I remember the day after I quit the job that I had for 11 years, like it was yesterday.

For months, I'd been buried in exhaustion and cynicism, and it felt like my world was just pressing in on me from all sides.

I was hardly sleeping, and I often felt like an elephant of stress was sitting on my chest in the middle of the night.

I would wake up in a cold sweat, desperate to find a way out, and no one had told me that I could burn out while doing good things.

I had just helped complete a capital campaign raising over $800,000 for a youth center, and I was overseeing teams and leaders that were serving hundreds of kids in our city, and yet in the middle of all of that, I hit the third wave of burnout, and I had no idea it was coming.

You see the third wave of burnout after exhaustion, the physical, mental, and emotional toll your body takes, and then cynicism, the moments when you start to distance yourself from the people and the passions that once drove you and motivated you is this word called inefficacy.

And it's the moment when you begin to doubt and question even your most basic and foundational skills as a leader.