Severe Burnout Pushes West Point Grad To Find Worthiness Beyond Career

You can learn more about Kafi Joseph here.

TRANSCRIPT

Kafi Joseph grew up in Trinidad with lots of family under one roof. She was so close to her grandparents she called them mum and dad. Her own parents, whom she called mummy and daddy, were busy.

My grandmother was more of what I think people see as a mother figure particularly because my mum was a nurse and she was in nursing school when I was born.

Kafi was precocious, inquisitive and independent. If there was something she wanted, she’d figure out a way to get it.

I might have been two or three at the time. She kept the big vaseline jar you know, on the shelf … And I would say, ‘oh, I can reach that.’ And she's like, ‘wait, show me…’ And so I climbed the shelf, a pretty high shelf, like hooked a foot on and an arm on the side and knocked the Vaseline jar down and then like jumped down. I was like, hello, here you go.

From a young age Kafi took charge. One summer all the cousins went to summer camp where her grandmother volunteered. Six kids needed to leave the house early so Kafi, the oldest of the group, got everyone ready.

I'm like, all right, here's the order for everyone to go in the shower. We need to get people's hair done the day before. Like, let's get organized. Let's go. And I remember just like you know feeling great about that. 

What began as a plucky can-do spirit, almost drove her to the end. This is a story about how Kafi turned it back into a strength. This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.

Coming To America

Trinidad is one of the most developed countries in the Caribbean but Kafi Joseph says it’s not easy to get ahead without connections. So her mum set her sights on moving the two of them to the United States. When Kafi was seven years old she boarded a plane with her grandmother bound for the US. Her mother had already made the move, landed a job, and rented an apartment. 

I remember when my grandmother got on the plane to bring me to America. I was like, this is amazing, I thought she was gonna spend the whole summer with me. And a couple of weeks later, she was like, ‘okay, well I have to go.’ 

Kafi went from her grandparents’ noisy house bustling with activity to an empty apartment, where she was frequently alone. Even though her mum was busy taking classes and working, she’d often leave encouraging notes for her daughter. Like so many immigrants, Kafi’s mum reminded her why they made this sacrifice to work so hard so far away from family.

She would say to me, ‘hey, we have jobs to do and my job is to put food on the table, clothes on your back, and a roof over your head. And your job is to go to school and get good grades. And she's like, you were fourth in your class and at age seven, about to be eight, that could impact your future. And so that was, I think the big thing driving me and was that like, mummy's doing this for me.

The Call To Serve

In middle school a family friend told Kafi  about the benefits of JROTC or Junior Reserved Officers Training Corps. So Kafi signed up and was immediately hooked.

There are a lot of things that I learned in JROTC that are foundational to how I operate. I'm the kind of kid that loves a framework and loves to understand things. Like I learned about Maslow's hierarchy in our JROTC classes. I learned about Johari's window and just like how you relate to, you know, people on your known and unknown parts of your personality. In addition to the military science and the history pieces as well.

In high school West Point and other service academies sent admissions representatives to talk with Kafi and her classmates.

I was very much like, ‘oh, this is what I want to do.’ 

But she couldn’t go very far without her citizenship. So it was Kafi who motivated her mum to become a citizen.

… like great mum, I'm studying for the citizenship exam for school, I need you to study for your citizenship exam for the country so that I can get my citizenship to pursue yeah.

‘Your Platoon Just Died’

She got accepted to West Point, and soon learned they took their training very seriously.

It's very much, we had this, and it's kind of probably now kind of a crude joke, but like, and it wasn't a joke, but just a saying. It's like everything that you did, if you did it wrong, the response would be like, you just killed your platoon, right? Like that was just kind of like the mindset. 

Almost every action Kafi and her fellow cadets took was evaluated or under scrutiny, down to how well they behaved in the dining hall.

We didn't do our duties right at the table. You just killed your platoon, Joseph. Everything that we did had the potential to impact lives. 

