Bouncing Forward: Cultivating Mental And Emotional Resilience With Chris Edwards

Well, boy, there's always a bunch, right? There's a lot of layers. You know, I think the thing that probably has the most validity is I have had to borrow your phraseology. I've had to pivot quite a bit in my life. I've made several career changes and more than several, and I have had to work on that whole change-proof mentality, like a lot. And it's a lot of what I bring to this business. So yeah, you know, listening to your stuff and your podcast, I go, man, this is like, you know, I wish you were my neighbor. You know, we'd have a great time. We have so much in common. You know, I was like listening to your Change Proof book and, you know, loving it and a little bummed because I'm like, Man, he wrote the book I wished I could have written. You know, it's, it's really good. And we think a lot alike. You have good quotes, you know, and you like to use stories to tell, you know, to really illustrate things and music and all that stuff. And, you know, that's me literally to a T. Yeah. Wow.

Well, I knew we were simpatico, but, and it was a strange thing because I read this article, this New York Times, if I'm not mistaken, article Or was it Wall Street Journal? I can't even remember.

Probably Wall Street Journal.

Yeah, I think it was the Wall Street Journal actually. And I'm, I'm reading this and I'm, I'm hearing about the work that you did with Amber Glenn, this amazing Olympic skater, this incredible athlete herself. And I just started thinking, I, I need to talk to this guy. Like, you're not, your business is not presently designed and used the way you described that. You've pivoted many times. So who knows? Who knows what the future will bring? You know, maybe decide you wanna write that book and, You know, take another, another turn in your, in your, in your career choices, et cetera. But I thought even though you wouldn't necessarily be the person who might be looking for an audience to share what you do, I thought I still gonna reach out and I, I want to have a conversation with you regardless. And you were so open, your whole team so kind, so, so open to the idea that we would set this up and have a conversation that I said, yeah, we're for sure kin in a lot of ways. So I'm excited. I want to lean in before we get into sort of the, the meat of why I wanted to actually speak to you on the podcast. I want to learn a little bit more about the pivot story because I don't think there's any accidents in it. I so appreciate the, the shout out for those 2 books, et cetera. I've pivoted a lot in my life as well, and I'm always so happy to meet a fellow pivoter on the path. Would you share either, either one aspect of that or even, you know, sort of what So you sort of pulled through that experience, those experiences?

Yeah, I can pull you through many, you know, quickly because it's a story I get asked. But, you know, I got out of graduate school and was working in a clinic with severely emotionally disturbed kids and their families and got introduced to using biofeedback with some of these kids and having a lot of luck. So already getting a little outside the box. But the pivot comes where my family, my brother, my sister, there's a lot of music in my family, a lot of musicians in my family. And I grew up as a musician as well. I didn't go into it for college, but I had a little weekend warrior band, and that band actually took off. So here I am as a therapist. I've got this other career that's opening up. And I was like, okay, maybe I'm going to do music too, right? So I did a little bit of both. I did a little bit of the therapy. Then I ended up having to really switch gears because it took off. So then I ended up taking a more flexible research job, let go of that therapy job, became a full-time touring musician. And then again, at about 35, about 10 years of that, had to pivot yet again. That band kind of imploded, and that was—I decided I was a little too tired and maybe a little too road weary to do it again. And still visiting, you know, and there's still this part of me that loves that kind of therapeutic healer roots, and had to do some pretty deep soul searching, sitting in my little house in the country for a couple of years, really reinventing myself. And luckily, I had. A couple of really great mentors who were able to sit and really walk me through that process, they having done it themselves, which is really brilliant, and literally spent 2 years designing this business at 35 years old. Here I am now, almost 55, and designed it all on a vision board before I ever moved to Colorado, from rural New York to Colorado. And it was, you know, this, these are some pretty big pivots. And then also in there too, and, and probably not to go down this road too far, but some emotional pivots along with that. You know, I think all of us do in our lives. We all have those stories, right?

