Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth - Managing nerves, anxiety, and burnout | Jonny Miller (Nervous System Mastery)

Starting point is 00:00:00 I have this idea that I call the feather brick dump truck phenomenon. And basically what that means is when we are showing early signs of burnout, our body will give us feedback usually in subtle ways in the beginning. So the feather might be waking up in the morning and feeling a little bit tired, maybe a little bit exhausted. The brick, you know, maybe you ignore that or you don't notice it. And then three or four weeks later, you have like a fight with someone or an argument or you just you just feel frustrated and terrible and you lose your call. And then maybe the dump truck is a

Starting point is 00:00:35 month later or even a year later, there's like a full-blown health crisis or you develop type two diabetes or there's a whole range of things or maybe you get fired. Like ideally you want to notice when it's the feather and then make adjustments or shift then and not have to wait until you experience the full-blown pain of the dump truck, which unfortunately is what happens to a lot of people, especially when they experienced burnout for the first time. Today my guest is Johnny Miller. Johnny teaches courses and does one-on-one coaching with tech professionals helping them with something he calls

Starting point is 00:01:09 nervous system mastery, which is essentially a set of tools and techniques for cultivating calm, upgrading your resilience, and increasing your aliveness. If you can get better at dealing with stressful situations, avoiding burnout, and being more confident in meetings and big presentations,

Starting point is 00:01:27 it becomes a superpower and a huge advantage in both business and in life. I actually read a post by Johnny about a year ago, and it totally changed the way that I think about nervousness and stress, and I still apply many of his lessons today. In our conversation, we dive deep into Johnny's key insights. We talk about why the best way to stay calm in stressful situations is to focus on the state of your body and not your mind, how to create calm and confidence by changing the state of your body through breath.

Starting point is 00:01:56 Johnny shares a bunch of very specific breathing exercises for creating calm and also for creating energy that we actually try out on the podcast. We also get into a bunch of advice for how to tell if you're seeing early signs of burnout, how to release emotional debt that you may be feeling. Also, why feeling the feels gives you a competitive advantage in business. Also a practice called ape, which reminds you to focus on your awareness, your posture, and your emotions that I've started practicing ever since our chat. And so much more. If you enjoy this chat, definitely check out Johnny's full course at nsmastery.com slash Lenny. If you use that URL, you actually get $250 off the course.

Starting point is 00:02:36 With that, I bring you Johnny Miller after a short word from our sponsors. This time of year is prime for career reflection and setting goals for professional growth. I always like to spend this time reflecting on what I accomplished the previous year, what I hope to accomplish the next year, and whether this is the year I look for a new opportunity. That's where today's sponsor, Teal, comes in. Teal provides you with the tools to run an amazing job search. With an AI-powered resume builder, job tracker, cover letter generator, and Chrome extension that integrates with over 40 job boards,

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Starting point is 00:04:27 to learn more and to claim your discounts. Get started today. Johnny, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast. It's great to be here, Lenny. So I read this post that you wrote. I think it was over a year ago. At this point, it was called the Operating Manual

Starting point is 00:04:43 for your nervous system. And first of all, it blew my mind when I read it. Second of all, I always think about it when I get nervous or anxious in a situation. it's like really stuck with me. And I know that people in the workplace often get nervous and anxious, doing all presentations, meetings, performance reviews, all the things. So I thought it'd be awesome just to dive into the stuff that you've kind of uncovered

Starting point is 00:05:09 about how we can become less nervous and less anxious. Before we get into the mute of it, I'd love to just spend a couple minutes just getting a sense of why you got into this stuff. What actually got you to spend so much of your energy and life force trying to understand how nervous system works how to get people to be less nervous and anxious. My story starts in, I was kind of have a background in tech. I had a startup. We went through tech stars back in 2012. About five and a half years into that experience, I went through burnout, which is pretty common in the startup world. But that actually wasn't the trigger for me.

Starting point is 00:05:44 I find that usually people that get into this type of work, there's some kind of catalyst or some kind of challenging life event. And for me, that was October 23rd, 2017. And my fiancé at the time had an anxiety attack, and she took her own life. And that kind of completely just destroyed me at the time. And I realized that I'd been so disconnected from my body and my emotions. And it kind of sent me on this five-plus year journey to, to kind of discover all of this inner landscape that I'd been numb from the neck down.

Starting point is 00:06:23 And I went into breathwork, meditation retreats, did hundreds of breathwork journeys, researched with a breath lab over in Bali, and basically just kind of directed all of my focus and attention onto understanding this inner landscape that I'd been pretty much oblivious to. And since then, I've been working with founders, executives, running courses and teaching what I'm learning and hopefully still researching at the same time as well. Wow. And I imagine the thinking was that if your wife had these skills, she would have had another path. Yeah, that was definitely part of it. Yeah. And also just since realizing how many people are struggling with anxiety, depression, all of this kind of constellation of mental health challenges, both in the workplace and at home as well.

Starting point is 00:07:15 Yeah, it's been a very rewarding journey. All right. This episode's already gotten very heavy and I'm sucked in. I'm excited to learn all these things that you've uncovered. So let's just get into the meat of it. Just talk about this kind of general method that you've found for how to help people become less nervous and anxious. Yeah, so I find this kind of top-down, bottom-up distinction to be incredibly helpful. Most people, when they try to calm down, they use kind of tactical reframed or maybe mindfulness

Starting point is 00:07:50 or maybe reframing the situation in the positive light. There's lots of different practices that people use, which do have some effect. But in my experience, working with the physiology using what's known as a bottom-up approach, primarily using the breath, although there's also other approaches that you can use, it's just such a rapidly more effective way at shifting your state. and to kind of give a little bit of context and maybe some science as well, we have what's known as afferent and efferent neurons kind of going up and down our body. And there's four times more afferent neurons going from the body to the brain as from the brain to the body. So you can almost imagine there's like a super highway of traffic of information going up to the brain

Starting point is 00:08:33 and much less, four times less going from the brain to the body. And so by learning how to kind of pull on the levers of our physiology, we can rapidly change our state. And then from there, by changing our state, that impacts the thoughts and feelings that we have. So instead of kind of trying to change the story or trying to fix something or trying to solve something, which is what most people do by default, myself included in the past, if you change your state first, then there's a cascading effect which changes your thoughts and feelings. Okay, amazing. Yeah, and just to like share how I felt when I was reading this and trying to understand this approach is whenever I get nervous, there's always this like, oh, my body's starting to feel anxious. And then I think of a reason. Like, oftentimes I don't know why it gets nervous, why my body's starting to create this feeling of anxiety. And then I often realize, I'm just now trying to just explain why it happened. Oh, I have this like big meeting coming up or have this podcast episode I'm nervous about or I'm not going to make a deadline for my anxiety. newsletter. Like I often experience this where it's just like, oh, something feels nervous and then, okay, here's the explanation. So maybe just along those lines, what else is there that might be helpful for people to think about in this context? I mean, I think it's helpful to understand

Starting point is 00:09:50 the process by which, by changing the way that we breathe, for example, it shifts our physiological state and changes our nervous system. So if you're listening to this, maybe you're learning, you can try this as well. If you start breathing into your, upper chest, and shallow, fairly, fairly rapid, maybe even through the mouth, that will then, there's a part of your brain called the insular cortex, which is basically constantly spying on the way that we're breathing. And it will register that change. It will then send information to activate the endocrine system, which then creates shift in our blood chemistry. The sympathetic nervous system gets activated, and that increase in adrenaline and cortisol,