Her Body Raises The White Flag

When she graduated from West Point, she served as an Army officer for five years, where her higher ups recognized her leadership skills. She also served an additional four years as an officer in the Army National Guard. Post military Kafi worked at a strategy and consulting firm, then transitioned to program management and executive leadership roles. She holds a bachelor’s and two master’s degrees. And just like her mum frequently held a job while she furthered her education.

In 2018 she worked as a consultant for an organization that supported the government. And Kafi was beginning to notice signs of stress. Her heart raced at odd times and her skin felt itchy.

I remember the leadership team that I have saying like, ‘hey, look, we pride ourselves on, you know, working on the weekends or put in this extra time or, you know, you'll notice that everyone is doing, you know, something above and beyond.’ And I just remember being like, yes, but why? LAUREL: Like in the back of your mind… KAFI: Yes, I understand what you're saying and what you're pushing and what you're modeling, but why I couldn't see the criticality based on what we were doing, that there was a need for that, to pride yourself on it, to do it just to do it, versus a need for it. 

She put in 12 hour days, while also keeping up with her executive MBA classes.

I would be in class on Fridays, so I distinctly remember like really working, pushing Monday through Wednesday and then my Thursday nights would be all-nighters because it would be like get work done, get stuff you know set up and then… do whatever readings you needed to finish for class and then be ready for class. And so I lived on five hour energies, the caffeine drinks. I did not sleep. I mean, it was definitely a badge of honor.

LAUREL: Are you starting to feel in your body the impact of that work stress? 

KAFI: Yeah, 100%. Yeah, absolutely, 100%...As soon as I finished my program with those working those hours that I worked and then pulling those all-nighters, my body shut down for a week. I remember, and I also remember being like nervous about telling like my team, like I'm sick and I can't come in. And I couldn't get it out of my head and so I would just you know heart racing mind racing just start sending emails and start working on things because I couldn't sleep and I couldn't I couldn't I just couldn't rest. 

On the outside she was killing it at work, growing her portfolio, but inside Kafi didn’t feel the success. She was angry and driven by an irrational fear of failing.

So she found a coping strategy. Technically she wasn’t allowed to work outside the US, because  of government regulations. So she started booking trips overseas. At the time it was the only way she felt she could enforce boundaries.

When you said ‘I'm going out of the country,’ people were like, whoa, okay, wait, I won't be able to contact you, I won't be able to email you. 

Kafi discovered the rest of the world didn’t operate the way her team and much of the US did. 

Sense Of Impending Doom

But in December of 2018 she started feeling short of breath.

I remember my first thought was like, man, I'm out of shape because I had neglected, you know, things like working out…I remember just thinking, but no, I can't be out of shape because I had started the process to volunteer as an EMT and part of that is a physical. And just the month before that I had done a physical and they did a stress test and I was fine. And so with that shortness of breath feeling and just kind of like anxiousness that I felt, I emailed my doctor, because it's hard to make doctor's appointments when you're busy, and told her what was going on and she said, I actually need you to come in and see me. 

So when Kafi went to see her doctor the following month she said she was worried Kafi might have a blood clot and wanted to run some tests. That night Kafi was volunteering at a fire station when the doctor’s assistant called with her results. 

They said that I should probably go get checked out because my numbers are really high for this blood test result. 

She arrives at the hospital and she’s waiting to get results from her CT scan and doppler but her mind is on a work presentation.

KAFI: I’m at the hospital waiting on these tests and I'm on email and I’m texting. The tests come back. There are three pulmonary emboli, so blood clots in my lungs, which means they have to have passed through my heart to get to my lungs. And so the Doppler indicated that I had a deep vein thrombosis that broke off, and that's what caused those. And they were going to go do a heart scan to make sure that my heart wasn't damaged. And what I was doing, very ridiculous, at this time I'm not yet trained EMT. It would be months later till I realized like how serious this was. I'm like, I'm fine. I was walking around. I was short of breath, like no big deal. It's okay…I have a presentation tomorrow with my team and I want my team to be ready for it and I need to organize people and so I texted my boss, I'm like, I'm in the hospital, yep, in the ER it's fine, and I'm like on and I'm like giving directions to my team about this presentation the next day is the ridiculous thing that I thought was absolutely okay to be doing in my bed because this presentation is important I couldn’t tell you what the presentation was about anymore. LAUREL: Kafi, oh my god. 

