Exit The Matrix with Me Experiment: Guest: Peace is the New Power: Healing the High-Achiever's Stress Pattern

Welcome to Exit the Matrix Stories of Success with your host Jane Slack-Smith, where we celebrate the incredible journeys of individuals who've transcended their limitations and achieved extraordinary success.

You look beautiful.

Hello, it's Jane here, and can you believe it is week 24 of Exit the Matrix writing experiment with me? And I know I say this every week, I'm so excited about the The next guest, I can't believe it, but seriously, Julie Hutchinson, hello. I am so excited to talk to you because I feel like we are aligned spirits.

We definitely are. We're definitely kindred spirits.

Um, now big shout out to Becky Robbins who said after the call that we had a few weeks ago, you have to speak to Julie. You guys are speaking the same language. And we had a chance to catch up just before this call and it was just like bing, bing, truth bumps, truth bumps. So I'm really excited to jump into this. And for those of you who don't know what this is all about, this is a crazy experiment that I started in the beginning of 2025 when I thought I have to get all of this knowledge out about what it is to live a life of alignment, aligned to your heart, creating abundance, creating flow in your life. So it's not a hustle, hustle, stress, and hardship. It is about creating everything that you want and doing it effortlessly. And we've been through this journey over the last 24 weeks and looked really at the nudges that you get that things aren't quite right. And it might be around the fact that you've got to the top of the career ladder and you're looking around going, is this it? It might just be, is there more to this? I seem to have all the doodads and I'm still not feeling fulfilled. So, we've investigated that and then we've kind of gone into this messy middle about what holds you back from claiming the life that you want. And we've learned a lot of tools and things that people have used and I've created a dashboard for people to go in and, you know, record their daily gratitudes and journaling. So some of the things that we've been learning, there's tools there in the Exit the Matrix with Me group that you can utilize. But when I'm in this messy middle, and just before we get to, you know, what is these ways that we can actually activate and, and take us from this awareness into, you know, really putting these things into our lives, I've been playing around the, the edges of some of the tools that I've been using, and such as the work of the HeartMath Institute and the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza and quantum physics. And guess what? Julie is an expert in all of those things. So Julie, you are like the perfect person to be talking to today. So I really, I'm excited to jump straight into it. Are you ready to go?

I'm ready to go.

So the thing that really struck me about, um, the work that you do is that when I'm thinking about what holds people back from, you know, claiming their best life, sometimes they're not even aware of it. And I know the work that you do with leaders and executives and vice presidents in corporate work, you know, you really are helping them understand how stress isn't just the nature of the game. I'd love to hear, you know, for people who are are listening to this and, and for, you know, people who want to awaken to live into their full life, how do you recognize stress? How does that turn up in your life? So it's not just this undercurrent of acceptance, it's actually, hey, here's a signpost that I need to be aware that something's not quite right.

Yeah, well, first of all, I'll address that, is that we have normalized stress. We say it's normal. And some of the symptoms of stress is Sleepless nights, being irritable, being frustrated a lot, anxiety, depression, irritable bowel syndrome— these are all symptoms of stress. And so if somebody has anxiety or depression, they're not really looking at, well, is that actually a cause of my stress or is it a cause of something else? What we've seen in research shows that 80% of primary care doctor visits are related to stress. 80%. And so the reason that I do what I do is because what we've seen over and over again is if we can reverse the damaging effects of stress, oftentimes we can reverse these chronic disease states. And it's just an internal journey that we go into learning how to biohack different parts of our body, like the autonomic nervous system. Which is what HeartMath teaches. And so when we can learn how to biohack internal processes, what's beautiful about this is we can learn to turn off the stress reaction.

So this is interesting. I just want to go back to this. So 80% of doctor visits, the fundamental cause is stress. Is it diagnosed by the doctors as stress?

No. Typically what happens, because I was one of those patients, I was working in a startup company many years ago and We wanted to be on the Inc.'s 5,000 fastest-growing companies, and I was on airplanes, and I was traveling the world, and I was go, go, go, and we wanted to accomplish our dreams. And then one Christmas, when we took time off, my body just broke down.

Hmm.

And I seriously had cortisol— my cortisol levels were through the roof, my adrenal glands were shot, I was having all the symptoms, I had anxiety. And when I went to the doctor, my options were, you might want to consider changing your diet, your exercise, which I already did exercise quite a bit, possibly quitting your job because that seemed to be the source of the stress, which wasn't an option for me at the time. And by the way, take this medication.

Yeah.

And presented with those options, I said, you know, there's got to be something else. There has to be another way. Because what we've seen, research shows that only 3% of patients get stress management help. It's usually they put you in a different direction So I decided that I was going to go find the root cause of all of that.

Which is the symptoms. They're just dealing with the symptoms, not the cause.

That's where the doctor sends us.

Because that's all they've been taught. Let's, you know, be honest. It's not all their fault. That's what they get taught in medical school.

Yes. And we're in a society that loves to consume medications as a, as a quick fix. I know that that's what my parents did is they relied on medications for a quick fix. And, you know, I kind of grew up in a little bit of a different generation. And I said, well, There might be a different way. I'm going to go explore it. And that's how I found what I found. And when I discovered the Institute of HeartMath and learning how to use coherence to biohack my heart rhythms, what ended up happening was, wait a minute, I could turn off the stress reaction. I could turn off the damaging causes of stress. And that's when the light bulb went off.

