Is Anything Real?

We ran a 90-second “Quick Pulse” live — and it exposed the truth most high performers miss: burnout isn’t a discipline problem. It’s a misalignment problem.

In this episode, Michael Brooke  (The Inside Atlas / Bridge Wave Magazine) walks us through the Quick Pulse, what it revealed in real time, and why your nervous system tells the truth long before your brain can rationalize it away.

This is Reality-First Leadership in its purest form: run the test, publish the receipts, and make the next move.

If you’ve been “doing everything right” but still feel friction, fatigue, or fog — this episode gives you a fast mirror and a practical path forward.

In this episode:
  • The Quick Pulse: what it is, what it measures, and why it works in 90 seconds
  • We proved it live: what the results revealed (and why that matters for leaders)
  • The hidden trap of “just push through” culture — and what it costs
  • How misalignment shows up as stress, indecision, and burnout (even when you’re winning)
  • The leadership shift: from grinding harder → to operating cleaner
  • The Inside Atlas report reveal + why Michael invited Adam into the coaching ecosystem
  • The next best step if you want clarity, traction, and sustainable energy
Links + resources:
Connect with Michael Brooke:
Work with Adam (Transition Leadership Coaching):
If you’re in a “new room/new scoreboard” season and want to scale with clarity (without burning out):
New episodes weekly. Proof over theater. Let’s lead with what’s real. ⚡

Creators and Guests

Host
Adam W. Barney
Adam W. Barney helps transitioning leaders navigate career and leadership inflection points with clarity and momentum. Author of Make Your Own Glass Half Full and creator of EnergyOS. Based in Boston, fueled by family and music.

What is Is Anything Real??

Is Anything Real? is the Reality-First Leadership podcast for builder-leaders who want outcomes, not optics. Each week, Adam W. Barney sits down with founders and operators to unpack positioning, marketing, community, energy management, and influence - plus the numbers behind what actually worked.

You’ll hear: a quick Reality Check, a practical Proof Stack (inputs → actions → outcomes), and one EnergyOS habit you can run this week. Specifics over slogans; humane systems over hustle cosplay.

New episodes every Wednesday at 12:00 PM ET.

👉 Book your 20-min Exploration Call: https://calendly.com/adamwbarney/explorationplugin-20min

[00:05.9]
Here's a myth that quietly destroys a lot of smart, capable leaders. If you're burned out, overwhelmed, or stuck, you probably just need more discipline. But what if the real issue isn't discipline? What if your business model is fighting your nervous system and you've been calling that drive?

[00:23.4]
Today we're talking about emotional erosion, hidden misalignment, and why some of the most high-functioning people in the world slowly break themselves trying to succeed inside systems that fundamentally just don't fit. Welcome back to "Is Anything Real?", the Reality-First Leadership show, where we test advice, publish the receipts, and ship what actually works under pressure.

[00:45.2]
I'm Adam W. Barney, transition leadership coach, author of Make Your Own Glass Half Full, and your host. And I'm in the hot seat today, but today's guest is Michael Brooke, the creator of The Inside Atlas, publisher of Bridge Wave Magazine, and a longtime builder with a seriously nonlinear path.

[01:03.3]
Skateboarding media, publishing, community building. And now, what I'm going to call AI-powered emotional alignment systems. Michael, welcome to the show. It's an honor to be here. Thank you, Adam. Awesome. All right, quick context for everyone listening.

[01:19.3]
Michael is going to do something live today that's rare on a podcast. Ahead of today, he had me take two tools that he's built. One is a Quick Pulse report, and the second is a 20-question career reflection. And when he combined them, he emailed me, "verbatim, that triangulation is one of the most fascinating combinations I've seen so far.

[01:42.2]
The two tools independently arrived at the same deeper pattern from completely different angles." So we're going to do a live version of that today because I think it's the perfect doorway in into the myth we're dismantling. Michael, I'm going to hand you the keys.

