How Your Nervous System Shapes Your Success With Angelica Ventrice

What if the reason you aren't growing isn't your strategy, but it's your stress level? We spend so much time fixing the business, the team, your systems, but very few women actually realize the very thing that you need to fix is your nervous system.

In today's episode, we have Angelica Ventrici. She's a high-performance coach who is going to reveal how your body is quietly driving all the decisions you make, good and bad. And how learning to regulate it can change completely all your results. Women real estate investors analyze the market, crunch the numbers, make sure all the details are in line to grow their successful, thriving portfolio. But they forget this critical factor: their nervous system. Angelica, you say that the nervous system affects directly the success of every single individual. So let's break that down for the women that are listening. What does that actually mean?

I think this gets really, really underlooked. People say that systems and strategies run our business, but I'm going to argue that it's your physiological state. It's the state of your nervous system because you could have all your fa— your face, you're like, oh shoot.

You could have all—

I'm ready. We're ready.

And I am a big systems and process, right? And the nervous system is also part of that.

So I like love it. Exactly. Like, your nervous system is the operating system behind every belief, every reaction, every, every decision you're really making to build your empire. So if you are in a heightened state, if you are in that sympathetic state, which is the fight or flight, from a scientific perspective, when you're in that heightened state, the blood flow actually moves away from the prefrontal cortex which is where we want. We want the blood flow to go there because that's like our decision-making, right? That's like, okay, this is how we make decisions. But when we're in that heightened state, when we're in that sympathetic state, fight or flight, the blood flow is not going there. So we're not as clear to make decisions. And then, I mean, there's a whole slew of things that happen to your body. But, you know, that's just, just, just one of the basic, basic things that occur. And at the end of the day, like I was saying, you could have all the strategies, all the systems. No one really needs more strategies. And systems. What women really need is to learn how to work on the internal because that affects the external of their business. But it gets left behind because we're focused on closing the next deal, making more money, checking the boxes, right? And then we forget about what's going in here— the nervous system, the alignment in health and body, right?

Absolutely. I have, I have a ton of follow-up questions. I'm not going to even give Liz a chance to breathe.

Totally. I was totally having my finger up, which I was trying to beat you to the punch, but then you beat me to the punch. We're both like Please, we have so much to ask.

I totally agree with you that, that we are running a business and we are looking at the business, what systems and process the business needs in order to, to grow. How do we become, become more aware of the state of our nervous system? Of course, when it's shutting down and when we are really not able to function, but How can women that are listening get the signs way before?

That's a great question, but I do want to touch on something you just said. You said we look at the systems and the strategies for everything in the business. Who runs the business?

You.

Your body, the vessel that holds it all, that holds the wealth, that holds the joy, that holds the abundance, that moves the needle forward. The business is an extension of you. So what are some signs? Feeling burnt out, disconnected. Say at one point, you know, you had so much joy in your career. Suddenly you're just feeling like, why do I want to— I mean, I'm sure ladies listening, right? Why do I want to burn this to the ground? Right. Feeling disconnected, feeling like you want to burn it down, feeling burnt out, feeling anxiety, feeling fatigued. I mean, these are all signs that your nervous system is off. Low libido, high cortisol, cortisol belly, weight gain, weight loss resistance, poor gut health, which can lead to brain fog, which can lead to levels of inflammation, which then affects your decision-making abilities too. Depression, these are all signs that your nervous system is off.

And those are big ones, right? So, and sometimes they happen where you're like, "Oh wow, I'm off." Are there moments though in our week, in our day that is like the small shift, the small level of burnout? 'Cause burnout, it could feel so heavy for women down the road. And then it's like, whoa, it's like anything, right? A relationship doesn't die overnight. Marriage doesn't die overnight, right? It's all of a sudden. It happens over time. There's moments and then we ignore them, we don't listen to them. So what are some of those daily moments that women listening can say, wow, I'm on the way to burnout or I'm on the way to this and I want to avoid that?