Starting point is 00:10:33 it starts to flood flood your body everyone's probably very familiar with that feeling and then that will then have a cascading impact on the thoughts that you're having and the way that you feel and so like you like you just shared we have a tendency to kind of confabulate or make up stories that match the state that we're that we're in and so that's that's kind of what happens when we're breathing in that way and then you can also consciously change your breath to breathe in a different way which has the reverse effect, which I can go into, but I'll pause there. Yeah, so I think one of the big actionable takeaways here is that instead of trying to convince yourself, no, this talk is going to go great. I don't need to worry about how I'm

Starting point is 00:11:14 going to look in this meeting. Basically, instead of going top down, trying to calm your body through thought, your advice is calm your body first because then your mind will notice, hey, I'm actually not as nervous as I thought maybe things are going to be okay. Is that right? Yeah, precisely. And I mean, I've, I've been. I've used this myself many times before presentations. I gave a TEDx talk a few years ago and I was like, my entire body was just terrified and I did 15 minutes of this breathing practice before and walked on stage almost cool as a cucumber. It's very effective.

Starting point is 00:11:47 Sounds too good to be true, but we're going to do some of these exercises for people. Before we get into, why is it that breath specifically so powerful? It feels like such a strange thing to work so well, just this idea of breathing in a different way. You talked a bit about this. I forget what you called it, that kind of watches how you're breathing. But I guess what else can you share about just why is breath so effective in changing our state? Sure. Well, it's one of the few things which happens automatically, but we can also control it consciously.

Starting point is 00:12:16 And so what scientists have discovered, that when the exhale is twice as long as the inhale, it has a calming effect. And when the inhale is either more intense or twice as long as the exhale, it has an activating effect. effect. So you can kind of think of this as like an up or down lever on the nervous system. You also have this really clever way of describing this system. You call it state over story, essentially focusing on the state of your body versus the story you're telling yourself. Is that the way to think about it? And can you just talk about that concept? Yeah. So it's basically a shorthand for what we've just been talking about, which is most people tend to approach the problem or try to solve things on the level of story. So there's multiple ways

Starting point is 00:12:59 you can do that through the breath, as we just talked about, you can also defocus your gaze and kind of relax your eyes, and that has a similar effect. You can expand your awareness and kind of bring your awareness to behind you and the sides of you and below you. Or you can breathe in these ways, which emphasize the exhale. And so when we breathe in a way with, say, the exhale twice as long as the inhale, that part of the brain, the insular cortex, then send signals to the parasympathetic nervous system, which then has the cascading effect on an endocrine system and calms us down. And what I usually

Starting point is 00:13:33 find as well is that the kind of reactive thoughts and feelings that we have when we're in that kind of anxious loop, they can be self-reinforcing. And so, you know, if someone has a thought of like, oh, no, I'm nervous before this important presentation, then that exacerbates the breathing pattern. And then the whole thing just goes into this spiral, which can end up in like full-blown panic attacks if it's not, if there's not an intervention of some sorts. Yeah, that's what I find with my nervous. Like, I hate talking on stage. I get nervous before every podcast. Like, this is not my natural state. Interesting. Yeah, and the people, I hide it well. Is that still the case with podcast today? Absolutely. And it's like different levels of nervousness, but it's always just like,

Starting point is 00:14:13 oh, there we go. Like, I'm not a performer person, even, like, I kind of push myself to do this podcast as a way to get better at this, to be honest. And so it's still a thing that I think about. And What I find is the nervousness comes from exactly what you described, is the nervousness of being nervous. It's like, I don't know. There's no reason specifically to be anxious, but it's, I don't know how I'll be once I do the thing.

Starting point is 00:14:36 So it's like nervous of what it might look like or end up being like. So that's exactly what I ran to. Yeah. And there's obviously, you know, people say mindfulness, meditation, things like that.

Starting point is 00:14:45 That can increase the psychological space between stimulus and response. And that is something that obviously does help over the long term. But it's, in my opinion, no one near as kind of rapid and effective and efficient as just changing the way that you're breathing. Awesome. So let's get into it. I know you have a couple exercises specifically for this and then and then we'll go from there. We can stack a few of the exercises and I'll try and keep it to like a minute or so. So yeah, if you want to get comfy in your chair, I'll sit up straight, feel your butt on the seat. And I find it helpful to kind of be aware of the space behind you and above you as well. kind of expanding your awareness so that you're,

Starting point is 00:15:25 you're aware of the space behind, to the sides, and above. And should we close your eyes? Yeah, and close your eyes down. If you're listening and driving, obviously don't do that, but yeah, closing the eyes down. Just sure helps. And now we're just going to do simple breath.

Starting point is 00:15:40 We're going to inhale in through the nose for four. We're going to hold the breath at the top for four, and we're going to exhale for eight. And then we're going to repeat. So let the breath go. And inhaling through the nose, inhale two three four hold the breath two three four and exhale eight two three four and exhale eight inhale two three four hold the breath two three four and exhale two three four and exhale two three four

Starting point is 00:16:22 five, six, seven, eight. And now you can let go over the breath completely. And we'll end with one, a round of humming, which is surprisingly effective at calming as well. So take a full breath in and humming through the nose all the way to the end of exhale. Let out a sigh if that feels good. And open up your eyes.

Starting point is 00:17:00 I feel extremely calm. I should do this every day. every podcast episode before we start. A note on the humming, it also releases nitric oxide, which is a vasodilator, and that helps to create that kind of calming effect, and it also reduces eye tension as well. So I'll do it if I've been looking at a screen for too long. It's really good for kind of reducing eye fatigue as well. And there's also like a vagus nerve component to it because your body's vibrating.

Starting point is 00:17:27 Is that true? Yeah, precisely. So it kind of tones or stimulates the vagus nerve, which stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system. What's your advice for doing this? Is this like before you go into a big meeting or presentation, how do you apply this? I kind of like to share building a toolkit of different practices that are appropriate for different contexts. So something like the four, four, eight breathing, you could do pretty much anywhere without anyone necessarily noticing. Humming is slightly more obvious, but you know, if you're about to jump on a Zoom or something, you can totally

Starting point is 00:18:00 do it with your eyes closed. Things like expanding your awareness or bringing your awareness down to your feet and your hands, which creates a kind of grounding, calming effect that also you can do if you're in a busy room, maybe you have social anxiety, even orienting and kind of labeling things that you're hearing and feeling, kind of bringing the awareness and attention back into the body that also has an effect. And then there's longer practices for say non-sleep deep rests, belly breathing, things that you can do if you have 10, 20 minutes and you're at home and you want a downshift. So I like to kind of give people a big toolkit to see what works for them and then cherry pick which ones are suitable to different situations. And another way that I think

Starting point is 00:18:41 about this is I call it if this then breathe. So it's like if I feel overwhelmed, then I do the humming. If I feel anxious, then I do four, four, eight breathing, or alternate nostril breathing. And kind of having my own little, like, recipe set that I have for different context is really helpful. And I work with people to kind of build those toolkits for themselves. This sounds like it needs to be a website where people can go with these lists of if then, then that is there a place that we could send people on the show notes. And if not, you should make one before we go live. There is not currently.

