The Breen Time Podcast

Stress isn't coming from where you think it is - and managing it the old way won't fix it.

Dr. Gary Sprouse is back! In Episode 32, "Stress Isn't What You Think!" (March 16), Sabrina and The Less Stress Doc challenged almost everything we've been told about stress - that it's a workload problem fixed by breathing more, doing less, or taking a holiday. The real source, he argued, isn't your circumstances; it's how you think about them, with guilt, worry, and regret doing more damage than your to-do list ever could.

Now, in Part 2, we move from theory to application. Dr. Sprouse breaks down his practical tool: the Stress Reducer Loop Model. We unpack how stress actually builds in the mind, where people lose control, and - most importantly - where you can interrupt the cycle before guilt, worry, and regret take over.

This episode is focused on real-world application, giving you a clear framework you can use immediately at work, at home, and under pressure. If you want less stress without lowering your standards, this is the next step.

In this episode

• Why most of us misunderstand where our stress actually comes from
• The Stress Reducer Loop Model, explained step by step
• How stress builds in the mind — and the exact point where people lose control
• Where to interrupt the cycle before guilt, worry, and regret take hold
• How to apply the framework on the spot — at work, at home, and under pressure
• How to lower your stress without lowering your standards

Key takeaways

• Stress often originates somewhere different from where we assume, so the usual coping tactics miss the real source.
• The stress cycle has identifiable stages — and a specific moment where it can be interrupted.
• Catching the loop early, before guilt and worry compound, is what keeps stress from spiraling.
• Reducing stress doesn't require lowering your expectations of yourself.

About the guest

Dr. Gary Sprouse - The Less Stress Doc - is a physician, author, and speaker who has spent decades helping people reduce stress and "spend more time in their Happy Place." He has a unique perspective on where the majority of human stress originates and has developed practical tools to address it.

His book Highway to Your Happy Place: A Roadmap to Less Stress won a Gold Medal in the 2025 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY Awards). He is also co-author of the best-seller Mindset Matters with Jack Canfield.

Links & resources

• Website: https://www.thelessstressdoc.com
• Free chapter of Highway to Your Happy Place (plus a bonus worry-less tool): https://www.thelessstressdoc.com/download-free-chapter

Connect with Dr. Sprouse

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lessstressdoc
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lessstressdoc/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-sprouse-13842a74/

Breen Time is hosted by Sabrina Brown - life coach and management consultant.

New episodes every Monday on Brum Radio and wherever you get your podcasts.

Instagram: @breentimepodcast

LinkedIn: @breentimepodcast

breentimepodcast.com

Brum Radio: brumradio.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You make hundreds of small wishes every day. Most of them go unnoticed - because you've been taught that wishing doesn't count as real work.

What if that's exactly backwards?

In this episode, Sabrina is joined by Brownell Landrum - TEDx speaker, author, inventor, and explorer of metaphysical mysteries. Brownell's work sits at the intersection of science and imagination: her book The Art & Science of Wishing investigates what actually happens - in the brain, in behaviour, in lived outcomes - when a person makes a deliberate wish. She's also the creator of the Cosmic Wishes universe, executive producer of the Life is a Trip podcast, and the author of more than a dozen books spanning fiction, nonfiction, and children's storytelling. In this conversation, she and Sabrina dig into the mechanics of belief, the neuroscience of intention, and why disciplined imagination might be one of the most underused tools in personal development.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• Why wishing is better understood as a form of focused attention - and how that reframe changes what you do with your desires.
• What the science actually says about how intention shapes behaviour, and where the evidence is stronger than most people expect.
• How the stories we tell about ourselves function as a kind of internal operating system - and why changing the narrative is harder, and more powerful, than most self-help advice admits.
• The difference between wishful thinking and deliberate wishing - and why the gap between them comes down to one thing: disciplined action.
• Why belief isn't a passive state you either have or don't - and how you can actually build it incrementally.
• What imagination has in common with scientific method, and why treating your vision as a hypothesis rather than a fantasy shifts everything.
• How Brownell's exploration of metaphysical mysteries has shaped her view of possibility - and what she'd say to anyone who feels like their wishes are too big or too strange to take seriously.
• 
  

The most practical thing you can do might be the thing you've been taught to dismiss as daydreaming.

Breen Time is hosted by Sabrina Brown - life coach and management consultant.

New episodes every Monday on Brum Radio and wherever you get your podcasts.

Instagram: @breentimepodcast

LinkedIn: @breentimepodcast

breentimepodcast.com

Brum Radio: brumradio.com

Find out more about this week's guest: brownelllandrum.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Some losses don't arrive once. They keep arriving - and the question becomes whether you can still build something meaningful in the wake of them.

