Living Balance

Do we stop seeing danger in everyday ordinary?

October 31, 2026

A wise woman raised a very thought provoking idea in her recent post: can something in life become so familiar that we stop seeing it for what it is. As strange as it sounds, do we stop seeing ‘danger’ in the everyday ordinary? I really had to think hard about this and then it became crystal clear.

As you know by now, we are struggling with ‘The Big Decision’ (it had to be bolded ‘cause as I write this I hear a booming game show voice in my head) do we stick with country living or become townies again? As I write this I hear hunters up in the fields. Everytime I hear a volley of shots my heart stops for that moment and I want to cry. Clearly I am not made out of country stuff!

Having said that, almost daily we tell ourselves that maybe, just maybe, we should stay on here. Why??? What became clear today is that the familiar ‘Here’ means security. The Estate we lease from isn’t going to sell off property after hundreds of years of tenants. If we move to a city we are back to a riskier situation. Everybody thinks you should own a house but renting has allowed us to live in different places, each with their individual pros and cons. Some we loved and some not so much. We never feared moving on, in fact we rather relished it. It was part of the original grand plan when we moved from Canada to the UK. Ten years or so of big city living and then another 10 years or so of country living.

We forget that our decision making didn’t take a ‘wrong’ turn!

My head shouts, “How could we have made such a stupid decision?” My heart whispers, “Of course you didn’t it was an opportunity to try something new”. My head counters with, “Another bad decision means you should be fearful of the next”. Yes, every time we venture into this decision making journey the safety of the familiar rears it’s head and we retreat toward ‘knowing’. The ‘danger’ is that settling for something only because it is safe and familiar means accepting, no quibbles, what it actually means to you.

As winter settles in here the decision becomes all about timing. Winter is not our favourite season as we experienced many losses in past winters. Then add the practicalities of winter in the country! We will have to rely on planning a new stage of life and lots of patience to get us through the coming dark days.

Acceptance can be difficult especially when you stop seeing the danger in settling for something that no longer fits. Safety comes from being honest with yourself and trusting your inner knowing even if at times you don’t like what it is telling you! And that’s just it.

With Love, Dr Toby & Dr Bev (aka The Burnout Queens)

The 50+ woman’s burnout

October 22, 2026

Everybody can learn from this but a special ‘heads up’ to those of you who are 50+! You see, 50 plus often means 50+ and fried. Burnout doesn’t stop with, shall we say, maturity. Unfortunately it can hound us into our ‘wisdom years’. Here’s why…

One of our main talking points has always been the idea that as women we were Raised and Trained to burnout. Now this concept has been known to raise a few hackles. Mum’s in the audience thought they were getting the ‘mum blame’ thing again and women are sensitive about any criticism of their own mums. That is not our intent. However, we do want you to understand that we are all products of our generations.

Now if you are 50+ you may not be an actual Boomer but you were most likely raised by one. FYI: First wave 1946-1955; second wave 1956-1964.

The Boomer generation experienced a huge cultural shift mid-generation. I think of the divide as the ‘Elvis boomers vs the Beatles boomers’! What didn’t change, however, were the unspoken rules and hidden values that defined women. Here’s where we got caught up in the burnout trap.

Women of ‘boomer parenting’ or being boomers themselves were raised to never need anyone, to not ask for help, to never admit even needing help, or to talk about difficulties or problems. Life was kept private. You weren’t ‘allowed’ to talk about medical/physical issues (including sex), finances, politics or religion. We were raised to be ‘ladies’. So even if you were breaking inside you smiled and summed up your status with these two simple words, “I’M FINE”!

When feminism took root again in the second wave of the boomer generation (1956-1964) not needing help was seen as a badge of merit. Handling life on your own was to be proud of, admired and screamed independence to the world. It didn’t matter though because even though society was changing, the woman’s role was still about looking after everybody else. The inner conflicts kept increasing.

You can see where this is heading. We became people pleasers, had frightful difficulty saying ‘No’ and was always the one being called upon to help. Being a girl still meant standing in the background, being subservient, taking care of everybody, not asserting your own beliefs or values and doing it all with a smile ‘cause after all ‘you were fine’!

