The unintentional impact of going above and beyond
Hello my friends! Happy 2025!
My three-week break has come to an end, and it feels so good to be back here with you. I am returning with such a grateful heart to have had this time for myself and for my family. I‘ve missed you!
I thought I’d kick off 2025 by sharing something I’ve been thinking about a lot. It’s an area of growth for me as I go into this year, and maybe you can relate: I've recognized that my habit of going “above and beyond” is unsustainable. This is the year that I want to break that habit: I want to do less so that I have more to give.
I’ll admit, this feels weird to write. Normally, my intentions for a new year are about doing more or being more. It feels odd—and also freeing—to think about doing less.
Let me back up a bit and tell you how I got here.
Right before we went on our holiday break, I had my usual walk-and-talk phone session with my therapist. (In case you’re new here: I am a huge proponent of therapy and prioritize it to care for myself. I also love having my calls with my therapist while I’m walking outside!)
It was a Friday at 4pm. I started the call by saying I felt I should be doing anything other than having a call with my therapist: I still had so much on my plate before I could sign off from my workweek, and it was already the end of Friday. I was completely overwhelmed and had no idea how I was going to get through the list of things that I had on my plate and still have some time to enjoy the weekend.
Have you ever had a moment like that?
Saying all this led to a deeper conversation about the kinds of things on my list and how I approach my days in general. Then, my therapist hit me with this series of questions: What are the types of things I tell myself that I have to do? Could I just . . . not do them?
My first reaction was, I could never! Everything on my list is something I must do, or it wouldn’t be on there. Each to-do is something I love and that’s important to me. I couldn’t imagine not doing even one of those things.
But as it usually happens on our calls, I began examining questions I hadn’t really challenged before. And what my therapist helped me uncover is that I spend a lot of time going “above and beyond” for others—often without being expected to.
For example, when someone asks for a 15-minute phone call and they tell me they know it’s a long shot, I almost always figure out how to make that time. I also commonly offer to do things for clients before they even ask—things that, unless they brought them up, I would never need to do in the first place. I also spend a lot of time and energy remembering small details about people and following up on those details: I’ve made it a habit to make note of when people have really big days coming up, whether it’s a birthday, anniversary, or some other big event in their lives. When the day comes, I reach out with a thoughtful email or text to let them know I’m thinking about them. I do that in both my personal life and at work.
I know that I do these things because of my values: It’s important to me to be kind and compassionate and that the people in my life feel important to me because they are. I pride myself on this part of me. It’s how I’ve built my business to where it is now and how I’ve learned to be a leader. In many ways, it is my identity.
There isn’t anything wrong with going above and beyond, but the painful truth is that we all have limits. The more I grow and the more I take on at work and outside of it, the more stressful it feels to keep up with this habit.
It’s a hard habit to change, though. We talked about how for years I’ve received positive reinforcement for going the extra mile. People are often surprised and grateful—which, of course, makes me want to keep going. And now, because I’ve operated this way for so long, I’m afraid that if I stop going above and beyond in these ways, I will no longer stand out as a business owner, leader, or speaker. I fear that this is the thing that makes people want to work with me and be my friend.
My therapist told me she could relate. After I shared my fears, she asked if she could tell me a story about her own journey. She rarely talks about herself, so this was very special for me, and I couldn’t wait to hear all about it.
She went on to share how, in the early years of being a therapist, she was very involved with her clients. She would send them resources in between sessions without being asked, and she would make herself available after-hours. But the more that she grew her client base, the more she realized that this wasn’t sustainable. She couldn’t continue to build her practice, be a really good therapist, and remain so openly available.
She was afraid to change her approach for the same reasons I was afraid to change mine: She was scared to change something that she thought made her stand out.
But she knew something had to give, so she told her clients that she could no longer talk after-hours. If they did reach out to her outside of sessions, she would have to bill for her time. She also stopped sending extra resources between sessions. And guess what? None of her fears came true. Not a single one. In fact, she noticed that setting these boundaries helped her clients by giving them permission to do the same in their own lives.
As she shared, I thought about the impact that she’s had on me. I admire her strong boundaries. It’s one of the things that I love most about her and that I strive to emulate. I realized that I want people to feel the same way about me that I do about her. Could it be possible that by not going above and beyond, I could actually inspire people?
We then talked about an angle I hadn’t considered before: When I constantly go the extra mile, I’m making an assumption that people feel good and happy about that. But what if the opposite is also true? My therapist asked me to consider that some of what I do could actually feel like a burden to others. For example, if I remember a special detail about someone’s life, they might feel pressured to remember small details about me. Or if I receive a nice holiday card from someone and send them a thoughtful text about it, they might feel obligated to respond to my text, even though they’re exhausted and want to put their energy elsewhere.
It opened my eyes to the possibility that sometimes, the assumptions I make about these small gestures are not always aligned with reality. Maybe these actions don’t always lead to positive results. Maybe I’ve unintentionally burdened someone, or maybe they don’t actually care either way, and I’ve put myself out for nothing.
So right then and there, I decided to give myself the permission to live my life in a more sustainable way. I told myself out loud that it’s okay to stop going above and beyond just because it’s what I’ve always done.
With this in mind, I took another look at my to-do list—and immediately reduced it by 40%. Huge.
And THAT is the energy that I want to carry into this year.
I want to be clear that I don’t mean I want to stop going out of my way to do things for the people I care about. That is who I am at my core, and nothing is going to change that. (And, by the way, I have a feeling that you are similar to me in that way. You wouldn’t be here reading this blog about building a more compassionate world if you didn’t care about others, too.)
The shift that I’m making as I go into this year is to check in with myself before I commit and before I act. Do I truly want to do this? Do I truly have the capacity to do this? If the answer is no to one or both of those questions, then I need to reconsider. Otherwise, I won’t be giving from a generous place. This year, I want to stay true to myself, I want to honor my limits, and I want all of my actions to stem from genuine generosity.
As I go into this year, this is my intention: I give myself permission to do less, to be less to others, and to check in with myself before I go out of my way. That way, when I go the extra mile, I know that it won’t come from a place of obligation or desire to maintain the status quo. Instead, it will come straight from my heart.
If you are on the same wavelength as me this year, let’s do it together. The world won’t fall apart, I promise! In fact, we just might inspire others to make the same courageous choices of their own.
I am curious: Where do you feel like you are giving or leading in a way that isn’t sustainable? What is this post bringing up for you? Hit reply and tell me more! My team and I love hearing from you.
2025, we’ve got this!
Big hugs,
