How Good Can It Get

Ep. 137 BEST OF HGCG: The Power of Intuition & Mind-Body Connection with Brooke Herbert

Two years ago, I recorded this conversation before I had language like Work Recovery.
 
Looking back, I can see the ideas that were quietly shaping everything I believe today.
 
This episode explores:
why being told "it's just stress" can disconnect us from ourselves
the relationship between chronic stress, trauma, and physical health
learning to trust your body again
intuition versus authority
why healing rarely begins with another productivity hack
 
Brooke Herbert shares the story of spending years as a medical mystery before discovering the root causes of her illness. What emerged wasn't simply better health. It was a completely different relationship with herself.
 
If you've ever wondered whether your body is trying to tell you something your mind keeps ignoring, start here.
 
Connect with Brooke
Instagram: @goldivyhealthco
Podcast: Ivy Unleashed
Connect with Bree
Website: executiveunschool.com
Instagram: @breejohnsonofficial

Ep. 136 (BEST OF HGCG) Put Me in a Box for the Last Time with Ina Coveney

This week's episode is another special reshare from the vault—one that feels just as relevant today as it did when it first aired. Bree sits down with entrepreneur and business coach Ina Coveney to explore what happens when you're forced to rethink your career, your identity, and the stories you've been telling yourself about success.
After being passed over for a promotion while on maternity leave, Ina made the difficult decision to leave corporate and build a business on her own terms. What follows is an honest conversation about entrepreneurship, resilience, and the invisible work of unlearning the need to earn approval. Along the way, Ina introduces a metaphor Bree still thinks about today: the two horses that pull every entrepreneur's chariot. One is the clients who keep us accountable. The other is the deeper purpose that carries us through the moments when motivation disappears.
The conversation also explores the realities of being a working parent, from navigating guilt and societal expectations to recognizing that so much of the pressure we carry comes not from others—but from ourselves.
What You'll Learn in This Episode
Why leaving corporate often requires unlearning years of conditioning 
The "two horses" that keep every entrepreneur moving: client accountability and a purpose that's bigger than yourself
Why entrepreneurship doesn't eliminate pressure—it simply gives you the opportunity to choose which pressures are worth carrying
How limiting beliefs about being liked can quietly keep us playing small in business and life
Practical ways to set expectations, establish boundaries, and navigate the tension between building a business and being present at home
Connect with Ina
Instagram: @inacoveney
Connect with Bree
Website: executiveunschool.com
Instagram: @breejohnsonofficial

Ep. 135 (BEST OF HGCG) Finding Yourself as a Whole Person with Christy Bowman - White

This week's episode is a special reshare from the vault — and one of the most listened-to conversations in the show's history. Bree sits down with Christy Bowman-White, who went from middle school dropout and teenage parent to principal of a Distinguished School in Washington state... and then burned out completely.
Christy's story centers on a metaphor that's stuck with Bree ever since this conversation was first recorded: the basket. For years, Christy poured everything — her time, her identity, her worth — into the basket labeled "career," while every other basket in her life sat empty. Then the Mack truck came. In this episode, Christy gets honest about self-abandonment, the moment she realized her core value of "excellence" was really just perfectionism in disguise, and why emotional intelligence belongs at the foundation of leadership, not on the side as a soft skill.
What You'll Learn in This Episode
Why so many high-achieving women hit the "I've made it" moment only to find the felt experience is the opposite of what they were promised
The basket metaphor: what happens when every egg goes into one area of life, and how to start identifying which of your own baskets are empty
How Stephen Covey's four quadrants can be used not just for time management, but as a map for where relationships, health, and sustainability actually live
Why emotional intelligence — starting with self-awareness — is the real foundation of effective, people-centered leadership
Connect with Christy
Christy's Website
Connect with Bree
Website: executiveunschool.com
Instagram: @breejohnsonofficial

Ep. 134 Who Wants a Summertime Siesta?