[01:57.3]
For anyone listening, this isn't therapy, it's not astrology. It's pattern recognition. What did you see when you combined the 20-question career tool with my Quick Pulse? Well, Adam, these two tools are completely different reflection systems.

[02:15.1]
The quick pulse measures fast state nervous system geometry. The other measures long form career observations and orientation. And what's astounding about you, and I'm getting goosebumps, is that both independently, they concluded the same exact thing.

[02:35.5]
Adam, you are not primarily driven by status, pressure, or domination. You are driven by coherence, meaning, trust, and emotional truth. Wow. Wow. I want you to think about that. You just said the wow word.

[02:50.8]
And I hear you, but it gets deeper. Most people, when they do these two reports, the quick pulse is 10 questions, multiple choice. I think it took you 90 seconds. Your career takes a bit longer. It's 20. Same thing though. You've got three choices. What is extraordinary about this is that the pattern is real with you.

[03:11.2]
There's no fragment here. And let me go deeper. Your intelligence expresses itself through atmosphere before analysis. You've probably spent years thinking about this concept of intelligence.

[03:31.0]
And I think that you may have felt like this, that it was like, it was about certainty, debate, speed, or strategic dominance. But what's interesting about your reports, Adam, is they show something else. You read people. You read tension.

[03:47.4]
You see the sincerity. You look for safety. And what's interesting is you can see the emotional congruence before you read the systems intellectually. You feel the truth of a room before you can fully explain it. Does that resonate?

[04:05.8]
I am speechless. That resonates so deeply with what drives me and what's inside of myself, Michael. So let me go another layer deeper if all of that resonates. And by the way, I didn't Google your name. All I did was take the two reports and put them in there.

[04:21.5]
I'm not Kreskin. This is not psychic powers. But I'm going to hit you with this: because of this functioning of your mind, your body, and your soul. I just put it that way. Just the way you operate because of this.

[04:37.5]
This is why certain environments drain you instantly, while others energize you immediately. And what this means is, and I hope I'm right about this, this line will hit you. Your nervous system is reading integrity before your mind catches up.

[04:56.7]
Wow. I mean, that's how I think I enter a room and I can trust that, or I enter even just a 15 minute conversation with you, Michael. And I can pick up on this so quickly and immediately. Just where that alignment and that energy sits together. Right.

[05:12.8]
And so there's one critical element that I wanted to hit you with. Because you know I operate in threes, right. I think small, medium, large. There's three sets of answers. So, let me hit you with this. Adam, I would say to put it in the best way I can, your biggest danger is not failure.

[05:36.3]
It's emotional erosion from staying too long in systems that don't match your nervous system. Right, Right. And here's what's extraordinary. And I'm going to, because we're having full disclosure here. It works 50-50.

[05:53.1]
I am pretty much built the same way. And I'm actually going to tell you something because like me, you probably tolerate misaligned environments longer than you should. Part of you wants to understand before you kind of explode or rupture.

[06:11.2]
And so you're absorbing all this stress. You try to preserve harmony because harmony is a big deal for you, like it is for me. But over time, emotionally cold systems just slowly wear you down. That hits the thread right on the nail.

[06:28.7]
The nail, and the thread, and the nail, and the hammer is all connecting. We talked about how after 20 years of my corporate career, I decided very deliberately to leave it, even after that corporate career, having laid me off twice. Right. And coming back to kind of where I started, finally, it took that separation of the chaos that I live in to pull that rip cord and make that decision.

[06:54.2]
And I think I explained this regret minimization framework that I worked within to make that decision. And it's an extremely powerful tool also. And that's the critical thing. Reflection leads to alignment, and alignment leads to balance.

[07:10.6]
Balance then leads to harmony, and harmony gets you into flow state. And right now, Adam, I can't get any better way of telling. Someone asked me, what is flow state? Right here, sharing this with you, and I'm going to hit you. It's funny, I live near a freaking, like, fire department, and that's like cat in a tree, and these guys are on follow.