Resilience. It's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And in times of massive change and disruption, the kind of rapid change that we're all experiencing as leaders, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, We have to learn how to not only increase our own resilience, but that of our teams. So right now we have a powerful opportunity for you to find out just how resilient you are. Some years ago, my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilience leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes. And it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. Indeed. Yeah. So again, another way that you and I are aligned in so many aspects, one being this concept of the vision board. And I saw when I was looking at your website and reading more about you that some of the things that you do, including, oh, I think one of the offerings, a program, a workshop, or therapy itself has to, is really focused around the use of vision boarding, which is something that my wife and I have done for years now. Every year it's, it's part of a, a ritual that we have for starting a new year and, and really living very much on purpose and, and intentionally. And, and I think people sometimes hear vision board, they're either, it's like 2 camps. I think those that lean really heavily into it. Yeah. For whatever reasons, you know, they embrace the woo-woo, they're spiritual people or whatever it is. And then those people that somehow think that it is not practical, it's not logical, even if they are, in fact, they have spiritual or religious inclinations, they think that's sort of like a little too airy-fairy or a little too, you know, California Grape-Nuts, right? Yeah. Like, for the people that are thinking that way, like, I don't want you to preach to the choir now. For those other people, what can you say about the applicability, the usefulness of vision boarding? Like you were—

And you know, this I think's my wheelhouse, is that's my group. You know, the people that are easy to grab are easy to grab. It's really about finding a little more applicability to everybody. So when I teach that class, I do the neuroscience of vision board. I usually start with a quote of my own that We tend to resist the things we need the most because they represent the biggest changes we need to make. And our brain is designed to look at big change with a lot of caution. Right? So if we're waving the cautionary flag just from this biological perspective on big change, then we often don't go there. Interpretation of that red flag is don't go there. Right? So we end up not going there. So I start with that and I let that sink in. And then I kind of move through a litany of stories and examples and things like this. But ultimately it turns out to this, you know, your brain runs about 95% on autopilot, right? Autopilot is born out of a lot of repetition. Repetition always lives in your past, right? Started in the past. That's how it got to be where it is. And that is what you become, right? So you've got this repetition in your past. And I say to people, all of us, I go, look, look backwards. And you were unwittingly, from a very young age, being introduced to patterns and habits and thoughts and emotions and a way of doing things. And what you didn't realize was happening was You were getting programmed. And so look back at that history, number one, and go, how happy are you with the things that are in your past? More often than not, people are going, yeah, there's a bunch of that that I'm not madly in love with. And I go, well, without a doubt, that's shaping you. And it's turned into a series of habits that are running on autopilot. So if you're doing things blindly, you're feeling things, and you've not made the direct decision to feel that way, it means it's showing up on autopilot. Most of your life's on autopilot. That's your brain's job, right? And you're only running your day-to-day life, this podcast and our conversations and, you know, our jobs and all things, it's only 5% of our brain, right? And it presents as the illusion of our life. But really, 95% of our brain's running on autopilot that was born in our past. And I go, do you, are you happy with where you're at? If not, You're going to have to start deliberately deciding who you want to be, how you want to feel. And you're going to have to decide on the thoughts, the beliefs, the behaviors of that person and start engaging them as new habits, building the person that you want to be versus just being the person that was programmed a long time ago when you didn't even know it was happening.

I think of it in the terms of, of sort of a, a, a blueprint of sorts. And when I'll engage somebody in that kind of, you know, healthy conflict around the usefulness of an exercise like a vision boarding process or what have you, or why my wife and I, we do this and why our, we've asked our, you know, like we showed our kids how to do it, recommend they do it, and now they're adults, they'll do it or not do it. And some of our kids don't do it, you know, be perfectly frank about it. But I analogize it to the way an architect draws up a plan for a home, let's say. And if you went to the site, you know, I know you live in Colorado. If you went to this, you know, beautiful cleared piece of land, you say, you know, here's where my gorgeous home in the mountains is, is gonna be, and here's a drawing of what it's gonna look like. Would anybody say to you, well, that drawing is a lie, right? They wouldn't because they go, no, the drawing is what precedes the building. If you're intelligent, you don't just deliver the wood and You know, a bunch of other materials and go, oh, we'll just start constructing something on the site. I mean, I suppose people do that, but I don't think that's what we do. So the blueprint's what comes first. I mean, to me, the vision boarding or that, that intentional look at what I want my life to be like or be different, what do I want to bring into my life? What do I want to remove even from my experience? It's just like creating a blueprint for something that doesn't exist yet. Why, why are those 2 things different? Yeah.

Yep. And that's where I live with it. And I feel like for those people who have that, the anti-woo-woo skepticism, which is fine, I live there too. I always, I always describe myself as an open-minded skeptic. I go, you have to design the person that you want to be. And yet then you have to practice the habits of that person until they become autopilot. And now you're the person you designed versus the one that got programmed. Right. And I go, you've got to decide what that looks like. You just have to. You do. Or it's always gonna defer to autopilot every time. Your brain's always gonna go back to—

And that's neuroscience. That's not—

That's neuroscience.

