From Burnout & Chaos to Everyday Joy: Two Stories That Will Change How You See Your Life

What if everything you're struggling with right now is actually trying to teach you something?

What if your burnout, chaos, broken relationships — what if those aren't failures, but invitations?

That's the question at the heart of School of Joy — a podcast and community exploring how spiritual wisdom becomes lived reality. And it's not abstract theory. It's born from two real women, two real transformations that went from deeply struggling to finding genuine joy in the everyday.

This is B and Renske's story.

B's Story: From Victimhood to Presence

My transformation didn't happen overnight. It was slow, messy, and real.

For years, my life was shaped by a complete mentality of victimhood. My childhood home was marked by mental illness - and it shaped me deeply.

The first crack appeared when I was working as a nurse, visiting elderly housebound patients — people without family, without options, without much hope. Looking at them, I saw a mirror.

I just looked back at how I had so much opportunity. And I think that was really the beginning for me of gratitude.

But gratitude alone wasn't enough. What really shifted things was fear — fear of repeating my family patterns, and a desperate desire to show up differently for my own children.

The memories of my mum that really light me up are the ones where she was happy. That's what our children want — when we're happy, that makes them so happy.

So in my early twenties, at the most chaotic point in my life — toxic relationships, unhealthy patterns, a version of myself I’m not proud of — I started therapy.

By that point it felt like there was no other option.

Here's what nobody tells you about that phase: it gets harder before it gets easier.

Every layer I peeled back brought more pain. I could see my patterns but couldn't yet break them. It was like trudging through treacle — years of slow, grinding awareness without real change.

Then came spiritual self-mastery work. And something cracked open.

The shift wasn't just understanding myself more. It was meeting myself with compassion. Moving from "why am I like this?" to "what am I here to learn?"

Today, my relationship with joy looks completely different. It's not the fleeting high of something external going right. It's quieter, more constant, more real.

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Renske's Story: New Glasses, Brighter World

Renske's turning point was less gradual. It hit all at once.

Eight and a half years ago, she burned out completely. She couldn't get off the couch. Couldn't face a trip to the shops. Her battery, as she puts it, was more than empty.

For six months, she was home, recovering, slowly beginning to ask the questions she'd been too busy to ask before:

How did I get here? What was I doing that led to this?

The recovery led to a radical decision: she wasn't going back to an office job. She was going to choose something she actually loved.

That one decision — that single door opened to change — made it easier to open the next one. Shortly after, she met someone from New Zealand and decided to move to the other side of the world.

In New Zealand, Renske walked into a pilates studio and discovered holistic health. She spent a year learning the physical and mental layers of wellbeing. But something was still missing. She could feel it.

Then she came across a spiritual self-mastery course. She had no rational reason to say yes. She didn't believe in the framework. She didn't understand what she was signing up for.

But there was a deeper calling.

"It was like my soul was knocking on the door. I still can't mentally or rationally explain why I said yes. It was, I guess, the whisper of the soul."

She showed up. And discovered that eight out of nine people in that first class felt exactly the same way: I have no idea why I'm here, but I had to be.

A year and a half in, something shifted permanently.

"I always say it feels like I put on different glasses and I look at the world completely differently. And those glasses continue to change as I continue to do the work — they just become brighter and brighter."

Nothing dramatic had changed in her external life. Same relationships. Same responsibilities. But she was seeing them through entirely different lenses.

And that changed everything.

Now, when life gets chaotic — and it does, she has young children, a thriving business, a dog, a full life — she doesn't fight it. Recently, on a chaotic walk with her children, she felt herself getting frazzled. She took a breath. Shifted into presence. And suddenly the chaos became connection. The silliness became joy.

"I felt a wave of gratitude for this chaos in my life right now. And the whole walk was different."

That's the power of perspective.

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What Both Stories Have in Common

Renske and I came from very different places. But we arrived at the same truth.

We both hit a wall. Mine was victimhood and chaos. Renske's was burnout and emptiness. Different flavours of the same message: this is no longer sustainable.

We both chose to look inward. We didn't wait for things to get better on their own. I started therapy. Renske said yes to a course she couldn't explain. Both chose to examine their own patterns, their own role in their own suffering.

We both went through the messy middle. There was no straight line upward. There were uncomfortable truths to explore about our own creations before real change happened.

And both discovered the same thing: perspective is everything.

We may not have been able to control what happened to us, but we could control our perspective.  

We get to choose how to see those things.

And that shift — that single internal shift — changed our entire experience of being alive.

The "Upgrade Available" Model

Renske has a framework she lives by, and I do too.

Every time you get triggered, every time something bothers you, every time you feel resistance — that's not a sign that something's wrong. It's a notification.

Upgrade available.

Most of us dismiss it. We scroll past, repeat the same patterns, and wonder why nothing changes.

But what if you said yes to the upgrade instead?

• Feel it fully. Don't bypass the emotion or think your way out of it. Feel the frustration, the grief, the overwhelm.

• Get curious. Once you've felt it, ask: what is this here to teach me? What's the gift in this? Curiosity is so much gentler than judgment — and it opens possibilities that judgment slams shut.

• Receive it. This is the hardest part. It requires trust that there is a gift, that it's for your growth, that you're capable of integrating it.

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Renske puts it beautifully: "We can choose to not push the gift away and say 'no, thank you.' We can say,, 'Yes, thank you, I'll receive this.'"

This is radical responsibility — not blaming your circumstances, not pretending they didn't happen, but saying: I didn't choose what happened. I do choose how I respond. And that's where my power is.

Does this resonate? Why not join our Joy Circle – our growing community of like-minded individuals who are ready to show up, do the work and most importantly, connect.

You're not alone in this journey. We're all students in the school of life.