Burnout Solutions- Stress Management Tools For High Achievers and Healthcare Workers

Declaring Emotional Independence (Replay) Mona shares that summer parenting with teenagers and getting less sleep in Boise has made her more emotionally reactive, so she’s replaying a popular episode on emotional independence in the spirit of the 4th of July. She explains how many of us hand the “remote control” of our feelings to kids, spouses, coworkers, or strangers, and how codependency and ol...

Resentment- What It's Really About Mona unpacks what resentment really is and why it shows up when an unspoken need goes unmet or a boundary never gets drawn (or held). Using familiar examples—summer parenting overload, saying yes to a “quick” favor that keeps expanding, or always picking up extra shifts—she explains how resentment can feel like it’s about other people, but is often a mirror point...

Laziness Gets a Bad Rap In episode 64, Mona unpacks why the word “lazy” can be both inaccurate and damaging—especially for high achievers who beat themselves up when they hit a wall. She walks through what’s actually happening in the body when motivation disappears, including the nervous system’s shutdown/freeze response, and why you can’t “push through” an emergency-brake state with more discipli...

It's not Work- Life Balance that we are after- It's Integration In the final episode of the Work and Play series, Mona ties everything together and challenges the idea that “work-life balance” is the goal, arguing that balance can frame work and life as enemies and leave high achievers feeling guilty on both sides. Instead, she explores work-life integration—bringing meaning, humor, creativity, co...

Play Like You Mean It: A Practical Plan to Restore Your Nervous System In episode six of Mona’s Work and Play series on Burnout Solutions, she digs deeper into Charlie Hoehn’s book Play It Away and how restoring play helped him resolve burnout and anxiety after relentless overwork. Mona describes how anxiety can show up in the body, why common wellness tools may help only marginally if play has be...

Work and Play, Ep 5: The Happiness Gap and Getting Macronutrients Right Mona reflects on her son’s high school graduation and uses it to introduce the “happiness gap” many high achievers feel when accomplishments don’t deliver lasting satisfaction. She explains the hedonic treadmill and Arthur Brooks’ idea of the striver’s curse: dopamine fuels the chase, not the arrival, so the baseline rese...

E60: Work and Play, Ep 4: Stop Escaping Your life! The Truth about Vacations and 7 Ways to Enjoy Work More Mona explores the “vacation treadmill”—working relentlessly to earn a break, briefly resetting on vacation, then returning home to a life that quickly erases the relief. She explains how anticipation, slow decompression, and pre-return dread can make vacations feel like they carry an imp...

Getting Better at Leisure- Let's Do it Right Mona reframes leisure as a skill—not a reward—and explains why many high achievers still feel empty after weekends, vacations, or binge-worthy downtime. Building on earlier episodes about work stories and play deprivation, she shares ideas from Harvard professor Arthur Brooks, including the distinction between pleasure (quick dopamine relief that fades)...

Work and Play, Episode 2: Why Play Is Medicine (Not a Reward) Mona continues her Work and Play series by diving into play as a key solution to burnout, drawing on Dr. Stuart Brown and Brené Brown, including the idea that “the opposite of play is not work, it’s depression.” She explains that play isn’t obligation, multitasking “rest,” or a stressful vacation, but an intrinsically motivated, absorbi...

Work and Play, Episode 1: Why Rest Feels So Hard for High Achievers Mona kicks off the summer Work and Play series by exploring why rest can feel uncomfortable—or even impossible—for high achievers, especially in healthcare. She invites listeners to examine the stories they were handed about work, productivity, and worth, sharing how nonstop work was modeled in her own farm upbringing and later re...

Episode 56: How to Say an Intentional Yes Mona shares takeaways from attending the Idaho PTA convention as a middle school PTA President, including the growing need for volunteers and how easy it is for high achievers to say yes too fast and then feel overwhelmed or resentful. She explains that the issue is deeper than “just say no,” often rooted in patterns like people pleasing, avoiding conflict...

What I do as a Nervous System Resilience Life Coach and Free Regulation Tools Mona answers a listener question: what a life coach specializing in nervous system resilience actually does. She explains that she helps busy high achievers notice their stress-response patterns, build regulation, and gently rewire those patterns so they can change behaviors and feel more fulfilled—without needing a perf...

