Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Sam, Welcome to Power the truth behind the business. I'm Jen Goday, your fearless host, entrepreneur, investor and business strategist. Why are we here? Because I believe that iron sharpens iron. And when we bring industry leaders, experts, people who have been there and done that, to share what's working in business and even what's not, we're all able to learn and grow. As a result, our businesses grow and the ripple effect impacts not only ourselves, our teams and their families, but also our communities and our world. Buckle up, you're in for a treat. We have a really excellent topic today. What if your team's next crisis meeting is already doomed not because they aren't smart enough but because their nervous systems are overloaded before they even walk into the room. Yes, this is possible. Today we're going to dive into peak human performance and performance under pressure, but not the hype kind. I've got Rachel Vickery here, former elite gymnast turned performance strategist. She works with pro athletes, elite military units and high stakes executives. What's her specialty? Helping leaders train their physiology and emotional systems to operate with clarity in the moment. Chaos strikes. If you've ever wondered why your smartest people fumble under fire, this is for you. Get ready, get your paper and pencil out. I'm really excited to introduce you to Rachel. Welcome to the show.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: Hi Jen, thanks so much for having me here.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: Well, I hope you have your eating your Wheaties because we're going to dive into this 100.
[00:01:54] Speaker B: Bring it on.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: Rachel, you have worked with everyone from NBA players to military special forces.
What did the top 0.1% that 1% of the 1% know about pressure that most entrepreneurs and executives never learn.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Such a good question, Jen. Across all the arenas that I work in, there's a common theme that I see show up across all of them and I call it the technical tactical hope strategy. Right. And so what that means is people focus so much on becoming world class the technical and tactical aspects of their craft and then they just hope that it's going to show up under pressure. Right. Without actually having an understanding that when the nervous system gets derailed, that's going to change things like decision making, situational awareness, fine motor skills, communication. Right. And that's going to derail performance and things go south. The real high performers understand that and not only do they understand it, they train for it and they train their nervous system so that they can de escalate themselves when they need to and not just at go time moment. So they've got a couple of strategies for that moment. But more importantly, they're thinking about, you know, front loading the buffer into the system for that so that they can handle those situations well.
[00:03:03] Speaker A: You know, like, let's, let's kind of pick that apart a little bit more because it's about putting in the reps and we practice business, folks. Like, if we're, if we're training a sales team, we role play with our sales team and we go over objections and we do all of the things and train them so that when they freak out or they stress out, they're able to just pull, pull from that knowledge and pull from those reps. So what, Rachel, is what you're doing is you're actually training the physiology, the human performance aspect of it, so it knows, oh, hey, I'm elevated, I'm stressed, and it can bring itself back down to kind of a more calm physiology to make those right decisions the first time and come from that higher level. So talk to me a little bit about how do we learn to recognize the difference between an elevated state and a calm state, where we're able to be calm, cool, collected, make that right decision the first time.
[00:03:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I think let's step it back a little bit. Right? Back to basics. Back to the simple pieces. So when we talk about physiological stress response, I'm not, and this is really critical, right? Is that I'm not talking about your mental or your emotional ability to handle pressure and stress, because so many of our high achievers can do that, you know, no problem. Right. I'm talking about what's happening in the physiology under the surface. And that can be, outwardly, someone can look calm, but. But under the surface, that physiological stress response is getting elevated. So there's two parts to our nervous system. When I'm talking about that, I'm gonna keep it super simple. It's really a complex system, but in layman's terms, basically, there's our fight and flight nervous system, which is our sympathetic nervous system. And when we're in that state, our breathing's in our upper chest, our heart rate's pounding in our chest, we lose our peripheral vision and our auditory awareness, so we don't see and hear things quite so well, and our communication shuts down. Our smart brain goes offline. The other part of the nervous system is our rest and digest or our parasympathetic nervous system. And when we're in that state, our heart rate's lower, our breathing is into our diaphragm. If that's our default pattern, that's Another conversation.
You know, we can make those smart decisions because our smart brain is online and we hear things and we see things really well. And those two parts of the nervous system are playing off against each other all the time because it's opposite effects. Right. So I liken that to almost like a squiggly line. Now then we have a threshold, and the threshold being our red line. And every human has a threshold that says as long as our arousal state, our physiology is staying below what that red line is, then our performance is going to stay on track so we can still feel elevated. And this is a really critical point to make. Just because you feel in that elevated state, you know, heart rate's pounding, you feel a bit nervous, that doesn't mean performance is going to go south. It just is. Where is that arousal state relative to your threshold? Because if you can keep your arousal state under your threshold, under your red line, then you're great. You're probably going to find that perfect position for performance. But the challenge with that nervous system is there's three things that's going to really escalate it. Right. One is, is being outside of our comfort zone. The second is a high consequence of outcome, and the third is unknown and uncertainty. So if we come into a performance moment, we step into a, you know, it might be an important business meeting or a presentation, and our arousal state is already just under our threshold.