Something big is coming. Bree is pulling back the curtain on what the How Good Can It Get? team has been quietly building behind the scenes — and it might be the most exciting thing this podcast has ever produced.
New guests. New series. Conversations so good she almost cried in the recording booth. Tune in to hear what's on the way and why the wait is going to be very, very worth it. The best is genuinely yet to come. How good can it get? You're about to find out.
The Upcoming Series You're Going to Want to Tell Everyone About
Exit Wounds is coming. Real women. Real exits. Corporate roles, multimillion-dollar businesses, marriages, partnerships, friendships — and in one case, an entire country. These are the stories of what happens when a woman finally stops holding on to what no longer fits and starts building the life waiting for her on the other side.
Bree has already started recording. Her words: "I almost feel like crying."
While you wait for the new series, the archives are full of exactly what you need right now. Bree is curating the best of How Good Can It Get? all summer long — the most downloaded, most shared, most life-changing episodes from nearly 70 countries of listeners. You may have heard some of them before. But you are not the same person you were then.
Connect with Bree
Website: executiveunschool.com
Instagram: @breejohnsonofficial

Ep. 133 Part 6 Work Isn't Working...How to Reclaim Joy

We've regulated. We've rewired. Now it's time to take your agency back. In the final installment of the Work Isn't Working series, Bree introduces the third step of the Work Recovery Method: Reclaim.
This episode is an honest look at the "good enough" zone so many high-achieving women quietly settle into, the victimhood cycle that keeps us pointing outward instead of turning the mirror around, and what actually becomes possible when you stop outsourcing your joy, your purpose, and your sense of self to circumstances you're waiting to change. Bree shares her own ongoing journey of shedding the shoulds, and offers a practical starting point for anyone who needs to begin reclaiming their life in small, powerful doses.
What You'll Learn in This Episode
What the "good enough" zone actually looks and feels like from the inside, and why it's so easy to stay there
Why dissatisfaction at work so often points outward, and what that pattern is really protecting
How life is a series of small identity deaths, and why that's something to move toward rather than away from
What Bree has shed over the past seven years and what it has made possible for her
Why reclaiming yourself rarely requires a dramatic pivot, and what it more often looks like in practice
The Love List exercise: what it is, how to build yours, and why it's a reclamation tool, not a productivity hack
Why joy is not a reward for finishing your work
The Love List Exercise
If big-picture reclamation feels too abstract for where you are right now, start here.
Make a list of 20 or more things that bring you genuine joy, pleasure, and happiness. Go small and specific. The first bite of ice cream on a hot day. A new bird at the feeder. A dog jumping into your lap. A particular song. A particular light.
The Work Recovery Method™: A Series Summary
Regulate — Come back into your body. Create enough internal safety to think clearly.
Rewire — Examine the agreements, beliefs, and conditioning running your life on autopilot. Choose differently.
Reclaim — Stop outsourcing your agency, your joy, and your sense of self. Build from what is genuinely yours.
This is an ongoing cycle, not a finish line. Two steps forward, one step back is still growth.
Connect with Bree
Website: executiveunschool.com
Instagram: @breejohnsonofficial

Ep. 132 Part 5: Work Isn't Working...The Hardest Part REWIRE

Most of the rules running your life were written before you were old enough to question them.
In this episode, Bree introduces the second step of the Work Recovery Method — REWIRE — and breaks down the invisible operating system underneath all of our behavior: your ABCs (agreements, beliefs, and conditioning). If you've ever changed jobs and still ended up in the same cycle or pattern of dissatisfaction, this is the episode that explains why, and what to do about it.
Key Takeaways
Your ABCs (agreements, beliefs, conditioning) are the operating system underneath all of your behavior — including the patterns you wish you could change.
Changing your external circumstances won't interrupt a pattern that lives at this level. The work has to happen from the inside
Neuroscience confirms the brain can form new neural pathways at any age but the new path will feel like a dirt road before it feels like a highway
Rewiring starts with one question: what outcome am I experiencing, and is it one I actually want?
The more aware you become of what's driving you, the more agency you feel and agency is what makes life feel expansive rather than reactive
Reflection Question Take a look at one recurring pattern in your work or relationships. What agreement, belief, or conditioning might be sitting underneath it? Is it something you chose, or something you inherited?
Connect with Bree
Insta: @breejohnsonofficial
Website: www.executiveunschool.com
Keywords: rewiring beliefs, work recovery method, agreements beliefs conditioning, burnout patterns, why the same job problems keep happening, invisible operating system, neural pathways rewiring, autopilot behavior, self-worth and work, burnout recovery tools, subconscious patterns women, how to break work cycles, ambitious women burnout, conscious living, executive burnout

