High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 259: Your Stress Solution for Life with Speaker, Author, and Expert, Jenny Evans

Episode Date: June 20, 2019

Jenny Evans is a speaker, author, and on-air expert on physiology and chemistry, as it relates to resiliency, confidence and performance.   She is highly experienced, having worked with thousands of C-suite executives, leaders, and employees — from corporations, associations, and universities across the globe. Her award-winning book – The Resiliency rEvolution — has been hailed as a “smart, clever read and super-practical guide to leading a more full and resilient life.” She is also the creator of Hit the Deck – the ultimate tool for combating stress and increasing productivity and fitness. Jenny has spoken on the TEDx stage, writes as a blogger for The Huffington Post and was NBC KARE 11’s Health & Fitness expert for over four years.   Jenny has a bachelor of science degree in kinesiology with an emphasis in psychology from the University of Minnesota.   In this podcast, Jenny and Cindra talk about: *resiliency, confidence and performance) · How you can restore your chemistry during stress · What she means by the “bliss” molecules · How to reduce your “Sneaky Pete” · Several microstrategies to increase resiliency and confidence

Welcome to High Performance Mindset with Dr. Sindra Kampoff. Do you want to reach your full potential, live a life of passion, go after your dreams? Each week we bring you strategies and interviews to help you ignite your mindset. Let's bring on Sindra. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast, and thank you so much for joining me here today. I'm grateful that you're here, ready to listen to episode 259 with Jenny Evans. Now, this is Sindra Kampoff, your host for High Performance Mindset, and I'm a speaker, author, and high performance coach. And if you know that mindset is essential to your success, then you're in the right place. With a couple

episodes every single week, you can learn from experts about high performance and I also provide a message, a really short message, every week for about five minutes to help you be your best self. Now in today's episode, I interview Jenny Evans. Jenny is a speaker, author, and an on-air expert on physiology and chemistry as it relates to resilience, confidence, and performance. And Jenny and I spoke at the same event last year, and since I heard her speak, I have been really excited to have her on the podcast. So I know you're going to enjoy the episode,

and what I most love about this episode and Jenny's perspective is she says things very differently than other speakers or authors or experts. And so I think you're going to get a lot out of this podcast interview today. Now, Jenny is a highly experienced author and speaker, having worked with thousands of C-suite executives, leaders, and employees from corporations, associations, and universities across the globe. Her award-winning book, The Resiliency Revolution, has been hailed as a smart, clever read and super practical guide to leading a more fulfilled and resilient life. She's also the creator of Hit the Deck, the ultimate tool for combating stress and increasing productivity and fitness. Jenny has spoken on the TEDx stage, has been a writer and blogger

for Huffington Post, and was NBC's Kara Levin's health and fitness expert over four years. She has a bachelor's in science in kinesiology with emphasis in psychology from the University of Minnesota. And she now lives in California. So in this podcast, Jenny and I talk about resilience, confidence, and performance. Very important topics to developing the high performance mindset. And specifically, Jenny and I talk about how can you restore your chemistry during stressful moments, what she means by the bliss molecules, how to reduce your sneaky Pete, which I really love our conversation about this and her name of sneaky Pete.

And she also talks about really practical micro strategies that we can use to increase our resiliency and confidence. All right, without further ado, let's bring on Jenny Evans. Jenny Evans, welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. Thank you so much for joining me here today. Hey, Sandra, thank you so much for having me. I am really stoked about our conversation and I know the value that you're going to provide for everybody listening. So to start us off, Jenny, tell us a little bit about your passion and what you're doing right now. Okay, my passion right now is in helping people and organizations go from feeling overworked, overwhelmed, overstretched,

overscheduled, overmedicated, to on purpose, on fire, on track, and on their game. So it's about just helping you in those moments when you're really feeling over it. How do you actually get on it? And my approach is a little bit different in that it's really all about how do you transform your chemistry and your physiology to go from feeling over it to on it. Yeah. And that's what I love about your perspective is like not a lot of people are talking about what you're talking about. And I think that you provide a really unique perspective that I'm excited to tap into. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about, you know, how you got to speaking and doing what you're doing now. Tell us a little bit about, you know, how you got to speaking and doing what you're doing now.

