Break the Loop – Stop Letting Triggers Run You

Ever feel like you're living the same meeting over and over? The same trigger, same reaction, same result. Today, I'll show you how to break that pattern, how to break the loop. Welcome to the NeuroLeadership Edge, brain science for bold leaders ready to master their mind and own their voice. I'm your host, Claire Hayek, neuroleadership expert, ex-engineer, lifelong musician, TEDx speaker, and founder of Mind Soul Purpose Team Building. Now, I want to take you back to one of my earliest years actually as an engineer. Imagine this. I'm in a meeting packed with senior managers, mostly men. At the time, it was mostly men. I worked in metallurgical engineering and it was male, really male-dominated. Kind of industry. I had data. I had results. I'm presenting this in the room. I'm ready. I'm doing my thing. And as I'm presenting, halfway through my sentence, I get cut off. Not once. It happens again. Not twice. Multiple times. And each time, I'd feel my body tighten. Heat is rising in my face. Hands are sweaty. Heart is pounding. I'd literally shut down inside and keep pretending to listen while my brain is going— it's gone in overdrive. There's thoughts in my head going, they don't respect me. I should have spoken louder. I should have interrupted back. Should have, would have, all that talk. By the end of the meeting, I hadn't said half of what mattered, but I'd spent all my mental energy replaying what I wished I'd said. That's what it feels like to be run by a trigger. You, you lose your, your sense of direction. You lose your voice in a figurative way, and you don't even realize your brain and body have taken over the wheel. Here's what I didn't understand back then and what most leaders Still don't. Every time you get cut off, criticized, or challenged, your limbic system in the brain's alarm center basically fires first. It's simple. It's just ancient wiring in the brain. It's designed to protect us from danger. But it doesn't know the difference between a wild animal chasing you or a colleague talking over you. It just knows alarm, threat, Threat detected. In milliseconds, your body floods with cortisol. Your prefrontal cortex, your brain CEO, the part that controls reason and decision-making, composure, choice— it goes offline, and you literally lose access to the part of your brain that helps you lead. This is why you freeze, you are fuming, you're, you're upset, or you say something you regret. It's not weakness, it's biology. And the good news is that your brain is neuroplastic. That means the brain can reinvent itself, it can rewire itself. Okay, so we can rewire the brain, we can change this pattern. I would like to tell you a little bit more about the loop. When you get triggered, your mind enters basically in the loop. The loop looks like this: there's a trigger, a reaction, then there's the rumination, the guilt, and the trigger again. Basically, you replay it mentally, you justify it, or you suppress it. But either way, the loop continues. It just keeps going. And until you learn how to interrupt the loop in your body first, you're going to keep repeating it in your behavior. So today I'm going to show you how to break that loop in 3 steps, which I call the Triple S: Scan, Shrink, Shift. This is the neuroscience of taking your power back. In the moment it matters most. So let's start with the scan. The first step is awareness, the physical awareness. Your body reacts before your mind does. So when that trigger hits, when you feel dismissed, misunderstood, challenged, scan your body. Ask yourself, where do I feel it? Do I feel it in my chest tightening? Is it a knot in my stomach? Is it in my face? That physical awareness reactivates the prefrontal cortex, that part again that brings choice back online the minute that you're pausing and you are bringing your attention to your body. So it's not about analyzing the situation, it's about just catching the physiological signal before it hijacks your brain. I use this every single day, even before walking on stage. Actually, last week I had a TEDx talk, and during rehearsal I was extremely nervous, and it was just a rehearsal. And try not to judge, and I was just observing my body. I was scanning my body, see what's going on. And I pretty much named it. I scanned and it was anxiety, basically. The minute you feel that surge of adrenaline, you just have to pause and scan. Something is happening. Just pause and scan. It's simple, but it's very powerful. And it'd be because it brings the awareness back in control. Step 2 is shrink. Okay, so scan is one, step 2 is shrink. So we spotted the signal by scanning. Now you shrink the emotional charge, and this is where we move from the brain to body through the vagus nerve. If you're not familiar with it, the vagus nerve is your body's superhighway between the brain and every major organ. Goes down through the brainstem into— through your heart, your gut. And it's what tells your system you're safe, basically. So the fastest way to activate it is by breathing, slow, controlled breathing, especially on the exhale. You can inhale through your nose for