The Myth of Work-Life Balance for Mission-Driven Leaders

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That's the only consistency to a work life balance is that it's consistently changing.

From others over self. It's hardcore and at ease. A show about people who are keeping their edge without going over the edge. I'm host Shelly Rude and today's guest is Crystal Branakant, who spent over 10 years in demanding roles from Navy service to mental health nursing while building a beautiful family life with her spouse and toddler. We explore why work life balance advice doesn't work for people who actually care about their work, including the warning signs that you're headed for burnout and how you can build a career that you love for decades without sacrificing what matters most. This is hardcore and at ease. Crystal Bronican, I'm so excited to have you on the show today. Welcome.

Thank you so much for having me.

And you are out of the office today, is that right?

Yes, I am camping for the week.

That's beautiful that you get to sneak in a little bit of work, but not in the office. And that's really setting the stage for our talk today because we need to learn this idea of work life balance.

Yeah, it is achievable, but it's not easy. It's a lot of work in the office, at home.

Would you please take a moment and tell us more about your professional background?

Yes, of course. So after I graduated high school, I immediately, 10 days after my 18th birthday, went to boot camp. It's something I had wanted to do since I was a kid. I had a plan and I carried it out. I did my four years active duty, two deployments over to the Persian Gulf. When I got out, I spent the rest of the summer in transition, which means a lot of mental health things in that transition from military to civilian life. And in the fall, I started college.

How can I ask? How old were you at that point?

22.

22. A lot of mental health things happened at the age of 22 for everyone. And

the military gives you a few days. I can't remember if it was three days or five days, but you get a class, it's transitioning into civilian life, out of the military life. What that's going to look like, what they don't talk to you about is your lack of structure that you now have, your lack of purpose that you now have, and the impending anxiety and depression that come with it. Very hard for me.

Well, you're talking about a time of life that whether you have the military or not from 18 to 22. Those are formative years.

Yes.

Now, you said that you joined boot camp 10 days after you turned 18.

Yes, and I had been planning it

for over a year.

So what about growing up? I mean, who planted this idea of the possibility of joining the military or serving the military? Was it just a recruiter at your school one day?

No. I was probably 11 when I decided that that's what I was going to do. My grandpa was a Navy veteran. My mother was an army veteran. I did not want to do the Army. I knew I didn't want to do that. And my grandpa was. He was my male role model, my dad, not much of a dad in the 90s. And then he was gone. It was my grandpa, and he had his Navy tattoos on his arms, and he wouldn't talk much about it, not until the later stages of Alzheimer's. And then he found out that I was joining because I was 17 when I signed up. I went right around my 17th birthday. I sought out the recruiter. I did what I had to do. I went and tracked my dad down to. Because he had to sign. He didn't have a choice. It's not like my dad was dead. He just wasn't around.

So he. He had to sign.

My mother reluctantly signed. And so for that next year, I was working with the recruiters through my senior year In High School, June 29, 2007, I was gone.

You went in, and you were gone. Did you end up getting a Navy tattoo like Grandpa?

No.

Am I allowed to ask that?

Yes.

Everybody wants to know.

I consider still getting an anchor, a memory of my service, and then also of my grandpa, but I just haven't gotten there yet. There's lots of tattoos I want to get, but they cost money, so.

Yes, they do, and they're a commitment. Well, that's what we're talking about today is really sustainability. Right. And how to make smart decisions so that we're not just living in the moment. We're actually setting ourselves up for success in the long run. What happened at the age of 22 that sort of catapulted you forward into the professional career that you have now?

So When I was 11, I knew

that I wanted to join the military and I wanted to be a nurse. The military eventually became. And this might sound a little horrible, but, like, a means to an end. I knew that going into college, out of high school was not for me. I wasn't mentally ready for it. I wasn't about to ask my mom for Any money I needed to do

it on my own.

But the thought of taking out loans and being in debt terrified me. So the GI Bill started, I think when I was in the service. I went in under the Montgomery. But then the post 911 started when I was in and I was, this is perfect. So I got out and I immediately started with my post 911 to continue my childhood dreams of becoming a nurse.

So you didn't let go of those while you were in the military career?

Absolutely not.

