Work Stress: How To Measure Progress When You Are Exhausted

Remember this: that “tiny” step you took today might be the bravest thing you have done all week.

When work stress, anxiety, and burnout recovery start to feel like yet another performance review, it is easy to believe you are falling behind, failing at boundaries, or doing wellbeing “wrong”. 

Guess what? I want to challenge that because I see it differently.

Progress is not only the dramatic, visible, social-media-friendly kind. Sometimes it arrives quietly, and it still counts.

We start with a quote I keep on my wall: every step you take, no matter how small, is a step towards a brighter, more balanced future. Then we walk through why this matters for capable, high-functioning people who expect themselves to recover quickly and completely.

Using Allie’s story as a mirror, we talk about the hidden pressure of trying to renovate your whole life in weeks, and how that can lead to burning yourself out while trying to recover from burnout.

From there, we get practical. I explain how acknowledging emotions like anger and anxiety is not the same as acting them out. 

Awareness creates space between emotion and reaction so you can choose a conscious response. We explore the ABGW Method® and how it reframes stress management as transforming energy into awareness, balance, growth, and sustainable wellbeing. We also talk about journaling as a simple tool to turn emotion into information, build healthier boundaries, and move at a pace that fits your real life.

If this lands for you, follow Work Stress Anxiety, share it with someone who needs permission to notice their progress, and leave a review so more people can find the support they deserve. What is one small step you have taken recently that you have not given yourself credit for?

The contents of this podcast are for informational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. If you have a specific health concern or condition, please consult a qualified Healthcare professional for more details. Check out herguru dot uk forward slash disclaimers

Transcript

Cheryl Parris talks about Work Stress Anxiety and a motivational quote

SPEAKER_00 0:21

This great story teaches us something about being human. I'm Cheryl Paris and this is Work Stress Anxiety. Together, let's borrow a little wisdom from a story to help us navigate a very modern world.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Hi and welcome to Work Stress Anxiety. I'm Cheryl Paris and today I wanted to talk about a quote that has become deeply, deeply important to me. It's on my wall. I use it in my work. And you may have heard me say at the end of previous episodes that if you've listened to previous episodes, if you haven't, I want to say uh welcome, a warm welcome to the podcast. And I want to say a particular welcome to anyone who's new who hasn't listened to it before, especially a new listener from Spring Hill, Tennessee. Welcome. Now, what is this quote that I'm talking about? Well, let me just say it for you. It's every step you take, no matter how small, is a step towards a brighter, more balanced future. Trust in your journey and remember, progress is progress no matter the pace. Now, on the surface, you may think it sounds like a motivational quote. It's nothing of the sort. No. The sort of thing you might put on a mug or nod politely to someone was to say it to you. It's not. And if Allie heard heard it once, she might have thought, hmm, that's the kind of thing she was to be thinking too. Allie is 51, she loves karaoke, music festivals, and in particular Taylor Swift. She also coaches grassroots football, or sometimes known as soccer. So she understands that progress is really glamorous. Sometimes it is a player finally making the pass that they've been practicing for weeks. Nobody releases confetti, the game simply moves forward. And you know, Allie is capable, encouraging, and very good at helping other people see their potential. But when work stress, anxiety, and even exhaustion begin closing in on her, she she did what many capable, high-functioning women do. She expected herself to recover competently and completely as well. So, where does that get us? So when she first heard me say progress is progress, no matter the pace, she may well have thought that's nice, Cheryl, and probably possibly followed it by saying she's slightly bonkers but harmless. And to be fair, I know I don't think in quite the same way as everyone else. I I've learnt that from experience. And I used to believe that meant that there was something wrong with me. Now I accept myself as I am, very Bridget Jones-like, but with fewer enormous pants and considerably more reflection going on. But in fairness to Ali, she kept listening and gradually she realized the quote was not a gimmick. I was being serious. It was not telling her to push harder, stay positive, or keep going when every part of her was exhausted. The quote was there for her and everybody else. It's there to give her another way of measuring progress. One that didn't keep turning recovery into another performance review target.

