27: A Sharper Life with Nikki Sharp

Welcome to my podcast called you'd Must.

Be out of youf Mind.

My name is Dr. Don Wood. Everyone has experienced some trauma at times during their life. These traumatic events and experiences create a significant impact on how your mind works on a day to day basis. At the same time creates long term effects on your emotional and physical health. It will interfere with your ability to stay present and in the moment. After years of research, I used my knowledge of neuroscience to to create what I call a memory reset. This memory reset reduces and eliminates the impact of the trauma and allows you to experience peace and clarity. My podcast will share many stories of people experiencing similar symptoms to you and how their lives have been positively impacted.

By our TIP program.

I can't wait to share with you how the impossible is possible and why you must be out of your mind. And there it is.

All right, well, welcome to another episode of you Must Be out of youf Mind. I'm your host, Dr. Don Wood. And as you know, we always bring on amazing guests that have so much to offer and so much to share. And a lot of times in almost every case, we have people that are able to share what they do that connects to what we do. And today is another great example of that I have on Nikki Sharp. And Nikki is a an amazing leader in the wellness field. So rather than go into any more detail, I'm going to let just Nikki talk about what she does. So welcome to. You must be out of your mind, Nikki.

Thank you. I'm absolutely thrilled to be here and to get into all the juicy topics.

Yes, yes. So one of the things we want to talk about. Right. And we'll get into a little bit more, but we're going to be doing a retreat and Nikki is going to be hosting it with us in Orlando on April 23rd. And so we're really looking forward to that. I mean, it's going to be an amazing opportunity to come and learn a lot about the health and wellness space and mental health wellness space. So we've got some great, great people coming to that. So. So Nikki, tell me a little bit first about what you do. So if you had to give us your elevator pitch on what you do, I know what you do, but it'd be easier for you to tell everybody.

Absolutely. For those listening, the long short of it is that I was in the quote unquote health space, wellness space where people knew me as the creator of the Five Day Detox. It went viral world in the app format, in a book, in an ebook that I published and so for years, people came to me, women came to me looking to lose weight and really getting frustrated about not being able to see the results they want. And this is also through my own journey of having two eating disorders. And I had body dysmorphia, anxiety, depression, chronic acne since I was 11, hospitalized multiple times. It took me down a path where as soon as I started learning about health and nutrition, everything shifted and my mind cleared, inflammation cleared. And then that's actually when the real work started that transformed my life. And so when people come to me and they assume that it's I'm in the direct health field, it's a yes and a no. What I do now is I help people work with the mind, with the subconscious mind and the conscious mind, because we have the conscious mind or the ego, which protects you, and then you have the subconscious mind, which you have all of these experiences. And you know about this, Dr. Wood, and teach about it. So we have all these experiences that go into essentially the back of our mind that we don't know how it's imprinted on our belief system. And based on that, that's where I've seen either helps you to see the results you want or causes you not to. And so I really, at this point, I can work with anyone who comes to me because let's say it's some a woman who's scared she's not going to find the partner. Well, I can tell based on our conversations, the ways that that belief system is then creating sabotage, or if a woman can't lose weight, then we go through a whole process that I've created to, to help clients based on what I've learned in my own life and healed myself of all of these things naturally, to essentially help people understand. You are your own guru, so people like you and I are great to come in and help. But then I also find that so often now people are looking for answers in so many different places that it gets confusing. And so I believe what you and I do, which is same, same, but different, is helping people to really take back their power and see the results they want by understanding the mind and then how that informs the decisions that people make.

Yeah, that is so true. And one of the things that I always talk about, too, is, and this is why our program is called a performance program, not trauma therapy. Right, because trauma is just interfering with your ability to perform at your highest level. And people don't understand that, but the trauma continues to loop, which then has a major effect on not only your mental Health, but your physical health. And so one of the things that I've been sharing and talking about when we do our, our sessions with people is, is that when we actually get trauma resolved, we stop that loop. We actually affect the mitochondria, the ATP in the cell. So I love working with athletes because they're always measuring performance and how quickly we can see that change and quite often what I'll tell them. So I worked with Rob Killian, who was a special forces green beret running in the Spartan World Championships, and after going through our program, won it. And it's like two days after. And what I said to him, I said, rob, I never made you a faster runner. You were always that fast. You just didn't have access to that power. And it's the same thing with so many people. So whether you're an executive, a CEO, right, Whatever you're doing in your life, you can improve your performance just by keeping the nervous system regulated. And yes, when you do that, everything else starts falling in line.

