Redefining Your "All": Breaking Free from Burnout with Jo Stone

What happens when you finally achieve everything you thought would make you happy, only to discover it's left you exhausted, guilty, and disconnected from yourself? That's exactly where Jo Stone found herself - Chief Marketing Officer for a listed company, mother of two, serving on a non-profit board, competing in triathlons, and living in the dream house she built from scratch. By all external measures, she'd succeeded brilliantly. Yet something was profoundly wrong.

Jo takes us on her courageous journey of what she calls "ego death" - selling her meticulously designed dream house (with its color-coded bookshelves and carefully researched water features), quitting her executive position, and essentially blowing up the life she'd built to discover what truly mattered. Through tears and fierce self-examination, she confronted the uncomfortable truth that much of what she'd been striving for wasn't actually bringing her joy or fulfillment.

Today, as founder of The Balance Institute, Jo helps ambitious women avoid the burnout path she experienced. She shares powerful insights about reconnecting with our authentic selves, practicing "micro-doses" of self-care instead of rare extravagant self-care days, and moving beyond superficial gratitude practices to genuine embodied joy. Her most liberating message? "You can have it all, but only once you work out what YOUR all is." This distinction frees us from chasing others' definitions of success and allows us to create lives that truly resonate with our deepest values.

Whether you're questioning your current path, feeling the weight of achievement that doesn't satisfy, or simply seeking more authenticity in your life, Jo's story offers both validation and practical wisdom. Connect with her through her podcast "Balance and Beyond" or visit balanceinstitute.com to discover how you might redefine success on your own terms.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Meeting Joe Stone
• 1:04 Joe's Corporate Success and Burnout
• 4:10 The House Sale and Identity Crisis
• 7:18 Helping Women Break Free
• 9:33 Finding Joy Without Blowing Everything Up
• 12:56 The Joy List and Having Your All
• 16:37 Final Thoughts and Key Takeaway

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

hello and welcome back to the next episode of overcome yourself, the podcast. As you know, my name is nicole and I'm so excited to be here today with joe joe stone. So, joe, um, take it away and please introduce yourself and let us know a little bit about who you are, what you do and who you help thanks for having me.

Speaker 2: 0:22

If you couldn't tell from the accent, I'm an Aussie and I help women who are ambitious and want to juggle all the things, and when I have it all, I help them better balance life and avoid burnout. And I have been doing this now for around six years with my company, the Balance Institute, and am a living walking example of my work, because I also have a husband and two kids who are 15 and 11. So plenty to keep me occupied and plenty of ways to continue to learn, to grow my toolkit.

Speaker 1: 0:53

I love that. So tell me a little bit about that journey and how you had to overcome yourself to get to where you are.

Speaker 2: 1:02

Well, there was a lot of overcoming along the way. I was very much, I guess you would say, had ticked a lot of the boxes of corporate success. So I was by my early 30s. I was in the C-suite, so I was a chief marketing officer for a listed company with a regional role, staff in five countries, and thought, right, I've made it. From a career perspective, that was always my goal to get into an executive team.

Speaker 2: 1:23

I had two young kids at the time, I was on a not-for-profit board, I was running triathlons and I had built my house from scratch. So I was like, oh my gosh, I've done everything that I thought was going to make me happy and yet something was wrong. Because I wasn't happy, I was exhausted and I was guilty and I was running between everything and felt like an imposter and thought, okay, something is wrong. And, like all high achievers, I decided to blow up my life. Rather than not knowing how to handle all of that, I sold the house. That was the first domino that fell, which got me a bit more financial freedom. And then I ended up quitting my job, starting my own business and essentially rebuilding myself from the ground up to work out what pieces of whether you call it success or life or conditioning were mine, and what beliefs and habits and things were actually inherited from someone else. So a whole lot of overcoming of who I thought I was in order to be who I really needed to become.

Speaker 1: 2:24

That's amazing and like to sell the house that you built. That's quite right, that's quite an identity shift because that's like the dream, right. And then you get there and it's not what you thought it was.

Speaker 2: 2:39

No, no. And I would have sworn. I would have paid you a million dollars if you'd said this house is what you wanted. And I thought that sworn. I would have paid you a million dollars if you'd said this house is what you wanted. And I thought that everything was going to be available to me on the other side of that house. That was going to be happiness. It's what I always wanted.

