"Yawning Could Change Your Life!" – Author Cortney McDermott on Neuroscience Hacks for Performance

Would you like to be more confident? In fact, let's get more specific. Would you like to be more happy? Well, today's guest is going to help you with that. She's going to give you permission. In fact, her new best selling book is called Give yourself Permission. Be confident. Be happy. Be you. Courtney McDermott is one of a kind. She had an executive role at Vanity Fair. She's been featured in Success Magazine Inc. And so many others. But she is a world leader. Leader in helping people to master themselves, master the habits to transform their lives. You are in for an absolute treat. Enjoy the show. The Lead on Purpose podcast is sponsored by NZ Mortgages. Learn more at nzmortgages.co nz. Courtney, a huge welcome to the Lead on Purpose podcast.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, I'm so glad you're here. You're in one of my favorite places in the entire world right now. You're living in Del Mar and Caroline and I went there recently. It is dreamy. What, what took you to Del Mar?

Well, my daughter brought me to Southern California. I had been living in Italy for 23 years and she had been begging me for two years to move here and go to school here. And there were lots of twists and turns in that story. But we did get here. We did get here and we were first in Solana beach and now, yeah, now the new home is in Del Mar.

So what a spot. I love it. Now you are in high demand and I know that because one you've got like a three year wait list of people want to work with you one to one. You've been on Necker Island. I think there's probably a 0.00001% of the population of the world have been there. Richard Branson's beautiful island. And you've written incredible books and your TED talk has went viral. So I'm so excited to get this time with you and I'd really love to talk about Give yourself permission. That's the title of your latest book and I will actually going to put a little link in the show notes for people to go and get it. But what do you mean by give yourself permission?

Well, one of the things that I was seeing consistently across the board working with quote unquote high performers was that a lot of times the only one not giving them permission was themselves. Like they were in these positions to be able to capture a lot more of their freedom. But they were so again, I'll use the word performance, you know, performance based that the play was just drained out and Paradoxically, as well, a lot of times I was just seeing a lack of confidence, which I define as trust. I mean, it's not that I define it. Confidence comes from confidere, which means with trust or with reliance. And so I was seeing lots of times that instead a lot of the people I was working with were really in this control dilemma of feeling like they needed to control everything. And I really wanted to work on the angle where I could, of what if you could actually let go of that illusion and you could start operating from a different set of principles and awareness and just a different consciousness. And so Give yourself permission, actually as a title came as sort of a download and each chapter was give yourself permission to do whatever that looked like and whether it be give yourself permission to believe, you know, believe that you can, or give yourself permission to, to make a lot of money. Because there were a lot of people as well in the entrepreneurial space who are trying to do what they love, but not necessarily aligning that to an abundance, consciousness and awareness of, of that. And so, yeah, I wanted to share all of that. And so each chapter was dedicated to a different permission that one can grant oneself when they're ready.

How empowering. And I get it because I work with a lot of high performers in different industries and some in corporate, some in sport, but I do get that sense that control is everything. And it's like command and control. And there's obviously a toxic side of that. So can we explore that for a second? For those that are like, oh, I'm not a control freak, I don't desire to have control over everything. What should they look out for as telltale signs that they are focused on control? And then the second component of that is what are the consequences if we don't get that in check?

Yes. I love this question. So control. I find it pretty fascinating that we trust in 99.999. I don't know how far that number goes on percent of what's happening both within us and outside of us. Right. You're not sitting there right this moment wondering whether the trillions of biochemical reactions that occur in your body every second are going to do what they need to do. You're not creating a five year plan for that. In the same way, you don't question whether this unless you have some issues. You don't question whether the sun's going to come up in the morning or whether it's not going to come up. You don't go to bed at night fretting about that or the path of the planets or the fact that we're spinning around on this ball of dirt in the middle of nowhere. You don't, you're not worried about it. You just take it for granted that it's all going to stay on track. And that's the 99 point. Like I said, some odd 999-999-9999 whatever percent. And then we take this infinitesimal part that's left over this 0.00000 Again, no idea how far that number goes on 1% that we somehow decide we need to control that if it doesn't look this way, then it's not okay. Whether that's a relationship, whether that's your job, whether that's certain results that you get in your business. And we say, oh no, no, no, no, no, you know, the sky is falling.

And that's the trap. Or as Shakespeare will put it, therein lies the crux.

And.

