How to Thrive Through Burnout Recovery
Episode 154
If you've ever felt like you're on the brink of exhaustion, dealing with career challenges, or longing for clarity amidst chaos, then you're in for an episode that offers a lifeline of inspiration, guidance, and actionable steps for a transformative change.
In this compelling episode of the Unstoppable Grit Podcast, our guest host, Jeff Lackey, brings you the unfiltered and moving story of Danielle Cobo, host of the Unstoppable Grit Podcast.
After this Episode, You Will Be Able to ..
Discover mindset shifts to cultivate resilience
Apply burnout prevention and recovery strategies
Identify and dismantle limiting beliefs
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About Danielle:
Danielle Cobo is an international female speaker for organizations, associations, and the public sector. She works with audiences to harness the grit and resilience to lead through change.
With over 15 years of corporate experience in the medical sales industry, she knows how to build high-performing teams that increase sales, productivity, and employee retention. Her expertise includes corporate resilience and burnout prevention.
Danielle is the author of “Unstoppable Grit: Breakthrough the 7 Roadblocks Standing Between You and Achieving Your Goals” and hosts the globally top-rated podcast "Unstoppable Grit Podcast with Danielle Cobo.”
As a former Fortune 500 Senior Sales Manager, she led her team through downsizing, restructuring, and acquisitions to become the #1 sales team in the nation. As a result, she was awarded Region Manager of the Year. Her resiliency motivated her to earn four consecutive national Sales Excellence Awards in a male-dominated industry.
While her husband, a Blackhawk pilot in the Army, deployed to Iraq for a year, Danielle learned to balance a demanding job while caring for their energetic 1.5-year-old twin boys, who possess more energy than a squirrel after a triple espresso.
Danielle’s resilience led her to start her own business, helping others develop the grit, resilience, and courage to thrive in life and business.
Her tenacious attitude stems from being raised by an ambitious mother and recovering from being taken from her father and cast out at 17 years of age.
She is a two-time 60-mile walker and a monster truck driver in Louboutin’s.
Danielle has a bachelor’s in communication with a minor in psychology from the California State University of Fullerton, Certification in Inclusive and Ethical Leadership from the University of South Florida Muma College of Business, and accreditation in Human Behavior from Personality Insights. Inc., and Leadership from Boston Breakthrough Academy.
She is a member of the National Speakers Association, the Central Florida National Speakers Association Chapter, Innovation Women, and a former member of Working Women of Tampa Bay. Danielle serves on the Military Advisory, Workforce Development, and Women of Influence Committees of the Tampa Chamber of Commerce. She is also a contributing writer for Women's Quarterly Magazine.
Her experience includes serving as a Training Pillar on the Military Spouse Economic Empowerment Zone Committee and Career Transition Advisor for Dallas Professional Women.
Through Danielle's captivating storytelling, content-rich and motivational style, she empowers individuals and organizations to cultivate unwavering resilience, igniting a transformative path towards increased sales, productivity, employee retention, and collaboration.
About the Show:
The Unstoppable Grit Podcast with Danielle Cobo explores the journeys of people who have overcome adversity and harnessed the grit and resilience to thrive in all areas of their lives, Guests share how they overcame difficult times - the strategies, mindset shifts, lessons they learned along the way, and actions that propelled them forward. From navigating career setbacks to overcoming personal obstacles, each episode is a testament to grit and resilience.
You'll learn how to develop the grit and resilience to lead yourself and others through change.
Join host Danielle Cobo, keynote speaker and author of "Unstoppable Grit: Break Through the 7 Roadblocks Standing Between You and Your Goals." A new episode is released every Wednesday at 4:00 AM EST.
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"Danielle and her guests are so Uplifting." <-- If that sounds like you, please consider rating and reviewing the show! This helps me support more people- just like you -- develop the grit and resilience to thrive in all areas of their lives.
Hello, my name is Jeff Lackey, and today I have the unusual opportunity to be the guest host on the show Unstoppable Grit with Danielle Cobo.