I mean, you're talking my language, doctor, I love everything that you just shared and especially that it shouldn't be the trauma response that we're trying to heal because so many people in today's day and age don't even realize that they have trauma. Right? Like my husband, for example, grew up in a really amazing family, but only now, years later, as we're married, he's realizing that there were things that were pushed under the rug and there were no coping skills that were taught, which most of us haven't had in our life, but coping skills on conflict resolution. And that can create trauma in the brain and in the mind. And just as you said, and where I come from, more with that health background is that it affects, as you said, the nervous system. And when the nervous system for, you know, a high powered woman, a CEO, C suite, or anyone starting a business, literally anyone with kids, like, it doesn't really matter who you are. It's when you're in that constant state of fight or flight, which is, oh my God, I got to get you done. I have my to do list, need to go, go, go, go, go. And your nervous system is getting raised up. It causes cortisol in the body. And then women complain that they can't lose weight even though they're, quote, unquote, doing all the right things. And so one of the big things that I work on, and it sounds like very similar, is actually helping people to calm down, slow down, because it's, it's so counterintuitive that the solution is always in the thing that we don't think it's going to be. So if you're trying to get more done, you actually need to slow down more and do less to regulate the nervous system to drop yourself out of that sympathetic state into para in order to then reduce the cortisol and then working through the trauma. And I found that this is why I made it wasn't like a conscious choice, like I'm leaving the quote, unquote food, health industry and going in this. It was just the more that I learned that was the secret sauce that I realized that's literally where the magic is. That's everything you want in your life is held inside the brain, inside the body, that fight or flight, that, you know, nervous system. And it's not taught. That's the crazy thing. Diets trending, you know, paleo keto, like, try the new workout, get up at 5:00am you know, January 1st, go hit your goals. And it's like, but no, like, you would have seen your results if those things worked. And so this is why I love these conversations, so that people can understand. Like, I am living, breathing proof that this works because I healed myself when, quote, unquote, no one else could. There was no doctor that healed me. There was no therapist. I didn't have access to it at the time. And now doing podcasts like this, like, this is free information for people to take back their life.

Yep. And. And again, that's what I say. The first thing I say when somebody sits down with me, I say to them, there's nothing wrong with you and there's nothing wrong with your mind. I said, you may have had a series of experiences, whether they're traumatic or disturbing. I call those emotional concussions. Not everything is a big T trauma. You can get an emotional concussion from childhood with a parent or a teacher or coach or whatever, but they manifest themselves somewhere in your life. So when people come in and they'll say to me, I have anxiety, I go, no, that's a symptom. You don't have it. Right, right. It's the way your mind is responding. So I said, all we have to do is get to the root of what is causing the anxiety. Your mind doesn't get anxious for no reason. There's something creating it. So same thing with depression. You know, what I say is, depression is not a dysfunction of the brain. It's a function of the brain. The brain is going into a depressed state for a reason. It's always trying to protect you. So. But it looks counterintuitive. You say, yeah, but look at what the person is doing. Right. Yeah. It's shutting down. Right. Because it's not getting the results it's been looking for. So it protects you by stopping. Right. The constant fear or anger or whatever. So that's what's going on. And generally what I'll say to them is when they say I'm depressed, I'll say, tell me what you're angry about.

Right. Spot on. Well, and that's. I find it so fascinating, again, me being the guinea pig of my own life. Like, I've been my best and worst client to date because it took so damn long to, quote, unquote, heal myself. But at the same time, exactly what you're saying. It. I. I go with the fears. And so we're doing kind of same thing, just a slightly different methodology. And I help people uncover what the fear is. What's the real fear behind the fear, and then how does it manifest? And people will oftentimes come and say, well, I don't really have any big fears, just like you're talking about the trauma and, you know, the big T, little T. And it's all right, well, it might not be a huge fear, but what are you angry about? And then it's like unleashed. And what I've found is that until someone can tap into that and actually acknowledge that there's anger or fear, you can't move through all of the manifestations of the depression, the anxiety, the acne that, you know, binge eating. And so I love that you're sharing this with the world and helping people understand that.

Yeah. And it's. People come in and they have all this misconception about what something's wrong with me. And the way I always explain it as I think of the brain as the computer, the hardware, the mind is the software. And the software are running programs for you. Right. But the software is capable of developing glitches and error messages. Right. All we have to do is figure out where it's glitching. What's the error message? Why is your mind doing what it's doing? Chances are it's reading old data from memory, activating the nervous system. And I always use. Nikki, I don't know about you, but I always like the word activation. I never liked the word trigger because I always thought trigger sounded negative and violent. And so I say, what is activating your nervous system is going into an activation for a reason to protect you. Right. So fight or flight is actually a pretty Good response if there's a danger.

Right.

Works really well in the animal world. Right. And it works well in our world. Where it becomes a problem is in when memory keeps activating the nervous system, and then the person has no idea why they continue to have these responses. You know, post traumatic stress, you know, anxiety, depression, are all coming from, in most cases, this trauma loop that has been unresolved and the mind is not okay with what happened, and it's trying to come up with a resolution and.

Fix it a hundred percent. And it's like when I look at my own life and the. The quote, unquote triggers or activations, something that was on repeat for so long with me was growing up. My parents were going through their. Their thing, you know, I know they loved each other. They ended up getting divorced, but me as the child, right? So from three months to seven years old, we know the human brain is. That's when it's growing and taking in all this information and. And forming the identity, the. The I. And so during this time, I felt.

