Are you waking up at 3 am with a mind full of nothing specific and everything urgent? You’re not running through one big crisis. You’re running through fifty small commitments, an inbox you haven’t cleared, conversations you haven’t had, and responsibilities you never should have taken on in the first place. And if you’re a woman right now, the world is very eager to tell you it’s your hormones. But in this episode, Master Coach Lisa Carpenter is naming what’s actually keeping you awake, and it has everything to do with your priorities.
Why Do High Achievers Wake Up at 3 am?
After more than two decades coaching founders, executives, entrepreneurs, physicians, and high-capacity leaders, Lisa has seen this pattern consistently: the people waking up at 3 am aren’t carrying one big problem. They’re carrying fifty small commitments, too many open loops, and a volume of responsibility that their body has quietly decided to stop tolerating. Sleep is where the symptom shows up, but the problem starts long before bedtime.
The 3 am wake-up isn’t your body betraying you. It’s your body finally having the conversation you’ve been refusing to have with your calendar.
What We Talk About in This Episode:
- Why blaming hormones for your 3 am wake-ups may be costing you: Yes, hormones can play a role, but for so many high-achieving women, attributing every disrupted night to perimenopause or menopause is a way of avoiding a harder look at the behaviors that are actually making the problem worse.
- The difference between high achievement and high performance: These are not the same thing, and confusing them is keeping driven professionals exhausted and scattered. High achievement asks, “how much can I carry?” High performance asks, “what matters most?” High achievement is driven by pressure. High performance is guided by priorities.
- Why over-commitment is a form of over-functioning: For the men and women who pride themselves on being dependable, being the person everyone counts on, being the one who figures it out, that identity has stopped being something they do and become something they are. And when you stop questioning your own patterns, they run you.
- The real cost of saying yes to everything: Every commitment costs energy. Every yes carries a price. Every responsibility takes up mental bandwidth. When everything feels equally important, nothing actually is, and that is when you become reactive, scattered, and pulled in ten directions at once.
- How to identify what’s actually yours to carry: A direct question Lisa asks her clients: look at everything on your plate right now and ask how much of it you could delegate or delete entirely. Just because you can carry something doesn’t mean you should.
- What it means to be committed to too many things at once: When you are committed to everything, you are committed to nothing. Lisa breaks down what it actually looks like to get intentional about your commitments, using her own experience of releasing her athlete identity during a season of world travel to illustrate how this works in practice.
- The “stable of horses” framework for priority-setting: As leaders, especially those with families and businesses, there are always multiple horses in the stable. All of them need tending. But you can only ride one at a time. The skill is in making intentional decisions about which horse gets your focus, and allowing that to shift by season.
- How to stop solving problems before they exist: Over-functioning often looks like managing other people’s emotions, taking on responsibilities that belong to someone else, and doing things because you’ve always done them rather than because they still deserve your energy.
- Why your 3 am wakeups are data, not a diagnosis: If you wake up at 3 am with your mind racing, that is not evidence of high performance. It is evidence that you have lost control of your priorities. And once you understand the specific pattern driving your over-commitment, you can stop treating the symptom and start addressing the root cause.
This Episode Is for You If You’ve Ever:
- Collapsed into bed exhausted but couldn’t turn your mind off, running through everything you still haven’t done
- Woken up at 3 am mentally juggling twenty different things with no idea where to start
- Taken on a responsibility because you knew you could handle it, even though it was never really yours to carry
- Said yes to something and felt the quiet resentment of knowing you should have said no
- Wondered how much longer you can keep operating at this pace before something gives
- Known you needed to slow down and take better care of yourself, but run out of time and energy every single day
- Felt proud of how much you can handle, while also being exhausted by exactly that
- Been the person everyone relies on, while quietly crumbling inside
- Built a life and a career that look impressive from the outside, but felt scattered and depleted on the inside
Why Over-Commitment Isn’t the Same as Over-Performance
There is a version of busy that looks like high performance from the outside and feels like survival from the inside. You are spinning plates, juggling responsibilities, managing other people’s outcomes, and adding more to your plate because that is what capable people do. But your brain has become a storage unit for open loops, and your body is paying the price.
High achievement collects commitments. High performance eliminates them. And until you are willing to get ruthless about what actually deserves your energy, your body will keep having that conversation with you at 3 am.
