The Neuroscience of Stress: Train Your Brain for Success - with Rebecca Heiss

Stress. We've been taught to fear it, fight it and run from it. But what if it's actually the very thing that can unlock your greatest potential? Dr. Rebecca Heise is rewriting everything we thought we knew about stress. She's a scientist, author and a sought after keynote speaker who has helped leaders and professionals all around the world turn moments of pressure into moments of power. In this episode, Rebecca reveals why your brain is wired to misread stress, how to flip that wiring, and how to transform every challenge into an opportunity for growth. This conversation will show you how to harness stress and turn it into your superpower. So stay until the end because this episode might change the way you deal with stress forever. All right, we talk about vulnerability on the podcast. This is my opportunity to be vulnerable, but I'll do it in a playful way. Let's guise it as a negotiation. So let's negotiate something right now. It's not a business deal or any kind of high stakes standoff. It's just a simple agreement between us and you. So if you've been with negotiate anything for a while now, you've been on an incredible journey nine years long. We've sat down with world class negotiators, gold medal winning Olympians, storytellers, CEOs, psychologists, FBI agents, professors, and all of this for one purpose, to help you become more powerful in your conversations, in your career and in your life. We've published over 1600 episodes and we were part of the LinkedIn Podcast Network and have amazing partnership that helped us grow. But unfortunately now LinkedIn is winding down the network and many of the shows that were on the LinkedIn podcast network had to shut down because the money wasn't there anymore. But not us. We are still here and we are just getting started. And now we want to bring you even more bigger guests, deeper stories and more value than ever. So here's the deal. If this show has ever helped you, if it made you think differently, negotiate better, or feel more confident, we're asking for one thing in return. Just leave us a review on Apple podcast, on Spotify, wherever you listen, because now we're going to be negotiating our own sponsorship deals. This is a matter of survival for us. And when sponsors look and they can see that we have a lot of reviews and our fans really love us and they get value that gives us the opportunity to negotiate better deals. And when we're able to do that, that allows us to continue to do what it is that we're doing here. So that's your side of the deal. It could take less than 10 seconds to just leave us a review. And what do you get in return? Our side of the deal is this. We will continue to commit to bringing you the best guests on Earth and to continue to raise the bar on the quality of this show week after week. So let's build this next chapter together. Let's make a deal. Rebecca, thanks for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me on. I'm so excited about this conversation.

I'm pumped for this. And let's set the stage for the listener here. So let's say there's somebody listening and they take everything that you share today and put it into action in their life. What changes?

Lots of stuff. I mean, first, you're going to see stress differently. Stress, like, not good, not bad. You're not. You're stop labeling stress. You're going to try and, you know, stop trying to get rid of it. You're going to use it to your advantage instead. That's the first thing. The second thing is you're going to stop avoiding difficult conversations. You're going to charge towards the roar, like running at the roar of the tigers that you are scared of. You're going to start running at them. And the third thing that's going to change is you're going to recognize the power of community and stop blaming yourself for all the ways that, you know, stress management has failed you and self help has failed you. We're going to talk about a little self help and, and why we might need to address that differently. So.

Oh, so many things to. Yeah, okay, so let me, let me just channel the listener here, because when you said they're going to see stress different, differently, some people aren't vibing with that. Rebecca, I get it. Because I was hoping that you were going to say you're going to help us to eliminate stress, get rid of it. So let's get into how we. Well, first of all, what is stress? Let's start at baseline, and then how we see it and how our perception of stress or perspective of it can impact how we experience it, too.

