Managing nerves, anxiety, and burnout | Jonny Miller (Nervous Systems Mastery)

0:00 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 you have like a fight with someone or an argument or you just you just feel frustrated and terrible and you you you lose your lose your cool.

0:33 And then maybe the 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 you you know, 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 the full-blown pain of the of the dump truck, which unfortunately is what happens to a lot of people, especially when they experience burnout for the first time.

1:02 Today my guest is Johnny Miller. Johnny teaches courses and does one-on-one coaching with tech professionals helping them with something he calls 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, 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.

1:56 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 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 ns-mastery.com/lenny.

2:33 If you use that URL, you actually get $250 off the course. 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, Teal is the all-in-one platform you need to run a more streamlined and efficient job search and stand out in this competitive market. There's a reason nearly 1 million people have trusted Teal to run their job search. If you're thinking of making a change in the new year, leverage Teal to grow your career on your own terms. Get started for free at tealhq.com/lenny.

3:28 That's tealhq.com/lenny. This episode is brought to you by Vanta, helping you streamline your security compliance to accelerate your growth. Thousands of fast-growing companies like Gusto, Calm, Cora, and Modern Treasury trust Vanta to help build, scale, manage, and demonstrate their security and compliance programs and get ready for audits in weeks, not months. By offering the most in-demand security and privacy frameworks such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, and many more, Vanta helps companies obtain the reports they need to accelerate growth, build efficient compliance processes, mitigate risks to their businesses, and build trust with external stakeholders. Over 5,000 fast-growing companies use Vanta to automate up to 90% of the work involved with SOC 2 and these other frameworks. For a limited time, Lenny's podcast listeners get $1,000 off Vanta.

4:21 Go to vanta.com/lenny. That's vanta.com/lenny 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 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.

4:55 And I know that people in the workplace often get nervous and anxious doing all-hands, 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 about how we can become less nervous and less anxious. But before we get into the meat 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 the nervous system works, how to get people to be less nervous and anxious.

5:27 My story starts in I was kind of have a background in tech. My had a startup. We went through Techstars back in 2012. About five and a half years into that experience, I went through burnout, which is, you know, pretty common in the in the startup world. But that actually wasn't the trigger for me. 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 fiance at the time had an anxiety attack and she took her own life.

6:01 And that kind of completely just 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 this five-plus-year journey to to to kind of discover all of this this inner landscape that I I'd been numb from the neck down. And I I went into breathwork, meditation retreats, did, you know, hundreds of breathwork journeys, researched with a breath lab over in Bali.

6:32 And basically just kind of directed all of my focus and attention onto understanding this this inner landscape that I'd been pretty much oblivious to. And since then I've been, you know, working with founders, executives, running courses, and 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 that was definitely part of it. Yeah.

7:02 And and also just since realizing how many people are struggling with with anxiety, depression, all of this kind of constellation of mental health challenges both in the workplace and and at home as well. And yeah, it's been a very rewarding journey. All right. This This episode's already gotten very heavy and 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.

7:37 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 they use kind of tactical reframes or maybe mindfulness or maybe, you know, reframing the situation in a 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 like rapidly more effective way of shifting your state. And to kind of give a little bit of context and and maybe some science as well, we have what's known as afferent and efferent neurons kind of going up 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 superhighway of traffic of information going up to the brain 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 so instead of kind of trying to change the story or trying to fix something or trying to solve something, which is what, you know, 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 your thoughts and feelings. Okay, amazing. Yeah, and just to like share how I felt when I was reading this and try 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 I get 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 I have this podcast episode I'm nervous about or I'm not going to make a deadline for my newsletter. Like, I often experience this where it's just like, oh, something feels nervous, and then, okay, here's the explanation.

9:42 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 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 if you're listening to this, maybe you Lenny you can try this as well. If you if you start breathing into your upper chest, and shallow fairly fairly rapid, maybe even through the mouth, that will then that there's a part of your brain called the insular cortex, which is basically constantly spying on the way that we're breathing.

