Is Your Mental Health Silently Sabotaging Your Success? (Part 1/5)
By Dr. Dashana Jefferies, Founder of A Passport to Breathe, and Sean Burrowes, Founder of Burrowes Enterprises Inc.
The Unseen Friction in the Founder’s Engine
Imagine a founder—let’s call her Sade. She’s the archetypal visionary, the heart of her company. Her days are a blur of 14-hour sprints, fueled by an unshakeable passion for the problem she’s solving. She’s working harder than ever, yet something feels off. Revenue growth, once a steep, exhilarating climb, has flattened into a plateau. Her team, once a tight-knit unit buzzing with energy, seems disengaged. Key strategic decisions, the ones that could unlock the next phase of growth, are perpetually pushed to “next week.” This isn’t a failure of her strategy or a flaw in her business model. It’s a subtle, internal friction, an unseen drag on the engine of her enterprise.
This is why Dr. Jeffries and Sean Burrowes have partnered to launch the Vision 2 Victory virtual workshop series and a 4 part article focused on bridging the gap between mental health and professional performance by leveraging your vision as a unifying force for clarity and focus. Stay tuned! https://go.burrowesenterprises.com/passport2breathe-vision2victory
Sade’s story is the quiet reality for a staggering number of leaders. It has a name: “Quiet Cracking.”
This isn’t “Quiet Quitting,” which is a deliberate choice to do the bare minimum. Quiet Cracking is an involuntary erosion of your psychological foundation at work. It’s the slow fracture that happens while you’re still showing up, hitting deadlines, and trying to hold it all together.
Over half of all employees are experiencing it, and for 1 in 5, it’s a constant state. For leaders, the stakes are exponentially higher. A leader’s quiet cracking doesn’t just affect them; it creates the very conditions—unclear expectations, lack of recognition, and wavering support—that cause their entire organization to crack. It’s a destructive cycle that starts at the top.
These are not personal weaknesses. They are critical data points on your leadership dashboard. They are the check-engine lights telling you a core system is under strain.
Sade’s story is not an outlier; it’s the quiet reality for a staggering number of leaders. We’ve built our careers on the myth of the relentless founder, the leader who sacrifices everything for the vision. But what if that very sacrifice is becoming the biggest obstacle to success? This leads us to a critical, often-unasked question: Is your mental health becoming an obstacle to your business success?
This isn’t a question about weakness; it’s about a high-stakes business variable that we have been conditioned to ignore. The data is unequivocal. Research reveals that 72% of entrepreneurs report mental health concerns, and a staggering 93% show signs of significant mental health strain. This is not a personal failing; it is an occupational hazard. And like any hazard, it must be managed with strategic precision.
That is why we have come together. As founders of two distinct but deeply complementary firms, we’ve seen this pattern from two critical perspectives. Dashana, through A Passport to Breathe, has spent years coaching leaders to master their internal landscape—the mindset, self-worth, and mental resilience that form the bedrock of effective leadership. Sean, through Burrowes Enterprises, has focused on architecting the external landscape—translating a leader’s vision into the operational structures, processes, and team alignment that drive sustainable revenue.
We have learned that these two worlds are not separate. They are inextricably linked. A brilliant external strategy cannot be executed by a leader in a state of internal chaos. Conversely, a healthy mindset without a clear strategic framework leads to passion without progress. This article represents the fusion of these two domains, offering a new lens through which to view performance, productivity, and profitability. It is a guide to identifying the visionary’s blind spot and, more importantly, a roadmap to realigning your inner state with your outer strategy to unlock your next level of success.
Use the link below to take a bold first step to aligning your vision with your mental health goals. Register for the workshop (live sessions or recordings) and get a free vision scorecard to get you started:
https:/burrowesenterprises.com/vision2victory
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