We're feeling, you know, we might not notice that because we're so focused on the task at hand, you know, but then there's a little bit of uncertainty or unknown, or we're outside of our comfort zone and our arousal state goes up just one or two more notches. And that's when it crosses our red line and that's when things fall ap.
So I think it's about understanding what is my body's way of telling me that I'm getting escalated, but more importantly, being able to catch that sooner in the piece. Right. Because so often we get into those high pressure, high stress moments, we're so focused on that task at hand that we're not actually aware of what's happening in our body or elsewhere under the surface until it's too late.
[00:06:47] Speaker A: Yeah. And, you know, so many times I meet with a lot of entrepreneurs, founders, executives, and maybe They've got a $250 million deal and it's not necessarily outside of what they have done in the past, but they're so dialed into what it is that they're doing that they are not paying attention to. Have I changed my diet. Have I missed my workout? What is my stress level under the knees? So what Rachel is talking about, she's talking about that underlying human physiology that maybe we don't pay as much attention to, but that's why you develop these routines and you have. Rachel has developed systems and protocols that can help you to set your physiology up for success. So that when you go into that high stakes meeting or that, that other elevated situation, you have a lot of room, a lot of wiggle room, and so you can throttle it and still be okay from a physiological standpoint. And so I want to kind of give an example of this because you've worked with military. Let's talk about when, when your life is on the line or your team's life is on the line. Can you give us a concrete example of the difference between having our physiology with a little room to go before threshold versus operating at threshold in a really high stakes game?
[00:07:57] Speaker B: Yeah, and actually just, you know, you raise a really good point, right? That stuff is. We call it allostatic load. It's what are all of those things that accumulate in the nervous system that can turn on the threat response? And it's not that any one of those things are a problem. It's how many of those things have you got stacked on top of each other and over what period of time are those things lasting for? And some of them are the practical things, you know, that we know, poor sleep, you know, high sugar diet, you know, disruptive circadian rhythms, you know. But then there's some of the self talk, though, you know, fear of failure, fear of what other people think, fear of letting teammates down. Imposter syndrome, you know, those things that accumulate into the nervous system is actually where the stuff is that pushes up to that threshold in the first place. And, you know, I think this was the clearest example I can think of is when we were running a training drill with some elite unit. They were doing a hostage rescue. And it was a very complex practice that they were running for this particular scenario. And the instructor said to me, he goes, rach, if you want to see how this is done really well, watch this guy, because this is our best guy, you know. And unfortunately, that guy, when it was his turn to run the practice serial, made a really critical error that would have killed him and his teammate had that actually been in the live scenario. And as you can imagine, he was devastated. And we talked about it afterwards and he came to me and he said, rach, when you talk to us in the room about allostatic load and arousal state and physiology and thresholds, he said. I got it at it made a lot of sense, but I didn't think it applied to me because I'm so good at handling pressure, he said. However, last night I had a really bad argument with my girlfriend. They'd been together for about four or five years. They broke up. He didn't sleep at all that night. Now, he had made the classic mistake that so many high performers make, which is, I can compartmentalize. I can put my game face on, I can step into the arena and I can still execute. And in that moment, he learned, I guess it was good that he learned it in a training scenario as opposed to a real life scenario, but he learned that that consequence, that accumulation of physiology and that he couldn't actually compartmentalize on the poor sleep and all of that deep emotion that he had when he came into his performance arena.
[00:10:02] Speaker A: That's so real. When we're talking to business owners, when we're talking about making decisions, when we're doing mergers and acquisitions and we're doing due diligence, it's that one critical error that can have us making the wrong decision in business. And so how do we. And we're getting kind of close to commercial, so let's lead us in and we'll let them know what's coming after.
Like, how do we know what's actually happening in the body when someone walks into this crisis meeting or this, this high stakes meeting before they blow it?
[00:10:36] Speaker B: How do they know? Yes, they're probably going to feel like their heart rate's racing. Right. And they'll probably feel like tunnel vision's, you know, super focused just on one thing. And so we can, we can unpack that for sure after the break and.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: Then the other one. And that's going to be the kick. Or how do I, as the CEO or as the leader, recognize it in my team? Yeah.
[00:10:55] Speaker B: Gotcha. Yeah. So you're going to see that person's probably. Their body language is up, they're tense, they're tight, they might be a bit fidgety. You know, the. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. You know, they just don't have that calm presence that we know. And as we know, stress is a contagion. Right. And so if your teammate's coming in elevated like that, you're going to read on that and you're going to, you know, going to build that up as well.
