Stress is Literally Making You Dumber (The Power of Shutting Up) | Mike Wood

If you're constantly thinking negative thoughts, fearful thoughts, your body literally goes into a chemical state where you're producing cortisol. You go into the default mode network and we lose our intelligence. As a leader, if I get excited and pissed off, I'm going into the default mode network. I'm becoming dumber and now I'm trying to address and solve problems at half capacity and I'm not very effective. And I realized I was doing a lot of that. I realized I was going to meetings and I was answering all the questions, although half the crew could have answered those questions. So I started shutting up. I started working on a lot of things on myself that really ultimately took the company that we were at— it allowed it to flourish and allowed it to grow because these young leaders were now able to speak, and it made them feel emboldened and part of the team and part of the creation because I got out of the way.