Kafi called her mum, who’s a nurse, to tell her what’s going on.

KAFI: She was freaking out. She was just like what, she was praying. She was calling her friends who were still in. She was trying to understand what she should be, how concerned she should be… So she was very, very concerned. But to her credit, also trying not to be alarmist, but also be stern with, you don't need to worry about work right now. I need you to pay attention to what the doctors are saying and what's happening here. LAUREL: And did you take that seriously at that time? KAFI: I mean, to be honest, I really did not. Like until I went through my EMT module where they talked about this, I had no idea how serious, yeah, how serious it was. It was a big deal. In my stats, I was 90 when I walked around, they were measuring me, I was like 90, 91, I'm like great, that's like an A, right? I think about it in terms of grades and it wasn't again until I learned that no, anything below 95 is not good…below 95, you're on a nasal cannula and you're getting supplementary oxygen and that's how I was walking around for a month, you know, or so, just not oxygenated, just not thinking about it and not wanting to take the time because I needed to work.

Kafi’s doctor put her on blood thinners and she had to be careful not to bruise or injure herself. It wasn’t until months later in her EMT class when they covered her condition that she realized how serious it was, how she could’ve died.

KAFI: So it wasn't until I realized how serious it was that I was just like, this is a big deal and I can't believe that I just sloughed it off. Like I didn't, you know, I don't want to be as extreme and say like, oh my gosh, I almost died. LAUREL: But you could have. KAFI: Correct. Yeah. And in the light of that, I was worried about work. 

Their teacher explained that a sense of impending doom can come before a serious event. For example, if you notice the patient expressing a feeling that something bad is about to happen, pay attention. As her instructor explained this, Kafi had a vivid memory.

I remember distinctly though, there was a point in time as before I had gone to the doctor to get checked out where I just getting into bed and my heart was racing and like it was really hard to breathe and I was just like man like I was scared. I was scared. I didn't know why I was scared and I was just like man I might have even thought to myself like oh my gosh I feel like I'm gonna die like I just felt like really nervous and scared out of nowhere like my body felt that way. I think that might have been the moment that the clots passed through my heart into my lungs, like just the way it was racing. But I remember feeling what I can now equate to what they tell us in EMT school is this impending sense of doom...But I just chalked it up to like I was stressed out… and then I learned about pulmonary emboli and what it does, I remember putting that together and being like, ‘oh my gosh, I know the moment that this thing passed through my heart. I know the moment that I died because I now know what an impending sense of doom is because I felt it. Holy crap.’

Kafi Break

In late 2020, more than a year after her hospitalization, Kafi was about to celebrate her 39th birthday, so she had decided to take time off and visit a friend.

This proposal came through, I had told everyone I was taking time off, I got pulled into calls, I felt like I needed to be on those calls again with the culture of the teams, and I was angry and frustrated about it, and I felt like, oh my gosh. Is this happening to me again? And I think that was the moment there where it happened again, where I really like actually had the conviction, where I was just like, oh my gosh, is my health, you know, at risk again? Like, is something happening?... I really got the conviction of like, look if something's wrong with me and something is happening, I'm going to quit. Like there's no way that I can do this.

It was at that moment she decided to see a therapist.

I'm feeling this anxiety, like I've gotta do something about this… I need a plan, I need to figure this out… Like I don't feel good about being at work. I don't feel good about what I'm doing. I'm angry. I'm frustrated. I'm all of these things and my body, you know, is reacting. 

She could barely find time to make her virtual appointments but knew they were important. And it quickly became clear to her therapist that Kafi needed to take a break.

We started to talk about like what steps I needed to do to create distance and, or to take a sabbatical and to take time away. 

The idea to take a sabbatical initially came to her soon after she was hospitalized in 2019, she didn’t make a decision until the end of 2020, and finally pulled the lever in January of 2021. But before she left she prepared her team.