[00:11:14] Speaker A: Absolutely. So, folks, you know what's coming. We have teased it. We are going to dive deeper into it. And then we're going to talk to you about how you can create your system to make sure that you always have ample space spaciousness from that threshold so you can continue to peak perform in any scenario after these important messages.
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Let's dive right back into our topic today. We are here with Rachel Vickery. We are talking about how to stay calm under fire, what to do when we are elevated physiologically so that we can continue to make the right decision in a crisis mode. And before the break we teased you a little bit and we said okay, great. What do I feel in my body if I'm kind of bumping up on that threshold for an important meeting and it feels like my heart rate is elevated, it feels like maybe I can't get a deep breath in and if I see a team member come in and they're tense and they're really, we see them that they're up and that's emanating from them, we know that our team is experiencing that as well. So I want to dive in Rachel with you. Thank you so much for being here today. But we're going to dive into when that moment hits and we're in a very important meeting, a high stakes meeting, a high crisis situation and we're elevated, how do we de escalate that so we can have that calm, cool pressure under fire?
[00:13:44] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. Hey. Because if you want to be able to make a really smart decision or the ethical decision, you have to have enough cognitive bandwidth in the system. Right. Because as soon as you cross your threshold or if you're in that sympathetic nervous system, you're going to go pretty short term, very much survival or scarcity thinking and you become a lot more risk averse as well. Right. And so that's obviously not what we want in some of those crisis situations.
So what we want to teach you is a couple of strategies just to de Escalate yourself in that moment. And there's a number that you can use, but the one that I love to teach is called the get out of jail card. So this is what you notice that you've crossed your threshold and you need to immediately bring yourself just back under your red line. Yes, you might still feel elevated and that's totally fine, but you're just intentionally turning on the calm nervous system just one or two notches to pull you down. So the get out of jail card is three things. You put put them together really fast. One is look up. So one of the things we've got control over that determines between our two systems is where you're looking. So either look up or just be aware of what you're seeing in your periphery. At the same time as you're doing that, just do a really long slow exhale and you can do it. No one needs to know that you've done it. You don't have to make it obvious, but a really long slow out breath that's going to slow your heart rate down a little bit and then immediately have a gratitude thought, an opportunity or some sort of creativity thought that you've already front loaded and thought about. Now that might sound really crystal waving. There's a lot of science that shows the best way to turn fear off is to turn gratitude, curiosity, opportunity on. So it might be something like how awesome is it to be here, to be able to share this knowledge or make this deal or have this. It doesn't really matter what it is. And you get really good at being able to put those three things together. You can do them in about five to 10 seconds. So look up, breathe out.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: Gratitude or opportunity, that's really rapid. And so talk to me a little bit about before we get into that scenario because that's what we do. And I just want to reiterate what she said because we all know that repetition is what works. So this is a definite action item. Start practicing looking up or looking around your peripheral, taking that long slow exhale out and popping in something you're grateful for.
That's a practice. And just like we practice everything else, I encourage you, one of your action steps from today is going to be to practice that. So the next time you're in that high stakes meeting and you feel like you can't get a deep breath in or you're really stressed out and you need to make that critical decision, let that long exhale de escalate you, bring your heart rate down, put that opportunity. I'm really Excited that I have this opportunity and then make that decision.
But Rachel, it's even more important that we train for this in advance. So what can we do to build that buffer that you had mentioned early on in the episode today, the buffer, so that we have enough spaciousness before we redline, if you will.
[00:16:32] Speaker B: Yeah, so there's the acute buffer and then there's a long term buffer. So the acute buffer is maybe, you know, that you've got that meeting coming up later in the day, right. And so you might be really mindful of not having a cafe, a coffee right before you walk into that meeting because that's going to elevate your heart rate. And there's some science that shows, you know, heart rate gets to about 115 beats a minute, smart brain starts to go offline, right. If it wasn't exercise induced.
So, you know, not having that last coffee, but actually taking a couple of minutes away from the meeting just to gather yourself, just sit and maybe do two or three minutes where you're just breathing, slow down into your belly, be connected into your feet, you know, that's going to front load an immediate little bit of buffer one or two notches to absorb what's going to happen when you walk into the go moment.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: Right.