And I thought, wow, this sounds very scientific to me. You're talking about coherence. It sounds like it's some kind of an electrical gadget thing, and you're talking about, you know, biohacking your heart and, and changing the rhythm. Like, is this a complex thing to do?

No, it's very simple. It's very simple, but it's not easy. And I'll tell you why it's not easy. Because research also shows that by the time we're 35 years old, 95% of who we are is a set of memorized habits, patterns, and emotional responses That function like a computer program.

Yeah.

So while the technique is very, very simple, it's not always easy because we get used to being in stress. We're habits and patterns. And especially people that are high functioning, getting things done, making things happen, stress is just part of the game. Yeah, of course. Until they realize—

it's kind of like a byproduct of success, right? That's the assumed Matrix kind of definition.

Yes, exactly. Exactly.

So with them, I'm really interested in this. It's funny, I had a similar but not so similar experience. So I had been diagnosed with high cortisol, very high cortisol, you know, the flight, fight, fawn, or faint kind of, you know, you wake up in the morning, your cortisol peaks, it goes down during the day so you can sleep. Mine started high and stayed high. Like it never stopped. And, you know, I went to traditional doctors and then I went to holistic doctors and I was on Chinese medicine and I was on, you know, cupping and meditation. And I found this document that a doctor had prescribed me in like 2012 that said, here's the top 5 books on meditation you should read that will help you. And they sent me away. But at the same time, I found this test that they had done that actually was the exact same test in 2019 that diagnosed me with Cushing's disease, which was a pituitary brain tumor which causes high cortisol. So there wasn't actually the stress. And like, I was like Zen Jane, and I was like, seriously, I can't be any more Zen. And they're like, but you've got high cortisol. And the doctor at the time in 2012, I think it was, said to me Maybe you're just an A-type person and high cortisol is how you operate. Go forth, conquer. And it was extraordinary. I had at least 5 years of the adrenal fatigue potential on the body and mitochondria and all of those things because of that misdiagnosis. And they did try, but it's interesting, the cortisol and the way that stress is measured can also I guess in my experience, be one of those things that the doctors can get very wrong. And you know there's something wrong in your body and you know something's not right. And once they remove the tumor, like the doctor said to me, we're not quite sure if the tumor is causing this, but if you wake up tomorrow and feel like crap, that's how the rest of the world feels when they wake up because your cortisol is not high because you're usually go, go, go. And I woke up the next morning after the surgery and I felt like crap. He's like, oh, so it was the tumor and the cortisol came down. So it's interesting. having then found the HeartMath Institute and the, the simple, um, what I want to call simple because I, I'm obviously not, uh, you know, certified and, and, and, um, experienced as you are, but it seemed to be dropping in and breathing from your heart and the magnetism or the electromagnetic field of your heart being so much higher than your brain, it actually has a bigger effect on how your whole body operates. And I'd, I, you know, having had a personal experience of being in high stress, which was kind of orchestrated rather than, you know, by the conditions around me, it, it showed me that we could actually listen to our body and listen to what's going on. And I'm assuming that's what you do when you, you take executives and thought leaders and, and, and people through this connection to their heart. First of all, before we get into the, the neuroscience, could you just talk to that, how important that is and, you know, the process that people, you take people through so we can kind of understand what that looks like?

Yes. And I'm gonna first touch on what you said about the heart being more powerful than the brain because that's really the key.

Mm-hmm.

Is a lot of us will grow up and we'll go to school and we'll understand things from a neuroscience, or not from a neuroscience, but from a brain perspective, knowledge perspective. But when we can drop it to the heart, the heart shows that every time the heart beats, it, it creates an electrical magnetical field. That's the heart. And it can be detected up to 6 feet outside of us. That's what we can detect with technology. It probably goes a lot further. We just can't measure it at this point. And so the power of moving into the heart, it's 100,000 times more stronger in frequency than the brain. And so the power of moving into the heart. Now, the key is that the language of the heart is emotion, and the language of the brain is thought. Most of us spend our lives thinking, thinking, thinking. And a lot of executives that I work with have a hard time feeling. Meaning that they live in their heads. They're not in their bodies. When we can get the attention down into the body, into the heart. Now, there's a reason that we say play with all your heart. What does your heart say? Because the heart has its own intuitive intelligence. But for many people, we've blocked those feelings for whatever reason. Maybe you had a trauma as a child, or maybe you grow up with the saying that boys don't cry.

Mm-hmm.

And so people stuff their emotions. What we do inside the Resilient Transformation Academy, the first thing that we do is we do an assessment form to find out what people are experiencing, the levels of stress. And then we do an assessment on their thought structure because by thought alone, we can create the stress in the body. So all you have to do is think about, I'm so overwhelmed, I'm never gonna finish this, or we don't have the right buyer for our company or whatever it is. Thoughts alone will create stress.

Hmm.

