How Good Can It Get

Sometimes my resistance shows up right when things are going well.
Maybe yours does too.
This week, the daily podcast and my 999-word writing ritual have started to feel mundane, kind of like opening a pantry full of snacks I can’t eat anymore. A friend told me her season is about turning the ordinary into extraordinary moments, and it sent me back to one of my favorite books, Gay Hendricks’ The Big Leap. His idea of an inner thermostat changed how I see my own resistance, and it might change how you see yours.
This episode explores:
The inner thermostat that limits how much good we let ourselves feel
Why our upper limit gets set by what feels familiar instead of what we deserve
The four hidden barriers that keep our thermostat low, and the one I rumble with most
Why so many women learned to be impressive, just not too impressive
How naming your upper limit helps you push past resistance without slipping back into hustle culture
Here’s a question to sit with: next time you feel resistance, ask yourself what good feeling you might be trying to avoid. And if you know a woman who keeps dimming her light to stay liked, send this episode her way.
Connect with BreeWebsite: executiveunschool.comInstagram: @breejohnsonofficial x @executiveunschool

Most days this month, I’ve felt resistance before doing the very things I chose to do. Maybe you’ve felt that too.
I committed to recording a daily podcast and writing 999 words a day for the book I’ve wanted to write since I was a little girl. Some mornings, folding laundry sounds better than either one. For a long time, I read that resistance as a warning. Now I’m wondering whether my internal alarm is working off an old map.
This episode explores:
Why resistance can feel like danger after a season of self-abandonment
How the friction of growth and the friction of betraying yourself can feel the same in the body
What Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art taught me about Resistance with a capital R
Two questions that help me decide whether resistance is worth pushing through
How small changes to my environment are making the hard work feel like coming home
Here’s a question to sit with: where are you feeling resistance right now, and what might it be pointing you toward? And if you know a woman who’s starting something meaningful and doubting herself, send this episode her way.
Curious what your work wounds are asking for this season? Take the Work Recovery® Audit at workrecovery.com.
Connect with BreeWebsite: executiveunschool.comInstagram: @breejohnsonofficial x @executiveunschool

If I give myself grace, will I lose my edge?
Maybe you’ve wondered that too.
If you built your career on getting everything done without complaint, letting yourself off the hook can feel like opening Pandora’s box. As an Enneagram 3, I’ve wrestled with this one for years. Part of the answer lies in how our culture rewards grit, and in what that’s taught us to call discipline.
This episode explores:
How the word “discipline” got hijacked by hustle culture
Why so many high achievers fear that grace will make everything unravel
Redefining discipline as devotion to your craft, your work and yourself
What a missed workout teaches us about grace that gets you back up the next day
How to tell when grace is helping you return, and when it’s become an excuse
Here’s a question to sit with: what would it feel like to be held by both grace and devotion, instead of choosing between them? And if you know a woman who’s afraid to slow down because she thinks she’ll lose herself, send this episode her way.
Curious where you are in your own work recovery? Take the Work Recovery® Audit at workrecovery.com.
Connect with BreeWebsite: executiveunschool.comInstagram: @breejohnsonofficial x @executiveunschool

