The desire to make a change didn’t happen overnight. It started with years of waking up and changing into my suit or business-wear. Mornings when I would wake up as one me and have to put on another face for work. When I had goals to meet, I always asked for more. I wanted to push the limits and always over-promise and over-deliver. I started to get somewhat jaded and desensitized because it stopped being fun.

I was on a third date 4-ish years ago, pretty tipsy. I had a call with all the CEOs and VPs on an emerging markets task force in a few hours (ack, time zones!). The guy (who’s now one of my good friends) asked me essentially what I wanted to be when I grew up (okay, it was more framed as career aspirations). I answered that I wanted to be a Fortune 500 company CEO. The question was why? At that time, I was idealistic and believed that you could really do a lot for the world and industry if you were in that sort of position, and I wanted to be in a role where I could really impact things and shape the future, even if it would be for a single industry. What hubris, I suppose, and also what idealism.

Then with successive major promotions over the last few years, I really came close to being on that path! If I had played my cards right and really wanted it, I would be on track to be a CEO at the last company I worked for, a company at the level of a Fortune 500 company, before the age of 40 potentially. The overachiever in me would have seen this as another milestone, another reason to push myself. But as I learned about the realities of what that type of role requires, I started to backtrack and reconsider. You have to make tough decisions you may not fully agree with in your heart of hearts. The people you work with sometimes may not be the ones you would choose to align yourself with if given a choice. Constant compromises. Sometimes impossible goals. These things matter when you feel moral duty or some other good force like belief and values pushing you in that direction. But when your values collide with what you do, it is easy to burn out.

Stress is addictive. The struggle can be addictive. For the first time, I am seeing how toxic my way of life really was, how at odds it was to the goal of being happy, doing good, being creative.

I think if I could choose to do anything now, it would be to create a movement to eradicate stress. What a killer.