Early in my coaching career, I sat with a man who had built something remarkable — a team, a culture, a reputation for integrity and results that others pointed to as a model. By every external measure, he was thriving.

And yet the first thing he said to me, quietly, almost as an aside, was: "I'm not sure any of them would still respect me if they really knew me."

We talk extensively about mental burnout. We talk about emotional exhaustion. We talk far less about what I'd call somatic disconnection — the gradual erosion of our relationship with our own physical experience. And yet the body is not separate from our leadership. It is the ground from which everything else grows.

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that high-achieving leaders know well. It isn't the tired that comes from too many hours or too little sleep. It's something subtler — a depletion that sets in when you've been working against yourself, pushing hard in a direction that doesn't feel natural, wondering somewhere underneath it all whether you're actually built for this.