Resources and money and opportunity. And you knew that once you ended your military career, you could still take advantage of some of those opportunities as well. So you graduated from Grand Valley State University in 2016?

Yes.

And I mean, you've been helping dedicated professionals build careers and lives. I mean, for decades now. I'm not that old. We're not that old, you know, but at a stage in life where we are professionals and we know what we're doing. Talk to me a little bit about that. Once you actually got your nursing degree and you started leaning into the mental wellness world, what was that like?

So it's actually kind of ironic how

I got into mental health nursing. So in nursing school, you get a whole semester of mental health. I don't think I cried more in any part of nursing school than I did during the semester of mental health. It was challenging. And there were questions, like, I had questions myself, like, what am I even doing here? I'm never going to make it through this. And for me to be in mental health and being able to look back at that semester, I'm just like, wow. My professors would probably look at me sideways if they knew what I was doing now. But I was in the hospital. I wasn't enjoying it. I was also in urgent care. I did in home nursing for an infant with a trait. And I was just scouring jobs and I saw it was a community mental health position and I was like, oh, my cousin works there. It'd be cool to work with my cousin. So I just applied just because. And I got the job. And I ended up working with kids for almost. Well, the first probably year or so was adults. And then working with youth with mental health concerns and all of that for the next almost eight years in community mental health before I left to be where I am now. And I loved it. It grew on me. I learned so much and gives you some routine. You're working with the same people all the time. But then there is also that unpredictability. It's like, okay, this is. This is why I'M here kind of thing.

Can you talk to me, Crystal, about working with youth mental wellness? Because the statistics and the data for mental wellness of our youth, they're not good and they're on a negative trajectory. Can you talk to me about what you've seen and kind of where the trends are going?

I don't know a whole lot about the trends, but I know the biggest pet peeve of mine that I had when we would get kids coming in for therapy or seeing psychiatry was that parents often say, here's my child, you need to fix them. And then when you kind of turn it around and okay, so what are you doing in the home? What does your guys daily structure look like? Oh, no, no, I don't have a problem.

It's my kid.

They're doing xyz. I don't have an issue. But from an outsider perspective, you see a chaotic living environment which breeds chaotic behavior. And that was my biggest pet peeve, working with the youth.

Well, the Youth in the U.S. we are, we're experiencing a mental health crisis. You know, it's beyond like, oh, this is an issue that needs to be addressed and it's affecting some teens. But like you said, there's certain things that we can do to set our children up for success. And the schools and the caregivers, they play a very important role in helping reverse the trends that we're seeing right now. In your life, Crystal, you are so hardcore because you've given over a decade to mental wellness performance. But I want to hear it in your own words. What is it about you that makes you so hardcore?

So after our conversation this morning and talking a little bit more with my husband, I think that my hardcore comes from my ability to consistently be resilient. I have been through so much as a child and then even through my adult life, and I've never once been like, you know what? I guess the universe is telling me something. I'm done. I'm just going to be done. I continue to get up. I continue to strive ahead and chase my dreams.

Can you share with our listeners some of those tools that you personally utilize to keep you so resilient?

I think that a lot of it comes extrinsically. I've had a lot of people telling me growing up and even in my adulthood that, oh, you can't do that. You are not capable. And I say to that, watch me.

That seems to be a common pattern for our guests on this show,

and it may be even to a fault because I know that I have done well, for myself, I would consider myself professionally, personally successful in achieving the things that I want. But also, please don't tell me that I can't do something because. Because I will probably without thinking it through first.

That's, I mean, that's a great point. Has there been a moment in your life where this ambition of yours has actually become a liability

on small scale? Yes. I accidentally said a really bad word in front of my mother when I was a child because it was written on a piece of paper and my cousin was like, oh, I can't say that. And I was like, what are you dumb? And then I said it and I was like, oh, oh, that's why you can't say that. Okay, got it.

You thought it is capability.

Yes.

Instead of should have, could have.

Yes. Yep. So, yes. Please don't ever tell me I can't do something unless you're trying to motivate me in a certain direction that's going to be beneficial.

What about in your professional career and working with individuals who see a lot of brick walls in their life? You know, that's, that's what you do. You have conversations and try to tear down those brick walls and get them to see other ways through it. What's it like to be a person of personal ambition and be surrounded by people that are, you know, not of that, like, mindset? I feel like it would be very frustrating.