10:17 And it will register that change. It will then send information to activate the the endocrine system, which then creates shift in our in our blood chemistry. The sympathetic nervous system gets activated, and that increase in adrenaline and cortisol you know, starts to flood flood your body. Everyone's probably very familiar with that feeling. And then that will then have a a cascading impact on the thoughts that you're having and the way that you feel. And so like 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 which I can go into, but I'll I'll pause there. Yeah, so I think one of the big actionable takeaways here that here is that instead of trying to convince yourself, no, this talk is going to go great.

11:12 I don't need to worry about how I'm 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, cuz 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 used this myself many times before presentations. I I gave a TEDx talk a few years ago, and I was like, my entire body was I was just terrified. And I did you know, 15 minutes of of this breathing practice before and walked on stage kind of almost cool as a cucumber.

11:46 It's it's very effective. Sounds too good to be true, but we're going to do some of these exercises for people. Before we get into why 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?

12:10 Sure. Well, it's one of the few things which happens automatically, but we can also control it consciously. 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. So, you can kind of think of this is like a like an up or down lever on the nervous system.

12:36 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? Can you just talk about that concept? Yeah, so it's basically shorthand for 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 you can do that. Through the breath as we just talked about, you can also defocus your 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 on the sides of you and below you. Or you can breathe in in these ways which emphasize the exhale.

13:16 And so, when we breathe in a way with say the the exhale twice as long as the inhale, that part of the brain, the insular cortex, then sends signals to the parasympathetic nervous system, which then has the cascading effect on the endocrine system, and calms us down. And and what what I usually find as well is that the the 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 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 sort. Yeah, that's what I find with my nerves like I hate talking on stage. I I get nervous before every podcast. Like this is not my natural state.

14:04 Interesting. Yeah, and the people I hide it well. Is that still is that still the case with podcast today? Absolutely. and it's like different levels of nervousness, but it's always just like, oh, there we go. Like I'm not a performer person even like I kind of pushed 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. It's the nervousness of being nervous. It's like 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. So, it's like nervous of what it might look like or act end up being like. So, that's exactly what I run into. Yeah, and and there's obviously, you know, people say mindfulness, meditation, things like that. That that can increase the 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 nowhere near as kind of rapid and effective and efficient as just changing the way that you're breathing. Awesome. So, let's 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.

15:10 so, yeah, if you want to get comfy in your chair. Let's sit up straight. Feel your your butt on the seat. And I find it help 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 you're aware of the space behind, to the sides, and above. And should we close our eyes? Yeah, and close your eyes down. If you're listening and driving, obviously don't do that, but yeah, closing closing your eyes down visual helps.

15:38 And now we're just going to do a simple breath. 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 five six seven eight. Inhale two three four. Hold the breath.

16:14 Two three four. And exhale. Two three four five six seven eight. And now you can let go of the breath completely. And we'll end with with one 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.

16:54 Let out a sigh if that feels good. And open up your eyes. I feel extremely calm. I should do this every every podcast episode before we start. And I on the 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. Cuz your body's vibrating. Is that true? Yeah, precisely. So, it 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 a presentation? How do you apply this?

17:42 I kind of like to like to share building a toolkit of different practices that are appropriate for different contexts. So, something like the the 448 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 you can totally 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 breaths, belly breathing, things that you can do if you have 10, 20 minutes and you're at home, and you and you want to downshift. So, I I like to kind of give people a a big toolkit to see what works for them, and then cherry-pick which ones are suitable to different situations. And and another way that I I like to think about this is I 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 448 breathing. Or alternate nostril breathing. And kind of having my own little like recipe set that I have for different context is is really helpful, and I work with people to kind of build those toolkits for themselves.

19:03 This sounds like it needs to be a website where people can go with the these list of if, then, then that. Is there a place that we could send people in the show notes? And if not, I should make one before we go live. There is not currently. It's part of the curriculum in in the course that I have, but it's I can I can maybe see if I can spin one up as well. But yeah. Okay, cool. We'll link to the course if nothing else.

