EP51: Is Corporate Burnout Blocking Your Career Change?
Corporate burnout can block your career change long before you even hand in your notice — and long after you’ve left. Before you quit, burnout drains the confidence and imagination you need to move. After you quit, fear of slipping back into overwhelm and exhaustion can stop you from building the meaningful work you really want.
We’ll dig into what’s actually behind burnout — not just overwork, but the deeper cost of squeezing yourself into an extractive system that values output over life.
In this episode, you’ll learn how to:
Understand the hidden roots of corporate burnout and why it lingers
Recognise how burnout holds you back from career change and meaningful work
Quit consciously and rebuild your relationship with work in a regenerative way
Find your purpose without repeating the same exhausting patterns
Ready to act? Courage to Quit is a confidential 90-minute session to take you from trapped and anxious to clear, grounded, and free — with a personalised exit plan you can act on with confidence.
Listen here
Full Transcript
Alisa:
Welcome back to From Corporate Into Calling.
Today we’re going to be talking about the thorny issue of burnout: Is corporate burnout blocking your career change?
We’re going to look at:
The definition of burnout — so we really understand that we are not the problem; the corporate system is.
The ways burnout actually keeps you stuck inside the very system that’s making you unhealthy — even if you’ve already taken the step of quitting your corporate role.
What really lies behind burnout, what it’s trying to tell us, and the information it gives us about the kind of changes we need to make.
Most importantly, what you can do differently to make sure burnout becomes a thing of the past.
If your career looks great on paper but feels wrong in your bones, you’re not alone.
Welcome to From Corporate to Calling, your lifeline into meaningful work. I’m Alisa Murphy, a regenerative business mentor and former startup CEO who walked away from corporate systems to create work that brings life. Each week I share stories, reflections, and provocations to help you recognize the signs of burnout and make a career change with purpose.
If work looks good but feels wrong, this is your invitation to get out of corporate and into your calling.
You can probably hear I’m not quite at my best. I’ve just got over my third bout of Covid — not fun — and my voice is still a bit clogged, so apologies for that.
It was interesting because I knew I wanted to talk about burnout this week after being laid up in bed for five days. For many of us, that’s just not an option when we work inside a corporate system — and it’s also not an option when those corporate ideals and standards are still deeply internalized.
It’s not easy for most of us to truly rest and take care of ourselves.
I’m probably at a stage now where I can accept it to a certain degree. I have a work-life setup that allows for a lot more ebb and flow. I’m very human-first in my work — I don’t expect perfection from my clients, and they don’t expect it from me.
We are all humans doing the best we can. And that’s really the missing piece inside corporate systems. They’re not built for humans — for people going through life, dealing with challenges. They expect a kind of automaton-like perfection and consistency that’s just not natural.
And I think that’s really at the root of this burnout topic we’re discussing today.
What Is Burnout?
Burnout is described as a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress, particularly from work.
Interestingly, the World Health Organization defines burnout as an occupational phenomenon rather than a medical malady. That tells us the problem isn’t with us — it’s with the system and the stresses we’re trying to operate within.
Most of us know that intellectually, but that’s not how we feel when we’re in burnout.
Most people I’ve spoken to who’ve experienced burnout also carry a strong sense of shame — a belief that they weren’t up to the task, that something broke within them.
I want to contest that idea.
To me, burnout isn’t a signal of weakness at all. Burnout is a strong signal from within — our internal wisdom screaming at us that we can’t go on this way. That we’re in a system that can’t support us, that won’t bring us life, no matter how many surface-level tweaks we make.
And when we’re really talking about burnout, those little tweaks — taking a personal day, having more flexibility — don’t move the needle. We’re talking about systemic problems.
What really makes a difference is stepping outside of that corporate system altogether — rejecting it and choosing a different way of working.
But here’s the rub: choosing that different way, which I would define as choosing a regenerative work life, requires internal resilience, courage, confidence, and energy. It requires us to be at our best — and that’s extremely difficult when we’re still experiencing the after-effects of burnout.
How Burnout Keeps You Stuck
There are two main ways burnout can keep us trapped in unhealthy situations:
1. Burnout While Still Inside Corporate
If you’re still in a corporate role and somewhere on that burnout spectrum, it can be very challenging to get perspective. It probably takes all your energy just to get through the day.
When I think of my own day-to-day life at the peak of my conventional career as a CEO and founder —
I was working extremely long hours.
Commuting constantly.