So we do an assessment on the thought structure. Then everybody that we work with gets a biofeedback sensor. This is the sensor. It's a simple little thing that hooks onto your ear here, and then you have an app on your phone, and you just put this on your collar and you turn it on. And then there's information on this app that shows you— it's color-coded. It's red blue or green. Green is what we call high coherence. Blue's medium. Low is red.

So that's measuring the difference between what the heart and the— like, what's that measuring?

This is actually measuring HRV, which stands for heart rate variability. And so the heart is connected to the autonomic nervous system. There's 2 branches of the nervous system, the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. Typically, when we see somebody hook up for the first time, there's their nervous system looks like this jagged pattern that goes across like this. Ideally, we move people into what we call a coherent frequency. Once we can get somebody into a coherent frequency, that is a direct line to the brain because the heart sends more information to the brain than the brain sends to the heart. So what we do is we start to work in getting a person into a state of what we call coherence. Peace, calm, being able to just sit and be okay with just being okay. And then we start to work on what we call Language Upgrade System, getting their language aligned with their desired state. And I'll tell you, 95% of the people that we interview to come into the program, guess what the number one thing is that they say that they would like to have? What?

Peace.

You got it. They say, you know, I'm successful from all these other measures, but inside I feel like I'm drowning and I don't have peace and I can never turn off my mind. So in this process, we, we teach people how to bring the nervous system into a state of peace, the peace that surpasses all understanding. And that's the key.

Wow. So If the heart is the emotions and the brain is the thoughts and we're trying to drop into the heart more and, you know, maybe use some of the HeartMath coherence techniques and breathing through the heart and all of those things, what is the— where's the awareness piece where you kind of help people trigger you're in your head, not your heart? Like, is there kind of a list of when you're telling yourself, I can't do this, or when When you're telling yourself, uh, you know, I gotta hustle, like, is, is there a typical kind of messages that we go, oh, I could catch this thought now?

Yeah. So a lot of times, if you, if you think about our language structure, I can't, it's too hard, I'm trying, I'm hoping, this is never going to work. If you look at our word system, it's usually negative words. So we give a structure That we tell people to catch themselves saying, I'm trying, or I can't do this. And then there's an upgrade that you have to it because the minute you say, I can't, like, for all the listeners out there, I'm just gonna invite you to say that you can't right now. And you could attach it to something that you can't do.

Yeah.

You can't seem to get up and work out at 6 AM, whatever it might be. And just notice how you feel.

Heavy.

It feels heavy. Now upgrade it into, I choose to. Um, the choice is the bridge. And then once you make that choice, then you can say, I can. I choose to be able to do this, and I can. And now say that to yourself and notice if you feel different in your body. Hmm.

It's interesting. I, I was practicing something similar to this this week. My parents have some health issues, and in Australia we have this like government Medicare card, and they've lost— the card's gone missing in the mail. And I thought, I'll just call this government institution and have a chat to them. How hard could it be? You know, you're waiting online for a long period of time, and then they had to speak to them to get permission for me. So I merged all the calls in, and my poor parents were in no state state to have that conversation and weren't prepared for it. And it just deteriorated quickly. And my husband had said to me last night, how was your day? And I went to say, oh, I had to help mum and dad with this situation. And I caught myself and went, I get to help them. They're alive. You know?

Yeah.

And it was just changing I have to to I get to. That actually changed how I got to share that story. And although it was, you know, a bit of a cluster at the time, I was able to help them and resolve the situation. And it, it changed the way that that conversation went and how, you know, I think it's Michael Dooley from, um, Tap the Universe, you know, uh, he talks about words have wings. And I think of the frequency of words and I think What am I telling people when I'm retelling an experience the day? And just what you're saying there just makes complete alignment to that.

Yes. And then it changes your experience, right? I had to versus I get to. It changes the whole perception of how you experience that. So thoughts are extremely powerful because we see the world through how we think and how we feel. It's perspective. And when we can upgrade or transform our thoughts— there's a scripture I love: don't conform to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Oh, say that, say that again.

Do not conform to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Because thoughts, when we have a thought, Typically what follows a thought is an action. An action creates behaviors, and behaviors create experiences, and experiences is what we feel. Right? So you're saying, I had to help my parents. You did the action, and then you might have felt drained versus, I got to help my parents. They're still alive. And it's so funny when you said my parents, I instantly had a thought. Oh, she's so lucky her parents are still alive.

Yeah.

Story, because I lost my parents about 8 years ago, and what a blessing it is. I mean, it's tough, it's tough being their caretaker, but what a blessing that they're still alive.

What, what you've just said kind of leads into the Dr. Joe Dispenza neuroscience, because what I heard you say was you were essentially taking that thought and it's embedding somewhere. You, you're, you're You're creating neuroconnections that say, when the dog barks, my experience was I got bitten as a child, I'm scared, I'm going to react this way. The dog barks, I had this great dog when I was a child, I love this, oh my God, I feel so happy. So the thoughts— can you just talk to, you know, how we could bring Joe's work into this? Because it seems like we've got to the heart now of understanding there's a difference between these 2 things and how we can have this coherence between the heart and the brain. But then how does the brain translate all of that and create how patterns or behaviors or habits or everything?