Yeah, well, first of all, in order to even feel that, you got to slow down for a second, right? I think too many of us just go, go, go, check all the boxes, trying to get to the top of the mountain, forgetting about celebrating the daily wins and the joy. So Little things like feeling maybe a little extra anxious, maybe more fatigued. And I think often, you know, I'm in my 40s, I'm in perimenopause. We can be like, oh, it's just, it's perimenopause. I'm just tired because of that. But no, that fatigue can really be coming from your nervous system being quite off balance, right? So it's paying attention to that, paying attention to like, have you taken micro rests, micro breaks? What are you doing in between the deals, in between the calls? Are you going from one to one to one? Are you taking a second to slow down? Slow down. So it's paying attention to that. If you've gone all day, you haven't taken a walk, you haven't got some sunlight, you forgot to eat lunch— these are going to be indicators that you're moving towards, you know, that burnout. Does that make sense? It's like all these little micro things, right? Oh, I got, I got, uh, plenty of sleep last night, but I'm still feeling— I'm still feeling exhausted. Something is off, right? That's a sign that you're heading towards burnout.

I wanna, I wanna kind of like give a different perspective that I think is all combined, and many women listening might relate. We are overstimulated, over what, you complete the dots, and we are being over-functioning our lives. And then that becomes quote unquote the norm, and then we can't relax. There was a time that, It's I forced, literally forced myself to relax and had put boundaries to do not check any emails, any messages, nothing when I am on vacation, unless there's blood or bones, I don't need to know anything. But I had to really, really, really work on relaxing because my norm was over—

this is all high-achieving women. This is all what I coach in. So high-achieving women, let's actually go back to childhood, ages 0 to 7, where this is formed. You get good grades, your parents are like, oh, good, good job, good job. They show you a form of love. Then you get into college, you graduate with honors, you feel a level of success from achieving something. Then you get into your first career and you work— you say you're in sales like I was, and you win the awards, you're number one in the country. Oh, more success, that success equals a level of love and worth. So we start to operate at this level where we're like, oh, in order for me to be loved and feel worthy, I have a high level of success. So I operate in a very high functioning state, and we normalize that state, and we normalize the level of stress that we operate in, so much to the point where we can't even sometimes tell, like you were saying, that we're in that level of burnout. And this all stems from just how we were really brought up, because it's like, it's that identity trap. It's— this is our identity. We feel love when we achieve a certain level of success, but we're doing it with a dysregulated nervous system. And you do need to learn how to slow down. And some things I teach in my program are like the micro rest breaks, the grounding, the breathing, just like little tiny things that you can do in the day. Don't look at your phone first thing in the morning. Slow down, do 5 minutes of breathing, drink some lemon water so you're not going straight to coffee so your cortisol is not going up. There's so many little micro things we can do, but you're right, this is how we've been operating, and this is how our nervous system has been functioning for so long in a dysregulated level, literally since we're children.

Is it fair to say we are trying to regulate the child in our own inner child?

It's the identity. So it's like we form this identity, right, when we were younger that we felt worthy of love, when we got good grades, right? And to push us to get to want a certain level of success. And high-achieving women, many of them in real estate, as we know, they want to build their empires. And it's this pushing, it's this pushing, it's this pushing, because that's how they have felt love and validation, from the, from the pushing, from the high levels of success. But along the way, we've done it so hard and pushed so hard that we've dysregulated our nervous system.

We had a case of women inside our STRIVE mentorship program that she got her appraisal report for from rehab that she, she was doing, and the appraisal report came lower. And rationally, we're like, let's appeal. We already have a system that we can share with you. I have made over $300,000 just in appealing. I can totally give you the step by step how to do that. But that was not even the biggest problem. The biggest problem in her case was that she associated that result with her worth. And we had to process it with her to come to the awareness that that's what was happening, because she was not even aware of where was that feeling of sadness and discouragement was coming from. So the awareness is, is something super important. But let me ask you a question. Can one person become aware without others?