But we weren’t ok. We were becoming discouraged, disappointed with life, disillusioned and, let’s not forget, exhausted. A big gap started developing between who we really were and what we really wanted, what we were feeling and thinking and who we were told we ‘should’ be just ‘cause we were girls. We call that the Reality Gap and it is in this gap that burnout finds its roots. We learned it from our mums, they learned it from their mums and on and on it was passed down, and dare I say it, still is.

Burnout in the 50+ club of women is now rampant. They have taken care of everyone in their lives and many still are. They have raised kids and now many raise grand-kids, most of their adult lives they have worked outside of the home and many still are. (Let’s not forget all the work that happens inside the home and always has!) They have been the dutiful caring daughters, and many still are as they add elder care to their portfolio. We musn’t forget that this age group of women were also being affected by the culture shift embodied by the boomer generation and that meant many remained single, chose not to have children, divorced (did you know that Boomers have the highest divorce rate?), and that means they learned to do everything by themselves without (you got it) asking for help! That spells one thing, exhaustion. That spells burnout.

So if this has resonated with you stay tuned because we will be talking a lot more about being 50+ and fried. We hear you, we get you.

With love, Dr Toby & Dr Bev (aka THEBURNOUTQUEENS)

The Burnout Personality Factor

October 1, 2026

DO YOU HAVE A BURNOUT PERSONALITY? (aka your BOP FACTOR)

Are you ready to discover if you have a Burnout Personality? Also known as the BOP Factor as we like to call it. Read on…

We all have certain characteristics we were born with that form a significant part of our temperament and personality. Taken one at a time these characteristics are amazingly wonderful. In fact, they are like a gift and can give you tremendous resilience and strength. However, if you don’t pay attention to what you need, want, desire or dream of these same characteristics can wear you down and wear you out. So now, The Bop Factor. Let’s get into it.

You are not out of energy, exhausted and stressed because you:

are weak,
can’t cope,
can’t handle stress,
are a loser,
or a failure.

You do, however, have a ‘Be All and Do All Personality’ that can put you on the direct route to Burnout.

You try to BE everything to everybody and DO everything for everybody and do it all yourself!

Simply knowing about your BOP Factor can change how you feel about yourself and how you approach your life. We are quite serious about this. Knowing how your BOP characteristics are inter-woven with each other, how you inherited some of them and learned others, how they work for you and against you can absolutely change your life.

Without further adieu, here is the foundation of your Burnout Personality, your BOP factor:

You are reliable, dependable, conscientious, responsible & trustworthy.

You pride yourself on endurance, persistence, drive, tenacity and strength. You have stick-to-it-ness!

You are more comfortable giving than receiving.

You always want to do the ‘right’ thing.

You are passionate, compassionate, empathic & sympathetic.

You are highly sensitive, creative, perceptive and have great intuition (when you listen to it!)

You are a caring, helpful, supportive, cooperative, loyal and a dedicated nurturer.

Now there are a few qualities that are cringe worthy. No doubt you will recognise some of them but no judgements allowed!

You are a people pleaser.

You rarely feel ‘good enough’ .

You have really high standards for yourself and keep raising the bar higher and higher.

You work like a maniac.

You are a perfectionist!

You feel the need to prove yourself.

You are a perfectionist!

And, last but not least…

You have a YES habit.

That my lovelies is the BOP Factor. When they work against you they put you at risk for burning out. We certainly don’t want this for you because burnout robs you of energy, happiness, and your zest for living. Burnout affects your relationships, your health, your career and your success. Ultimately you lose your drive, motivation, belief in yourself, passion and your spirit.

But, big but, when your BOP characteristics work for you we are talking peak performance. They make you a passionate doer and truthfully the planet needs more of those. The key is knowing how to embrace them, express them and direct the energy and intensity that comes with having such a strong personality. That’s the power that comes with being a Burnout Queen.

P.S. To put it into a context, here are 4 examples of how your BOP Factor can get in the way:

#1: Being a perfectionist means you live in the future. You are always looking ahead to what you can do better, differently, or tweak a bit.

Result: You never find peace, contentment, satisfaction or success NOW.

#2: You live in a land of ‘shoulds, ought to’s, and musts. You do what everyone else thinks is the ‘right’ thing for you to do.

