You ever feel like your worth is directly tied to how well you’re performing? Not just in your job, but in your life? Yeah. Same.
In our recent conversation on If You Have Feelings, we sat down with former pro triathlete turned breathwork coach and real estate agent Collin Chartier to unpack what happens when high achievement becomes your whole identity and what it means to come undone when that identity collapses.
The Breaking Point We Never Talk About
Collin’s world flipped when his doping suspension became public. The aftermath wasn’t just career-ending. It was identity-shattering.
This wasn’t just a moment of embarrassment. It was a full-body reckoning. When you’ve spent years grinding, pushing, and achieving at all costs, there comes a point when your nervous system says, Enough.
But instead of compassion, people often meet moments like this with judgment. And that’s part of the problem. We’re conditioned to applaud resilience, but we’re terrified of emotional reality. Especially when that reality doesn’t look like a comeback story. It looks like collapse.
Performance as Protection
For so many of us, high performance becomes armor. The gold medals, the straight A’s, the packed schedule. Those things look like success. But under the surface, they’re often masking fear, loneliness, and the terror of stillness.
This is the part of the mental health conversation we need to normalize. That feeling numb doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means you adapted. That pushing through is sometimes survival. But that healing asks you to stop. To feel. To listen.
The Weight of Having to Be “The Best”
When your identity is rooted in being “the best,” the fall feels like failure. No matter the reason.
If you’ve ever grieved your own coping mechanisms, your own perfectionism, or the role you thought you had to play just to be loved, you get it.
Collin’s story isn’t about redemption in the traditional sense. It’s about reconstruction. About being willing to ask, Who am I, if I’m not achieving? And Am I still enough, even if I never win again?
Slowing Down to Feel (Not Just Function)
Through breathwork, therapy, and time, Collin learned how to return to his body. To slow down enough to actually hear what it was trying to tell him. That he was exhausted. That he was hurting. That he didn’t have to earn rest.
So many of us never learned that. We learned to “be strong.” To “keep going.” But strength isn’t about pushing past your breaking point. Real strength is in pausing. In honesty. In softness.
That’s the kind of healing we’re interested in.
The Takeaway: You Are Not Your Productivity
Whether you’re an elite athlete, a corporate overachiever, or just someone trying to keep your life from falling apart, you don’t have to earn your right to rest.
Overwhelm isn’t weakness. It’s your body asking for something different. And healing isn’t always glamorous. Sometimes it looks like breaking down in a parked car. Or breathing through tears on a yoga mat. Or having the courage to admit: I’m not okay.
But from that place? You can rebuild something honest. Something whole.
Something real.
About Collin Chartier
Collin Chartier (he/him/his) pursued the life of a professional athlete since he was 12 years old. He competed professionally in the sport of triathlon for 8 years, achieving top 11 ranked triathlete in the world in 2022 and winning major races around the world. In 2023, he tested positive for a banned substance and took a 3 year ban from professional sports. Collin left on a 5.5 month bike-packing trip from California through Colombia, where everything changed for him. He returned to Colorado and is now a top producing realtor and certified breathwork coach and facilitator.
Follow @collinchartier on Instagram for more.