Tell us a little bit about your journey to get there. Oh, it's a funny journey. Like if somebody would have told me when I was nine years old, you're going to grow up to be a speaker. I would have said like, first of all, what's that? And B, there's no way. But my career has just really been an evolution of pursuing things that I've just been really curious about, things that I found helpful, and then figuring out how can I share those with other people. And so I actually started my business when I was in college and I was working really with individuals, a lot

of really busy entrepreneurs. It happened to be a lot of women. And through that, I actually got hooked in with Aveda, which is a healthcare skincare organization. And they brought me on as their corporate director of wellness. And that's then I started speaking to a lot of the different Estee Lauder brands. And then that just led to one thing, which led to another. And it really kind of helped me uncover my passion. I love sharing information with people that have the potential to change their lives in some really significant and meaningful ways. And not just their lives, but also the lives of the people that they work with, that they're trying to serve,

the lives of the people that they really care about. That's awesome. And then tell us a bit about, I know part of your journey has been doing some work at the Human Performance Institute. You have an award-winning book. So tell us a bit about how those two things came about. Yeah, as like I said, as one thing leads to another I spent 14 years with the Human Performance Institute one of their speakers trainers coaches really traveling the world and sharing their

content and the book really came about from know, just kind of noticing that today's day and age, everything is so fast moving that when organizations would invite me in to speak, it sort of became like this TEDx type of a thing where you're like, what can you do in 20 minutes or 25 minutes? And I found myself being frustrated, not just having enough time with people. I like, I want to give them all the tools that they need to be resilient and confident and successful. And I realized that the only way to do that was to write a book and have it as a leave behind. And so that really was my powerful motivator. I wrote the book in eight months, even though I had been collecting the research around it for years. how to create a book, how to sell a book. But it also helped me get really, really clear on my message.

So I'm really proud of that. Yeah, that's awesome. I have it over here in my bookshelf. So definitely I would recommend it. And so, Jenny, one of the questions that I always ask people, and I want to ask you this question really early on, because I think sometimes we can hear, okay, high-level speaker, really successful, award-winning book, you've spoken on the TEDx stage. And so we might hear all these great things, but I'd love for you to tell us about a story that you failed at. Just tell us about a story that didn't go so great for you.

What did you learn about resilience? And what do you think we can learn from that? Oh, which story to choose? As an entrepreneur who's been running a business for God, you know, 25 years, there are so many challenges. And I, I hate to use the word failure because I feel like it's only a failure if you didn't learn something from it. And so, you know, I have a resiliency training product and somebody was like, you should focus on QVC. And I was like, great, that would be fun. And I went through this whole series of shenanigans of, you know, meeting all the criteria that they wanted, went to QVC, they were like, oh, your product's gonna kill, it's gonna be great. I think I sold 20 products, and I had to pay

to have everything shipped back to my garage. I mean, on a certain level, you're like, oh my gosh, that was a total disaster. But I learned a lot about online selling. I learned a lot about the retail business. Probably the biggest learning that I took away is my passion is not in the world of retail. My passion is in the world of connecting with individuals and having important conversations, meaningful conversations, life-changing conversations. So, I mean, I could go on and on with all kinds of things like that, where you think something is going to turn out a certain way, and it totally doesn't. But I always think I did not pursue a business degree. And so every time something funny think that the message is for the listeners when they think about, you know, their own lives at times that they failed? How can you apply, you know,

what you learned to other people who might be listening? Yeah. So, I mean, it's, it's funny, people's perceptions, when people ask me, like, man, how have you gotten to where you are? How have you gotten to, you know, being as successful as you are? Like, first of all, a lot of us have really high standards for ourselves. And so the way I define success, the way any of us define success is, is so different. But my first answer when people are like, how have you gotten to where you are? My first question is, have you tried slogging? And I'm like, slogging, you know what? Like day after day after day, putting in the hard work, climbing up mountains, overcoming setbacks. Like it's just putting in the hard work day after day.

And every once in a while, I feel like the universe rewards you with a victory that will just keep you coming back and vlogging more every day because I mean we all have those days where you lose a sale or a presentation didn't go well um or a product launch totally flopped. But then there's also those days where, you know, you're on fire and everything is going your way. And I just believe that the instances of overnight success are so rare, but that's not what our society celebrates. And just learning from other entrepreneurs, it's never a straight line. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of setbacks. It's a lot of frustration. But on the flip side, I mean,

I would, I wouldn't have it no other way. Just having the freedom and autonomy to pursue what I'm really, really passionate about completely overrides any of those bad days or bad moments. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right that many times we can see someone's success and it seems like it was an overnight success, but it's not, you know, in any writing, speaking, coaching, training world knows that, right? Yeah, for sure. I think we all need to be reminded of it because I think we all intellectually know that. But I think sometimes when we're not taking care of ourselves and we're feeling over it, like I mentioned, that's where like self-doubt can start creeping in and comparison and all of those things that just shatter our confidence and optimism. I mean, I think we all need to be reminded of that. We're all human. Yeah.