[00:17:13] Speaker B: But the far more important piece, you know, talk about the get out of jail card. The most important thing is don't end up in jail in the first place and then you don't need it. Right. And so that's thinking about all of those things that we listed with allostatic load that we know again accumulate in the physiology. It's running those non negotiables of human performance. And I'd love to say they were shiny things, unfortunately they're not. But it's the simple things like sleeping really well, eating clean, no sugar, you know, moving your body, learning how to breathe properly into your belly. And I don't mean breath work, I mean just your default way of breathing daily gratitude, you know, knowing who you are and what you're about and having your North Star and those sorts of things on, you know, online, getting rid of toxins. And again, not just what you ingest, what you listen to, what you watch on media, those sorts of things. Having those really non negotiable human performance physiology pieces in is always going to give you the buffer because the reality of life is, yeah, maybe you know that you've got that meeting and it's scheduled in your diary, but what about those crises or crises that just hit with no warning? And I Think that's what we have to be really prepared for, and that's by having maximum buffer.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely. And every entrepreneur knows that we're firefighters 100%. We're all firefighters, whether we want to be or not. And no matter how prepared we are, things do happen.
So I'm going to give you an opportunity now because I know everybody's digesting this. And so just sort of before we dive into your Mythbusters, because I love to myth bust.
Sleep is important. You've heard this before. Get enough sleep, move your body, high quality nutrition.
Make sure you're physiologically set for success as a high peak performing human. Because all the business strategy and tactics in the world mean nothing if we're not coming from that space. And we can't make the right decision the first time and have speed of.
[00:18:57] Speaker C: Implementation if we've got no buffer.
[00:18:59] Speaker A: So dial in your peak performance and.
[00:19:02] Speaker C: Then practice some of these other practices that we've shared already today so that you can build those reps and when crisis hits, you're ready. But I want to talk about the biggest myths of stress and mental toughness, because there's a whole lot of them out there. We all have all these shiny objects and people. There's a ton of influencers with a ton of different things that may or may not be research based.
What are the biggest myths about stress and mental toughness that you just want to debunk right off the bat?
[00:19:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, the obvious first one is you can't compound empties on physiology. I think we've spoken about that.
The other one I see often is the inability to perform under pressure is not a character flaw. Right.
It's just, it highlights if we see poor performance under pressure, it just highlights what wasn't built either in the human system or in the organizational system before that moment. Right. And so, you know, I think that's really important. It's a highly trainable skill. It's only going to be there for you, though, if you do train it. So work on some of those drills that we talked about in low threat moments, you know, in line at the coffee shop, you know, if someone cuts you off in traffic, starting to work on it in those low threat moments. So I think that that's a common.
[00:20:12] Speaker A: Myth that we see while we're on that one. Let me ask the question, because I know people are, okay, how many times, how many reps do I need to put in every day, Rachel, in order to build that muscle?
[00:20:22] Speaker B: I mean, you want to just get to the Point where you are not reactive. You know, you'll have that initial elevation of state, but you can very quickly pull it under your control. Now, when you've got that ability to do that, man, you're kind of bulletproof, you know? And another great way to train that is have a cold shower every day for. For 30 days. Notice what happens to yourself. You know, you're not going to want to get into the cold shower. First of all, you're going to try to negotiate with yourself to not get in there in the first place. Right. Secondly, you get in the cold shower, and you'll notice that your shoulders tense up and your breathing's really fast and your heart's pounding in your chest, and you're trying to rush things. The magic with that is being able to get into the cold shower, relax your shoulders, breathe. Yes, it's still going to be cold, but you're not reacting to the cold. So you're training yourself to not react to the things that are going on around you. So how many reps is it going to take?
You know, it's a long one. That one.
[00:21:11] Speaker A: Yeah. And it varies between person to person.
[00:21:14] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:21:15] Speaker A: So I just want to kind of recap a little bit. Performance and chaos is trained before the chaos, folks. It's trained by doing these little. Practicing these little habits in different points in time during the day. If you're in the Houston market like I am right now, you get cut off in traffic all the time. What an amazing opportunity to practice and practice, practice. But the more you rely on brilliance over physiology, the more likely you are to crack under pressure. Your standard operating procedure as a human needs a nervous system playbook, too, and that's what Rachel is here for. So, Rachel, how could people reach out to you if they would like to learn more?
[00:21:50] Speaker B: The best place to reach out to me is via my website. I think we're gonna put the details on the screen for that or on LinkedIn is probably where I'm most engaged.
[00:22:00] Speaker A: All right, Rachel Vickery. So in business, we train systems, sales, and strategy, but most CEOs never train the human system behind the strategy. Coming up next, we're going to dive deeper into what happens when you're no longer the business athlete or the operator. Maybe you're having an exit, maybe you're changing a role or changing a company, but you still have to lead under fire. We're going to dive deep into what happens during transition and talk about that identity gap that happens leading after the pivot, the exit, or the fall. You're not going to want to miss a moment of this. Stick around and we'll be right back after these important messages.