Danielle and I have had the recent opportunity to connect through another friend of ours and previous guest, Kevin McCarthy. And in that conversation, I realized the amazing story that to tell. So today I get the opportunity to interview Danielle. Welcome to your show.
Yeah, this is a unique circumstance. I have not been on the other side of the table on my own show. I've been a guest on several podcast, but not on my own show. So I'm excited for this opportunity and our conversation for today.
Well, thank you for trusting me with it. I hope to inspire better things as a result of our conversation because I think you do have a wonderful story to tell. And that's what we're going to do. We're going to give you that opportunity.
We're going to hear about where Danielle has come from, what inspired her book and the podcast. But before we get started, let's begin with a question that's derived straight from Cheryl Batchelder, former CEO of Popeyes Chicken. If you can't start with a quote from a question from Popeyes chicken, what can you start with? Right.
How My Childhood Shaped Who I Am Today
So tell me what major life events have actually helped shape who you are today?
I believe one of the most pivotal moments in my life that shaped who I am today was my earliest childhood memory. And even though it was a traumatic experience, it really led to the direction of where my life was going to go. So my earliest childhood memory was when I was two years old. And I remember my dad wanting to come to pick me up, and he wanted to take me to a baseball game. My parents were divorced at the time, and he wanted to take me to a baseball game, but unfortunately, my mom would not let me see him. And I just remember early on grasping onto the bottom of her leg and crying because I wanted to go so bad to go see my dad. And she ended up throwing me over her shoulders, running to the next door neighbor's house, having the next door neighbor kind of put me in another room while my mom and my dad argued. And I have no idea what they were arguing about.
I have no idea why my mom wouldn't let me see him. But that was not only one of my earliest childhood memories, it was also one of the last memories that I had as my dad, of my dad when I was a child. Because what I later found out is my mom took me from my father. So I later found out that one day my dad came to pick me up, and our house was completely empty, and my mom had moved us. So I didn't end up meeting my father until I was 15 years old. Now, why is this such a pivotal moment in shaping who I am today is because in a lot of ways, even though the decision that my mom made, I definitely do not agree with that decision. I don't know why she made that decision to keep me from my father, but it also kind of created a twofold in some of the strengths within me, but also some of the brokenness in me. So the beauty and the brokenness, one of them being the beauty is my mom was a single mom, and she raised me while she was going to school full time, while she was serving as a cocktail waitress in the evening and raising me.
And so my mom was somebody who I looked up to as a role model, somebody who role modeled grit and tenacity and determination and motivation, because I saw her go from absolutely nothing where we were living in a one bedroom apartment, I was sleeping in the living room.
The Pivotal Moment in My Life
As a young child, we shopped at thrift stores. I remember most of my clothes were on layaway, and I saw us go from nothing to her building a very successful career in medical sales and becoming a regional manager in the early 1990s, which really wasn't as for a female to be. And a manager in the 1990s is not the same as what it is today. We've made a lot of progress. And so my mom was somebody that I believed was a strong role model for me. I clearly ended up following in her footsteps and pursued a career in medical sales.
And I ended up meeting my father for the first, or I guess, when I later on in life. I met him when I was 15, when he randomly showed up at my high school, and the principal called me out of class and said, I have somebody here who says he's your dad, and he's proven he's your dad. He's got all the documentation to prove it. Would you like to meet him?
That's a shocking conversation at that point in time, one that you probably didn't wake up that morning expecting to have.
No, I really definitely was not anticipating that conversation. And it's interesting, we're kind of coming up on that anniversary because it was a couple of days right before Valentine's day. So I was 15 years old. I was a sophomore in high school. And I remember walking out of the school, and there's the principal next to me, and there's the school counselor next to my dad, and I remember just him embracing me in his arms and us both crying. But it was interesting because I thought that he left us. I thought that he chose another family. But I had such a deep longing for my father to be part of my life, especially at that age when in high school where there's father daughter dances, and I didn't have anyone to go with.