19:23 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. 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. It's he calls it the physiological sigh, and it it's both very effective, especially if you just have like, you know, 5 seconds, and you just take it take a full sigh, it's great. It I I'd also add that the sigh happens naturally as a result of doing these down shifting practices. So, if you notice after you do, let's say the 4 4 8 breathing, at the end you might naturally just want to let out a sigh, and that's a signal that your body is naturally down shifting. Or if you're if you're with a friend and you feel just like comfortable and and and relaxed, then your body might sigh, and it's it's something that we do a lot.

20:12 And as you say, you can consciously do it, and that that will help as well. That's another one of the practices. Awesome. So, link to that. And I think that 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 it is just make your body more calm as a baseline.

20:36 A practice to work on there. 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. Let's Yeah, we we can do that as well. I call this espresso breath. So, this is the opposite. 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.

21:00 In the in the scientific literature, it's it's bellows 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 cuz if you do it through the mouth, it can be very, you know, too activating, and it can kind of overwhelm people. Obviously, there's the Wim Hof practice that I'm sure many people are familiar with. So, this is like a a more gentle version of If Wim Hof is like Red Bull, this is kind of like a a a small coffee.

21:29 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 let's do it. So, again, kind of sit up straight. And this time you you're want to be pumping the breath from your from your lower belly. And you pump the breath on the exhale. So, I'll demonstrate it briefly. It's like breathing Okay, so yeah. Take a full breath in.

21:59 And begin. And let go. And full breath in and sigh on the exhale. I already feel a little bit tingly. I'm energized. Let's do this. Go. Go. Go. Go. That was great. Okay, look at that.

22:30 We're back to where we started. We're at full circle of energy. That was great. down. And then how long do you recommend doing that one for? So, kind of depends on how activating you find it, but I usually find 30 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. 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 if you're kind of meeting's 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 down shifting practices to kind of ground and stabilize that 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?

23:21 No, I I think we've covered kind of the bases. I 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 is are these things that you recommend doing ongoing to build this muscle in your body, or are these mostly for you need 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, particularly to kind of build the the muscle of just of just doing it and getting used to it. So, you know, maybe 5 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 cuz 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 7 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 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 breathing for 4 seconds, hold it for 4 seconds, breathe out slowly for 8 seconds, and do that for about 30 seconds. Is that right, or for a minute? Yeah, I I'd say for at least a minute or two. We kind of did a short shorter version. I'll also add that the important thing is that the exhale is twice as long as the inhale.

24:56 So, if exhaling for 8 is too long, you could do 3 3 6, or even 2 2 4, or even 5 5 10, depending on your your lung capacity essentially and your CO2 tolerance. Okay, good to know. And then the espresso breath when you need energy, where 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. 30 pumps, yeah. And again, the reason this is effective and powerful is coming back to your original big insight that the 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. So, 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.

25:44 Yeah, and and maybe something that we haven't touched on yet, but I think is important to add in, is this idea of interoception or somatic awareness. And the reason I bring it in is because if you 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 here.

26:12 This awesome acronym to help you with this process of introspection. So, talk about that is, and then how to actually go about becoming better at being aware of what your body is doing. Yeah, so it's it's this this idea of interoception, 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 the metaphor of a chef. In the same way that you you train your flavor palate for kind of sweet, spicy, umami, things like that, you can also train your interoceptive palate and become more aware of the 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, 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.

27:08 There will be a kind of cascade of subtle things that happen in your body that eventually result in in anxiety. And so, if you can catch those things early and kind of like like nip them in the bud and then do one of these practices, then you can avoid the kind of 10 out of 10 worst-case scenarios. Okay, awesome. So, I know that there's also specific things you recommend people pay attention to to understand what their body is doing as part of this intros- interoception, yeah. Intra- Okay, what is it? interoception interoception to exteroception, 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. So, we have these five senses, obviously taste and smell and vision and like touch, but your finding and research showed basically this is another sense people don't really know we have.