Let'S say, second to whatever my parents were going through at the time. I wasn't aware of that. It was only later. So then the trigger or the activation that became something later was what I would call the brick wall. That if I shared something with a partner or my mom and I didn't get a response back, it made me feel ignored and it made me feel not special and. And like they didn't care about me, didn't love me. So that's all that. That looping you're saying. And until I was able to really understand where that was, because the activation of the triggers, it's yours to deal with, right? And we blame it on our partners and our parents. Like, you're triggering me. No, love, that's your own response based on something when you were three months old to seven years old. And so when I learned that, I was able to then see. Oh, my God, when I would get that way and I felt that brick wall, and that's why I just. I named it so that I could identify. And when I would feel the brick wall, it would then manifest and I would become louder. I would raise my voice to try and be heard. Literally be heard, which has the opposite effect with my husband. He's like. He shuts down if I raise my voice. But the very thing I'm trying to get is that. That response from him. And I had to learn that, okay, Nikki, that's not a response. You're triggered, but that's not a Response that's going to get the response out of him. And so that's been my own work and why I've really become obsessed with the mind and the brain and the subconscious and neuroplasticity and, and I would say how it relates to then our health because I do have so many women coming to me with challenges of their gut and sibo and not being able to lose weight. And it's like. But all of these are just manifestations of something, a fear planted in the back of the mind in that subconscious based on something that happened when you're a kid. And it's, it's all fascinating stuff. And I, I love that we're talking about this more and more because we learn more every, every year as we go on in humanity. And when I was going through my eating disorders, this, this knowledge was not available. Nobody was telling me about this sort of thing. It was like, all right, we'll go to an eating disorder clinic. And they, they were going to tell me just to, you know, start to eat more. And you're like, that doesn't work.

That's not, it's like the old joke, doctor, it hurts when I do this. Well, don't do that.

Right.

Yeah.

Are you tired of dealing with stress, Anxiety, panic attacks, depression, even feeling broken? Have traumatic events and experiences in your life created post traumatic stress for you? Perhaps you're an athlete, an executive, trying to reach that next level of performance. Well, there's nothing wrong with you and there's nothing wrong with your mind. Your mind is dealing with some glitches and error messages as a result of these traumatic events or disturbing events earlier in your life. It's interfering with your ability to stay present because the memory keeps on looping, activating your nervous system. I've helped thousands of people deal with anxiety, panic attacks, depression, feeling that sense of brokenness. We can clear that in as little as four hours. Check out our website, inspiredperformanceinstitute.com and check out some of the stories and testimonials. Some of these may relate to what you've experienced in your life, and we look forward to helping you reach your next level of performance. And there it is.

That kind of. It was the same thing. That's how I really got into this, was because of my daughter. And so my wife had trauma as a child. I had none. I came up in the home similar to what your husband did. I had no trauma. Amazing parents. Never raised their voice, never argued, never fought, never hit us. And I had no real trauma. So I just assumed everybody had my world. I had no idea that my. All my friends were dealing with all. Because nobody talks about it, right? Nobody talks about the dysfunction going on in their home. We found out that two principals, two teachers, and the guy ran a little league were sexually abusing kids, right? So it was everywhere. And that truly to me is the number one pandemic in the world, sexual abuse. So we can talk about everything else, but that is a big, big problem. And I don't know if you ever. Have you ever looked at the ACEs study that they did in 1997?

No.

The CDC and Kaiser Permanente put a study together of 17,000 people, and it was called the ACEs Study ACE, which is adverse childhood experiences. And anybody who had from zero to four aces what they called, they made a direct correlation to their physical health. And there was amazing statistics. And this wasn't done in a poor, you know, underprivileged neighborhood. This was done in a fairly middle to upper middle class neighborhood. And with the, with the study and they were showing direct connections to cancer, COPD, lung disorders, everything in the health area, the more ACEs, the better the opportunity, the better the statistics were in those areas. And it was incredible. And, and yeah, fascinating. What do we do about it? And this is what happened is we teach people to live and manage and cope with it. And what I'm saying, let's fix it, we don't need to manage it. Why would you want to manage anxiety? Right? That doesn't make any sense.

I mean, I would almost say people manage it. Like what I've seen happens and I'm. This happened with me, that it's like you can't figure out what's wrong. You can't figure out. So you could get testing, whatever, and then finally you get the diagnosis, oh, you have anxiety. Suddenly you feel better. You're like, okay. There's a label that it gets like, okay, you're right, I have anxiety. The problem is that it becomes the identity at that point. And when it's the identity. And for me it was like, I have insomnia once that's your identity. And you say, I am or I have, boy, oh boy, does that get so much harder. So just as you're saying, I feel like, yeah, who wants to just manage anxiety? But I also feel like people don't realize that there's actually something before it. Like, we know depression medication does not work. There's so many studies over and over and over again that said it does not work. The work that you and I teach Actually works. I have so many clients that come into my program on antidepressant medication, and at the end of the program, they've either cut it in half or completely gone off of it.

Us as well.

Right?

It's the same thing. There was another study that just came out in the summer. I had just written an article about it, that depression is a function, not a dysfunction. The brain's going into a depressed state because it is being angry, trying to fix something that doesn't exist anymore. So if you were abused as a child, right, Your mind is looping through that trauma, saying, fight back, say something, do something, because it sees it in real time. So if it keeps calling for an action. And what I always talk about, the purpose of an emotion is a call for an action. The purpose of fear is to escape. The purpose of anger is to attack. So if you think about something that happened 20 years ago or 10 years ago and you get angry, that's a glitch. Your mind is viewing the data in real time. So if your mind is being calling into an action for 20 years and you don't answer the call because you can't answer the call, how does it protect you? It shuts down. Depression is the absence of emotions. It's not using emotions anymore because it hasn't worked. So your mind's protecting you resolve what the anger is all about. You resolve the depression. That was a function.