So it was a very pivotal moment in my life. In many ways.
A Journey of Strength and Resilience
As a dad of a daughter, I can understand just how hard it is to think about being separated from any of your children. But your daughter has a special place always in your heart, and there's a connection there, that's for sure. I can only imagine how that really. I love the way you put it. It created a beauty within you, but it also created a brokenness, that separation, which sounds like we're really getting into what maybe helped motivate you to write Unstoppable Grit.
Yeah. What inspired me to write the book unstoppable was actually a series of events that took place in 2020. So in 2019, my husband had served a year deployment, so he was in Iraq. And while he was in Iraq, I was leading a team for a Fortune 500 company. My twin boys at the time were one and a half years old. And it was a moment where 2020 was just a year of an emotional roller coaster. And I believe it was for many of us, every single one of us experienced change in 2020. My year started with, I was at a national sales meeting.
I'm sitting with my team, and I hadn't heard from my husband for a couple of days. And I receive a text message that there are some bombings going on at his base. And so I couldn't get a hold of him. Eventually, I was able to get a hold of him. But while I was on the phone with him, I heard in the background this phrase that will never escape my mind, and it is, incoming. Incoming. Take cover. Take cover.
Take accountability. Take accountability. And what that meant was that their base was being hit by missiles. And it was that moment of going, is he going to come home? And is he going to go home alive? And that particular evening, 13 missiles hit his base. One of the missiles took out the PX, which is like kind of their grocery store on the base. Gratefully, he was not there. He actually just kind of escaped it by 30 minutes. And grateful he did come back safe.
The Beauty and Brokenness of Life
But I started my year with going, is he going to come home? And the uncertainty of whether he was going to make that flight out or not, because it was right around a time where there was a heat and amount of missiles that were hitting the military bases in Iraq. And then right as he came home, it was difficult when he was deployed, but I really did not anticipate the challenges that were going to come next with us reintegrating into the family life, because I was a different person after him being deployed, I was much more independent. I was the one making the sole decisions when it came to the parenting of my kids. Now I've got to check in with my husband. Are we in alignment with our parenting decisions? We each have different styles, and I believe that every parent can relate to that. We have our own parenting styles. And you're trying to find a way to come together with them and be united front as parents. Yes.
So it took some time for us to get into our rhythm of parenting, and right when we started to kind of have our rhythm and started to see how our life was going to be of us back together as a united family with him being in the States. On March eighth, I lost my mom, and I lost my mom to suicide. And the moment I heard the news from my uncle who had called me, I remember collapsing to the ground and not able to breathe, tears flowing down my cheeks, my cheeks were all flushed. And just couldn't believe that my mom was in such a state of pain that all she thought was the only way to relieve the pain was to take her life. And my mom and I, even though we have had our challenges, we were estranged for 13 years, so we didn't have a strong relationship. But she was still my mom. She was somebody that I loved and cared for. And the reasons as to why we have an estranged relationship is for a whole nother episode.
The Journey to Unstoppable Grit
That's a lot of history, as you can imagine, with the history of the beauty and the brokenness of my upbringing with my mom. But she was still part of my life, and it was devastating news. And as I was trying to find a way to cope with her loss and prepare for her celebration of life. March 13, just a week after the world had shut down with the global pandemic. So I wasn't able to go back to California. I wasn't able to experience my mom'ws, to do her celebration of life, to go through her things, and even just to see my mom's life that I had missed out on. And then as I was trying to cope and heal with the loss of my mom, the company that I was with had been acquired by a larger company, a top ten pharmaceutical company. And it became a very toxic work environment.And I go into the details in great length, into the book, unstoppable grit. But for now, I'll just kind of say it was a very toxic work environment, something that I had not expected. I had been with the company for seven years. I loved the company that I worked with. I thought I was going to retire there, but the culture became so toxic, I could not stay. And so I ended up leaving. And these series of events really is what inspired me to write the book, because after these series of events, within six months, I felt lost and confused and broken and uncertain. And all I wanted was clarity, clarity on what my life was going to look like.