That's a great question. I've had a coach so long myself. I believe that you, you can become aware, but to move through to the next phases, it's wise to have guidance and a mentor because you can only see what you can only see. You're in the box. I'm out of the box. So often when women come to me for mentorship, they're aware that they have these roadblocks, right? They're aware that, like, I keep falling back into this pattern, I keep doing these things, I can tell that I'm attached— my worthiness is attached to my level of revenue and success. How do I shift? And then that's where the work comes in. Yes, I mean, the women at our level will be aware, right? That's the first step, is awareness. I would hope that they would be aware. But also, it really depends on the person, how deep in their ego are they. Some people just haven't done any of the work, right? And their, their ego is just flying high and they don't have the level of awareness. But that's not typically what I see. I see that they, they have some awareness and then they're like, okay, now help me shift. There's actually 4 phases to identity: awareness, activation, embodiment, and mastery. And you want to help, you know, you know, that's the work we do. We help them move through those stages so they get to the level of mastery where it's like, we're not, we're not associating our worth with our success anymore. It's inherent.

I'm curious though, in that moment, right, you have high-achieving women who are beyond— obviously their nervous system is attracted to it, addicted to it. There's like a regulation that needs to get kind of moved through and worked through. And there's a habit that's been formed. Like, this is who I am, right? There's actually like your level of who you are and your level of identity is in that. So that's big. It's not just like, I'm going to relax a little bit. So it could feel heavy to women and it could just hearing you talk, right? And I've learned how to take those moments and I love sitting on my porch outside, usually during lunch or if I haven't gotten— I always take a moment to have lunch, of course. I just stare. I just stare at the trees. I love staring at trees. That sounds funny, but I love just staring trees. It's one of my favorite things. But I've had to learn— that felt guilty. It felt guilty. I could be sending back an email while I'm eating, and I've had to work just through that micro opportunity. So women listening, is it just finding a short amount of time in their day? What does micro really look like to what you've seen?

Micro habits, micro rituals. Don't think big, right? It's like before you make $1 million, you make your first dollar, right? Before you lose 50 pounds, you lose 1 pound. So micro habits, that could be like you just said, I love that. Going to actually scheduling in a lunch break, scheduling in rest. You schedule in meetings, right, for your business. Schedule in a meeting with yourself, right? Schedule in 5 minutes in the morning to just breathe. So it's just these little micro things, little, little tiny things. Doing a— I do a facial cold dunk every morning. It's 25 seconds.

What?

What is it called? I dunk my face in ice cold water. It resets the vagus nerve. Okay, your nervous system.

Yeah, like a cold shower kind of thing?

No, I'm gonna— I'm getting on Amazon right now, I'll send it to you, it's gonna arrive tonight at your door.

No, I mean it's like a little bowl I stick my face in.

Yeah, it's a bowl. I stick my face in one of our bowls with ice water.

Yeah, it's— it has— you can— you already comes— there's a proper thing that it comes already with ice, you just break the ice and fill up the—

I'm living in a bubble, never heard of it.

That's fancy. I literally just use one of her huge salad bowls and— okay, okay, like you don't need to get fancier, but These are like little micro rituals you can do. Okay, so taking the 5 minutes and remembering that rest does not need to be earned. Rest is part of your business strategy.

Hmm.

Bottom line, you need to slow down to speed up. You can't just keep going at 150,000 million miles an hour to keep growing. You have to have that pullback. You have to slow down.

Let me ask you a question about what regulating the system works and what works for me, right? Sometimes it's different, but sometimes it doesn't mean doing nothing. Sometimes it means doing something like have a coffee at my favorite coffee shop or even getting a book, catching up on a book. So to me, regulating my nervous system sometimes is tied to certain activities that help me to, but it now, it's barely is like sitting down and staring at the birds like Liz, right? Liz does that. No judgment, Liz. All good. But I cannot look at the birds. I will start having so many downloads of ideas and I need to write that down somewhere. That won't work. And I think the reason why I'm saying this, because I really want to encourage the women that are listening to see what works for them and try it out, right? And see what fits or what doesn't. But I 100% would like women to— bodies are bodies, right? So, the cold in our face, it's independently of our personality or anything else. So I encourage all of you that are like, that's weird. Well, try it out. Try it out.