Oh, my God. Like, mic drop right there. That. We need to just make that into a sound bite, a clip, because it is so true. And anyone who is suffering in whatever it might be, I mean, goodness gracious, like, let's talk. I'm not going to go into politics or my viewpoints, but let's just talk about the pandemic for a second. Of the trauma that happened and the responses. So CDC, in 2021, 41 point, 41.9% of adults had obesity. Right. That is, in the pandemic, people started eating, drinking more. They didn't know how to manage the emotions. And then in, in 2020, during the, the first year of the pandemic, sales of alcohol increased by 2.9%, which was the largest annual increase in over 50 years. Like, it's funny because I just, I had Dr. Amen, Dr. Daniel Amen, who studies the brain on my podcast, and he was saying, you know, love your brain. And I, I love his work, but he was saying, love your brain. Do things that are good for your brain. And I presented him that quote and I'm like, right, I like, I Get that. I understand that alcohol is a depressant. I understand it's a toxin in your body. However, there's also a lot of that says hey, like a glass of red wine can actually be good for you. But the very nature that alcohol sales went up 2.9% in one year alone because of the trauma that people didn't know. And then the government failed to actually do anything about this, like any sort of education. But that's where we're at now. I feel like people are starting to realize the answer's not out there. Government's not going to help you. And the things that I've been doing, right, the binging, the eating, the sabotage, the whatever it is, the hiding out. Like I can't remember the specific, specific statistic but it was when companies started opening up again. It was a vast majority, it was like 75% or something of people did not want to go back into the, the office because they had gained weight. They didn't feel good in themselves. They didn't feel confident. They were scared people were going to judge them. Well, if you don't feel good about yourself, what are you going to do? Are you more or less likely to go than sabotage? Well, we already know if you don't feel good, you're more likely to go do the thing that gives you pleasure. Dopamine hit in that moment. And so all of this became. We've been. And even now today I feel like we are just living in this constant trauma response of war's going on, the balloons are going on, you have the crash with the train. I mean and it's just news. Used to be there used to be I believe on a 24 hour, like if we have 24 hours in the day they used to do a one hour news slot. I believe it was like three times a day in the beginning when. So three times a day, that's three hours out of 24. Now you have channels, you know, NBC and CNN, all of these ones that are just like constant news alerts, breaking news, breaking news. And so our, our, our regulatory systems, our nervous system is just constantly in this fight or flight and it's like oh my God, wait, are we going to get bombed? Wait, what's going on? China and this and Beijing and, and, and it's, it's constant noise and then you add on the day to day life and we are just, we have been living since the pandemic in a trauma response activation response. And I think that's where I get, I mean it pisses Me off, to be honest. But I also get excited because of the work that you and I are doing and this retreat that we're doing. Like, this is the stuff that's going to move the needle for people. And when you do the work, whatever the work is the self work, when you do the work, it affects you and it starts to affect those around you. And that's. That's where we make change. Everything has to start with you by first off taking responsibility and saying, I want to make a change.

Yeah. And especially even depression. One of the things we talk about with depression, the key is you got to move, right? Because depression is a shutdown. So one of the things when. Just go back to the addiction thing. I have a very different approach to addiction. I've never had a drink in my life, never touched a drug in my life ever once. People say, well, how could you talk about addiction, right? I say, because I know the model, right? I never needed it, right? So I've never had that pain. If I had had. So people say, well, why would people use drugs and alcohol? And I said, because it works, right? It stops the pain. And the subconscious mind is always in the present. So everything for the subconscious is now. So when does it want pain to stop? Now. And the drugs and alcohol stop the pain now. Very good resource. The issue comes in is that the subconscious, which is the dominant part of our brain, the survival part of our brain, has no connection to time, so it cannot see consequences to the action. And what I say addiction is, is a code. It's not a disease. If you kept having pain and you solved the pain with this drug or alcohol, right? Your brain is a constant coding machine. It's coding on how to respond. And you're teaching it that this solves the problem. And then we want to shame and guilt these people and say, what's wrong with you? This is about your character, your morals, your willpower, your ethics. No, it's not. It's about a code. The brain codes. So I always use the analogy. I said if I hit the M key on my computer and my computer shut off, I wouldn't say, oh, there's something. My computer's bad. There's something wrong with it. It's shutting the computer off, right? It's not a problem with the computer, it's a problem with the code. So if I took my computer into my computer therapist, my computer therapist would tell me, don't touch the M key. Stay away from any words that have M's in them. And you'll. And you'll work around the problem. What I say is let's figure out how to rewrite the m. The code, and then it goes back into the normal operating. We're designed to be in homeostasis into balance, right? What's interfering with it? And most of the times it's this trauma loop which then brings in behaviors and habits which are codes. And then the codes, the computer doesn't say, oh, I don't know why you're writing this code. It just writes the code. If you hit the keystrokes, it'll write the code. It doesn't say it's good or bad, right or wrong. It just accepts the code. And so that's what we do. We get people out of addiction because we take away a lot of that shame and guilt of it. They couldn't have been any different. And I say, if I had your pain, I would have found a resource too. Whether that's food or, you know, whatever it would be, I would find a way to stop that pain. That's human, totally human.