So many good questions. Let's start with the definition of stress. And the simplest way to define stress is a challenge to the body, right? Anything that challenges the body, anything that dysregulates you, throws you off balance, throws you out of homeostasis. And the really interesting thing about stress is that humans are weird. We are the only animal on the planet that creates stress with our own thinking. So there's this great book by Robert Sapolsky Called why? Why Zebras don't get ulcers. Right? And the whole concept of it is, you know, zebras get chased by a tiger or a lion, and they don't die, and then immediately they go back to grazing, and the lion goes back to taking a nap. Nobody's sitting there going, oh, my gosh, I almost died. Or, oh, my gosh, I failed. I'm a terrible lion. Like, they just nap. It's done. It's over. And yet, if you put a human in the same situation, like, oh, I failed at hunting. I failed this negotiation. I failed this, I failed that, or nearly escape with my life, we're replaying that event again and again and again. So stress can be physical. It can be emotional. It is anything that throws us out of balance. Now. Yeah, now you want me to dive into how we. How the. How this. Okay, so what. Most of the. Most of the research on stress talks. Most of the research that people are familiar with talks about how we get rid of it because stress has been labeled as this bad thing. And yet what most people don't know is stress. Cortisol. If you don't have cortisol, you die. Like, cortisol is good for you. Cortisol is the thing that gets you out of bed in the morning and forces you to seek food and forces you to, like, have a drive to do things and accomplish things in life. And the idea of trying to get rid of all of the stress is misguided. We need to stop labeling stress as good stress and bad stress, like eustress and distress. Fine, fine, fine. It's just energy. It's just a challenge to our body that we then get to decide how to use. And that's the big jump that I want to help people make today. And I can tell you all the research about why it's important we do that. Not to scare people, but it's really important, y', all to get the right stress mindset.

So this is great. This is a strong start, Rebecca. Strong start. Because, first of all, when we understand what stress really is, it shows how little we understand what stress actually is. And I'm recognizing that a lot of the challenges that we experience around stress just starts with the. Our perspective. And think about.

With.

In, like, clinical trials, we understand that one of the most consistent pharmacological effects is the placebo effect. So we also don't consider the power of the nocebo effect, which is the opposite. Right? And so essentially, we are telling ourselves stories about stress that make us sick when we don't have to be.

Oh, my gosh, thank you. Like, louder please, for the people in the back. This is, this is huge, in fact. So I'll give you the setup. This is one of my favorite studies. It was a. I think it was 2013, looked at 20,000Americans over the course of eight years. Right. And the most important question they asked these people is, is their stress mindset? Essentially, like, do you believe that stress is bad for you? And the results are mind boggling. So people who have very high levels of stress who believed that their stress was bad for them. So the story they told was, yeah, stress is bad. And I think that's probably most of us, like most of our listeners right now are just going, yeah, I have a lot of stress. It's not good. They died, like, at a very high rate. So their mortality rate was 43% higher than, like the standard. Here's the good news. People who had that same level of very high stress, but simply told a different story, simply said, yeah, stress isn't bad. Stress that doesn't have to be good. It's just, it's just stress. It's just energy. They had the lowest mortality rate of the entire study. And I'm talking lower than the people who had, like, very little stress in their life. Right. So again, let's not get rid of stress. Let's change what it means. Let's change the story about it and how we can utilize it, because I think it's a competitive advantage.

There's so much, so much to explore here. I think the thing that is most shocking in this shocking study is the fact that even the people who had less stress performed worse than the people who had more stress and thought about it differently. So really, it's, it is all in our head in a very real sense. That's fascinating. So even so, even if the people who say, I am feeling really bad right now because I have too much stress, if they were to successfully lower their stress, they still wouldn't be in a better position because it's not the stress, it's their mindset around it.

Boom. Here's the, here's the simplest way to think about this because I honestly struggle with this. Right When I first read that study, I was like, I don't know, I feel pretty good kicking back on a weekend, having some Mai Tais on the beach. That feels good. I don't get it. It. And, and the way I, the way I figured this out and like, reconcile it in my brain was to think about Olympic athletes right when are Olympic athletes breaking world records? When are they performing at their peak? It's not at practice. It's when the stakes and the pressure and the stress and the anxiety and the fears are at peak. And we all have the ability to like, channel in and use that energy. We just have to shift our story about what that means to us. Right?

Yes. And how much of this. And maybe the study doesn't articulate this, but hypothesize with me. I wonder how much of this is a result of habituation as well. So the ability to just, you know, acclimate to any circumstance, because even if you lower your level of stress in an objective type of way, so, yes, that stressor is no longer here, then we would acclimate to that lower level of existence without. With less stress. And. And then the things that are not as stressful for you now would become stressful for you in that.