I'm a lawyer. I was a lawyer for 20 years. I need practical, you know, but I love the way you put that, an open-minded skeptic. I'm gonna have to borrow that, actually.

Yeah. I'm, I'm willing to listen to anything, but at some point you're gonna have to show me something. You know, I always loved— you're a quote guy, right? I don't know that I have this directly, but I love the Einstein quote of intuition is the sacred gift. Logic is the faithful servant. And we've evolved into a society that values the servant over the sacred gift. So I go, like, intuitively, I go, doesn't it make sense, like you said, to, like, sit down and design this thing?

It just would work. Wouldn't you just, if that's the way you were going to plan something else, Logically speaking, but also on from an— just intuitively, what would make sense? As everybody asks each other all the time, you know, does that make sense? Like another verbal tic we've adopted, you know, another habit that doesn't— do you— are you really asking me if that makes sense? You know, right? I'm just— there's a parenthetical in here for those of you that, that either do that all the time or people around you do that all the time. It's like, stop somebody next time they ask you if that makes sense. Say no. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

No, back that up with some logic. Right, right. That's what I love about neuroscience is it does, it actually does back up the logic of, of a vision board. So you go, it, it, I get it. And then you go, no, it, it really, it turns out it's important too.

So I wanna now get into, when I read the story about Amber Glenn and how she was utilizing your services, your organization's services to help her to get in a better place mentally and emotionally to be able to perform. You know, I was also thinking about more in the last couple of years and Simone Biles and how she, because she's such a superstar in the world and huge personality, huge celebrity brand, et cetera, people really paid attention to the fact that she took herself out of the Olympics for about a week, that the last Olympic, you know, the one before the last one, because of her just feeling mentally and not ready to perform and potentially could not only damage the team, but even damage herself. Physically, you know, because of the things she's doing. So could you share something about, and we'll dig into this more, the mental and emotional side of performance? Because often people will talk about the physical side, but how do you support people, or how do people support themselves, and what options do they have if they find that they are mentally and emotionally not performing the way they can and they don't understand? I wanna ultimately tie this to resiliency because that's our, that's really the thing that Workwell does is focus on, you know, that being the tip of the spear? How do we develop mental and emotional, physical and spiritual resiliency so that we can in fact perform in our lives in all aspects, whether it's the work thing, it's the sports thing, it's the music thing, it's the, it's the creative pursuits in our lives with writing or, or whatever it might be. And it's our relationships and our, our overall wellbeing.

Yep. So I think thinking of it like this is probably the best way to go is let's use an example, right? Probably the best way to, to be illustrative. So let's say you have somebody who goes through some childhood trauma. Okay, let's just pretend we've got somebody who's got alcoholism, you know, one parent, both parents alcoholic. So we've got a chaotic household, we've got an unpredictable environment. And typically what you'll get out of that is somebody who's developing a lot of hypervigilance. Okay, because we're living in a chaotic environment, right? And that looks like something in the brain. In our office, what that looks like is mid and high beta activity. So if somebody goes into a hypervigilant state, we're going to see this brain go into this hypervigilance. You'll see it. It's a thing. It's a brainwave, right? And what we know, right, through neuroplasticity— see, this is what people don't understand about neuroplasticity— is neuroplasticity, in my opinion, you know, it's opinion, um, doesn't delineate between bad and good. That is a judgment call. Anything that's got a lot of repetition—

Will you do our audience the favor of just quickly defining what neuroplasticity For those that may not already know.

Yeah. So neuroplasticity is this idea that the brain can be trained, the brain can change, and anything that's got enough repetition behind it can be learned. And we love this, right? And it just makes sense, right? Again, it's that intuition go, yeah, that feels right. And then there's a lot of logic that supports that, right? So this idea then, right, that you could hang out, let's pretend, in a hypervigilant state for a long time. If you live in a household like that, after a while, your brain wires that in for you. This is a good thing because if we don't have to think about being hypervigilant and we just are hypervigilant, neuroplasticity kicks in, wires that state in for you. You're a lot better off. Then, then your brain can go about doing the rest of your life and be running hypervigilance in the background. Now we grow up, let's say we grow out of that household. And oftentimes when we're dealing with like households that have alcoholism, you'll see kids that start to become a little perfectionistic. Whoa. So we've got this elevated brainwave state. We've got a little bit of learned perfectionism. And if nobody gets in there and really alerts us to what's going on, Somebody could take that and do some pretty cool things with it, right? I could run a great business with that. I could plow through law school. I could be a rocking lawyer. You know, I could go, go, go, go, go, go, go. Why? Because my default wiring is go, go, go, go, go, go, go. I got this part of my brain that's always going, and it doesn't feel good unless it's got something to land on, right? But a lot of times what'll happen in here is like when we get our like Fortune 500, even our Fortune 50 guys in here. What they're doing is they're hitting 45, 50 years old and they're going, I'm not doing so well. Okay. We start to back out of that and we go, oh, you've been using overdrive for a very long time. Where did that start? Right? And so what we can do, because we're so adaptive and we're so amazing that way.

