You Are Not A Frog

Note: This is a re-release of one of our most-listened to episodes — originally recorded Autumn 2025. We've given it a new edit because it's more relevant than ever.
If you know you need to do something about how you're feeling — but you keep telling yourself "not yet" — this is for you. We are very good at spotting danger in other people. Sepsis, red flags, a patient or client deteriorating. We act fast. With ourselves, we don't. We wait until it becomes catastrophic — a patient or client complaint, an error because our brain isn't working properly, our health going — before we give ourselves permission to act. This episode is about why doing nothing feels safer, why it isn't, and how to make the next step small enough you can actually take it. Not handing in your notice. One doable thing.
Download the free Burnout Self-Assessment Toolkit — work through it as you listen: https://youarenotafrog.com/toolkit/
We cover:
• Why we spot burnout and overwhelm in everyone else but not in ourselves
• The three psychological traps that keep high achievers stuck: status quo bias, loss aversion, and sunk cost — including the thought "I've given 10 or 20 years to this, I can't stop now"
• Why our ingrained programming tells us the misery we know is safer than the uncertainty we don't — and how that will affect your next decision, and the one after that
• Why waiting has a cost too — your health, your relationships, your character — and why that cost keeps going up and can be devastating
• How to decide your line before burnout decides it for you — your "kill criteria" — so you don't wait for catastrophe
• How to make the next step small enough you can actually take it: one conversation you've been avoiding, one boundary, one phone call to a trusted person — shame shrinks when you speak it
This episode is for you if you are a high achiever in a leadership role who has to have the conversation nobody else will, has to make the call someone disagrees with, or lies awake replaying a decision you had to make — and you can feel the heat building, but you keep telling yourself to keep going.
Hosted by Rachel Morris | You Are Not a Frog - for high achievers who want to care deeply and carry less.
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Burnout Self-Assessment Toolkit: https://youarenotafrog.com/toolkit/
#burnout #burnoutrecovery #highachievers
Mentioned in this episode:
🟦 [FREE WEBINAR] How to Beat Burnout and Escape Burnout on Repeat

Every high-achieving leader has a to-do list that doesn't end — it just refills. And the only response most of us were ever handed for that is push harder. Grip tighter. Muscle through. In this episode, Rachel talks to Ellen Coomber, co-founder of the Softness Revolution, about why that instinct — the one we were trained into from exams onward — stops working, and what she does instead. Ellen has a genetics degree from Cambridge; she is not someone who arrived at this by avoiding rigour. She arrived at it because pushing harder had genuinely stopped working, and she had to find something else. This conversation is about that something else: working with less effort, not more, and learning to tell the difference between an instinct worth trusting and fear wearing an instinct's clothes. Getting that distinction wrong is how we end up saying yes to the thing that breaks us, and it will affect the next decision too, and the one after that.
We cover:
Why "work harder" is the only tool most high achievers were ever handed for pressure — and where that training actually started
The Softness Revolution: what "soft" means when it isn't the opposite of capable
What solo-sailing a 40-foot boat taught Ellen about the difference between soft and weak
What horses know about force that most leadership training never mentions
How to tell your actual instinct apart from fear when they feel identical
Why more effort is not always the effective option, and what to do with the effort you're not using

This episode is for you if...
...you're looking at a to-do list that never actually shrinks, and your automatic response is to push harder, focus more, try again — even though that's the exact same plan you had last week, and the week before. If some part of you already suspects that working harder isn't the answer but you don't yet have a working alternative, or a language for it, this one's for you.
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🐸 Learn more about Ellen: https://thepowerofsoftness.com
Mentioned in this episode:
🟦 Permission to Thrive
⭐️ Book Your FrogFest Ticket Now

Nearly one in three people who take time off for burnout are off again within a year - and over half of them work in healthcare. This episode is about why that keeps happening, and it isn't because anyone's weak.
You go back to the same poisoned water, you carry the same responsibility you carried before, and now there's something extra on top of it - a shame tax, the pressure to prove you're fine, to prove the time off wasn't a mark against you. Rachel walks through the Bent Tent Pole - why the same load bends you faster the second time round - and makes the case that the fix was never more resilience. It's changing what you believe is actually yours to carry.
We cover:
Why nearly 3 in 10 people relapse into burnout within a year of returning
The poisoned water analogy - why rest alone can't fix a toxic system
Why dropping hours or changing roles often doesn't touch the real problem
The Responsibility Trap: picking up what everyone else drops
The Bent Tent Pole - why the same weight bends you faster the second time
The Shame Tax: the extra load you carry just for having needed the break
Why waiting for the system to fix itself keeps you stuck
The Performance Zone - what boundaries actually look like in practice