I developed this whole like, here's everything anybody can ever need. So that Saturday I was like, I will organize it, I know I'm technically done and my sabbatical has started, but I am gonna organize this stuff for them... And I was on the phone and my mum called me and I didn't answer it. And then she called me again … And so that's when she let me know that my sister had passed away. 

Her parents asked her if Kafi would take the lead coordinating with the funeral home.

…And so I messaged my leadership team, like, hey, I know my sabbatical starts today. I also wanna share that my sister passed. You know, I know I mentioned that I might do these things, but I think you have enough and I'm not going to do that… And I remember thinking to myself, how crazy is it that I'm literally thinking if I were working right now, I'd have these proposals that I were working on and I don't know how to coordinate my sister's funeral. That's a problem.

During her six month sabbatical Kafi traveled to the Caribbean, Costa Rica, and Europe, visited friends and family, went skiing, roadtripped, and sorted through her stuff that had accumulated in a storage unit.

And so it was a lot of, I think, self-exploration, just trying to really try to figure out, I still had therapy, so you know.biggest thing I was concerned about was, I don't wanna turn into a lazy person on sabbatical… And my therapist is like, I assure you, there's no chance that will happen for you. 

A New Way To Work

During her time off she had a number of small epiphanies. She discovered it was important that she surround herself with people who encourage a work life balance. She made a key decision to join a team whose director promotes health and family first. Kafi also found a new way of working.

What I learned about myself on sabbatical is that I actually operate better in flow versus like, very rigid, these things need to happen here and so I needed blocks of time and then to say that these are the things that are going to happen versus like these 10 minutes I'm going to do this thing.  I created this time for me in the morning, like this three-hour block of like, I'm not coming online before this time. 

She’s also learned how to stop and listen to her body.

My body signals things to me and it's one of the things that I'm learning is how to tune in and to understand what my body is telling me that I need to take a break, step back, etc.

She knows if she doesn’t listen to her body’s signals, she’ll become the thing she dreads the most – someone who is unable to perform. So just recently she called in sick.

I pinged into our team chat. I said, I am not feeling well. I am going to go offline for the next couple of hours to take care of myself. If it's an emergency, you can call me and I'll be back online. I'll check in and I'll let you know what's going on. LAUREL:  What did that feel like? KAFI: It always feels great. I'm always proud of myself. 

Kafi developed a theory on burnout.

Burnout is a symptom not an outcome… It's not a symptom of the work environment or the stressors or any of those things. It's a symptom of something within that person. I think certain people have a propensity to burn out and so the work that I did on myself and you know and looking at this for me it was a sense of worthiness like I did not feel like I was worthy of of being able to work in a certain way… I was pretty new person running that kind of account and growing that business, and I felt like I was under scrutiny. And it was like, am I even worthy to take this break? Am I worthy? And so I worked very hard and I worked extra and I did all the extra packaging to prove that like, ‘hey, I'm good enough to be here.’ So one of the things that has allowed me and enabled me to say I'm taking two hours off I need is because I know that people haven't brought me onto their teams, haven't asked me to take the roles that I'm doing, haven't asked me to do what I'm doing because I'm not worthy. They know I'm worthy. They know what I'm capable of.

LAUREL:  If you could talk to a younger version of yourself, what would you tell her? KAFI: I feel like what I would say to her is just because you can doesn't mean that you have to. And that is, and that you are enough, which coincidentally is what my name means. And yeah, yes, it means enough, sufficient. It was something to anchor to that I am enough. So I would tell myself, yeah, just because you can doesn't mean you have to. Younger Kafi, you're incredibly talented. There are lots of things that you can do well, and it doesn't mean that you have to do them all. And choosing not to do them doesn't make you any less worthy of appreciation, acceptance that you desire.

Today Kafi advises new employees, especially those who have trained or worked in the military.

I try to remind people no one is going to die. None of the things that we're doing is mission critical. So be kind to yourself.

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.