This is something Patricia Ezechie can relate to. After years of working herself to the bone in a corporate role, she burnt out and developed chronic fatigue. It took her six years to recover.

“I learned the hard way that nothing is worth your health and wellbeing, and certainly not working the hours I did to prove I was worthy of my role, salary and to be taken seriously,” Ezechie tells Stylist. “As it turned out, none of those things mattered. I didn’t like the person I had become; I was the unhealthiest and the most miserable I have ever been in my life. The greatest irony is that from the outside I was a success: I had a great job, a great title, a six-figure salary, but not the success I really wanted.”

A gruelling meeting with her boss proved to be Ezechie’s breaking point. She found herself driving home, crying so hard she could hardly breathe. It was a call to her mum that provided the lightbulb moment: she told Ezechie to simply leave. After she calmed down, Ezechie wrote her resignation letter on the spot.

“I used to feel that, as a Black woman, I had to do better and be better to be accepted. It was the narrative I ran in my head and the background soundtrack to everything I did. It was unhelpful and untrue,” she adds. “Ambition is not a dirty word; neither is success. The challenge is finding out and really understanding what they both mean to you, then figuring out what you need to do to achieve them.”

Now, Patricia is a career, resilience and wellbeing expert with her own consultancy. She left the city and now lives on the west coast of Scotland. “For me, success is living by the sea and being able to walk on the beach every day. It is working for myself, doing work I love in a way that supports my health and wellbeing.”

How Black women are breaking free from the ‘ambition trap’