[07:30.7]
So the alarm just went off. This is the final line I'm going to hit you with. And, I want to be honest when I hit you with this, because it hits me too, because I'm a little older than you. I'm 62 this year. So to put it out as concisely as I can, your nervous system was never weak.

[07:50.9]
It was really like me reading the environment. And if you understand that, and I think you do, then the issue was probably never the fact that you were too sensitive. It was the fact of exposure.

[08:06.3]
And you, like me, are exposing ourselves, or have exposed ourselves to systems that simply, just do not align with who we are from a body, mind, or soul perspective. Right, right, right, right, right. Yeah. I mean, and maybe for our listeners, we can bring it back a little bit also.

[08:25.8]
We have to decompress, as they say. Okay. I mean, because the geometry between all of this, I find it weirdly sticky, actually. Right, Michael? It's a extremely powerful thing. So what I want to maybe do now is take people a little bit behind the whole process of what happened.

[08:47.0]
I want to share with your audience and with you, and I think you kind of know the story. I have been misaligned for decades. I grew up in London, Ontario, which, for anybody who knows, about two hours west of Toronto. And I never fit. I mean, I went to this program called enrichment.

[09:05.0]
And even there, I didn't fit. I didn't get into math, chemistry, science. Oh, my God. I got negative two on a dictate in French once. I was a terrible student. I couldn't fit in the music business. I was given this plum job at Warner Music, and they were very patient with me, but I was completely the wrong guy.

[09:23.6]
What should I have been there? Probably someone who sits in a room for eight hours listening to cassette tapes, finding out which band would have been the next big thing, that I could have done. But arranging labels to be customized for Canada, it just didn't fit. I got into sales because I thought I was a really outgoing, gregarious personality.

[09:42.2]
I suck at sales. And so, long story short, I was writing a book, and I spent some time in publishing. I was writing a book, and in this book, I started writing about my complete screw-up with my career, with the one phase, which wasn't so screwed up.

[09:57.5]
But what happened, Adam, is like this. I use Claude, which is an AI tool, to start to formulate a test. And I thought, well, maybe there's a test that can see me. Because right now, Kolbe, which is a great test, you know, how you operate. It didn't see me. CliftonStrengths.

[10:14.1]
It didn't really capture me. DISC. It didn't capture me. And, oh, my God, Myers-Briggs. Great tests, all of them, but they didn't capture my essence. Why I'm laughing, and you're laughing, is that I decided to infuse the why into the actual test.

[10:31.8]
And once you do that, you are forced, because I make you choose one out of three. I ask you to think about what do you think, what do you feel, or what do you do instinctively.

[10:46.9]
Whether it's your career, whether you're dealing with a quick pulse, which is just how you're operating under stress, or whether it's grief, selling insurance, whatever the problem is or challenge you have in your life, you're going to instinctively reflective. Actually, the way I'd say it, it's like what your default go-to mechanism is.

[11:06.5]
What do you feel, what do you think, and what do you do? So mind, triangle. Circle, soul, feel. And body is square. Now, I have a geometry. What happens if you get a little bit of square, a little bit of triangle, and a little bit of circle?

[11:27.4]
Well, you're a hexagon, that is somebody who feels, thinks, and does simultaneously, almost like a juggler. They can carry three balls at once. And the risk for those people, obviously, is that you relate to the circles, you relate to the triangles, and relate to the squares, and sometimes you lose yourself.

[11:45.8]
So you need all four geometries. Triangles are clarity-driven. Circles are emotional, and feeling, and thinking, in terms of what does this do to the soul? What does it do to our heart? And squares are very much about the. how do we put this in a process?

[12:01.1]
How do we build this? And what's the funniest thing is that once you have a geometry of why, you now have a language. So when your listeners hear, well, you know, Michael, has 19 circles in career out of 20.

[12:16.7]
We probably don't want to give him a whole bunch of triangle stuff to deal with because I'm terrible with, you know, clarity. My brother is 13 triangles. It doesn't mean I don't think. And having zero squares doesn't mean I don't have a body.

