Published on LinkedIn December 29, 2025
Late December is a strange stretch of time.
The calendar says the year is almost over, but the body often says otherwise. Fatigue lingers. Motivation wavers. The noise finally quiets enough for a different question to surface.
Was this year actually sustainable?
For many midlife women leaders, that question arrives with weight. Not because you failed. Because you endured. We taught an entire generation that leadership meant endurance. And midlife is often where the bill comes due. By this stage of your career, you know how to lead. You know how to deliver. You know how to carry responsibility. What becomes less clear is how long you can keep doing it the same way.
This is where rest stops being indulgent and starts becoming strategic.
Why Midlife Changes the Leadership Equation
Midlife leadership is not the same as early-career ambition. The context is different.
Physiologically, women experience real changes in sleep, stress response, and energy regulation during perimenopause and menopause. Research shows shifts in cortisol patterns, sleep quality, and cognitive load tolerance during this phase, even in high-performing professionals.
Organizationally, many women reach mid- to senior-level roles at the same time. The stakes increase. The expectations compound.
Culturally, women are still rewarded for being reliable, adaptable, and endlessly capable. Rest rarely appears in the performance narrative.
According to the Deloitte Women at Work report, women consistently report higher burnout and stress than men, with mid-career and senior women experiencing the highest sustained pressure. The issue is not resilience. It is a system design.
Rest becomes necessary not because you are weaker, but because you are operating at a higher level.
Rest Is Not the Opposite of Leadership
One of the most persistent myths in professional culture is that rest and leadership sit on opposite ends of a spectrum.
They do not.
Rest is not disengagement. Rest is recalibration.
In neuroscience, rest is when the brain integrates information, strengthens decision pathways, and restores executive function. The default mode network, which activates during rest, plays a key role in insight, pattern recognition, and strategic thinking. In leadership terms, rest is what allows you to see clearly again. Without it, leaders become reactive. Decisions narrow. Perspective shrinks. Everything feels heavier than it should. With it, priorities sharpen. Boundaries strengthen. Authority feels steadier.
This is not about stepping away from ambition. It is about sustaining it.
Reflection as a Strategic Practice
Reflection often gets framed as journaling or emotional processing. That framing undersells its power.
For leaders, reflection is a form of intelligence gathering. It answers questions data alone cannot.
What drained me this year that no longer makes sense? Where did I spend energy without real return? Which responsibilities are structural problems, not personal ones? What patterns am I ready to stop repeating?
McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace research consistently shows that women take on disproportionate emotional and organizational labour. Reflection helps separate what is truly yours to carry from what has quietly accumulated.
This kind of reflection does not require hours. It requires honesty. Late December is uniquely suited for this because urgency drops. The noise pauses. The system loosens just enough for truth to surface.
A Different Way to Approach the New Year
Most year-end leadership content pushes goal setting. More plans. More intentions. More momentum. Midlife leaders often need something else first. They need to ask not what they want to achieve, but what they need to change in how they operate. Before setting goals, consider these questions:
- What must be protected for me to lead well this year?
- Which systems need redesign rather than more effort?
- What version of success would actually feel sustainable now?
- What am I no longer willing to normalize?
These are not soft questions. They are structural. They move leadership out of survival mode and back into authorship.
Rest as a Signal of Authority
There is a quiet confidence in leaders who rest well. They do not rush. They do not overexplain. They do not confuse urgency with importance. Their presence carries weight because it is not depleted.
This matters more in midlife because visibility increases. People watch how you operate. Your pace sets a tone. When you model rest as a leadership discipline, you give permission for healthier systems to exist. You also protect your own longevity.
Rest, in this sense, becomes a signal. Not of disengagement, but of discernment.
Reflections
As this year closes, you do not need to earn rest. You do not need to justify it. You do not need to optimize it. You need to use it.
Use it to take inventory. Use it to notice what no longer fits. Use it to let the body and mind settle enough to tell the truth. Midlife leadership is not about proving capacity. It is about choosing sustainability.
And that choice begins with rest.