Right. Yeah, this. Okay, so this is a great question. I love thinking these thought experiments out. And, and, and I think one of the, one of the things I talk about frequently is I call it tiger training. So going back to the tiger, I think about tigers as like the, the epitome of the stressor. Right. Like. Cause that's what our stress response is built for, is getting chased by a life and death situation. And all of the stressors that we have in our lives, I shouldn't say all of them, most of them are not life and death situations. Right. But we can train our brain to recognize they're not life and death. And that's the start of this, this idea of rewiring the circuitry. And I think it's really important to differentiate between what I just described there, like a tiger training kind of thing, like seeking the discomfort from exposure therapy, where you're just like exposing yourself and like you're tamping down the stress response. That's not our goal. Our goal isn't to get rid of it. It's just to tell our brains this isn't life and death. We don't have to go to survival. We can use this energy differently. So, like, big distinction.

Yeah, that's an important distinction. Yeah. Because even in my mind, I, in, in, in my life, I try to reduce, like make the button smaller rather than a knitting trigger, you know, and then saying, okay, when I feel this, treating it almost like a meditative practice. So that's. I think about my business life, running the company as the CEO, as meditation practice. How calm can I stay under pressure? And, and what you're saying is Something a little bit different, though. It's like, hey, the, the feeling, the energy is going to be there. Let's mobilize it and move it in the right direction.

Yeah, you just, you just nailed it, Kwame. Because the whole idea here is you can't control how, how heightened you get, how elevated you get. Like, I, I don't know about you. Last time I, I talked to my adrenal glands and I was like, hey, guys, please don't release adrenaline right now. It's not going to be useful. Like, it doesn'. And yet this is the advice we consistently hear given to people. It's like, well, just try to calm down, right? Take some deep breaths, meditate. Now, listen, I'm a big fan of meditation. We could talk meditation and breathing and all of that is important. And on top of that, that's energy that your body just gave you. Let's use it. Why would you try and get rid of it when you can't physiologically just lower your physiological state? Let's use it in the moment.

This is fascinating. So it's almost like, all right, stress is then a tool that we use. Okay, so let's create a hypothetical that would connect with the everyday person. So let's say they are finishing up a project and they need the Internet to do it. And the Internet is out. And that. Yeah, exactly. They feel that now that is a stressor. So what do they do with this energy other than explode, curse and break things?

So, so the setup is that the Internet just went out. Right. Okay. So I have this massive rush in my, in my body. And literally, if I tell myself, oh, I need to calm down right now, here's what's going to happen. I'm going to get really frustrated because I'm not going to calm down. Right. And that is going to stress me out even more. This is. I'm. We did this research in 2024, and we looked at people who are trying to, like, get rid of their stress. And like, 74% of Americans stress out even more trying to get rid of their stress. This is the wrong direction to move. So instead I'm going to say, how can I get curious in this moment? Because curiosity and fear cannot coexist. There's literally no brain mechanism for it. For 200,000 plus years, nobody ever had a tiger charging them, like a real stressor. And we're like, huh? Like, I wonder how fast it's coming, you know, like, that doesn't, that doesn't happen. So when we kick ourselves out of this Fear this stress as a bad thing. We can use curiosity to do that. So I'm going to say, all right, what are my other options? What's the potential that my neighbor has Internet? Where's the closest place that I can go? Do I need to unplug and replug in the router? Who do I need to contact? How do I. How do I. How do I. And I start getting to get in this curiosity phase. What that does is that mobilizes. And then I'm going to ask the most important question. What is the smallest step I can take towards something? So fear is always going to say, anything but right, Anything but failure, anything but rejection, anything but. The problem with that is it doesn't point you in any particular direction. So any road will do, right? And it's not always a good one. Often what it does is it has you sitting right here frozen in place, going, well, nothing I can do. I guess we're just. We're. We're just gonna suffer here because it's not my fault the Internet went out. Um, so. So cortisol is a really. It's a motivator. And there's one other piece that I'll add to this, which I think is really important and often overlooked. We talk about cortisol all the time, but we forget to mention all of the other hormones involved in the stress response. The second most important hormone in the stress response is oxytocin, which is the cuddle hormone, the love hormone, the like reach out and help people hormone. So when we are under stress, we're actually driven to ask for help and others when they see us, because humans are emotionally contagious. When they see us, they are primed to help us. So this is a beautiful thing that the stress response does. It motivates us to move, seek help, ask for help, and others will respond to that help. That's beautiful. Whoa.