This is not a time management problem. It is a priority and identity problem. The behaviors driving your over-commitment have a pattern underneath them, and that pattern is specific to you, whether it’s driven by achievement, productivity, perfectionism, or people-pleasing. Different patterns create the same exhaustion. Which means the solution isn’t a better calendar system. It’s understanding what’s actually running you.
Ready to Stop Waking Up at 3 am?
If this episode landed, it’s because you recognized yourself in it. And recognition without action is just awareness. The next step is understanding the specific pattern underneath your over-commitment, because knowing that it’s happening isn’t the same as knowing why.
The Success Paradox Quiz was built for exactly this. In about seven minutes, you’ll identify the unconscious pattern driving your stress, your overthinking, and the volume of responsibility you keep saying yes to. Once you understand your pattern, you stop managing symptoms and start addressing what’s actually causing them.
Head to lisacarpenter.ca/quiz to take the quiz and get your results then head over and grab your bonus resource called From Overcommitted to Intentional, a Priority Assessment for High Capacity Leaders, and it is the companion piece to everything we covered today.
It will walk you through the full cost of the overcommitment pattern across eight dimensions of your leadership and your life, give you two practical tools to start shifting it, and ask you five questions that are designed to create the kind of honest self-examination that most high-capacity leaders avoid because the pattern itself ensures there is always something more urgent.
Head to lisacarpenter.ca/bonus to grab it, take the quiz first, and then dive into the resource because everything in it lands with more precision once you know which specific pattern is driving your overcommitment.
Success that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside.
00:00:06:29 - 00:00:33:12
Lisa
You built success that looks damn good on the outside, but inside it's costing you your health, your relationships, your energy. And no matter how much you do, it never feels like enough. Welcome to Congruent. I'm Lisa Carpenter, the coach. High performers call when they can afford to burn it all down, but they can't keep living like this either.
00:00:33:14 - 00:00:58:24
Lisa
Here we rip off the mask of success and expose what's real. The patterns that you keep running, the price that you've paid, and how to build success that fuels you instead of empties you. Real success is agency. It's powerful self leadership to run your life instead of being run by it. To let your drive and your well-being finally work together.
00:00:58:27 - 00:01:09:08
Lisa
Because the real win is success. That actually feels good.
00:01:09:10 - 00:01:34:08
Lisa
Have you ever woken up at 3:00 in the morning with a mind full of nothing specific and everything urgent? Yeah. Me too. And, I know this well because I noticed myself in this pattern lately, so welcome back to congruent. My name is Lisa Carpenter, and this is what we're going to be diving into today when it's 3 a.m. and your brain is scanning the emails, the clients, the meetings, the conversations that you need to have.
00:01:34:10 - 00:01:58:06
Lisa
Oh my God, the things that you've forgotten to do, the things you haven't done yet where nothing feels like an emergency but everything feels important. And of course it's 3 a.m. like we're not getting out of bed to do this at 3 a.m.. At least I hope you're not getting out of bed at 3 a.m.. And right now, if you are a woman, everything is being blamed on menopause and perimenopause.
00:01:58:06 - 00:02:30:27
Lisa
And yes, hormones can play a role. But for so many of my clients, they are doing themselves a disservice when they blame every 3 a.m. wake up on hormones while refusing to look at the behaviors that are actually exacerbating the problem. Because what I've noticed after more than two decades of coaching founders, executives, entrepreneurs, physicians, and highly capable, highly capable and high capacity leaders is that most people waking up at 3 a.m. aren't carrying one big problem.
00:02:31:00 - 00:03:00:22
Lisa
They're carrying 50 million small commitments, and eventually your body is going to have the conversation with you that you've been refusing to have with your calendar. So today, in today's episode, I want to talk about why over commitment is quietly destroying your performance and why this isn't high performance at all, and why many people who think they're operating at a high level are actually trapped in a cycle of high achievement and over functioning.
00:03:00:22 - 00:03:44:19
Lisa
So this sleep is often where the symptom shows up. But what I want you to hear, and please understand, is that this problem happens long before bed time, because your brain has become this storage unit for a million different open loops, too many commitments, too many responsibilities, too many decisions, and too many things that you're mentally carrying. So a great question to ask yourself is if you look at all the things that you currently have to do right now, all these responsibilities, all these commitments, how many of them are not yours to carry that you could be delegating or you could be full on deleting?