And it's.

Wanting to drink or smoke or take drugs. It's. It's a hit of dopamine, right? It hits the dopamine receptors in the brain. And so it's. It. Dopamine is the feel good chemical. So immediately it's like, oh, my God, you know, if people. January 1st, I'm not gonna drink for 30 days. I'm gonna go off alcohol. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna not eat this food. And very much like what you're saying, it's like the moment that you tell yourself you're not gonna do something, it's like, don't focus on the M key. Don't focus on the M key. Try to come up with all the words. And you're like, wait. But literally all I can think about is M. Words that have M in it. What do I do now? And then you end up sabotaging. And. And it's like, you know, then you're just hitting the. And that's very much how it is when you. You tell yourself, I'm not going to drink. I'm not going to do this thing. It's. Well, if it worked, you would have seen a change by now.

Yeah.

And so that's where it's fun, what we're talking about. And I. I get so jazzed, jazzed up, as I said. Like, I was my best and worst client, and I'm still a work in progress. Like, I still have my things and vices and things I enjoy doing. But just as you said, I've taken away the judgment on them, and now I'm like, oh, I love eating pizza. And there's no judgment, which means that there's no sabotage further on down the line. It's like, oh, I'm just eating some pizza now. Great. And then I move on with my life. And my nervous system is calm when I'm doing that, versus when people binge. Typically, it's. Their nervous system is already, you know, high strong in that fight or flight, judging themselves and guilt, which then causes a double whammy of the food then not digesting. So now you have cortisol, and then you can't gain. I mean, it's. It's a whole process. And yeah, it sounds like we. We really do similar things in helping people overcome addictions or mindset. And. And I just love how you put it of. It's just rewriting the program, because that's what it is. Only we think that the program is us. We identify with the program, and it's like, but if you could rewrite it and change your life, wouldn't you want to?

Right? And that. And that's what we talk about, is you have control of this. The reason you're in the situation you are is because of just the science behind how the brain works. There's nothing wrong with you, and there's nothing wrong with your mind. So if you want to make the changes, first, let's get to the root cause of what created this habit or behavior or code. Let's get that taken care of. And then the mind will change codes, right? And it'll build a new code for you, but it won't if it keeps retreating back to the old pain. And so that's why the pain message is so strong. I found. And this is all this amazing research kept showing up in my lap all the time. Nikki, it was really funny, is I found this article from a German sniper during World War II. And what he talked about is he said when we fought against the Russians in World War II, he said they didn't have a lot of weapons. He said they would just charge at the German lines. And he says, and if one of them had a weapon and got shot and killed, another one would run and pick up the weapon. So it was just wave after wave. And he said my job was to shoot them. He says, and then another wave would come. He goes, then I figured out how to stop them. He says, I didn't shoot and kill them. I shot them in the stomach.

Then what happened was all the other Russians would hear this screaming and agony and pain because that's the worst place to get shot. That was a bigger deterrent than dying. Isn't that amazing? The power of the mind. And he realized that people don't want to be in pain. Right. Death doesn't, you know, cause a bigger problem because you don't feel any more pain. But that agony of hearing these people screaming in pain was a bigger deterrent. Which tells you a lot about why people don't want to be in pain and how they look at. I tell this story often about a young lady who came in, she'd been seven years on heroin and she said to me, I heard about what you do and I told my therapist I was going to come in and meet with you. And he told me that I have to be honest and up front and let you know I have self destructive behavior. And so I just smiled at her. I said, really? What would make you think you're self destructive? And she looks at me and she says, well, I'm sticking a needle with heroin in my arm. Don't you think that's self destructive? I said, no, I don't. I think you're trying to feel better.

Yeah.

And I bet you when you stuck the needle in your arm, you felt better. She goes, yeah. I said, that's what you were trying to do. Now the substance you're using is destructive, but you're not destructive. I get why you did it. If I'd have had your pain, I'd have found a similar substance as well to try to stop that pain. So that's human, right? That's nothing about your character, morals, willpower, ethics, take that shame and guilt out of it. Even with all the things like anxiety, depression, all the things that people do, if you just understood what people had been through, you'd understand. I call that atmospheric conditions. If you understood a person's atmospheric conditions, you would understand why they behave and they do the things they do. So the idea is to clear up the atmospheric conditions.

Yeah, I mean it's, it's actually making me think or go back to. I was sharing about my husband, where he came from, this, you know, pretty wonderful family. Now could they have learned some coping mechanisms for fights and things like that? Sure. But did I have a far more conflicted childhood, not only from my parents, but just being an only child? My parents were from England, we lived in, in Colorado. So already there's some, some interesting changes there. Had some very strange experiences going growing up with, with Outside forces. And with all of that when I met him it. And now as we, we have this conversation but as I, I continue to do my own work, it's. He doesn't understand my model of the world. And like I'm a self starter, definitely kind of that alpha female. I get shit done. I like, I love taking charge, being a leader because.