Sounds like, by the way, that you, you watched my TED Talk, and if you didn't and you're just doing this like spontaneously, then I'm having a moment here.

No, I actually, I have not yet. I, Just found out today listening to your podcast that you had a TED Talk, and I love TED Talks. I have not had the chance.

So you'll freak. You'll get a little freaky moment later or whenever you watch this thing.

Oh, cool.

Okay, but keep going.

So here we are right now. We've got this learned thing, and it's got a glass ceiling to it that we didn't know existed. We thought we were doing the right thing because we've got this default brain state. We've got this default, which turns into a default physiology. And what we've been doing is using adrenals, And using fight or flight and using all kinds of things to go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. And of course, our bodies and brains are not meant to run that way. You talk about resilience. I talk about that a lot too. For me, a large component of resilience is flexibility, right? That cognitive flexibility, that ability to be hypervigilant if you need it. And then later on when you don't, chill out and read a book. Right.

I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof Podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary Resilience Assessment Tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today. Is that similar or the same as adaptability?

It is. You're really supposed to be able to flex in and out of all of the different brainwave states. But if you hang out somewhere too often and too long, after a while, your brain goes, this must be the new normal. So we're going to go ahead and wire this in because it's here all the time. And that's your brain's job, is to wire those things in that you keep practicing over and over and over again. It says repetition is king, right? Good or bad. So that can be a boon at some time, you know, in your life when you're building a business with it, and then a bane later on when you're really tired, right? And worn out and you can't turn off, right? So to go back to your initial question, what we're doing in here with folks is we can either come at performance enhancement from a top-down or a bottom-up mentality, right? Yeah. So some of it is, are there things that you've been using for a really long time that, you know, may have gotten you to where you are, but now they're starting to get in the way? That's a possibility. Or are there some things that you haven't been doing that you could be doing that would be really helpful to add in, right? Or both. Oftentimes it's both. So what we're doing in here is we're doing a really good assessment on that, and we're looking at central nervous system. Autonomic nervous system, enteric nervous system. And we're making sure that those are in a place of flexibility so that when you're performing, you're in a performing space. And when you're in a chill out, a time to chill out, you are actually chilling out. You're not sitting still crawling outta your skin because your brain's still going 150 miles an hour cuz you don't know how to let that go.

So when we talk about resilience, and this is where again, we're so, I keep saying it, But I, I think it really, for me anyway, it bears repeating here that, that our messages are so aligned because we don't define resilience the way a lot of people do, which is to bounce back. This whole idea of bouncing back, if anything, we'd say you're bouncing forward. But the real concept here is about recovery and that in recovery we develop greater resilience. And I feel like that's what you're saying as well.

That's exactly it. So, so when people are coming here, you know, sometimes they're coming in On the surface going, I want to improve. And what they really don't know is they're asking for better recovery. Right. And they don't know it. They just, they don't know that that's why they're here. And then, you know, in our way of doing what we do in here, and we do a fairly elaborate in-person, one-on-one individualized intake and things like that, we really start to get to know people and go, got it. This is what's going on. You know, and having been doing this for as long as doing it and, and creating my methodology for it, we're really able to get at, you know, what's drive— what's, what are your driving forces? Some of them are gonna be great. Some of them may be things that were meant for another purpose that you have adapted to and used to your advantage. But now those things that you were using to your advantage are becoming a disadvantage. And a lot of people don't understand.

