something. Anything.
She called it decompressing.
I called it what it is: revenge bedtime procrastination.
That habit where you’re so stretched during the day, you steal back time at night, sabotaging rest just to feel like your time still belongs to you.
For me, this looks like deep cleaning the bathroom or watching absolute trash on social media.
These are my little signs. What are yours?
For Asha, it was breezy fiction. Novels with no link to her life. A soothing escape.
She knew it wasn’t helping, but it was relief in a life with little of it.
A moment where no one needed her.
I call these habits mental chewing gum.
They don’t nourish you, but they stop you falling apart and distract enough from the tough stuff
No wonder she kept doing it.
Not because it was working, but because it gave her a flicker of control.
A sense of agency.
A tiny rebellion.
But it was also exhausting.
And completely unsustainable.
Especially because it was pulling her further from what really mattered: her family.
The fear behind unstoppable habits
Most of us know when a habit isn’t helping.
The frustration comes when we still can’t stop.
That’s what makes it feel like failure.
It’s not just that you’re tired, but that you’re tired of letting yourself down.
In one session, I asked Asha:
“What are you afraid will happen if you stop pushing?”
She hesitated. Her voice cracked.
“I think… I’ll disappear. And lose everything I’ve worked so hard for.”
That landed hard.
Because for so many high performers, pushing through becomes identity.
When strength has always meant endurance, flexibility feels like failure.
When your worth is measured by how much you can hold, letting go, even a little, feels dangerous.
You feel under threat.
Because you are.
The version of you you’ve relied on, being the strong one, the capable one, the one who always comes through, is starting to suffocate you.
And now, you realise you have to unhook from it.
No wonder we avoid.
No wonder we scroll.
No wonder we delay.
But here’s the truth:
Your brain isn’t wired to grind forever.
It’s wired to adapt.
To learn.
To shift gears.
If you're exhausted, you’re not broken.
You're just overdue for an upgrade.
What the neuroscience tells us
Lisa Feldman Barrett, Neuroscientist and Psychologist, reminds us that the brain doesn’t just react, but it predicts.
And if your nervous system learned that “pushing through” equals safety, success, approval, or even survival?
It will keep cueing that strategy. Even if it’s running you into the ground.
This is why we sabotage the very habits we know would help us.
Because letting go of what made us successful feels like killing off a part of ourselves.
But we have to let go of the past to make better predictions for the future.
That’s where cognitive flexibility comes in.
It’s not fluffy.
It’s not weak.
It’s the resilience skill most high performers never get taught.
This year, I’ve had to rewrite my own over-functioning script and take different action.
I planned monthly breaks and shifts to reset, often while resisting them.
(In fact, I’m finishing this off after an excellent trip to Bath.)
Because even rest can feel like pressure when you’re wired for output.
But every time I stepped back, I came back clearer.
Stronger. More focused.
That’s not lost time. That’s leverage and a smarter way to perform.
Cognitive flexibility is what allows you to say:
I can pause without falling apart.
I can pivot without losing credibility.
I can choose a smarter strategy instead of defaulting to the familiar one.
When you reinforce those shifts with habit change, your brain learns to expect safety from rest, or a different behaviour, not threat.
It predicts differently.
And that changes everything.
Resilience that adjusts and sustains
Asha didn’t need another productivity hack.
She needed permission to change.
And a way to rebuild identity from the inside out, without quitting her job or blowing up her life.
We mapped the freeze or urge-to-push on moments.
We tracked the signals her body sent when she was about to override herself.
We planned her evenings backwards from bedtime so she could honour her rest and ‘get in bed’ time.
We worked out what blocked her exercise habits and built in friction-reducing cues.
Less discipline. More design.
Within weeks, she was:
Saying no without the guilt hangover.
Taking non-negotiable breaks with a snack that actually supported her.
Spotting when her inner critic was echoing an old boss, a teacher, or her mum.
Choosing morning movement and earlier bedtimes so tomorrow’s energy wasn’t left to chance or exhausted regret.
Spending real (and focused) time with her children.
She didn’t lose her edge.
She just stopped sharpening it on herself.
When life is beating you over the head, stop giving it a new bat!
Key takeaways
Mental strength isn’t gripping tighter, but knowing when to loosen the reins.
If your body’s screaming and your brain’s spiralling, your strategy is likely out of date.
Stop pushing through when it no longer serves you, but choose adaptive approaches.
Flexibility isn’t soft. It’s a performance advantage.
In moments like these, your nervous system doesn’t need more discipline. It needs permission to adapt.
Permission to say goodbye to the old you, and hello to the new.
Strong minds don’t push harder. They pivot faster.
And this builds real momentum and flow where it matters.
P.S. If you're ready to stop pushing through and start rewriting the patterns keeping you stuck, book a free 25-minute discovery call and let’s explore how I can help.
I can relate to the light reading late at night, I remember doing it in my twenties. It was pure escapism.