The 40% and the 60%

In 2021, during what became known as the Great Resignation, over 34 million Americans voluntarily left their jobs—roughly 40% of the U.S. workforce.

The number alone should give us pause.

What’s even more striking is the reason.

When researchers later studied the trend, one of the strongest predictors of turnover wasn’t pay, workload, or remote flexibility. It was toxic workplace culture.

What struck me most wasn’t the forty percent who left.
It was the sixty percent who stayed.

Forty percent is enormous.

But sixty percent is larger.

If culture was the primary driver of departure, then many of the environments people left likely didn’t transform overnight.

Which means millions of people are still navigating those same conditions.

This isn’t an accusation.
It’s an observation.

Human beings are remarkably adaptable.

We can normalize almost anything if we stay in it long enough.

We internalize our reactions.
We tell ourselves it isn’t personal.
We coach ourselves to “suck it up.”
To buckle down.
To grin and bear it.

We suppress irritation.
We minimize exhaustion.
We convince ourselves this is just what adulthood requires.

At first, that adaptation is protective.

It allows us to function.
To maintain income.
To preserve stability.

But there is a subtle cost.

When an environment repeatedly requires you to mute your reactions, override your instincts, or reinterpret discomfort as personal weakness — irritation, dread, exhaustion, that quiet sense that something isn’t right — something begins to shift internally.

You stop questioning the environment, and you start questioning yourself.

Over time, that recalibration becomes automatic.

Incremental.

A gradual erosion of internal reference.

The Great Resignation wasn’t just about leaving jobs.

It reflected a collective threshold — nervous systems reaching the limit of what they could, or were willing to, absorb.

And if enough people have to leave in order to survive a culture, the problem isn’t individual resilience.

It’s what we’ve normalized.

What does it mean to live inside environments that reward distortion?

Where misalignment is routine — and individuals quietly conclude something must be wrong with them?

Adaptation is a strength.

But not all adaptation is growth.

Some adaptation slowly disconnects us from ourselves.

And if we continue to normalize that disconnection — personally or culturally — we shouldn’t be surprised when anxiety, burnout, and depression rise alongside it.

Health requires alignment.

Individually and collectively.

And that begins by paying attention to the internal signals we’ve been taught to override.

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