Starting point is 00:19:14 It's part of the curriculum in the course that I have. But it's, I can maybe see if I can spin one up as well. But yeah. Okay, cool. We'll link to the course of nothing else. Amazing. Okay. Along this line of calming breath exercise, Huberman also has a different version, which I've tried, and I'm going to do both now.

Starting point is 00:19:31 You breathe in fully, and then you breathe in a little bit more. Imagine you've seen that piece of advice. That's also fantastic. He calls it the physiological sigh, and it's both very effective, especially if you just have like, you know, five seconds and you just take a full sigh. It's great. I'd also add that the sigh happens naturally as a result. of doing these downshifting practices. So if you notice after you do, let's say, the 4-48 breathing,

Starting point is 00:19:59 at the end, you might naturally just want to let out a sigh, and that's a signal that your body is naturally downshifting. Or if you're with a friend and you feel just like comfortable and relax, then your body might sigh. And it's something that we do a lot. And as you say, you can consciously do it, and that will help as well. That's another one of the practices. Awesome.

Starting point is 00:20:18 So I'll link to that. And I think throughout this episode, as you said, we're going to give people a bunch of tools that they can use. And it feels like some are like in the moment, I need to feel calmer right now. Here's a thing you could do. And then there's things you can do ongoing that build. I guess another way to think about is just make your body more calm as a baseline. I'll practice to work on there.

Starting point is 00:20:38 Yeah, precisely. Awesome. Okay. I think the other breathing exercise we're going to do is the opposite. Get you all excited. Is that right? Yeah, sure. Yeah, we can do that as well.

Starting point is 00:20:47 I call this expressive breath. So this is the opposite. it, this is very activating. I would only recommend this if you're feeling lethargic or maybe instead of drinking a coffee in the afternoon, you could do this for a minute or so. In the scientific literature, it's Bellow's breath or breath of fire. And it basically looks like a series of rapid exhales through the nose. I like to keep it through the nose only because if you do it through the mouth, it can be very too activating and it can kind of overwhelm people. Obviously, there's the Wimhoff practice that I'm sure many people are familiar with. So this is like a

Starting point is 00:21:20 a more gentle version of, if Wimhoff is like Red Bull, this is kind of like a small coffee. I like that. And you call it the espresso breath, espresso breath. So yeah, that's a good metaphor there. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, let's do it. So again, kind of sit up straight. And this time you want to be pumping the breath from your lower belly.

Starting point is 00:21:45 And you pump the breath on the exhale. So I'll demonstrate it briefly. It's like breathe in. Okay, so yeah, take a full breath in. And begin. And let go. And full breath in and sigh on the exhale. I already feel a little bit tingly.

Starting point is 00:22:25 I'm energized. Let's do this. Go, go, go, go. That was great. Okay, look at that. We're back to where we started. The full circle of energy. That was great.

Starting point is 00:22:34 Up and down. And then how long do you recommend doing that one for? So it kind of depends on how activating you find it, but I usually find 30 breaths per round and then kind of take a breath, have a long pause on the exhale, and then if you want to do another round or two. Amazing. And the cases where this might be helpful is maybe you're about to give a big talk.

Starting point is 00:22:54 Like I guess in a talk, you both want energy and you want calm. So that's kind of complicated. You can certainly, especially if you're kind of meetings early in the morning, and you haven't quite got going yet, you can do the espresso breath to begin with and that activates you and then do some of the downshifting practices to kind of ground and stabilize that. aliveness. Are there any other tactical breathing exercises that are worth doing real quick? I know we'll get into some longer practices and deeper stuff, but is there anything else that would be helpful here?

Starting point is 00:23:21 No, I think we've covered kind of the bases. I don't want to overwhelm people too much. Just as a takeaway, there's kind of these two techniques. One, to help you get more calm, when you need to be calm in the moment. The other is to get energy. And then I guess are these things that you recommend doing ongoing to build this muscle in your body? Or are these mostly for uni this now in the moment? And it's not worth just doing a few times a day, even when you're fine. Yeah, great question. So I like to recommend both a morning practice,

Starting point is 00:23:52 particularly to kind of build the muscle of just doing it and getting used to it. So maybe five minutes in the morning before you start work, before breakfast, something like that. And then you're more likely to remember that you kind of have access to that in the moment because usually the challenge is that when someone is kind of in that like flustered state remembering to do the practice is often the last thing that comes to mind so by kind of having a deliberate practice for you know at least kind of seven to 10 days and so that you get get the hang of it then it feels much more natural to do it when you're feeling like that's kind of like

Starting point is 00:24:27 playing the game on hard mode when you're when you're really stressed and anxious it's like that's when you need it the most but it's also when you're least likely to remember to do it awesome Okay, so the first exercise to calm you down is essentially breathe in four seconds, hold it for four seconds, breathe out slowly for eight seconds, and do that for about 30 seconds. Is that right, or for a minute? Yeah, I'd say for at least a minute or two, we kind of did a shorter version. I'll also add that the important thing is that the exhale is twice as long as the inhale. So if exhaling for eight is too long, you could do three, three, six, or even two, four,

Starting point is 00:25:02 or even five, five, ten, depending on your lung capacity. essentially and your CO2 tolerance. Okay, good to know. And then the espresso breath when you need energy or you just kind of pump air out of your belly through your nose and you do that for how long would you recommend? Two to three rounds of 30. Okay.

Starting point is 00:25:20 Amazing. Okay. And again, the reason this is effective and powerful is coming back to your original big insight that our state is driven by what our body is doing and our mind often explains what we're feeling based on what our body is doing. that if you can change the state of your body and become less nervous in your body, your mind will be like, all right, everything's fine. Yeah, and maybe something that we haven't touched on yet,

Starting point is 00:25:47 but I think is important to add in, is this idea of interception or somatic awareness. And the reason I bring it in is because if you do this practice, but you're not really aware of your body and how you feel, then it'll be less compelling to you. But if you're kind of tuned into like sensations in your body, what's going on. you're more likely to notice the difference in the shifts. Great. So let's get into that. That was something I definitely wanted to touch on. You know, this awesome acronym to help you with this process of introspection. So talk about what that is and then how to actually go about becoming better at being aware of what your body is doing.

Starting point is 00:26:22 Yeah. So it's this idea of interception, which is known as like our sixth sense. And basically it's our ability to kind of sense, track and feel our internal landscape. And I like to use a metaphor of a chef in the same way that, you train your flavor palette for kind of sweet, spicy, umami, things like that. You can also train your interoceptive palate and become more aware of the internal sensations, whether that's your breath, whether it's tension, whether it's moods and emotions, whether it's the quality of your awareness, the quality of your thoughts. And the more kind of in tune with that you are,

Starting point is 00:26:59 the more likely you are to notice the kind of early warning signs of something like anxiety. because usually certainly a panic attack doesn't come out of nowhere. There will be a kind of cascade of subtle things that happen in your body that eventually result in anxiety. And so if you can catch those things early and kind of like nip them in the bud and do one of these practices, then you can avoid the kind of 10 out of 10 worst case scenarios. Okay, awesome.