It is one of the grandest illusions. I think it is our, it is the cause of suffering to kind of paraphrase from what Buddha was talking about. Because it's not so much desire. The desire is an evolutionary impulse. It's very normal that you want to grow. It's very normal and beautiful that you want to adapt and evolve into new versions of yourself and possibilities and potentials and probability outcomes. You want to experiment with that and enjoy it. That's the human, that's the human game. And at the same time realizing that you don't, the minute you relinquish that control of it needs to be this way or I want it to be only that way. A lot more magic is going to open up in your life and in your business as well. But it's just really hard because we've been hyper conditioned to think that those little bits and pieces that are there that are somehow I don't know, intimate to us in some way, that we have to control them in some regard. And I think that's, that's a really gets us into really tricky and sticky situations 100%.

And you know, I reflect on my own life and sometimes there are things that I need to have control over. Like time is a very, it's a crazy thing in my life. Like I'm very time focused and you know, I'll be early to things and I'll measure time and I'll, you know, quantify it and schedule it and it's a bit overwhelming for a lot of people around me, I imagine. But there's a control sense I can Control this. So what advice would you have to me maybe to like, let go and accept maybe some acceptance.

Well, it's beautiful to be on time. It's another thing to let time control you and have everything be kind of in these neat little boxes of, you know, and I used to live very much that way. So I'm talking from. I'm talking from the other side, if you will, the other side of having gone through that. Because as a high performer, which I know you are, and your history is remarkable. And so we get trained, we get hyper trained to think, okay, Now I've got 10 minutes for this, and now I've got 50 minutes for that, and then I've got 60 minutes for this other thing. The thing that happens is most of the time when you are in those time traps, you are calcifying into a Persona.

You are calcifying into a character that then becomes almost the only character you can play in the show. And that can get really boring.

The minute you start to realize that you're also not the character, you realize that essentially, which means you open up your space a lot more. Your time space continuum, you open it up a lot more to this intelligence, the one that's beating your heart and conducting the trillions of biochemical reactions every second. That one. When you say, okay, I'm going to start making a lot more space for that and then see what starts to happen with your time. There's also, I have a time model in this second book because I wanted to awaken people to the potential that when you're doing a lot less of what you think you should be doing, and you're really focusing instead on the pieces that you know innately to be yours and yours alone to experience, you know that there's a you you're becoming. And if anyone listening to this podcast, your podcast specifically, which I absolutely love, anyone listening to it, the people that are listening to this show are people that have this aching desire to step into who they're becoming. And the way to do that is usually not through.

Too much structure. Structure is great, but it's like a little kid. You need to have the structure, but you also need to have a lot of space around that so you can breathe into these new potential for yourself, so you can open up to the new potentials. So at the beginning, if you're asking about you specifically, I would say, like, play around with it a little bit. You know, to paraphrase from Warren Buffett's, you know, Warren Buffett talking about, don't, don't test the depths of the, of the water with both feet. You know, don't just jump in, but play around with giving yourself bigger margins. Play around with saying, okay, what If I took 10 minutes in between to shake out my body, in between whatever it is that you're doing. What's going to happen when you do an exercise like that, which could even be five minutes or three minutes, but you getting up and shaking to a fast paced song or oxygenating and with some jumping jacks or whatever that looks like that will start to release a lot of stuck, stagnant energy in your body. A lot of this calcification that I mentioned a minute ago so that you can open up to new possibilities for yourself. Because if it's always been this hyper trained, like I need to be on top of it and do all these things, you're sort of missing like the magic, right? In some regards, like it can be very easy to miss the magic when you're in that, when you're in that dimension, which again, in the, in the book, I go through a time model because I talk about these different dimensions of time. There's the dimension of delusion, the dimension of distraction, the dimension of demand, and then there's the dimension of design, which is where you're really focusing on those things that you and you alone can do. And you, you alone know that you have to do.

And again, you sort of flip the whole time paradigm, if you will, which needs to be flipped because we live in a culture and societies across the, across the world that are basically saying, do, do, do, do do, missing the essential teachings of all our greatest spiritual traditions.

You know, like the, in the dao, it is in the non doing that it is done right. It's like, relax. So I talk a lot about it, about that in my work because I think it's so critical, especially for people listening to this who are like, I want to do it, I want to make it. But it's when you step into like, oh, I already made it. I mean, the fact that you're here, the fact that you're creating this, the fact that the people who are listening, I mean you, you are in this potential, you're living it. So opening up to more of it requires a kind of relaxing around it that's so powerful.