This episode is for you if...
You're a high achiever in a leadership role who's been back at work for a while now and can feel it building again - the same tightness, the same countdown to the next break. You're the one who has to pick up what someone else dropped, who has to say yes because no one else has the whole picture, who lies awake replaying whether you're actually cut out for this. Hard as that is to admit, it's not a character flaw. It's physics, and there's a different way to carry it.
The tent pole bent because of the load, not because you were weak. You can do the work without being responsible for all of it.
📩 Join 20,000 professionals: https://youarenotafrog.com/welcome/
🐸 Get exclusive episodes and resources by joining FrogXtra: https://youarenotafrog.com/members
Mentioned in this episode:
⭐️ Book Your FrogFest Ticket Now

There's a project you've been meaning to start, a conversation you've been meaning to have, or a change you've been meaning to make. You know that you can do it, but what you can't quite find is the moment, the time, or the right conditions…and so it waits.
Robbie Swale is a coach and author who has spent years thinking about why capable, intelligent, hard-working people don't start the things they most want to do, and what it takes to change that. In this conversation, we explore the idea that the problem isn't time; it never really was.
We cover:
The 12 Minute Method: how Robbie wrote 80,000 words in three years by dedicating twelve minutes a week, and why that's not as absurd as it sounds
Why time management is largely choice management, and what that means for the things you keep deprioritising
Why the internet makes it harder to start, and how to stop comparing your beginning to someone else's middle
How to protect a new idea before it's ready to be criticised
How to approach a big change without betting everything on it going right the first time

This episode is for you if you are the person who does the hard things, who shows up and delivers, but who also has that specific project or version of your life that keeps moving slightly out of reach. This episode may give you a slightly different question about what's actually in your way.

📩 Join 20,000 professionals: https://youarenotafrog.com/welcome/
🐸 Get exclusive episodes and resources by joining FrogXtra: https://youarenotafrog.com/members
Mentioned in this episode:
🟦 [FREE WEBINAR] How to Beat Burnout and Escape Burnout on Repeat
🐸 Enquire Now About Our Training

Most of us were taught that having limits is a weakness - something to push through, not something to honour. And if you're a doctor, a nurse, a vet, or anyone in a high-stakes role, that message arrived early and arrived hard. The result is a profession full of people operating at full stretch capacity without realising it, because full stretch became the new normal so gradually that we stopped noticing.
In this conversation with Sarah Coope - former GP, CEO of Wild Monday, and executive coach - we explore what happens when we stop thinking about limits altogether, and start thinking about capacity instead.
We cover:
Why the word "limits" triggers guilt, and what happens when you replace it with "capacity"
The TEAM model: Time, Energy, Attention, and Money - the four dimensions of our capacity, and why overstretching one always costs you somewhere else
The elastic band analogy: what it looks like when one corner of your square gets pulled too far, and what it takes to come back
Why operating at the edge of burnout can blunt your awareness of how stretched you really are
Micro-recovery and third spaces: small, practical ways to build recovery into a day that leaves no room for it
"Guilt with an i" - why the discomfort of saying no isn't a sign you're doing something wrong. It may be a sign you're doing something right for the first time
How to communicate your capacity to colleagues and managers without apologising for being human

This episode is for you if you know intellectually that you can't keep running this hard, but the alternative feels selfish, or like letting people down, or just not who you are. It may help you understand why what you call a "limit" is actually something worth knowing about yourself, and why caring for your own capacity is not the opposite of caring for your patients or clients - it may be the condition for it.
📩 Join 20,000 professionals: https://youarenotafrog.com/welcome/
🐸 Get exclusive episodes and resources by joining FrogXtra: https://youarenotafrog.com/members
About Sarah Coope:
Sarah Coope is a former GP, medical educator, and executive coach who works with healthcare professionals and high achievers on burnout, resilience, and sustainable performance. Her own experience of burnout is what drives her work - she coaches from the inside, not from above
Mentioned in this episode:
🐸 Enquire Now About Our Training
🟦 [FREE WEBINAR] How to Beat Burnout and Escape Burnout on Repeat