And when I heard you say that right at the beginning, I was thinking about comparison and then you mentioned that. But I think that's the one thing that really gets in people's way. It's, you know, it's like, wow, she's so successful. I'm not there yet, you know, and then we start to compare and maybe we haven't been in it as long or we haven't failed as much, you know, and then we start to compare and maybe we haven't been in it as long or we haven't failed as much, you know, as the other person, but it's like appreciating what you have in your progress instead of comparing to somebody else's ending and you're just beginning.

Oh, completely. And when we compare, we do it in the most diabolical distorted way, because what we'll do is we'll compare somebody else's best to our worst. So we're not even doing apples to apples. And so I love to remind people of, you know what, in our society, we do reward people for like being the best. And a lot of us strive to be the best. But at a certain point, you have to realize, you know what? There is always going to be somebody smarter than you, more successful than you, thinner than you, with more well-behaved children than you. But if you focus on just really being the only, all of us already have that wrapped up in the bag. Like I really feel like our own experiences

and things that make us different and unique are our number one best assets. And the more we can tap into those and bring those forward, I think the more, not only the more successful we are, the happier we are. Yeah, that's really good. So when you think about kind of your philosophy in terms of, you know, I know you believe that resilience and confidence performance is really like the chemistry of the brain and then your body before you kind of being able to do that, be able to help you optimize your potential. So tell us about, Jenny, like, how do you see being the only one? How does that connect with your belief that, you know, it's about the chemistry of your brain? Well, I mean, so for me, when you think about something like resiliency and stress,

stress is actually not a psychology problem. It's a chemistry problem. And that anytime we're exposed to a stressful event, the chemistry and physiology of our body and brain radically changes. Cortisol, adrenaline, more adrenaline comes pouring into our bloodstream. And what that does is it turns off the advanced intellectual part of our brain where rational thought lives. And it actually turns off our primitive, what I call our caveman brain. And caveman brain is highly reactive. It's hardwired to the negative, always assuming the worst. It's the voice of fear. It's the voice of self-doubt. And so most programs around dealing with stress and confidence are all about, you know, let's give you some cognitive tools. What I hate to tell you is that during times of stress, we don't even have access to

the part of our brain where cognitive tools reside. And so what we have to do is restore the chemistry of our body and brain back to an ideal state so that we can actually access the cognitive tools, talents, skills, and knowledge that we have. And so we have to optimize our chemistry first, and then we can optimize our psychology. Nice, nice. So could you give us some examples maybe in your own life or the clients that you've worked with a time where you know they're really stressed and maybe you know their caveman brain is really on strong like hyper mode you know where they can't access kind of what you're talking about as the cognitive tools. Oh, for sure. I mean, I think this happens to all of us, at least daily. Yeah, I had an HR executive who was facing one of the biggest business challenges of her career. And she was

feeling really stuck and overwhelmed with, know self-doubt and what's the right decision and she found herself getting really emotional and really reactive and she knew that we had to keep her emotion or reactivity out of it and so what she did but she's like all right I'm gonna squeeze in a really really quick. So she does 20 minutes of pretty intense physical activity. And what that does is it actually burns off those stress hormones and releases what I call the bliss molecules that actually put our advanced brain back into the driver's seat. So she put herself back together, got back into her office, and she was in a completely different psychological and emotional state. And she said she wasn't able to handle it.

And she just felt so good afterwards about recognizing, oh, man, my primitive brain is in charge right now. And if I actually make a decision, there are going to be some really negative consequences for the business and for me. And I know how to change my chemistry and it doesn't take that long. Yeah, that's awesome. And so her physical activity that helped her restore the chemistry or other things people could do when they feel like this caveman brain has overtaken maybe the way that they're responding? Yeah. So I actually have a series of micro strategies that help people go from feeling over it, on it, because, you know, anytime we try to change our behavior, that actually triggers the stress response. And now we've got caveman brain