a count of 4 and then exhale through your mouth for a count of 8, for instance. And you do it again and again. And as you exhale, you feel— basically relax your shoulders. And automatically your parasympathetic nervous system goes on. It switches on the opposite basically of fight or flight. So we're putting the pedal— our feet on the pedal— on the— sorry, we're putting our feet on the brake. Okay, the parasympathetic nervous system slows everything down. It's the opposite of putting our foot on the pedal, which is the fight. Or flight. You, you're not calming down. You're taking command of your biology. That's how you shrink the intensity of a trigger, by giving your body proof that the threat isn't real. Got it? All right. Step 3 is shift. Once your body has caught up, now you can shift your attention. You can ask yourself, What's the next most useful thing that I can do right now? Not the perfect thing to do, not the reactive thing to do, just useful. Again, what's the next most useful thing I can do right now? What should be my next step? What is the little step I can do right now that's gonna make— it's gonna be just simple and it's gonna be extremely useful for me to do right now? This question basically redirects your focus from the threat to, um, I have a choice. I can decide. I'm deciding right now. And choice basically rewires your neural pathways for future calm. So we are training our brain that when it gets triggered, just to bounce back very rapidly. So each time you break a loop, remember the loop is the trigger and then everything follows from there and it just keeps repeating. But each time you break that loop and you use the scan, the shrink, and the shift method, you are strengthening a new circuit between your prefrontal cortex and your limbic system. So you can bounce back much quicker. So that's the neuroplasticity that we're talking about, being able to retrain your brain and rewire your brain. You're teaching your brain that calm equals safety. You see how that works? So you say, oh, okay, here we go. It's fine. It's all good. We got this. Now, what does that really look like in real life, in practice? Let's go back to that meeting that I mentioned at the beginning. So old me, cut off, triggered, spinning, silent, pretending everything's fine. But new me, I'm scanning, I'm shrinking, and I'm shifting. Again, scanning, feel— I usually would feel the tension in my jaw. I really felt it, felt tension in my jaw. The shrink, one long exhale and just relax. Shoulder drop, shift. I choose my next move. Let you know, we can say something like, let me finish this thought before we move on. Or if, if I may just finish my point here before, you know, we— I would love to, I would love to get your opinion. I would love to Yeah, listen what you have to say, or I'd love your feedback, but I really would like to finish this thought before we can move on. Calm, composure, completely in my prefrontal cortex, in my PFC, not in my limbic system— threat, threat, fight or flight. So it's the same exact situation, entirely different brain state. And I wish I knew this back then. I wish I knew this back then. And this is why I do what I do today. I do want to make an impact. I do want to add value to you, to you all, everybody listening here, anybody listening. I want to make sure that we are training your brain So you are thriving, you are standing out, you are taking up space, and you are being successful without the cost of burnout. That's the difference between reacting and responding, between being run by your emotion and using emotion as Data. Do you see the difference? I sure hope you do. Now, many people go, you know, Claire, you know, this is this mental fitness talk. It's very interesting. It's great. It's mental health. Yeah, I need to meditate more. I need to do this more. It's not just that. It's, I mean, obviously meditating, breathing, this is all great and it's part of mental fitness. But this is, this is beyond that. It just goes beyond just meditation because leadership isn't about being calm all the time. This is where people get really confused or they get it wrong, that you need to be composed all the time and to be calm all the time. Eventually, maybe you'll get to that state. But the truth of the matter is, as a leader, we are challenged and bombarded by different situations. So you might not be always in a calm state, and that's okay. However, the difference is, if you're being in an agitated stress state for hours and being triggered right, left, and center, You are not leading. The idea of mental fitness is about recovering faster, bouncing back faster. And I don't know if you're feeling me here, if you're hearing the difference. So if you do react, you know how to bring it back right away to calm. So at the end of the day, probably nobody's noticing that you're really reacting and then going back to calm. Because you are the one running your brain. It's not your brain running you, and the recovery time depends on your mental fitness. This basically the strength of your brain's command muscle, and that's what we're training. I want you to think about this as a gym. If