Welcome Back to power CEOs the truth behind the Business. I'm Jen Goday here with you, speaking with Rachel Vickery, talking about performance under fire. How do we practice the things so that when we have a crisis moment, we're able to de escalate our physiology and make the right decision the first time, but now you built it, you scaled it, you exited, or maybe evolved and pivoted. But now what? Why do even the most successful founders spiral when the business card changes?
We're going to flip the script a little bit from peak performance to personal reckoning. Rachel Vickery is going to talk to us a little bit about what happens when we have an identity collapse or shift that really hits founders, entrepreneurs, athletes, elite operators, when the thing we're known for ends. Whether it's an exit, a pivot, a fall, a fail, navigating that space without losing yourself is so incredibly important and it really is the next frontier in leadership. Rachel, you have lived through this. You and I both, we have lived through this whole identity shift. You lived through it as an elite athlete. Can you talk a little bit about what happened? Tell us about where you were and then what happened when that came to an end.
[00:24:25] Speaker B: Yeah, so I was six years on the international gymnastics team for New Zealand and retired. So I started gymnastics at 3 and retired at 19. So pretty much my whole, you know, growing up was, was attached with the identity of being an international gymnast. And then at 19 I had retired.
And I think one of the things we don't ever talk about when people retire from something that so defines their identity is the loss of identity that we actually go through at the back end of that. I mean, it really is a grief process, you know, and I think we often don't talk about it in advance. And so suddenly someone's in this moment where everything that they've identified with, where they've got their validation, their self worth is gone, you know, and I think it's really normal to have that time where you out the back end, you might be feeling that you don't have purpose, you're not motivated, you feel flat, maybe you start to worry that you're clinically depressed, struggling to get off the couch, those sorts of things.
And I think it really is a grief process that you're going through and to have that grace with yourself, to allow the space for that to happen. A couple of the things I talk with Leaders and people who are in a lot of those high performance environments early in their career is try to attach your identity to what you do, not who you are. Sorry, who you are, not what you do. So that it's not I am the title it might be I am someone who can do hard things. I am someone who, you know, lives for service. I am someone who lives with excellence. Because once you're no longer attached to that label, those parts about who you are will continue out along the timeline. So you actually stay connected deeply to who you are. And the other important thing is to have a third thing. So you might have your family, you might have the role that you know your business, but have something that's completely unrelated to that, that you can attach some of meaning in your life as well and do that early, before you even get to that point of exiting.
[00:26:17] Speaker A: Well, because a lot of I've had exits and actually I moved from sports medicine into the entrepreneurial and consulting world and I did all those things right. I thought I had set myself up for success. Success. I had thought about the identity piece of it. And then two years later, after I had retired my license and everything, I went to a deep, dark hole for a little bit.
Because, folks, it is a grieving process. No matter how much we prepare, when we exit from a company, there is a grieving process. When we change a role that we have been doing for a very long time. Even if we've been an independent contributor and now we're in leadership, it's no longer an independent contributor role. And we've assigned, even though we don't realize it, some of our worth to those metrics, those performance metrics. And we're going to have that grieving process. So what now is very natural for us to ask, but it's so important that you take heed, you have to have some of those other things and attach your identity and your worth to who you are rather than what you do, just like Rachel said. So listen, many of our listeners, and this is very. This happened a lot in business. There's a lot of transition. A lot of people are retiring out of their career or they're looking at an exit or maybe they just recently exited.
What's the physiological cost of that post exit disorientation even when things went well?
[00:27:37] Speaker B: Yeah, because it's the emotional mental identity piece. Right. And then you're right, it's what's happening in the physiology. And there's two parts to that as far as I can see it. If you think about what was leading up to that before you get into the exit. Often it is, you know, high pressure. You're under the pump for a long period of time. It's long hours. There's all of those sorts of things.
And there's what we call a parasympathetic backlash when that's not there anymore. So you've been running your nervous system at redline for a long time and you're no longer in that environment.
And it's like your physiology swings a pendulum the other way. And it's like you're flat out getting off the couch. You know, you feel unmotivated and you start to worry about that, especially as a high performer, if you're used to being driven and focused and then you're thinking, you know, what's happening with my physiology? Why am I not feeling motivated? I don't want to do anything. That is literally your nervous system saying, stop. I don't want you to feel motivated. I need you to, you know, build up your reserves and your resources and those sorts of things. So it's a really normal, you know, physiological response. But the second piece is, you know, we talk about those things that escalate the nervous system right outside of comfort zone. And unknown. Uncertainty. And uncertainty. There was actually some research that was, that looked at traders on the New York Stock Exchange and it showed that uncertainty was more stressful for people than bad news.
And so in that, what now? What am I going to do in life next? Uncertainty and unknown physiologically can be very stressful for people. And the downside of that is that if you buy into that, then your brain's going to spiral too, because you're starting to go into that scarcity thinking or survival based thinking, short term focus.
