You Are Not A Frog
The podcast for GPs, hospital doctors and other professionals in high-stakes, high-stress jobs who want to thrive rather than just survive. You studied for years, you’re really good at what you do but you’ve noticed that you’re starting to feel overwhelmed, overworked and under-resourced. You may be comparing yourself to a frog in boiling water - the heat has built up so slowly that you haven’t noticed the extra-long days becoming the norm. You may feel on the edge and trapped in the very job that you’ve spent years working towards. Here’s the problem, frogs only h...
10
The Real Reason You Can't Switch Off (with Nick Petrie)
<p>Do you lie awake replaying a decision you had to make? That work anxiety loop where you can't stop thinking about work even when you are home? Maybe you've told yourself burnout is just the occupational hazard of this job.</p><p>You've tried to put things in place — to leave on time, to say no more often — and you just can't seem to hold them. What if you are solving the wrong problem? It's not a work stress problem, but an identity one.</p><p>Our ingrained programming tells us we have to tie who we are to how...
Doing Nothing Feels Safe - That's What Makes It Dangerous
<p>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.</p><p>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...
Try Softer, Not Harder
<p>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 someth...
Going Back After Burnout When Nothing Has Changed
<p>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.</p><p>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...
The 12-Minute Method for Getting Stuff Done
<p>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.</p><p>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 re...
How to Embrace Your Capacity Instead of Defining Your Limits
<p>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.</p><p>In this conversation with Sarah Coope - former GP, CEO of Wild Monday, and executive coach - we explore what happens when we stop thinking about...
Is Your Dedication the Reason You're Burning Out?
<p>Most of us have been told that burnout is caused by overwork and that the solution is to rest, take a break or slow down. Set some boundaries. But what if that's only part of the picture? What if the very thing that made you good at your job - your values, your drive, your commitment to never letting anyone down - is exactly what keeps burning you out? And what if rest, on its own, isn't enough to get you out?</p><p>In this conversation with Nick Petrie, author, leadership researcher and burnout specialist, we go deeper...
The Analytical Brain Trap: Why Smart People Can’t Switch Off
<p>Every doctor and high-achieving professional knows what it feels like to lie awake with a brain that refuses to stop - replaying a decision made that afternoon, running tomorrow's list at midnight, scanning ahead for what might go wrong. Our ingrained programming tells us that more thinking keeps us safe and keeps things running. But there is a cost to that, and our analytical brains (the very thing that makes us good at our jobs) may be the reason we can't rest.</p><p>In this conversation with Giles Croft, former NHS surgeon and coach, we explore what happens...
Why Every Doctor Should Learn to Coach
<p>Boundaries aren't walls. They're fences. A wall keeps everyone out. A fence has a gate, and it's yours to open or close, if you're willing to hold it when someone pushes.</p><p>That idea comes from this conversation with Dr Sarah Coope, recorded for the Your Coaching Journey podcast. Sarah talks about her own route into coaching, what twenty years of coaching doctors has taught her about self-worth, and why so many of us try to fix things that were never ours to fix.</p><p>In this episode:</p>How a magazine advert led Sarah to her...
How to Work Free From Burnout
<p>There is one belief that keeps high achievers stuck in burnout long after they should be recovering - the belief that burning out means they failed.</p><p>This is a live panel discussion from the Burnout Free Working Conference — an unscripted conversation about what burnout recovery actually requires, why the self-blame makes it impossible to start, and the single reframe that changes how you see every struggling colleague, including yourself.</p><p>We cover:</p>Why burnout is not a personal failing — and what the evidence actually says about where it startsThe clinical difference between burnout and depression, and...