It is.

That is the immediate word that came to my mind. And I work right alongside a social worker. So we go in together, we have these conversations and then we get in the van and we have to decompress because it's just like, I'm not someone who can understand how you can just sit in your apartment all day and do absolutely nothing. And you can sometimes recognize these, you know, mental health struggles and oh, I gotta do this, you know, because I want my life to be better. And then just take no action. It's very frustrating. Yes, but we gotta move on.

When you encouraging people to move on and drive forward and make change. Tell me about the importance of taking action.

I mean, if you don't take. Because there are the certain steps as pre. Contemplative. Contemplative. There's one more. And then the action stage. Yes. You have to go through those stages and it's not linear. You can go back and forth, but if you don't ever hit that action stage of that doing, next thing you know, it's, it's been five years and you're £350 and you've done absolutely nothing. And it's just. It's hard to. It's hard to watch that happen for me and be with the people that I work with, because I see it all the time. It's the same patterns of, nope, I didn't do anything. Nope, I don't want to do anything. I don't want to take my meds. I mean, they don't say this part, but it's like, essentially because I'd rather live in my delusions. And you see so much potential in these people, and it's so hard to watch them never even get close to that action stage. Or you see it happen for a day, and next thing you know, they're off the rails again. It is. It's hard. It is very hard.

Crystal, you work with a lot of veterans, and so these are not people that have never achieved anything in life. These are people that, at one point, you know, they had this ambition and they said, yes, and they went out and did the thing.

Yes.

And that's not what their life is now.

Right. And I think for the individuals that we work with, it's the severe mental illness that hit them. And a lot of. Like, one of my guys in particular, he was very successful in his career, and he went out and he did things, and he was very physically fit. And now that he is just wrapped in this cycle of schizoaffective, he can't see a way out of it. So then you see it and you. He, you know, he has the stories and he has the pictures and we can see the potential. He has all of the supports. A lot of them have all of the supports that they need. They have, you know, family. They're in a good location. They have some sort of transportation and some sort of, like, drive, like, I want to be xyz. But it's that barrier. A lot of them for that. A lot of a big barrier for those individuals is that door. And that door is the literal one that gets them out of their apartment or their house.

Why?

I think it's what is on the other side of it. And what's on the other side is a reality where they were high achievers, they did great things, and now they can, you know, they don't have close friendships. They don't. You don't have a purpose. I think a purpose is a really big struggle for a lot of the guys that I work with. It's because, you know, they're. They've got their 100% disability, so they've got their money coming and they don't have to get up and go to a job every day, so they don't have that purpose anymore like they did when they were in the military. And it wasn't just, oh, in the military, had a job, it was a lot of them during the times that they were serving, it was noble, they were respected, they were successful in their careers, and they had a lot of even praise coming from that. And now they're just, there's no more purpose. And I think that is. It gets in the way of a lot of people, whether you have mental illness or not.

Absolutely. What I hear you saying is that we don't even open the door because at one time when we opened that door, we liked what we saw. And now when we open the door, there's maybe nobody on the other side or you've lost friends, maybe you're experiencing grief, and you've got some loved ones that have moved out of this world. And what's on the other side of that door is not a picture that you want to step into.

Absolutely. I couldn't have said it better.

How do we create a vision for ourselves on the other side of that door? How do we make it so that when we look at that door, we see something that we want to step into?

That is the million dollar question. That is something that we help the people that we work with kind of build. Like, what do you want out of your life in the next six months? Like, what can we work toward for you to enjoy your life and not just be alive? It's really digging down deep and trying to figure out those things. Like, do I want to have close personal relationships? And if I do, what do I have to do? What are the steps that I have to do to achieve that? And we, of course, use smart goals, but anybody can take that concept of, okay, so in six months, I really want to be more social, but in order to be more social, I have really bad anxiety. Okay, so what am I gonna do? I can talk to my doctor. I can seek therapy to learn coping skills. And if I do these things, I think that I would be able to go to, you know, a dog park with my dog and talk to people and maybe potentially make friends. Or I would be able to, and I'll go to the beach by myself and talk to people, not talk to people, but still enjoy that time and not just be stuck in my living environment because I'm too afraid of what's on the other side of that door.