Cornea, I really needed to hear that. And as you're sharing this with me, I feel like there's this trilogy going on. And for people that don't know these other two people, I think they should focus in for a Second and get the. Get the connection. So there's yourself, there's Wayne Dyer, and there's Arthur C. Brooks. I think you guys are like the most powerful trilogy of helping humans discover what's most important. And Wayne Dyer's translation of the Dao, like, it is so powerful. How you perceive it and how you look at time is mind blowing. And Arthur C. Brooks, along with Oprah, writing the book, build the life you want and how do we create happiness? All the things you say are in alignment with him. So you three together, like, I think can really transform this world. And you put it in such plain English for a person like me to understand. So thank you.

Thank you. That is, wow, what a high thought. Thank you for that. You know, it's astounding me that you're saying this because I just walked into my local library the other night. I got back, I had phone back from Mexico, and the library here is open until 7pm on Tuesdays. And I got back at, I don't know, four something. So I walk over because I really wanted to get a library card. I haven't gotten a library card over here in the States yet, so I wanted to go get a library card. And I stroll in there and I brought the right documents. I was able to get a card. I was really excited about that. Had a great chat with the librarian. And then I strolled up to the biography section. And what book do I choose? I haven't interacted with Wayne Dyer's work in years. But when I was a kid, I used to listen to his audios. When I was a child, I was listening to his audios and I strolled up to that biography section and I see his autobiography and I pick it up and I sit in the library for two hours until it closes. Reading his autobiography just two days ago, my friend. And now you're talking to me about him. I mean, that is like, wow, synchronicity. Carl Jung, like, blow his top at that. 100%. Love it.

I really love it too. I think it's special. And when I look at the work that you do, I often think that great authors, they generally write the book that they needed like three or four years ago or five years ago in their life. And so that's helped them navigate and they want to help others navigate what they've went through. So what did you go through in your own lived experience that made you really want to write this book on giving yourself permission?

Wow, thank you. No one's ever asked me that question. I died so many times.

This Life has been so many rebirths into new potentials. Sometimes when I'm giving talks around the world, I don't usually use slides because I just like to talk. But I have started using slides over the last few years because I wanted to show a picture of myself from 10 years ago when I was in corporate. And well, over half the audience, I would say even much closer to 80, 90%, does not recognize me. It takes.

A beat for people to recognize that it's the same human in front of them. And then when they do, it's like mouth agape. They cannot believe. The transformation of this human, of the form. And what I wanted to share through the book because I've had a lot of spontaneous transformations. My clients report the same things. I had a young woman. I normally do not work with children.

It's sort of a personal policy. I like going in and teaching at younger schools where I can't, as a kind of a pro bono thing. But I. I had this family come to me, a really prominent family, and they wanted me to work with their daughter. And she had terrible eczema. And they had done everything. And they had all the resources, my friend. I mean, they had all the resources to cure this eczema. And she did one session and it was gone, and it never came back.

And what I wanted people to know through this work and what I love to share through my work and through the possibility of just even with a book. We have so many testimonials for this book that people have come back and said things like, we just had one recently where someone said he was living.

In a camper home with his kids, on his own, in the middle of just destitution, essentially. And he said he got his hands on this book and everything has changed for him. His family's out of that situation. He got them out of that situation. He attributes it to the book. But the truth is, it's. He was seeking what was in there. He was the seeker, and thus he was the finder. And I, when I get those, I think, okay, we can do this. We can change consciousness. And the consciousness is what changes the form. Whether that's your physical form, whether that's the environment that you see around you. That's the fact of the matter. And I wanted to give people as closely and as clearly as I could the.

Ways that I have found. And the. It's not just instruments, but again, it's the consciousness. It's the awareness. It's the awakening to, like, for instance, the money chapter in the book. It's awakening to certain. Certain knowledge. It's awakening to a consciousness around money that's not like, oh, let me go out and get something. It's really awakening to the fact that you have these potentials. They are in the field right now.

I resonate with that.

Yeah, yeah. Whether you're going to see it. Yeah, no, that's it. That's.

Yeah, I really resonate with that. And probably 10 years ago, I would have been like, this doesn't make sense to me. This all seems a bit crazy to me. I. I was that guy, right? And I was similar to you, like, working hard in a corporate kind of environment, working many hours, drinking a lot of alcohol, not looking after my body. My relationships were subpar. It was not good. And then I started reading and come across work like the Master Key System. You know, it's very old book, but, you know, incredible. The Secret, of course, and, you know, more recently, Joe Dispenza and just understanding quantum. The quantum field epigenetics, the connections. It makes sense now. It totally makes sense. And I'm meeting more and more leaders and high performers that want to understand this, and they're fully invested in going, hey, what's going on in my mind? What's going on in the world, the universe, these potential realities? So for the person that's a bit stuck like I was, who's a bit of a skeptic like I was, what would you challenge them to consider?