Cheryl says acknowledging emotions can help reduce stress and anxiety

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Now, because so many people experience work-related stress, anxiety, emotional exhaustion, and even burnout, they already know what it feels like when they feel as if they're falling behind. They believe that they should be coping better, sleeping better, setting stronger boundaries, maybe feeling calmer, or genuinely being more productive, and ideally solving the whole first world problems by Thursday afternoon. Then we get well-being advice that can add another layer of pressure, another morning routine, another breathing technique, another habit to track, and another opportunity to feel that you are now failing at recovery as well. That is why the words every step you take, no matter how small, matter so much to me. So, so much. Because I have noticed something through my own experiences and through some of the work that I've done and observed. A step doesn't have to be dramatic or visible or impressive on your social media feed. It might be admitting I'm not exactly okay with what's happening. It might be recognizing, well, actually, I'm quite angry about that. It might be leaving an email until tomorrow, or taking a proper lunch break, or even asking for help, or even going to bed instead of trying to stay awake, trying to solve another problem. And when you have had severe distress, the smallest meaningful step might be telling one trusted person the truth. The truth. So please make sure you get the support that you need. But for me, small doesn't mean insignificant. Some things, as small as a small step, sometimes is the largest step a person has the emotional, mental, or physical capability at this moment to take. And that matters. You know, I was reminded of this recently when something happened and I felt angry. But the thing is, I told myself I shouldn't be angry, upset, or perhaps, you know, disappointed, possibly. But angry? Apparently, my internal committee have rejected that application. And the thing is, I know for myself, refusing to acknowledge the anger that I felt didn't actually make it disappear. It made it even want to be more entrenched, it made me more distressed because I was dealing with the original situation and fighting with myself about how I was allowed to feel about it. But the thing is, and this is why it's so cool. Excuse me if I get excited about these things, but I do. The moment I acknowledged I am genuinely angry, something shifted. Not because the anger vanished, but because I stopped wasting energy arguing with its existence. Then I could ask better questions, like why am I angry? Why did I feel dismissed? Did something feel unfair? Was a boundary crossed? What does this emotion need me to recognize? And what would an appropriate response actually look like, Cheryl? Now, I appreciate that you may think, well, what is Cheryl talking about? But to me, acknowledging an emotion doesn't mean acting on every single impulse attached to it. Accepting that you're angry doesn't mean shouting at someone. Recognizing the anxiety doesn't mean allowing anxiety to then make every decision. It's all about the Awareness. Awareness simply allows you to say this is what is happening inside me. And once you can see and experience what is happening, you have a better chance of actually responding consciously instead of reacting automatically. Now, this is actually at the heart of the A B GW method. It doesn't ask how do we get rid of stress and anxiety, it simply asks a more, I think, productive question. It asks how can we transform the energy within the stress and anxiety into awareness, balance, growth, and more sustainable well-being. Because we all know that stress is part of being human. Inappropriate amounts. It can help us focus, act, prepare, and respond to danger in the right way. Okay? Not that there is a right way, but in a way that you know feels good for us. The problem, I think, begins when it starts to become chronic or overwhelming, when it stops helping us respond and starts controlling how we're living. Now, the aim is, I think, is not to become a permanently calm robot. No, that's where the balance comes in. It's to develop responses, I think, that are more appropriate to what is happening without becoming paralyzed or or even consumed by what's going on. So that begins with awareness. What am I feeling? What is happening? What happens uh if I've been ignoring it? What might this response be trying to show me in this moment? But awareness is only the beginning because once capable people stop uh spot a problem, they often try and fix it all at once in immediately. You know, they may recognise for years they've been overworking, people pleasing, having poor boundaries, and decide that their entire life must be renovated within a week. But you can't do that. I don't think you can do that. I don't think that's realistic at all. The thing is, you can burn yourself out trying to recover from burnout. Yeah, you can, and that's where beef for balance matters because balance, I think, asks something useful. It says, what can I realistically do now? What support do I need? What can wait? And what is the smallest sustainable step? And I know what you're thinking, but sometimes balance means taking action. Sometimes it means resting, sometimes it means waiting until you are calmer before making a decision. To me, it means recognizing that not everything has to be solved in the same emotional weather in which it was discovered. And for Ali, progress might begin with her leaving her job or reinventing her life or producing a colour-coded recovery plan. It might begin with noticing that she is carrying the whole week into football training and then giving herself ten quiet minutes in the car before she even decides to step onto the pitch. Now that pause might not repair an entire unhealthy workplace. I'm not expecting miracles here. It will not remove every pressure and magically make everyone else behave in the way that they're supposed to. But it may help Ali notice what belongs to this moment, what belongs to work, and what she doesn't want to pass on to the people she is coaching.