Starting point is 00:27:25 So I know that there's also specific things you recommend people pay attention to understand what their body is doing and this process of interception, yeah. Intra. Okay. What is it? Interoception. Interoception. As opposed to extra reception, which is awareness of all the external stimuli. Got it. I guess before we can get to that, so you mentioned that it's like another sense we have, and I think that's a really important point that I think maybe people didn't catch.

Starting point is 00:27:51 So we have these five senses, obviously taste and smell and vision and touch, but your finding and research should, basically this is another sense people don't really know we have. Yeah, exactly. And it has been studied, quite a lot, especially in the last decade or so. And there's a number of interesting kind of findings from the research that I found. One being that ADHD tends to correlate with low levels of interception, as does if people have PTSD or trauma again, interception is lowered. And I'd certainly say for myself, you know, for the first 25 years of my life, I was fairly numb from the neck down. I was not very aware to what was happening. in my body in real time. I was also reading a book recently called The Hour Between Dog and Wolf, which looked at Wall Street traders, and they correlated higher degrees of interception with basically making more money and making better decisions. And I think the thesis was that by tuning into what their body was doing in certain moments, they could pick up on things on like more intuitive decision making, essentially. So I think there's like a specific list of things that you

Starting point is 00:28:58 recommend people pay attention to their posture, their breath, things like that. What is that list? And then how do we actually do this better? Yeah, so I simplify this to ape, which basically is an acronym, which stands for awareness, posture, and emotion. So to kind of go through each one by one, awareness is, to give an example, like, I could narrow my awareness and become kind of really focused and just you kind of tense up and it also is quite activating sometimes. Or you can relax and expand your awareness and be aware of like the space above me the space behind me the space below me and that is generally a kind of a calming thing posture is fairly self-expanatory but again our posture affects kind of how we how we feel shifting there and then and then emotion

Starting point is 00:29:46 which i include kind of somatic or body-based sensations which arise so both kind of what what is the overall mood and the flavor or the the texture that I'm feeling. Like right now, maybe it's like excitement. Maybe there's some joy. I'm noticing some like, there's some like heat in my belly, probably from the breathing. Yeah, there's like a little bit of tightness in my lower back from working out yesterday. So just kind of sense, kind of mapping that landscape of sensation.

Starting point is 00:30:19 And for most people, it's almost like it's like a terror incognita. Like you have those maps of like here be dragons. And for a lot of people, there's just these big kind of blind spots. their body. And the advice here is, so there's this acronym, ape, and the advice is think about these three things when you're feeling something that you may not, like basically something's going on slash just often come back to this. I imagine just like whenever you can think of, oh, ape, awareness, posture, emotion. Is that how to use this? Yeah, exactly. So again, it can be something that you do kind of before you start your day, maybe like with a cup of tea.

Starting point is 00:30:58 I like to drink tea and just kind of do like a body scan essentially and just check each of those three areas. And it's also, it's really valuable, particularly if you're, if you're having racing thoughts or something doesn't feel quite right, instead of just tackling the problem on the level of the mind, kind of dropping down into the body and bringing that kind of into the picture as well, I find to be really helpful. basically as often as you can and generally when things are feeling a little off just remember where's my awareness how's my posture and then what am I feeling my feeling sad am I feeling happy excited angry things like that I think you also talk about breath like you have a list you wrote about this of other things that you might want to pay attention to you actually finding paying attention to my breath is doing it's really powerful too so I'm going to try a like a babe

Starting point is 00:31:55 version of this. I'm going to try to think about, where is my breath coming from? What am I feeling there? Yeah. So the breath and sensations are two other ones that are really helpful. The breath in particular, often people will,

Starting point is 00:32:09 there's an idea of like email apnea. When people are checking their emails, they will, without noticing it, start to hold their breath, which is generally a very activating thing to do. Or as I mentioned earlier, if your breath is through the mouth and shallow

Starting point is 00:32:23 and into the upper chest, that will also be, very activating versus is your breath through the nose? Is it kind of into the belly and into the sides of the rib cage? And does it feel easeful, basically? Like breathing without tension is ideal. What I think about using this practice is if I were sitting in a meeting and just like not feeling like amazingly confidence,

Starting point is 00:32:47 just like come back to this acronym, babe or ape, whichever one you want to choose, just like, how am I feeling right now? Oh, wow, my whole stomach is clenched because I'm, maybe nervous about what might happen or I'm not breathing at all or my posture is really bad so I think in a meeting would be really helpful here maybe you're about to get on a zoom or an important call or something like that maybe on one-on-one is there anything else any other moments that might be good that kind of triggers for people of like oh I should really be aware of what's happening right now let me do an ape exercise yeah well just to kind of piggyback on what you just

Starting point is 00:33:19 said if you're about to jump on a meeting and you're noticing that your stomach is clenched like that's actually really useful data to kind of be like how like why am I like why is this happening is the like is it your intuition kind of saying that you know maybe you shouldn't do this deal with someone or maybe like something is off and so it's a sign to kind of explore that more or it could be that you've been triggered by something or something that someone said and you've only just realized it and then that's again like more information or something that you can you can reflect on or go into. Is there anything in your life recently that is an example of this where you're feeling

Starting point is 00:33:57 unsure and maybe you realize, oh, here's what my body's doing. Maybe I should pay more attention to this. Actually, last week, I did a podcast conversation so I have a podcast myself and I got off the call and I remember I felt, or I got off the podcast and I felt pretty like exhausted and I felt like there was this kind of tension in my chest and this, And again, my breath was kind of all over the place. And I realized that I had very much overcommitted myself for that week. Like I'd scheduled back to back podcast interviews. The podcast wasn't even the priority for kind of, you know, what I'm focusing on in this quarter. So I then made the decision to just push back all my episodes until, until the summer, basically. I love that example. I know that feeling very well. I'm sure. when you wrote about this idea of interoception you connected it to burnout and i think you talked about

Starting point is 00:34:55 how this is one of the best tools to avoid burnout is that is that right am i remembering that right and if so how do you think about this and burnout and avoiding burnout in general something a lot of people experience yeah so i have this idea that i call the the feather brick dump truck phenomenon and basically what that means is when we are showing early signs of burnout, our body will give us feedback usually in subtle ways in the beginning. So the feather might be waking up in the morning and feeling a little bit tired, a little bit, maybe a little bit exhausted. The brick, you know, maybe you ignore that or you don't notice it. And then three or four weeks later, you have like a fight with someone or an argument or you

Starting point is 00:35:38 just feel frustrated and terrible and you lose your call. and then maybe the dump truck is a month later or even a year later, there's like a full-blown health crisis or you develop type 2 diabetes or there's a whole range of things or maybe you get fired. Like there's a bunch of different things that can happen. But normally depending on how attuned or depending on someone's interoceptive capacity, like ideally you want to notice when it's the feather and then make adjustments or shift then and not have to wait until you experience the full-blown pain of the dump truck.

Starting point is 00:36:11 which unfortunately is what happens to a lot of people, especially when they experienced burnout for the first time. This is such an important point and such a good way of thinking about it. Reminds me of Andy Johns in the episode we had there of just how long and, willing to the episode there, just like how all these little things came up along the way and then eventually just became incredibly unsustainable to live the life that he was living. This episode is brought to you by Miro.

