Jaimie Abbott:
Well, my guest today on Pitch Perfect is Liz Tobin, and Liz is one of Australia's most respected corporate mental health and wellbeing speakers, facilitators, executive coaches, and meditation teachers. With over 20 years of experience, she has helped thousands of professionals break free from stress, overcome burnout, and build lasting resilience.
Her approach blends evidence-based research, practical application, and the transformative power of mindfulness and meditation—helping individuals set clear intentions, stay present, and take meaningful action. Liz collaborates with Australia's leading organizations, including not-for-profits, professional services, and government agencies, to create healthier, high-performing workplaces by combining real-world insights with actionable strategies.
She equips teams with the tools to reduce stress, restore energy, and foster a culture of wellbeing. If your people are feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, or stuck in survival mode, Liz will help them reset, recharge, and reclaim control so they can thrive—both professionally and personally. Welcome, Liz!
Liz Tobin:
Thank you so much, Jaimie. Lovely to be here.
Jaimie Abbott:
You're so welcome. Thank you for being on today. So first of all, I’d love to know—how did you get into this particular area and what you specialize in?
Liz Tobin:
Yes, so I specialize in workplace mental health, wellbeing, stress, burnout, and overwhelm. My background is originally as an occupational therapist in rehab. And after I had kids, I loved observing people's journeys—how they were trying to work out how to better manage in workplaces. It all felt really interconnected.
I moved into the broader space of workplace mental health and wellbeing and became really curious about our relationship with stress. Because it’s part of all our lives—we all have stress. It’s inevitable. But how we respond to that, and the strategies we use to manage it, have a significant impact on our overall wellbeing.
As time went on, I became curious about meditation. At first, I was delivering workshops telling everyone, “Oh, I meditate, I go for walks,” and then thought maybe I should actually do some professional development. I dove right down the rabbit hole. What started out as a bit of learning ended up being pivotal for me. I’m a busy person, with a busy mind—and meditation brought a sense of calm and ease.
I noticed right away that my reactions, whether at home or work, weren’t as sharp. I was still annoyed when things happened—like if I forgot my keys or laptop—but it didn’t hijack my day. That led to a whole new journey of learning and conversations. I’m still integrating that into my own life, into the coaching I do, and the workplace sessions I deliver.
What I found is that what sounds mystical is actually very simple. I remember my first Transcendental Meditation session. I walked away thinking, “Everyone makes this sound really complex, but it’s actually pretty simple.” The hard part is doing it consistently. Whether it’s a daily walk, a meditation session, or choosing to watch comedy instead of scrolling—doing it is the challenge for all of us in our busy lives. That’s often my entry point in conversations with people who feel overwhelmed.
Jaimie Abbott:
I've got so many questions about this. As someone like me who has tried meditation in the past, what would you say? Whenever I sit down and do meditation, my mind just keeps ticking over, and I get so frustrated, and then I just can't relax. Does that sort of go away with regular meditation and doing it at frequent intervals? How do you kind of really get into that unwind state?
Liz Tobin:
So, sweet. What—thinking about the same places we need to go—that's actually okay. And allowing that, real busy minds that we have, which are absolutely overloaded, just almost like to work on the filing pattern. And definitely the more we meditate with that sort of bubble in mind, and we sort of describe this having a restful meditation or meditation—and either one of the meditation itself is a time the brain slow down—and the more we do it, the brain starts, “this is my time to carve for everything.”
I personally find my morning meditations are busy because my mind is busy. I’ve got three key names, I’ve got to get everything done, and that’s okay. But still having that time where we're not active or responding—witnessing our own thoughts is the key to it. It's about just sitting with it and just showing—not being really hard on ourselves.
And I can really relate to what you’re saying because that was me 20 years ago. I remember doing yoga. Oh my god, it’s so small. I love yoga now, but it took me a long time. And that’s why I'm the person—Jaimie, when my kids were real—overset of time, pack the dishwasher, just see how I put up and do it. “What’s your next thing? Go, go, go.” And so kind of letting go of that kind of focused part of our personalities that we have been rewarded for at work—and the COVID—and leisure. It’s like people have five—the more we do is part of the...
Liz Tobin (continued):
...process of just leaning. Imagine if I just prioritised myself to sit for five minutes every day without judging it and without commenting to myself, “I’m good. I’m bad. I can’t do this. I’m hopeless. I’m not that guru.” And then we started—
Jaimie Abbott:
Our brain...
Liz Tobin:
She’s thinking about the email. She’s actually not writing the email. This is good. So we’re kind of pairing that—our actions—a little bit.
Jaimie Abbott:
Yeah, I love that. And so is this something which you sort of think anyone can do? Or entrepreneurs, female, males—really the target audience?