in charge. And caveman brain actually hates change. Change is a huge stressor. It's a huge danger. We resist change. And so what I teach is use a micro strategy called using optimal defaults, which means little tweaks to your environment that are unconsciously nudging you into a desired behavior. Because we're actually highly influenced by our environments, and our environments really exhaust our self-discipline and willpower, which is why change is so hard. So there is the nutritional component to optimizing your chemistry. So for instance, an optimal default of, you know, we need to fuel ourselves optimally throughout the day. So eating the right kinds of foods in the right amounts at the right time. And in our society, the default portion size is

ginormous, like none of the portion sizes. And it's really hard to use self-discipline and willpower to only eat a moderate amount. So an optimal default research has shown that if you switch from a 12 inch dinner plate down to a 10 inch dinner plate, you will unconsciously without even trying eat 22% less food at every meal every day. That's going to make a significant difference. So I share with people all the different optimal defaults that you can create everywhere. You can create it at work for focus and productivity. You can create them for when you travel for creativity, optimal defaults to get more movement to change our chemistry. Even things that like companies and organizations can do to create environments that are better for our resiliency, confidence and performance.

And Jenny, what might some of those be? Because I think as people are listening, they're like, oh, yeah, that sounds awesome. Tell us a bit more about maybe how organizations or corporations could incorporate to some of these ideas when being able to restore the chemistry of your brain when you're under stress. Yeah. So, I mean, one of the things that I mentioned was just getting movement actually changes our chemistry and our physiology. And when you think about like the optimal default for most corporations is we sit in a meeting, we sit at a desk. So simple things that organizations can do is if you're having a meeting with one or two people, do a walking meeting or removing chairs from meeting rooms so people are actually standing around the table and what that also does is it minimizes multitasking and distraction increases engagement and productivity and now meetings can actually be

half the time organizations that have cafeterias there's a way to organize the cafeterias so that people are choosing more healthy food instead of like those easier, convenient, less healthy foods. An example is research has shown that at a buffet, people will always take the first two to three options. There might be 50 options there. And so if you put the healthier food at the beginning of the line

and the less healthy options, that automatically changes people's behavior. Awesome. Awesome. Those are really tangible strategies that I know people can easily implement. Yeah. You were saying something earlier about these bliss molecules. Is that what you said?

Yes. Yeah. Tell us about that and how you see that connects with like stress and resilience and confidence. Yeah. So, you know, as I mentioned, like cortisol is one of those stress hormones that really changes our chemistry and our physiology. It also changes our confidence because that is that voice of fear and self-doubt. And so I give people ways of like, how do you change your chemistry to more ideal state? So some of the other, for instance, that have a lot to do with confidence are things like serotonin, things like dopamine, GABA, and the endorphins.

You know, a lot of these, when you think about it, are, for instance, serotonin. This is the main ingredient in a lot of antidepressants and a lot of anti-anxiety medications. And so give people strategies of ways to increase a lot of these molecules, which make you feel more confident, less, what's the word I'm looking for? Maybe basically like confidence in your, in yourself and your beliefs. And so I mentioned like, your chemistry, another way to change chemistry is to actually tap into your sense of purpose and your sense of belief so what are the things that um you know a question that i ask people is like what do you

really believe what do you know to be true in your life you know so for instance somebody might say you know what my my top belief is having a growth mindset that I believe we're all given a set of talents and skills. It's our responsibility to try to develop those as much as we possibly can and put those out into the world. about their beliefs actually changes our chemistry. And when we really start getting clear on our beliefs, and then we start making decisions and choices in alignment with those beliefs, we start living a life of integrity where we are actually confident in the decisions that we're making and our ability to get those things done and accomplished. I believe that we can change our chemistry of confidence perspective. And then not only does that improve our confidence, but research has shown that it also improves our resiliency and that people who are less clear on their sense of purpose and actually get less physical activity

are more prone to anxiety and they're less resilient to traumatic events. So that is a great way to very quickly change our chemistry in a big way. Another way to change our chemistry and improve our confidence is really by setting goals and accomplishing those. Those secrete all kinds of things like serotonin and dopamine and reinforce a sense of purpose. So dopamine is sort of like an addiction molecule. Like when you see some people that are addicted to exercise, you're like, God, I wish I had that addiction.

