Big Girl Panties Diaries – Entry #101: We Don’t Have Change Fatigue—We’ve Just Been Living Out of a Junk Drawer
This week I attended the Executive Leadership for Change Council (ECLC) Conference in New York, and one phrase kept coming up: change fatigue.
It was everywhere—in panels, in hallway conversations, in side chats over coffee. Leaders are worried their people are too tired to adapt, too overloaded to keep up.
But I believe there’s so much more to unpack here. What we call change fatigue is often a cover for emotional fatigue—and underneath that, grief.
In Entry #88, I wrote that it isn’t really change that’s hard—it’s letting go. Every new beginning requires us to release something: a habit, a comfort, a system, a version of who we were. And letting go, even when it leads somewhere better, always carries loss.
Right now, it feels like we’ve all been living out of a junk drawer—personally and professionally. Every new initiative, every headline, every disruption is another item shoved inside. The drawer is overflowing, and what’s spilling out is more than resistance. It’s the weight of letting go, over and over again.
Emotional Fatigue vs. Change Fatigue
Change fatigue makes it sound like people can’t keep up. But people keep up with change all the time—new phones, new apps, new routines. What we can’t keep up with is the emotional clutter.
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At work: “Your old process is gone. Here’s the new one.”
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At home: “The life you planned? It looks different now.”
Each of those moments might seem manageable. But stack them, unacknowledged, and you get wear-and-tear. People aren’t just adapting—they’re mourning.
The Suitcase That Won’t Close
Emotional fatigue is like sitting on an overstuffed suitcase. You push, squeeze, maybe even pray—but it still won’t zip. At work, leaders keep cramming in “just one more initiative.” At home, it’s one more bill, one more appointment, one more obligation. The zipper broke ages ago, but somehow, we’re still expected to haul it through the airport.
I wrote about this before in Yes, I Overpacked—But I’m Learning to Travel Lighter (Even at Work). The truth is, the suitcase is always heaviest when it’s carrying unspoken emotions, not just clothes.
Running on 5% Battery
It’s not the shiny new app on your phone that drains you—it’s the dozen running in the background. Same with change. The constant pings, the “urgent” meetings, the world news you didn’t ask for—it’s like living on 5% battery with no charger in sight.
We don’t just carry tasks. We carry attachments—to routines, to identities, to people. Each time we let go, it drains the battery a little more.
The Pause We Keep Skipping
In yoga, there’s a tiny pause between inhale and exhale. It’s where your body resets. But in life and work, we blow right past it. We sprint from one change to the next, no recovery, no breath. People aren’t disengaged—they’re depleted.
I explored this in Pause Before You Pounce (Emotional Intelligence in Action). That pause—the one we rush through—isn’t wasted time. It’s where resilience lives.
What We Really Crave
Not fewer changes. Not more cheerleading. Just a corner of comfort and control.
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At work: one system that runs without crashing.
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At home: a kitchen counter that isn’t buried in mail.
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In life: the chance to take one deep, unhurried breath.
Without that anchor, the junk drawer keeps spilling open—and eventually, something important gets lost in the clutter.
It’s the same message I found writing Creating Margin: The Space I Didn’t Know I Desperately Needed. Space isn’t optional—it’s fuel.
Big Girl Panties Rule
🩲 Change isn’t what wears us out. It’s the emotional clutter we keep shoving into the junk drawer. Until we name the grief underneath, we’ll keep calling it resistance when it’s really exhaustion.
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