Mental Resilience Isn't About Enduring Everything

Who it's for: For every leader, founder, and manager who has ever asked themselves whether it's still worth pushing forward or if it's time for a change.

Why it's worth reading: You'll find my personal story of two years of burnout while running my own company, juxtaposed with research on burnout (WHO, Christina Maslach), the latest Gallup report on leader loneliness, and one of today's most important books on decision-making, "Quit" by Annie Duke.

Reading time: approx. 11 minutes.

Concrete numbers on mental health

30% of founders experience depression, compared to 7% in the general population. That's a rate more than four times higher [1]. As many as 87% of founders report experiencing anxiety, depression, burnout, or all three at once [1]. A study by the University of California, San Francisco, conducted by Dr. Michael Freeman, showed that 72% of entrepreneurs report some mental health problem during their lifetime, compared to 48% in the control group [2].

These numbers aren't here to scare anyone. They are here to make it clear: if you feel burned out while leading a company or a team, you are not an exception.

My two years

For the last two years of running my own business, I was burned out and in a poor mental state. My efficiency dropped to a very low level. I had no desire to enjoy activities outside of work. I became increasingly cynical in my interactions and relationships. I stubbornly clung to diminishing chances of growing the business instead of honestly assessing where I actually was. I couldn't look at my own situation carefully and calmly because I was too deeply immersed in it.

Looking back on it now from a distance, I see something that was invisible to me then: During that period, I represented the classic three dimensions of burnout as defined by the World Health Organization in the ICD-11 classification. The WHO defines burnout as a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed, and it identifies three specific dimensions: feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from one’s job or feelings of cynicism related to it, and a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment [3]. This is the exact same triad that Christina Maslach described back in 1981 in her burnout measurement tool, which is used worldwide today: exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced efficacy [4]. I didn't know these frameworks then. I only knew how I felt, but I didn't examine it or react, I just kept pushing forward with work.

A breakthrough that had nothing to do with employment type

The breakthrough in regaining my energy and motivation was ultimately the decision to part with my own business and take a full-time job. But when I look at it honestly, it wasn't really about my form of employment. It was about doing something that brought tangible results, that was growing, and being surrounded by people who shared my motivation to do something valuable. I needed change and community.

For a long time, I couldn't make this decision, and now I understand why. Annie Duke, a former professional poker player and author of the book "Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away," shows in her research that over half a century of research into human cognition proves something inconvenient: we regularly misinterpret, downplay, or ignore signals telling us it's time to stop [5]. In the face of clear signs that quitting would be sensible, we escalate our commitment to a losing cause instead of walking away from it [5]. This phenomenon is called the sunk cost fallacy, and as Duke shows, merely being aware of its existence doesn't protect you from its effects [6]. The more you've already invested, the harder it is to leave, even though what you've already invested should have no bearing on the decision of what to do next. If you invest in the stock market, a good example is the feeling you get the first time you sell a stock at a loss. ;)

The business culture we operate in almost always rewards perseverance and treats quitting as a failure. Duke flips this narrative: she shows that the best decision-makers are the best quitters, and that quitting something that has stopped working doesn't slow you down, it accelerates your path to what actually works [5]. For two years, I held on to diminishing chances because it was painfully difficult for me to accept that the time, energy, and identity I had already invested in it should not determine what I would do tomorrow.

Why it's so hard to hear your own signals

This brings me to the core insight I gained during those two years: the key is to be mindful of yourself, your emotional state, and your needs. It's not worth swimming against the current for too long or maintaining a self-image that is inconsistent with reality. It's not worth telling yourself that results will appear if you just try a little harder.

When we force ourselves to be mentally engaged, the body can still keep up with that approach, but it comes at its own expense. And the worst part is that we develop a habit of ignoring the signals our mind and body are giving us, and over time we stop receiving them altogether, just to be able to continue trudging along in a delusional pursuit of happiness and satisfaction.

This phenomenon is confirmed by research. Emily and Amelia Nagoski, in their book "Burnout: Unlocking the Stress Cycle," describe one of the most common mistakes: we try to remove the stressor itself instead of completing the stress response cycle in the body, which causes tension to remain in the system even when the external cause of stress is formally gone [7]. In other words, it's not enough to change the circumstances. You also have to give your body and mind the space to actually close what they have experienced.