Yeah, I was a major skeptic, too, and I work with super, super, super smart people. So you can't say, oh, just stand in front of the mirror and say, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone if people like me. It's not about affirmations.

And people often fail to recognize that actually everything we're talking about, yes, it comes from our greatest spiritual traditions, and the Eastern traditions knew it all along. But science is catching up now, and I love to present all of that. So in my books or in my talks, like my signature talk right now joins together three key principles in neuroscience, epigenetics and quantum physics that are all demonstrating that essentially what you're putting your consciousness on is that's the creative principle. Your consciousness is the creative principle. Your consciousness is your currency.

And so when I meet a skeptic, I think, great, I love it. Let's talk neuroscience. Let's talk what's happening in your brain right now. Because most of the time, what's happening in the brain of, well, really virtually anyone. Let's take a Thought, for example, you know, people say, oh my God, my thoughts. It's just my brain, my mind's going crazy. All this stuff.

Thoughts, right? We don't even know the origin of a thought. There's not a part of your brain that I can point to, like the prefrontal cortex and say thought originates there. We don't know. What we do know is that you're getting these electrical impulses. They are electrical impulses, right? And the average person is getting somewhere between 50 to 70,000 thoughts of them a day. And the average person is recycling the same thought patterns every day.

And what we can see is the impact. So if we look at it from a purely a scientific perspective, we look at brain body scans, for example, okay. And we see that when this thought impulse comes, if the person kind of grasp onto the thought impulse, they're holding onto it, they're repeating it, they're getting all worked up about it, right? Because it goes through. People talk about emotions. That's a kind of a tricky word. I like to think of it as sensations. You will feel a physical sensation. It'll provoke a physical sensation in your body. So that's happening. While that's happening, your brain is literally sending these chemical messengers. You think of them like little chemical messengers, little neuropeptides going down and literally being lodged into the different organs of your body. The Eastern traditions knew about this. They talked about chakras, they talked about freeing those chakras, these, these energy centers. The Western science, the Western medicine as well, is catching up and realizing, oh, crap, this is really true. But when you've got a skeptic right, again, repeating that thought of like, this is useless. I don't need this. Whatever else that looks like my first, my first inclination would be, you don't have to believe any of it. I will just tell you one thing that can help you. That I promise can help. And again, it's the relax. But again, then lots of times people rail against that. They're like, I can't relax. I got all these things to do. And I suggest two major things to people. I say yawn, go and yawn. Yawning is considered the best kept secret of neuroscience. So if you yawn, you're both energizing and relaxing your body at the same time. You're also sending a message to your relaxing your vagus nerve, which sends a message to your entire body that you're safe. You're moving into different brainwave frequencies. So you're moving out of beta frequencies. If you're Freaking out that you got to do all these things. You're moving out of Beta. You'll start to gradually move into Alpha, where you get more creative, where you have more access to this intelligence we've been talking about. You could potentially keep sliding into theta if you just keep relaxing. You're also simultaneously releasing oxytocin, you're releasing serotonin, you're releasing this host of beauty, like a chemical cocktail in your body that you don't need any drugs for. So you're doing all this just by yawning. Yawn for a minute. It will seriously start to transform your life. Lay down. Same exact thing. That vagus nerve is relaxing. You're relaxing your autonomic nervous system. You're changing your brainwave frequencies. You're opening up to new potentials. And when people tell me, I can't lay down for five minutes, I paraphrase from the Dalai Lama, who said, you know, if you can't meditate for five minutes, meditate for an hour. If you truly believe that you cannot lay down for five minutes, I beg of you, go nap for an hour. You will start to revolutionize your life. So I don't have to get. I don't have to convince you. I'm not trying to convince any skeptics, but I love being able to introduce some really basic, simple science so that people can start feeling better and operating from that place. Because when we operate from that place, we. We're just better for everyone else, too. And that's what I want to see in the world. Like, I don't. I don't want to be doing great in a world that's not doing great. I want to be doing great in a world that's doing great. So those are some suggestions. I'm with you on that right off the bat to some skeptics, yeah.

That's so powerful. It's funny when you talked about yawning, I'd never thought of it in that context before, but I was thinking back to times when there was big moments. So playing at the World Championship final, you know, like three, four minutes out from my performance, I started yawning. And it's like, it's the middle of the day. There's no way. I'm tired, and I'm like, I just keep yawning and yawning, and then I go up and play and I'm pretty happy with my performance and walk off. I'm like, cool. I didn't realize that the yawning was actually helping the nervous system that was Getting me settled to perform.