Yeah, great, great question. And I'm going to go to your example because it's a really great example. 2 different experiences of having a dog. I either got bit or I love my dog. The way the brain works is we have these neurons in the brain, and the neurons, we call it firing and wiring. This is from the scientist Donald Hebbian. It's called Hebb's Law, and he He coined the phrase, "What fires together wires together." So let's say you got bit by a dog and you had a strong emotional experience as a child. The stronger the emotional experience, the more it gets lodged in the brain and the body. So now you think dogs are dangerous. So you grow up with that belief: dogs are dangerous. You fire and wire the thought: dogs are dangerous. Dogs are dangerous. The more you fire those thoughts, it creates what we call a cluster of neurons in the brain. And then it starts to become an unconscious thought going down into the subconscious. Then, then we go out and we see a dog, a big brown dog, and we're like, oh, danger, danger. And it's subconscious because we fired and wired that thought for so long. The opposite is true.

Kind of becomes like a superhighway. Like there's this tiny little, you know, journeys together. And if we get the opportunity to cut it and recognize that it's us creating something that may not mean anything, But if we don't, this superhighway will always be the default and drop into the subconscious is what I'm hearing. And then you don't even know why you feel scared when you see a dog.

Exactly. And that is the first clue, is that when you see a dog and you get scared and you hit the fight or flight, that is where you go, wait a minute, my body's reacting to this. I don't have the conscious memory of being bit by a dog at 2 or 3 years old. Something is going on. And now what you can do is as soon as you feel the fight or flight, is you can examine what thought did I just have, and can I upgrade the thought? And then can I start my heart-focused breathing to bring my nervous system back into balance? And so you're— what we— it's called self-regulation.

Mm-hmm.

So as soon as you have that awareness, I'm in fight or flight, The thought just triggered it. I choose to shift because my goal is to find internal peace. So what thought could I bring in and how can I rebalance my nervous system in the moment?

What I love about what you're doing is you're, you're bringing together different modalities. Like you've, you've allowed people first of all to understand their heart, their emotion, and then you've put on the, the brain and the science of it. And there's this kind of intuitive coherence that's working. Now, you're a certified Dr. Joe Dispenza, you know, coach, etc. Why did, why did that methodology call to you? What, what have you seen has been the outcome of, you know, people that you've worked with that you've introduced this kind of knowledge of the brain and how it works to them?

It was a natural progression. I had been certified in HeartMath for about 20 years, and I had a pretty traumatic experience happen to me about 3 years ago, and it left me devastated. And the tools that I was using from HeartMath were working, but not to the extent that I had really wanted them to work.

Mm-hmm.

I could get coherent and bring my, my body back into homeostasis and balance, But my brain kept firing and wiring a traumatic event in my life. And then I don't know if anybody knows this, but Dr. Joe Dispenza's retreats sell out in 6 minutes. And so—

I've tried to be on them. I'm just like, yeah.

They're very, very popular. And I remember when I was going through this event or trying to heal from it, I made a declaration. I said, I will get into this event. And I knew I was going to. I felt it in my heart. I just kept practicing my coherence and my faith. And lo and behold, I got into the event. And I noticed that they had a big sign for if you wanted to go further and become certified in his work. And I thought, well, I just—

Stop you there for a moment because I want to get into that. But you just said something that I think if we let this slip, we're going to miss it. You had coherence in your heart and you set an intention of something you wanted to create and it was created. Can you just talk to that for a moment? moment, because if we're around trying to create this life that we want, this alignment, I think, is like a super gift that you've just jumped over.

Yes. Thank you for pausing on that because it is pretty important.

Is—

I'm going to go to a quote that Nikola Tesla said. If you'd like to know the secrets to the universe, look in terms of energy and frequency. Do you know what percentage we as human beings are, are energy and frequency?

Tell me.

99.9999%. You know what makes up our energy and our frequency?

Tell me.

Our thoughts and our feelings. So whatever you're thinking and whatever you're feeling, that is your energy. And that energy can be detected by other people. It can be detected by animals. I mean, think about it. If somebody were to walk in your room right now and they didn't say a word, But they were angry, you would be able to tell. That's our energy.

I've got, I've got, uh, truth bumps. Uh, that just resonates with me so clearly.

Yes. And so when we can use the power of the heart and get the heart into what we call that coherent frequency— coherence is the natural frequency of, of nature, right? That nature is coherent. When we get coherent and very aligned with an intention, a thought, and a feeling, I will get into this Dr. Joe Dispenza event. I will get in. And when we can hold that energy, and how do I feel now that I've gotten into the event, even though I haven't gotten in yet, but I hold that frequency, and then I'm in aligned action with that thought, feeling, slash frequency, that's when things become so much easier.

Mm-hmm.

And I knew for several days leading up to the opening of that, because though you'll get an email, online registration is happening at noon on Wednesday, the 23rd, and I was at my computer at 5 till, and I just kept hitting submit, submit, submit, and doing it in faith and doing it in a state of coherence. I'm in. I'm speaking the language. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. And then boom, I get in.