This is my own story as well. And I think it's the story of a lot of executives and a lot of people that are, are high performers. Have been and consider themselves that way, and you know that's their worldview. It's their it's the way they identify themselves, and it's also difficult for that group of people to acknowledge, admit, reach out, ask for help. You know that they're struggling with this. That is the sort of the through line of my TED Talk. I took me it took me to have a a pretty rough experience to kind of have a pivot moment, if you will, to go yeah I do need this change or make reach out and make an effort to change. So it sounds to me like at least in your experience the old. dog can learn new tricks, that we can change. And I'm wanting to also understand that for a person who's hypervigilant, for whatever reasons that might be the case, or whatever the case is that's created this sort of state of less function than they want, with an athlete, you know it because their batting average goes down. They fall off the balance beam. They don't win the race, right? So there's, there are really obvious ways for an athlete to determine. Yeah. That something needs to be recalibrated and they have to ask themselves, can I still, can I still perform at the level I want to based on age and time and injury and whatnot? Right? But there's that moment and then there's the rest of us, you know, the, the 99% of folks that are in their lives working and, and living and relating to people, et cetera. And they don't feel the way they want to feel, or they're not getting the promotions, or they're not achieving the things that they, they believe that they can. I want you to see if we can draw the bridge between those 2 groups, because I know you work with both the, the Amber Glens of the world, the athletes, but you also work with Fortune 50 CEOs and, and executives. So when things aren't going well for them, it, it doesn't often look like, hey, we, I lost the race. It's like, well, my team isn't performing, my company's not doing well. I didn't get a promotion. Like there are some signs, but it's not nearly as clear-cut, is it?

No. And that's right. That's where it gets a little complicated. Right. And I'm sure you've run into this because you have developed sort of a methodology for assessing and looking at those things. Right. And in doing so, you probably ran into a lot of, but what about this? And what it could be that there's so many things that it can be. Right. And I really do believe it to a large You can use things like questionnaires, which we do, and the forms and gathering that general information. And then I really do believe there's a lot of value to sitting down with somebody or a group and going, now that we know this about you, let me ask some questions because I'm having some thoughts here, right?

Yeah.

Like, I'm seeing this, I'm seeing that. For somebody like an Amber Glenn comes in and goes, I'm not where I wanna be. This is what's going on. And I go, okay, let's first of all, tell me that story, what's going on? And then, you know, I'll start poking around that.

And her story is just really quickly that in the, in the biggest meets for her, the biggest competitions, she was just not performing the way she could in practice even an hour before. Right?

Right. Well, here's what's wild. First, I mean, gosh, I could say a lot about her that's amazing cuz she's just like this really cool lady, but she has this claim to fame. Right? She can do it. She's one of the few females to do a triple axel, right? This is requiring a lot of power, a lot of precision, you know, and she can do it. She can do it. It's like, it's not an issue whether— it's not up for debate. It can be done. Can I do it under all these other circumstances is a whole other question. And why you might not be able to show up to that situation There's a lot of reasons why that might be there, right? So taking the time to sit down and figure out what those things are. And then I think over the years, probably you and me and other people like us have started to come up with a list of, you know, what are the top 20 things, right? That might do that, that make it difficult for somebody to show up. And they don't know that a lot of those things are running in the background and running interference patterns. Right? Or that top 20 list of things that you could or should be doing that you don't know that you should be doing or putting a priority on. And because nobody's explained that to you, you're not doing those things, right? Like, you know, one of my, the funny ones with my executives that always cracks me up, but I love it, is how they don't prioritize sleep.

Oh my God. Exactly.

And you go, wait, okay, water, we got to have that or we die. Food, we got to have that or we die. Sleep, we got to have that or we die. These Do the things that you do in sunlight. We know we're going to have these things, so we really should be looking at those and going, those should be at the top of your list. And it kills me when I have these amazing high performers who don't have that at the top of their list. And to a degree, speaking of TED Talks, like Matt Walker's Sleep Is Your Superpower TED Talk, which is one of my favorite, gets into this thing. There's a little bit of ego in there. I'm like, ah, I'm not one of those people that needs all that sleep, or sleep's for pansies or whatever.

You get sleep when you die.

Right. That one too. Right. So, so it's like that where you go, oh, how the heck did you get there? Right. So there's the list of interference, the, the list of things that have happened or are happening that can cause interference patterns. And then there's that top 20 list of things that we should, things we should probably all be doing that often we're not.

Like visualizing our success, which I think is one of the strategies you used with Amber Glenn, right? That she could Actually visualize what it's like to be in the throes of competition so that she's practicing being in that that state of hyperfocus or feeling whatever she's feeling. Like you say, the interference patterns including you know my coach from third grade told me I'd never amount to anything. You know I could never be good enough for my mom or my dad. Whatever the the voices are in our heads, but to practice those things when the lights weren't. So that it wasn't first that when the lights are on and it's the most serious, that those voices are— or those interference patterns, to use your term, which is brilliant— that those things are showing up for the— in that moment when you're going, I got to do a triple axel right now, and suddenly I can't.