Crystal I love this conversation because my listeners are taking this in from two different mindsets. On one mindset, they're saying, well, that's not me. I have ambition, I have drive, I've got these dreams. I'm just frustrated about these other people, people around me. Which brings us to the second mindset. These are the other people around you, and it is exceedingly challenging to get them to like what's on the other side of the door.

Absolutely.

So what advice would you say or what would you give to the ambitious people that are listening, who want to light that fire and that spark in the team members that are around them?

Oh, that's a hard one. Because everybody is motivated differently. So you're gonna have people who are motivated by, you know, visual things. Like, hey, these are our visual goals. As, you know, if you're looking at a company with your co workers or you're leading a team and it's. I don't know how to answer that one, Shelly.

So for those of us that are really ambitious and we want our teams to kind of stand up and rally around and do the thing, but we're looking at them and we can see, we can see people who perhaps don't want to open the door. Maybe we know a little bit something about our co workers or the people that are close to us and they're not ready or they're scared of what's on the other side or, you know, you see them, would you say spending all day on their couch, what do you say? You know, like, so you get 10 minutes at the water cooler with them because they're microwaving their lunch. What do you say in those moments that might actually make an impact on how they're living their lives.

I think in a 10 minute window it would be, could be kind of difficult, but just finding out and trying to weed out what motivates these people that you work with to, you know, be on board, be part of the team, get going. Like, what motivates people, I think is, is really the, the bottom of what we're looking for and then we can take. What motivates you? Like, oh, being able to, you know, continue to go skiing or I'm, I'm just in such of a. I don't ever try to motivate my team. You know, I try to motivate these individuals that are struggling with mental illness. So it's hard to change my, my perspective of like, who I'm talking to. But like, with my guys, it's, it's figuring out what motivates them to make that Change to put in that effort. Have I found it? No, but I'm gonna keep trying. And we, we pick out little things like, okay, I think that you being able to go to the beach and having the transportation motivates you. So let's figure out how we can make that happen. And then you make it happen. And it's still like getting an electric bike to be able to go. And then it still doesn't work. Still not happening. Okay, so what else motivates you? You want to have these relationships, you want to work out. How can we work together toward that goal so that you're not doing it alone?

What I'm hearing is almost a counterintuitive approach because the mission is do the thing. The humanity is. I don't want to open the door. And by you saying, you know, we do the thing and, and we don't like the results, so we're kind of going to slink back away. Your approach is to kind of raise up another thing. So, so that when we slink away or we back off. Right. Or we fail or we quit, we don't go too far backwards. We don't retreat all the way back into the hole of safety. We're still out there, we're still outside.

Yes. And I think for a lot of people, mental illness or not, it's accountability. If you're working with a team, like, hey, let's do this together. Because if you just send someone off, okay, it's your job to do X and there's no accountability and there's no motivation and there's no determination to be part of the team and accomplish the goal, that's likely not going to happen. And you can, you know, apply that to individuals with mental illness or your co workers who you're working on a big project with.

And I feel like that's some bad advice that we get about work life balance. It's like, oh, well, you need more time with your family, so forget your team, you know, and, and just focus on your husband or your spouse or whatever. But that's not what work life balance actually means. Right. I mean, it's, it's actually about taking all of it and bringing it into one solid mission altogether so that everything works together.

Right. And with work life balances, there's going to be sacrifices on either side, no matter what. I don't. Work life balance sounds wonderful, but sometimes I feel like in practice there's, there's always going to be a sacrifice. And I mean, that's, that's anything that you're working toward, like if you are working really hard on this one thing to accomplish, you know, this, this goal that you have, you're going to be putting, you know, you're awake for 16 hours a day and you're putting half of it in there. You're, you're gonna have sacrifices elsewhere always. And, but the work life balance, the beauty in that is okay for, so for this month I'm working in this really big project and yes, I'm gonna have to sacrifice a little bit, but the outcomes are going to be wonderful. And then after that I'll have a little bit of time to then really focus in on my family because my work won't need me as much because we just accomplished that goal. And then it ebbs and flows. It, it's up and down throughout your whole life. And it's never going to be perfectly 50% to my family and 50% to my work because. And just like in a relationship, we're not giving 50, 50, we are giving, it's 100% to the relationship. And some days I give 80 and some days I'm only able to give 20. It is up and down and it's a working relationship and it is constantly changing. That's the only consistency to a work life balance is that it's consistently changing.