you lift one time. you don't get stronger. If you're doing one rep of biceps, you're not going to grow that bicep, right? But if you train your nervous system every day, even if for 10 seconds, 10 seconds at a time, then it becomes automatic. You start catching the loop before it catches you, basically. And the ripple effect Is that when you regulate yourself, you regulate your team. This is the amazing part. And your calm becomes contagious. That's why this isn't just a mindfulness practice. This is not about meditation or just breathing, or it's not about that. It's a leadership tool. Mental fitness is a leadership tool. Now let's tie this back to the bigger picture. I did recently a talk for executive MBA cohorts and alumni. I called it the strategic brain. And I shared this: under stress, the brain's field of vision basically shrinks by up to 60%. You literally lose access to creativity, empathy, and reason. Your PFC, your prefrontal cortex, goes offline and it's fight or flight, freeze, or fun. This is why great, great leaders don't think faster. They think clearer. Do you see the difference? They train their brain to stay online, PFC online. When others go offline. They don't suppress emotion, they regulate emotion. They don't chase control. They— it's not about control, it's about building command, especially and first and foremost self-command. And it all starts with interrupting that first little teeny micro trigger. So here's the challenge for the week. Every time you feel that rush, that familiar rush, the frustration, you get defensive, the urge to jump in, just pause and practice scan, shrink, shift. You can do it while you're waiting in traffic. Instead of getting impatient, maybe before answering a difficult email, stop, scan, shrink, shift. Or when your child, for instance, or your teenager, or a colleague, or a partner pushes a button you know way too well. So remember, you cannot stop your brain from firing, but you can train it to fire correctly, to reroute faster. So it might fire that trigger, but if you are developing the neural pathways to reroute and break the loop and reroute faster into your prefrontal cortex, and now that's a winner. That is true mental fitness. Now, if this resonated with you, I— and basically, if you want to go deeper, Into how your brain handles stress, clarity, and choice, how you build mental fitness, what does it mean, how does it apply in your day-to-day, how do we practice this, etc., I would love for you to join my Mental Fitness Masterclass. You're going to see a QR code here. If you scan it, there should be on top of the page exclusive invitation to the masterclass. This masterclass is a great way to practice mental fitness and build your mental fitness. Specifically for leadership, entrepreneurs, people that are tired of being triggered, that are tired of playing small, and they want to step into their power and play at their full potential and build their mental fitness. This masterclass has 4 modules. Basically, it's watch as you go. There's typically 4 to 5 lessons per module, very short lessons, about 10 minutes. Each. There's also a quiz if you want to claim your hours and use this for training and basically to, to claim training hours. There's quizzes that you can take every couple of weeks. We do a live lab, a rewiring lab where we go over the modules. We answer questions live. It's with me. I go live and we tackle on your challenges, whether it's work challenges, personal challenges. Any challenges by applying what you've learned during the modules, and this is ongoing. Those live labs are ongoing, and basically the whole year. It's think of it as a live coaching session, and it's just basically we take the time and build that mental training because mental training. Mental fitness is an— it's an everyday, every second, every minute kind of training. But it doesn't have to be an hour or 2 or 3 hours a day. It's 5, 10 seconds here and there. And when we do the 2 weeks, every 2 weeks live sessions, they're great because you get to practice in real time. And if you don't want to go and ask questions, just listening to others maybe share their challenges. And resolving their challenges and me coaching them, it will really help you. It's a great community as well. It's all about rewiring your default pattern so you can lead, speak, and decide from presence, from your anchor, not from pressure. So again, you can scan that QR code and check the comments basically for the Linktree if you are listening to the audio. The Linktree link will be included in the, in the comments. I want to leave you with this thought: you cannot lead others until you can lead your own nervous system. Leadership starts with you. The brain that reacts will always sabotage that voice, the voice that wants you to lead. So take control. So when you feel this, the loop start, pause, breathe, and remember, your trigger doesn't define you, but your response does. Scan, shrink, shift. And the final note, lead boldly, stay human, and turn every challenge into a gift. And before I'll let you go, Please subscribe to the podcast, share, follow, and I will see you next time.