Speaker 2: 2:53

My husband and I used to spend our date nights drawing plans on a back of a napkin and it was very much part of the dream. And then to realize that when you get the dream, it's not all it's cracked up to be and there's no magic rainbow of happiness at the end of that was a very big reality check, cause I'd spent a lot of my life waiting until I will feel successful when I'm on the executive team, or I will feel like I've made it when I've got a board appointment, or I will. And then I realized there was a whole lot of when thens that I was attaching to giving myself permission to feel lovely and empowering emotions. You know, when the kids are in bed, then I'll have time for myself. It's like no, it doesn't work that way um, tell me more.

Speaker 1: 3:36

Tell me more about that and what shifted for you, because I think that this is a really important point in finding our own success and really understanding what do we want. So can you tell me a little more and dig a little deeper for us?

Speaker 2: 3:50

Yeah. So I still remember when my husband and I started talking about is this all there is? We're stuck on this hamster wheel keeping up with the Joneses, and there has to be more than life. He was having health problems and there has to be more than life. He was having health problems. His mum had passed away suddenly. Like this is not fun. What are we doing this for?

Speaker 2: 4:14

And so I started doing a lot of soul searching, and it was when I found myself in hospital with an autoimmune condition that I thought was permanent and, at the moment, uncurable. Remember lying there, going okay, my body is screaming at me, even though I'm thankful in that I have a body that I can push a long way. Eventually it just cracked and went okay enough and forced me to confront what am I really doing? If I was to go tomorrow, would I say this was a life well-lived, and on the surface you'd say yes, but was it making me happy and did I feel like my best self? And the answer was I don't think so. So I had to almost go through a really interesting ego death, particularly with the house.

Speaker 2: 4:56

That was the first domino that fell, and I still remember the night before our auction, when we were hopefully going to sell the house. Everyone else had gone to bed and the house was immaculate. We had all the imported furniture in it and all the books were, you know, colour-coded from top to bottom, which was a nightmare. With a what were they? Sort of six and nine-year-old trying to keep a house to that impeccable standard and looking out over my water feature that I'd spent thousands of hours researching and looking over every plant that I had planted in the garden and just sitting there with tears rolling down my face, thinking am I really giving this up? This is everything I thought I wanted. This was my status, this was my way of showing the world that I'd made it and we hadn't bought anything else.

Speaker 2: 5:41

So at the same time, I had my parents. I had lots of other people doing interventions, saying what are you doing? This has been your dream. Why are you selling this house and where are you going to live? And you've got two kids. This is very irresponsible.

Speaker 2: 5:55

So I triggered a lot of people around me because I was getting out of the race and they were all stuck in it and the thought of somebody tapping out who was very much leading the charge for let's all go do this and let's all go be successful was really, really confronting. So I had to actually sit with that over many, many hours. I don't think I went to bed that night until about two in the morning. I was just playing music and bawling my eyes out and grieving the life that I thought I wanted, and realizing in that moment that I actually valued freedom more. I valued freedom of money, I valued freedom of becoming who I wanted to be, freedom of being able to live a life that felt more authentic, and so I had to be willing to almost burn everything to the ground in order to start again from a much deeper place of authenticity.

Speaker 2: 6:50

Wow, that is quite back, peeling back the onion, right, and you kind of just did it all at once, yeah well, if you're going to go big, you know, go hard or go home, may as well blow it all up, yeah so talk to me about how this ties into what you're doing now and how you help your audience, your clients.

Speaker 2: 7:18

Well, I found on that journey that I wasn't the only one who felt that way, that there are so many women who are exhausted and chasing a version of success that they thought they wanted. And they tend to get in there, you know, late thirties, mid forties, and start going. Hang on, I've been doing this for 20 years now. I'm exhausted. What if I've still got another 20 or 30 more to go? I don't know if I want to keep going like this. And usually their bodies are starting to break, or their relationships are starting to break or they're starting to break. They've completely disconnected from who they are. They don't recognize themselves and they're asking themselves there has to be more than this. Especially, you know, they're usually financially more secure by now. They're, in theory, successful in their jobs and yet don't feel like it. That horrible feeling of you know I'm always trying and yet I never arrive. So there is.