And what we don't want is people jumping into the next thing out of panic. You know, it's just taking that time to just recalibrate and reset the nervous system before pushing forward.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: Absolutely. And I think a sort of microcosm of this is, you know, we just went through the holiday season and so business kind of grinds to an almost halt for a lot of people because people aren't talking about business or spending time with their families and whatnot. And what happens is we've been going, going, going, and then we have this time and we think, oh great, I'm going to catch up. And we get sick.
[00:29:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:46] Speaker A: And our body literally forces us at that moment in time to slow down.
It's because we've operated at that red line for so long. And as soon as we have that cue and we take a breath. That's when our body's like, stop, do not press, go. Do not get off of this couch. So talk to me a little bit about when we are in that state, what can we be doing so that down doesn't feel like dead.
[00:30:12] Speaker B: Yeah. So the fundamentals again, right, like trying to prioritize sleep and clean nutrition and exercise and looking after yourself, having some social contact that you actually really enjoy, you know, because obviously sometimes holiday time can be really stressful for some people, depending on their families. Right. I think though, in the biggest scale, if you know that you're coming up to an exit or you're retiring or something like that, is having a chance to bleed off some of that physiological nervous system. And what I mean by that is maybe plan to go away three or four weeks after the retirement date or have a next thing that you are looking forward to that's not high pressure, high stakes, but it's something else. And I draw from the military with that. You think many years ago in world wars the guys would be off in deployment, they'd take four or six weeks on a ship to come home from those high pressure, high stress environments. And their nervous systems actually had a time to recalibrate and de escalate by the time they actually finally got home. These days, they finish a deployment, they're straight on a plane and then they're home 48 hours later. And it's really hard to go from one environment to the next. So even thinking about that, if you know you're going to be off, ramping off something pretty significant, do the slow exit with that.
[00:31:26] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. And it's not just about exiting the company either. A lot of people are preparing for Exit and we talk a lot on this show about three years of preparing for Exit and first exiting our role.
[00:31:37] Speaker A: As maybe the CEO and becoming a true founder. And that's very hard for a lot of people and they experience the same kind of identity shift.
So can you share? Maybe if we're thinking about exit and we're about to exit the role that we're in to put key personnel in place to prepare for that business exit. What are some things regarding allostatic load or some of the practices that you have that can set us for success as we do that so we can continue to perform as that founder, pushing towards that exit.
[00:32:07] Speaker B: Yeah, it's giving yourself real permission to change your identity. Right. To know that you are going to step into a different role and that's okay. You know, framing Things in a way that is future focused or, you know, what am I creating, not what am I losing? You know, I think can be another thing that's really important with that. But then in that same period of time, it's, you know, it's the same stuff, right? It's doing the, and the thing with high performance is it's about doing the common uncommonly well. And that's where I think so many people get caught up on the Shining. They want that magic thing, but it is just prioritizing, you know, sleep and eating really well, moving your body, making those connections coming back to you. You know, maybe it's a good opportunity to reset. Looking at your values and your North Star and who am I and what am I about and why am I showing up in this way?
[00:32:54] Speaker A: And so as we look at that and we, you know, we talk about elite performers, we're dialed in. We have our set nutrition, we have our workout plan. We don't deviate, we're driven because we know that gives us that like 0.01% edge. But a lot of times during this process, people want to compartmentalize and, and it's kind of a trap. They think that we can completely separate the business from the personal. And I know we're getting close to time, so we can take this into the next as well. But why is it dangerous for us to think about that hyper compartmentalization from a neurophysiology standpoint?
[00:33:34] Speaker B: Yeah, let's dive into it after the break for sure. But it's what I refer to as physiological creep, you know, is that we might start the process 12 months out with a lot of buffer in the system. But if we're solely focused on that time point and we're working towards that, and that is taking our sole focus and we lose sight of those fundamental habits that perhaps set us up really well in the first place. Our physiology over time is just creeping closer and closer and closer and closer to our red line under the surface. We don't notice it until that critical moment where we make that dumb decision right under pressure.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: And we do have a little bit more time.
[00:34:10] Speaker C: But I want to just recap that this creeps up on us.
[00:34:14] Speaker A: We're not paying attention to us, to this.
[00:34:17] Speaker C: And sometimes it's important for us to.
[00:34:19] Speaker A: Up level the amount of self care that we're doing. Maybe we need a little bit more rest when we're focusing because if you've been through due diligence before because you're exiting a company, you know that it is grueling.
[00:34:28] Speaker C: It is so grueling and it requires a ton of endurance. But we're going to dive a little bit deeper into this neurophysiology after these important messages.