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Starting point is 00:37:40 What are some examples of this feather? So your advice here is just like, pay attention to these little signs that like you're not living a sustainable life right now. What are some examples of these kind of feathery signs of like, maybe I need to change something? Yeah, so I'll tie this in with a concept that I call emotional dead, which is basically when our nervous system experiences stress, there's what's known as a mobilization cycle. And if that cycle isn't completed or we don't get to downshift or relax on the other side, that gets stored in the body as allostatic load, which I call emotional debt. And over time, that creates fragility in the nervous system. And so what that fragility can look like is anything from being impacted by small things

Starting point is 00:38:27 in a kind of disproportionate way. So noticing that you're more reactive than normal, maybe you're a little bit more snappy, maybe you get frustrated by little things. Maybe your sleep isn't as good. Maybe you wake up not feeling fully rested. Maybe kind of relationships are often, like especially intimate relationships are usually a place that this shows up or relationships at work. So those are kind of the classic early warning signs.

Starting point is 00:38:51 And then as that emotional debt threshold increases in the same way that, say with technical debt, if you're building a product, in the beginning, it's fine. And in fact, it's even necessary in the beginning. Like, it's great that our body can buffer this stress response because it allows us to function. But if we don't pay off that technical debt or emotional debt, then over time it accumulates. And it can also come out through kind of health crises, health challenges. It just gets basically progressively worse until that debt is paid off. I feel like a lot of people listening are like, yes, I know exactly what you mean.

Starting point is 00:39:29 how does one notice that you're building emotional debt and then how do you start to release this debt and pay off this debt? What I've seen with some of my founder clients and in the research that we did where we interviewed 260 leaders, what can often happen is that emotional debt will increase and increase and increase until it gets to a point where we are well outside what's known as a window of tolerance. And at that point, there's like there's like, there's like a crash. It's almost like the fuse switch blows and there's there's exhaustion, maybe there's complete inability to get up off the couch. And for some people, people with large nervous system capacity, they can keep going for five years,

Starting point is 00:40:14 maybe 10 years and they can kind of like keep building this up and it becomes normalized to kind of live in a way where you're always on and never really relaxing or coming down. or one really key sign actually is if you're not able to kind of naturally downshift or downregulate your nervous system at the end of a day without something like wine or or CBD or some kind of like external substance, that's a sign that you're, you kind of reached a certain threshold of emotional debt. And then how does one start to pay off this debt if you've spent years just working way too hard? You've had a relationship that just isn't working great.

Starting point is 00:40:56 I don't know. Like, I imagine most people go to therapy and just kind of talk through all these things and try to work through the challenges. What do you recommend if you're just like, man, I feel like I have this. What should I do? Yeah, well, it's, I mean, that's a big question. I'm actually, I'll probably get some pushback for this, but I'm not a big fan of talk therapy alone,

Starting point is 00:41:18 or at least therapy that doesn't have a somatic or body-based component. And from my understanding of the nervous system, and how we store this stress, just talking about things and keeping things on the level of the intellect doesn't actually address the root of the challenge. What we need to do is create a certain sense of safety to kind of go into those buffered emotional responses

Starting point is 00:41:42 and feel them all the way through and allow that mobilization reflex to complete. And so to kind of give a personal example, when I was living in Bali, I did kind of several hundred breathwork journeys where you kind of breathe in a certain way to get into an altered state. And then in that place, these memories would arise of these things that happened, you know, five, ten years ago.

Starting point is 00:42:06 And my body would, like, it would either move a certain way or the anger would come through. Sometimes it would be sadness or grief. Often there's a lot of stored emotion that's held in our body that just needs permission to kind of be felt through and be released. And so for me, it was a journey of coming into, like, right relationship. with my anger and my grief and honestly my shame as well, like giving myself permission to feel this like gunk that had been stored in my, in my pelvis. So I'm not saying you have to go to Bali and do 200 breathwork journeys. Like that's definitely not that's, I mean, that's that's a path.

Starting point is 00:42:44 But first, it begins with, as I said, cultivating interception and even being aware that there is this tension, there is through these things in your body. Secondly, having the practices of self-regulation so that if these things come up, you don't get overwhelmed, you're able to downshift and ground. And then thirdly, it's the practice of what I call emotional fluidity, which is basically creating the conditions of welcoming the full spectrum of emotions as they arise. And often it's very helpful to have a guide or a somatic practitioner. I like somatic experiencing Hacomi, a two modalities. I'm a big fan of. And yeah, that's a journey and a process. And it depends how many years you've been operating in a slightly numbed way.

Starting point is 00:43:31 And it's different for everyone, but it begins by tuning into and listening to the body and then having honestly curiosity about what is there. And just following that curiosity and the body starts to kind of show you what is ready to be seen. I love that it always comes back to kind of the original place we started, which is that the way we feel is a very bottom up. body-based system. It's not. We feel something in our body gets nervous. It's our body gets nervous and they're like, oh, here's why I'm nervous. And your advice is just focus a lot on helping your body release the stuff that you built up, this debt, and then also just when you're nervous

Starting point is 00:44:10 in the moment, focus on getting your body to a state versus trying to convince your mind. Now everything's going to be okay. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Exactly. And specifically on the therapy route, just to touch on that, so your advice there is if you were to work with a therapist and you feel really, you feel a lot of this stuff that we're talking about is focus on a somatic oriented therapy where it's body oriented, not just thinking about it and talking through stuff. It's actually convincing your body this is going to be, here's a way to helping your body release this debt, essentially. Yeah, I mean, you can understand in precise detail about whatever the challenge was from 5, 10,

Starting point is 00:44:47 15 years ago, but if you're unable to connect it to the correlating, like, sensation, in the body, like usually if, say, I don't know, if I was to imagine, someone shouted at me yesterday, and I think about that, there's usually a correlating kind of somatic sensation. The neuroscientist, DiMazio, calls it a somatic marker. So by tracking the somatic markers and then either on your own, just kind of following that sensation and allowing whatever emotion was present at the time to complete, that is the way that we kind of by we slowly pay off that emotional debt but like one one process at the time. So maybe coming back to this question of say someone is listening and wondering, am I building

Starting point is 00:45:31 emotional debt? Am I ignoring things that are these feathers? What are signs and just I don't know examples of this of emotional debt being built up of this drama, whatever you want to call it, being built up in the body? I don't know. Is it just like anytime you feel really nervous, that's emotional debt. Is it anytime you push something down that you are pretty sure you should deal with in the moment, that's emotional debt? What are just like some examples of what that feels like and looks like? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:45:59 So it's typically different forms of nervous system dysregulation. And that shows up as, you know, it could be someone's breathing pattern. Like if they're constantly in this sympathetic or hypervigilant state, if they're always tracking for things, looking for the worst case scenario, So another common one, and this is particularly true in the tech sector, is being very much in the head and living in the thoughts and the mind the entire time. And there's a form of disassociation that happens as a kind of protection mechanism, essentially, because it's uncomfortable to be with the sensations in the body.

