It’s not you - it’s the system: why leaders experience burnout, depression, and loss of meaning

There’s a quiet kind of exhaustion that sits just below the surface for a lot of people. Even with a full calendar and a long list of accomplishments, something deeper still feels… missing.

And when that ache shows up, it’s easy to think it must be personal. That something is wrong with you—that you’re just not doing enough, or not doing it right.

Enter:

  • Anxiety

  • Depression

  • Imposter Syndrome

  • Insomnia

  • Burnout

But what if these experiences aren’t a sign of personal failure?

What if they’re signals that the systems shaping our daily lives are out of alignment with what makes us feel alive, connected, purposeful, and in integrity?

And… WHAT does this have to do with business???

 

As a business owner, leader or entrepreneur, we have both the privilege and responsibility of creating change in this world. Many of us have been taught we need to do it the way it’s always been done to be successful.

Think: grind culture, extractive business processes, prioritizing profits over people.

But as we look at how to innovate marketplaces, business practices and technology, we can also re-imagine what the culture of our businesses are founded on.

We can run and lead businesses that don’t contribute to people’s trauma, and we can do it through applied decolonization.

 

The system doesn’t care if you’re thriving

Colonialism is often described in historical terms—land theft, forced assimilation, and destruction of Indigenous cultures. All of that is real. And it didn’t stop with the history books.

Colonialism continued. It evolved. And it embedded itself into how we work, relate, care, rest, and dream.

This is the root of what some now call the colonial-capitalist patriarchal system—a way of organizing life that prioritizes profit, control, and individualism over connection, reciprocity, and collective well-being.

It’s these systems that have so many living in poverty, one paycheck away from being unhoused, struggling with addiction. And even if you’re living the good life on the outside, internally, it might be a different story.

Whether you're conscious of it or not, our systems shape the stories we’ve been told - and believe - about what a “good life” is supposed to look like.

 

What does applied decolonization look like?

Decolonization isn’t just about land back and policy reform—although those are critical. It also lives in the everyday: the quiet, personal decisions to challenge colonial values in how we live, lead, and connect.

That’s what applied decolonization is: shifting from theory to practice. Choosing a different way of being—one rooted in care, community, and a deeper sense of purpose.

And a powerful place to begin is by asking where the core drivers of life—the wants, needs, and values—are coming from. Do they align with who you really are, or were they handed to you by a system that profits from your disconnection?

 

Five beliefs that keep us stuck

Here are some colonial ideas that many of us unknowingly carry:

  • Productivity = Worth
    A lot of people learn early on that being valuable means being productive. Rest becomes something to earn. Guilt shows up any time it’s taken. And burnout becomes the norm, not the exception.

  • Success = Status and Stuff
    Big title, corner office, home ownership, six figures. These are the usual metrics of success. But often, the pursuit feels hollow. Because those metrics weren’t built with wholeness in mind.

  • Youth and Thinness = Beauty
    Particularly for women and femmes, colonial beauty standards, rooted in racism, demand an impossible and ever-shifting ideal. It’s exhausting, expensive, and rooted in control.

  • Care Work Doesn’t Count
    Raising kids, tending to elders, making meals, holding space for grief—this is essential labor. But in a system that doesn’t value what can’t be monetized, it’s often overlooked or dismissed.

  • Facts Over Feelings
    Feeling sad? Have a medical appointment? Work better at night or with less hours? These needs fall out of the norm of productivity and profit, so we are taught they don’t matter, and we need to conform to the norms.

If any of this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Most people didn’t choose these values consciously. They were absorbed over time, woven into daily life through school, media, family systems, and institutions.

Reframing what matters

Applied decolonization invites a pause. A soft interrogation of the life that’s been built—what feels real, and what doesn’t.

Instead of chasing an inherited idea of success, maybe it’s time to ask: What actually feels meaningful? What do I want to do or become before I die?

Instead of striving to earn rest, what would it feel like to just… rest? And why do I feel bad about it?

And instead of measuring worth by output, what if value was inherent, not conditional?

This isn’t about abandoning all ambition. It’s about realigning with what’s true. For many, that starts with reconnecting to land, to community, to cultural roots, and to the body’s own knowing.

A way to begin

Here’s a practice that might help open a new door:

Set aside ten quiet minutes and reflect on these questions:

  • What do I need most right now?

  • What do I value most in this season of life?

  • Where did those ideas come from?

  • Which ones still serve me—and which ones don’t?

You don’t need to have all the answers. Even the act of asking is a disruption of a system that wants you to keep moving, buying, striving, and never slowing down enough to feel.

This is one small way to begin reclaiming direction and meaning.

 

Other ways people are shifting

All over the world, people are experimenting with different ways of being. Some are finding healing through land-based practices. Others are building businesses centered in care and reciprocity.

Still others are reconnecting with their culture, roots, and languages, and the lands they’ve been displaced from.

Some are learning how to rest without guilt. Others are finding joy outside of productivity or helping each other grieve what’s been lost—connection, culture, lineage, belonging.

There’s no one roadmap. But it helps to know that the ache for a different way is widely felt. And that different ways are possible.

 

There is more than one way to live, and lead.

The colonial system wants people to believe there is only way. But that’s a lie.

There are other value systems—ones that center collective well-being, honor aging, revere caregivers, make space for emotion, and don’t ask people to sacrifice themselves for profit.

Many of those ways aren’t new—they’re ancient. And they’re still here, carried in Indigenous knowledge systems, community practice, and quiet everyday choices.

Applied decolonization invites a turning point: to stop measuring life by a system that was never built for thriving—and start listening for the wisdom that was. In this way, we become better people, better leaders and better humans. And from there, we can build better businesses.

 

In solidarity, Laurel Anne Stark

Laurel Anne Stark