What it Really Costs You to Know and Not Act
by Suzan Hart | The Influencer’s Journey Show | 4 min read
There is a particular kind of leader who knows exactly what they need. They’ve read the research. They’ve heard the conversations. They can articulate the importance of sleep, of movement, of stillness, of filling their own cup before they try to fill anyone else’s.
And still, they don’t do it.
Not because they’re lazy. Not because they don’t care. But because something in the gap between knowing and doing remains unexamined.
That gap is what I want to talk about today.
The integrity question most leaders never ask themselves
In my conversation with certified functional nutritionist and health coach Debbie Portell, she said something I strongly agree with.
She said the leaders who walk in real confidence aren’t the most credentialled or the most experienced. They’re the ones who keep their commitments to themselves. The ones who honour their word when no one is watching.
And the ones who don’t, we see it. It shows in how they carry themselves, how they speak, and how they lead.
Honoring our word is where integrity gets personal in a way most leadership conversations avoid.
We talk about integrity in terms of what we say to others and whether we do what we promise. We define it as whether we show up honestly and consistently for our teams.
But what about the commitments we make to ourselves?
The decision to sleep. To eat well. To move. To protect the inner conditions that make real leadership possible.
When we break those commitments — quietly, privately, repeatedly — something in us erodes. Not just our health. Our presence. We erode our capacity to lead with the fullness that the people around us deserve.
“The leaders who walk in real confidence are the ones who keep their commitments to themselves — the ones who honour their word when no one is watching.”
— Debbie Portal, Functional Nutritionist & Health Xoach
The real cost of knowing and not acting
Performance psychologist Dr. Jim Loehr and author Tony Schwartz spent more than 30 years studying what separates those who sustain high performance from those who burn out. Their conclusion, laid out in their landmark work The Power of Full Engagement, was this: energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance. And physical energy is the foundation on which everything else rests.
Which means that every time we override the body’s signals of exhaustion, hunger, and the need for stillness, we are making a withdrawal from the account our leadership runs on.
Small withdrawals go unnoticed. Accumulated over months and years, they compound.
The result: Our judgment narrows, patience shortens. and creativity dulls. Eventually, the quality of presence that makes a leader worth following quietly, almost invisibly, weakens.
Not through failure. Not through lack of skill. Through the slow accumulation of a choice we kept making without examining it.
A moment from the conversation
Debbie didn’t arrive at this wisdom through theory. She arrived through a near-death experience.
In her late twenties, Debbie was steadily rising in the financial industry. She worked long hours, ate fast food at her desk, and squeezed in a quick workout. Eventually, her body gave out, she collapsed on her driveway and ended up in the hospital.
Debbie had confused depletion with dedication for so long that the depletion had become her baseline.
What strikes me most about her story is this: Debbie wasn’t ignoring herself out of laziness. She was ignoring herself because she was trying to succeed. She saw the desk, the client lunches, and the late hours as evidence of commitment. The truth is, the hustle we celebrate can be a form of self-neglect we haven’t permitted ourselves to name.
That is the real cost of knowing and not acting. A slow drift from your own centre that can eventually lead to dramatic results.
A framework: Four Principles For Body-Centred Leadership
1. Integrity begins with yourself
Before you can keep your word to anyone else, you have to keep it to yourself. The private commitments — the sleep, the movement, the nourishment, the stillness — are not separate from your leadership character. They are the foundation of it.
2. Your energy is your most important leadership resource
Before strategy, before communication, before influence, there is energy. When your body is cared for, you arrive fully. When you’re depleted, even your best thinking is working against friction.
3. Self-care is a requirement, not a reward
The most effective leaders share one consistent habit: a morning routine built around movement, stillness, and nourishment. Not because they have more time, but because they decided that filling their own cup first is how they serve at all.
4. Lead yourself before you lead others
“As an executive, as a business owner, as a leader of anything, you will transform in that area when you have led yourself down the wellness path.” The leadership work doesn’t start in the boardroom. It starts the morning you decide your body is worth tending.
The question underneath everything
A large purpose makes great demands on you. You must build your body, your mind, and your spirit for what you are called to carry.
Self-care is not selfish. It is not a luxury. It is not something you earn once you are done with the important work.
It is the condition under which important work becomes possible.
The question was never whether you know this.
The question is what you are going to do about it.
REFLECTION QUESTION
What is the one commitment you keep making to yourself and keep breaking? What would change in your leadership if you finally kept it?
This article was inspired by a conversation with Debbie Portal, certified functional nutritionist and health coach, on The Influencers Journey podcast, hosted by Suzan Hart.
Full episode available on Spotify.
