Michelle Bourque Coaching - Mindful Weighs

There's a moment in this episode that gave me chills.

Katie's son Jackson asked her: "Mom, why did you leave? You never complained. You loved it so much."

And she said: "You're right. But people loved what I was building more than I could possibly love where I was."

How many of us are waiting for something to go wrong before we give ourselves permission to go after something more? We think we need the burning platform. The bad boss. The terrible quarter. The reason.

Katie didn't wait for that. She built in the margins, proved it could work, and made the move from a place of vision — not desperation.

Her mom Muriel, who won the region's top chowder competition three years in a row until they retired her recipe, would be so proud.
The ripple effect of how we live our lives is real, friends.

Episode 402 is live - take a listen today.
www.michellebourquecoaching.com/podcast

What if the best thing you could do for your career right now wasn't work harder — but think differently about what's possible?

Kelly Hiller, CMO at Purdue University, has spent 22 years at the same institution. Not because she ran out of ambition — but because she kept reimagining what the next chapter could look like and kept saying yes to it.

She led the alumni association. She led the 150th anniversary on a fixed-term contract that was supposed to end with her role. She came back to central marketing when the whole operation was being rebuilt from scratch. And each time, she asked: what could I contribute here that hasn't been done yet?

We talk about all of it in Episode 401 of It's Your Time — including the Taylor Swift STEM activation her team created that welcomed 10,000 people into an Indianapolis mall for free, what personal branding really means when you build it on core values instead of a polished image, how to lead people who used to be your peers, and the "make them jealous" approach she's using to get her team genuinely excited about AI.

But the thread running through the whole conversation is the one I keep thinking about: reimagining what's possible is not a one-time decision. It's something you choose to do over and over — in small moments and big ones — throughout the whole arc of a career.

This week's episode goes deeper on all of it. Link in comments and bio
(www.michellebourquecoaching.com/podcast - or your favorite platform.)

What's one area of your career or life where you're ready to reimagine what's possible? Drop it below. 👇

I started this podcast from a closet. Literally — Marc's closet. With a completely different name and a completely different mission.

The early episodes were about why high-achieving women were reaching for wine at the end of the night. I thought I was talking about the wine. What I was actually uncovering was the exhaustion underneath it. The going and going and going all day with nowhere to finally land.

I knew that woman well — because I was her.

Four hundred episodes later, I'm recording from Florida. I've left a 20-year career in my best financial year. And I'm launching something I could not have pictured when I pressed record the first time.

But here's the thing I want you to hear: the external life only changed because the internal work happened first. That's the whole story.

Episode 400 is live — link in bio. 🎙️ and on your favorite platform.

High performance and over functioning are not the same thing — even when they produce the same results.

High performance says: I'm taking ownership of what's mine and doing it exceptionally well.

Over functioning says: I'm taking ownership of everything — because somewhere along the way, I learned that being needed proves my value.

That second one can absolutely fuel success. Your brain rewards it. But over time it requires you to keep proving, keep producing, keep being available at all costs — because the minute you stop, something in your brain starts asking: am I still valuable?

That's not high performance. That's borrowed fuel. And it gets expensive.

The rewrite isn't about doing less. It's about doing things from a completely different place.

New episode 399 is live — listen anywhere your catch your favorite podcasts.

You can hit every goal on your list and still feel like it's not enough.

Not because you're ungrateful or unmotivated. Because of a belief that's been quietly running in the background for years: my worth comes from my achievement.

Most high-achievers didn't consciously choose this belief. It got wired in over time — through the praise that came when you performed, the recognition that followed when you pushed, the identity that formed around being the reliable one. And the tricky part? The rule works. It produces results. Which is exactly why we don't question it.

But internally, you might be running a completely different dialogue. What if I'm not number one next quarter? Who am I if I'm not producing? Why can't I enjoy this win before I'm already chasing the next thing?

That gap between how things look from the outside and how they feel from the inside — that's the fingerprint of this belief.

The reframe isn't to want less. It's to relocate where your worth comes from. There's a version of ambition powered by fear and external validation. And there's a version powered by genuine self-trust and desire. They can look identical on a performance review. But they feel completely different to live in — and one of them is sustainable.

I go deeper on this in Episode 398 of It's Your Time Podcast — The Invisible Rule That's Costing You More Than You Know.

Listen on your favorite platform.

If there were nothing left for you to prove, nothing to earn, no ranking to climb — what would you still choose to pursue? I'd love to know.

The goalpost for "enough" is always moving. That's not a coincidence — it's the rule.

I kicked off a new series on the podcast this week called the Invisible Rules. These are the unspoken rules nobody handed you in writing, but you've been living by anyway — shaping your decisions, your schedule, and honestly, your identity.

Rule number one: I have to earn rest.

Here's why it's so hard to catch. It doesn't feel like a rule. It feels like responsibility. Like professionalism. Like being someone who takes their work seriously.

But there's a concept in psychology called contingent self-worth — your sense of being okay is tied directly to your output. And when that's the operating system, rest doesn't feel neutral. It feels like a risk. Like slowing down means falling behind. Like the version of you that takes a breath is a lesser version.

The cost isn't just fatigue. It's the quality of your thinking when you're running on fumes — defaulting to safe instead of strategic, getting through the day instead of building toward the vision. It's the relationships that get what's left over instead of what's real. It's the ideas that never come because you were never still enough to hear them.

The reframe from this week's episode: rest is not the reward for your work. It's evidence of your worth.

Take a listen today! 💝