Yeah. I would also argue though, to play devil's advocate here, that there is something to sitting in silence. This meditation has been studied for years. So I hear a lot of women say what you say, I can't just sit still. My activity needs to be walking in nature. I'm going to challenge you to sit still. Sit still, close your eyes, do some breathing, put on a meditation or listen to the birds or the trees if you're in nature. But there is something to one, being in nature, what it does to the nervous system, scientifically proven. So what Liz is saying is there's a— there's the trees literally actually emit oxygen and you can feel it. And that's— that helps tone your vagus nerve. So there is something to that. There is something to being in nature and what does your body. If you can't be near nature, you're in an office, you can go outside, get a little sunlight, or just honestly you can put on a meditation. But there is something to just sitting and being. As humans in this society, we always want to do. We want to do, we want to do, we want to do, we want to do. By reading a book, you're doing, you're not being.

If I feel reset after I take time to have my chai latte and my book at my favorite coffee shop.

Yes, that's great. I'm just challenging you to also learn how to sit in silence and just be. Oh, sure.

Sure.

So don't take my chai latte from me.

To do your chai latte, do the reading. I think that's so important. But what I'm saying is truly learning how to just be. So when you attend a silent retreat, you can't read. Monks and Buddha, like when they're learning how to be a monk, there's nothing, there's no reading. Like they're meditating in silence. So there is ancient wisdom to that that we have forgotten in our society. So when I've attended silent retreats, I was like, oh, I can't bring a book. But then I understood the book is taking you out of you tuning into you and just being present, regulating your nervous system. I'm just going a level deeper. Like, absolutely. Meditation, I think it's very important. And I want people to understand the difference between doing and being. And high achievers burn out and dysregulate their nervous system because they're always doing and they don't know how to just be.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

One thing that I do right now that no matter what, I'm like, take my shoes off and go do my gardening. And that grounds me so much. And I have this— you probably don't know this, Liz— I have a grounding pad under my feet right now.

Beautiful.

Liz is like, that's cool.

I can stick my feet in the earth all day long, but a lot of my clients live in colder climates where they don't have that. And if you're sitting at your desk all day, The grounding mat mimics what the earth does, which is take away the positive ions. We're exposed to tons of EMF, so you want the negative ions to pull the positive out of us to calm our nervous system down. So this is beautiful you do that.

If I'm listening to this and saying, "Okay, but how does that help me achieve more?" The yes and, and so many of the women want to get to that next level. These women listening are driven, make it happen type of women. How do they really allow themselves to really get in there, embody this thought of, if I slow down, I actually will achieve more? Because I think it could be sometimes a little bit of a paradox for women.

It is hard. I mean, I'm a Type A, high-achieving worker. So trust me, it is hard. I used to feel guilty for like, okay, I'm going to take a half day to take my dog to the beach. And then it's really just learning that You don't need to operate at 150% to be successful. You can pull back and attract a lot of abundance being in your highest state. Doesn't mean that you don't take aligned action, but aligned action doesn't mean working 24/7 and running yourself into the ground. Aligned action doesn't mean saying yes to everything and saying no to yourself. What boundaries are you instituting? What are your non-negotiables? And realizing like You want to grow this empire, but don't you want to feel good while you do it? Or do you want to be overweight, burnt out, exhausted because it's going to catch up to you? So sure, all the money in the world, it's great, but it's useless if you don't feel good in your body while you're doing it. And that's really the angle to say if you're— and you may be feeling good now, but like I have a lot of women say to me like, well, I operate great under stress, but that doesn't mean that your body likes it. That doesn't mean internally— like a lot of women can look good on the outside, but internally their system is a wreck.