Speaker 2: 8:12

My purpose ended up becoming by complete accident, because I didn't ever intend to become a life or executive coach is to find and help other women who are stuck on the treadmill, who are wondering there has to be more to life than this and deep down know that they're made for more and that's more authenticity, or maybe it's more joy or more love or more fun. Help them unlock that without having to go through the journey I did of blowing everything up Because many women are thinking about that and finding somebody who can guide them through that, without blowing everything up and taking years in the process. I'm a big one for when I was in corporate. My superpower is taking something that's really complicated, pulling it apart and putting it back together again in a way that makes sense, and so I did that with my life and I help everybody else do that with theirs.

Speaker 1: 9:02

I love that. So what advice do you have for us as we go through this process? Let's say that we are coming up on this wall and we're like, what have I done? But we don't necessarily want to throw everything out the window, I guess, as you alluded. So what advice do you have for us now in helping us make this transition, maybe, I guess, in a less scary way?

Speaker 2: 9:32

Yeah, well, not everyone wants to blow up their life, although I do joke that I've had many clients who, before they found me, blew up their life, you know, sold everything looking for simplicity, moved to the country and buy a little antique store, only to find that within three months, you know they've changed out the point of sale system, they've gone global online, they're going to, you know, china to buy new supplies and I think, hang on a second, I've done exactly the same thing for my supposed simple life. I and think, hang on a second, I've done exactly the same thing for my supposed simple life, I've made it more complicated. So the first thing I think that is the most important thing is to start to bring awareness to what's actually going on inside you. So what are your thoughts, what are your emotions and feelings?

Speaker 2: 10:12

Most women are pretty numb to what's going on. All they feel is guilt and exhaustion and resentment and don't know how to access a lot of joy and have a huge amount of recurring negative thoughts that are just running the show. So, learning to take charge of their brain, learning to not be hijacked by their body and their emotions anymore and that usually takes shifting a lot of beliefs and it can be tricky when you are stuck on the hamster wheel with no time and everything else going on to be able to do that. So finding a little bit of space and I'm a big fan of micro dosing so micro dosing your self-care or micro dosing your space, instead of believing that you have to go to the buffet and spend a half day at the day spa once every two months that's not enough.

Speaker 2: 10:58

It's about those regular check-ins and usually once you can start that process of seeing where you're at and what is going on inside of me, then when you are able to get some tools that help you slow down, then everything starts to shift for the better. That doesn't mean it's not easy. You usually end up my clients and I we call it the poop pond, when everything goes to pot and you are stuck and it feels hard and it's icky. But the beauty is when you find the right guide for you whether that could be a therapist, it could be a coach, it could be a book that you found online or a podcast that we joke, that we throw you a pina colada and a flamingo floaty and help you get out of the poop pond and swim to the side and you do it in style.

Speaker 1: 11:43

I love that, and it makes me think of, like you know, monica's closet, and if you finally decide to open it and clean it up, there's going to be a mess because there's a lot of stuff in there. It's all going to fall out, and so it's part of the process of of, you know, like you said, taking something complicated, breaking it down and then kind of reorganizing it right and kind of getting rid of stuff we don't need anymore. Um, but I love the example, you know, because, like I'm in Miami, so, um, you know, florida is like the, the right.

Speaker 1: 12:16

Australia is like the Florida of the world, or whatever, like a lot of people relate. They're like, oh, you know, because of the gators, I guess, I don't know, because it's hot, the beaches, anyway, sorry, ok. So the next thing I was going to ask you I was going to go, but that's fine. What I wanted to ask you, though, is because one of the things that I teach, the foundations of what I teach, what I talk with my clients about what part do you find gratitude plays in this process of unveiling what we want, getting rid of what we don't want and just rebuilding a life that we love, that brings us joy.

Speaker 2: 12:57

Yeah, great question. I think gratitude is at the root of many things, but I'm sure you teach this to your clients. I find, for a lot of women who come to me, finding gratitude can become difficult because they're not actually connected to it. They're very intellectual and when they start a gratitude journal it starts with a list and it's very superficial I'm grateful for my house, I'm grateful for my kids, I'm grateful for the sun I'm grateful for, and they're not actually embodying those emotions and then they go. It's not working. But it isn't working, and so I usually find that what is better is even teaching them.