Yes. And, you know, have you ever noticed that animals before a hunt and after a hunt, they yawn?

Yeah. Yeah, I never thought of that either. And the other thing you Talked about earlier, 15 minutes ago was having these break points in your middle of your busy day to shake. It's interesting. Got a couple of dogs, and when they're kind of rough housing and, like, with each other and wrestling, as soon as they stop, they shake. They shake off the feeling, the emotion, the anger that they have towards each other. And I'm like, wow, I wonder why they shake every time. But it sounds like us humans need to do the same thing.

We absolutely do. I learned this trick from a woman. I went to her retreat years ago in the south of France. She was teaching this movement called Coya. Her name is Rochelle. And she had us do this shaking. And while she was telling us this story, and she said, shake one of your hands vigorously. And while she told us the story. So if anyone's listening and they want to try, you just shake one hand, and you just keep shaking it. And she told us this story about a gazelle being chased through the wetlands by a tiger. The gazelle gets away. However, the gazelle does not go to therapy for the next 10 years. About this time that a tiger was chasing her through the wetlands. What the gazelle does is she shakes through every part of her body, releasing the tension, releasing the fear, and goes back to being a gazelle. And if you are shaking that hand and you hold the two hands out in front of you, you will feel a remarkable difference between the two. One of those hands, the one that was shaking, will be much lighter. You have literally started to release some of that stuck, stagnant energy. We say it's psychological, but really, lots of times it is stuck energy in our physical bodies. And a lot of the times it's happening there. And we also know that the quickest way for us to change what's going on up here is to change what's happening in our body. And again, science demonstrates that very clearly. And anyone who's ever even just been struggling with something and they get up and they take a walk around the block or. I used to joke when I was in corporate that my best ideas came to me when on my way to the loo, because it was the only time that I wasn't actually, you know, stuck to my screen, unfortunately, at that time in my life. But luckily, even then, I started to tap into some of these things, and that also changed completely the trajectory of My corporate career as well. So you can tap into these wherever you are, whatever you're doing. And as you do, you will be setting, you know, trailblazing, setting that trail, that path for, for others. If again, it's not our responsibility to do that for others, but it is your responsibility to do that for yourself. It's your responsibility to shine your light. It is your responsibility. So such a big message. That's one of the ways.

Yeah, I love it. It's interesting that the lymphatic system obviously keeps us alive and cleanses us. It can get quite stagnant, particularly in us adults. Like I look at my 8 year old boy and he's constantly jumping from couch to couch and he's constantly moving. I look at my own life, whoa. I'm pretty stagnant in comparison. So the idea of like, I think they have those rebounders and people rebound to kind of move the lymphatic system. So as you're saying all of this, I'm just like, it makes so much pragmatic practical sense, yet there's still this component that we can't put our finger on which is where does our thought originate? We might never know, but there's this kind of magic. But we have such influence in other things and so few of us, I guess, don't step into that influence. We kind of give up and don't give ourselves the permission.

Yeah. And you know, thinking, very few people actually direct the thought process.

I mean, it's very curious that we say, I think.

Because most of us are not conducting that at all. And.

You know that book Think and Grow Rich, I always say, well, you know, that's one of the most sold books of all time. Right. Napoleon Hill did a number on that one. But if all these people have read it and it's not working out for them, I thought to myself, what is it that is missing? And I realized there are two words implicit in that title. And if you don't get those two words, you will not be able to put that book into practice in your life. What he was teaching. And the two words are learn to learn to think. Learn to start conducting and moving and shaping those electrical impulses. You can. It takes effort. It is arduous. I think it's the most arduous undertaking we can perform because we're so untamed in our thought process, in the ones we're holding onto. And also once you've learned to do that, you can start letting go of all of those impulses as they come in and that is a very liberated place to be living from. Again, not the easiest task, especially not in our society that says, oh, that thing should make you so upset. Why? Why?

I talk about this a lot in the book because you're holding on to. You know, I say if you pull a hot potato out of the oven and it's giving you second degree burns, you're not going to hold it there and let it just burn the crap out of your skin. You're going to drop it. But we're not dropping these thought impulses. And we've got to learn, and I do lots of training on that, because that piece is vitally important. If someone wants to live a really directed life, they've got to start working with those thought impulses and not letting them just run amok.

Yeah, it's taking responsibility, I guess, and taking an intentional direction with our thoughts. So I like the thought of Think Time. And I often have in my calendar, this is Think Time. And I don't hang with anyone. I usually go for a walk. I might bring my journal. I might meditate. And I just don't, like, force the thought. But what kind of exercise might you suggest that we could start with to really kind of develop my level of thinking?

