On Sunday, I woke up and chose to fail.

I had signed up for a Mother's Day 10k to raise money for breast cancer. At the time I registered, it felt achievable, meaningful even, a marker that I was still taking care of myself while everything else around me was changing. The truth is, I did not prepare for it.

Over the last few months, I have been launching a company. I have been untangling myself from an identity connected to a company I worked for, believed in, and was proud to represent for years. I have been navigating uncertainty, pressure, excitement, grief, exhaustion, and possibility, often all in the same day. And somewhere inside all of that, I still expected myself to train properly for a 10k.

If I am honest, the goal was a stretch when I signed up and had become unrealistic well before Sunday. I think I knew. I never asked anyone to sponsor me. I made the donation myself at the start, for the target they asked me to set. Even still, I didn't let go of the plan. I am not very good at giving myself grace.

That morning, I had three choices. The first was to stay in bed, pull the covers over my head, eat a donut, and decide that because I could not do the run the way I originally intended, there was no point showing up at all, then beat myself up for not being prepared. The second was to force myself through the full 10k anyway, drag myself around the course underprepared, beating myself up every time I walked for not being disciplined enough, focused enough, organised enough, or good enough to manage everything perfectly. The third was the one I chose.

I threw the original goal out. Not because I am lazy or because I had given up, but because the goal itself was no longer helping me. It was punishing me. So I set a different one: go out, work hard, build the underlying capability so that a 10k becomes something I can honestly commit to. Respect where I actually am, rather than punishing myself for not being where I thought I should be.

This translates to leadership and work more than most people realise. How often do we set goals that were never achievable within the actual constraints we are operating under? How often do high performers hold themselves to impossible standards and interpret adaptability as failure? I see this constantly, particularly in people who struggle with impostor syndrome, and there is usually an underlying belief driving it: that if you were truly competent, truly capable, truly deserving of your role, you would somehow be able to do everything at once without trade-offs, exhaustion, or limits. But that is not leadership. It is fantasy.

Real leadership requires adaptation. It requires reassessment. It requires the maturity to recognise when circumstances have changed and the courage to adjust accordingly. That is judgment, not weakness. Sometimes the most responsible thing you can do is stop pretending the original plan still makes sense.

The fallacy of sunk cost exists for a reason. Continuing down a path that no longer serves you costs more than time. It costs energy, confidence, health, and perspective. Changing the goal is not the same as abandoning accountability. I still went out, worked hard, and pushed myself. I just stopped measuring success against a version of reality that no longer existed.

There is a difference between resilience and self-punishment, and a lot of high achievers were taught to treat them as one and the same. Replacing the pursuit of perfection with the pursuit of what is actually possible is not giving up on standards. That is what sustainable leadership looks like.

— Cindy Schwartz

Founder, Executive Excellence Group | Rewriting Leadership Norms