I found that there was no one around me like that. And just naturally that's my personality. And so I found that there was part of the challenge was he didn't realize why that came up in me. And that was a defense mechanism growing up really. And the very nature of like I have a lot of confidence now, but I've had to work hard to have the right type of confidence. Not from the ego confidence, but that true self confidence. But still he. We've had kind of, let's say talks and, and crunchy moments about it where he doesn't understand my model of the world that I literally like for safety, protection for various things that happen in my life, right. I ha. I literally had to learn how to say no to someone, walk out, slam a door, raise my voice, like whatever it was for, give the circumstance. But that was a protection mechanism. And so it's, I think the big thing and what I'm seeing and I love that we're doing this more and more is people sharing about their lives because like people, women that come into my group, the ultimate transformation program, none of them like to share in the beginning, nobody wants to talk about their life and all the suffering they've had or their challenges. And then I'm so open and honest about things that I've gone through and currently working through. Like if a challenge comes up, I share how I, how I dealt with it in the moment. And by the end of it, every single one of these women are like the group, the support. I didn't realize like I wasn't alone. We're all going through the same thing. And it's the moment that you can break down that actually there is at least one other, if not like 7 billion other people who have faced at least one of the challenges that you have. Then it suddenly makes it feel like I'm not alone. And it sounds like we're both doing that of helping people to be like, no, you're, you're actually not making the wrong decision. You made the decision based on the programming, the beliefs, your old experiences, your parents, what they told you. And now it's. It's safe, it's safe to make a change. You Are safe.

Exactly. And one of the things. Because my wife grew up in a traumatic household. Very angry father, very violent father. So she was dealing with all of that. And when I first met her, right, this was news to me. I thought this was an anomaly. I couldn't. Couldn't understand this tension in the house. And if I said something like, no, I don't like that to her, she could tear up and start to cry and say. And she'd go, why are you upset with me? And I'd go, honey, I'm not upset at all. And she'd go, yes, you are. You're getting upset with me. And I'd say, I didn't say it anyway like that. And she'd go, yes, you did. But, Nikki, what I didn't understand at that time is that as a child, she had learned to listen so carefully to the way her father spoke. If I was a little tired at the end of the day, and there was a little, slight inflection change in my voice. Children who have been traumatized are highly sensitive to sound. So what she heard was, no, I don't like that. She wasn't wrong and I wasn't wrong. Right. And yet that could destroy a marriage.

Right.

Because that could create a disconnection between the two. Luckily for both of us, I didn't have that, because I wasn't. I was around this nurturing, loving, quiet home that I. What I realized afterwards, through all this research, is that when that little inflection change happened in my voice, her mind does a Google search of what she knows about men who start to get angry. And a flood of data about her father would come in. That's what dysregulated her nervous system. It wasn't what I said. It wasn't what I was doing. It was this flood of data from trauma that was affecting her nervous system. I couldn't fix that by just changing the way I spoke. I did everything I could do, Nikki. I was very careful with the way I said things. I tried to choose my words really carefully, and it was just like a tripwire, you know, would just be like, oh, there it goes.

Right, right. And then you. You never have any idea. It's like you're on eggshells all the time, and you never know which one's gonna break.

Yep. And she's a great mom, a great wife, just living in fear. And until we could get that resolve for her and get that trauma loop from looping and that I was explaining about my daughter. My daughter, right, was growing up in the home I grew up in, and we thought everything was fine. What we didn't know is that she had some trauma when she was 6 that we were unaware of. And at 14, she's diagnosed with Crohn's. And they said, well, there's no cure for Crohn's. We don't know what causes Crohn's. She's going to manage this for the rest of her life. She ended up having four resections done. They took out 24 inches of her intestines. And she's an actress, so that constant stress of acting would aggravate her Crohn's. And then she ended up with a second autoimmune disorder called idiopathic pulmonary hemosiderosis. That's what got my wife to say to me, you've got to figure this out, because we're going to lose our daughter. And then the research I put together connected up that trauma creates inflammation in the body. The inflammation compromises the immune system and the neurotransmitters. Once we got that addressed, she has no Crohn's. She has no lung disorder. Right. Both were healed because we got to the root of the problem.

Wow. I mean, it's. It's so prevalent, what you're saying. And it's in one sense, like the old Nikki, the old me who was battling the eating disorders and all of these things. And what I was saying earlier about attaching yourself to the label, like, okay, I now know I have Crohn's. It's like, once you do that. And for me, with the. The body dysmorphia, the anxiety, the. Everything, all of it.

The old version of me.

Like, I can hear myself actually talking, and it's like, yeah, but I don't know if this would work, right? I don't know if this would work. I've. I've tried everything. Or that's what the mind is telling. Telling me. And so it's always interesting, like, having gone through my own journey to be able to hear that. I call it the Siamese twin. And to be able to hear her voice and be like, yeah, but, like, that's not me. That wasn't my situation or whatever it might be. And so I guess the fascinating thing is we come from. And I love this. We come from such different backgrounds, Right. Very little trauma, and had a great childhood for me.

Had a nice one in a lot of aspects, but clearly a lot of trauma that affected the way that I did things later and. And imprinted on my mind and so it's like we're teaching very similar things. Just I've had to do the healing on myself. And for you, you're getting to do it. You saw it, like, straight up with your wife and your daughter, and it's like, it works. This stuff works. The methodology works, regardless of the situation. Because when you break it all down, and this is what I see with clients is they come in and they're like, right, it's just me. And I had this and was abused or this or that or X. It's like, but let's get. Let's get down to. Let's get down to business in the mind. Because as you said, the mind then affects the body. And that was one of the biggest. Biggest things that I learned was the more that I slow down.