The Journey to Recovery
I wanted to know that I was going to be okay. I wanted to know that I was going to be able to heal from this. And it took about a year of really rediscovering who I was and what success meant to me. I had tied my success to my career and my paycheck, and I was a senior manager for one of the top pharmaceutical companies in the world. And I had a very desirable job that a lot of people would fight for that particular job. I worked for a great company. But while working in corporate and working and tying so much of my success to awards and accomplishments, I had lost my identity through the process. And so what inspired the book was after I left corporate and I started to do speaking and I started to do career consulting, I kept on hearing this, I just want clarity.The Journey to Perseverance for a Fulfilled Life
I want clarity on what my life is going to look like. Where is this next phase of my career going to go? Do I stay in the current job? Do I look for a different job? And then people kept asking me, how are you always able to bounce back after challenges? You're just able to keep moving forward. And I said, these are questions that I'm commonly asked. What would it look like if I wrote a book and I shared some of the exercises, the activities and the mindset shifts that I've made that have helped me develop the grit, to have the passion and the perseverance to keep moving forward and to build a career in the life that I absolutely love? I love what I do. I'm so happy. I don't look at those experiences as they happen to me. They shaped me into who I am today. They've built different layers of character, and I wouldn't be doing some of the things I'm doing now if it wasn't from that radical shift and pivot in my life.
To Be the Best, Get Past the Worst
Well, I've talked to a lot of leaders in my time, and what I find is that the best leaders have gone through some of the worst situations because they have a natural level of empathy and caring for others that you can only really get by having gone through terrible things yourself. Unfortunately, that's the rule of patience. People in church sometimes joke about, be careful not to pray for patience, because how you get patience is something you may not want. But the fact is that patience and that empathy and that caring come from very hard places often. So what a heartbreaking story. I mean, talk about challenges in reintegration and deployment. So marriage related child rearing, you have children, you have a death of a parent, you have job instability. I mean, any psychologist worth their salt would tell you that any one of those could rock your world by themselves.
And having all four of those simultaneously and with this minor thing called the global pandemic at the same time, those could really change your focus. But the fact is, you took the beauty and brokenness from before, and it seems like you've applied it in that scenario and now you're sharing it with others. In the book, unstoppable grit, which is I'm sure it's already hitting the tips of the charts. It's getting accolades all over the place. But in the book, you actually talk about things like burnout prevention and recovery, and you started to talk about how you've personally experienced that burnout. But talk to us about maybe some things that you discuss and how you prevent burnout and how you go through recovery when you have such terrible life events hit you.
From Burnout to Bliss
Yeah. In the book, I share a story. So the flow of the book is a story. Maybe it's a story that I've personally experienced, or maybe when working with different clients throughout my time, some of their stories, and it goes into the stories, it goes to the lessons learned, and then how can the readers apply it to their life? I wanted to make sure that when readers are reading the book, they're able to have tangible takeaways that they can apply to their life and make shifts in a positive direction for their life. And one of the stories that I share in the book is a time where I had experienced burnout. Now there's times where I experienced burnout at work, where I was in medical sales, and every third quarter I would break out in hives when I was younger because I was so focused on achieving the quota that I wasn't actually taking care of my own body. But one of the most pivotal moments of when I learned the tools to recover and prevent burnout was my experience of after having my kids, my twins, were born six weeks premature. When they were born, it was an emergency c section.
I was rushed to the hospital, and as they're pulling them out, I distinctly remember looking over. Fun little tidbit is, we didn't know the genders, so we didn't know if you're having boys or girls. I wanted it to be a surprise. So they pull one boy out, and I'm going, oh, my gosh, it's a boy. I'm so excited. And then they pull another boy out, and I'm like, another boy. I thought I was having girls, but he came out blue, and he wasn't breathing. And both of them were p
There were five nurses and a doctor on each of them, and they were rushed to the NICU. I never had that experience of holding my baby for the first time. In fact, I didn't get to see my babies for at least an hour and a half because I was in recovery right after my surgery.