Ep. 131 Part 4: Work Isn't Working, Now What? REGULATE

Work Isn't Working, Now What? Part 4: Regulate
When work stops working, the instinct is to think harder, plan faster, and do more. But what if the doing is exactly what's keeping you stuck? In part four of the Work Isn't Working series, Bree introduces the foundational step most high achievers skip entirely: regulation.
Before strategy, before decisions, before any meaningful next step, your nervous system needs to feel safe enough to think clearly. This episode explores why dysregulated states produce reactive choices, what nervous system regulation actually looks and feels like in practice, and how flipping the cultural script from Have, Do, Be to Be, Do, Have changes everything about how you build the life you actually want.
What You'll Learn in This Episode
Why the mind-in-overdrive response to professional struggle works against you, not for you
What happens in the brain during prolonged stress, and why "thinking your way out" has real physiological limits
The difference between reactive decisions and grounded ones, and how to tell which you're making
Bree's three personal regulation practices: no-headphone walks, hypnobreathwork, and meditation baths
What makes any practice a true regulation practice, and why body-focused is the key distinction
The Have, Do, Be sequence most of us inherited, and why reversing it to Be, Do, Have is where real momentum begins
The Insight Worth Writing Down
Most of us have been living a Have, Do, Be sequence: get the thing, do the work, then finally feel at peace. The sequence that actually creates abundance and joy runs the other way. You be first, grounded and connected to yourself. From there, you do with clarity and intention. And then you have more of what you've been working toward, built on a foundation that can hold it.
Reflection Question
Where in your life have you been making decisions from a dysregulated state? And what would one small regulating practice this week make possible?
Connect with Bree
Website: executiveunschool.com 
Instagram: @breejohnsonofficial
Next in the Series
Part 5 of Work Isn't Working is coming next. Once you've regulated, a whole new question becomes available to you: what do you actually want? When you're not operating from chaos, that answer might surprise you.
If this episode resonated, share it with a woman in your life who needs permission to slow down before she speeds up.

Ep. 130 Part 3: Work Isn't Working...When It's Your Whole Identity

What happens when the thing you built your entire identity around disappears? In this episode of Work Isn't Working, Bree gets personal — sharing how the intoxicating elixir of career success quietly consumed her identity through her twenties and into her thirties, until the whole thing came crashing down and forced her to ask the hardest question: Who am I without my work?
This is the episode for every high-achiever who has an easy answer to "what do you do" but a complicated one to "who are you."
In This Episode, You'll Hear: 
Why work-based identity is so seductive and how it's designed to be
The psychology of contingent self-worth and why it makes your nervous system treat setbacks like survival threats
Why you can't think your way out of an identity crisis and what actually works
The three-step Work Recovery Method: regulate, rewire, reclaim
How Bree shed the habits, relationships, and even the dream home that didn't center her values
Why rebuilding identity is slow, nonlinear, and the greatest gift you'll ever give yourself
Key Takeaways
Work-based identity isn't a character flaw — it's a seduction. Recognizing the pull is the first step.
When your sense of self lives in your job title, your nervous system responds to every setback as a survival threat.
You can't rewire what you can't see. Regulation has to come before reflection.
Identity reconstruction happens decision by decision, not overnight.
The people and habits that don't center your values are the first things to go.
Reflection Question If you woke up tomorrow and your job — your title, your role, your professional identity — was completely gone, what would be left? Who would you be?
Connect with Bree
Insta: @breejohnsonofficial
Website: www.executiveunschool.com
Keywords: work identity, burnout recovery, contingent self-worth, nervous system regulation, Work Recovery Method, overachiever burnout, identity after burnout, hustle culture, executive burnout, reclaiming yourself, who am I without my job, work wounds, conscious leadership, ambitious women