It's funny. I've got a recoder coaching client at the moment, and she was sharing a similar story, and she had done some of the advanced work with Dr. Joe, and she's like, Gosh, if only he did a retreat for the advanced people and added on this little bit at the end. So we had the 7 days with him and then this extra stuff for 3 days that I'm going to hold that intention. And she told me last week that he's just announced this Cancun retreat for that in November 2025, and she's in. And I was like, gosh, you know, this kind of— And I had another I had a friend who was so convinced that she had won this fully paid scholarship to this retreat, she had her bag packed whilst she was waiting to hear that she'd won it. And of course she won it. So what you're saying is like, yep, I'm seeing people do this all the time. And I appreciate you going back to that because I think I think that often, you know, you work with executives and logical, successful, financial balance sheet type of people. You're bringing them into their heart, which seems a little woo, but we know it's the window of opportunity. You're connecting them to the science, to their head, to create what they want rather than, you know, having this stress and hustle. So, I'm going to pick up the story where we left off, which was When you got into this trauma moment and you're looking for alternative ways to deal with it, so you found the work of Dr. Joe at that stage, and you just had quoted Tesla.

Welcome to Exit the Matrix Stories of Success with your host Jane Slack-Smith, where we celebrate the incredible journeys of individuals who've transcended their limitations and achieved extraordinary Yes.

And so at that event, they had the opportunity to, to apply to be certified. And so I applied. It was quite a lengthy process, and I went through the whole certification, which was about 8 months. And what was really beautiful about it is it literally was my healing. It was my therapy out of this deep, deep thing that I— the trauma that I had experienced. And the reason that I knew I needed it was because every time I saw something that reminded me of the event, I watched my brain get hijacked with PTSD. And I knew that I had to change the way I thought because the, the trauma kept replaying itself and replaying itself. I would wake up and it would be there, and the thoughts would be there, and I would get coherent. But I knew I had to shift the way I was thinking And that was the Dr. Joe work. The Dr. Joe work is about change your mind, create new results. So I learned all about neuroplasticity. I learned how the brain worked, and I learned the formula. There's an actual formula for change. And so I started to align my thoughts, my beliefs, my actions with the future state of being fully healed. And every time I would catch myself, or the subconscious would think a thought, and I would feel the anger or the trauma I had the formula that I'd be able to say stop, change, and I had a whole list of beliefs that I would shift out of the old belief into the new belief, and then I would get coherent and I would hold that belief. And there's an app out there that I'll share with your audience that I absolutely love. It's called the Think Up app.

Think Up app.

Think Up. And what you do in this app is they've got all these affirmations in there. You can choose theirs or put your own in, but you record it in your own voice. And then you listen to it and you could choose music or binaural beats. So what I would do is I would record all these beautiful sayings of, I'm healed, I'm safe, and I would just record them in my own voice. And then I would listen to it while I was using the HeartMath app at the same time, feeling at peace and coherent. And a lot of my friends are like, I can't believe how quickly you're moving through this. And I was able to move through it quickly because I understood the science of the brain and the body and how trauma lives in both and how to overcome it. And so it's an inside job, wasn't it? I didn't do this on the outside. I didn't go for runs and do a ton of yoga. I mean, I did that, but I didn't expect that to heal me.

Yeah.

This is what really healed me because I could catch myself in the moment every single day when that that thought, negative thought came up, I could recognize it, shift, choose a new thought and align it with my nervous system.

You know, it, it strikes me as you talk to that, um, there's a theory that the issue's in the tissue. And, you know, I think, uh, I did the body— I was reading the Body Code book about, you know, the, I think it was a chiropractor who found that although A lot of the people that he was massaging on their shoulders, for instance, felt the weight of the world on them. And there was this kind of correlation that he was finding. Do you have anything to say about that? Because it keeps kind of coming up to me that there is— you talked about having post-traumatic stress disorder and it's a mental reaction, but does that manifest in the body? Have you had that type of experience?

Very much. The brain and the body are connected. So when you have a thought and you keep thinking the thought over and over, this is— you're firing a thought in what we call the neocortex of the brain. When you get enough thoughts of similar energy and frequency— I can't, it's too hard, this is difficult— then what happens is you get a certain set of pattern sequences and combinations inside the brain. And then you have a dominant thought like I am angry. That dominant thought goes into a part of the brain called the limbic brain. The limbic brain is responsible for producing chemicals in the forms of neuropeptides and neurotransmitters, and those chemicals go down the spinal column into the body. Now what happens if we keep thinking those negative thoughts over and over and over again? Remember, thoughts have energy, and if they create stress in your body or the fight-or-flight response, the adrenal glands will activate, cortisol will spit out. And guess what happens when you have that shot of cortisol? The body wakes up. Because you know when we're stressed, or you're driving a car and somebody swerves and almost hits you, your heart starts pounding, you get this jolt of energy. Well, the body goes, wow, that felt good. I feel alive. I have energy. And then the body wants more of it. So all you have to do is think a thought, it triggers the adrenaline in the body, the body feels alive. Now this is going to sound really strange. We can get addicted to the stress response or the emotions that are produced in the stress response. I realized I was addicted to anger. I didn't like it. People around me didn't like it. But when I realized, wait a minute, my body's addicted to anger.

And when I was alive, it feels active.