[00:35:01] Speaker A: Foreign.
Welcome Back to Power CEOs, the truth behind the business. Loving what you're watching. Don't miss a moment of it. Download the Now Media TV app from iOS or Roku and be plugged into all your favorite Now Media shows. Or if you prefer the podcast version, go to NowMedia where you can find all of our shows ready for you to stream in podcast format whenever you are.
We're going to dive right back into this. Before the break, Rachel and I were talking about something called psychological creep. We were talking about founders having to prepare not just their companies for exit, but also themselves from a neurophysiology standpoint. And we talked a little bit about that kind of identity, death, post achievement, how common it is, but we don't really talk about that. What's next? So, Rachel, I want to ask you to dive a little deeper into psychological creep. What is it? How do we notice it? What do we do about it? How do we train for it so that we can continue to high perform during these transitions?
[00:36:11] Speaker B: Yeah. So physiological creep, you know, is that accumulation just over time that our physiology is getting.
We're stacking more into the allosthetic load piece. Right. And so we're, over the days and the weeks and the months, we're absorbing that buffer that we were maybe, maybe we were really intentional about it when the pressure was less and we were sleeping well and we were exercising and looking after our body. But those things have gone by the wayside. And so, you know, that just accumulates under the surface, Right. Right up until that, that, that moment. And then it's gone when we most need it.
[00:36:41] Speaker C: Right.
[00:36:42] Speaker B: In that final, final period of time. And so maybe it's about needing to be a lot more intentional about.
You know, I'm working with a founder at the moment, actually. He's going through a sale process and he's given up alcohol for the 12 months prior to the sale point because he knows that that disrupts his sleep so much. It has him edgy, it has him more emotionally all over the place if he's drinking on a regular basis. So that was one of the things that he was really intentional about taking out and really prioritising his sleep.
I run a busy lifestyle. I know you do too. Lots of different time zones and traveling and those sorts of things. I absolutely prioritize sleep as a Cornerstone thing. So I think even if you just choose one or two things that you actually have to be more intentional about when you know that you've got something else that's really demanding, your priorities is really critical, just offset for that.
[00:37:33] Speaker A: Absolutely. So we've talked about a lot of things. We've talked about identity gap, and we've talked about psychological creep. We've talked about allostatic load. We talked about training for the most moment of crisis, as well as training.
[00:37:46] Speaker C: To make sure that we have a.
[00:37:47] Speaker A: Buffer to handle whatever happens.
Is there anything that we didn't cover today that you just absolutely is coming to mind and you're like, you know what?
[00:37:57] Speaker C: I really want to leave this gem with this audience.
[00:38:00] Speaker B: Yeah, Two things. Right. The first one being that and we've touched on a little bit, but I really want to hammer this point home, is that performance under pressure is actually less about what you do in that moment of pressure. And it's everything to do with what you've done everywhere else. Right. You know, an NBA team doesn't lose that final in the last 90 seconds of a game. They've actually lost it in the hours and the weeks and the months leading into that game based on what they've actually set up into the system. So that's number one. But number two is, you know, you ask what's a really good way to know whether you're starting to redline either you or your team.
And a great litmus test is tolerance. And so I have this rule that I call the three idiot rule. It's a really great way to just check yourself. So basically, the rule says if by lunchtime you have met one idiot, there's a fair chance that it was them. If by lunchtime you've met three idiots, there's a fair chance it's probably you.
And so, you know, we all know that when we get to those days, right, where it feels like everybody's frustrating us, everyone's annoying, that's actually an us problem, not a them problem. And probably a really good sort of time to check ourselves and go, actually, I need to de. Escalate myself a little bit.
[00:39:12] Speaker A: I couldn't agree with you more with that. It's really funny. Like, whenever something goes wrong in business, a lot of people have a tendency to point at other people. And I always think if you're pointing at other people, you've got all these other guys pointing right back at yourself. So when something doesn't go accordingly, I go, and I actually physically look in the mirror and I Go. Okay, what, what went wrong? What did I do? How did I show up? How could I have shown up differently? And so what Rachel is saying right now is we've talked about that before, like don't place blame, look at what we did. But now let's do that in a physiology from a physiological standpoint. Because if we're really frustrated about everything that's happening, 10 to 1, every single other external thing is not happening to us, it's how we are showing up. So it's just an elevated way of doing that. I really enjoy your 388 role.
So Rachel, we've talked about a lot of things and if you're building, if you're exiting, if you're reinventing, don't leave your brain, your body and your identity behind. Folks.
Now is the time to train yourself. You can follow Rachel's work and connect with her. You can connect with me as well. I'm happy to connect with you as well. But Rachel, for everybody who's here, I love to leave an actions item. An action item that they take immediately, not tomorrow, not next week, but right now. What would that action item be? Based off everything we talked about today.
