You’re Not Failing at Success — You’re Carrying Too Much of It
- Apr 7
- 4 min read
By Nell Derick Debevoise Dewey
If you’re tired but still ambitious, burned out but still capable, and secretly wondering why your impressive life doesn’t feel impressive – you’re not broken, or crazy.
You’re probably just overfunctioning.
This is the sneaky failure mode I see in high-achieving women all the time – especially women who influence capital and culture. Board members. Philanthropic advisors. Founders. Executives. Investors. The women who sit at the tables where money moves and meaning gets decided.
From the outside, it looks like you’re winning. Like you’ve ‘got it all.’
From the inside, it can feel like you’re dragging a life that’s gotten too heavy to carry.
The problem usually isn’t laziness. Or a shortage of ambition. Or even a lack of clarity or purpose.
It’s that we’ve been trained to treat success like a volume problem instead of an alignment problem.
More goals. More commitments. More visibility. More mindfulness. More passion. More impact.
Surely more of something will finally make it feel like enough.
Except… it doesn’t.
What actually happens is you hit the ceiling of diminishing returns. What has always gotten you praise, raises, rewards stops working. You dig deeper than you thought you could go, and still… nothing.
That’s not failure. That’s the inevitable result of overfunctioning.
The Counterintuitive Fix: Strategic Subtraction
The simplification that most improved my own results — and the results of the leaders I work with — wasn’t another productivity system or mindset hack.
It was learning to subtract systematically, not ruthlessly defending boundaries or dropping balls.
I call this Systematic Subtraction: the intentional practice of removing what no longer compounds value so that what truly matters can.
This isn’t stoic minimalism. It’s not about “doing less” so you can float from yoga retreat to visioning session sipping green juice.
It’s about understanding how complex human systems (careers, organizations, families, industries, communities) actually work. At a certain point, adding more stops helping. Subtraction restores flow to allow improvement.
Think of it like decluttering a closet that’s so packed you can’t find the outfit you actually love. Or a portfolio overloaded with underperforming assets. You don’t need to buy more to diversify. You need to distill down to what works.
What I Had to Subtract (and What You Might Recognize)
For me, subtraction started with outdated paths to success that no longer fit:
Saying yes because it looked impressive
Staying busy to prove I was a “hard worker”
Treating rest like a reward instead of a prerequisite
Chasing visibility rather than providing value
Carrying responsibilities that once mattered but no longer matched my actual priorities
When I stopped treating busyness as evidence of worth and started protecting my energy, attention, and values as finite assets, something unexpected happened:
My work got more resonant. My impact spread. My life became… satisfying.
Paradoxically, doing less made everything work better.
Not easier. Better.
The Three-Dimensional Success Trap
One reason success gets so exhausting is that we tend to collapse it into a single dimension, choosing to focus single-mindedly on either:
Me: personal growth, wellbeing, identity, fulfillment
We: relationships, teams, family, collaboration
World: impact, money, influence, legacy
Most cultural narratives about success overemphasize one of these at the expense of the others.
But if we overinvest in World (impact, mission, money), we burn out. Overinvest in We (roles, expectations, loyalty), and you lose yourself, and what it all means. Overinvest in Me (self-optimization), and you can drift into navel-gazing or irrelevance.
Sustainable success compounds when all three dimensions reinforce each other.
That’s the alignment most high-achievers are missing – not effort, not intelligence, not drive.
When alignment is off, we try to fix it with more volume. Which only deepens the misalignment.
What to Let Go Of (So What Matters Can Grow)
Subtraction doesn’t mean quitting everything or blowing up your life. It means getting quiet enough to actually hear what’s really going on, so you can recognize what no longer compounds value.
For many women who influence capital and culture, this shows up as:
Performative goals that look good on LinkedIn but feel empty in your body
Comparison metrics that quietly hijack your decisions
Old “shoulds” that once made sense but don’t match your current season of life
Obligations you’ve outgrown but never consciously released
Roles you’re still playing because you’re good at them, not because they’re true
None of these make you wrong. They just make your life heavier than it needs to be.
The Real Reason Success Starts to Feel Heavy
Here’s the reframe I wish more high-achievers heard earlier:
Success doesn’t break because we aim too high. It breaks because we try to carry too much.
Too many goals that compete for the same finite energy, and don’t actually matter to us. Too many identities that used to make sense once, but don’t anymore. Too many prescriptions of what to do, how to do it, and why to care.
Subtraction isn’t about lowering standards or losing ambition. It’s about letting go of what no longer works so that what does can breathe enough to compound.
If your life feels heavy, it may not be because you need to try harder.
It might be because you’re strong enough to finally put some things down.
Connect With Nell Derick
Comments