A journey from burnout to rejuvenation

Between 2023 to 2025 I experienced severe burn out. And I have never spoken about it, till now…

I have tried a couple of times, but honestly I was simply beating around the bush!

Burnout, hopelessness and losing one’s sense of worth — these discussions are not new! Yet each of this story needs to be shared, read, seen, heard and acknowledged.

Why did I not speak up before?

Because I felt ashamed, I felt I would be judged, I believed I would be seen as incompetent with zero accountability of my career and life. It would mean acknowledging the belief I harbored — sharing means accepting failure!

How do I know it was burn out?

• I used to get frequent panic attacks, could not breathe and sometimes almost pass out.
• I had zero strength to pull myself up most mornings.
• I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life or if anything meant anything anymore.
• I was never present, never in the moment. Even when I was travelling, I always felt a nagging pull in my chest, almost as if I should be guilty about feeling happy.
• I had zero clue what I wanted to do in life and how I would put back the pieices together.
• I had come to absolutely resent a career I had fought tooth and nail to build in the past decade.

But….

• I went out and socialized
• I always met my friends, laughed with them
• I went for holidays
• I have an extremely loving home & partner who has been there with me at every step, every moment.
• I didn’t have financial crisis, thanks to my partner and work savings

What changed by 2025?

To be 100% honest I just woke up one day and told myself this is not how I want to live my life. I had been sitting in my own shit for almost 2 years and it had begun to stink badly. I needed to press the reset button!

You might say it’s not that simple and I agree, it was not. Making this commitment was the hardest part.

The comparitively easier part was then identifying what I needed to do to bring the change!

Of course I took professional help.

But I want to take a moment to acknowledge the work I put into myself everyday. Some days the work felt doable and some days it felt gigantic.

Have my challenges magically vanished?

Hell NO… but today I know I can tackle any curveball life throws at me.

What I did not do :

• keep stock of what I was doing to make the shift
• keep stock of my emotions
• I’ve no memory of when I began feeling like myself again
• I don’t recall when I decided to become an entrepreneur

I should have kept a journal.

Why am I sharing this now?

Because I am finally at that stage of my recovery process! To be able to let go and own my story completely, unapologetically, proudly! This is more for myself than for anyone or anything else in the world.

• I’ve always tied my self worth to certain self defined external factors. When those were taken away, I felt anchor less.

This journey has been about finding who I am, to lead myself with power and compassion to a place where I feel I AM, no frills attached.

• I was trapped in a vicious circle of being busy every waking minute, producing average results and pushing myself to do even more, as a form of rebuke.

I cannot emphasize enough how invaluable detachment, rest and recovery have been to see things more clearly and make confident decisions!

Bottomline…

Of course we cannot know what life holds for us. But one thing I know, from here on, I will only do work that sparks joy and aligns with my life goal — to be able to earn money working from anywhere in the world!

This does not mean ‘exciting work’. There are and will be mundane work that I will absolutely cry doing, I will have to learn to do things that will push me completely out of my depth. But it will be all me… the learning, the failure, the trying and and again and finally the success! I will own the entire journey…

Another promise to myself

For the longest time I believed that my story was nothing special. It meant nothing to anyone. But honestly, your story needs to mean something to you, that's it.

And hence, I will be more consistent with sharing more about my work, my entrepreneurial journey and my evolving relationship with rest and recovery!

Until next time.

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Hi, I’m Adrita.

For years I have given every drop of my energy to be this person who is called an overachiever. When I walked into a room, I wanted people to call me ambitious, and acknowledge that I’m that person who has bested every hurdle to be where she is today!

Here are two fundamental flaws with this.

One, this goal is extremely myopic as it fixates on professional success only.

Two, it became my entire identity.

This has done me more harm than good. And it has taken me two broken jobs and three years of self work to realize this.

Yet I feel grateful that I went through this journey, and there is no going back to that old route anymore!

Today, I want none of the above. I want to be free.

So here’s what I’m doing instead.

Building two businesses, climbing the hill of entrepreneurship, steeped in challenges, new learnings, and juggling to strike a balance since my partner complaints some days he does not see me look up from my laptop all day.

But I have not felt more free, more empowered and happier in a long long time!

Why am I here?

Because for the longest time I have kept all of this to myself. But one day I read a line, to be human is to have a story! That shifted something in me. And this is my story…..

I am on this mission to :

live in the present

explore the luxury of a slow, more intentional approach to life

and use rest, reset and recovery as my biggest productive assets.

And I am building my businesses on the same principle.

Masala Chai Travel | Slow Brewed Luxury Journeys — is a travel agency that I have co-founded with my husband and it offers slow, experiential holidays close to nature to Finland, Northern Norway and Tuscany (Italy). (instagram : masalachai_travel) | www.masalachaitravel.com

K.I.N.D. Program for Emerging Leaders (MAG People Oy) is a people consultancy that I’ve co-founded. It equips tech and product experts and founders stepping into leadership, with emotional intelligence and regenerative leadership tools to build, grow and sustain themselves and their teams. These are skills AI cannot replace! www.magpeopleconsulting.com

So if you are…

feeling drained, completely out of yourself and finding it hard to let go of the control you think you have on your life, and you happen to come across my page,

This is your space and indication to embark on this change!

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