Put Your Strengths to Work

Marcus says Rachel's desire to take on so much isn't necessarily from a desire to please as much from a desire to take on more and more responsibility. "I felt if I didn't do it, I was letting somebody else down," she says. "That nobody else would possibly take their role."

Over time, Marcus says, Rachel's abundance of extracurricular activities made her forget why she loved being a teacher in the first place. To combat this he asked her to put an "S" and "W" in her weekly planner next to her strengths and weakness and to then focus on her strengths. "In order to find yourself ... you had to discover the emotion[s] you felt when you felt strong in the classroom," Marcus says. "You didn't find someone else's life, you found your life again."

Since her meeting with Marcus, Rachel has been paring down her commitments and doing things for herself. "I'm getting married in two months, and there's a lot of planning right there," she says. "I was able to put aside the different things that I was involving myself with and take the time to spend on things that I enjoyed."