After burnout, so many of us start asking when we’ll get back to normal and feel like ourselves again.
In this episode, I give you my honest answer. You may never return to the version of you who existed before burnout... and that might be the best news.
When you look at your patterns with radical honesty, you find things you want to change. That could be how you work, how you show up for your work, or how you separate your worth from your output. Those changes become who you are now. And yet there can be real grief in letting go of the woman who could push through anything, especially when the people around you got used to her.
I also share where I am right now in writing my book, using a ritual of 999 words a day. That excavation has shown me a built-in “governor” I didn’t have in my chief-level years, and I’m learning to trust it.
In this episode
Why “getting back to normal” may be the wrong goal after burnout
Grieving the version of you who could handle anything, and remembering what that capacity cost your health and your peace
The pushback that comes when your new boundaries affect the people around you
Why the urge to come back sharper and faster is an old pattern in a new flavor
Small kept promises that rebuild self-trust, like taking lunch away from your desk or leaving when you said you would
Meeting old reflexes with curiosity and grace when they come back
Take the Work Recovery Audit
I worked really hard on this one. The audit helps you slow down and notice what you might be carrying from work, then maps your answers to the Work Recovery Method (Regulate, Rewire, Reclaim). It tells you which phase to start in. Take it at workrecovery.com or find it linked at executiveunschool.com. I’d love to hear what you think.
Share the show
If this episode helped you, follow or subscribe and leave a rating. Then send it to the friend who keeps saying “I’m fine,” with a note that says, “This made me think of you.”
Connect with BreeWebsite: executiveunschool.comInstagram: @breejohnsonofficial x @executiveunschool

I’ve wrestled with this one for years: when do I give myself grace, and when do I push through?
After burnout, your internal alarm system can get out of whack. Some women feel like everything is forcing. Others feel so numb that nothing registers at all. No one can watch you work and tell you whether you’re in flow. You’re the instrument, and this episode helps you tune it so you can feel into what force and flow feel like for you.
This episode explores:
What flow actually is, and why it needs challenge to show up
How forcing borrows energy from caffeine, fear and self-abandonment
Four questions that help you tell flow from forcing
The difference between the friction of growth and the friction of betraying yourself
Small, low-stakes check-ins that rebuild your connection with yourself after burnout
Here’s a question to sit with: pick one task on your list this week. Does it renew your energy, or does it borrow from somewhere you’ll have to pay back later? And if you know a woman who’s trying to find her way back after burnout, send this episode her way.
Connect with BreeWebsite: executiveunschool.comInstagram: @breejohnsonofficial x @executiveunschool

When a woman comes to me after burnout, I ask her what she wants for herself. Most of the time, she can’t answer.
Maybe you can’t either.
She can tell you exactly what her team needs and what her boss expects. Her own desires are much harder to find. That long pause says a lot. Burnout is the work wound our culture has finally named, and underneath it, so often, is self-abandonment.
In this episode, I share how that showed up in my own career, and why rest alone rarely heals it. This episode explores:
The quiet ways we override our own signals to be seen as valuable and worthy
How years of small overrides add up to losing contact with yourself
Why so many women rebuild the same burnout pattern in a new job with a new title
How workplaces reward self-abandonment and call it a compliment
Why a few days of PTO can’t rewire a lifetime of putting your needs last
Here’s a question to sit with: where did you first learn that your needs could wait when it comes to your work? And if someone you love keeps saying “I’m fine,” send this episode her way.
Connect with BreeWebsite: executiveunschool.comInstagram: @breejohnsonofficial x @executiveunschool

I’ve said “I’m burned out” in the same breath as “I’m tired.”
Maybe you have too.
In the past few episodes, we redefined growth as capacity expansion. This week, I’m looking at what happens when our capacity gets pushed past its edge for too long.
Burnout might be the most overused word in work culture right now, and I think it’s one of the least understood. We use it as a catch-all, then take some PTO and expect a week off to fix something that took years to build.
So in this episode, we get more precise. This episode explores:
How the WHO actually defines burnout, and why it’s specific to work
The signs of burnout that go beyond exhaustion, including cynicism and declining confidence
The mismatch between people and their jobs in areas like workload, control, fairness and values
Why the cleanup for a systemic problem keeps getting assigned to individual women
What I saw as an employment attorney when people changed jobs and the harm followed them
Here's a question to sit with: when you say you’re burned out, what do you actually mean? Getting specific is the first step toward finding your way back. And if this episode made you think of someone who’s running on empty, send it her way.
Connect with BreeWebsite: executiveunschool.com
Instagram: @breejohnsonofficial x @executiveunschool