[12:32.3]
It means when I'm working with a team, I bring in somebody who is high square. I bring in someone who's high triangle. And that, in a nutshell, is how you wrap your Achilles heel. And that's what I did for you. If you understand that you're high circle, then being in a job that is totally triangle or square based will rip at your soul.

[12:53.2]
And you now have a language. It's like, I'm 17 circles. What the hell am I supposed to be doing here? For the audience here with that first, the ten questions that we started with there, I landed at a triangle at 1, a circle at 9, and a square at 5, which sounds like I'm either a human being or I'm a rare number one record that gets recorded here.

[13:19.2]
But also, you know, triangle being low, it's not low intelligence in the way you frame this, right? Not at all. Intelligence expresses differently. And when you told me that circle is my center of gravity, you know, like that I'm built to stabilize environments or create that emotional coherence, that made me sit back in my chair.

[13:45.0]
Especially when you turned it into the greatest risk is not failure, it's emotional erosion through that prolonged exposure to misaligned systems. Exactly. Emotional erosion is so different from a dramatic burnout collapse. Right?

[14:02.7]
The one thing that you've honed on beautifully, Adam, is that this is not, it's not therapy. I'm not a psychologist or psychiatrist. I am somebody who spent 55 plus years. My earliest memory is being 5 years old.

[14:20.4]
So I spent 55 years plus feeling things and trying to express them in a way that most people. I didn't have the vocabulary, and I couldn't explain it. All I know is I felt something. And like you, the frustration has been, well, surely he could be good in math, or surely he can do French, or he has to be good at sales.

[14:42.0]
It's like, no. And what's really extraordinary is that once people do the Quick Pulse, maybe 9 out of 10 will say, this is nice, great, whatever, move on. But that 10%, that one out of 10 will go, oh my God, this finally lifts the veil.

[15:00.5]
Because here's the thing. If I had a degree from Harvard, if I drove a Lamborghini or a Bugatti, if I had millions of dollars, and I was on LinkedIn with 150,000 followers, and I was coach to the stars, I wouldn't have created The Inside Atlas. The Inside Atlas, was born of decades of frustration, anguish, pain, emotional turmoil.

[15:24.6]
And you know what, if it helps one person, then it's worth it. And I'm telling you right now, Adam, the response that I got from you made me so happy because you are that 1 in 10 person that says, holy crap, I now have a vocabulary to explain what I'm thinking, and feeling, and doing.

[15:45.4]
Right? Right, right. Yeah. I mean, it's incredibly powerful in where leaders can go. Obviously I work in this realm of transition leadership coaching. And you know, most people aren't burned out because they're weak. You know, they are actually burned out, just like myself, where they've spent years performing coherence inside systems that quietly are starting to fracture them. Right?

[16:09.8]
And one thing you wrote that felt like a direct shot at modern, let's call it growth culture, is when you said most coaching markets reward visible certainty, sharp positioning, aggressive extraction, and constant self-promotion. So every time you try to scale, part of you experiences it as self betrayal.

[16:30.3]
That is so deeply inside myself. And what's real about leadership and growth right now The system rewards the opposite of nervous system stability.

[16:45.6]
Right? Well, I'm going to let you in on a little secret that I normally would share privately, but this will be a little Willy Wonka test. And I'm going to tell you right now, this is probably the only public time I'll mention this, but it's true, and it's built into the system.

[17:04.3]
It's hard-boiled into it or hard-baked, or it's there. Okay? So I'm going to ask you a question. Let's assume you had invented The Inside Atlas, okay? And you now have a tool that in 90-seconds decodes people.

[17:20.8]
And you have a tool that, in literally three minutes or four minutes, how long it took to take the career. And I have other tools, but you have a tool that does exactly what has happened to you. You feel seen, you understand. You can align, reflect, reflect, move to flow state. Yep. How many coaches in the world, how many consultants would you want in your, in your, in your network, in your business?