Yes. And I would do all these things. Well, I got to stop my anger. And then I realized, wait a minute, it's living in my body and I'm getting the chemical reaction of it. So I've got to learn to settle the body down. And then what I would do is I would writing out my emotions. What emotion did I just feel? Oh, that was anger. That was frustration. What thought did I think that connected that anger and that frustration? And when I could look at those— that thought equals anger— how can I upgrade that thought? And how can I get my body coherent and move from anger to peace?

Mm-hmm.

Or you practice it. Think Up app, getting heart-centered coherent, you retrain the body. What used to feel foreign to me was peace and calm. Now I love it. I love peace and calm. If I don't have peace and calm, it's like, whoa, I got to sit down and do a little practice here. Yeah, but it was foreign to me.

It's I just— it's triggering a learning that I learned from a neuroscientist I've been working with. And she kept going on about the importance of sleep. And right in the beginning of this conversation, you talked about, you know, the stress response of people and this lack of sleep and sleep being kind of an indicator of it. And it's made me think of something that she had shared, which is essentially every night the cerebral spinal fluid drains from your brain and you need 7 hours to get the new fluid up to kind of remove the plaque, which can cause Alzheimer's. And she also was really stressing to me the importance of journaling at the end of the night. And she was saying, if you can journal your thoughts and your feelings and your experiences and even discard, like, this happened today, It didn't feel great. I responded in a way I'm not proud of. I could learn from this experience, but it's done and gone. She said, if you could get that down, it's not something that your brain has to process during the night and embed somewhere in your body. And that kind of made sense to me. And so since, for the last 18 months, at the end of the night— end of the day, I journal and I write down— it takes 3 minutes. These are some positive things. These are some things I did well. I have some prompts that kind of take me through it. But this is something I can let go of. This is something that worries me that I don't need to process overnight because it'll be there tomorrow and I'll have all the resources to assist me. Can you just talk to that component of sleep? Because I think if people are in this boat of going, I want to create this beautiful life. I want to have the intentions. I want to have my heart in coherence. I want my brain to be wired for success, and there's one thing holding me back, maybe sleep issues, for instance. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Yeah. So, first of all, I'm going to talk about your journaling because I love that you specifically said, what were the great things that happened? Like, you're tuning, you're putting your attention on the great things because we are built for survival. That's just the way that we're built. And How many times do we do great things, but when then we focus on the things that didn't go so well?

Yeah.

And we don't really give ourselves credit. So, when you're going to bed at night, when you turn around and you focus on what great things did happen today, you're training your brain to look for gratitude, to look for success. And remember, our cells eavesdrop on our thoughts. So, if you're going to bed journaling about the beautiful things that happen or what you're grateful for, That will help to calm the nervous system down.

Mm-hmm.

So now I'm going to move into sleep and some things that you can do. So some listeners are out there going, well, I don't sleep at night and I'd like some real good tips. That's number one. First of all, train your brain to look for the positive. The other thing that you can do is make sure that you're not falling asleep with all kinds of other things on your mind, like, oh, I forgot to do this, or this isn't going to happen. To train your brain, first of all, And then prepare your room for sleep. Prepare your bedroom. What I like to say is my bedroom is only for intimacy and sleep, and that is it. My bedroom is clean. It is organized. It is a sleep sanctuary. So I keep it that way because I, when I enter my bedroom, I just feel this awe. I just, I put time and effort into my sheets, my linens, the way my Room looks. Sometimes I'll light candles before I go to bed. Then the other thing that I do is to build onto what you said about journaling is move my attention down to my heart with my eyes closed and start to do heart-focused breathing, inhaling deeply and slowly, imagining that your breath is flowing in and out of your heart. The reason that we do that is because the way the heart beats. Sends a signal to the brain to tell us that we're either in fight or flight or we're calm. So when you do hard focus breathing, and you could do that for five to ten minutes, just replaying the gratitude of the day, then bring in that feeling, that emotional component. Because remember, feeling is the language of the body. We're sleeping to recuperate the body and the brain, and when we can move into an elevated feeling, peace. calm, joy, love. It's bringing the nervous system into balance. And then we can fall asleep from that place. And that's the key.

It's, um, it's interesting. My husband would be very happy if I created the bedroom like you do. He would like a bedroom like that. I'm, I'm a bit more messier, so I'm gonna set an intention to do better. But, um, I have a good friend Bing, and she's, uh, her business Good Studios here in Australia. And she has created this beautiful ritual around the bedsheets and the beautiful linens that she creates for people's bedding in the fact that it is a sanctuary and this is your special place. And I think there's more and more people who are really recognizing the importance of sleep because Because, you know, we see all these biohackers and all these, you know, Silicon Valley people and, you know, the Googles and etc. And they were all pivoting towards health and wellness and, you know, maybe ice baths, which is not great for women, but a lot of women, but, you know, they're all looking at these things and sleep seems to be the number one thing that everyone's trying to hack.

That's important. It's very, very important. I have I have countless executives that'll come to me and say, well, I can fall asleep, but I can't stay asleep. I wake up at 3. And I ask them, well, what happens at 3 o'clock? What's the first thought? Is it positive or negative? It's always negative. Oh, I forgot to do this, or I'm behind on that. It's always negative.

Yeah.