Okay. So much to explore here, Rebecca. Again, let's take it back to the top. So stress is just a challenge to our body. So a lot of times what we do then is we experience stress, and then we try to do what is oftentimes impossible, which is calm down. So we experience a stress to the body. And our solution is to experience. To introduce another stress to the body. It just amplifies everything. So now he understands. Understand this. This is great. So you're not trying to fight it, because it's almost like the. I. I'm thinking with. With Victor Franklin. Mr. Franco.

Franco. Yeah.

Yeah. The power of opposite intention. A lot of Times, the more we try to drive in a direction, the further we get from it. Right. So this. This is great. We actually have some understanding of what to do and why it works. And now also you. I wish we had this conversation years ago, before I wrote my first book, because when we talk about our framework for having difficult conversations is compassionate curiosity. But we designed it for not just the difficult conversations with other people, but also with yourself. So the same three steps. Step one, acknowledge and validate the emotions. Name it. To tame it. To calm it down. Step two is getting curious with compassion. Step three is joint problem solving. Working with the other side, then internally directed. Now I understand why this helps to alleviate fear, because you're intentionally driving toward the curiosity which eliminates fear. This is so good. I love.

I wish. I see. I wish I'd read your book years ago, because that's the whole framework, right? It's invite the tiger in for a cup of tea. Name it. Name it. To tame it. Invite it in. You can't avoid it. Invite it in. Right. Exact same stuff. I love it. I love it. Kwame, this is.

Okay, now let's talk about what it takes to put this into action, because you often talk about one of my favorite words, which is neuroplasticity. And let's talk about what our brains look like right now with our problematic patterns of stress and how it could shift. But talk. Talk about that process.

Sure. Yeah. So, I mean, our brains are built for a time in which we lived in cave times. I know that sounds ridiculous, and I know people have heard this, but we really haven't evolved that much from 200,000 years ago. It's. It's a slow process. And so our brains are fixated on survival and sex. I'm sorry. Like, those are the two things that. That they're fixated on. And so the first of those being survival, because the other is secondary. So when. When we're looking at anything that is a challenge to our body, our brain goes immediately into this survival mode. And in the times of our ancestors, that was useful because it's a. It's a storm, it's a tiger. It's an actual survival challenge. Today, it's the pings and dings of emails. It's the Internet going out. It's like, it's these ridiculous things that aren't actually life and death. But our brain doesn't have any mechanism to distinguish between, like, a real life and death and an email coming in that's from a client that you're nervous about having A conversation with like that's exact same response. We have a singular stress response to all of that. So the, the challenge is to update our, our hardware, right? It's to say, okay brain, thank you, I appreciate that you're, you're trying to keep me safe and let's explore this a little bit. So I, I ask people to do this tiger training, the seeking of discomfort. And I know you, you've done the same thing, right? How do we, how do we have the difficult conversation? How do we ask for that 20% discount? How do we bake our neighbor cookies randomly and just drop them off? If you think that's, that sounds easy, it's actually really hard because you get in your head and you're like, what are they going to think? Do they, do they think I poisoned the cookies? Or like we go to these ridiculous places because we're humans and we create stress. So, so doing these discomfort challenges simply to allow our brain to recognize there is another path. And the magic begins when we recognize, oh, I had a stress response, right? My heart, my heart started pounding, I started to sweat, my mouth dried up a little bit and I didn't die. And when we are conscious of that stress response, did it die? And we register that consciously. Our brain layers this down and it's called stress inoculation. Right? We're inoculating ourselves not against stress because we can use it differently. We're just teaching our brain to take a different pathway when the stress happens, that it doesn't have to go to the fight flight. Freeze. Now, all that to say the first three minutes of any stressor hitting you, Sorry sucker, you're in it. It's screaming terror. Like you're in the screaming terror. So do not expect to be cognitive or making good decisions within three min minutes of that stressor hitting you. Give yourself that space to be activated to allow yourself to think. I, I, I highly recommend, this is when I, I say invite the tiger into for tea. I highly recommend you take a journal out and set a timer and for three minutes catastrophize, right? Like my Internet just went out so I'm not going to get the job, so I'm going to lose all my money. So my husband's going to divorce me, so then I'm going to end up dead in a ditch. So then like this is, this is natural, this is normal and allow yourself to go there so that when you pull back out of that stress response, you can go, oh, maybe I won't die. And then we can move forward this.