Worse.
And they spent 17 days in the NICU. So the first 17 days of their life, they had feeding tubes in them. They were hooked up to heart monitors, what was called desaturation, which is where they would forget to breathe. And so you'd have to unwrap them and tickle their feet to remind them to breathe again. And just two weeks out of them exiting out of the NICU was two weeks after them getting out of the NICU. That's when I was actually shortly rushed to the hospital. And the reason being is because after they were born, it would take an hour and a half to feed one, an hour and a half to feed the other, and I would get an hour break, and that was around the clock because there were only five pounds 3oz, four pounds 10oz. They were tiny.
Finding Resilience While Under Postpartum Depression
So the sleep deprivation was causing me to be so sleep deprived that I wasn't eating, I wasn't hydrating enough. I just felt like a walking zombie. And because I wasn't taking care of myself, I ended up having gallstones and being rushed to the hospital. And while I'm laying in the hospital, gratefully, they have passed. But while I'm laying in the hospital and the doctor is sharing with me, you need to have surgery to get your gallbladder removed. I look at the tv, and across the tv, it says, breaking news. Category five hurricane headed to Tampa. We had just moved to Florida sharing with me, you need to have surgery to get your gallbladder removed. I look at the tv, and across the tv, it says, breaking news. Category five hurricane headed to Tampa. We had just moved to Florida.
This was our first hurricane. It was category five. It was headed to Tampa. And right as I'm just looking at this physician going, what do I do? My husband calls me and says, hey, I've just been activated. We need to move our helicopters because he's a Blackhawk pilot. We need to move our helicopters up to the northeast. And I looked at the doctor and I said, I can't have surgery. And that's.
That's something in itself that goes into, like, we really need to prioritize our own personal well being and health. But I ended up leaving the surgery center or leaving the hospital. The doctor told me, it's not a matter of if you're going to have gallstones, it's a matter of when. So as soon as the hurricane passed, I ended up having surgery, but went home, boarded up the house. We lost power for four days. One of our boys was hooked up to a heart monitor, hooked up to the generator, and bought an overpriced generator for $1,000 off the side of the road because they were price gouging. Yes. There was no gas.
The grocery stores were out of food. So all of these events compounded together. Apparently, when I go through experiences, they all happened at once. They don't get spread out throughout my life like these compounded events. And I ended up really going and hitting severe postpartum depression. I used to sit at the dinner table every night at 05:00 and I would cry and I would try to eat, but I would throw up. I couldn't keep anything down. And I was severe.
Moments where I learned how our body reacts when we are not taking care of ourselves. And I know that people talk about self care and the importance of taking care of yourself, but this is really how my body was showing. No, in order to be a good mom, a good spouse, a good colleague, it starts by taking care of us. So we need to take care of ourselves first, then our family and then our business. And what I mean by that is I've learned that if I want to be the best mom, the best spouse, the best friend, the best colleague, I need to take care of myself. If we are deprived of sleep, if we are dehydrated, so if we're deprived of sleep, we're going to come across irritable and short. If we're deprived of water, even just 2% dehydration causes mental fatigue, which affects how we are at work.
If we are not exercising and having good nutrition, that could be affecting us as well. So in the book, I really go into how to take care of ourselves and really live an optimal self awareness and an optimal being of ourself and I also take them through activities and exercises and identifying the signs of burnout. Like, what were the different various ways, emotionally, physically and spiritually, that I noticed were compounding, looking back, all the different areas where I was short sighted and what was causing that burnout. And then in order to take care of our business, we need to take care of our family. Because if we've got turmoil at home, if we are going through challenges at home, whether it's maybe a disagreement with a significant other, maybe there's some challenges with the kids, or we're maybe having a disagreement with a friend, it's going to be really hard for us to focus at work. And so I'm a big believer that we get to bring our whole selves to work, and in order to do that, we first need to take care of ourselves and then our family and then our business.