This is also evident in the latest Gallup report, "State of the Global Workplace 2026". Leaders today report higher engagement than the people they manage, but they also report more stress, anger, sadness, and loneliness than their teams [8][9]. One of the authors of this report describes it as the difference between the "remembering self" and the "experiencing self," referencing the concept by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman: the remembering self constructs meaning from work and neatly concludes its narrative, while the experiencing self, living day by day, endures far more difficult emotions than leaders are able to admit to themselves in the moment [8]. This is exactly the mechanism that allowed me for two years to tell myself and others a coherent story that with just a little more effort, it would work out, while my body and daily well-being were saying something completely different.

This isn't just my individual case. Even at the highest levels, this mechanism works similarly: 69% of senior executives seriously considered leaving their jobs for their own well-being in 2022, and a year later, that figure rose to about 75% [10]. Burnout at the top of organizations is so severe that it drives thoughts of a complete career change, even among people who, from the outside, seem professionally fulfilled.

A systemic review, not just of the organization, but of yourself

This is precisely why I believe that listening to the signals of your body and mind, pausing, and calmly analyzing your own state is such an important ritual. It's a bit like a systemic review of an organization, which is worth doing from time to time to ensure the company is heading in the right direction and is adapted to its environment. Except this time, the subject of the review is you.

In this context, Annie Duke proposes a very specific tool: setting "kill criteria" in advance, before you find yourself in a situation where emotions and sunk costs make rational assessment difficult [5][6]. Instead of asking yourself in the middle of a crisis, "should I quit this," it's better to write down, in a calm moment, what specific signals will mean it's time to change course. Just like climbers on Everest set a turnaround time in advance, regardless of how close they are to the summit, because they know that when they are standing a few dozen meters from their goal, no rational calculation will help them.

What to do with this in practice

A few principles that I apply myself today, which come directly from those two years:

• Treat exhaustion, cynicism, and a decreased sense of effectiveness as an early warning system, not as something to wait out or drown with even more effort.
• Establish your own kill criteria before you find yourself in a crisis. It's easier to make an honest assessment in a calm moment about what signals will indicate it's time for a change.
• Don't confuse quitting a specific path with personal failure. What you've already invested in it should not decide what you do next.
• Find someone who will tell you the truth, even when you don't want to hear it. Someone who is not emotionally invested in your self-image can see the situation more clearly than you can from within it.
• Conduct a regular, honest review of your state, just as you review your company's results. This is not a luxury. It's a fundamental element of responsible self-management.

Invitation

Two years of my life in burnout ultimately taught me more about mental resilience than any course or training. Today, working with founders and managers, this perspective most often proves to be the most useful: it's not about enduring everything, but about knowing when and what to change.

If you feel that what I'm writing about might apply to you and you want to get an external, independent perspective and have an honest conversation, I invite you to a free 30-minute 1:1 mentoring session (with the option to extend to an hour).

Choose a date for your first free session here

Sources

[1] Fortune, We studied America's entrepreneurs and found too many of them were burned out, anxious and depressed, https://fortune.com/2025/09/12/we-studied-entrepreneurs-burnout-anxious-depressed-wellbeing/

[2] Freeman M. et al., The prevalence and co-occurrence of psychiatric conditions among entrepreneurs and their families, Small Business Economics, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11187-018-0059-8

[3] Wikipedia, Occupational burnout, WHO ICD-11 definition, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_burnout

[4] Yu-kai Chou, Workplace Burnout: Maslach, Leiter, Exhaustion, Cynicism, Inefficacy, https://yukaichou.com/behavioral-analysis/burnout-maslach-leiter-exhaustion-cynicism-inefficacy/

[5] McKinsey & Company, Author Talks: What poker pro Annie Duke can teach you about quitting on time, https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-on-books/author-talks-what-poker-pro-annie-duke-can-teach-you-about-quitting-on-time

[6] Next Big Idea Club, Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away, book bite by Annie Duke, https://nextbigideaclub.com/magazine/quit-power-knowing-walk-away-bookbite/36452/

[7] Human Concepts, Burnout: Recovery from the Modern Plague, with reference to Emily and Amelia Nagoski, Burnout: Unlocking the Stress Cycle, https://humanconcepts.in/burnout

[8] Forbes, Gallup's 2026 Workplace Report: Leaders Are More Engaged. They're Also More Stressed, https://www.forbes.com/sites/vibhasratanjee/2026/04/08/gallups-2026-workplace-report---leaders-are-thriving-theyre-also-burning-out-both-are-true/

[9] Evolveup, Employee Engagement Statistics & Data to Know in 2026, https://evolveup.io/employee-engagement-statistics/

[10] High5Test, 50+ Leadership Burnout Statistics in the US for 2024-2025, https://high5test.com/leadership-burnout-statistics/