And that is a sustainable pattern. When you look at it almost like waves on a seashore, that's the sustainable pattern that allows passionate professionals like you and I to make it through decades and decades of achieving wonderful things. And it is counterintuitive, but I love how you said you give a lot in one area and then you pull back and you intentionally, intentionally shift into a different area so that you can give maybe that same amount of passion attention into the other area. And I think that's where a lot of us go wrong, isn't it, Crystal? We do that wave approach, but we do it like for me, all in work, you know, and it's one work project and then yay, another. We're done with that. Tie the bow. Another work project is coming up and Tie the bow. Next quarter's results are in. Tie the bow. But when do I ever take that, that passion and that drive and turn it into my family? Like we had this really amazing vacation. That was amazing. Tie the bow. Like, what's next? Do we have something planned for next year? Do we have something planned, planned for three months from now?

Yeah, I think it's, I mean it's great to do big trips. My husband and I went on, went to A festival, just us without the kids. And it was wonderful. And that is so important to be able to connect with your spouse, to have that time away from the kids. But now we're on a family vacation and we might not have anything big necessarily planned, but we have little things like we have tickets for Lewis Farms, which is near us that we have to use probably next month. And then we have tickets to a baseball game in September. And it's the little things of this is what we're doing us as a family unit. And we obviously spend time together every single weekend. But we also take that time, some of that time to spend by ourselves as well. Because it's not just work family, it's work family, self. You have to take care of yourself.

Tell me about that. Crystal, what are some of the warning signs of. I know burnout is being overused almost right now, but what are some of the signs that you're not prioritizing this idea of a wave after wave work life balance appropriately.

I don't know what the papers and the research say, but I feel like that it's, it's when you are becoming overly fatigued, you are sleeping your seven to eight hours, it's hard to wake up. You're not enjoying the things that you would normally enjoy. Like I'm a reader and if I get to a point that I don't enjoy reading anymore, I know that I need to do some self reflection and pull myself back together.

It's not just the matter of the book that you chose?

No, not always. I, I don't ever. I'm one of those weird people. Whether I like it or not, I finish the book because, you know, respect for the author or whatever.

Good for you. Because I have had a number of books where I couldn't even make it past the first chapter.

Oh yeah, no, I, I finished, I finished the books. It might take me a little longer than normal, but I'll finish it.

So you just genuinely enjoy the act of reading?

Yes, absolutely. I don't enjoy the. I don't enjoy reading to learn though. Not anymore. I really should, I should always be trying to better myself. But sometimes like reading is my enjoyment for myself, not for my growth. I, I learned, I learned during the act of work. Like I, I learn a lot during work so much.

Well, it sounds like reading is one of your recognized self practices for how you can stay at ease.

Yes.

And what's interesting is it, it probably is unique to the work that you do in mental wellness because you're hearing so story after story after story. But they're negative stories from your client for the most part, right?

Yes.

And so you need to have the counter to that in your brain, and that's where your reading for pleasure comes in, is you get to put in those story after story with a positive outcome.

Well, I mean, considering what I read, it might not be positive. However, I read a lot of thrillers and, like, crime novels and things like that, so it's pretty extreme. Some of the books that I read, I'm just like, oh, my gosh. I don't. Is this author okay? Like, if I finish a book, and that's my immediate thought. That was a great book.

As a favorite.

I do. I've only read one of his books, but I have a few more on my shelf. I really want to tackle it, but I have to finish my Goodreads challenge before I can pick that book up, because it's probably going to take me a month. It's like three inches thick. Maybe four. I don't know.

Well, Crystal Bronnigan, you're on vacation with your family right now. Thank you so much for giving us the time together today. Will you take just another minute and share with us what's next for you, either personally or professionally?