This week, Sabrina sits down with Pamela S. Thibodeaux - award-winning author, life coach, and mentor based in Louisiana. Pam is the co-founder of the Bayou Writers Group and the voice behind Coaching in PJs, blending decades of writing about women's lived experience with a faith-rooted approach to coaching that's earned her the tagline "Inspirational with an Edge." In this conversation, she draws on her own story to talk about what it really takes to keep moving when grief isn't a single chapter but a recurring one.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• Why our culture struggles to talk about grief that doesn't resolve, and what gets lost when we treat loss as something to "get through" rather than learn to carry.
• How Pam distinguishes between the future we thought we'd have and the future that's still available to us - and why mourning the first is part of claiming the second.
• The role faith plays as a working tool, not a slogan, when you're rebuilding a life you didn't plan for.
• Why personal responsibility becomes more important, not less, in seasons when circumstances would justify giving up.
• The disciplined daily practices that compound into resilience over months and years - and why repetition matters more than intensity.
• How to recognise when "retreat" is wisdom and when it's avoidance dressed up as self-care.
• Practical guidance on building a meaningful life from the inside out, even when the outside hasn't caught up yet.

Grief teaches you that endings and beginnings often share the same address - and that walking forward isn't a betrayal of what you've lost.

Hosted by Sabrina Brown — life coach, management consultant, and your weekly companion in the work of becoming.

New episodes every Monday on Brum Radio and wherever you get your podcasts.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebreentimepodcast/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/breentime/

Website: https://shows.acast.com/the-breentime-podcast

Brum Radio: https://www.instagram.com/brumradio/

Connect with Pamela: pamelathibodeaux.com

If this episode raised something for you, support is available:

• Counselling Directory
• Samaritans
• Mind
• NHS mental health & talking therapies

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You can look like you've got it all together and still be quietly running on empty. This episode is for anyone whose composure has started to feel like a costume.

This week Breen is joined by Tracy Doyle - entrepreneur, emotional wellness advocate, and author of Life Storms: Finding Your Clear Sky. After years of leading an award-winning business while privately burning out, Tracy developed the Aurora Method: a psychology-informed, mindfulness-based framework for healing emotional burnout and reconnecting with yourself and the people who matter most. Her story moves from childhood trauma and instability to reinvention, and her work is rooted in the belief that the patterns running our adult lives were usually written long before we noticed them.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• Why high achievement so often coexists with emotional exhaustion, and how the two can quietly feed each other for years.
• How early life experiences shape the internal beliefs we carry into adulthood - and how those beliefs distort how we think, feel, and relate to others.
• The difference between stress and emotional burnout, and the subtle signs that you've crossed from one into the other.
• What it actually looks like to rebuild after years of holding it together for everyone else.
• Why reconnection has to start internally before it can happen in our relationships.
• Practical entry points into the Aurora Method, and how mindfulness becomes useful when life feels anything but calm.
• The reframe Tracy offers on storms: not as something to escape, but as the weather you learn to navigate on the way to your clear sky.

Your clear sky isn't on the other side of the storm - it's on the other side of how you've been weathering it.

Breen Time is hosted by Sabrina Brown - life coach and management consultant.

New episodes every Monday - listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebreentimepodcast/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/breentime/

Website: https://shows.acast.com/the-breentime-podcast

Brum Radio: https://www.instagram.com/brumradio/

More from Tracy Doyle: https://www.tracydoyle.life Life Storms: Finding Your Clear Sky - available on Amazon.

If this episode raised something for you, support is available:

• Counselling Directory
• Samaritans
• Mind
• NHS Mental Health & Talking Therapies

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You've made life easier. But has it made you weaker?

We've engineered discomfort out of almost everything - and it's quietly costing us our drive, our patience, and our ability to cope. This episode of Breen Time asks a question worth sitting with: what happens to us when nothing is ever hard anymore?

In this episode, you'll hear:

• Why the brain's reward system is wired to respond to effort - and what happens when rewards arrive without it, dulling our sense of satisfaction over time.
• How instant access to food, entertainment, and work has quietly removed the everyday friction that once built resilience without us even noticing.
• Why constant comfort doesn't make us calmer - it can actually increase anxiety and restlessness, leaving us less equipped to tolerate uncertainty.
• The link between deliberate difficulty and confidence: why doing hard things, even small ones, rebuilds trust in your own ability to follow through.
• Practical ways to reintroduce resistance into your daily life - from adjusting how you exercise to how you work and how you complete even the simplest tasks.
• Why discipline isn't about punishment or grinding - it's about closing the gap between what you intend to do and what you actually do.
• How patience and persistence aren't personality traits you're born with, but capacities that grow through practice - and shrink without it.
• A reframe that changes everything: discomfort isn't the enemy of a good life. In the right doses, it's what makes one possible.
• 
  

The goal isn't to suffer more. It's to stop mistaking ease for wellbeing.