Is so good and it's so validating. This is great. This is great. And so something else that just popped into mind. Before we even go deeper into the brilliance that you just bestowed upon us, we're recognizing why the curiosity reflex in conversations is so good as well. Because when we are hit with something surprising, somebody says something offensive or something that we weren't expecting, instead of just, you know, freaking out and listening to our emotions and doing whatever the fear says to do, which is almost always the wrong answer, we get serious and we can actually stay grounded in the moment. This is such a powerful habit to start to put into practice in everything. But we can especially see how well it, it would work in these tough conversations.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And again, as you've said before, like, our brain is incredibly plastic. I mean, incredible. It's four. It's getting hit by 400 billion bits of information every single second. Like, think about that. Your brain is processing 400 billion bits every single second. So mostly our brain is a filter. It's just filtering out things it doesn't think we need. Right. So all your training on your brain is to say, wait, I could use that. Pay attention to that. Let's, let's pay attention to that. I can use this differently. Rather than saying, I get rid of it, get rid of it, get rid of it. Yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty powerful stuff. And I mean the potential of the human brain. And don't get me started, I get really jazzed up about this and I'm sorry, I'm starting to like spin out a little bit. But it's so exciting because your brain, we used to think it was set, you know, you can't develop any new. No neurogenesis. Totally incorrect. I mean, 90 year olds can create new pathways. This is not limited by your age, your race, your gender, your height, your weight, doesn't matter. Like show up, start to train your brain. And you can do it. Yes. Now, now, now, here's the thing. Don't ask me how long it takes because that's an. Anybody that tells you 30 days to a new habit or two days. Yo, it's, it totally depends is the response there.

And that's, that's the most annoying but correct response, right? Because the studies are so different, right? Because you might see somebody says, oh, the studies say what, 66 days or something? Well, that's like, like a metal meta analysis of a whole bunch of different things. The smaller the habit, the easier it is. But if you're trying to do something more Complex. It's harder. So. But. But going back to this, we have to remember, we have to have that growth mindset here because the mind can grow life. We all think about life so much about as a process of discovering ourselves, and it partially is, but now we can recognize that life is just as much or more about building ourselves with intentionality. And it's. It's. The awareness is the first step, but then doing it consistently is the. Is the next one. And it's going to be hard. I think it's. It's important for people to understand it's going to be hard. But it does start to get easier once it becomes a bit of your. Not just what you do, but more so who you are because of the plastic nature of the. The brain.

Oh, my gosh. You just. You nailed it. Like I often say, every stressful interaction, every stressful response is an opportunity to build or betray yourself. Every time you have an opportunity to build or betray yourself. And so that's the question, like, am I growing? Am I growing or do I want to revert? Am I growing or do I want to revert? And we have. I love stress for that because I see it and I'm like, oh, great. I get to build. I get to build something new. I get to build. I get to reinforce this pathway of like, this isn't life and death. This isn't a tiger. I can get curious. I can point it to serve myself and others. That's so cool. That's so cool. Absolutely.

Let's talk about this too, because this, to me, sounds very familiar to the concept of what everybody is very aware of, which is post traumatic stress. But people don't talk about the other side, which is just as legit. So tell us about that.

