If KPIs are the things making you move, your body will eventually hit the brakes.
For years, I loved KPIs.
Client numbers. Revenue targets.
But I noticed an interesting pattern.
When I slipped, I added pressure and tried to control myself back “on track.”
And like so many high-functioning individuals, I called it “discipline”.
Have you noticed how the more you chase the metric, the less you can feel yourself?
How the more you optimize performance, the harder it is to tell if you are actually okay?
We can’t drag-and-drop ourselves into alignment the way we drag a graph upwards.
At some point, our nervous system will refuse to keep sprinting for numbers it never agreed to.
KPIs, Burnout, and Your Nervous System
In organizations, KPIs (key performance indicators) are meant to offer clarity and track progress. In reality, unrealistic or decontextualized KPIs are strongly linked with chronic stress, anxiety, and burnout, especially when people internalize them as proof of worth.
Your body doesn’t hear “Q1 revenue increase by 25%.”
It hears: “If I don’t hit this, I’m going to be in trouble.”
When your system registers pressure as threat, your autonomic nervous system shifts into survival: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.
In that state, your brain literally has less access to executive function: focus, creativity, long-term thinking.
That’s why productivity drops (even though you are trying to increase your effort).
It looks like “KPI underperformance”, but what it really is a dysregulated nervous system trying to survive your own expectations.
So the standard advice: “tighten up your goals, get more accountable” often does the opposite of what you hope. It creates compliance, not capacity.
Where have you pushed yourself to comply with a goal your body never consented to?
And what happens when you treat every slip as evidence that you’re “not cut out for this”?
Compliance vs Capacity: What Are You Actually Building?
KPIs are powerful at creating compliance.
You either pass or fail.
Your body either keeps up or collapses under the pressure.
Compliance = “I move because I’m scared of what happens if I don’t.”
Capacity = “I move because my system has enough resource, safety, and support to hold this.”
From a somatic lens, capacity is your nervous system’s ability to meet life as it is, and our goal is ALWAYS to widen this “window of tolerance”, so we can meet stressors with more ease and recover more quickly.
Somatic Signs You’re Living in KPI Burnout
Burnout is not just “being tired.” It’s a body that’s been stressed for too long. It’s a nervous system issue rather than a mindset issue.
Some somatic signs that KPIs are running the show:
You wake up with your mind racing
You can’t rest after hitting a goal, you need another target
You feel wired and depleted at the same time
Small dips in numbers trigger outsized shame, self-criticism, or panic
It’s like driving a car with the check-engine light on, but only watching the speedometer. At some point, something has to give, and it’s never the spreadsheet.
If you live in the tired-and-wired cycle, you might resonate with The Repattern, my 12-week breath & nervous system coaching container designed exactly for this kind of chronic overdrive.
Redefining Success: Nervous-System-Friendly Metrics
I am not asking you to abandon all your goals. All I am asking is to consider to change what you’re measuring and who you make it about.
Instead of only tracking external KPIs, consider adding capacity indicators:
Baseline State
How often do you feel basically okay in your body, even when nothing special is happening?
Can you return to that baseline after stress, or do you stay stuck in hypervigilance or a freeze response?
Recovery Time
After a big push, whether its a launch or a hard conversation, how long does your body take to come down?
Do you give yourself structured decompression, or do you immediately load the next sprint?
Relational Honesty
How often are you honest about your capacity with clients, collaborators, and loved ones?
Access to Pleasure and Play
Is there any space in your week that isn’t optimized, monetized, or tracked?
Do you remember what your body likes outside of productivity?
These indicators don’t show up on a dashboard.
But they’re often better predictors of sustainable performance than your revenue graph.
So as you look at your own business or career, ask:
What would it look like if my primary KPI was the health of my nervous system?
What might become possible if I let capacity lead, and let goals follow?
Building Capacity with Breath and Somatic Support
Real change creates less resistance in your system, not more.
Somatic and breath-led approaches work by:
Helping you notice early cues of overwhelm
Re-training your breath so your system can downshift instead of staying in constant alert
Completing old stress cycles so your body doesn’t bring yesterday’s threat into today’s task list
Giving the “inner manager” and “inner critic” new jobs, so they don’t have to scream through metrics to get your attention
If you’re feeling the cost of KPI burnout in your body, The Repattern can help you rebuild a calmer, more reliable baseline. And if you know there are deeper identity patterns under your overachieving (ie. parts of you that only feel worthy when you’re exceeding the target), you might be ready for The Reclaim, my signature coaching program with somatic shadow work woven into it.
The next season of your life isn’t about proving you can handle more, but proving to your body that you’re finally willing to handle it.
And the the most radical thing you can track this year is not your output, but your ability to stay with yourself, even when the numbers dip.
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