Breen Time is hosted by Sabrina Brown - life coach and management consultant.

New episodes every Monday - listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebreentimepodcast/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/breentime/

Website: https://shows.acast.com/the-breentime-podcast

Brum Radio: https://www.instagram.com/brumradio/

If this episode raised something for you, support is available: Counselling Directory: https://www.counselling-directory.org.uk Samaritans: https://www.samaritans.org Mind: https://www.mind.org.uk NHS Mental Health & Talking Therapies: https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/talking-therapies-medicine-treatments/talking-therapies-and-counselling/nhs-talking-therapies/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Good intentions don't build great businesses. Disciplined daily habits do.

In this episode, Sabrina sits down with Lori Rogers, business owner, speaker, and creator of the Positive Activity™ methodology - a science-backed approach to mindset that goes far beyond motivation and good vibes. After reaching her own breaking point in 2011, Lori transformed her business and her life through consistent, evidence-based practices - and went on to increase her sales by 200%. Now, through Rogers Marketing and the Positive Activity™ programme she co-created with her husband Neil, she helps individuals, sales teams, and business leaders do the same.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• Why there's a meaningful difference between surface-level positivity and what Lori calls "disciplined mindset practice" - and why that distinction changes everything.
• How consistent daily activities, not bursts of motivation or hype, are what actually shape performance, culture, and long-term results.
• What the Positive Activity™ methodology is built on, and how decades of real-world business leadership informed its development.
• Why mindset isn't just something you feel - it's something that shows up visibly in your decisions, your habits, and the way you show up in relationships.
• How responsibility and ownership sit at the heart of sustainable change, and why wishful thinking can quietly keep you stuck.
• What it means to be a "rational optimist" - holding space for the hard stuff while actively choosing the thoughts and habits that move you forward.
• Why incremental, almost imperceptible changes are often more powerful than dramatic overhauls - and how to trust that slow, steady progress is still progress.
• Practical entry points for bringing Positive Activity™ principles into your daily life, whether you're a business owner, a team leader, or simply someone ready to do the inner work differently.
• 
  

Positivity isn't a personality trait. It's a practice - and like any practice, it gets stronger the more consistently you show up for it.

Breen Time is hosted by Sabrina Brown - life coach and management consultant.

New episodes every Monday - follow, subscribe, and share with someone who needs to hear this.

Instagram: instagram.com/breentimepodcast 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sabrinabrown 

Website: sabrinabrown.co.uk 

Brum Radio: brumradio.com

Learn more about Lori Rogers and the Positive Activity™ methodology: positiveactivity.net

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Real Cost of Perfectionism

You're achieving. You're delivering. So why does it feel like you're running on empty?

Rubina Chada joins Sabrina this week for a conversation that goes beneath the surface of high performance — exploring what happens when ambition is fuelled by pressure rather than genuine alignment. Drawing from lived experience and professional practice, Rubina brings a grounded, honest lens to the quiet ways perfectionism and chronic stress erode the things we rely on most: clarity, creativity, and trust in ourselves.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• Why perfectionism often isn't about standards — it's about what we believe happens if we fall short of them.
• How chronic stress quietly dismantles the clarity and creativity we need most to do our best work.
• What it means to build achievement from alignment rather than anxiety — and how to begin making that shift.
• Practical ways to regulate your nervous system when pressure starts to override your thinking.
• How developing emotional awareness can change the way you show up in work, relationships, and decision-making.
• Why slowing down isn't the opposite of growth — and how it often becomes the conditions for it.
• How to start building a more stable inner foundation, even when the demands around you haven't changed.

The cost of perfectionism isn't failure — it's the version of yourself you never gave permission to exist.

Hosted by Sabrina Brown — life coach and management consultant. New episodes every Monday on Brum Radio and wherever you listen to podcasts.

Instagram: @breentimepodcast

LinkedIn: Breen Time Podcast

breentimepodcast.com

Brum Radio: brumradio.com

Guest website: theinnerdesign.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You've rehearsed it in your head a hundred times. You know what needs to be said. And yet - you stay quiet. Again.