00:03:44:21 - 00:04:04:18
Lisa
But we tend to make everything a priority, and it's not possible to have everything in our life for priority. And for what I know about the men and women that I work with, because they are so highly capable and highly responsible, they can often take on way more than they need to, because it's just so natural for them to take on more.
00:04:04:18 - 00:04:19:18
Lisa
And I know that this was a big and can still be a big thing in my world, where I have to really look at and be discerning about what I'm taking on. Because just because I can doesn't mean I should. So
00:04:19:21 - 00:04:28:04
Lisa
sometimes we have to look at it's not that you're you're not capable like you are capable. You are more than capable.
00:04:28:11 - 00:04:52:16
Lisa
But that is the problem because you you've become so capable that you're you've stopped questioning what even deserves your energy. So over commitment is actually a form of over functioning. And for most of the men and women I work with, they really pride themselves on being dependable, on being the person who gets things done, on being the person that everybody relies on.
00:04:52:16 - 00:05:20:09
Lisa
It's become so ingrained as part of their identity. It's not what they do, it's who they are. And that that competence. Like I said, it's just so who they are now. They never think to question it. And we get into problems when we stop questioning things about ourselves and we make it a factual statement. This is who I am because nothing in this universe is fixed.
00:05:20:11 - 00:05:44:05
Lisa
Quantum physics teaches us that nothing, nothing is fixed. Particles can behave as waves. Waves can be behave as particles. We are not fixed substances and we are capable of changing how we think and feel about things. Nothing is fixed. So again, I want you to start to think of. Just because you can take everything on doesn't mean that you should.
00:05:44:07 - 00:06:08:22
Lisa
And who are you if you start saying no to some things? So consider how often in your life you're maybe starting to solve problems before they even exist, how often you might be managing other people's emotions or taking on their responsibilities because you don't trust them to take on those responsibilities, or you believe you could do it better.
00:06:08:25 - 00:06:32:04
Lisa
And this is, you know, when you when we take on people's responsibilities for them, we actually disempower them. We rob them of the lessons that they need to learn. And if we're talking about children, we're teaching our children that we don't trust them, that we don't trust them to be responsible for things that they can create for the outcomes in their own lives.
00:06:32:06 - 00:07:02:20
Lisa
And this also happens in the office. We have to be very mindful. How are we treating the people that we're working with? Because if you want an empowered team, you have to give them responsibilities and allow them to be responsible for the outcomes. They have to own the outcomes. So when you are saying yes to all the things because you know, you'll just figure it out and make it work, you're so often saying no to yourself, and this is what's going to keep you waking up at 3 a.m..
00:07:02:23 - 00:07:30:10
Lisa
So how much of your exhaustion is coming from what you're doing, versus how much is coming from the volume you've asked yourself to carry? And what I want you to know is this is not high performance. This is not high performance, because so many people confuse high achievement with high performance. And they're not the same thing. High achievement is all about I can do more, I can, I can, I can carry more.
00:07:30:14 - 00:08:13:17
Lisa
Whereas High Performance is asking, what matters most? High performance is about intense intentionality. High achievement is reactive. High achievement is driven by pressure, and high performance is guided by priorities. I'm going to say that again, high achievement is driven by pressure and high performance is guided by priorities. It is incredibly intentional. High achievement collects a million commitments and high performance eliminates commitments because you can only be committed to so many things before you become uncommitted to everything.
00:08:13:24 - 00:08:42:14
Lisa
So if you are waking up at 3 a.m. every night mentally juggling 20 different balls, that is not evidence of high performance. It's evidence that you've lost control of your priorities. It's evidence that you've lost control of your priorities. And if you really want to create spectacular outcomes in this life, if you really want to step into powerful self leadership, it's looking at what specifically is it that you want to be committed to?
00:08:42:17 - 00:09:00:15
Lisa
What are the number one priorities in your life? And then I could even go down the rabbit hole in terms of how those align with your values. So if you've been around here for any length of time, you've probably heard me talk about this. But when you are committed to everything, you're actually committed to nothing.
00:09:00:17 - 00:09:31:25
Lisa
Because every commitment you make costs energy. Every yes has a price. Every responsibility takes up mental bandwidth. And at some point, if everything is feeling equally important, then nothing really is mattering to you. Okay, I'm going to say that again. If everything's feeling equally important, then what you're really saying is that nothing really matters because everything can't be equally important.