So, the first thing we say is the minute you wake up at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning is notice your thoughts and then begin to upgrade them. Because just like ChatGPT, our output is only as good as the prompts. So if you're prompting yourself at 3 AM and going, oh, here we go again, I'm never going to get back to sleep, and your heart starts racing, all you got to do is say, stop it. Stop that thought. I can get back to sleep. I can get back to sleep, and I will get back to sleep. Begin your heart-focused breathing. And you're prompting, you're prompting the body, I can and I will get back to sleep. And you start your heart-focused breathing. The other thing too is I'm going to talk a little bit about brain waves, because a lot of people, when they're either falling asleep or waking up, we go through a progression as we fall asleep. We go from a high to high beta brain wave, which is a waking state when we're thinking or crunching numbers. You and I are in beta brain waves right now. Then we go into alpha. Alpha is more of an imagination state. It's slower brain wave. Then we go into theta. Theta is the doorway to the subconscious, and that's right at that window when we're aware that we're still awake but we're just about to drift off. And then when we drift off, we go into delta. That hopefully we get deep into delta. When we wake up, we do the reverse: delta to theta to alpha to beta. So as soon as you wake up at 3:00 AM and you have that negative thought, thought, boom, you're in beta. You cannot sleep in beta. You just can't. The brain is just gonna go like this.

Hmm.

So here's a tip for the people that don't sleep. When you change your thoughts at 3 AM in the morning, the other thing that you can do— remember, alpha typically goes with visualization— have something that you visualize that you Like the beach or the mountains. Maybe it's a cabin in the mountains, or it's sitting in a lounge chair at the beach. So when you wake up, you have that negative thought. Stop it. I can get back to sleep. Close your eyes. See yourself laying on that lounge chair on the beach, hearing the waves. Visualize, and that will start to bring you back into the alpha brainwave. And then eventually theta, and you can fall back asleep. So those are the basics.

I love what you say there. And for people who aren't that visual, I, um, have, or have had— it's not practicing very actively at the moment— a meditation practice where I go to a happy place. And one of my happy places is a very, very simple, like, one-room log cabin in this beautiful clearing of flowers. And I can visualize And it's funny because when I saw your 2 lamps there, I was like, oh, that's the lamps that are behind the lounge on the bench. And, um, but I created in Pinterest my log cabin. And so I have— Oh, look at that. I've gone and got all of these pictures and I know exactly what it looks like. And I have another one that, you know, overlooks, you know, this ocean and it's very open and white and beautiful lounges and jonquils, et cetera. But I've created that room as well. Well, so it makes it easier for me, and I'm happy to share, you know, my private log cabin Pinterest room with you people. But it gives you, um, it gives me something when you're in a stressful state or you're in a state where you're trying to get out of it. I can connect to that very quickly because I know exactly what it looks like.

Yes, and that's the key, right? You have a clear picture.

Can I just ask you about Delta? Because I'm in a competition with my husband regularly on who gets the best sleep. He wins. Zen Todd. But I noticed a few things recently, and one was my heart rate variability has gone down to like 16. And I was like, oh, is that good or bad? And it seems like it's not great. But my deep sleep, instead of like the hour, hour and a half, And which I'm thinking is the delta. Is it? But it's like 10 minutes. What is that deep sleep? Is that deep sleep delta? Like, am I missing out on that or is that no, not—

Deep sleep is delta. It's delta. And that's typically where we dream. And so are you guys wearing like a wearable and then you look at it? It's a Fitbit. Yeah. Yeah. And so you guys are measuring who got the best sleep based on the Fitbit.

He's like, I got 93. I'm like, damn, I got 85.

I love it. You guys have a sleep competition going on every day.

It's like, what'd you get?

Well, I noticed too, is that sleep competition causing a little bit of anxiety?

Ooh. Right?

I've gotta beat my husband. I've gotta have that sleep.

I have high intentions for him. I definitely don't want to bring him down, but I have to say, every now and then when I'm like, woohoo, I got 90 and he got like 87, I'm like, I win today. I don't know if it correlates into having a better day or anything, but it does make me feel better, I have to say.

Well, sleep does translate into having more energy, at least in my world it certainly does. When I have a good night's sleep, I tend to have a little bit more Well, look, just before we wind up, we—

there's so many things that you've dropped in nuggets here that I'm going to reflect on. I just finally want to bring this to the 3rd state of the quantum and the frequency, because we've talked about the heart, we've talked about the brain, energy. You touched on Tesla. This is the 3rd state that you take people through on the journey when you work with them. Could you just touch on that for me and how that brings everything together?

Yeah, the, the quantum field, you mean? Yeah. So I'll, I'll first say that the quantum field, think about that like the, the 5th dimension. We live in the 3rd dimension in this reality. It's a 3rd dimension. In the quantum field, everything is possible, right? There's a possibility for everything in the quantum. Now, that's where we're all connected. We're all connected in the quantum field when we talk about oneness. Well, what exactly does that mean? Well, it means we all come from the same source, right? Source of all that is.

Mm-hmm.