Right. And not only that too, I think what's interesting to think about— and you could use Amber's like just a great way to look at it is, so there, you know, she's over here, um, at the Olympic Training Center every day, right? Skating every day, a couple times a day, right? And she's doing the weight training and she's doing this and she's doing that. But how often is she in front of thousands of people performing? Not that much. Not enough to put that on autopilot, right? So when we're showing up to the new thing or the thing, you know, when the pressure's on, so to speak, Not only is the pressure on, but it's unfamiliar. So this is where you want as many things in the background to bolster you in that moment on autopilot, as many of the good things as you can. And like you said, practicing visualization, having all of these really great learned habits on autopilot in the background. So then all you have to do in that moment is show up and do what you do,

right?

Because it's all on autopilot no matter where you are.

Not make hard work of it. Oddly enough, that when, you know, relaxation, loosening, being loose is so important in, in almost every endeavor, especially creative ones or ones where there's that sort of intense pressure to perform, that ability to actually be relaxed To loose, to be loose, right? And, and not make hard work out of something that, that essentially is, you know, can be fun. I mean, we don't do it for any other reason, at least initially, other than the fact that we get something from it, some fulfillment and some enjoyment, some fun out of it. You know, it's interesting cuz we've had about 9,000 business case studies that are in the form of an assessment that we developed some years ago. And I'll just, the simple through line of the whole thing, I think you're gonna find this interesting. Is that 2 things. One, there's a question that asks whether people are doing, you know, their, the work they do is in align— it's in alignment with their core values. And routinely that lights up green. Most people that we assess are doing the right work, believe it or not. They're in their right zone. But the very next question says that there are significant gaps between what they say is important to them and how they actually allocate their time. And so that disconnect between what people are, are saying is important to them and, and what they actually do with their time. was a thing that I felt when I was a lawyer and a workaholic as well, and I was missing spending time with my kids and my family. And those 2 things were irreconcilable. I had a conflict that I couldn't resolve, uh, especially being the prototype for the hypervigilant, like you said, based on childhood and other things. Mm-hmm. The second thing that we found from all these assessments is that people neglect their recovery. This is the one thing that you just said earlier that's so So true that in the 4 areas, mental, emotional, physical, and, and on the alignment and spiritual side, the physical piece lights up red all the time organizationally by teams and individually that people are neglecting their, their conscious decisions about food, their hydration, their sleep primarily, and just how frequently they are, are, are tied to their tech right through, right through bedtime. I mean, and And in bed, people have phones in bed with them and other devices in bed, you know, and they're having trouble. They're having trouble. And, and now people are pretty, you know, good to answer these questions. When I'm in keynote and I, I get to ask people this en masse, you know, I'll say, how many of you are having trouble getting to sleep at night? You know, a lot of hands go up. How many of you have trouble staying asleep at night? A lot of hands go up. Mm-hmm. And I think to some extent we've been sold a bit of a bill of goods from some of the other influencers out there. That say somehow you shouldn't be able, you should be able to go and not need sleep, or that somehow or another sleep isn't actually a vital tool for your performance in the day. You wanna be better with people, you wanna be better in, in leading people and finding solutions to challenges that will always persist. How are you focused on, on getting your recovery at night as being one, one element of recovery, right?

Yeah. And, and then the irony of that is, is if you don't, right, there's all these issues. We could sit here for an hour and do a thing on sleep easily. But how do you compensate for that the next day?

Tell us, say more about that.

Whoa. Okay. So,

so I know we've just got a couple of minutes here and we're gonna— I think, Chris, we're gonna have to schedule a part 2 because I know people are just going, you guys, we got— we need more from Chris. So.