28:01 That right? Yeah, exactly. And has been studied quite 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 interoception. As does if people have PTSD or trauma, again, interoception 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 the hour between dog and wolf, which looked at Wall Street traders, and they correlated higher degrees of interoception with basically making more money and making better decisions. And and I I think the the thesis was that by tuning into what their body was doing in certain moments, they 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 recommend people pay attention to, their posture, their breath, things like that.

29:02 What is that list, and then how do we actually do this better? Yeah, so I 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 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-explanatory, but again, our posture affects kind of how we how we feel.

29:42 Yeah, I see. Shift them down. Yep. and then and then emotion, 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 texture that I'm that I'm feeling. Like right now, maybe it's like excitement, maybe there's 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. And and for most people, it's almost like it's like it like a terra incognita. Like you have those maps of like heavy dragons. And for a lot of people, there's just these big kind of blind spots in their body.

30:30 And the advice here is so there's this acronym APE. And the advice is think about this 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 same imagine and 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. I I I like to drink tea and just kind of do like a like a body scan essentially and just check each of those three areas.

31:04 And it's also it's it's really valuable particularly if your if you know, if you're having racing thoughts or something doesn't feel quite right, that just instead of just tackling the problem on the length the the level of the mind kind of dropping down into the body and bringing that kind of into into the picture as well, I find to be really helpful. Basically, as often as you can and generally when things are feeling all off, just remember APE.

31:33 Where is my awareness? How's my posture? And then what am I feeling? Am I feeling sad? Am I feeling happy, excited? Angry? Things like that. I think you also talk about breath. Like you have a list that you wrote about this of other things that you might want to pay attention to. Actually finding paying attention to my my breath is doing is really powerful, too. So, I'm going to try a like a ba- BAPE version. Where I'm going to try to think about what am I where is my breath coming from? What am I feeling there?

32:02 Yeah, so so the the breath the breath and sensations are two other ones that are really helpful. The breath in particular, often people will there's a there's an idea of of like email apnea. When people are checking their emails, they will without noticing it start to hold their breath, which is a generally very activating thing to do. Or as I mentioned earlier, if your breath is through the mouth and shallow 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 is ideal.

32:39 What I think about when using this practice is if I were sitting in a meeting and just like not sure like not feeling like amazingly confident, just like come back to this acronym BAPE or APE, whichever one you want to choose. And just like how am I feeling right now? Oh wow, my whole stomach is clenched cuz 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.

33:02 Maybe you're about to get on a Zoom or an important call or something like that. Mhm. Maybe a one-on-one. Is there anything else? Any other moments that might be good like kind of triggers for people of like oh, I should really be aware of what's happening right now. Let me do an an APE exercise. Yeah, well well just to kind of piggyback on what you just 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 like huh, 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.

33:51 Is there anything in your life recently that is an example of this where you're feeling 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 I did a podcast conversation. So, I have a 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 my there was this kind of tension in my chest. And I this and again, my breath was kind of all over the place. And I realized that I had I'd 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 in this quarter. So, I then made the decision to just push back all my episodes until until the summer basically.

34:42 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 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.

35:14 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. Like say the feather might be waking up in the morning and feeling a little bit tired, 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 you have like a fight with someone or an argument or you just you just feel frustrated and terrible and you you you lose your lose your cool.

35:42 And then maybe the the dump truck is a month later or even a year later, there's like a full-blown health crisis or you develop type two diabetes or you know, 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 the full-blown pain of the of the dump truck, which unfortunately is what happens to a lot of people especially when they experience 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 of 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. Mhm.

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37:42 So, your advice here is just like pay attention to these little signs that like you're not living a 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 debt, which is basically when our 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.

38:20 And so, what that fragility can look like is anything from being impacted by small things 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 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.

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 the 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's it can also come out through kind of health crises, health challenges. the it just gets basically progressively worse until until that debt is paid off.