Setting a goal and then following through and getting that sense of accomplishment. We sort of all have that little rush before. That's dopamine. That's serotonin. And there are ways that we can create goals, learning things new that create this dopamine pathway that really enforce a sense of confidence. And also when we set out by, you know, specifying a goal and then following through, that just also creates a sense of confidence in yourself of like, okay, I did that. I followed through. And the more we accomplish, the more confident we become. So it's like this great reinforcing circle of chemicals and sense of accomplishment that if we are really

strategic about how we accomplish goals, that can also really change our chemistry. I think those are really practical ways, Jenny, like people understand how to do that. And I know you said to me before that your caveman brain, you have a nickname for it. Tell us about what that nickname is and like why you decide to nickname the caveman brain. So I like to think like our primitive brain and our advanced brain, I like to think of them as like two different people that we have living inside of our heads and so for me caveman brain is this caveman whose name is sneaky Pete and let me say that like caveman brain is not completely terrible because he's part of our evolutionary hardwiring and we couldn't have made it this far without him. So he does have some great things. First of all, you are his number one priority. He's always looking out for your own self-interest.

He's very passionate. He's very action oriented. But the problem is, is that Sneaky Pete as a caveman is now transported in the 21st century where we have a lot of change that's always happening. Sneaky Pete hates change. Sneaky Pete is also really, really lazy. He's all about conserving energy. And so he always wants the easiest default option. He's more about living the moment and he doesn't really care about future consequences. So I also like to think of our advanced brain as like the notorious RBG, Ruth Bader Ginsburg of this is our analytical brain where this is rational thought. It's intelligence. It's decision making. It's goal setting. It's keeping emotions out of things. And so we always have like sneaky Pete and notorious RBG going on at the same time. And it's ways of like, how do we get sneaky Pete to just

simmer down and take a back seat and get Notorious RBG back in the driver's seat more often? I like it. Notorious RBG. Is that what you said? Yeah. Ruth Bader Ginsburg. You know, she's the Supreme Court Justice that just everybody, everybody, I don't know. She's kind of a, she's a thing right now. Everybody loves her. Yeah. That's awesome. I like that idea of just like, maybe even naming these two parts of our brain, you know, the sneaky Pete and then yeah. Notorious RG RBG. There we go. That kind of just helps you realize that, you know, kind of one of the things I talk about is like,

we don't always choose the thoughts that we have, right? Maybe it's the, it's the sneaky Pete. It's the caveman that's kind of talking, right? This, this kind of what you're saying, it's just really here to keep us safe. I think that's really helpful to know that we have these two parts, but we can still do something about it. You know, we still have the choice, right? To not, not always just listen to that caveman brain or let that caveman brain take over. Oh, for sure. And I think, you know, kind of making a joke about it by saying, oh, it's sneaky Pete. It also creates context and conversation. It's high stress. Somebody can just say like, oh my gosh, this, my sneaky Pete just

took over. Everybody understands what that is. And I think, you know, in today's day and age, we often show up to meetings where everybody comes in and there's like 12 sneaky Pete sitting around the conference table, 12 notorious RBG. You know, it's giving people and organizations tools to just say, okay, how do we make sure that Sneaky Pete is not sneaking into our meetings, he's not making important business decisions, he's not communicating with coworkers, customers. And so it's, yeah, it's a great way to take a lot of technical chemistry and science and just break it down in a really simple um strategy that people totally understand yeah and i like how you

know you're just naming it and it's you know it's like a sneaky pete just came out i might even acknowledge that in myself because i know it's in me right and that gives me a little more even more compassionate with myself or more compassionate just in general with other people that it's like, okay, this is part of all of us. Yep. Yep. And he's not all bad. You know, it's just when, when is he an asset and when is he a detriment? So when you think of like individual strategies that someone can use to really, would you say take control of their sneaky peed or what's the, what's the ways that I might describe that? What do you think are like the best strategies? You kind of said making sure

that we exercise. Is there anything else that, you know, you think could help that? Yeah. So from a chemistry perspective, so I spent a lot of research around this and actually our body produces the bliss molecules after just 30 to 60 seconds of intense physical activity so when you think about this how our body is hardwired the stress response for our ancestors did not go on for days weeks hours it hours. It was fast and furious. Either they were over with or it was over with. So 30-60 seconds of intense physical activity is all it takes to flush out stress hormones, self-doubt hormones, get those glistening molecules. Another thing that we can do from just a nutrition

perspective is that any time we go longer than four hours without eating, blood glucose levels drop and that triggers the stress response and then puts sneaky Pete in charge. I think everybody has experienced those moments when you're so hungry and you actually just get hangry you become very reactive we're just not a very nice person yeah so one of the things that i teach is make sure that you're eating every three to four hours between moderate size noodles and snacks because it's keeping your your chemistry and your physiology in an ideal state. I definitely advocate journaling daily, even if it's just for five minutes, about your values and your beliefs and how did you express those yesterday? How are you going to live those out