[17:43.9]
How many would you want? I mean, it doesn't need to be a hundred, right? You know, it needs, it can be less than that, but I mean, I would love to cause those ripples across a wider market, but I can't do it positioning myself as the key in the center of it.

[18:02.7]
Right. You know, that's that circle inside myself that I lean into so heavily. If I push myself too hard out there, it starts to feel inauthentic. It doesn't feel genuine.

[18:17.9]
It doesn't feel like the real me that I'm bringing to the world. Although I've started to realize through this, the real me is actually what I should bring to the world. Well, first of all, I want to thank you for your answer, because your answer is 1,000% correct.

[18:36.3]
The other thing I want to mention is that there will only be 144 coaches. We already have 5. And remember, I'm trying to build the airplane, while I'm flying. So if there is a finite number of coaches, I mean, you think about Kolbe or CliftonStrength or DISC.

[18:54.8]
Those have tens, if not hundreds, if not millions of people who are practitioners, who are trained, who live it, love it, teach it. Gobble it up, and regurgitate it. Rinse and recycle. Right. So I'm going on record that we are looking for 139 coaches only.

[19:16.7]
That's the Easter egg. If people have been listening this far, 18 minutes in or so, they have to understand that there is a finite number of coaches. And what that means is that I can, over the next few years, hopefully decades, because I have a 33 year plan.

[19:33.5]
Actually, it's 34 years, but I've got a few decades ahead of myself here. But where I'm going with this is that each of those coaches will be part of a network, and the coaches will learn from each other. The coaches will basically be integrated into what I'm calling The Hive.

[19:51.1]
And Adam, I'm going to tell you right now, you are my number one choice for a sixth position. I am honored to be a part of this, Michael. This is so powerful. I mean, this gets it back into the things that I love and the things that I truly believe in, I champion more than the things that are popular in the wider world.

[20:12.2]
Right. But this is something that has such a deep thread to bring to people to unlock this. You know, we can talk a little bit more about product evolution also into the future, but I assume in that 34 years, it's probably also, how do you have someone who, like myself, is a high circle, how can they work best with someone who maybe is a leaning triangle?

[20:39.8]
So what's astounding, Adam, is two things. And it's so funny you just intuit this. You're actually living, breathing the report now. So I'm going to tell you two things. One, unlike any other system from Kolbe to DISC to Myers-Briggs, and I don't want to rag on those folks because they do excellent work.

[21:00.6]
Those are great, great tools. My tool does something different, and that is, over time, each coach/consultant will bring their philosophy and their knowledge into The Inside Atlas. And I have the GPT.

[21:17.1]
I'm the one creating it. So the GPTs, and there are four GPTs, they're actually five GPTs. But the bottom line is, any of your philosophies, any of the things that you bring to the table become absorbed by The Inside Atlas. And of course, that means that, let's give it another, I don't know, 50, 60 years before you pass on.

[21:36.7]
My background, just for anybody listening, if you Google me, my background is skateboarding, and I published a few magazines and books on skateboarding, but I spent five years in death. I worked at a funeral home. So without getting too morose here, Adam, let's say you got 50 more years, all right? You happy with that? Because you look young.

[21:53.7]
I mean, that would bring me to 93. I would be happy with that. You'd be happy with me, too. 93 is my number. So let's assume we got 50, 60 years left with you. That means that over that time frame, the things that you've learned, your philosophy, make your glass half full.

[22:10.7]
That's going to get absorbed. Why? Because that's the way growth happens naturally. It's not top-down thinking. My favorite, favorite, favorite thing in terms of just a shape and just the whole evolution of how nature works is, of course, the hexagon.

[22:30.0]
And that's because people aren't wasting space making this damn shape because it's not a circle. It's not. It's not. Well, it is a triangle, but you got to look for the triangles. And it's not a square, it's a combination. I'm not saying that people, you know, take the test to become hexagons, but what I am saying is part of your energy and part of what you do as a circle lifts up one part of you.