Starting point is 00:46:34 And because society tends to reward people for solving problems and being in their mind, that is a pattern that continue for many, many years or even decades. other ones are, I think the most obvious one for people is emotional reactivity where your response to a certain situation is disproportionate to what's happened. So like, for example, if you said something to me of like, that doesn't make any sense. And I was like, I freeze maybe. And this is another important point that most people have two versions of reactivity. Some people will kind freeze, withdraw, shut down and disconnect, and other people will, like, become more aggressive, become bigger and attack and, like, fight back. And kind of knowing which way you tend to orient,

Starting point is 00:47:19 most, for me, it's usually shrink and freeze and shut down. Um, knowing what your pattern is and also knowing what the sensations are when this happens, it's really helpful for you to be like, oh, that thing's happening. My priority now is to downshift and kind of find a sense of, of, of, of, of safety basically in the body and then interact, then make the decision, then have the conversation. Because if you can keep going from that place of reactivity, like, nothing good happens from that place. No great decisions were made from that place. So again, that's a place where having the intercept of awareness, oh, this is what's going on, being able to then downshift your system, kind of access a sense of, oh, like, I'm okay, that actually this isn't so bad. And then moving on from there,

Starting point is 00:48:07 is a profoundly like practical and just useful skill. Kind of along these same lines, you're at summer, this idea that you have a big competitive advantage if you feel the feels is the way you described it. Does that ring a bell? And if so, what can you share around that, just why this is so powerful, especially in the workplace? Yeah, so I think I wrote about this in one of the every essays.

Starting point is 00:48:31 I think the title was the best decision making is emotional. And I basically wanted to kind of poke at the frame, I think I saw someone on Twitter say, fact over feelings. Like, don't let emotions ruin good decision making. And yeah, there's so much as I can say about this,

Starting point is 00:48:47 but basically there was a landmark study by this guy, Damazio, who's this kind of famous neuroscientist, and he studied a patient called Elliot. And Elliot had a tumor in his brain that was removed, and it basically meant that he was unable to feel emotions.

Starting point is 00:49:04 So his entire emotional capacity was removed. And Elliot went from, being a successful married businessman to divorced, broke and unable to like choose what he could have for lunch. He was unable to make the most basic life decisions. And it's because he didn't have access to that emotional sentence in his brain. And so our brain is like a prediction making machine. And as I mentioned earlier, there's this highway of sensory data that's coming up through the body. And if we don't listen to that when we're making decisions, then we're losing out on a lot of information. And what?

Starting point is 00:49:37 what tends to happen, I see this in clients that I work with, is if they are avoiding feeling a certain way, let's say that they don't enjoy feeling conflict or anger, then they will make decisions subconsciously to avoid feeling that way. And it becomes a huge bias and a huge problem because people make decisions because they're afraid of feeling a certain way. And if you're, on the other hand able to just welcome and be with whatever emotions would arise on the other side of a decision, you're able to kind of decide clearly instead of being skewed one way or the other. Is your said than done? Yeah. Do you find there's ever a downside to being too in touch with what you're feeling? I find, like, I'm actually not like a feeler of what I'm feeling kind of person.

Starting point is 00:50:30 like I'm pretty stable, partly because I'm not like super in tune with what I'm feeling a lot of times. And maybe this is a huge problem that I need to deal with. But I don't know. It's worked out okay so far. I guess you ever find that sometimes it's okay. Sometimes like you don't need to know exactly every moment, anything that's hurting you're causing you pain. Yeah, it's a good question. And some people do have, you know, a very high interceptive capacity.

Starting point is 00:50:55 And that can be overwhelming, in which case I would recommend focusing on the breathing practices, to build that capacity to downshift so you're able to just function. And yeah, there's definitely people who are overwhelmed by the stimuli of day-to-day life, you know, being out in traffic, like they're very easily overwhelmed. And for those people working on increasing nervous system capacity to kind of hold that amount of stress, maybe it's through sauna and cold plunge, or maybe it's through like gentle titration of stresses and then downshifting. Like that's actually really valuable. I'd also say that the ability to kind of function well, or this applies to kind of like a lot of high functioning people, which is probably honestly a lot of your audience. It's very

Starting point is 00:51:40 helpful kind of in the moment to kind of, let's say something comes up. You want to be able to buffer intense emotions and say get through the meeting, get through whatever it is. Like that's a very helpful skill. But if you don't then give yourself spaciousness afterwards to downshift and allow yourself feel whatever was brought up by that experience, you're going to be adding to this emotional debt over time. And as I mentioned, some people, they might only, it might be a year before there's some kind of breakdown, burnout. Other people, it might be, it might be longer. And usually it's more unfortunate in the longer case because it creates like a long-term health crisis and then no amount of money or time is able to repair the damage that has been done, which is, can be really

Starting point is 00:52:22 tragic. My chat with Andy Johns is a great example of that happening. Yeah. And, and, And he's a superb example. And I love his vulnerability and honesty in what he's been through. Yeah, I think if you're interested in this topic, definitely watch that episode. Another exercise that you talk a lot about is this idea. It's called NSDR, I think. Talk about that and when that might be useful, how to go about using this tool. Yeah, so NSDR was a practice coined by Andrew Heuben, who you mentioned earlier.

Starting point is 00:52:53 And it basically, it's a more scientific lens on the practice of, Yoga Nidra, which is kind of an ancient yoga practice. But I'm a huge fan of it, and I do it myself most days for kind of 15 to 20 minutes. Basically, what it looks like is you lie down, put on an eye mask or blindfold, and you listen to a guided audio. I can, I've recorded some myself so I can share these in the show note links. Your voice would be so good for these, by the way. This is the founder calling. Nice. Yeah, it's really fun for me to do. But basically what it involves is a guided body scan. So this is also a great way to practice interception. It's something that I didn't mention earlier was that when there's cortisol present in our

Starting point is 00:53:35 body, the cortisol basically acts as a numbing agent. So it's much harder to kind of tune into those sensations. But using this, I think it's a 14-minute guided NSDR practice. You're basically lying down, there's a guided body scan, there's like relaxing music in the background. And by the of it, you feel, you feel like you've had like a two-hour nap. Like it feels incredible. And particularly for people who like myself tend to get tired in the afternoons, if you kind of space this out, usually between like 1 and 3 p.m. for me, that will give you a second wind in the afternoon. And it'll mean you won't kind of end the day collapse on the sofa. So I think it's great for improving interception. It's good for allowing your body to downshift and relax instead of being

Starting point is 00:54:24 in that kind of high-tone sympathetic state all throughout the day. So it gives you, it gives your body a break. And it's just, it just feels really good. Like, honestly, it's, it's probably my most played practice of everything that I teach. It's just people listen, listen to it every day. So I'll, I'll share that in the show notes as well. And I imagine if you feel like you've built this emotional debt, this would be a really good exercise to start to do. Is that right? Yeah, it's fantastic. I mean, most people, there's some people who struggle with, you know, having enough energy to kind of get out of bed and function. But again, I imagine listeners to your show, people that live in Silicon Valley, their challenge is the downshifting without external substances. And so NSDR is a really great way of strengthening that ventral vagal tone, which is our body's capacity to go from like on, kind of go, go, to then relaxing.