Avoidance feels like keeping the peace. But over time, it quietly dismantles your relationships, your self-respect, and your sense of who you are. In this episode, Sabrina gets direct about one of the most common patterns she sees as a life coach and management consultant: the high cost of the conversations we never have.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• The five fears that drive avoidance — and how to identify which one is yours
• Why silence isn't neutral: how staying quiet teaches people exactly how to treat you
• The hidden damage of unspoken truths — from invisible walls in relationships to eroded self-respect
• Eight practical techniques for handling tough conversations with confidence and emotional maturity
• Why the goal isn't to be right — it's to be honest
• How braver conversations lead to deeper relationships, stronger boundaries, and a life that actually fits
• 
  

Because the pain of avoidance doesn't disappear — it just changes shape.

Breen Time is hosted by Sabrina Brown — life coach and management consultant. New episodes every Monday — listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

Follow the Breen Time Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebreentimepodcast/

And on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/breentime/

Visit the website: https://shows.acast.com/the-breentime-podcast

Brum Radio: https://www.instagram.com/brumradio/

If this episode raised something for you, support is available: Counselling Directory: https://www.counselling-directory.org.uk Samaritans: https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/contact-samaritan/ Mind: https://www.mind.org.uk NHS Mental Health Services: https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/mental-health-services/ NHS Talking Therapies: https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/talking-therapies-medicine-treatments/talking-therapies-and-counselling/counselling/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Some losses are clean. Others dismantle you slowly - from the inside out, and in front of everyone.

This week, Sabrina is joined by Linda Magoon for a conversation about what it actually takes to rebuild a life after long-term control, public shame by association, and the kind of emotional collapse that leaves you questioning who you even are. Linda's story is not one of slogans or easy reframes. It's one of putting one foot in front of the other - literally - when everything else has fallen away.

What emerges is a grounded, honest account of recovery rooted in action: deliberate physical challenge, time in nature, professional support, and the quiet discipline of showing up for yourself when you have nothing left to prove and nowhere left to hide.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• What long-term control does to a person's sense of self — and how disorienting it is to reclaim it
• How public shame by association compounds personal grief, and what it takes to separate someone else's choices from your own identity
• Why motivation alone is not enough in the aftermath of collapse — and what actually anchors recovery
• The role of deliberate physical challenge and time in nature as tools for rebuilding from the inside out
• Why professional support isn't a shortcut — it's part of the discipline
• What responsibility really looks like when you're the one picking up the pieces

Resilience isn't a mindset you adopt. It's a practice you return to, every day, whether or not you feel ready. Linda's website and resources: www.lindamagoon.com

Breen Time is hosted by Sabrina Brown MA - qualified coach, management consultant, and host of Breen Time on Brum Radio. With over two decades of experience leading large-scale transformation and advanced training in AI in Business Strategy from MIT, Sabrina brings structure, depth, and real-world insight to every conversation.

Follow the Breen Time Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebreentimepodcast/

And on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/breentime/

Visit the website: https://shows.acast.com/the-breentime-podcast

Brum Radio: https://www.instagram.com/brumradio/

If this episode raised something for you, support is available: Counselling Directory: https://www.counselling-directory.org.uk Samaritans: https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/contact-samaritan/ Mind: https://www.mind.org.uk NHS Mental Health Services: https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/mental-health-services/ NHS Talking Therapies: https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/talking-therapies-medicine-treatments/talking-therapies-and-counselling/counselling/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Most of us know what it feels like to be stuck in a loop. The same argument with a different person. The same job that starts well and then doesn't. The same feeling, dressed up in new circumstances. We tend to call it bad luck - or just life. But what if the loop is actually the lesson?

This week, Sabrina sits down with Rachael Kennard-Wall - holistic health practitioner and co-founder of It's All About Health - to explore why the same patterns keep showing up, and what they're really asking of us. Drawing on her clinical work in subconscious and root cause approaches, Rachael reframes repetition not as a sign that something is wrong with you, but as feedback - a signal pointing to a misalignment between what you believe, how you behave, and what's true for you beneath the surface.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• Why life keeps repeating itself - and why that's not a flaw, but a feature
• How to read recurring patterns as feedback rather than failure
• The role the subconscious plays in keeping us anchored to familiar (but unhelpful) cycles
• Why surface-level change rarely sticks - and what root-level change actually involves
• How intuition and personal responsibility work together in breaking old patterns
• Practical ways to pause, get honest with yourself, and begin creating change that lasts

Because the pattern doesn't repeat to punish you - it repeats until you're ready to understand it.

For more about Rachael, visit her website: www.itsallabouthealth.co.uk

Sabrina Brown is a professional life coach and management consultant, and the host of Breen Time on Brum Radio. Connect with the show on Instagram and LinkedIn: @breentimepodcast

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.