[22:55.2]
But you, and I've seen it, you take the time to make this podcast, you take the time to write. That's pure triangle and square energy. And so I'm the same way. I'm producing 180-page magazine this month with no advertising. That's pure square and that's pure triangle.

[23:12.3]
But it's driven by my circle. That's critical insight. So those two things, number one, it's reciprocity with how this gets built. And number two, protecting it and understanding that high circle, people put their heart out and they don't want to be destroyed.

[23:31.1]
They want to make sure that it's protected. So I have protected. And Mark Zuckerberg, if you ever see this, there's no effing way I'm going to sell it to you ever. Even for $100 billion. I wouldn't. And it's been protected. I can tell you. It's protected.

[23:47.6]
It's magic. This is magic, Michael. I love how this gets into the fact that, at a very basic level, your nervous system usually tells the truth long before your LinkedIn profile does or your social media platform. I had this conversation this morning at 6:30, Toronto time, which is basically 6:30 New York time and 9:30 Brisbane, Australia time with a guy called Mateo, who you will meet.

[24:15.4]
And everything you just said, he not only embodies it, he has philosophized on this. And you two are going to get along like a house on fire. The body knows before the mind. You felt it. That's exactly what's happening. Wow.

[24:31.4]
No further questions, your honor. No further. Michael, but after everything we just talked about, is anything real? Let's bring it back to that. Is anything real? So here's my take on this. I had struggled for decades in trying to figure out who I was and where I fit.

[24:54.4]
And in that struggle, I have created a tool that I believe will help many of humanity, seeking some sort of answer to that question. And I think to answer it, I will say that that journey has been both painful and profound.

[25:13.1]
And the knowledge that, yes, life is best understood backwards, but must be lived forwards, coupled, with this idea of, yeah, a lot of pain for a lot of gain, I would say, yes, things are real, but you have to put the time into them because it does not happen overnight.

[25:33.9]
This took a year and 55 years. That's a beautiful way to describe it. So thoughtful. Michael, where can people find The Inside Atlas, as we start to grow there? Bridge Wave Magazine and your wider work, outside of, you know, pulling up Lords of Dogtown?

[25:53.9]
So very easy. theinsideatlas.com, theinsideatlas.com you can Google it, you can find it. No credit card required. I don't need your son or daughter's firstborn name. Just try the freaking quick pulse. If it resonates, great.

[26:09.1]
Email me at michael@theinsideatlas.com I answer every email. And then with Bridge Wave Magazine, I would say this much. Go to bridgewavemagazine.com Again, no credit card needed. I don't want your firstborn child. Just take a look. There's hundreds of pages already.

[26:25.5]
There's going to be a lot more. Adam, you're going to be a part of it. We'll start to integrate your philosophy. But ultimately, what it boils down to is like this. BridgeWaveMagazine.com exists to point out to people what are basically invisible structures, meaning what is producing something has been designed, it's been engineered.

[26:50.2]
And all I will tell you is I have taken the work of Donella Meadows, who is a systems thinking pioneer, and put it into a magazine that kind of looks like a cross between the Atlantic and Skateboarder magazine. Anybody who read that. That's a beautiful, beautiful center point right there between things that people don't think about typically.

[27:09.6]
Amazing. And, we'll of course, Michael, link to those in the show notes below so that people can start to gobble this up. But I would say, if anyone listening knows someone who looks successful on paper, and I think most of us do, but is quietly feeling disconnected from themselves, send them this episode.

[27:28.0]
And if you're navigating transition, pressure, burnout, leadership changes, or trying to rebuild an operating system that actually fits your life now, there's a 20-minute foundational call with me, also linked in the show notes below. No surprise after going through this, but no performance, no pitch theater, just clarity.

[27:46.3]
And until next time, stay grounded, stay human, and keep questioning the noise. But, Michael, thank you for joining today. This was a blast. And thank you for the live reveal here. You are going to be an amazing Inside Atlas coach and consultant.

[28:01.9]
I feel it in my soul.