today? Those are a great way to get sneaky Pete out of the driver's seat and get those chemicals of confidence really flowing throughout the body and brain. So I'm all about things that are just fast, simple, easy, convenient that are doable because the last thing that I want to do is add more stress or add more to your to-do list. For sure. And Jenny, when you think about just like 30, 60 seconds of intense activity, I'm thinking like right now what I could do is stand up on my desk and just do some jumping jacks. You know, that's what I'm thinking, but what, what would you actually recommend people do? Yeah. So this is a big question to are like, how do I do that?

Because Sneaky Pete is like, this sounds like a lot of work and Sneaky Pete is like exercise. So I actually created a product and it's called Powerhouse Take the Deck. And it's 35 cards in a box with an interval timer. So on the back of each card is one physical activity that both elevates your heart rate and challenges your muscles. So it's like fighting and cleaning and it requires no fitness equipment. So it's just using your own body weight. And then what you do is you take the interval timer and program anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds on the timer.

And you just rock hard and whatever activities on the back of that card, you crank out as many repetitions as you can. And when the timer beeps, you just did it. You flushed out all those toxic stress and self-doubt hormones. Now you got the blood molecules. You just went from feeling over it to on it. So these are things you can do in your office. You can do in a hotel room. You can do as a group in a meeting before the meeting starts

so you get all the sneaky beats out of the room and you get everybody's notorious RBG in there. Ah, love it. Super practical. I saw that on your website, so I know it's available for people to purchase there yep so jenny as i'm listening i'm thinking how did you become just how did you like why choose this topic about chemistry and how you know stress is a chemistry problem not a psychology problem i'm curious about like what made you lean towards this? Is there, you know, a life experience or, you know, something that made you realize that it's like,

okay, this is the answer to stress? Yeah. So I started out pursuing a psychology degree. And then one of my many part-time jobs in college was teaching fitness classes. And what I noticed was there was a professor, a female professor, that would come to my fitness classes. And she would always come in, like, right at the last minute. She would be in the back of the room. I called her my invisible participant. She just didn't seem like her body language was just very neat. You could tell she didn't have a lot of confidence. As she continued

from class, as her body started to transform, and as she was daily giving those bliss molecules, she just started becoming more visible. She started moving forward in the class she started coming a little bit earlier she just came became more visible because i watched how her body transformed her brain like that was the big thing for me where i was like there is something here and so i really got fascinated about chemistry and physiology and neurobiology and how can we change our chemistry in order to feel a certain way, move through life in a certain way. You know, so then I actually switched my degree to exercise physiology because I think I'm so fascinated with how the brain actually works, how the body actually works. And so also, you know, like as a speaker, as a coach, I also just don't want to make noise. There's already enough noise out there that if I have

something to say, it needs to be something new that I'm having the conversation. And people are not having the conversation around, you know, stress and confidence. Everybody's still approaching it from a cognitive perspective. And like I said, you don't change your chemistry. You don't even have access to those parts of your brains that are rational and cognitive. And I'm not bashing on cognitive techniques. They're awesome after you've optimized your chemistry so that you actually have access to those tools. And that's an excellent point, you know, that these cognitive tools are still helpful. And what would you tell us in terms of like, what can we watch in our body or our, you know, our emotional reactions to tell us, okay, this is, this is sneaky feet. This is

my caveman brain. This is where I really got to make sure that I'm getting my chemistry under control. Right. And then, okay, this is when maybe the cognitive techniques are more beneficial. What are your, what's your thoughts on that? Yeah. I mean, the funny thing is, is we all, myself included, tell ourselves that we're doing really well with the stress in our lives. But I will say like one way where it really shows up is in sleep. And when you think about the number of people that have sleep issues, that are on sleep aids, sleep medications, I think that's really a good indicator of a lot of us are even stressed out while we're sleeping, which is why we're not sleeping very well. So I think that is a big signal that you're not doing as great of a job when you're stressed as you think you are. You know, number two is even paying attention to those physiological states that are happening on a daily basis.