Sure. So then the next day you're sleep deprived, you're going to be running low on dopamine. Blood sugar levels are gonna start— you're gonna start riding the roller coaster, right? And more than likely, if this is your habit, you will have learned how to tap your adrenals, your fight or flight, your sympathetic nervous system for a little bit of adrenaline, for a little bit of norepinephrine and dopamine. So you are now using your body in a way it wasn't meant to be used unless you're running from a bear. Right. But we can tap on that and we can learn to do that. And our brain is gonna go, that worked. You could do that tomorrow. That was cool. You know, I have an anxious thought. I'll push something to the very last minute. I'll hit adrenaline. I'll get dopamine, norepinephrine circulating, and I'll get it done. In the meantime, you've also got elevated heart rate, elevated blood pressure, digestion shutting down, cellular mitosis is shutting off, like you're really hampering some stuff with this coping mechanism. So the next day when you have to show up and live your life on the bare minimum, those coping mechanisms are really going to influence your ability to change, adapt, and pivot, right? There's limitations. And then that actually can become an ingrained neural habit, right? So we do a lot in here. We do use neurofeedback for addressing the ingrained brainwave patterns. Yeah. We use biofeedback for addressing the ingrained autonomic nervous system habits. And then we do look at things like diet and nutrition to address the ingrained enteric nervous system patterns. But there's that lack of sleep turns into a set of coping mechanisms the next day that actually starts to take a toll on all of those things. And if you do them over and over and over and over and over again, they become your new homeostasis. It becomes your new you. And now your body Your brain and your physiology, your chemistry and your energy recalibrates to this outside the norm thing. And now your homeostasis is off center. This is your new normal. And then what happens is you go see a therapist or somebody like that. You go, wow, I'm really anxious and I'm really this and really that. And they're throwing techniques at you that temporarily bring you back to center. And then as soon as you stop using their techniques, Slide you back to your new normal because this is now your new normal. So what happens is those coping mechanisms over time that are making up for the deficits in your life and lifestyle and whatever that is, and all the other things that may have happened, brain injury and poor nutrition and you name it, you now have an off-center homeostasis and a whole physiology around that. And then of course, we all need to get stuff done. So somehow you're getting it all done over here and not well. And then that starts to take an overall toll on things. But if we can get you back into center, right? It's okay to pop out of center once in a while. Amber's gonna do it when she goes and performs in front of 10,000 people and the pressure's on. Trust me, it's— we're pushing an envelope. That's okay. We don't want to live up there. And what we learned through the research of Robert Sapolsky— did you ever read— he's got a really great book called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. Do you remember that?

I will be reading that.

Oh, He's great. He's one of my faves. I love this guy. But this idea of how we can adapt to stress, the way that human beings adapt to stress and use that overactivated autonomic nervous system state and that stress physiology to live our lives in lieu of good habits underneath, this is where it all starts to fall apart. So those That you don't do the foundations, the next day you gotta compensate for the fact that you didn't do those things. You do that over and over again, it's your new normal. Now you're in trouble. And that, and that, and that's honestly, I think, where a lot of chronic health issues are coming from, chronic mental health issues are coming from. I think most of chronic is over there, is that you're chronically out of alignment anyways.

So as we wrap this part 1 of our conversation up, I have an unfair question for you, which is to ask this. If there is one thing that you would say to the person who's the prototype of what you're just describing, what's that one thing? Because I know there's a lot, and that's why I say it's—I know it's an unfair question. But if there's one through line piece of advice for somebody listening to this right now who's saying, "I think he's talking about me," what are you saying to that person?

Are you happy with the way things are? Are you happy with Not only what you are doing, so that's what you do. What you do is not who you are. Are you bringing the you, the person you wanna be, to the things that you do? And are you loving it? Because if you're not, you're missing it.

Yeah. I love that message in part because we're not getting into the solution side of it because that's where the question is unfair because we've already started to talk and unpack How much is involved in the solution side? I know on our side what we recommend is something called a recovery map, and I won't get into that now. But it's this idea that if you know that where you're kind of missing is in in that by not having recovery rituals, all those things that you're describing occur over time, and you're you can't sustain it. It's just impossible to sustain it, you know, beyond a certain point. But I think the bigger question is: How do you really feel? Because that's what my moment of truth was in my life. Yeah. Because I had everything going for me, so there was no reason on the outside to stop doing. In fact, friends and family and others said, what are you doing? Like when I decided to pivot outta being a lawyer, as an example, years later, not right away, I didn't jump ship, but you know, but to plan that pivot was seen as, you know, by some as absurd. Yeah. Because when you look healthy, you, relationships look healthy, kids are healthy, you got money and business and all, like why would you change any of that? But the bigger question being, how do you really feel when you look in the mirror? What do you see and how do you feel about that?

Right.

That's a great point of inflection to start whatever we're gonna say next.