Speaker 2: 13:35

A lot of my clients end up keeping a joy journal, or how do you get them connected and learning to connect with something that perhaps is more accessible in the interim, and once they've done that, then they can learn to be grateful for the joy, because they actually need to learn to feel again. And so the more we can get them embodied and have them practising, whether even that's feeling their anger or actually feeling something, because most women spend a lot of time suppressing or shoving right down, where the sun don't shine, those emotions, because they're terrified that their emotions become like this huge damn wall and if one little bit cracks that, they're going to turn into a ginormous puddle and not be able to function. So it's all about how do we let it out. And gratitude is a fabulous gateway, particularly, you know, knowing that gratitude is often mutually exclusive with things like guilt, and it can be this beautiful, neutral landing place for them to yeah, to reconnect to the truth of what actually is here.

Speaker 1: 14:43

I think that's so important, and I do also tie gratitude into joy. I think that's so important and I do also tie gratitude into joy. And it's like, even in our brain, right, when we haven't actively practiced gratitude, there's areas of our brain that are literally dedicated to that, but they're kind of dusty and they're kind of abandoned and they're behind Monica's closet. Right, you got to clean out the closet so you can clear it out and be like, oh, let's put this room to use. So I love that, I love how you phrase it.

Speaker 1: 15:14

And a joy list. I think that is so fun and I think it's such a great way of reframing right, because it is important how we're feeling, but also how we see things right, because the gratitude helps us just shift our perspective a little bit, and the same thing that we're looking at, we just see it a little bit different, and so I love how you bring that a joy list. I think that kind of like wraps it all up. I think it's, it's wonderful, I love it. Thank you for sharing that with us. So talk to me about how we can stay in touch with you.

Speaker 2: 15:53

Well, I have my own podcast, if you have podcast fans, which is called Balance and Beyond, and they can find me on Spotify and iTunes and all the places and also my website, which is balanceinstitutecom. I tend to run pretty regular challenges and workshops and leadership programs and all of the things. So, yeah, they're welcome to come and have a look and see what we do and see what happens to be running at the time they're browsing Awesome.

Speaker 1: 16:18

And we will have those links available for you down below in the comments or in the show notes, wherever it is that you're watching this. So, as we're wrapping up, I'd love to know what is the, that one big tip that gives your clients that big aha moment? You know, like what's that juiciest tip that you can leave the listeners with as they're transforming into, to this version of selves that they actually want, now that they're thinking about?

Speaker 2: 16:46

it? Yeah, great question. I tend to find that many of us have been brought up with this assumption that we want to have it all, and we're repeatedly told that well, you can't have it all at once, and I say they lie, you can. However, you have to decide what your all is, because chances are, when you talk about have it all, you want to be a 1950s housewife. You want to be the boss in the boardroom, the boss in the bedroom. You'll be the perfect daughter, the perfect friend, and that usually is not all yours.

Speaker 2: 17:18

And so when you sift through this process, almost going through the closet and saying, what do I actually like in here? What do I, how do I want to construct my life? And when you can do that, free of the stuff that isn't actually yours, the stuff that you don't actually want, what you're left with is this beautifully clean closet of just the boots that you love and just the jackets that you love, and suddenly it's a lot more achievable. So you can have it all, but only once you work out what your all is.

Speaker 1: 17:46

I love that. Yeah, in my book I talk about in success, defining our success, and then I had mentioned something about a Ferrari and I was like, do you even want a Ferrari? Right, cause, for a lot of people a Ferrari might mean success, but I would hurt myself, you know, like I don't want any part of that, you know, cause I could really hurt myself in one of those cars, right, cause I go so fast. So I like I don't want any part of that, you know, because I could really hurt myself in one of those cars, right, because I go so fast. So I'm like, no, I'm good.

Speaker 1: 18:11

And so for me, success does not include a Ferrari, like maybe riding one, like driving one, like on a race course, you know, like a helmet and stuff, you know. So I think it's so important is really understanding. You know and I love the way that you phrased it what is your all Um, because all for you doesn't have to include everything in the entire world, but we do have to define what that goalpost is, um, and then not move it when we get there, that's the other thing that we're really good at doing Very, very good at that.

Speaker 2: 18:49

yes, allow yourself to actually achieve something and sit in the celebration and gratitude of that I love that.

Speaker 1: 18:56

Thank you so much, joe, for being here with us today. This has been absolutely fantastic and we will catch you guys next time on the next episode of overcome yourself, the podcast. Bye thanks, having me.