You know, so when you have that constriction or tightness in the chest, when you've got that muscular tension, when you find yourself being really reactive and negative and highly emotional and really sort of like terrorized by sneak peek peek and that horrible dialogue that is sometimes in our brains that tells us we suck, tells us that we're frauds, that we're failures, that we have no business doing what we're doing. We should just quit. I mean, that to me is like the big fear of, man, chemistry is way off because we're just feeling really negative and irrational. And so, you know, it's recognizing those physical symptoms as well as those psychological symptoms. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. So I know Jenny, one of the things that I remember

you talking about before when I, when I spoke to you is about micro strategies. And I think you've already talked about some of those micro strategies, but it could just like help us better understand maybe what are the, some of the micro strategies that you've already talked about some of those micro strategies, but it could just like help us better understand maybe what are the, some of the micro strategies that you've already talked about and kind of in a way to maybe summarize the different strategies that you could use. Yeah. So micro strategy number one is what I call play it out. It's playing out the hard wiring of our stress response by getting a short burst of intense physical activity of just 30 to 60 seconds is all it takes to hit the reset button on stress. Second micro strategy is creating a series of optional defaults, little tweaks and nudges to your environment where the

easiest default option for sneaky pigs is actually the option that's best for our resiliency and our confidence and our health. And that it would actually take more energy to opt out of that behavior. So like I said, you know, tweaks to your environment for focus, for creativity, for when you travel, for nutrition, for exercise. And then the third micro strategy that's very powerful is just breaking down this whole huge sense of what is my purpose? What, you know, what is my life's mission? Just ask yourself that one question. What do believe what do i stand for and just really connecting and figuring out like if you didn't say what are your top five values and beliefs and that when we tap into those when we think about those when we write about those when we

talk about those those transform our chemistry and get sneaky p Pete out of the driver's seat. So I feel like those are the three most powerful, easy things that we can do to optimize our chemistry for resilience and confidence. Awesome. Awesome. Jenny, I'm so grateful that you were here today sharing this powerful message. I think it's an important message that people hear and I think about in my own life. I think that I manage stress pretty good, but there are times where it's like, wow, it really heightens and I could use some of these strategies as well that you talked about.

I think for me, particularly the one about the 30 to 60 seconds of, you know, a burst of physical activity would be really easy to do and really impactful. Yeah, it's a game changer. And, you know, I have managers and leaders tell me, you know, like, oh, I bought your hit the deck. And a couple times a day, I just go out into cubicle land and I make everybody stand up and play it out. Or like I said, you know, starting a meeting with that, or that's maybe what you do when you are leaving work and you want to transform yourself from like a stressed out, anxious work mode person to, you know what, I'm going to disconnect. I'm going to disengage. I want to show up when I get home for the people that I care about in the way that, you know, is in alignment with my values

and beliefs. So yeah, it's just, it's a great way to really transform how we think and feel. Love it. Can you give us an example of when you use the micro strategies, you know, which one you use most often and when you use it? Oh, man. You guys are going to like this. Okay. One of my favorite micro strategies, optimal default, is at the end of the day, I love to have a cocktail. It's how my wife and I reconnect. It's, you know, when I'm not speaking, I'm in my home office.

And so, like, I need a ritual that helps me end my day. So, if I was to just have a glass of wine, well, Sneaky Pete loves having a glass of wine. Yes. And one always tastes like two. And it's too easy to just pop the cork and just top your glass off a couple of times. So for me, my optimal default is a gin and tonic because a gin and tonic actually takes flavor. I got to go into the refrigerator, bend all the way down to the produce door, get a lime out of there, roll it. I got to cut it. I got to squeeze it into the glass. Then that has to go into the

compost bin. Then I got to go over to the freezer and I got to pull out the I got to cut it. I got to squeeze it into the glass. Then that has to go into the compost bin. Then I got to go over to the freezer and I got to pull out the gin, pour it into the glass, put it back in the freezer. Then I got to, oh, one ice cube. That's the key to the best gin and tonic. That has to go in the glass. Then I got to go back into the refrigerator, pull out the tonic. Of course, a gin and tonic tastes great and it tastes like a second one.