Well, one of the things to play around with is one thought or even one word and just starting to learn to repeat it to yourself. And you will see, most people will see how hard this is for them. So if you just sat there and you just. One of the ones that the best one you can play with is thank you, thank you, thank you. And you just imagine and you just let your mind focus on those two words. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And you will see, or most people will see.

That that, as I said, is a very difficult exercise.

The more you practice it, the less difficult it'll become and the easier it'll become for you to start redirecting some of those really wild thoughts that are not serving you, but just starting to practice with that. And then, you know, lots of times people say, well, you know, I tried that out for a few days, didn't work. Well, how long have you been trying out the other one? Right. The fact that these thoughts are on repeat. And to go back to Wayne Dyer's work, I remember as a kid listening to him talk and one of, in one of his talks, he said, you know, you got all these thought impulses. He was talking about thought impulses. And he says, he said something to the effect of, that's your currency. Right. And so it's like, you go into these shops, right? You go into one shop and you're shopping for stuff for your home, and you see this horrible couch. You wouldn't want this couch anywhere, but you spend 20 grand on it, and you send it home. And then you go into the next shop and you see an awful rug, but it matches the couch. And so you purchase that, too, another five grand, and you send that home, and so on and so forth, et cetera. And you go through the day, and then you get back to your home and you say, why is this so ugly? You know why? This is just so ugly around here, right? And that's what we're doing, right? That's what most people are doing. And it's like, just clean it up. It's not. It's not rocket science. It's not easy. I will say that because we have been. Unfortunately, we have not been taught about these operating systems. We need teaching. We need teaching in our curriculum. Our children should grow up with these teachings. I find it horrendous that we don't teach about the mind and body. You know, we do it in a very superficial and also misdirected way most of the time in our school systems. I know I grew up in that. I didn't learn anything about my. About my brain and how to use it. My mind and how to use it, they're two different things, the brain and the mind. But anyway, I didn't learn anything about these Magnus. I didn't know anything about the reticular activating system, for example. I didn't know that my brain's. One of its major functions is to find the matches for what I'm thinking predominantly about or my questions, my predominant questions. I didn't know those things. When you start to know those things and you start to play with them. So again, advice would be to really start to calm the mind, because you can't get anywhere if you.

If you.

If you've just got all this noise, you know, it's like trying to hear a single note in a cacophony of notes. You're not going to be able to hear it. So it's really starting to say, all right, I'm just going to start with a simple practice. I'm going to. In line at the grocery store. I'm just going to see how long I can repeat, thank you. And when I lose track, that's okay, I'm going to come back to it. And as I'm falling asleep, I'm just going to keep repeating, thank you. And if I get distracted, which I will, I'm going to come back to it. And when I wake up, I'm going to do the same thing. That's the other thing I would suggest for people. Be extremely mindful about how you use those pre sleep and pre waking times. Extremely mindful, because that is when you are most programmable.

So we're in theta at that point.

Yeah. So as you're falling to sleep, so most people, let's say you've been on your phone right? Until late at night, you're gonna be in beta, right. And the blue screen light is gonna be sending off serotonin at a time that you should actually be producing melatonin. So you're not gonna be your most relaxed. Your brainwave frequencies are gonna be kind of going crazy. It's gonna be usually for most people, a little bit harder to get to sleep. But as you're falling and you're following, you're going into different ranges of beta.

These frequencies have ranges as well. So you might start to drop into low beta. So you're chilling out a little bit more. Then you start to move into alpha after that, then you start to move into theta, then you move into delta. And delta is where you're releasing human growth hormone, which is just what's regenerating your body, which is why we need to sleep. When you're in theta, you're releasing catecholamines, which are vital for learning and memory. So you've got all of this magnificent chemical part that's happening in you. And if you're using those times to frankly focus on other people's priorities, like that's the best way I ever heard. Some of these, like email and social media is like a great organizing mechanism for other people's priorities. Right. So you're grabbing your phone, you're focusing on this. You're not going to be living a directed life if you just do something as simple as yawning, giving yourself a few minutes, repeating thank you. Giving thanks. You know, Sir John Templeton, who is arguably the greatest investor of all time, definitely one of the greatest investors, when he was asked the secret to wealth, and he really had wealth in the truest form, not just the financial wealth. He said it's one word. Gratitude.

Appreciate. Appreciate all of it. You know, we're here today, we're gone tomorrow. Appreciate it.