I used to believe growth came from pushing harder.
This week, I've been redefining growth as capacity expansion: the capacity to hold more of my own truth and to stay with myself when life gets full. That definition leads to a better question. If growth is capacity, what actually expands it?
In this episode, I share my answer in two parts.
The first is environment. So many of us leave a job that hurt us and then keep living in the conditions that caused the hurt. When the same patterns show up again, we blame ourselves. Changing the conditions around you creates room for growth that willpower alone can't force.
The second is the promises we keep to ourselves. As a former employment attorney, I think of these as the unspoken contracts we have with ourselves. Self-trust gets built one honored term at a time, and every small promise kept tells you that you can count on yourself. That trust is the fuel that lets you hold more.
I also share what these two rules look like in my life right now, as physical health becomes my number one priority after some eye-opening news.
This episode explores:
Why growth needs the right conditions before it needs more effort
How work wounds keep us stuck in old environments, even after we leave
Small environmental shifts you can make right where you are, without burning it all down
Self-trust as a contract you build with yourself, one kept promise at a time
Why quiet growth, like a doctor's appointment or a boundary no one notices, still counts
If your growth looks quiet right now, I see you. This weekend, choose one small promise to yourself that you know you'll keep. Then keep it, and notice what it feels like to be someone you can count on.
Connect with BreeWebsite: executiveunschool.comInstagram: @breejohnsonofficial

I'm becoming suspicious of the way I've defined growth for most of my life.
For 20 years, I lived inside reports. As managing partner, COO, and chief strategy officer, I watched revenue, headcount and expense trends, and the "successful" direction of every line was up. Flat meant a problem. A sharp decline meant a crisis.
Somewhere along the way, I started measuring my own life the same way. More clients meant better. A fuller calendar meant I was growing. Anything that slowed down felt like falling behind. I carried that pattern right into my work as founder and Editor in Chief of Executive Unschool.
This week, after so many of you responded to Wednesday's letter, I wanted to keep exploring this in real time. I don't have it all figured out.
What I do have is a new definition that's been coming online for me over the past few months: growth as capacity expansion. Capacity to hold more of my own truth. Capacity to stay with myself when things get hard. Sometimes that means adding something, and sometimes it means clearing space.
This episode explores:
The invisible architecture behind how we define growth, and how much of it comes straight from balance sheets
How the ABCs (agreements, beliefs, conditioning) from years of work shape what we call "success"
Why chasing more can be one of the sneakiest forms of self-abandonment
Clearing space as growth, including what I let go of before September's new moon
Steady seasons, flat lines and decisions made from self-trust
If your growth right now looks quiet or steady, or even like a season of contraction, I hope this gives you another way to measure it.
Ambition is beautiful. Big, audacious goals are the essence of how good it can get. Let's make sure our measures of growth include how we actually feel.
Connect with BreeWebsite: executiveunschool.comInstagram: @breejohnsonofficial

I know what it feels like when the thing you built becomes the thing you have to leave.
Ashlei Rolloff got the email on her day off. The million-dollar agency she had built was being divested and spun out to her. On paper, it was a gift. Inside, it showed her how much of her worth had been tied to her VP title and her output.
In this episode, Ashlei shares the grief that came in waves and the very specific ways she has rebuilt since, including a sovereign morning and a last hour of the day that belongs to her alone.
The beauty in her story is this: the exit opened a new door, and the healing work is what let her walk through it.
This episode explores:
What happens in the body when a work identity ruptures overnight
The healing practices Ashlei layered over time
Using Human Design to build a calendar that prevents burnout
Early warning signs, and permission to be unapologetically you
Featured: Build Your Personal Life Coach Agent
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Friend, if you're in that in-between season, I hope this conversation helps you feel less alone. How good can it get?
Connect with AshleiWebsite: https://www.nerdherdpro.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleirolloff/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ashleirolloff/
Connect with BreeWebsite: executiveunschool.comInstagram: @breejohnsonofficial