I'm curious to ask you about intuition and why this is coming up for me is I took a— my husband and I went on, we walked the El Camino in Portugal and Spain for our anniversary. So I had a number of days just walking on this path with other people. It was just a beautiful experience. And something I reconnected with was my intuition. And I knew I had it, but I haven't used it as something where I'm really listening being present and listening to my intuitive nature. And this experience really allowed me, and I had some ideas came up and it was just a really, this wonderful experience on a lot of different levels. But my point is I really reconnected with my intuition and not just reconnecting with it, but listening to it. And even now, right, I'm incorporating that in my life. So how does intuition, does it connect to listening to it, following it, you know, really embodying it? Does it connect to that nervous system kind of transition of what we're, talking about on any level?

Yeah. So when you're in a calmer state, you can tap into your intuition and your higher self.

If you're operating fight or flight and you think about it like, yeah, it makes sense, right?

Like if you're go, go, go, your shoulders are tight, everything's tight. You can't feel into your body, right? You can't feel into your gut, which is really the center, right, for it to tap into that intuition, right? They say the gut is the second brain. We can feel into our body, we can do muscle testing and different things. But if you are operating in that stressed-out state, you cannot tap into your intuition. And especially as females, we have very strong intuition. And the more you slow down, you'll be able to tap into your gut instinct, your intuition, and make sound business decisions instead of making these reactive, pushy decisions that move you perhaps in the wrong direction or made you go— like, maybe it ended up okay, but you went through all these crazy loopholes because you just didn't take a second to slow down. This is what I'm saying with the slow down. And slow down could just literally be like something simple in between— to say you have two really crazy meetings back to back— in between the meetings, taking a minute to just say release, release, release until you feel calm, and then move into the next meeting so you're more sound. It's just there's like so many little things that we, we can do, but just like slowing down to feel that. Yes, the intuition is a big piece of it.

So the release, what is that? You're literally repeating release to yourself, having a moment to yourself?

Yeah, until you feel calm. Because what happens is a lot of us have a call with a crazy client or a deal goes bad, then we move into the next thing and we're carrying that, bringing that energy. We bring that energy and people can feel it. And actually, if you and I were in person and I was high stress, you would feel my cortisol and then that would dysregulate your nervous system. Yeah, right. Or think about when someone who has amazing energy walks into a room, you feel it, you feel like, oh, I like that person for some reason. Yeah, same thing. So it's like we're bringing that into the next meeting, the next call, the next deal. So regulating in between, literally, like I call it, like just a micro, a micro reset is so vital, so helpful.

It's so funny you're saying this because InvestorCon for 4 years, no, 3 years in a row this year into 2025, that didn't happen. I, I had to start getting IVs so I could continue. And I'm like, Liz, it's not possible. Like I am, I'm like literally dying here. Because I can really feel people's energy. And when you have so many people in the room and you're having, as you were saying, one conversation after the other, and people are vulnerable, they're sharing deep, deep situations there, and I accumulated and carry it from one another, it brought my immune system down super badly throughout those years. And I'm like, I need to work on it. And besides, of course, getting what my body needs in terms of vitamins and the IV and all the different things, I also have mentally this closure. I call it a closure. So after every single conversation that I have, I wish the best and I release and I separate their energy from my energy. And then for the first time this year, I was able to do not carry around everybody's energy. But I think that people might be listening and like, oh, this is like woo-woo. It's physics.

It's physics. It is real. I visualize an energetic bubble and that might sound woo-woo, but that's really what it is. Whether you want to use release, whatever, however you want to do it. But it's, it's really, it's a boundary thing, right? Close it out. Close the energetic circle. Yes, because I know, because I sit in healing circles and there could be women next to me crying at all these weird things. I have to make sure that I'm not taking on the energy. I do a lot of healing work too, so it's like, yes, that's very, very, very important, especially when you're running it. You know, you're taking on a lot of energy, so your energy needs to be protected.

What can you do to prepare yourself for tougher situations? You know, you're walking into a, a funeral just multiple things in our personal and our professional. We really— I do it. I mean, I do something where I see, I see myself in the situation. I do some visualization, but there's nothing like just sometimes things don't work out. Things don't work out the way you may think the person wants them to or what have you. Can't control that. Are there other, like, another tool or another kind of set point that people can— women can walk into these situations to like I don't know, bring the energy that they want to set themselves and in the situation for the right outcomes, I should say. Not the best, but the right outcomes.