I was afraid you're gonna ask me that, because right now, my goal is just to continue in my job. I am only, like, seven months in, so I'm still learning so much and then just pouring my love into my family. I think that right now I'm kind of at a. I don't want to say low, because I'm not at a low. I, like, personally, I feel like I'm at a high, but, like, I'm at, like, a plateau with where I'm at and in the work that I'm doing. And I'm just focusing on doing well in my current role, because it is new to me. And this is not a job where you're just like, oh, three months in, I got this. I can do is not so.

I love this perspective, Crystal, because so many of us think that there has to be this constant uphill view of growth and succession to feel like we're established at work. But isn't that the point of being established, that you can actually lay this foundation so that you can take a deep breath and transition that wave over to something else, like a family or travel or a home to be built or something like that?

Yes, absolutely. And I feel like if I can build this foundation at work, then I will be able to eventually grow and build and hopefully improve things within our system at work. But I need to know what is actually going on first.

Well, we talked about having a Navy tattoo. It's not on the schedule yet, but maybe someday.

But it's. It's not off the table either.

All right. And maybe once you get through it, we'll. We'll see one of those tattoos. What would an it tattoo look like?

Like for Stephen King.

Yeah.

It probably depends on how gory you want to go. Right. Because you could just get a simple red balloon or the. The paper sailboat.

Yeah.

Even just like the outline of a red jacket. Red rain jacket. Or sorry, not red. Yellow rain jacket.

Someday, if I see you and you've got an anchor on one arm and a red balloon on the other, you'll know what happened. Next level. All right, Crystal, thanks so much for being with us today and sharing your wisdom.

Thank you for having me.

That was Crystal Bronnacant. And what really hit me about our conversation was this idea that sustainable leadership is not about perfect balance. It's not even close to being about perfect balance. It's about being brave enough to open doors, even when you don't know what's waiting on the other side. In my experience with mission driven leaders, we spend so much energy trying to control the outcomes that we forget that the real courage really is just in showing up. What I'm continuing to learn from working across military, corporate, and entrepreneurial environments is that leaders who can sustain their impact for decades aren't the ones with perfect systems. They. They're the ones that are willing to face reality even when it's uncomfortable. They don't run away. And this is what hardcore and at ease looks like in practice. It's having the discipline to open the difficult doors while trusting that you can handle whatever you find. This means having those tough conversations, like doing exit interviews with staff members when they turn in their notice, even though you kind of wish that they would just slip away. And they probably do too. This means that we accept speaking gigs even when we don't think that we're ready. Because something inside is whispering that you are. And this means taking a chance on that coaching program that you're thinking about. Because when you hear their message, you get this sense of hope that greater things are ahead. So instead of exhausting ourselves trying to maintain impossible standards, we're building something that lasts because it's grounded in truth. What if we tried measuring sustainability by our willingness to face what's real rather than what we wish were true? And Crystal lives this out Every single day. After our interview, she told me about making house calls for veterans that are dealing with mental wellness. So picture this. You're outside someone's door and you're knowing that there's something happening on the other side. You're taking a deep breath and you're steeling yourself internally because you have no idea what you're about to walk into. Crystal knocks and the door opens and she is face to face with this very large man wearing an even larger fur coat, sunglasses. Indoors, the thermostat is cranked way up. The heat hits her like a wall. Everything about this scene screams that this person is living in a completely different, different reality. But here's the thing. Crystal doesn't back away. She stepped into that sweltering, surreal space because maybe, just maybe, he needed what she had to offer. Now that image sticks with me. Because how many of us are living our own versions of fur coats and sunglasses, cranking up our own thermostats, afraid to let anyone in to see what's really happening? Maybe you're not as successful financially as you think people are perceiving you to be. Maybe inside your family there is a lot more turmoil than what's being perceived on the outside. How many of us need someone brave to come knock on our door and ask how we're doing? If you're tired of pretending like you've got it all figured out that I'm here for that conversation, connect with me through our community. The website is join.othersoverself.com now this week, let's sit with this question. What door have you been avoiding because you're afraid of what you might find on the other side? That's all for now. I'm Shelly Rude and I'll be back next Tuesday because, listen, getting results is great, but you could be doing so much more. We're digging into the sky specific mistake that's keeping you from creating exponential impact. Until then, stay hardcore, be at ease, and trust the process.