00:09:31:27 - 00:09:52:29
Lisa
Everything can't matter at the same level of priority. And when we are operating from that place, we become reactive, scattered. We're pulled in ten directions. And I know this because this has been something that has been going on behind the scenes in my business right now. I am in a season of such growth and it's exciting and awesome.
00:09:52:29 - 00:10:12:18
Lisa
And the the To-Do list is longer than it usually is, and I've really had to get in there and get discerning about, yes, less about what matters the most, because all of these things do need to get done, but they're not all going to get done today. We need to give ourself a runway. And out of all these things to do, what are the priorities?
00:10:12:18 - 00:10:37:05
Lisa
What are things that you can hand off to your team? Because I cannot be scattered and pulled in a million directions, because what ends up happening is nothing really gets done. I just get back into this place of being busy, being busy without intention. So I have the illusion that I'm moving things forward, but in fact I'm not moving anything forward.
00:10:37:07 - 00:11:00:08
Lisa
So any time that I wake up at 3 a.m. and my brain is racing, I take a step back and look at what is going on in my life, what is going on in my business, what kind of season am I in, and what is the most important thing that I get off my plate? So I like to say, you know, a good mentor of mine says, you know, we've got one house we can, right?
00:11:00:08 - 00:11:21:02
Lisa
One horse. And I love that saying. But what I also know as leaders is we actually have a stable of horses, especially if you have children as well. We have a stable of horses, and all of those horses are ours to tend to. All of those horses need to get ridden. However, you can still only ride one of those horses at a time.
00:11:21:04 - 00:11:47:02
Lisa
And it's about making, intentional decisions about which horse gets the priority. In some seasons of my life, it's my family. In some seasons of my life, it's my business. In some seasons of my life, it's my training. But I need to understand what is the number one thing that needs my attention. And if it's in my business and the To-Do list is long, I still come back to.
00:11:47:03 - 00:12:20:22
Lisa
But what is the most important thing on this list? What one thing if I were committed to, would move the needle the most in my business? This is how it works. And this takes practice. Because when you are a high functioning person and you've learned to carry all the things and spin all the plates and juggle all the balls, it can cost you so much time, energy, money you cannot lead at your highest level if this is how you are operating.
00:12:20:25 - 00:12:32:14
Lisa
So I, I would really ask that you go through what is on your what is on your plate right now, what is in your stable. Come back to the horses. How many horses do you have in your stable?
00:12:32:16 - 00:12:44:14
Lisa
What things can you remove? What things can you delegate? What things can you hand back because you really should never have taken them on in the first place. They are somebody else's responsibility.
00:12:44:16 - 00:13:01:06
Lisa
What are you doing right now that you're just doing it because you've always done it? And this is another thing with commitment. So often we can take on these commitments and we we forget to step back and go, but do I still want to be committed to this, or do I need to shift how I'm committed to this?
00:13:01:09 - 00:13:23:13
Lisa
So a great example in my own life is in 2024, when I was traveling the world, I had to make some decisions around how I was going to live my life that year. So I have been a professional athlete for years. I've been an athlete my entire life. If you don't know, I'm like a mini. I'm like a mini bodybuilder.
00:13:23:13 - 00:13:44:29
Lisa
I love to compete in and fitness competitions. Although currently I am. I'm having a very long off season, we'll call it that. I'm having a very long offseason, but in 2024, when I was traveling, I had to make the decision like, how do you want this to look, Lisa? Because if you think you're going to be eating every 2 to 3 hours with your balanced protein and your carbohydrates and your fats, you're going to go crazy.
00:13:45:01 - 00:14:14:25
Lisa
And how do you want to enjoy your travels? Do you want to be able to be enjoying foods from different countries and different place and different tastes, and giving yourself some freedom and flex flexibility? So I had to eat during that season. I made the decision to be committed to traveling and having new experiences, and I released my commitment to following a specific workout routine to following a specific nutrition plan I trust in my body.
00:14:14:25 - 00:14:41:13
Lisa
I've been doing this for years. I had to release for that season the identity of being an athlete. So underneath it all, I'm always going to be an athlete. But the things that I associate with being an athlete, I had to be willing to soften because I couldn't be committed to those things and be committed to a season of travel that had me on a plane every single month.