Yes, thank you for asking. You can see me jumping up and down because, look, 8% of the population experiences post traumatic stress disorder, which is. Which is way too much like, let me be clear, that's horrific. I might argue that most of us actually experience most of the symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder because life is traumatic. Period. End of discussion. Little T traumas, big T traumas. Every single person you meet. Your story is my story. My story is your story. We may not have the same traumas, but I guarantee you we're going through it. And so there's recognition and power in recognizing the community around PTSD now, full stop. 80% of the population that has gone through a trauma experiences something known as post traumatic growth. Post traumatic growth is an easy. Is. Is defined as having a greater Connection to your community, having more purpose in your life, having more connectedness to other feeling, like there is a bigger purpose for your life. There is, there is so much incredible growth that happens through these moments of challenge and change. And unfortunately, while I've asked, you know, hundreds of thousands of people this in audiences, I'm like, anybody familiar with ptsd? And all the hands go out because we talk about all this negative stuff. How about PTG and like maybe a sprinkling, one or two hands. But post traumatic growth is so much more prevalent in our society and yet we don't talk about it as much. And again, that goes to this mindset of like, well, it's, it's bad, so let's label it this. Meanwhile, we can grow through what we go through. And, and there's such power and purpose there. There's such power and purpose there. There's a study and it's, it's one of my favorite studies. Again, this is, there's a lot of stress research done in 2013, but it was looking at what makes for a meaningful and purposeful life. Right? And I'm like, oh, who doesn't want that? You know, who doesn't want a meaningful purposeful life? And what surprised the researchers is that the number one correlate to a meaningful purposeful life was past stressful events, current state of stress, and even future worry and anxiety. Those were the correlates that were most strongly connected to purpose and meaning. And I sat with that for a minute. I'm going to tell you right now, I was like, nah, like, even as a stress physiologist, I'm like, nah, they, they must have screwed something up. That doesn't, that doesn't work for me. And then I did my own research and I did some follow up on that exact study. And in 2024, we did a, we did a, some work and found that. I'll just ask your audience, I'll ask your audience the same question that I, that I asked them. I want you to think of a project or an accomplishment that you're most proud of. And now go back in time to when you were in the middle of that project. What was your stress level? Right. 0 to 100. Most people, I had to filter out. Most people were like 28, 42. I'm like, yeah, that, that's, that's not helpful. So I can tell you the results of that data. And, and as you can guess, the vast majority of us were stressed out of our gourds. We're saying 100 110. You know, about 4% of people said, ah, I wasn't stressed at all. So I think they're liars or like, just don't have big enough goals in life. I don't know what to tell those people. About 20, 20% of people were like, I was stressed. But it was in that, like, optimal zone of stress, which means the vast majority of us, we're stressed out of our gourds when we're doing our most meaningful, purposeful work. And so to me, this is the, the core of my message. Stop running away from the thing that brings you meaning and purpose. Stop trying to get rid of the things that are actually giving you meaning in your life. That's the stress, baby. Bring it on. Run at it.

So good. That's so good. And actually, let me, let me run one something by you. I like testing out, doing these little micro tests on myself and then journaling, seeing what the results are. And so one thing I've been playing with is when I come upon a stressful situation, I recognize I'm, I'm batting a thousand on my stressful situations. I have thus far survived all of the stressful situation. Let me just assume that that will continue, right? And so I say, okay, with all of these situ stressful situations, I always end up surviving. And when it's a stressful situation that requires me to perform, I always perform well. So, well, why don't I just do this? Let me envision that end state where I'm getting the congratulations that I know I'm going to get, and let me just focus on that. I realized that I will go through the same process. I could either go through the process feeling okay or feeling bad and always get to the same destination. So just like, intentionally thinking about this has helped me so much because I can do the exact same thing but not feel terrible.

Yes, you're nail it. You're nailing it. And incidentally, it's helping you to perform. So like that channeling. One of my favorite, one of my favorite demos is to take two violins that are tuned to one another and put them in opposite corners of the room and you pluck the string on one violin and the other one's going to play the same note. And my point on this is that's humans. So when you show up and you're trying to perform and you're like, I'm just gonna be excited about this. I'm just gonna be excited. Guess what? Your audience feels that excitement, even if you're still scared, which you are like we all are. Even if you're still scared, if you decide, if you choose the story that you're telling, you're playing the music, you're plucking the string of excitement, others have their strings plucked and then you get that resonance and it feeds back to you and you. It carries us all together. Whereas if you show up and you're like, I don't know, this is not a good outcome, I'm really nervous. That's not. Not only are you showing up like that, people pick up on that energy and they're gonna feed that to you and then that's the outcome you get. It's the placebo, nocebo. Like, that's all part of the story that we tell. Yeah.

And it goes back to one of the things that you said earlier about emotional contagion as well.

Yeah.

These emotional contag. We've so many studies have demonstrated that we can talk about the science of the mirror neurons and everything. You could also think about it from just like the. I love it when like metaphysics that might seem woo woo corresponds with science. And it's like, hey, shocker. Vibes matter.