So I think those simple things of just starting to calm your mind, starting to train your mind to focus on something and have that training really be around gratitude, even if you're Feeling like, what can I be grateful about? There's stuff to be grateful about. There's a lot of stuff to be. Just go find it and seek it out. And it will start to really, really disrupt a lot of those patterns that have been leading maybe into more tumultuous places.

That's really powerful. Break the patterns that we're in. And yeah, the attitude of gratitude. Every morning I've got my journal and I just start with some gratitude. Whatever I'm grateful for, sometimes it's ridiculous, small things. Other times it's big things. Other times there's people that kind of recur and they pop up a lot. But it does allow me to be a bit more focused and intentional about how I start my day. Now I'm human, and some days this bad boy, for those that are listening and not watching, sometimes I lift this bad boy up the phone and it starts my day. And those are not good days. They are a little more reactive and yet less kind of calm and flow. So I relate to that a lot. And the other thing, as you were speaking, I've been thinking about is the nervous system. And I think for some people, when they talk about quantum and they talk about manifestation, for some people it's like, God, I can't connect with that. But we can all connect with the nervous system. It's a thing, and we know it's a thing. And science has documented it. Now, if our nervous system's out of whack and we're highly strung, overwhelmed, anxious, burnt out, I imagine no matter how hard we try to make the millions or the billions, to have the dream relationship, to have the body that we love, whatever it is that we want. I imagine if our nervous system is dysregulated, it's going to make our lives pretty difficult. So what's your advice to people in terms of, like, getting in touch with their nervous system and then regulating?

Yes. Well, definitely the pieces from earlier. So yawning and laying down is going to start to reset your nervous system. It's some of the simplest ways moving is going to help reset your nervous system. And again, if you're having problems with any of these things, just say, I'm just going to spend. I'm just going to, like, set a timer every hour. And I'm only going to spend a minute, a minute yawning. That's all I'm going to do. That minute every hour will start. You'll see how it'll start to expand. It will start to expand into new possibilities for you because you're just teaching your nervous system that it's safe. You're showing your nervous system that it's safe. The reason a lot of people are struggling is they don't feel safe. And you're the one who has to create that safety for yourself.

Because, you know, I used to think when Einstein, when he talked about the environment being the sole governing agency of the particle, I thought he was talking about. Of course he was talking about it from a physics perspective, but when I kind of extrapolated, extrapolated that to the human experience, I thought, you know, he's talking about also your immediate environment, what's surrounding you and how it's shaping you. But then after I started to really play around with that theory and in myself noticing you also have an inner environment that's the one you get to cultivate.

And so your nervous system is depending on you. It's depending on you saying, no matter what's happening out there, I'm going rogue. I'm going to breathe, I'm going to lay down, I'm going to take some of those deeper breaths into those full body breaths. You don't need anything fancy for this. You don't need any breathing techniques. That's why I love yawning, because I'm like, please don't use any of the fancy breathing techniques. Just go yawn. Another one I love that really helps with the nervous system is laughing. Those I consider the two highest meditations, laughing and yawning. If you can just laugh. And I do this sometimes. I used to do workshops. I don't, I don't really offer them anymore, but I used to do these workshops and I would sit around with people and I would, I would trigger the la. I would just start, I would tell everybody, we're going to laugh together. We're just going to laugh. We're going to laugh as hysterically as we can possible. This is weak as possible. We're just going to experiment with this. And it was, it's, it's awkward and uncomfortable for the first few seconds. And then all of a sudden everyone's really genuinely laughing because your mirror neurons get activated, your kubelli neurons get activated, and you are genuinely engaging in this really powerful breathing exercise that oxygenates all of your blood cells and everything else. I know, I can't remember what teacher this was, but there was a mystic who was talking, I remember talking about this years ago who was saying, like, they would just go and laugh hysterically. They would. Or they would hear this, this mystic every morning, laughing hysterically to himself. Right. And I don't know if that was his practice or that was just, you know, his part of his enlightened being. But it's such a powerful way to connect with yourself, your inner intelligence, your relaxation response. And think about it. We don't like to interact with people when they're all uptight. Like, no one wants to be. No one wants to be around someone with their panties in a bundle. Like, just, you know, breathe it out. But it. Breathe it out in these ways that are, that we come equipped with these technologies. You don't need to like hold your breath for an hour and be in all these crazy positions. I mean, I love it. I'm not opposed to any of that. But what I'm saying is it doesn't have to be so complicated. Can really just be like, find more ways to laugh. Find more ways. I went through a whole period. I don't remember if this was like eight, nine, ten months ago, but I was like, I just want to watch stand up comedy. I just want people around that are making me laugh. That's the other thing that I would highly suggest. If you're in a situation where you're struggling and the people around you are maybe more negative, et cetera, et cetera. We are in a day and age that you get to decide who you interact with. This podcast is a great example. When I found your podcast, I was just like, binge listening because this guy's amazing. And all of your solo episodes and the things you were doing when you were interviewing people, this is really good stuff. This guy's doing really good stuff. And we need to tune into those places that are reminding us of the truth of what you are. No one can teach you anything. And if anyone says these, just do these five things and everything will be okay. I call bs. I call absolute bs. You, you are the one with the ruby slippers. The people who you interact with should be reminding you that you have those ruby slippers. That the way home is within you. That the knowing of everything you need to know to be a pure expression of the formless through your form, and to shine that light through your form that is in you, that come. You come equipped with that. You have to remind yourself and be surrounded by people who remind yourself. And like I said, we are in a day and age where you have access to that. Everyone listening has access to that. If it's this recording, go back to it again and again and again and again until the knowledge becomes your knowledge. It's not somebody else's it's not. Didn't come from anyone telling you what to do. It came from you recognizing that part of you recognizing this is truth. And if it doesn't, throw it out where it does, grab it and say, this. I'm going to spend my time with this. This makes sense for me to interact with this person.

