Episode #041 · India Tizol
What Happens When The Overachiever Slows Down
Overachievers know how to do. To push. To make it happen. What they struggle with is slowing down.
When you're forced to step away, you also lose the congratulations, the gold star, the "great job" comments. And that can be disorienting.
So who do you become when you're forced to pause your work? That's what my friend and colleague, India Tizol, are discussing. For the first time since having a baby, she returns to the mic to talk about being visible in the void, struggling to find brain capacity when her body was asking so much of her, and navigating porous transition points.
Who Are You When You Aren’t Working?
India has spent much of her life in motion. She’s been a model, photographer, competitive bodybuilder, marketer, facilitator, and visibility strategist. She describes herself as an over-functioner and a problem solver—the person accustomed to figuring things out and moving forward. Pregnancy interrupted that rhythm much earlier than she expected.
India went into it believing she might take two weeks off before giving birth and a couple of months afterward. By the final months of her pregnancy, her body was breaking down. Her energy and brain capacity disappeared, and she began maternity leave earlier than planned.
Then came a difficult delivery, tearing, pelvic floor challenges, postpartum preeclampsia, medication, and a recovery that required far more time than she’d imagined.
“I had no idea how much space my body was really gonna need to recover. It needed a lot.”
India was accustomed to pushing herself physically and professionally. She knew how to train harder, solve the problem, or find another gear. During this period, her body determined the pace. And the physical recovery was only part of what she was navigating.
“There’s the identity shift of who am I when I am not working?”
She was caring for and lactating for a newborn while trying to understand where the person she’d been before pregnancy fit into this new life. India had changed careers and titles many times before. This transition gave her very little ability to immediately move toward another version of herself.
She describes those months as a messy process of integrating identities.
Integrating the Different Versions of Yourself
India told me before we recorded that she’s in a season of “integrating choices I made years ago rather than constantly reinventing myself.”
I told her that felt like a personal attack.
India has moved through enough professional identities to recognize her own pattern of reaching for the next iteration. Earlier in her career, she could often sense when a change was coming. She might notice that her work was drifting away from her values, although she didn’t yet have that language for it. Eventually, some event would push her into the next chapter. Today, she’s more likely to notice that feeling and sit with it.
Part of that shift has involved examining the pieces of herself that weren’t given much space earlier in her life. Through therapeutic work, India has been exploring what she calls the “denied parts” of herself.
For a person who identifies strongly with solving problems and getting things done, those parts include play, joy, and passion.
“It’s so awkward,” she jokes. “I’m not achieving anything when I’m doing that.”
India is also less concerned with finding a title capable of containing everything she’s done. She recognizes the practical need for a LinkedIn headline or something people can quickly understand, but she spent many seasons feeling like she needed to figure out and explain her identity.
Now she’s paying more attention to the characteristics that have remained consistent underneath the titles.
Staying Visible During a Career or Life Transition
India’s work in visibility made me especially curious about the periods when we don’t have a clear story to tell.
A title gives us something concrete. So does launching a business, selling an offer, starting a new job, or announcing a decision. The in-between is harder to package.
India has experienced that from both sides. She helps other people become visible, and she runs a business that requires her to remain visible herself.
Her experience as a bodybuilder still informs how she thinks about it. She initially entered that world because she was photographing athletes and wanted to understand what her clients experienced. Years later, she applies a similar principle to her professional work: how can she guide someone through visibility if she doesn’t know what being visible feels like herself?
That includes being seen without having everything figured out.
India talks about sharing what you’re reading, what you’re considering, or a transition you’re currently navigating. Visibility can also happen through the relationships you continue tending during that period. Our own reconnection happened that way.
After we’d fallen out of touch for about a year, India texted me. There was no pitch or business reason behind it. She was reaching out because she was thinking of me—and I happened to badly need that message that week.
That exchange eventually led us back to each other and to this conversation.
Deciding What You Want to Scale
India is still figuring out what the next iteration of her work looks like. One question she’s sitting with is how to influence culture at scale. She’s received the familiar business advice: grow the company, add a team, serve more clients.
She’s currently experimenting with working alongside larger organizations, where her ideas can reach more people without requiring her to dramatically increase the administrative demands on her time. It connects to something India said at the beginning of our conversation when I asked what the internet’s list of her many titles was missing.
“Knowing that I’m legacy minded, that everything with me goes back to values.”
India talks about wanting her work to influence the cultures people experience and the relationships they build. Motherhood has given that interest another dimension as she thinks about what she wants her own children to know about her and the values they’ll see reflected in how she spends her time.
India Tizol
India Tizol (she/her) is a visibility strategist, facilitator, and creative director whose work sits at the intersection of values, relationships, and public presence. As the founder of Flaunt Your Fire, she supports leaders, organizations, and households in aligning how they show up with what matters most—across branding, culture, and connection. With a background spanning luxury branding, community design, revenue operations, and relational facilitation, India brings a grounded, human approach to visibility that prioritizes trust, repair, and long-term impact over tactics or trends. Her work has supported and been featured by organizations including Christian Dior, Martha Beck Inc., Forbes, and Libsyn. You can learn more about her at flauntyourfire.com
