Finding Bliss after Burnout

Recorded from a quirky pink hotel on the Gold Coast during a solo business trip, Michelle shares a moment that stopped her in her tracks: watching an elderly couple at dinner, sitting side by side, sharing toasted sandwiches and wine, completely present with each other. No phones, no rush — just quiet togetherness.
That moment sparked this episode's central question: what are you waiting for?
Michelle unpacks the habit so many of us fall into — postponing real life until "someday." Waiting until the kids are older, until the job gets easier, until there's more money, until burnout passes. She reflects on her own post-burnout realization that she was surviving, not living, and how she made the decision to stop waiting for permission or perfect timing to start actually showing up for her life.
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In this episode, Michelle sits down with Dr. Toby Brooks — performance scientist, professor, coach, and leading voice in the science of resilience and reinvention — for a conversation about identity loss, grief, and rebuilding when "the person you used to be no longer fits."
After more than 20 years studying how elite performers navigate adversity, Toby shares his own story of chasing (and ultimately grieving the loss of) a college basketball career, and how that experience shaped the frameworks he now uses to help athletes, healthcare workers, executives, and everyday people move through transition. Michelle connects this to her own journey from critical care ED nurse to entrepreneur, and the two dig into what it really takes to grieve a former identity, find alignment, and build forward into a new chapter.

What You'll Learn
Why gratitude and grief can't coexist — and how reframing grief into gratitude changes your emotional state
Toby's personal story of grieving the end of his basketball dreams, and how it shaped his career path into athletic training
How to tell the difference between a season that's ending and one worth pushing through ("the million dollar question")
The UNDONE framework for navigating identity loss and reinvention: Uncover, Define, Overcome, Navigate, Execute
The "door" ritual Toby uses with graduating students to mark closure and new beginnings
The concept of a "purpose storm" — what happens when your sense of identity and purpose is suddenly destabilized
Why struggle and adversity make your story "holdable" for others
The UCVMV framework for high achievers: Ultimate Concern, Vision, Mission, Values
Why tying your self-worth to output and performance can be a mask — and what happens when the mask starts wearing you
Treating setbacks as data, not failure

Key Quotes
"Gratitude and grief cannot coexist together."
"Don't be sad that it's over. Just be thankful that it happened."
"We don't need to bounce back. We need to build forward."
"The adversity, the struggle, the strain — those add handholds that other people can grab hold of."
"It's not failure. It's data."

About Dr. Toby Brooks
Dr. Toby Brooks is a performance scientist, professor, and coach who has spent more than 20 years studying how elite performers navigate adversity. Through his work with athletes, military personnel, executives, and everyday people, he helps them understand that life's greatest setbacks can become the catalyst for their next chapter. His new book is due out this September, with pre-orders opening in August.

www.DrTobyBrooks.com 
@DrTobyBrooks on Insta, FB, and LinkedIn

Fresh off a family trip to the Gold Coast, Michelle tackles a comment that's been grinding her gears: "You're so lucky." Lucky she gets to travel. Lucky she only works casually. Lucky her husband owns a business.
In this episode, Michelle pulls back the curtain on what people don't see — the years of burnout, the rock-bottom moments, and the hundreds of small decisions that built the life she has now. She shares her own story of nursing burnout, the wine-every-night spiral, and the single decision that changed everything.
If you're a nurse who knows something needs to change but isn't sure where to start, Michelle invites you to check out the Aligned Nurse Method Program — a self-paced program to help you uncover your values, understand your burnout patterns, and start building a career and life that support you.
🔗 [Click here for the Aligned Nurse Method Program ]

What if the burnout you keep cycling back into isn't a willpower problem, but a wiring problem? In this episode, Michelle sits down with EFT practitioner Faye Chan to unpack why tips, techniques, and morning routines so often fail to create lasting change — and what actually does.
Faye explains how Emotional Freedom Techniques (tapping) works, why the body "keeps the score," and how patterns anchored in childhood quietly run our careers, relationships, and habits decades later. Through a series of vivid client stories — a five-year-old who couldn't give up her bottle, a business owner stuck under six figures, a chocolate-hoovering emotional eater, and a pilot whose need for control served his career but wrecked his relationships — she shows how rewiring the source of a pattern changes everything downstream. Faye also shares her own story of caning, report cards, and the moment she realised her seven-year-old self had chosen her corporate career.
A genuinely eye-opening conversation for anyone stuck in survival mode, people-pleasing, or their "third burnout" wondering why they can't shake it.

https://linktr.ee/livingwellwithfay 
www.instagram.com/livingwellwithfay

Michelle shares the one step in her manifestation process she keeps forgetting—and the wild story of how a commercial property purchase she'd been stressing over for months finally came through the exact moment she surrendered. Even after teaching manifestation for 4-5 years, she still trips up on this one. Every. Single. Time.
Click here to register for the Manifestation Masterclass