Liz Tobin:
Absolutely. And I really started diving into teaching meditation—which was perfect times because everyone had a lot of time—so good. I’m based in Melbourne, so I had, like, this captive audience of all my friends and all my family. And I’ve got lots of nieces and nephews. I’m like, “Come on, just let me be—like—guinea pigs.” And I was actually really surprised by people’s—the range of people—and confidently saying now that anyone can.
The key is turning up and doing it. Like, anyone can go to the gym. Anyone can walk around the block. But this is even easier. And like, from— you know—eight-year-olds and homeless children to, you know, accountants who are type A who don’t have any interest in any of it except for black and white—and just slow...
Liz Tobin (continued):
...down. And lots of small business people who have that constant “there’s never an end” quote for them—to kind of pop off, unfortunately—which I’m quite a thing—and this starts to build into many of...
Jaimie Abbott:
Kindness to ourselves. Yeah. I mean, what do you say to someone—like, I’m the best person to do this because I’m throwing challenging questions. So, I mean, it sounds like I’m now where you were 20 years ago—frame of mind. But what do you say to someone like me? And there’s many people like me who thrive on adrenaline. Next thing, next thing, next thing. “Okay, what’s funny?” And setting the timer and just challenging yourself.
And people always say, “Oh, you get so much done.” It’s because I’m on adrenaline. Is that kind of a recipe for burnout?
Liz Tobin:
Absolutely. It really is. What’s happening is your sympathetic nervous system is fully charged all the time. Cortisol is charged all the time. And that’s fine. And it’s really tight. Amazing things produce from this type of personality and these behaviours.
Liz Tobin:
The problem is we have an infinite amount—you know, we’re not designed to be fight or flight. Fight-or-flight tends to be about a 60 to 90 minute process in our body, where we go hard because the lion’s chasing us, or we quickly grab our child because they’re in danger.
So when our body is in that type of response 24/7, our immune system is really compromised because everything has gone to the production of “get ready and go, go, go.” And our minds become really wired. So then something really small—often someone who’s stuck—“I’ve been able to read this proposal, and I just presented to, you know, a room of 500 people, but today I’ve got a flat tire and I burst into tears.” If you think of it like your glass is full and there’s no more room...
The key with integrating something like meditation or any mindfulness strategy—it creates a bit of a buffer in that glass jar. Where there’s a little bit of elbow room so that when you do get that flat tire... I was laughing at your post the other week, Jaimie—your child vomiting in the car. Oh god!
When those things go wrong, you have nerve. You’re calmer. Your barometer’s not always fully charged.
The other thing we see with people with burnout is the anxiety kicks in because there’s a lot of negative thoughts. There’s poor sleep that kicks in because the cortisol is not low enough to enable them to sleep well, because the brain is too busy. And often they’re getting the cold, the flu, getting run down, and down. And often they’ll have the COVID. And we see this cycle and we will walk people right up to that island.
Jaimie Abbott:
As a society, we’re like, “That’s the person who always does it.”
Liz Tobin:
So we all need—happy—not coming right down to being zen, but just coming down a few degrees. So we kind of laugh a bit more at ourselves. And we show up for the people we love, not feeling exhausted, but able to engage as well.
Everything I talk about—I’ve done the opposite to. So... yeah.
Jaimie Abbott:
Yeah, it totally makes sense. And I think myself, and many other entrepreneurs who do work at that really high-paced sort of level—the minute you go on holiday, or when you get sick—you stop. Because you kind of just... yeah.
You’re a professional speaker, and I should also mention you’re one of my fabulous PR Club members. On your speaker bio, you’ve got many topics that you can entertain and speak to audiences on. One of the topics is overcoming burnout.
And I’d love to ask you—how can we set boundaries to not only overcome burnout, but also in the first instance, just to reduce that overwhelm that many of us feel?
Liz Tobin:
I think boundaries are the cure for reducing burnout. Those two are kind of like the opposite ends of the continuum. And when people sit down for any of their yearly reviews—and then each quarter—I work in small terms, a lot of colleagues that I work with do, but you know, every year when you do the planning—seeing really clear boundaries.
And within that, I say to people: What is a day or a half-day that is clearly a non-negotiable? It’s not your little red tick to get things done. It is brunch. It is with a friend. It’s a massage. It is a non-negotiable. Whether that’s every week or every fortnight, but having that locked in your calendar.
The other thing to have locked in is a mentor. Inviting an accountability person where you can actually dig in and out with them really regularly to say, “I just am going to do this, even though I shouldn’t. I know I’m going to do this.”
So I’m a soprano and by myself, I put a lot of pressure on myself. If I say I’m going to do something that happened yesterday, and it probably isn’t going to be read till next week or sent out then—and so by actually talking with peers constantly...