39:25 Feel like a lot of people listening are like yes, I know exactly what you mean. 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 what I've seen with some of some of my founder clients and in in the research that we did where we 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 as a window of tolerance. And at that point 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 like complete inability to get up off the couch.

40:08 And for some people people with, you know, large nervous system capacity, they can keep going for 5 years, maybe 10 years and they can kind of like keep building this up and and it becomes normalized to kind of live in a way where you're always on and never really relaxing or coming down or or what 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.

40:47 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, 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 their challenges. What do you recommend if you're just like, man, I feel like I have this what what should I do? Yeah, well, it's a I mean that that's a big question.

41:12 I'm actually I I probably get some pushback for this, but I'm not a big fan of talk therapy alone or at least therapy that doesn't have a somatic or body-based component. And from from my understanding of the nervous system and and how we store this 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 of safety to kind of go into those buffered emotional responses and feel them all the way through and allow that mobilization mobilization reflex to complete. And so to kind of give a personal example, I 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 these memories would arise of these these things that happened, you know, 5 10 years ago and my body would like it would either move a certain way or anger would come through, sometimes there would be sadness or grief. Often there's 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 with my anger and 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 in my pelvis. So I'm not saying you have to go to Bali and do 200 breathwork journeys like that. That's definitely not That's I mean that that's that's that's a path, but first it be it begins with as I said cultivating interoception and even being aware that there is this tension, there is there are these things in your body.

42:53 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 a guide or or a somatic practitioner. I like somatic experiencing, Hakomi are two modalities I'm a big fan of. And yeah, that's that's a journey and a process and it depends, you know, how many years you've been operating in a in a slightly numbed way.

43:31 and it's it's different for everyone, but it begins by tuning into and listening to the body and then having honestly curiosity about what is what is there and just following that curiosity and the body starts to kind of show you what is 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 and our body gets nervous, it's our body gets nervous and then like, oh, here's why I'm nervous.

44:03 And your advice is just focus a lot on helping your body release the stuff that you've built up, this debt and then also just when you're nervous in the moment, focus on getting your body to a state versus trying to convince your mind now everything's going to be okay. Mhm. Mhm. 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.

44:39 Mhm. Yeah, I I mean you can you can understand in you know, precise detail about whatever the challenge was from 5 10 15 years ago, but if you're unable to connect it to the the correlating like sensations in the body. Like usually if if say, I don't know, if I was to imagine someone shouted at me yesterday and I I think about that, there's usually a correlating kind of somatic sensation. The the neuroscientist Damasio 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 by like one one process at a time.

45:26 So maybe going back to this question of say someone is listening and wondering, am I building 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 trauma, 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?

45:58 Yeah, so it 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, you know, tracking for things, looking for the worst-case scenario. Another common one and this is particularly true in the tech sector is being very much in the head and living in the thoughts in the mind the entire time and there's a form of disassociation that happens as a kind of protection mechanism essentially because it's it's uncomfortable to be with the sensations in the body and because our society tends to reward people for solving problems and being in their mind, that is a a pattern that continues for many many years or even decades.

46:43 Other ones are I I I think the most obvious one for people is emotional reactivity where your response to a certain situation is disproportionate to what what's happened. So so like for example, if you said something to me of like, that doesn't make any sense and and I was like yeah, I I freeze maybe and and this is another important point that most people have two two versions of reactivity. Some people will kind of 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, most for me it's usually shrink and freeze and and shut down.

47:24 knowing what your pattern is and 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 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 interoceptive awareness though, oh, this is what's going on, being able to then downshift your system, kind of access a sense of oh like I'm I'm okay that actually this isn't so bad and then moving on from there is is a profoundly like practical and just useful skill.

48:14 Kind of along these same lines, you wrote somewhere 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 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. I think the title was the best decision-making is emotional. And I basically wanted to kind of poke at the phrase. I I think I saw someone on Twitter say fact over feelings. Like like don't let emotions ruin good decision-making. And yeah, there's so much I can say about this, but basically there was a a landmark study by this guy Damasio, 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.