Yeah, because if you're distracted with things that are going wrong with your family and are unable to resolve them, of course that's going to occupy your mind. If you're distracted with gallstones or something like that, you're not going to be able to think about work. That's going to be the last thing on your mind. But if those two things, if you can encourage people to take care of themselves, take care of their family, put those as priorities, then they're going to be able, when they're at work, give so much more of themselves to the work, and you're going to get a better result, and they're going to be happier. They're going to want to stay. And you, I think, as the leader, will be a lot happier with yourself. You can look at yourself in the mirror and say, actually, I feel like I led well today because I allowed people to take care of themselves and take care of their family. And then after they're done with that, I want them to show up at work.
And that's amazing. That's really great advice. I think about the old adage of putting your own oxygen mask on first. Right. Because you're really not good to anybody if you can't breathe. Right.
The “Unstoppable Grit”
Tell me a little bit. Obviously, we've talked about the book. We talked about the podcast. I'd be curious, how can listeners go about finding and ordering the book? Because I'm sure you're hiding it somewhere like you don't want anybody to find it. Right. But you can let everybody hear a little secret of where you've hid the. Yeah.
Yeah. So the book is available at most retailers, Barnes and Nobles, but I would say Amazon is always an easy go to. Amazon. You can find it on Amazon and it will get delivered directly to your house, which is always nice. I feel like Amazon at this point. My kids play Amazon truck because Amazon comes to our house so much. They do the delivery, but, yeah, it is available. And when the readers preorder the book, so the book officially launches February 21, and that's when it's going to ship. However, they can preorder the book right now.
And when they preorder the book and they go to my website and they go to daniellecobo.com book, there are free resources that they get access to because they've pre ordered. So depending on how many books they purchase, whether it's just for them, maybe it's for them and their best friend, or maybe it's a book club or for their team, there's different resources that I have provided them. Whether it is a courageous, goal setting guide or there is a Break the Cycle of Burnout Workbook. There's different workbooks that are available so that they can really take the steps and some of the exercises that I take them through to help them level up in all areas of their life. I believe that there's roadblocks that we all run into in life, and some of the roadblocks that we have are narratives that were shaped in us at an early age, whether it's been from society or it's been from our upbringing and parents, where they've kind of created these narratives on what we believe we can and cannot accomplish. And when we're able to break through those roadblocks, that's when we can really achieve the goals that we want to achieve and level up in all areas of our life.
Well, yeah, I mean, that sounds like a wonderful book. And I've actually just started an online book club on LinkedIn named after my mother's bookstore we call the Dee's bookworm. And so we started that. I got a bunch of people that are joining, and maybe unstoppable grip should be our next read. That should be the one that we go for.
A Story of Practical Wisdom
I think given the stories I've heard today, I think it's going to be compelling. I think it will be interesting, it'll be edifying, and most importantly, you'll take away some things that you can apply to your life today that can help you through. Any one of these could be something that could shake any one of us.
But the fact that you've had, I guess I could call it the privilege to go through some of these difficult situations and then being able to see the way out of them. We should really learn from you as to what are some best practices and ways that you helped to not only survive but I think thrive as a result of all your experiences. Danielle, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to be your guest host today and interviewing you.
Thank you, Jeffrey. This was an incredible experience to sit on the other end of the microphone and be a guest. So thank you so much for hosting us today.
Well, Danielle Cobo, the actual real host of the show, but not today. Thank you so much. This is another episode of Unstoppable Grit and we can't wait for you. February 21, preorder the book now. Get all your freebies that go along with it. And if you have a book club, consider putting this on your list for just one week after Valentine's Day to get this thing kicked off. So thank you so much, Danielle.
Thank you.
