Show Notes
What if one small habit could pull you out of burnout… and completely change the direction of your life?
In this episode, Kat Thorne sits down with Carol Mead, a corporate HR professional turned botanical wellness creator and founder of Elyse. What started as a personal journey through stress, anxiety, and burnout became a powerful discovery - and ultimately, a brand designed to help others reset, rebalance, and perform at their best.
From 3am wake-ups and emotional exhaustion to creating natural scent-based tools used by colleagues in high-pressure environments, Carol shares how she turned her lowest point into something meaningful.
This is a conversation about courage, intuition, and the power of small, simple habits - especially the ones we often overlook.
Burnout doesn’t happen overnight Stress → anxiety → exhaustion → emotional overwhelm and often we don’t intervene early enough. One small habit can create a breakthrough For Carol, it was something simple: inhaling essential oils to regulate stress in the moment she needed it. Your lowest point can become your purpose What started as survival became a tool to help others - and eventually, a brand that she is now scaling. Experience creates belief Carol’s colleagues didn’t need convincing - they felt the impact immediately and kept coming back. We’re overlooking simple performance tools Breath, scent, pauses - the basics that can transform how we feel and perform.
“My husband said: I feel like we’re losing you and that was my wake-up call.” The moment Carol realised her oils weren’t just helping her… but everyone around her
ABOUT THE GUEST
Carol Mead is the founder of Elyse, a botanical fragrance brand born from her own journey through burnout and anxiety while working in the corporate world. Blending neuroscience, scent, and ritual, she creates plant based fragrances designed to calm the nervous system and shift emotional states. Her work explores how small sensory habits can transform how we feel, think, and show up in the world.
ABOUT THE HOST
Kat started her career as a teacher, before moving into Tech where she worked in different executive roles within teaching and consulting working across the globe, both in the public and private sector. Despite appearing 'successful' on the outside, she paid a heavy ‘life’ price. In 2016, her whole world collapsed.
The reason? The compound effect of years of unhealthy and toxic habits that destroyed her health, relationship, and career.
She rebuilt herself by changing just one small habit and built a series of positive habits which has transformed her professional and personal performance, resulting in becoming the healthiest and happiest version of herself.
She is a positive habits international keynote speaker and teacher, giving talks and delivering high impact programmes to organisations across the globe.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/katthorne https://www.instagram.com/the_morning_gamechanger
More from The Positive Habits Podcast
What happens when you take a team of lawyers out of the office and put them in a freezing cold lake together? In this episode, I’m joined by Sarah Whitemore and Catriona Ralls from Warner Goodman - lawyers, colleagues and regular members of our Women Who PLNGE community. We explore the power of human connection - at work and in life and how shared experiences, vulnerability and simple positive habits have helped strengthen their team culture and the relationships they build with their clients. But we also go deeper into relationships, counselling, community, cold-water swimming, the expectations we place on others and taking responsibility for our own happiness. We explore: Why human connection matters at work How vulnerability and shared experiences can strengthen teams Why relationships can be a competitive advantage The power of community and taking responsibility for our own happiness Small positive habits that help us feel and perform at our best And we finish with an important reminder: Stop searching for the red flags and start searching for the glimmers. The small moments of good are everywhere. Sometimes we just need to get better at noticing them. ABOUT THE GUESTS Sarah is Creator of Peace of Mind - the fixed-fee employment law service Sarah founded 20 years ago to make legal advice accessible, proactive and human. She has grown it from a solopreneur's idea into a 12-strong specialist team supporting 475+ organisations and delivering Peace of Mind to employers across the south coast and beyond. Catriona is an Associate Solicitor and Legal Advisor within the Peace of Mind Team at Warner Goodman. ABOUT HOST KAT, HUMAN PERFORMANCE EXPERT I help organisations build future-ready, high-performing teams equipped with the skills, habits and behaviours to perform in a rapidly changing world. www.katthorne.com
In this episode of the Positive Habits Podcast, I’m joined by career coach and diversity & inclusion expert Sally for a brilliant conversation about women, careers, confidence and the power of backing yourself. After more than 20 years in the corporate world, Sally had reached the room she'd worked so hard to get into only to realise it wasn't where she wanted to be. She took the leap, left corporate life and built a career helping other women accelerate their careers, navigate change and create work that actually works for them.
Cold Water Isn't the Transformation. It's the Teacher. In this solo episode, Kat explores why deliberately choosing discomfort can change the way you respond to every challenge life throws at you.
How many opportunities have you talked yourself out of because of a thought that wasn't actually true?