Yeah. Sit next to somebody. Even if you're not a nervous flyer. Sit next to somebody who's a nervous flyer on a plane and see how well you do. Or like sit next to that friend at a scary movie who jumps at everything is going to be 11 times scarier because you're responding to them. That's, that's. And the coolest thing, like, yeah, of course fear is contagious, but so is joy, so is laughter, so is excitement. So are all of these things. So, yeah, lean into the music that you want to play.

Oof. So good. Okay, so the vibe has been awesome and I could just keep on going talking to you forever about this, but I want to make sure that we can get to our listener question. So this segment is designed to speak directly to the person who is listening. So we call it the listener dilemma. It's a real world, real world scenario that reflects the kind of fear, stress or uncertainty that many people face in their careers and relationships. And we'd love to hear how you'd coach someone through this. And then Ashley's voice will come in.

Hi, Rebecca. I'm in a mid level leadership role and lately I've been feeling stuck. I constantly second guess myself before making decisions, worry about how I'm being perceived, and tend to avoid speaking up in meetings even when I have valuable input. I know this behavior is holding me back, but it feels like My brain is working against me. How can I stop being so afraid of failure and judgment and start trusting myself more? Thanks.

Ashley.

That's a heartbreaking question. I think this is an incredibly common question that I get because especially. And listen, I think both genders experiences, but especially women speak about it. Men, I think, suffer just as much. They're just probably suffering in silence. But this, this idea of not being enough or having this imposter thinking is really, really common. So I want to ask a question back to you, and you don't have to just, just as a, as a rhetorical question, what is the cost of your inaction? So it's really easy to measure the cost of our actions, right? I might be rejected, I might fail. I might look like a fool. I might, you know, whatever that is. But we neglect to measure the cost of our inactions. And so frequently, that's where all of our regrets fester. Because when we take action, even if it's really, really small, that small action gives us data. It's a data point. It might be a failure, it might be a success, it might be a stalemate, but it's data. And when we don't take action, that is what festers, because we don't have any information. And so we go, what if, what if, what if, what if, what if? That's what keeps us stuck. So my advice to you is take the smallest step forward that you can. Any action, failure, win, loss, draw, doesn't matter, its action. And then here's the. The fun science behind that. You can begin to create something known as the winner's effect. Now, I didn't name it, don't blame me, but, but the winner's effect is essentially this. If you have a big goal or project or you're just trying to move through out of this stuck space, and you do the smallest possible thing you can do, you set this goal and you're like, today I am going to speak up in the meeting, I'm just going to say one thing and you do it. Your brain immediately gets a dopamine hit. Now, dopamine is a happy hormone, but it's also a hormone of addiction. And what that means is when you hit that and you do it, your brain wants more of that. And so then you set another really small goal and you get more of that feedback, more of that motivation. And this cycle actually helps us to achieve more and more and more. So that winter cycle is really commonly looked at in other animals. And I don't know why humans don't use it more. But the smallest step, the smallest action that you can take. Good, bad, doesn't matter the outcome. It matters that you do the action. I hope that's helpful.

Oh, so helpful. So helpful. And I. I love the fact that we get data through action, because for people who are chronic overthinkers, we say, well, I haven't considered everything, but, you know, no plan survives first contact with the enemy. A lot of times people here.

That's so good. All right, I'm sorry. Can you say it again? I know it's your podcast. I gotta hear that again.

Yes. No plan survives first contact with the enemy. So you create this amazing game plan, and then we go out, and then we run in. We're confronted with reality, which is different from what we hypothesized. And then, of course, we have the brilliant American philosopher Mike Tyson, who said, everybody's got a plan until they get hit in the face. Right. And so sometimes we have to recognize that the thing that we want the most, which is information, only comes through action. So action is always the antidote. And so I think this is such a powerful reflection on how we can use this neuroscience and get it moving in our favor.

Yeah, love that. Love that. Gosh. I'm writing down more. I think I've gotten more out of this than I've given. Thank you.

Oh, no, this is great. This is great. And a little aside, we'll see if this is put in. But there's. I want to get your thoughts on this, because I've been thinking about this for a very long time, and I've. I realized that one of the many things that makes humans unique is that we are animals. But as we get more of what we want in terms of status and resources, one of our primary things that we want to do is become worse animals.