Habits Help if They are Anchored in Regulation Mona speaks to caregivers and high achievers—healthcare workers, teachers, and parents—who are great at showing up for others but often struggle to care for themselves because their systems are overloaded. She explains how constant decision-making drains the prefrontal cortex, adds stress to the nervous system, and can lead to procrastination, avoidan...

The Sneaky Habits that Sabotage Your Goals This episode explores why high achievers struggle to change long-standing behaviors and argues that inconsistency isn’t a discipline or motivation problem, but begins “seconds earlier” in subtle, believable thoughts and nervous system states that predecide actions. Using examples like hitting snooze, skipping workouts, and overeating, it explains how neur...

Easter- The Message of Hope for Our Humaness This is a special episode where Mona explains her beliefs and what she has learned about the nervous system and the human brain and how it has brought her more compassion for her mistakes and helps her forgive other people. She explains a great metaphor on why to rely on Jesus by "yoking yourself" with him to help create an intentional, joyful life. The...

Consistency or Control? A Message for High Achievers The episode explores how high achievers often mistake consistency for tighter control, rigid rules, and perfect execution, which can create fear-driven pressure, black-and-white thinking, and hyperarousal that eventually leads to burnout and collapse into hypoarousal (“what’s the point?”). It contrasts compliance/control (following external rule...

Loving Yourself to Health: Nervous System, Emotional Eating, and Sustainable Habits If you want to learn more about breaking emotional eating habits, get this course! For only $37 Mona shares the audio from a February community webinar with life coach April Diaz on “loving yourself to health,” focusing on emotional eating and how sustainable habits come from nervous system safety rather than self-...

Allostatic Load with Brent Bartel and Practical Ways to Lighten the Load In part two of Mona’s conversation with Brent Bartel, they move from the science of allostatic load into how it shows up in real life—and what you can actually do about it. Brent walks through common symptom clusters and measurable biomarkers (like blood pressure, resting heart rate, triglycerides, A1C/glucose, inflammation m...

Allostatic Load: When Your Stress Response Never Fully Shuts Off (with Brent Bartel) Mona introduces Burnout Solutions guest Brent Bartel, a coach she met in person in the Phoenix/Mesa area, and explains this conversation had to be split into two parts because they talked for so long. In part one, Mona and Brent define allostasis (the body’s adaptive stabilizing process, related to homeostasis) an...

A Regulated Life: What Real Progress Looks Like Beyond Limiting Beliefs (Part 3) Mona wraps up the limiting beliefs series by shifting from theory into what progress actually looks like when you start living with a more regulated nervous system. She explains that change isn’t linear—it’s often 1% better moments, faster recovery, and catching old patterns sooner without spiraling into self-judgment...

Limiting Beliefs Aren’t “Just Who You Are” How Mona Uses Nervous System Safety to Change Habits and Identity Mona continues her Burnout Solutions series on limiting beliefs and explains that these beliefs aren’t simply “bad thoughts,” but nervous system stories formed to explain and manage survival or distress states. She describes how nervous system states shape sensations, feelings, behaviors, t...

Limiting Beliefs- Why Thought Work Sometimes Doesn't Help In this episode, Mona delves into the intricacies of how limiting beliefs are formed and why they can be so challenging to change. Drawing inspiration from observing Olympians and their positive mindsets, she explores the connection between mindset, habits, and performance. Mona explains the pivotal role of the nervous system in creating an...

Screen Time and Emotional Resilience Explained By Dr John Condie In this episode of Burnout Solutions, host Mona interviews Dr. John Condie, a pediatric neurologist from Boise, Idaho. They discuss the significant impacts of screens, social media, and video games on children's brain development and emotional resilience. Dr. Condie explains the roles of the amygdala and prefrontal cortex, their deve...

Overcoming Upper Limit Problems for Greater Abundance In this episode, Mona delves into the concept of 'Upper Limit Problems,' inspired by the book 'The Big Leap' by Gay Hendricks. She discusses how arguing against possibilities often means arguing for one's own limitations and how our nervous system's comfort zone can restrict growth and success. Through examples, including those from healthcare...

E43: Expanding Capacity to Receive Do you find it challenging to accept compliments, receive gifts, or let others help you? Join Mona as she explores how these patterns may be hindering your goals and your ability to receive more. In this episode, Mona discusses the importance of expanding our capacity to receive with grace and how it ties into achieving our goals. She shares client experiences an...