[00:40:33] Speaker B: Learn to control your arousal state, learn how to catch it in the moment, learn a strategy, whatever it needs to be for you to be able to de escalate it at will. And if you've got that as a tool in your back pocket, the reality is we can't prepare for every possible scenario that's going to come flying at us sideways. But if we can control our own physiology and our own arousal state, we're going to keep our smart brain online in that moment. We're going to keep our situational awareness online. We're going to be able to do the thing that we actually want to be able to do and we can pull it out of our back pocket at any moment. And so knowing how to slow yourself down, be present in the moment, be able to regulate yourself so you can regulate others around you. You know, the get out of jail card and at acute moment, the front loading, all the buffer stuff.
[00:41:19] Speaker A: Okay, so I'm going to ask you the hard question for you because we all want to know, right folks, when was the time when you really just wanted to throw in the towel and how did, what did you do and how does this play into how you were able to continue showing up so strongly?
[00:41:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I had, I had a period of time where in about a two week period I had a long term relationship that broke out very amicably but I mean, I had to find a different place to live.
My business partner and good colleague was killed in a plane crash and her estate decided to close the company, the business down. So I needed to find somewhere else to work. So I was dealing with a significant grief from the relationship and the friend loss and nowhere to live and nowhere to work. So all of the big things all at once, right? And I remember just feeling that almost that where do I, where do I start, you know, feeling. Because normally, at least when something goes wrong, at least you've got one solid foot on something that you can build from. All the foundations had gone. But the nice thing was being able to just take that pause time, you know, and almost in the next breath realizing that I actually got to control what I wanted to create next. So went into all of those same habits around sleeping really well. I took a period of time where I just, I slept well, I ate well, I moved my body.
I got to a point where I felt calibrated before I started to make those next choices of the what next. You know, sometimes if there's an emergency situation, we need to make a quick choice. You know, I had to find somewhere to live and to work, but they weren't my final endpoints.
[00:42:47] Speaker A: Well, and you know something that you.
[00:42:49] Speaker C: Said that really strikes home is when we're in those emergent situations, we look at them as stepping stones.
She said it's not an end point. She had to make a decision on where to live and she was in this grieving process. It didn't have to be the best decision, it just had to be the next decision without it feeling final. Like when you described it, it felt like, okay, okay, this is just the next thing. This is the next thing, like taking steps on a rung of a ladder and just continuing. So folks, like, practice what you practice what you preach, just like Rachel does and practice those habits. So, Rachel, share with us. How can people reach out to you? Where do you want them to reach out to you if they'd like to learn more about reining in their neurophysiology and their peak human performance?
[00:43:32] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks, Jen. The best place to reach out to me is directly via my email address or on my website.
My email address is rachelachelficary.com and I'm very active on LinkedIn as well, so feel free to connect with me there.
[00:43:46] Speaker A: And that website is www.rachel.
folks, this has been tremendous. Thank you so much for all of your expertise, everything that you've shared. It really is kind of a missing piece in the puzzle when we talk about being high performers and elite entrepreneurs. So thank you for sharing your expertise with us today, Jen.
[00:44:08] Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:44:10] Speaker A: Absolutely. And you, yes, you. You know, all good things come to an end, including the show. But before we do, you know that we're all about taking an action today. Not tomorrow, not next week, but right now. Because when we take the action now, we haven't just listened to Jen and Rachel yap about how to get better at this. So I'm gonna challenge you. The thing I'm gonna challenge you to do is practice that in the moment. Crisis de escalation. Look up.
Exhale slowly. Like, long, slow exhale.
And then what is the gratitude that you're gonna focus upon so that you can start to practice that when you're in traffic, when you're going through your day, when your kids come and they've got some crisis? Let's practice that at every opportunity so you can build that muscle just like you do in a gym. It's the practice in building that muscle so that when that crisis hits, you're able to just do it automatically. It becomes a part of who you are instead of something that you have to think about. Because when we do that, we all make better decisions with a clearer head so that we can continue to learn and grow and really see the fruits of our labor. So that's the action step I would like to encourage each and every one of you to take get that practice, decide what that's going to be, have it to pull from, and let's practice it multiple times during the day. I want you to reach out to to me. I'm on LinkedIn as well. We have the Power CEOs group on Facebook that you can join. I want to hear how you're doing with this practice and how does it change in a crisis moment? I want to hear that, and I want to share that with Rachel as well so that we can see the fruits of our labor. But that's the action step I would like to encourage each and every one of you to do today. Without further ado, all good things come to an end, including this show. But the good news is we will be here same time, same station next week. But until then, win today, win this week, and I'll see you next time.
