Natalie Nixon

And I walked into my office.

I closed the door.

I sat down.

I thought.

Oh, OK, I'm going to have to reckon with this because I the other piece in my career building is that I've always followed my heart.

I received an incredible gift from my parents when I was a sophomore in college, trying to figure out what I would measure.

And I didn't want to disappoint them.

I wanted to get a really good J.O.B.

at the end of a very expensive education.

And.

The short of it is, as I was talking in circles about majors I thought sounded impressive because they know me well, they said, well, what are you interested in?

And I confessed, I love anthropology and these Africana studies classes are so cool.

And almost at the same time, they said, that's what you should study.

And my father said,

Natalie, if you study what you love, you'll have to turn away opportunities because no one will have to tell you to get up earlier, stay later, work harder.

And it was like this load lifted off my shoulders.

And it was this permission slip, which probably to their chagrin at different times in my

life, I kept following their advice to follow my heart.

And so when that burnout moment happened for me, I reckoned with it, which doesn't mean it was easy, but I acknowledge I couldn't keep stifling in this friction between work that had once fulfilled me but was now starting to deplete me.

And I think if we're leaders, if we're managers of teams, we have to be cognizant of the boundaries that we are setting for our team, that hopefully we are setting boundaries and respecting those boundaries.