About This Episode
Welcome to the Overachievers Podcast, where I help you achieve success without the burnout. I’m Keith Blakemore Noble, your host and Mindset Master. In today’s episode, I’m taking a look at a powerful question: why do so many of us overachievers end up carrying more responsibility than we ever agreed to, and barely notice it happening?
I’ll guide you through how responsibility builds up gradually in our lives, from small favours to assumed expectations, leading to the well-known “reliability loop.” I’ll share why stepping back from responsibility can feel not just risky but fundamentally wrong, and why managing the stress of achievement isn’t just about managing your time, but about understanding and managing your workload.
Throughout the episode, I’ll invite you to reflect on where you’ve become the default problem solver and encourage you to notice where you might be carrying responsibility simply because you always have. Join me for honest insights, gentle questions, and practical ways to step into a healthier, more sustainable way of succeeding.
Key Themes
- Gradual and invisible accumulation of responsibility
- The reliability loop: becoming indispensable
- Becoming the default problem solver
- Responsibility becoming part of identity
- The distinction between responsibility and control
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Transcript
This is the Overachievers Podcast for people who want success without the burnout. If you often find yourself carrying more than everyone and you’re not even sure how that happened, this episode will help you to see why.
Hello, I’m Keith Blakemore-Noble, the Mindset Master, and I work with people who carry a lot. In the last episode of the Overachievers Podcast, we explored why rest feels uncomfortable for overachievers. Today builds directly upon that, because when rest feels unsafe, responsibility expands to fill that space. And over time, that expansion, well, it becomes invisible.
Not dramatic, not imposed, just Gradual. Until one day, you realise you’re carrying far more than you ever consciously agreed to. Sound familiar? Let’s find out what’s going on. Now, here’s the first thing to understand: Responsibility rarely lands in one big moment. It’s— it accumulates, it grows, it builds. A favour here, a task there. An expectation that forms quietly, never gets revisited. At first, at first it feels manageable.
Oh yeah, it feels manageable. You, you are capable, you can handle it. Hey, it doesn’t take much extra effort. Where’s the problem? So you say yes, and because you do it, people learn something. They learn that you are safe to rely on. Over time, a loop forms— the reliability loop. You step in, things improve, people trust you more, so you step in, so things improve, so people trust you more, so you step in. The, the reliability loop.
It cycles on and on and on, and because it works, it reinforces itself. Now, there is rarely a conscious conversation about this. No one formally assigns you the emotional load. No one officially declares that you are responsible for everything. It just becomes assumed. And often, here’s the killer, you don’t even notice the shift. In part, that’s because part of you likes being reliable. I mean, let’s face it, it’s nice being reliable, isn’t it? It feels, it feels competent.
It feels valuable. It feels secure. Until it doesn’t. Excuse me. I have seen this so many times. Someone becomes the organised one in the team, the calm one in a family, or the responsible one in a partnership, not because it was assigned, but because they stepped in once and then twice. And it’s stuck. Gradually, gradually they stop asking, is this actually mine? Gradually they stop asking, does this still make sense? Gradually they stop asking, what happens if I don’t step in? Instead, gradually they just carry it.
Not dramatically. Automatically. Let’s pause for a moment at this point, and I’d like you to consider something. Where in your life have you become the default problem solver? Where in your life have you become the default problem solver? Where do people come to you first? Where do you preemptively take responsibility before anyone is even asked? Just take a few moments out, pause, and just, just consider that and just notice. No judgment, just notice where in your life have you become the default problem solver? People come to you first and you preemptively take responsibility. Just notice where that seems to be happening in your life for you. Now, here, here is where it starts to get interesting. You see, for overachievers like you, stepping back doesn’t just feel risky.
It feels wrong. And it does, doesn’t it? It feels wrong stepping back. Because once responsibility becomes part of your identity, reducing that responsibility, that can feel like failure. You might think things like, if I don’t do it, it won’t get done properly. Or maybe you think, you know what, it’s just quicker if I handle it. I bet you’ve said that many times, haven’t you? Many of us do. Or maybe you, you might think it’s easier to do it than it is to explain it. Now, sometimes those thoughts are absolutely true.
Yeah, no two ways about it. Sometimes that is true. But over time, over time, those thoughts create something else. They create a quiet imbalance. And there is an important distinction here. A distinction between responsibility and control. Responsibility is about responding when needed. Control, that’s about, it’s about preventing discomfort.
Sometimes we carry responsibility because we care. Sometimes we carry responsibility because uncertainty can feel uncomfortable. Those two motivations, they, they can feel very similar on the surface, but internally, internally, they are very, very different. When responsibility is driven by control, it rarely ends. There’s always one more thing to stabilise. There’s always one more gap to close. There’s always one more person to support. And slowly but surely, your capacity erodes.
There is an invisible trade-off here, and this is the part that many people miss. Every time that you silently absorb responsibility, you trade something. Could be that you trade energy, could be that you trade your time, could be you trade your mental bandwidth. And because you can cope, the trade rarely feels urgent. You often don’t even notice it because you can cope. However, small trades repeated often over time— oh boy, do they get heavy. It’s not because you’re incapable. You are capable, but it’s because you are human.
So how does this connect to rest? I said that this builds on the last episode. This links directly to that. You see, when responsibility expands, naturally rest shrinks. When responsibility expands, you’ve got less time in which to rest. Rest shrinks, not necessarily in hours, but in quality. You can still sit still. You can sit still even. I’ll say that again.
You can sit still and still feel responsible. You can stop working and still be carrying. That’s why sustainable success is not about managing time. It’s about managing load. Remember last time we spoke, we talked about rest and how even when you’re not doing things, you’re not necessarily resting. It’s the same here. You can sit still and yet still feel responsible for what’s happening, or even not happening. Sustainable success is not about managing time, it’s about managing the workload, the load that you put yourself under, the load that you take on.
In the next episode of the Overachievers Podcast, we are going to explore something that sits underneath all of this, and that is high standards. Because for many overachievers, standards quietly fuel responsibility. High standards Drive responsibility. And until we understand that connection, nothing really is going to change. That’s coming up in, in the next episode. For now, what I’d like you to do as you move through the week ahead, just hold this thought gently. Hold this gently. What responsibilities are you carrying simply because you’ve always carried them.
What responsibilities are you carrying simply because you always have? Not because they’re necessary, not because they’re aligned, but because they became yours by default. Don’t judge for this. Don’t judge yourself or anyone else for this. It’s not about judgment. It’s merely about observation, about awareness, about noticing. What responsibilities are you carrying simply because you always have? So as you go through the next week, just hold that thought gently and just see what you can see, observe what you can observe, notice what you can notice about the responsibilities that you are carrying simply because you always have carried them. Over the next few days, Pay attention to where you step in automatically. Again, no judgment, no dramatic change.
It’s all about awareness. See if you can, with this increased awareness of, of you carrying responsibility, because you always have, just pay attention and notice where you’re stepping in automatically. It’s amazing what you’ll notice when you start looking for it. That about wraps it up for this episode. Thank you again, as always, for listening to the Overachievers Podcast. And please, if this episode resonated with you, follow, follow the show, give us a like, a comment, a share, subscribe to it, give us a review on your favourite podcast platform. It all helps to increase the coverage, the exposure of this podcast, so we can help more people to take back control of their lives. And stay with me for the next episode, where we are going to explore how high standards can quietly turn into self-pressure.
That’s all coming up next time. For now, just reflect on the things that we’ve covered and have an amazing week. My name is Keith Blakemore-Noble. I’m the Mindset Master. And I will be your guide as we explore a healthier way to succeed.