Starting point is 00:55:16 There's a quote from Kevin Kelly that I interviewed recently and he said, if you have a great work ethic, that needs to be matched with a great rest ethic. And I think that that kind of piece of actually training our capacity to downshift after stress is just completely missing from most people's playbooks. I think with a lot of the sort of advice, if you listen to Tim Ferriss and Huberman and everyone's got this stuff. you should be doing every day list. And it ends up being so long and there's so many things to do. Cold plunge, Sana. What is it that you practice or come back to slash? What would you recommend people try to do daily that is most impactful of all this stuff we've talked about?

Starting point is 00:56:05 First experiment with a bunch of different practices and see which you enjoy. And notice how you feel before and then how you feel afterwards. that's kind of the key because once you know that it feels good, you're not going to have to like force yourself or motivate yourself to do it. You'll just do it naturally because you know if you'll feel great afterwards. I would recommend starting really simple. So starting with like the four, four eight breathing or humming, doing that in the morning for like just like two minutes. Like two minutes in the beginning is enough. And I would also recommend listening to the NSDR practice at least once or twice. If you work from home, it's pretty easy. You know,

Starting point is 00:56:44 after a lunch break, something like that, could also be in the evening when you get home as well. Some people use it to help fall asleep. And then the final thing that I would recommend is, is if you have the resources and you have access, finding a somatic practitioner or somatic therapist is so life-changing. I mean, I emerged a completely different human on the other side of the kind of 200 breathwork journeys.

Starting point is 00:57:09 Like I have a different experience of life, basically, released so much time. Even my voice sounds different. Like if you listen to the podcast episodes I recorded four or five years ago, my voice is higher pitched. It's like, it's, it just sounds different. It has like a different resonant quality to it. Wow. Okay. Awesome. So you've kind of summarized, I was going to try to summarize all the advice you've given. But if you were to do the bare minimum next steps based on this advice, try this 448 slash 336 slash 224. This 2-24 work too if you're just like go real fast like it yeah okay okay um so do that for a couple mornings see how that does try this nsDR practice you'll link will link to a recording of how to do

Starting point is 00:57:54 that and then was there something else you recommended oh somatic uh worker like basically a maybe a therapist maybe not someone that helps you with your body yeah and i'd add in the the eight practice for even you know 15 seconds before the breathing in the morning and after just so that you notice the difference. And if you do the NSDR, that is basically a 15-minute interception practice as well. So you're kind of getting two birds with one stone with that practice. What's your perspective on meditation? Does that fit into this?

Starting point is 00:58:26 Do you find the SDR replaces the need for meditation? That is a big topic. I am an avid meditators that I've done many 10-day silent retreats. I was in a dark room for 10 days. With meditation, I think it really depends on what. your training. It's like saying, you know, what's your opinion on exercise? Well, are you training mobility or stamina or strength? It's the same with meditation. You could be training loving kindness. You could be training your focus and attention. You could be training spacious awareness.

Starting point is 00:58:59 So I'm a big fan of embodied meditation practices. So this is often the classic Vipassana body scan is a good example. Again, I mean, that's basically interoceptive practice, right? Where you're just moving your attention through different parts of your body over and over and over again for like days on end in the case of ever pass and retreat. Meditation is helpful for the specific skill of increasing the psychological space between a stimulus and your response. So if you have some degree of meditation practice, instead of getting wrapped up in a certain emotion or we're even believing a certain thought pattern, there's usually an ability to kind of step back a little bit and see it for what it is. So there definitely is a place for meditation, but my my viewpoint is that we've

Starting point is 00:59:49 kind of over indexed for mindfulness and meditation in over the last 20 years. Like there's so many apps, there's so much talk about it. And we've completely forgotten the body-based approaches. So I'm not saying don't meditate. I think meditation for sure has its place, especially if your goal is more of the traditional waking up and like seeing through the nature of the self. Like that's a different kind of path in my opinion. But if you're looking to to function more effectively and kind of be more in tune with your body, then there's a whole different category of practices in this bottom up variety that we've touched on today. On the topic of bottom up, I imagine you're a big fan of this book that everyone always talks about, the body keeps score, I think it's called.

Starting point is 01:00:33 Would you recommend that book? Is it connected in a large part to the stuff you talk about it? What do you think of that book specifically because I hear about it all of it? Yeah, it's a good book. It's by Basil van der Kolk and there's another right. I think Peter Levine says the issues are in the tissues is basically the concept. And this is the idea that we have these incomplete mobilization reflexes that are stored in our body and often held as tension. It's not strictly true to say that the trauma is in the body. There's actually a cortical map in the brain which kind of tracks these things. But for kind of practical purposes, it looks and feels as if there is stored grief in my right hip or anger in my solar plexus.

Starting point is 01:01:14 Like that's the experience that we have. And the more that you become aware of these sensations and start to, yeah, develop emotional fluidity, essentially, the more that tension is released and the less reactive you become and the more emotional debt you pay off. So I think the body keeps the score. I think a more accurate way would be the body is the scorecard in a way. I think that's kind of a slight reframe. And if you're interested in this, the work of Peter Levine, Waking the Tiger,

Starting point is 01:01:46 is kind of the seminal book on this like mobilization reflex stuff that I'm describing. I never knew that part of it. And basically it's actually kept in the brain, but it comes across as somewhere in the body. Yeah, exactly. Fascinating. I want to spend a little time on a new segment that we have in this podcast that I call Contrarian Corner. So let's visit Contrarian Corner. I feel like you'll have something interesting here.

Starting point is 01:02:09 So the question is, is there something that you have a very contrarian opinion about, something that you believe that a lot of other people really don't believe? We've already touched on, I'm not a big fan of talk-based meditation, which will probably get me some comments, I would imagine. I'd say the other one that's worth mentioning is, I think that we vastly underestimate the impact of burnout, particularly on a kind of from like bottom line perspective there was a research report that I did a couple of years ago where we interviewed these leaders and they'd all experienced burnout of some degree and we said if you were to estimate like how much this cost your startup or business what would you say and the median response was a hundred thousand dollars which I imagine is more than most people would would think and you know most people aren't actively investing in burnout insurance like it's not something that's on many people's radar besides meditation practices and things like that. And I think part of the reason that the cost is higher is

Starting point is 01:03:10 because there are these second and third order consequences of like talent attrition, of opportunity, loss productivity, you know, you lose great leaders, make shitty decisions in the run up to the burnout itself. There's also this idea of emotional contagion, which there's some research from Wharton, I believe, and they show that the leader or the CEO has a disproportionate impact or their emotional state has a disproportionate impact on the people in their team. So something I'd like to say is the nervous system of an organization is a reflection of the nervous system of the CEO. And so I think that's just something which I would like to see talked about more.

Starting point is 01:03:52 Just on this idea of burnout, I don't think you're saying don't work really hard if you want to work really hard. It's that you need to maintain your body and mind and nervous system if you're working insanely hard. Like if you're working long hours, you feel free. But just know there's debt you're building up and you need to be doing things to pay off that debt as you're doing that. Precisely. It's very much like building technical debt in the early days of a startup.

Starting point is 01:04:14 Like it's worth doing, but just do it intentionally. Like know that you're doing that. And so let's say you work really hard for eight months, you know, give yourself a month or two off to like really downshift. And it's also really worth building that nervous system capacity. Like it's great to be able to push it really hard. and focus and then combine it with that rest ethic as well. So do NSDRs kind of find a way to downshift so that that way of working can be sustainable.