Because it is so dynamic, our boundaries. And our boundaries will need to be set by us, but then we need to maintain them.
This example—“I’ve opened the bag of chips and said no one can have them in the office, but Bill forgot his lunch and he’s really hungry.” Bam—there goes my boundary.
So we need to hold our boundaries, and if we find that we can’t, that’s when you need to kind of dig down. So do people speak with a coach or a mentor to really map it out?
Liz Tobin:
Another way of having good boundaries is having time in every single day, rather than back-to-back. Having 45-minute meetings instead of an hour. They’re really simple things that are common sense, but it creates just this time for you to keep—having a bit of a walk, having a cup of tea, getting lunch—those things that are kind of ongoing day to day. They’re actually going to set you up not to spill over that adrenaline.
That way, when those instances come—when the adrenaline's gotta kick—you’ve got enough of it and you’re ready to go. And it actually becomes fantastic and rewarding. How positive adrenaline and positive stress should feel. You should feel really kind of elevated by it.
But if you’re not feeling like that—people are always thinking, “That’s not me anymore”—that’s also a really red flag that you’ve probably moved down that continuum where you’ve gone alongside and... take pause and bring it back.
And the easiest and best way to do that is with support from other people, particularly in the workplace. It is so hard to have that conversation in your head, because our brain’s got a negative bias. So it’s already telling me, “You haven’t done enough,” or “You’re not good enough,” and you jump on LinkedIn, social media...
Absolutely having some real-life conversations and some really lovely people in your corner, I think, is key.
Jaimie Abbott:
Yes, boundaries—really blurry. It’s interesting because when you talk about boundaries, it almost always refers to external boundaries that people are asking of you. But I think about my adrenaline and my life cram as my own pressure I put on myself.
So even yesterday—I had 13 meetings. I tried. I’d squeezed in a business club lunch, which I squeezed into 90 minutes in the middle of it all. And then I jumped on the train to Sydney and had a corporate event in Sydney, and then had a breakfast...
And I just literally crammed so much into my life. How do you cope with being able to say no when it's only those boundaries that are crumbling from your own fault? No one else is putting that pressure on me except for myself. So what do you do then?
Liz Tobin:
I think it’s learning how to respond to things. So it’s not about saying no, because we can’t afford to say no—because it’s work and it’s opportunities. It’s about resetting. Saying, “Have you got flexibility on this time? Because I’ve already got 13 meetings on this day. I am free next week.”
We need to get better at doing that. And we’re hesitant to do that because we think, “Oh my god, then I won’t get the work. I won’t get it done.” And it feels really good to do the work. That’s the thing. It really feels right. And in that moment, we’re getting that adrenaline kick because they’ve asked us to do it, and we can do it.
But I think this email can be really great—where you say to someone, “Here, just email me what the date is and let me know if there’s flexibility around it.” And what that does is buy us mental time. So we can then, on the train coming home, look at the diary, book it, and go, “Does it have to happen tomorrow? Or can it happen in a few weeks’ time?”
You know, I had a conversation with a colleague today and we both laughed. I said, “You know, I’ll send this through here,” and she goes, “Oh, I’ll make it after Easter.” I’m like, “Are you kidding? This is not urgent.” But we hadn’t had that conversation. We’d probably both gone away.
So just checking in—whoever you’re doing the work with—“What’s your timeframe?” And “This is what suits me.” Just because we say what suits us doesn’t mean we’re not going to get the work done. We can flip back and forth and go, “Look, this is my preference. But if you don’t have any flexibility, I can do it another time.”
Jaimie Abbott:
Yeah, love that. Integrating that into every conversation so that you map it out.
I think entrepreneurs—we run a real risk of being really busy at one point of the year, and then there’s nothing. And we look at the work and go, “That work could have happened anytime.” It didn’t have to happen next week or this month.
So, being a bit mindful and taking pause.
Yeah, love that. If people want to work with you and get in touch with you, how can they find you?
Liz Tobin:
I’m on LinkedIn. So a DM on LinkedIn—I’m trying to be more present on LinkedIn. And I’m on Instagram quite regularly, because I’m scrolling... in Jaimie brain mode, like everyone else.
And otherwise, my website is Calm At Work—they can contact me through that. So any of those three portals. I’m highly active in any of those things most days. And yeah—always happy to chat and respond to any curiosities that people have.
Jaimie Abbott:
Yeah, fabulous. And of course, if you want Liz as a speaker at an upcoming event or conference, or in your workplace to run a session, you can go to her website, Calm At Work, and we’ll put the link to that in the show notes.
Liz, thank you so much once again for coming on Pitch Perfect.
Liz Tobin:
Thank you so much. A few of you tuned in—for instance, true privilege. It's lovely.