G for growth is not about becoming more impressive

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Then there comes growth. G for growth. Now, growth is not about becoming more impressive. I'm laughing because I think that's what a lot of people think. But if you grow, you have to you have to be winning awards or um getting accolades. No, no, no. I think it's about you have to decide who you are now. That's what you need to do, and it's about learning from your experiences, recognizing your values and your unconscious patterns, and then making choices that feel more aligned with the person you want to be. And then there's what I call win-win well-being, and that's about caring for other people without sacrificing yourself and caring for yourself without disregarding everybody else, which is good, right? What's good for the bee should be good to support the hive, and that to me is what is good about the hive, shouldn't then destroy what's good for the bee. So when I say a step towards a brighter, more balanced future, I'm not promising perfection, that dreaded P word, or a life without stress, anxiety, frustration, frustration, as she says it, or even difficult emotions. The word towards matters. You do not have to have arrived, okay? You can be moving towards something and still have difficult days. You can be making progress and fall into old habits and old patterns. You can be growing and still feel uncertain, and that's the thing about growth. Growth isn't there is no certainty in growth whatsoever. You know yourself from your own experiences. Progress is really, really neat, visible, or straight line. Sometimes it's about setting boundaries, sometimes it's about realizing you are not ready to set one safer level yet. Um, sometimes it's about having a difficult conversation, maybe one that you might have been putting off. Sometimes it's about deciding not to have that conversation while you're emotionally overwhelmed. Sometimes I think progress is moving forward, sometimes it's about stopping long enough to check whether the direction you're moving towards still belongs to you. And that's why no matter the pace matters too. Pace is not a measure of worth. People do not begin from the same place, and they do not have the same health, responsibilities, um, financial concerns, support, workplace conditions, or even life experiences. A step that appears tiny to one person might require tremendous courage from someone else. And there is no prize in reaching well-being first. Moving slowly does not mean that you are stuck. The way that I see it is this the useful question is not, am I moving as quickly as someone else? Right? Because that's comparison, and I'm not interested in that. It is, am I moving in a direction that supports my well-being, my values, and my actual life? You know, one of the things that has been really, really powerful for me, and I say really, really like that, because it has been, is journaling. Journaling has helped me create that space between emotion and reaction. I might write, I am angry, then what am I angry about? Then what needs to be acknowledged, and eventually, what response would allow me to respect myself tomorrow? The journal does not force the emotion to disappear. No. What it does is something even more magical than that, and I say magical because I do believe that's what it is, is something that I really cannot explain. It helps transform emotion into information, and that is what I believe we are trying to do with stress and anxiety, not erase it or deny it, or even deny them, and not turn ourselves into some permanently serene creatures who float above difficult meetings. No. We are trying to understand them well enough to use their energy more constructively to move to move possibly from distress towards useful action or from paralysis toward more purposeful living, or from an automatic response towards a conscious response. Now, eventually that can create what I describe as outrageous unconscious joy. Now, what is outrageous unconscious joy? Well, it's not false positivity, it's not pretending life is easy, but it's the joy that becomes possible when we're no longer spending so much energy fighting ourselves, when our actions become aligned to our true values, and well-being becomes something that's lived rather than something that's been constantly chased. That is why the quote is actually on my wall. Seriously, and it's not there for my clients to see, it's there for me too. It reminds me every single day that awareness matters, that every discovery doesn't have to become an emergency, that rest can be progress, that reflection can be progress, asking for help can be progress. And something that I think is really cool: changing your mind about something can be progress. One conscious, sustainable step may be far more valuable than a hundred frantic actions driven by fear, guilt, or even shame.

Every step you take is a step towards a brighter, um, future

SPEAKER_01 22:13

So I would like to leave you with this one question. What is one step you have taken recently that you may not have given yourself the true credit for? Perhaps you recognized a feeling sooner, or perhaps you said no, paused, rested, or even asked for support. Perhaps you simply began to become more aware of something that you couldn't previously see. Thinking back to Allie, Allie may still roll her eyes at inspirational quotes, and I can understand why you do that, Allie. Frankly, some of them deserve that. But she also understands now, I think she does, that progress doesn't have to look impressive to be real. Sometimes it is simply the moment you stop dismissing the evidence that you are already beginning. Beginning that journey. Don't dismiss your step because it was small. Small does not mean meaningless, small doesn't mean stuck, and progress doesn't stop being progressed simply because it arrived quietly. That's what I want to leave you with. Thank you for spending this time with me today. If this episode helped you think differently about stress, anxiety, and more importantly, progress, please follow work stress anxiety. And if somebody came to mind while you were listening to this, you might share this episode with them, especially if they need permission to recognize the progress that they're doing that no one else can see. So remember, every step you take, no matter how small, is a step towards a brighter, more balanced future. Trust your journey and remember progress is progress, no matter the pace. Bye for now.