Wholeheartedly agree, because I always tell people when they're building a vision board, the center of your vision board should be how you wanna feel, not what you're gonna do. Start with how you wanna feel and build around that. When I built this, I was like, I wanna feel happy and excited every day. That was it. That was my prime directive. And I built off of that and that's how I landed here.

Yeah. Oh, it's just brilliant. Brilliant, Chris. I've so loved this conversation. I know we're gonna end it now in a second here, but folks, don't be sad again. We'll get Chris back, I promise. If you've got questions for Chris, however, you can go to adamarkel.com/podcast, leave questions there, comments, anything like that. If you have a friend, family member, colleague who would benefit from this conversation, please share this episode, share this with those folks. And for me, that moment of truth, both in my TED Talk is described, but I also, I read a book called The Road Less Traveled, The Revisited Road Less Traveled by Dr. Scott Peck. And that was a catalytic moment for me to do a lot, to, to go into a dark place the way we're describing now, where you can find some truth within yourself. To say, hey, again, this what I do isn't who I am necessarily. And if there's a gap, if there's a delta between who you want to be and how you are showing up in your life, in your world, wherever it is, there's something to pay attention to. Hello? Because this is the only life you're gonna get, as far as we know. As far as we know.

Yeah. And even if it's not, don't you want to live this like to the best? You know, don't you want to hit 99 in your rocking chair going? That was cool.

I agree. Yeah.

I had a good time.

Too great, brother. All right. Yeah. We're going to end it right there, everybody. Ciao for now. And, and we'll see you on the next one. I promise that we will schedule a part 2 to that episode. I hope you loved it. If you didn't love it, then you're not, maybe you wouldn't be interested in part 2, but I just, I'm intuiting. My instinct tells me that so many people have, who've just heard that episode, heard our discussion. Really will be benefiting from it. That when you sit with it, maybe relisten to it, even think about it. It went very, very deep in a very quick amount of time. And I definitely feel simpatico with Chris and his work in the world. We are very much on sort of parallel paths in terms of our purpose and what it is that we want to do and how we want to impact and have a positive impact in the world. And his methodology also just aligns so well with what Workwell does. So we're in conversations with Chris about having him join and become part of our faculty team as well. But for now anyway, I just think it's— this is an episode that bears relistening to and certainly sharing with others, sharing with family, friends, colleagues, anybody that's, that's in that sort of hypervigilant state, whether they know it or they don't. But they're not potentially able to sustain what has gotten them as far as they've gotten. It may not be that they can sustain that or get to that next level because of these things that are unconsciously blocking them, things that are creating an exhaustion, a level of depletion mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually even, that will not allow them to achieve their highest potential. So I love the conversation that we had. So, so, I think, so practical. And so please share with those. And also know that if you want to snapshot. I think it's a perfect opportunity given what Chris was sharing and, and the thoughts that you may be having. Listen to that, uh, that you get a snapshot in this moment of where you are. How are you mentally? How are you emotionally, physically, spiritually, from a resiliency standpoint, from a, the capacity to, to be able to move forward, to bounce forward, if you will. And all you need to do to get your own resilience assessment and confidential results that's entirely free is simply go to rankmyresilience.com. Rankmyresilience.com. And you will in 3 minutes have your own personalized and confidential assessment. It will cost you nothing except that 3 minutes in time, and it will give you tremendous insights in some of the areas that Chris and I were speaking of today. In fact, I alluded to some of those findings, spoke to some of the through line of those findings today, and you would be among those that we aggregate data on in order to come up with those kind of Those are those conclusions. So see if what I said matches up with what you see after having taken the assessment. rankmyresilience.com, it's yours. And, uh, and we hope you take advantage of it. For right now anyway, I just wanna thank you once again for being a member of this community. If you would take another couple of minutes out of your day, uh, if possible at some point to rank or rate our podcast on the platform that you consume it, uh, whether it's Spotify or it's iTunes or In any other way, you know, the 5-star rating is obviously the one that we're looking for, but whatever makes sense for you, that's authentically true, that's perfect as well. I know that when the algorithm sees that people are, are doing that, there's more, there are more people that get to view it, get to consume it, listen to it, and that's a part of our mission. So we thank you ahead of time for, for taking the time to do that. For now anyway, once again, I would just say ciao for now, and thank you again.

Thanks for listening. We hope you now have even more tools and and greater insights to build resilience and become change-proof. Remember to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, and you may be featured in an upcoming episode. For more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change-proof teams, visit adammarkel.com. To get your own free resilience assessment, go to rankmyresilience.com.