Result: You end up living a compromise, instead of doing what you want, living your dreams.You end up always feeling guilty about something.

#3: Bell rings, you jump. Others expect a lot from you and you always try to meet those expectations. If you don’t, you berate yourself for not being helpful enough, understanding enough or just plain old good enough.

Result: You end up pulled in too many directions. Over-being and over-doing everything for everybody.

#4: You end up silenced by your own strengths. Your need to prove yourself, to do everything well, coupled with the fact that you are so good at what you do.

Result: Other people simply expect your success. They assume nothing is too much for you and you can handle anything and everything whether you want to or not.

With love, Dr Toby & Dr Bev (aka The Burnout Queens) xx

The Burnout Lesson and Lipstick

September 22, 2026

Hands up, have you got a burnout personality? Well I do. Happily I’ve got the burnout part of it sorted, no more burnout for me. Recently however I realised that my BOP Factor (burnout personality) has been flying under the radar and impacting another part of my life.

I was going along thinking that having a super flexible, bendy body is a good thing as you age, apparently it’s not, it is in fact a syndrome. Recent research I discovered connected the dots for me. Sprains, falls, being clumsy and bruisey, extreme exhaustion and even a cardiac component which is totally benign but unsettling and annoying. As it all fell into place (excuse the pun!) it led me to the realisation that my BOP Factor was at play. You see, the burnout lesson I swallowed hook, line and sinker while growing up was this,

Put your lipstick on and keep going!

When I fell I kept going, when I was too tired I pushed through, I worked till I dropped throughout university, never let anyone down and (ta da!) I always wore my lipstick. I perfected that lesson. I may have escaped my burnout trap but some of the same dynamics were humming along in the background tending to make me push beyond my endurance, take on tasks that were too big for my body, and at times to ignore signs that my body was in trouble. Now that’s a confession to myself and to you.

The power to once again deal with this burnout characteristic is in my hands. I can’t change my body but I can change how I handle it. I’ll take more breaks, make tasks more manageable and outsource the hard stuff when I need to. And I won’t feel guilty, old, weak, lazy or like I’m shirking!

Patterns, like our BOP factor, lie so deeply inside our psyches that we are often unaware of their impact on our daily life and daily choices. My burnout personality led me to follow false cues. When my intuition (inner cues) was saying ‘pause, wait, rest, or enough already!’ I chose to follow false cues based on lifelong learning. So I ‘put my lipstick on and kept going’ to my physical and mental detriment.

If you would like to understand more about your own burnout personality, your BOP Factor, you can find more information in the coming days on our blog. Knowledge is power, Burnout Queen power.

With love, Dr Toby & Dr Bev (aka The Burnout Queens) xx

Who did YOU want to be?

August 31, 2026

Are there times it seems like ‘Who You Are’ has been shaped by the opinions of others? You are not far off the truth and it begins from the time your little feeties touch the earth. We are raised to believe that the opinions of others count for more than our own opinions. We are taught to listen to parents, siblings, teachers, friends, religious mentors and many other influences (or should I say influencers these days). Of course, the wisdom and guidance of others has a genuine place in our development, The problem is that over time we forget that…

Others opinions are simply that, others opinions.

When society convinces us that ‘Who We Are’ is determined by others, we end up outsourcing our self-identity, our self-approval and finally our all-important self-worth. We spend so much time trying to be what someone else wants that we shrink, become invisible and ultimately stop believing in ourself.

Our authentic/true/real/essential Self gets lost amidst all that external noise. Like a mirror that has lost its true reflection we no longer see who we were born to be.

We stop knowing what is ‘right’ for us and what is ‘wrong’. We end up in relationships that don’t fit, jobs that don’t work, and careers that pinch like bad shoes. We learn how to ignore our natural talents, to change our very person, even physically, to meet the opinions (read needs) of someone else. Worse still, we lose our desire to contribute to the world in a way that honours and values who we were born to be. And that, my dears, is the biggest contributor to burnout. But all is not lost…

Start with this one simple question: Who did YOU want to be when you grew up?

This single question can point the way back to your beautiful authentic Self and set you on the path to a burnout-free lifestyle.

With love, Dr Toby & Dr Bev (aka: The Burnout Queens) xx

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