Written by Aisha Saintiche, leadership strategist, keynote speaker, and Certified Health Coach. Founder of Me to Moi Health Inc., where she designs experiences at the intersection of mental wellness, identity, and leadership. With over 20 years of experience across the public sector and community systems, Aisha brings a trauma-informed approach to helping individuals and organizations move beyond survival mode and lead with clarity and resilience.
There is a leadership habit we don’t talk about nearly enough.
It isn’t poor communication.
It isn’t a lack of strategic thinking.
It isn’t an inability to delegate, manage conflict, or inspire a team.
It’s self-abandonment.
And here’s the tricky part: in many workplaces, self-abandonment can look a whole lot like success.
It looks like being the person who always says yes. The leader who can handle just one more thing. The woman who remains composed regardless of what is happening behind the scenes.
The person responding to the email at 11:47 p.m., picking up the pieces when everyone else drops them, absorbing the pressure, solving the problem, managing everyone else’s emotions, and still walking into the meeting the next morning looking polished, prepared, and completely unbothered.
Sound familiar?
Trust me when I tell you this is eerily familiar!
You see, we call that committed.
We call her resilient.
We call her dependable.
We call her a high performer.
We celebrate her.
We promote her.
We tell her how amazing she is for being able to “do it all.”
And meanwhile, somewhere underneath all that achievement, she may be slowly disappearing from her own life.
That’s the part we don’t talk about enough.
That’s the part we too often push aside in the name of ‘success’!
The Hidden Cost of High Achievement
Here’s a truth bomb.
You can become incredibly successful at leading everyone else while becoming increasingly disconnected from yourself.
For many ambitious women, self-abandonment doesn’t happen in one big, dramatic moment.
There isn’t necessarily some flashing warning sign telling us, Girl, you are losing yourself.
Instead, it happens through a thousand tiny negotiations we make with ourselves every single day.
I’ll rest after this project.
I don’t want to disappoint them.
It’s easier if I just do it myself.
I know I’m exhausted, but they need me.
I don’t want anyone to think I can’t handle it.
Once I get to the next level, things will slow down.
But will they?
Sure, sometimes the next level comes with a bigger title, a bigger salary, more responsibility, more visibility, but that means it likely comes with even greater expectations that you continue being the woman who can handle everything.
We override the signals telling us we’re tired.
We say yes when something inside us is screaming no.
We silence our instincts because someone with a bigger title has a different opinion.
We make ourselves more palatable in rooms where we already earned the right to be.
We accept behaviors that conflict with our values because challenging them feels professionally risky.
We keep producing, performing, achieving, and showing up because somewhere along the way, our ability to handle it all became intertwined with our sense of worth.
And perhaps most dangerously, we become so accustomed to performing competence that we stop asking ourselves whether the life underneath all that competence actually feels good.
Returning to Yourself: The Leadership Journey
At Me to Moi, so much of my work centers around the journey back to self.
The movement from the version of ourselves we’ve learned to become for everyone else toward a deeper relationship with who we actually are.
I believe leadership requires that same journey.
Because eventually, every ambitious woman has to ask herself a question that may feel uncomfortable:
What is the point of becoming successful if I have to abandon myself to get there?
The challenge is that self-abandonment can be difficult to recognize because many of the behaviors associated with it are actually rewarded in leadership.
Being endlessly available can look like commitment.
Over-functioning can look like excellence.
Perfectionism can look like high standards.
Hyper-independence can look like competence.
Avoiding difficult conversations can look like diplomacy.
Suppressing our emotions can look like professionalism.
People-pleasing can look like collaboration.
Never needing help can look like strength.
But there is a difference between choosing to go above and beyond during an important season and believing you must constantly overextend yourself to remain valuable.
There is a difference between excellence and proving, between service and self-sacrifice, between flexibility and having no boundaries, and between resilience and repeatedly tolerating environments that deplete you.
One of the most important questions we can ask ourselves as leaders is:
Am I doing this because I choose to, or because I believe I have to in order to remain successful, valued, safe, or accepted?
Whew.
Sit with that one for a minute.
How to Recognize Self-Abandonment
So how do you know if you’ve started abandoning yourself in pursuit of success?
One of the simplest things you can do is conduct what I call a “Yes Audit.”
For one week, pay attention to your yeses.
Not just the big ones, but the little ones too.
The extra meeting.
The committee.
The “quick favor.”
The assignment you automatically volunteer to take on.
The thing you agreed to even though your entire body wanted to say no.
Redefining Success on Your Terms
So before you chase your next level, I want you to ask yourself one final question:
Who am I becoming in order to succeed? And do I actually like the woman I’m becoming?
Don’t rush past the answer.
Don’t judge it.
Get curious about it.
Because the most powerful leadership transformation may not require you to become someone new at all.
Maybe the real work is finding your way back to the woman underneath the titles, expectations, achievements, responsibilities, and carefully curated definition of success.
Maybe it’s about coming back to yourself.
Because success should expand who you are.
It should never require you to disappear.