00:14:41:15 - 00:14:59:19
Lisa
I regret nothing. I loved every moment of it. But this is what I'm asking you to look at is where are you committed to things and have you even looked at, do I still want to be committed to these things? Is it serving me? Or if I just been doing it for so long that I haven't even thought that I can change my mind?
00:14:59:19 - 00:15:26:12
Lisa
Because in every day we always have the opportunity to choose differently. So I want to end the episode by saying, you know, if you're waking up at 3 a.m. with a mind full of nothing specific and everything urgent, I want you to consider that maybe it's not your body betraying you. Maybe it's trying to get your attention. Maybe it's showing you the cost of over commitment.
00:15:26:14 - 00:15:58:14
Lisa
Maybe it's exposing this gap between being a high achiever and stepping into intentional, grounded self leadership that requires you to be a high performer. Because high performance is not about caring more. It's about becoming a ruthless, ruthless about what deserves your energy in the first place. And until you're willing to have that conversation, your body may continue having it for you at 3 a.m..
00:15:58:17 - 00:16:21:28
Lisa
And I don't know about you, but sleep is such a high priority for me, and a full night's sleep is such a big part of being a top performer. It's a non-negotiable. Rest is a success strategy, and if I'm doing things in the day that are disrupting my sleep, I get to be responsible for making the changes there.
00:16:22:01 - 00:16:50:28
Lisa
So if this episode resonated with you, if you feel like, in the words of my good friend, I chill, you've just been slapped across the face with the wet fish. There's a reason, because this pattern underneath over commitment is not random. For some people, it's achievement. For some people, it's about productivity. For some of you, it's about perfection, and for others of you, it's about taking care of everybody else and people pleasing so different patterns can create the same exhaustion.
00:16:51:01 - 00:17:16:07
Lisa
But this is exactly why I created the Success Paradox quiz. In about seven minutes, you're going to discover the unconscious patterns that are driving your stress, your overthinking, your over commitment, and the behaviors that keep pulling you away from the life that you're trying to create. From feeling the way you want to feel about success. So head over to Lisa Carpenter, aka Forward Slash Quiz.
00:17:16:10 - 00:17:40:17
Lisa
Go through the quiz, get your results, and then you're going to have a better idea of of how you can start to unravel these patterns so that you can have a full and restful night's sleep. Because once you understand your pattern, you can stop treating symptoms and start addressing the root cause. And again, for all my ladies out there listening, it's not just because your estrogen is low.
00:17:40:17 - 00:18:08:06
Lisa
So let's stop blaming our hormones for everything. And let's start. Let's start taking a step back and looking at the role that you are playing in unbalanced hormones and waking at 3 a.m. because it's this is layered and it is nuanced. So thanks for being here. I hope you got what you needed from this episode and I will catch you next week.
00:18:08:06 - 00:18:26:17
Lisa
Thanks as always for tuning in and I can't wait to hear about your course or sorry your quiz results over at the Success Paradox Quiz. Have a wonderful day and take great care of yourself. And here's to full night's sleep so you can show up and perform at your best.
00:18:26:19 - 00:18:47:00
Lisa
So before I let you go, I want you to leave with something concrete. Because awareness without next steps is just an interesting conversation. And I'm not here to just have interesting conversations. I am looking to give you tools to change. So I put together a free resource called From Overcommitted to Intentional a Priority Assessment for High Capacity Leaders.
00:18:47:03 - 00:19:14:15
Lisa
And it's the companion piece to everything we've covered today. It's going to walk you through the full cost of the of your over commitment pattern across eight dimensions of your leadership and your life. It's going to give you two practical tools to start shifting it. And it's going to ask you five questions that are designed to create the kind of honest self-examination that most high capacity leaders avoid, because the pattern itself ensures that there's always something more urgent.
00:19:14:17 - 00:19:34:25
Lisa
I know you already understand this. So head to Lisa Carpenter, aka forward slash bonus to grab it. What I am going to ask is that you take the Success Paradox quiz first, so you know which archetype you're working from. And then it's going to help you dive into that resource, because everything in it is going to land with much more precision.
00:19:34:25 - 00:19:46:04
Lisa
When you know the specific pattern that is driving your level of being overcommitted. So again, thanks for tuning in and I will catch you on next week's episode. Enjoy the resource.