Yeah, I believe that visualization is a really powerful technique. So is journaling. So is meditation. Also just being really specific when you are doing your journaling and your manifestations. Not just like, "I really hope this deal goes well. I really like to get a new car." Like, what kind of car? How do you want to look? How do you want to feel? How do you want the new house to look? How do you want— like, how— be like really specific in your visualization and your manifestations. Too many people are just too general, and you're just— they're throwing out to the universe, and it's not going to align. So being really specific. Today, when I meet with the contractor, this is how I want it to go. This is how I want it to feel. Getting like really visceral with it. I want it to feel flowy and light and easy. I read a lot of books about manifestation, and they say when you journal or do the mantras, like 'With ease, I want to achieve this with ease and flow.' So using those type of words, creating little mantras for yourself that feel, you know, aligned to you. Everyone has different affirmations and mantras. Looking in the mirror, and I know it's so awkward, but it really does honestly help. Looking in the mirror and speaking to like that higher version of yourself and or what you desire to happen. Brain dumping, like in your journal, like if you're in your car, like having just like an, you know, an extra— I have a million journals— extra journal to like if any— if there's any nerves or anything that needs to come out, you get all the, the negative energy out. Sometimes we're anxious or we're feeling negative, get that negative energy out and like rip up that piece of paper. So yeah, there's a million different techniques. And then if it doesn't go the way you want it to go, remembering like victim versus victor, you know, we're not the victims here. There's a reason why something happened. Could you have shifted something if you did everything you thought you could do and then it wasn't aligned, right? And remembering that it's happening for us. Everything is happening for us. And remember, remembering the energy, because just because one deal goes bad, you know, every no leads to a yes. I like that, right? So just remembering that, like, okay, this happened, but on to the next and letting it go and releasing it rather than carrying it with us the whole day, right? Are you being reactive or are you responding? Well, and all really energy work at the end of the day.

I couldn't agree more. And I do believe that the women that, if you're listening, you're like, ah, I don't want to deal with it. That might be what's holding you back from truly achieving success, but going beyond not just the success material, but living the life that you want. I do not know any true successful women that are not taking care of their mind and their body as much as they are taking care of their assets. It's really a high priority. So I am super excited. If you are enjoying this conversation, that does not stop here. I am super excited to have Angelica joining us at InvestorCon 2026, where she's going to share with us a high-performance method called DNA. Tell us more about it, Angelica.

So the High Performance DNA, the D stands for dismantling limiting beliefs. We all have them. We all have the excuses and the stories and the subconscious programming that's been living in our body, really, you know, from an ancestral level even as well, the time we're in our mother's womb. So we're going to break that down, how that could be holding you back. We're going to, we're going to get deep. We're going to get uncomfortable, right? Because a lot of people think discomfort is leading you towards misalignment. But I say discomfort is moving you into greater. Alignment. And then we'll go into the N, which is the nervous system recalibration. So I'll do some— I'll actually be doing some like live on-the-spot coaching with, with women in the audience. I'm excited about that. And then the A is alignment in health and life. So talking about really what's going to get you to the greatest level alignment in your health, in your body, and in your life. So really, really excited to, to be bringing this. So I'm just— I'm so excited for this.

I'm excited. I want to like ask you more questions, but, but we'll have to just put a pin in that for now. And just cannot wait to meet you and have you there in, uh, in June, June 14th to the 16th. Hope everyone listening is going to be there in Scottsdale with us at InvestorCon for our 5th InvestorCon. So Angelica, where can everyone listening learn more about you and follow you on your journey?

Instagram is the best spot for me, @theangelicaventures. Send me a message if you have any questions, or yeah, I'm excited to see you guys at InvestorCon, but that's the best place to find me.

Great. All this information you guys can find on our show notes. Angelica, thank you, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom here with the community.

Yes, thank you so much.

Yeah, see you guys soon.