The less stress I have. The less stress I have, the better decisions I make, the less inflamed I am, the. The less I want to do the sabotaging behaviors. And that's what we're saying. It's so counterintuitive, the things that you want to do in life and achieve and overcome. It actually starts with that slowing down for that nervous system in order to then feel okay to then get into the mind.

See, that's such a great comment, because it's what. When I work with athletes, one of the things that I talk about is that you need to actually calm the system down and be in that alpha brainwave state where you're actually focused and relaxed. Then people say to me, well, don't you think that nervous energy is good for you before an event? And I went, no, it's burning energy. Right? And what's really interesting is I've worked with people when. And just what you talked about, the slowdown, when people are in a highly stressed situation, it actually slows down. It looks slower. I worked with a veteran one time who got into a. He got separated from his team, got into a major firefight. He had to shoot his way out. He killed a lot of people. And that, obviously, that's a big trauma for him. And I asked him a question. He goes, he was shocked. He goes, no one's ever asked me that. What I asked him is, did it feel like it was in slow motion? And he goes, it absolutely felt like slow motion. I said, because the mind is hyper focused, right? And everything looks slower. That's why great athletes like Tom Brady and Wayne Gretzky are so good. It looks slower to them so they have more time to process, right? So the faster you think and the faster you try to make something happen. Just like you said, we don't work at our best unless we slow it down. And the brain will naturally do that. That's why I really believe these athletes have that edge, is because they can. You know, you watch a guy like Tom Brady, so, so relevant right now. He's not the best athlete in the NFL, but he's the best player in the NFL. And what his, it's all in his mind. He can look at the other players on the field, calculate their speed and distance and angles faster than anybody that's ever been able to do it. Same with Wayne Gretzky in hockey. I'm a hockey guy, so. Right. So if you're processing at faster speeds, you're going to be able to make more accurate decisions. And just like you talked about. So if you slow down, you actually become more efficient.

Yeah. And it's, it's all about clearing the trauma, the triggers, the whatever you want to call it and moving forward then into that performance to see the results you want. I was just thinking, actually we drove up to my mom's in, she now lives in Florida. And I drove up, my husband drove down like two and a half hour drive and exactly what you were just saying. I can, when I'm driving, I can actually see and pre predict what people are gonna do when they're driving. And it makes me a really, really good drive, very safe driver. Because I'm like, oh, I already know that that guy's gonna come in. No blinker. And it's like, how do I know how to do that? How can I predict? It's not that I'm predicting the future per se, it's that I've slowed down and I can read the, the language of the car or I can see just like, oh, there's an opening and I can tell that he's going to go in or they're going to do that. And so I'm hyper aware and hyper focused of all of my mirrors at all time. And, and I've raced cars before and I was one of the best out there. Not because I'm the best of. And it was a group of girls, phenomenal experience. It was because I was able to feel things and see things and perceive them because of the work that clearly like I've done that you teach. And it's, I'm so looking forward to, to our retreat. So I'm also sitting in on your sessions. By the way. I told Jamie that I was like, I'm attending everything because I'M not here just to teach. Like, I'm doing a workshop, but I'm like, I'm not just here to teach. I'm here to constantly learn. And I, like, I'm learning from this. And I'm just, I'm so excited for the retreat. Oh, my goodness.

Well, again, I always talk about codes, right? And how. Why are the. And I look at the brain of athletes. You take Michael Jordan, right? Best basketball player of all time. No question about it, right? Why was he so good? Right? And so they take Michael Jordan, who's a superior athlete, stick him in baseball, and he can't dominate baseball. Why? Because he doesn't have enough codes built. He hasn't seen enough pitches at a major league level, right. And so Harvard did a study and said it's actually impossible to hit a major league fastball. You can't calculate that fast. So what does that mean? When that pitch is coming in from that angle at that speed, right. With that amount of spin, those players have built thousands of codes that they recognize the pattern, just like you're talking about when you drive, right? So you had developed a brain that can slow down and process coding faster than the average person. That's what makes you a good driver. That's what makes them a great baseball player. And so I worked with a professional baseball player, and they told me, his agent said, you know, they're getting him to now put all these stats in his head. You know, this picture on a two in one count, you know, 80% of the time we'll throw a slider, blah, blah, blah. They said, what do you think about that? I said, it's a terrible idea. You can't think and hit a baseball. It's not about. Yeah, it's about responding through your coding, right? And that's in everything in your life. And so if you become really good at something, you develop a skill, and the skill is codes.