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. Like he was on unable to make the most basic life decisions. And it's because he didn't have access to that emotional center in his brain. And so our brain is 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 we're losing out on a lot of information. And what what tends to happen and I see this in clients that I work with is if they are avoiding feeling a certain way, let's 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 it becomes a you know, a huge bias and a huge problem because people make decisions because they're afraid of feeling a certain way.

50:03 And if you're on the other hand able to just like 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. Easier 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 in feeler of what I'm feeling kind of person. 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 do you ever find that sometimes it's Okay. Sometimes like you don't need to know exactly every moment anything that's hurting you causing you pain.

50:49 Yeah, it's it's a good question. And some people do have you know, a very high interceptive capacity and that can be overwhelming. In which case I would recommend focusing on the breathing practices to to build that capacity to downshift. So you're able to just function. And you know, there's 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. Maybe it's through like gentle titration of of stresses and then and then downshifting. Like that's actually really valuable. I'd also say that the the ability to kind of function well or or this applies to kind of like high like a lot of high functioning people which is is probably honestly a lot of your audience. It's it's very helpful kind of in the moment to kind of like 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.

51:49 Like that's it's a very helpful skill. But if you don't then give yourself spaciousness afterwards to downshift and allow yourself to 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 yeah, 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 it creates like a long-term health crisis and then no amount of money or time is able to repair the damage that's been done which is can be really tragic.

52:24 I tell with Andy Johns is a great example of that happening. Yeah. And and he's a and he's a superb example. And you know, I I love his vulnerability and honesty and what he's been through. Yeah, I think if you're interested in this topic, definitely watch that episode. Mhm. Another exercise that you talk a lot about is this idea it's called NSDR, I think. Mhm. Mhm. Talk about that and when that might be useful, how to go about using this tool.

52:49 Yeah, so NSDR was a practice coined by Andrew Huberman who you mentioned earlier. And it basically it's it's a more scientific lens on the practice of yoga nidra which is kind of an an ancient yoga practice. But I 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 you lie down, put on an eye mask or a blindfold, and you listen to a guided audio. I can I I've recorded some myself so I can share these in the in the show notes links.

53:16 Your voice would be so good for these by the way. I think this is you found your calling. Nice. Yeah, it's it's really fun for me to do. But basically what it involves is a a guided body scan. So this is also a great way to practice interoception. Because it's something that I didn't mention earlier was that when there's cortisol present in our 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 I think it's a 14-minute guided NSDR practice. You're basically lying down. There's a there's a guided body scan. There's like relaxing music in the background. And by the end of it, you feel you feel like you've had like a two-hour nap. Like it feels incredible.

53:59 And particularly for people who like myself tend to get tired in the afternoons if you kind of space this out usually between like 1:00 and 3:00 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 collapsed on the sofa. So I I think it's great for improving interoception. It's it's good for allowing your body to downshift and relax instead of being in that kind of high tone sympathetic state all throughout the day. So it gives you 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.

54:36 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 it's fantastic. I mean most people there's some people who struggle with you know, having enough energy to kind of get get out of bed and function. But again gent I I imagine listeners to your show, people that live in Silicon Valley, their challenge is 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 go to then relaxing. there's a quote from Kevin Kelly that I I interviewed recently and he said if you have a great work ethic, that needs to be matched with a great rest ethic.

55:26 And I think that that kind of piece of of actually training our capacity to downshift after stress is just completely missing from most people's playbooks. I think with a lot of this sort of advice, if you listen to Tim Ferriss and Huberman and everyone's got this like 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, sauna. 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?

56:05 First, experiment with a bunch of different practices and see which you enjoy. And and notice how you feel before and then how you feel afterwards. That's kind of the key. Cuz once you 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 the 448 breathing or humming. Doing that in the morning for like just just like two minutes.