It's so.

Right. So it's like animals move. We get more resources, we move less. Yeah.

And we're more miserable. It's actually really interesting. The more we move away from our animal instincts in general, the less happy we are, the less content we are. And it's because our brain craves, like, safety, safety, safety. And we. Well, I mean, let's look at calories. You know, you need fats and sugars to survive this cold, harsh winter. So we're layering down, like, 5,000 calories in a single meal, because we can get 5,000 calories in $5 in under five minutes today. Right. And suddenly our brain's like, oh, I didn't know that was possible. That's More of that, please. It hasn't, it hasn't, it doesn't have the shut off. Right. So more resources, more resources are always better to our brains. But in the modern environment, it's not what's going to bring us joy, it's not what's going to bring us happiness. And all of these things, I mean from social media we want connection, we're desperate for connection. And so we get in, we get these little dopamine hits and they come kill our connection, they kill us. It's the same thing with fats and sugars. We need it to survive and then we get too much and our brain is like, ah, what do I do? So I think you're spot on. I mean it's just, it's a, it's a, it's a mismatched environment for the brain that we have. I think it's why we do like things like Spartan racing.

Yes.

Right. You're paying money to somebody to make you uncomfortable and suffer. Like that's how disconnected we are. I think that's wild and kind of cool.

Yeah. It's so funny because we through as humans, we try to get more status, acquire more resources and then we become less human and then a new status symbol emerges within the high status ranks which is going back down to humanity where we're paying people to hurt us so we can feel again.

Oh, it makes me so sad at some like a deep, deep level. And also I'm laughing about it, so.

I don't exactly, hey, it's better to laugh so we don't cry. Right?

Amen to that. Amen to that.

This is great. Well, I know if anybody, if they've made it to this point, they were vibing with you just like, like I was. And before you go, because you, you've obviously got this great book, I want to make sure you give them a clear shout out for that. But tell us about the other programs that you're working on, how they can connect.

Yeah, sure. So I mean my, my day to day job is I'm a keynote speaker. I, I have the honor and privilege of working with great companies and associations and, and being in front of people all day to, to share this message about stress. And I think of myself as a PR agent for stress. You know, stress, Stress has gotten a bad rap. We got it. We got, we got to twist that around a little bit. So mostly I do keynote speaking. I have a master class for those that are interested in, in working directly with me or with my content. And that is a A huge undertaking. It's a 52 video module. It's a whole year's worth of content. And, and of course, I, I'm an author, so I've got two books out there. Instinct is my first book. And Springboard, which I am so excited about, is releasing September 2nd. It is a lot of what we've talked about today about how we can transform stress to become a competitive advantage for us. Yeah. So that's, that's me.

Amazing. Rebecca, thank you so. Oh, go ahead, go ahead, share one other thing.

Promise. Here's, here's the, the reason I'm most excited about Springboard is this. All of the pre sale orders and I, I'm not sure when this is, when this is airing, but all the pre sale orders. So September 2nd is the, is the date that it launches. Are going to charity. It is my, it is my give back. It's my way of living the message that I'm preaching, which is that when we get our butterflies in alignment, we got to point them towards others in service. And so that's, that's what I'm doing with Springboard. So if you can order as many books as you can on the pre order, it'll all go to a good cause.

So amazing. Thank you. Thank you for that. It was great. If you've made it to the end of this episode, you're now part of our negotiation community. Every conversation, every deal, every tough negotiation shapes the world that we live in. And the more we grow together, the stronger our community becomes. If this episode gave you something valuable, don't let it stop with you. Share it with someone who needs it. A friend, a co worker, or anyone looking to take more control of their conversations, their careers, and their lives. Every time we bring somebody new into this space, we make negotiation a tool for real change. And if someone shared this with you, take a second to acknowledge that they see you as part of this journey and as someone who belongs in this community. Let them know you appreciate it. This is how we build something meaningful. We do it by looking out for each other. So if you haven't already, join us, subscribe, stay connected and help us to grow this movement. Because when we become better negotiators, we create better outcomes for ourselves and for others. Hit subscribe and share this with someone. And let's keep building together. Together. I'll catch you in the next one.