Now, Joe Dispenza's work, he talks about entering the quantum, and to enter the quantum, you cannot enter as an identity. You can't enter as a person. And so you can't enter with all this stuff in your brain. You have to get to a place of what we call nothingness. And a key to getting to nothingness is to let go of the thoughts, to let go of the emotions in the body. It's what he teaches, is that you open your focus to a very expansive, wide focus. As you can do that and you send the signal of the energy out— so think about it this way: When you're in, he calls it nobody, no place, nowhere, no time. When you are in that state of like nothingness, deep meditation, you're fully expanded. That's where when you're in the quantum, you place an intention. Now you may place the intention of I'm going to buy a beach house. I'd love to have my my perfect beach house. I see myself there. That's placing the intention in the quantum. The key is holding the frequency back here in a coherent heart, because when you do that, if everything in the world is energy, including us, Mm-hmm. when you resonate at a frequency of the energy of your beach house, then what happens is you're holding that frequency, and some pretty interesting things can happen where you may get a, a call from a friend. Hey, I have a friend that's selling their beach house. And they don't want to go through a realtor. It just happened with a client of mine, actually an hour before I got on this call. He did, and it had to do with the beach house. But the key of the quantum is that it's the thought that sends a signal out. When we hold the frequency here and we can align the frequency with the possibility, that's where we draw it to us. And of course, we have to be in action for it. It's not just going to come magically. But it's it's much easier because we when we I know when I was growing up if I had a goal that was here and I was here I had to go do and push hard and make this happen. But in reality, if I could become that which I choose to create, I can start to create different scenarios where coincidences start to happen and I'm in action. I'm drawing it to me in a whole different way, and that's the key.

Now that I've got a certified Dr. Joe person here, I'm going to ask you a question that is just a personal question that has been bugging me forever because I think now I understand. But when I do his meditation in the space meditation, I'm taking my ear and I'm like floating my ear in space, and then I take my nose and my nose is in space, and I'm visualizing all my little body parts in space. Is that the separation of the self?

Got it.

I always wondered why we did that, and then I see all my little body parts floating around separate, and I'm like, hmm, I wonder why. Being the kind of logical mind, I just go with it and I have that beautiful experience. But now that makes sense.

I'll say it this way too. We talk about convergent and divergent focus. So you know how he'll say The space between your eyes in space, and you place your energy there. And it's— this is space, it's all energy, it's frequency. So you place your energy there. Then he says, now place your attention in the space inside your room in space. So now your attention is off the body and the— your attention is widened out into space. That is what's getting getting you off of the identity of who you are and moving you into nothingness. So when you do that convergent and divergent focus— and this is something that I play with all the time— like, if my mind is just chattering, chatter, especially at 3 o'clock in the morning, if that happens and it's chattering, I'll focus my, my attention here, then I'll widen it into the room, then I'll bring it back, then I'll widen it Then I'll bring it back, then I'll widen it into my neighborhood. And when you do that, I know for me, I can literally feel my brainwaves change. It's amazing what you can feel. That's incredible.

Well, yeah, I just, um, it's such a gift. And once again, thanks to Becky Robbins for introducing us to, to be able to talk to you and, and see how you have layered all of these things because Because I think for people who are stuck in not being able to sleep, in a stress response, and not even recognizing in the stress response, what you've highlighted is being aware of how your emotions and your thoughts are the triggers, the emotion in the heart, the thoughts in the brain. And by dropping into your heart and creating that coherence and— And I'm going to go I'm going to seek out a HeartMath person and I've put some feelers out to the institute. So, we're going to create a little group within the Exit the Matrix group for HeartMath as well. But, the idea that we can have this heart coherence, but maybe it's not enough, we have to understand the science of how our brain works so that we can deactivate the things that aren't serving us, set the intentions for what we want, and then from a quantum point of view, be able to get out of the 3D self, go to the 5D, be connected to all, and have that beautiful experience of being able to create and pull with intention and emotion and experience that that we may not even have as yet, but the possibility of that thing already existing and making that so. That is a gift that I'm taking away from you, Julie. Thank you so very much.

Well, that's why they call it the present moment, because it's a present and that's all we have. So if you're desiring to create something, you create it in the present moment as though you have it.

I love it. Well, look, you can, um, contact— people can contact you at coreperformance.us, and you very generously also offered, your 5 Mistakes Executives Make When Dealing with Stress and How to Avoid Them. So if you go to exitthematrix.today/julie, we'll make sure that that link is there for people who are listening to this on the podcast. Or if you're in the Exit the Matrix group and you're following along, please do so, and you'll get the access to that dashboard Matrix Flow where you can create your daily gratitudes and do journaling as well. I've got a lot of tools in there Yeah. To support people on this journey. But thank you so much, Julie. I really appreciate the insights you've brought to this. You've given a lot of clarity in a practical way of how we can deal with things like, you know, sleep. What am I going to call it? A sleep ritual. And, you know, recognizing how we can actually be better at sleep and be better at being ourselves, basically. Like just something just simple that people can put in place straight away. So thank you so very much for your time. I really appreciate it.

You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me.

And for everyone, as always, here's to your success. And I can't wait to connect with you further. If you would like to join the group, go to exitthematrix.today/ETM with me. And, uh, I look forward to talking to you soon. All the best. Bye for now.

Thank you for listening to Exit the Matrix Stories of Success. Make sure you subscribe to future episodes at www.exitthematrix.io. Until next time, here's to your success.