56:34 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 it's pretty easy. You know, after after lunch break, something like that. Could also be in the evening when you get home as well. Some people use it to to help fall asleep. And then the the final thing that I would recommend is is if you're if you have the resources and you have access, finding a somatic practitioner or somatic therapist is is so life-changing. I mean I I emerged a completely different human on the other side of the kind of 200 breath work journeys. Like I have a different experience of of life basically. I released so much tension. Even my voice sounds different. Like if you listen to the podcast episodes I recorded four or five years ago, my voice is is higher pitched. It's like it's it's it just sounds different. It has like a different resonant quality to it. Wow.

57:29 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. Does 224 work too if you just like go real fast like that? Yeah, perfect. Okay. so do that for a couple mornings. See how that does. Try this NSDR practice. You'll link link to a recording of how to do that. And then was there something else you recommended? Oh, somatic worker. Like basically a maybe a therapist, maybe not. Someone that helps you with your body.

58:06 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 that the difference. And if you do the NSDR, that is basically a a 15-minute interoception 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? Do you find NSDR replaces the need for meditation? That is a big topic.

58:31 I I I I am an an avid meditator. I've done you know, many 10-day silent retreats. I was in a dark room for 10 days. With meditation, I think it really depends on what you're training. Like 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.

58:59 I I so I'm a big fan of of of embodied meditation practices. So this is often the classic Vipassanā body scan is a good example. Again, I mean that's basically interoceptive practice, right? Where you're you're just moving your attention through different parts of your body over and over and over again for like days on end in in the case of a Vipassanā 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 or 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 kind of over indexed for mindfulness and meditation in in over the last 20 years. Like it's there's so many apps, there's so there's so much talk about it, and we've completely forgot the the body-based approaches.

60:01 So, I'm not saying don't meditate. I think meditation for sure has its place, especially if your goal is more more of the traditional waking up and like seeing through the nature of the self. Like that's 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 in this bottom-up variety that we've we've touched on today.

60:26 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. Mhm. Would you recommend that book? Is it connected in large part to the stuff you talk about? What do you think of that that book specifically cuz I hear about it all the time. Yeah, it's it's a good book. it's by Bessel van der Kolk, and there's there's another right I think Peter Levine says the issues are in the tissues is basically 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 the trauma is in the body. It is actually a a cortical map in the brain which kind of tracks these things, but for 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. Like that's 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 that tension is released and the less reactive you become and the more emotional debt you pay off. So, I I think The Body Keeps the Score I I I I think a more accurate way would be the body is the scorecard in a way. I think that's kind of a a slight reframe. and if you're interested in this, the work of Peter Levine, Waking the Tiger, is kind of the the seminal book on on this like mobilization reflex stuff that I'm I'm describing. I never knew that part of it. And basically it is actually kept in the brain, but it comes across as somewhere in the body. Yeah, exactly.

61:58 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 will have something interesting here. 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 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 a like bottom line perspective. There was a research report that I did a couple of years ago where we we interviewed these leaders, and they'd all experienced burnout of some degree, and we we said, "If you were to estimate like how much this cost your startup or business, what would you say?" And the the median response was $100,000, which I imagine is more than most people would 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 and and things like that. And and I think part of the reason that the cost is higher is because there are these second and third-order consequences of of like talent attrition, of opportunity costs, lost productivity, you know, you lose great leaders, make shitty decisions in the run-up to the burnout itself.

63:24 There's also this idea of emotional contagion, which there's some research from Wharton, I believe, and they show that the the leader of or the 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 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. 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 you there's debt you're building up and you need to be doing things to pay off that debt as you're doing that.

64:11 Precisely. It's it's very much like building technical debt in the early days of a startup. Like it's it's worth doing, but just do it intentionally. Like know that you're doing that and that so let's say you you work really hard for 8 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.

64:37 So, do NSDRs, kind of find a way to downshift so that that way of working can be sustainable. Johnny, we've reached a 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 by David Whyte. this is the book that I've I've gifted most to friends, I think, more than any other book. And he basically has 52 definitions of words like ambition is is I think the first word.

