Too Much? Jessica Fearnley on Self-Acceptance, Ambition & Recovering from Burnout
Jessica Fearnley on self-acceptance, seven figures, and the secret she kept for two years
There’s a version of Jessica Fearnley that her current clients wouldn’t recognise.
Long blonde hair. Demure smile. No opinions visible anywhere. A woman who had learned, after years of swinging to extremes, that the safest thing was to keep herself small and get on with the work.
And then there’s the version who didn’t get out of bed for seven months.
Both of those women existed before the Jessica who now runs a seven-figure coaching business, hosts the Seven Figure Consultant podcast, and has written a book called Too Much, for women who’ve spent their whole lives being quietly, persistently told they are exactly that.
The girl who just started a band
Jessica grew up in Watford listening to Blur and Ash. She loved Blur so much that when she found guitar chords printed inside their CD booklets, she taught herself to play from them. Her best friend decided she could probably play bass. They found a singer in their class at school.
They were fifteen. It simply didn’t occur to them that they couldn’t do it!
“That’s what I love, looking back,” she told me. “It never occurred to me that we couldn’t do it. We believed in ourselves so much.” Three teenage girls in Hertfordshire, surrounded by a local scene full of bands, who just looked at what everyone else was doing and thought; why not us?
What she discovered, though, was that she didn’t actually enjoy performing. The stage amplified every insecurity she had. Where some people are made for it, they’d feed off the energy. Jessica felt the opposite. Before every gig, she wanted to run away. Or be sick.
It’s a distinction worth sitting with; the conviction that you can do something, and the question of whether it’s actually for you. She had the first in abundance. The second took rather longer to figure out.
The metronome years
What followed was a decade of swinging between extremes. From tomboy skater-band-girl to growing her hair long, wearing pink, becoming ‘smaller’ in some ways. She resisted university to stay in the band, then changed her mind and pushed herself so relentlessly through a history degree and a master’s that her body started to register the strain in ways she didn’t yet have words for.
“I think fundamentally I hadn’t learned how to temper my ambition with my actual human body,” she said. “I always wanted to push harder. I always wanted to do everything. I had no concept of finding a pace in life that works. I was too impatient.”
At twenty-seven, the bill came. A total burnout. Seven months of not being able to get out of bed. The word burnout hadn’t really entered common usage yet, so when people asked what was wrong, she’d just say she didn’t do anything. She had no way to describe it.
Her parents rang to tell her she had to go back to work. Friends told her she didn’t seem depressed. And through all of it, it felt like she was the only person in the world it was happening to. So she didn’t tell anyone about it for years.
Then one day she mentioned it to her mastermind group. almost in passing, and lots of people in the group started crying. That’s exactly what happened to them too and they were so relieved that they weren’t on their own with that experience!
Wired for self-improvement, starving for self-acceptance
Too Much is the book that came out of eleven years of coaching, two years of research and writing, and a lot of deep reflection on what she kept seeing in the people she worked with. High achievers. Women who were, often, too much for the workplace. Those who’d come to entrepreneurship partly because it was the first place they were allowed to just be themselves.
The surprise concept that emerged from writing it came to her on a walk with her dog.
We are, she realised, wired for radical self-improvement. It’s almost the default setting for people like her and the consultants she works with. The drive, the pace, the relentless push toward the next thing.
What she also realised was that what we need, but have never been taught, is radical self-acceptance.
“If I do none of these things, I still like and love the person that I am. I’m still proud of the person that I am. I still feel like I’m worthy.” That’s what we should be aiming at rather than relentless productivity or whatever.
It’s not about dialling down the drive. It’s about building the foundation that means the drive doesn’t eat you alive.
How to want a big thing without being crushed by it
The practical question at the heart of her work, and the book, is this – you can say you want a seven-figure business, or any other significant goal. But what happens in the space between the decision and the destination?
Because that space is long, and it’s hard, and it’s full of moments where the goal feels too far away. Or you fall off the wagon. Or you wonder if you actually want it at all.
Her answer isn’t to want less.
It’s to understand why you want what you want. To distinguish between the healthy reasons (you’re capable of it, and you simply want it) and the unhealthy ones (you’re looking for approval, or you don’t believe you’re enough without it). And to build a relationship with yourself that can hold the weight of a big vision without collapsing under it.
Fifteen years of therapy. A burnout that took her out entirely. A book written over two years. A business built from zero to seven figures.
She does nothing by halves, as she freely admits. But somewhere in the oscillations between extremes, between the teenage band and the demure corporate photo and everything that came after, she found the thing that had been missing all along.
Not less ambition. Just somewhere solid to stand while she pursued it.
Too Much by Jessica Fearnley is available now.
Listen to The Seven Figure Consultant podcast here.
And connect with her on LinkedIn here.
And while you’re at it, why not connect with me on LinkedIn here. And find out more about my offer positioning and messaging services here.
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Timestamps:
00:00 Show Intro
00:09 Meet Jessica
00:45 Friends Reconnect
01:52 Too Much Book
03:38 Hiding Yourself
05:44 Teen Band Days
07:46 Stage Fright Shift
10:47 Burnout Turning Point
15:07 Burnout Shame
17:32 Radical Acceptance
20:01 Big Vision Balance
21:18 Wrap Up Outro