Yeah, I mean, it's codes. It's interesting. And like, I'm just thinking about now as you're. You're talking with that, the whole, you know, everyone's heard, okay, meditation's good. Well, if meditation's good, why don't people do it? Right? If we know that alcohol is bad, why do people not stop drinking? If we know that a Twinkie or, you know, all the junk food is not good for you, why do people not do it, stop eating it? And so let's just go back to meditation. We know it's good for us. And what do people say? Well, I can't Calm the mind. Okay, well, the goal is not to sit there and be like, I don't have thoughts. You allow the thoughts to come and that they're there. Just as in waking life, like there's going to be other cars passing you, there will be a car next to you, there will be a thought. And what I'm, I'm kind of hearing and I guess taking into my own language on that is that the meditation is. You don't practice meditation to go become a monk and sit on a mountain and you know, oming and chanting. You do it so that you can slow the mind, free it from all the, the chitter, chatter and take it into waking day life. So just as that of like the stats of this baseball player, it's like, no, that's the monkey mind. The goal of meditation is to slow down so that you can process things in a far better place. And like I, I think about my husband and he works in the financial industry and when he gets stressed, the thing that he's trying to do more of is go to the office more, do the solution, all of this and, and.

Where it's quite the opposite. It's like you got to get outside and exercise, get fresh air, you got to sleep more. Your body needs to rest and your mind needs that, that rest in order to heal, in order to reduce the inflammation. And that's where you get better answers. And yet it's just, it goes back to what I was saying in the beginning. It's so counterintuitive.

Yes. But it all comes down to training. So if you get experience with it and you get results, which I think what you're doing, when you can bring these women into these retreats and you can, here's what I've learned, here's the science behind what I've experienced. Right. Follow what I'm telling you to do and it will work. That's what they need to hear. Right. They're trying it on their own. So they'll go out and they'll try, oh, I'm going to try the keto diet. It doesn't work for them. Well, it may never have worked for them. And then they get discouraged because they say, well, I never, you know, lost any weight or it was too hard. So getting that advice, which is, I love what we're doing and I love what we're going to do at the retreat is be able to give people real world advice. And this is coming from the pains that you went through, the pains that we went through as a family to Find answers for our daughter. Right. This is real world advice and it just works. And I have people say to me, do I have to believe in it in order for it to work?

And I said.

This is, you can go up on the third floor of our building, jump out, gravity is going to take over whether you believe it or not. Right. It's just the way it works, science works and use it to your advantage. In fact, I just wrote my fourth book. I haven't put it out yet. I'm just going to be putting it out and just finishing the last read throughs with it. And it's about parenting. And, and again, I'm not saying I got everything right, but what I know now about how the brain works and with the childhood that I grew up in. So I'm calling it don't mess with my DNA. Because trauma affects DNA and it affects the way the DNA is read and transcribed and then will continue to affect the DNA in future generations. So the idea is keep the trauma out, teach children on how to respond. Just like you talked about conflict resolution, all of those things. That's what I talk about in the book. And people said to me, what's the best advice you can give to a parent? And I said, make your home safe. I lived in a safe home. I never had to worry about my home having any kind of a threat. My wife didn't have that. She never had a place to land. So I said, you were in flight almost all the time. And I said, I never had that. So school was easy for me, sports was easy for me because I had the ability. Right. To regulate my nervous system. I've been healthy all my life. I played hockey. I had six, six concussions, 60 stitches. Never missed a hockey game. Wow. And they used to just say, well, you just heal really fast. I was healing fast because I was getting maximum restorative sleep. I was healing faster. I've lived in Florida 30 years, never been to a doctor. I don't get sick. I never took the vaccine. I said, I've got an immune system that I would challenge against anybody's. There's no way, I don't think my immune system. And if I get it, my immune system will handle it. I truly believe in when you keep the nervous system in regulation, the body will heal 100%.

What a beautiful place to end and promote the retreat now.

No, exactly. I knew we would go longer. What do we got here? Oh, not too bad. And go too far over.

No, it, I could go on for ages. But I also, I Also realize that it's what an enticement of come to the retreat and come, come hear us talk. And what I love too about this and when I was speaking with Jamie is that I don't want to just teach. I don't want someone to like sit there and just take notes and walk away. It's. I want everything just as you do, to be very interactive so that you have the exact tools that if you and I never work together another day in your life, my life, you at least have some of the tools that I didn't have when I was going through the challenges. And that's, that's really what this is about. And I think that retreats, and especially this one are changing where it's not just, okay, let me go to Costa Rica, do some yoga, I feel great and then I get thrown back in, you know, the deep end when I go home with the kiddos. And this is teaching you tools on how to truly change your life, transform your life, improve it, you know, get that performance. And so I'm very much looking forward to your sessions and meeting in person.

Yes. And meeting you. And so this is going to be great. So it's April 23rd, it's in Orlando, Lake Nona actually, which is pretty close to the airport. And so we've got some amazing things besides, you know, everything that we're doing to hear Nikki speak as well. I'm looking forward to hearing what you're going to share as well. So from your experience. So check it out, Nikki, how do people get a hold of you if they want to work with you directly?

Yeah, Nikki Sharpen I KKI S H A R P pretty much everywhere on Instagram, my website and I have my program, the ultimate transformation program starting in about a month, March 18th. So if anyone's interested to learn that for women, a four month long, very supportive program. Otherwise come, come see me at the retreat.

Excellent. So if you need to find out any information, you can check out our website as well. It's Inspired Performance Institute. And I'd like to thank Nikki for all your time. This has been amazing. Like I said, we could go on for hours on this whole subject. And I'd like to thank everybody for listening to another episode of you must be out of your mind. And there it is.