65:14 And his writing is just it just blows me away. I I open this to a random page, read the definition, and it's just it's probably affected me more than any other book. So, that's that's one that I love. 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, which is I imagine has come up before in in your podcast. this is by Jim Dethmer and Diana Chapman. They have the Conscious Leadership Group, and this is basically in my opinion, it's it's the best leadership book that I've come 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 Wheal.

65:55 big fan of Jamie's work, Jamie's writing. This is 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 your state of consciousness. And the third is ethical cult building, which I'll just I'll leave that there.

66:25 Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show you really enjoyed? My wife and I love animations, and we saw Kubo and the Two Strings recently, which was fantastic. Just so so great. And that and also Wolfwalkers, 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 Scavengers Reign 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?

67:07 I stole this question from a guy, Jerry Colonna, who's who's here in Boulder. the question is is amazing. It has it's so good. 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 saying like in what ways is it your fault, but it's like in what in what ways were you complicit in creating the the conditions for anxiety, for building up emotional debt? And 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 in your life. And that's it's a really rich journal question or a question to explore with with a friend, co-founder, colleague.

67:53 I remember him sharing that on the Tim Ferriss podcast many years ago, and it stuck with me, and I often think of it. But I I never am complicit in anything that goes wrong. It's never It has nothing to do with Just kidding. Excellent. Do you have a favorite product you've recently discovered that you really like? One is these blue blocking glasses. these are Raw Optics blue 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 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.

68:37 So, that's that's one. And then the other thing I'll briefly share, this is this came through the other day. You mentioned the vagus nerve earlier and that that device. I have three devices here that are all vagus nerve stimulation devices. This one is called Neurosym. This one I believe is Pulsetto, and I think this is a Apollo strap. I haven't used them that much yet, but they basically work by sending low-level electrical electrical stimulation directly to your vagus nerve. So, this clips on your your ear cuz the vagus nerve goes through the the right side of the neck.

69:10 Same with Pulsetto. And I'm really curious to kind of compare the effect of these versus say breath work, humming, the other body-based practices. Obviously, you can do both at the same time, but I am I'm just interested in 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. Right. Slap on our device and life is amazing.

69:36 Don't have to meditate. Don't have to breathe in a different way. I'm going to Yeah. need to do this while I'm on the podcast. Just wear all these devices. See how that goes. Awesome. Well, I guess somehow report back to us how these go cuz Sure. 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. Mhm. State over story.

70:04 Mhm. 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 of 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 there's many stories that can be told. And I usually try to have a practice of of telling the most generous story that I can.

70:47 I like that a lot. Another way of describing that is just assume good intentions. Mhm. 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 and what do you do when that happens? well, I was I was nervous before this podcast. so, I did some I did some breathing practices and some stretching and some humming before jumping on here.

71:17 I 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 I've actually noticed how there's a relationship between that and having a healthy relationship to anger. 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 with my time, with what I'm doing, saying no to certain things. I think that's that's the practice that's most alive for me right now.

71:53 Johnny, you're 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 I'm very active on Twitter or X. The my handle is Johnny Miller. J O N N Y M 1 L L E R. 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.

72:26 Applications are now open. And the website is ns mastery.com/lenny. I've created a custom page and there's a there's a $250 juicy discount for listeners if they if they want to sign up. I'm going to I got to sign up for this myself. I didn't know you're going to do that. 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, well, firstly, if if any of this resonates, I'd love to hear from you on on Twitter or or email me as well. I can I can pass pass over my email. And I would just love it if if you experiment with with this stuff. Like I I I love this idea of just being a a scientist of life. so, if anything that we've talked about resonates or any of the practices you want to try, just just go out and try it and and see how it feels.

73:16 I think that would be and and then tell me about it. That would be the the greatest gift, I think. And the best way to tell you about it is tweet at you or is there someone else? Tweet at me or my email is johnny@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'm excited for the show notes. We're going to have to give people actual tools to use to become less anxious and nervous in their work and life.

73:45 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 Podcast, 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.

74:11 See you in the next episode.