Ep. 129 Part 2: Work Isn't Working...And It's Causing Mind & Body Harm

How Work Is Quietly Harming You — Physically, Mentally & Emotionally
Part of the Work Isn't Working series on the How Good Can I Get? podcast
In this episode, host and former employment attorney digs past the surface-level conversation about workplace stress to expose the measurable, documented ways chronic work pressure is harming your body, reshaping your brain, and eroding your relationships.
From elevated cortisol and cardiovascular strain to impaired prefrontal cortex function and trauma-mirroring neurobiological patterns, this episode names what most organizations — and their EAP programs — refuse to.
If you've ever felt exhausted, reactive, or hollowed out after years of high performance, this conversation will reframe everything. Because the goal isn't to push through. It's to understand what your body has been trying to tell you all along.
Key themes
Chronic cortisol elevation: How sustained work stress keeps the body's stress hormone dangerously high for years — or decades.
Nervous system dysregulation: Fight-or-flight as a permanent background setting — and why a beach vacation won't fix it.
Cognitive impairment: Sustained pressure damages the prefrontal cortex — the very region your job demands most.
Work wounds as trauma: Columbia University research links adverse workplace experiences to trauma-like neurobiological patterns.
Systemic failure: Why legal systems, EAP programs, and affinity groups are bandaids — not solutions.
Work recovery: The shift from pushing through to listening to what your body's wisdom is actually signaling.
If this episode resonated, subscribe and leave a review — and share it with the high performer in your life who keeps saying they're "fine."
Next week: why we build our identities inside our work, and what it really costs to walk away.
Keywords:
burnout recovery, chronic workplace stress, work stress physical effects, cortisol and burnout, nervous system dysregulation, prefrontal cortex stress, work trauma, work wounds, high performer burnout, executive burnout, Sunday scaries, emotional numbness at work
Connect with Bree
Social: @breejohnsonofficial
Website: www.executiveunschool.com
Work Recovery Services: www.executiveunschool.com/services

Ep. 128 Part 1: Work Isn't Working...And Burnout Isn't the Problem

New Series: Work Isn't Working...And It's Not Just You Episode #1
Burnout gets all the attention — but what if it's not actually the root problem? In this episode, host Bree Johnson digs into why treating burnout like a time management or resilience issue keeps you stuck in the same cycle, and what's really going on underneath the surface.
If you've tried all the "fixes" and still feel off, this one will reframe everything.
In This Episode:
Why burnout is a symptom, not the source — and what it's actually pointing to
The physiological truth about chronic workplace stress and why your body isn't overreacting
What work wounds are — and how past experiences with bullying, betrayal, burnout, and bad behavior silently shape how you work today
Why changing jobs doesn't fix the feeling (and what does)
The gap nobody names: operating like a machine in a system that rewards output, while your nervous system requires something completely different
What real recovery from work actually looks like — and why it's not about doing less
Key Takeaway
You are not broken. You are responding to something real. And the moment you stop trying to fix yourself and start understanding what your system actually needs — that's when something different becomes possible.
Keywords burnout recovery, workplace stress, high achiever burnout, nervous system and work, work wounds, emotional recovery from work, burnout symptoms, high performance burnout, work trauma, sustainable career
Connect with Bree
Insta: @breejohnsonofficial
Website: www.executiveunschool.com
Work Recovery Services: www.executiveunschool.com/services