But the fact that I have to expend a lot of physical activity, which sneaky does not like to do, leads me to just having one cocktail instead of multiple. I hear what you're talking about. So Jenny, you're a phenomenal speaker. I've seen you at least once speak on the big stage. So tell us a bit more about your speaking and the outcomes that people could expect if they hire you. Yeah. So I work with a lot of Fortune 500 organizations, working with leadership development teams teams a lot of times speak at big global sales meetings or big global conferences where they're looking for a speaker who spans both sort of the professional and the personal. different associations. And so I have a keynote called the chemistry of confidence, as well as your resiliency RX, and my are, I like to make it where the audience has no idea what's coming up next. So they're very high energy, very engaging. People are up, they're moving, they're talking. Everybody walks away with an individualized plan for how they're going to their brains and improve their confidence. And so the end result is that for individuals,

people start feeling happier, more focused and more in control. And for individuals, people start feeling happier, more focused, and more in control. And for companies, when people are more resilient, we're talking about a cost of about $31,000 per employee per year because of improved resiliency, retention, productivity. So it's good for people and it's good for business. Awesome. I can hear that it's your calling. Yes. I'm sorry. Yeah. I just, I get so into it, but this is what I love doing. Yeah, that's awesome. And I know you offer some coaching, so tell us a little bit about that. Yeah. I also do a select number of individual coaching clients. And I mean, it's fascinating to me, Sindra, and I know you do a lot of coaching too. I don't know if you

would agree with this, that, you know, a lot of people come to me because they're either feeling stuck or they're feeling overworked, overwhelmed, overstressed, overstretched, or they're feeling like they're down, like on a slow downhill slide or they're faced with change. One of the very first things that I do is have people really get clear on their beliefs because what that does is it provides clarity, direction, and accountability. And so when I'm working with my clients, it's a very intensive process. There is daily journaling, there are weekly calls. And so we really go deep. And I mean, it's amazing to me. I love doing the one-on-one coaching because when you're on a stage, it's fun to share information with people, but I do my thing and then I leave and I never know what happens. But having that ongoing relationship with an individual where you're talking about challenges, you're having conversations about what's important and what really matters and helping them to have new insights and new ways of thinking and breakthroughs and

having weekly tasks and accountability just like the level of accomplishment and change that happens is so inspiring to me like I'm shocked every time at how my clients just transform and I'm like it wasn't me who did all the work I might have asked you the right questions. Yeah, it's very powerful and very rewarding. Awesome. And I know you can find all of that on JennyEvans.com. So Jenny, I am so grateful for you to be here today and just for sharing your message with everyone that's listening. You know, I'd love to share with you a few of the things that I got from today as a kind of way to kind of summarize. You really talked about how stress is a chemistry problem, not a psychology problem. I thought that was powerful. And these different

micro strategies that we can use, the 30 to 60 seconds of intense physical activity, right, like play it out, you called it. And then these optimal defaults that, and your gin and tonic example was a great there. I love that, really practical. And then just the importance of making sure that you're asking yourself and reflecting on your beliefs and your choices and these beliefs,

how they're really a foundation to everything. So talking about your sense of purpose, your values can help you deal with stress. And then your two names of the sneaky Pete and the notorious RBG. There we go. And I really appreciated that. And then all the other things that you talked about. So tell us, Jenny, how we might get in touch with you. Are you on social media or what are the ways that we can follow along with some of the work that you're doing? Yeah. As you mentioned, my website, JennyEvans.com. I am also on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, you know, I'm not hard to find at all. So yeah, I would just, I would recommend going to JennyEvans.com. There's links to my

social media from there. And Cyndra, I also just want to say like, I'm so honored that you had me on because you are also an amazing speaker in your own right. And talk about confidence, like being a woman who has like busted into the world of professional sports, that is confidence. That is resiliency. And I just think like what you're doing is so inspirational to me, just, you know, getting to where you've gotten as a woman, but also the work that you're doing is, it's so cool. It's so fascinating. It's so helpful. So I love your watching you do your thing as well.

Thank you, Jenny. Well, I try my best to be a good role model, right? Because I think that part of my life's purpose is to pave the way. And it is not, it's not always easy. You know, like when you said the word, to me, resilience means like, you know, that you can bounce back and there is some kind of adversity or something in your way. And I think that's important because I kind of circle back to the point you made earlier that, you know, it's like, you know, we think that success is the straight line, but it's really like, you know, it's like, you know, we think that success is the straight line, but it's really like, you know, a lot of things that didn't go so well, picking yourself back up and saying, oh, I, you know, I provide value and, and it doesn't matter what I look like or what I sound

like or what my background is. So I appreciate you saying that, Jenny. Yeah. And I just, I'm, it's going to be fun to watch you and see what you do next and how you pave the way for others. It's so inspiring. Thank you. And I will be watching you as well. A little behind. So, uh, thank you so much for joining us, Jenny. You are so welcome. Thank you for having me.