In back-to-back meetings.
Taking taxis between meetings so I could be on calls.
It was relentless. And even though I loved my work and had control over the culture, it was still exhausting and overwhelming.
If your life looks anything like that, the chances are you have very little space to step back and ask:
Is this work actually working for me?
Is this how I want to spend my life?
Is this healthy?
Is this human?
Those are big, radical questions — and they require stillness, space, and reflection.
If it takes all your energy just to make it onto the train and into another meeting, it’s almost impossible to question whether you even want to be there. So we keep going through the motions — showing up to the next meeting, taking on the next project, reporting on the next quarter — and life passes us by.
We descend deeper into burnout. And that exact burnout pattern keeps us entrenched in the role we know, deep down, we don’t want to be in anymore.
2. Burnout After Leaving Corporate
The other way burnout can show up is after we’ve quit — not only our corporate role, but the corporate system.
When we do that, we might feel an immediate sense of freedom and liberation. But that doesn’t mean all the ideals, standards, and expectations we internalized in the corporate world just vanish.
For most of us, that conditioning stays alive long after we’ve left.
This is something I see with clients in the Meaningful Business Incubator — people who’ve quit corporate and are building their own life-giving businesses or consultancies.
While they’re taking practical steps to create something new, there’s also so much inner work to be done.
The corporate conditioning will tell you all the way through:
You’ve lost your mind.
What you’re doing is silly.
It can’t be done.
Who are you to think you could do this?
That voice might whisper: Maybe you should just go get a job. Maybe you should take that call from your old CEO who keeps asking you to come back.
It’s hard to work against that conditioning. That’s why having a coach by your side is so essential — because at least half of this journey is inner work, alongside the strategy of building your business.
Burnout can also hold you back from success. Somewhere in the back of your mind you might think:
“If this works, I’ll be working really hard again. I’ll be exhausted and responsible for everything — just like before.”
We assume that success in our own business will look like success in corporate: stress, exhaustion, endless responsibility.
The Good News
It doesn’t have to be that way.
When you create a meaningful, regenerative business, you never need to experience burnout again — because you’re building work on your own terms.
You’re creating work that puts humans at the center.
A corporate system has no interest in the ebb and flow of human life. But regenerative work does — it’s at the very heart of it.
You get to decide:
What success looks like.
How many hours you work.
Who you collaborate with.
How your structures are designed — not hierarchical or isolating, but community-based and supportive.
You can build this in a joyful, soul-centered way.
When you choose regenerative work, you get to decide what work feels like — not just what you do, but how you do it, and how it supports and nourishes the rest of your life.
That is what’s available to you.
Final Reflections
Watch out for how burnout is showing up for you right now.
Please remember: you aren’t the issue — the system is.
If you’ve been making small tweaks, maybe changing roles or organizations, and find yourself in the same pattern again — nothing is wrong with you.
This is your body, your wisdom, your spirit saying:
“No, I do not want to exist inside this system. Corporate life is not for me.”
If that’s where you find yourself, it’s time to make a radical and joyful change.
Next Steps
If you’re still inside the corporate system, it’s time to find the courage to quit.
I offer a single 90-minute confidential one-to-one session called Courage to Quit. In that session, we’ll create a personalized exit plan — not just from your corporate job, but from the corporate system as a whole.
We’ll support your nervous system, tackle fears, and look at the practicalities so you can make a good ending and set yourself up for the next chapter of meaningful work.
And if you’re already in that next chapter — building your own life-giving business or offer — I invite you to explore the Meaningful Business Incubator.
It’s a powerful program with one-to-one coaching and community support. Together, we’ll balance:
The strategic and practical steps to design, test, and launch your regenerative business.
The inner work to release old conditioning and create work on your own terms — work that brings real joy and satisfaction.
You can find details on my website; the links are in the show notes.
You can also reach me at alisa@regenerativeworklife.com — I’m always open to conversation, with no pressure and no expectation. I love meeting the people who listen to this podcast.
Thank you for being one of them.
If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please follow the podcast so you don’t miss future episodes — and share it with someone who needs that lifeline out of corporate and into meaningful work.
If this episode of From Corporate to Calling was helpful or inspiring, follow the show so you don’t miss an episode. And if you know someone who’s questioning their career, send them this podcast. Lifelines are meant to be shared.
Remember: you don’t have to tolerate burnout or misalignment. You can redirect your skills into meaningful work that brings life — to you, and to the world around you.