Starting point is 01:04:44 Johnny, we reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready? Let's do it. First question. What are two or three books that you've recommended most to other people? I actually had a sense this question was coming and I have the books with me here. The first book is Consolations by David White.

Starting point is 01:05:02 And this is the book that I've gifted most to friends, I think, more than any other book. And he basically has 52 definitions of words like ambition is, I think, the first word. And his writing is just, it just blows me away. I open this to a random page, read the definition, and it's probably affected me more than any other book. So that's one that I love. 15 commitments of conscious leadership, which is, I imagine, has come up. before in your podcast. This is by Jim Dehmer and Diana Chapman. They have the conscious leadership group. And this is basically, in my opinion, it's the best leadership book that I've come

Starting point is 01:05:43 across. And it's, it combines practicality with a lot of great theory. So this is, this is awesome. And then finally, this is a bit out there, but recapture the rapture by Jamie Wheel. Big fan of Jamie's work, Jamie's writing. This is kind of three books in one. The beginning is like kind of addressing the meta crisis and a lot of like the craziness that we're seeing in the world. The second chapter is very related to what we've been talking about. He calls it hedonic engineering and it's basically practices for accessing, shifting, shifting just your state of consciousness. And the third is ethical cult building, which I'll just, I'll leave that there. Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show you really enjoyed? My wife and I love

Starting point is 01:06:29 animations and we saw Kubo and the two strings recently, which was fantastic. So, so great. And that and also Wolf Walkers, which was an Apple TV series. Yeah, those have been my two favorite movies I've seen recently. If you like animated content, check out Scavenger's Rain on HBO. I've mentioned it on this podcast before, but it's incredible. It's a TV show on HBO. So I usually ask, do you have a favorite question you like to ask candidates you're interviewing, but I know you coach people? So to kind of turn this question a little bit around, do you have a favorite question you like to ask executive coaching clients that you work with? I stole this question from a guy, Jerry Colonna, who's here in Boulder. And the question is amazing. It's so good.

Starting point is 01:07:15 It's basically how are you complicit in creating the conditions that you say you don't want? And so the word complicit there is key because it's not so. saying like in what ways is it your fault but it's like in what in what ways were you complicit in creating the conditions for anxiety for building up emotional debt and just the question kind of opens up the door to ways in which you're like an active participant in creating these challenges in your life and that's a it's a really rich journal question or a question to explore with with a friend co-founder colleague i remember him sharing that on the tim ferris podcast many years ago and I stuck with me and I often think of it. But I never am complicit in anything that

Starting point is 01:08:01 goes wrong. It's never my fault. There's nothing to me. Just kidding. Excellent. The other favorite product you've recently discovered that you really like? One is these blue blocking glasses. These are raw optics blue blocker glasses. They they block out 100% of blue light. And they are a lifesaver if I'm ever going out of the house basically after dark. I'll wear these to drive, I'll wear these to, even like dinners with friends sometimes, and it basically means that I'm able to then sleep well that evening. So that's one.

Starting point is 01:08:38 And then the other thing I'll briefly share, this came through the other day. You mentioned the Vegas nerve earlier, and that device, I have three devices here that are all Vegas nerve stimulation devices. This one is called Neurosim. This one, I believe, is Pulsetto. and I think this is a Apollo strap.

Starting point is 01:08:57 I haven't used them that much yet, but they basically work by sending low-level electrical stimulation directly to your vagus nerve. So this clips on your ear because the vagus nerve goes through the right side of the neck. Same with polsetto. And I'm really curious to kind of compare the effect of these versus, say, breathwork, humming, the other body-based practices.

Starting point is 01:09:19 Obviously, you can do both at the same time, but I'm just interested in playing. So I wouldn't recommend them yet, but I think it's interesting that they exist. How cool would that be? We just put these things on. We don't have to do anything else. We just get up.

Starting point is 01:09:33 Slap on our device and life is amazing. I have to meditate. You don't have to breathe in a different way. I'm going to do this while I'm not on the podcast, just wear all these devices. See how that goes. Awesome. Well, I guess somehow report back to us how these go,

Starting point is 01:09:49 because that feels really great. Next question. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to, share with friends, either in work or in life? State over story would be one, which we've touched on. State over story. And then I think the other one, which I think about often is I say, I like to say, make generous assumptions. And by that, I mean, in any situation, like what is the most generous story that I can tell of this person, of this situation, not kind of naively fabricating something, but like usually there's a spectrum

Starting point is 01:10:27 of like, I can assume that they're a bad person and they did this thing out of spite, or maybe they had a bad day, maybe they have a lot of emotional debt. You know, there's many stories that can be told. And I usually try to have a practice of telling the most generous story that I can. I like that a lot. Another way of describing that is just assume good intentions. which I often think about. Exactly. Final question, you seem extremely calm, always, and very centered and stable. What still gets you riled up and unsettled?

Starting point is 01:11:03 And what do you do when that happens? Well, I was nervous before this podcast. So I did some breathing practices and some stretching and some humming before jumping on here. I still at times notice ways in which I'm conflict avoidant. I've been working on it actively for a while, but there's a part of me that can sometimes avoid conflict. And so I've actually noticed how there's a relationship between that and having a healthy relationship to anger.

Starting point is 01:11:35 So basically giving myself permission to express frustration, not at someone, but like just allow it to be there. And then from that place set better boundaries with my time, with what I'm doing, saying no to certain things. I think that's the practice that's most alive for me right now. Johnny, you are awesome. Two final questions. Where can folks find you online and explore the things that you offer? I think you teach a course, whatever else you offer. Talk about that. And then how can listeners be useful to you? Yeah, well, this has been so much fun. I am very active on

Starting point is 01:12:09 Twitter or X. My handle is Johnny Miller. It's J-O-N-N-Y-M-1-L-L-E-R. And, And yeah, if this was interesting or listeners would like to dive deeper, I teach a course. Our next cohort is running in the spring. The end of March, applications are now open. And the website is nsmastery.com slash lenny. I've created a custom page and there's a $250 juicy discount for listeners if they want to sign up. I'm going to sign up for this myself. I don't know you're going to do that.

Starting point is 01:12:42 That's awesome. Yeah. And NS mastery stands for nervous system mastery. Exactly. Amazing. Anything else? And then the second question of how listeners can be useful to you. Well, firstly, if any of this resonates, I'd love to hear from you on Twitter or email me as well.

Starting point is 01:12:58 I can pass over my email. And I would just love it if you experiment with this stuff. Like I love this idea of just being a scientist of life. So if anything that we've talked about resonates or any of the practices you want to try, Just go out and try it and see how it feels. I think that would be, and then tell me about it. That would be the greatest gift, I think. And the best way to tell you about it is tweet at you or something else.

Starting point is 01:13:26 Tweet at me or my email is Johnny at CuriousHumans.com. So feel free to email me as well. All right. I'm going to use all these things. Johnny, thank you so much for being here. You're awesome. I am excited for the show notes. We're going to have to give people actual tools to use to become less anxious and nervous

Starting point is 01:13:43 in their work in life. Thank you again for being here. Amazing. Thanks so much, Lenny. This was super fun. Same for me. Bye, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny'spodcast.com. See you in the next episode. Thank you.

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth - Managing nerves, anxiety, and burnout | Jonny Miller (Nervous System Mastery)

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