This makes so much sense to me. And in terms of where my life has changed, it's been through just thought leaders, great people like yourself and you know, many years ago, Tony Robbins, in fact, I was at a Tony Robbins event in Fiji. And it wasn't him, but it was another one of his instructors doing the laughing thing. I was like, guys, we're going to laugh hysterically in our chairs. I'm like, I'm not doing this. This is weird. I'm going to watch everyone. And he was like, come on, for those of you who are skeptics, come on, let's give it a try. So I started fake laughing. And within about 30 seconds, I'm in hysterics, genuine hysteric, like laughing at myself doing this. And everyone's laughing at each other. And if somebody had to walk into that room, they would have thought we were all nuts. But I'll tell you what, it felt great. And next time I'm in Del Mar, I want to have a laughing session with you.

We're doing it, my friend, we're doing it. And you know, I forgot to mention those workshops. I mean, you will see a visual reduction of lines. They've done, they've done such fascinating studies where they've worked with technologies like that. You can see the, the lengthening of the telomeres, which are those shoe like strands at the end of your DNA that actually indicate your age. You will see these quote unquote miracles occurring when you're working with these technologies instead of like, you know, you brought up your 8 year old. I mean, we know this. We culminate with jumping around on couches. We're meant to do that. We're designed to be doing this stuff. And then we just get it sort of hammered out of us and we stuff a bunch of other stuff inside. So it's unstuffing, unmucking and coming back. It's, you know, unless you become again as children, you shall not inherit the kingdom.

So powerful. This is amazing. I could literally speak with you about this for days, hours and days. But I want to be mindful of your time. So a couple of things for the person watching or listening. One, I'm going to Put a link in the show notes where you can go and buy both books. The most recent book, obviously we've been chatting a bit more intentionally around that, but you buy both books also. I'm going to put all of your socials, Courtney, so people can actually come and follow you and engage with the amazing work that you do. If someone wants to work with you, they're just going to have to be really patient and join your wait list. But I hear maybe in 2025 there may be some other ways in which they can engage with you. So I'll make sure that they can connect with you socially and they can follow along to see what you might bring to the world.

Thank you so much. Thank you. One of the things that's important to note, if anyone's listening and they're looking up the name, it's Courtney without a U. So lots of times that gets missed. And so if you're trying to find me, which I hope you do, I hope all of you listening find me because you are my people. If you're listening to James and Yeah, it's Courtney McDermott on all the social and website as well, it's also Court Inc. C O R T I N C where you can find a lot of, a lot of additional resources and things. So thank you so much.

I love it. Can I ask you one last question, please? So for a moment, let's just pretend that we're going to fast forward many years into the future and you're highly aware that it's your last day here on earth and someone very young that you really love, they're really dear in your heart, they come into the room and they say, courtney, how do I go about leading my life on purpose? What would you say to them?

Trust. Trust every single thing that occurs.

Relax into that trust and your life will be a non stop miracle.

That's seriously powerful when you share that and I'm sure the listener can feel this too. You're like holding us, you're holding space for us as listeners and I can, I can see that you embody that message that you're passing on to this person that means so much to you. So trust. Thank you so much for sharing that and thanks for the great work that you do.

Thank you and thank you so much to everyone who listened.

The Lead on Purpose podcast is sponsored by NZ Mortgages. Learn more at NZMortgages Co NZ.