You're Not Lazy or Broken, Your Just Wired for Survival | MJ Gordon

One day my husband came up to me and he was like, I think I want a divorce. And I was like, what? Like, what are you talking about? He's like, yeah, this is not fun anymore. You're always working and when you're home you're not very present. And so I don't know what we're doing. And that was like the biggest wake-up call for me because I had spent all this time trying to create this circumstance that looked beautiful on the outside. And then all of a sudden my family wasn't happy on the inside. The thing that we find with most high-performing performers or high achievers is that their nervous system is completely dysregulated. And it doesn't look like that because they've gotten to a place where they're pushing the nervous system to pump out all the support they need to keep performing, but there's no recovery cycle. So I love what you teach because you talk about leaning into the suffering, and that's what creates identity change, and it really shifts. And that's step one and really important. But step two is the shift comes from the recovery.

Hey guys, welcome back to the show. I am super excited to be with to you again today. As we began to create this One Part Lion, One Part Lamb new podcast episode each week just for you guys, we started really thinking about what it would take to actually move the needle. How would you actually change your mindset? How can we change your physiology? How can we change the attributes that control the behaviors and the choices that you make? Which is why I wanted to introduce you to a really good friend of mine. She has done world-class stuff from Super Bowls to Adidas, you name it. World-class strategists, amazing human being, Miss MJ Gordon. What is going on?

Hi, I'm so happy to be here.

Oh, I'm so excited.

Yeah, this is like— I can just be here all day.

Yeah.

So thank you for having me.

Yeah, you know what's funny?

We—

when we, um, when I made the decision, I was actually in Utah at the time, and, uh, I felt like my season in Utah was coming to an end. You know, it was about a year and a half, but I didn't feel like I was supposed to go back to North Carolina, or Raleigh specifically. Came out for Christmas My son's like, why don't you just look at the lake? I'm like, ah, fine. So sure enough, on like, I think it was Christmas Day, get in the car, drive around, look at some different things. You look at Zillow and find some stuff. And found another house that I was like really interested in here. Yeah, here. Um, not too far from here. It's a quick 5-minute boat ride, but it's about a 30-minute ride to it because it takes a few minutes. Um, But for whatever reason, that didn't work out. And I got back to Utah and, you know, this is, you know, over the holiday. And I was like, I just, all right, I swore I'd never go back to the East Coast, but I feel like I'm supposed to go back to the East Coast. And about that time, I just hear Safe Haven. So obviously, welcome to Safe Haven.

Thank you.

Yes.

Love it. I'm glad you followed that call.

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely been, Definitely been a journey. You know what, I tell you what, I think this is one of the cool things that about everything that you do is actually I walked through a season where I was in a bit of a high achiever paradox, right? On paper, I had everything that you would think would make you happy, but internally, I wasn't feeling so good, struggling, if I'm honest. And probably one of the hardest moments in my life, honestly, outside of being homeless, which is kind of funny because I go from not having anything and being miserable to having everything and being miserable. It's like, where the hell am I supposed to be at, right? So I know, I know you have many stories of your own. I'd love to share a few of those because I know that you're just as passionate about helping leaders become integrated and high achievers actually feel meaning and fulfillment while pursuing an actual viable dream.

Yeah, yeah. I think for a lot of us, the conflict comes from, I really wanna be this person, So why am I not experiencing that? And it comes from a number of things, right? I mean, like you talk a lot about identity not matching the external circumstance as well as not leaning into the suck of it. But there's, for me, what happened was I was trying to be a good provider for my family, a mom. I have, you know, I came from a little bit of trauma. And back then I didn't realize that you know, there was something deeper beyond my mindset.

Mm-hmm.

So I was going at this kind of mindset, mindset, mindset, and a lot of high achievers do, right? Like we're passionate and we see something and we're gonna make it happen. And then on the flip side, there's this, well, what's wrong with me? Because I can make my business happen, I can make success, but then I'm not very happy, or my, you know, health and fitness has gone awry. So in my circumstance, I was achieving all these things. I lived in Hawaii, we had this beachfront property, we were like living it up.

Wait a second. Isn't everything almost beachfront in Hawaii? Everything except for one little mountain.

Exactly. But you know, one day my husband came up to me and he was like, "I think I want a divorce." And I was like, "What? Like, what are you talking about?" He's like, "Yeah, this is not fun anymore. You're always working and when you're home, you're not very present. And so I don't know what we're doing." And that was like the biggest wake-up call for me because I had spent all this time trying to create this circumstance that looked beautiful on the outside. And then all of a sudden, my family wasn't happy on the inside.

So, well, I'm curious. I had a similar situation. My audience has heard it a lot. My son comes to me after a divorce and says, hey, there's one thing you can do better. Like, you're an amazing dad, husband, as far as we're concerned, but it's the one thing you can do better is to be more present when you're present. And in that moment, I had like a Rolodex of all these thoughts of missed dinner, or not like, missing— when I say missed dinners, I'm over there on my computer, on my phone, eating while they're at the table or whatever. Or, you know, being at a football game, or one of them was a drum major, so being at a, you know, a band event and like being on my phone. And, and I think I'd love to get your thoughts on this too. I feel like part of what I was doing is I was convincing myself that they were the reason I was really doing it.

Yes.

And then I determined later that, at least for me, I discovered that because of subconscious, call it wounds, trauma, whatever, there was a lot of striving, a lot of performance.

Yeah.

You know, so did you find a similar thing that they're just like, well, I don't understand, 'cause I went through this identity crisis of like, I don't understand that I'm doing it for you guys.

Yeah.

And they're like, that's not, we don't care.

We don't care, yeah.

Yeah, so.

Yeah, I think it's interesting because at least with a lot of the clients that I work with, what we find is that it's a level of self-expectation and we call it like performance expectations. So they think, oh, if I'm gonna be I'm gonna be a good mom or I'm gonna be, you know, a successful business owner. This is what it's supposed to look like. I can't say no, I have to be on all the time. I gotta be attentive to everybody. And so what happens is they put themselves on the back burner and then that creates a whole different situation chemically in the brain and body that just perpetuates the problem.

Well, let's dig in there for a second. Sure. You're really solid in the brain and body. That's the stuff I'm learning a lot about right now.

Oh yeah.

So what is actually going on with the nervous system, with the brain, with the body when this is occurring?

Okay.

Because I, I felt like, at least for me, in my striving and performance mode, it felt normal to me.

Mm-hmm.

Now that I don't do that, now I'm like, I was so anxious, like so anxious or active.

Yeah. Tense. So the reason that happens, and so I gotta think about like my context here. So I'll start first with the thing that we find with most high performers or high achievers is that their nervous system is completely dysregulated. Regulated. And it doesn't look like that because they've gotten to a place where they're pushing the nervous system to pump out all the support they need to keep performing, but there's no recovery cycle. So I love what you teach because you talk about leaning into the suffering, and that's what creates identity change, and it really shifts. And that's step one and really important. But step two is the shift comes from the recovery. So resilience has been built after. It's kind of like going to the gym, right? Yeah. You get sore, but then if you don't recover, you're never gonna grow the muscles. It's the same thing for our brains and our emotions. So when we're pushing and trying to build a business, show up, be on all the time, we increase our cognitive load, our physiological output. And when we don't have recovery there, that shifts, like disregulates all the hormones. And then something like, and I'm kind of jumping, you know, ship here, but like something like exiting a company, feels like a huge crash.

Yeah.

Because your brain has been going at high speed. Think like high RPMs, and now you're just slamming on the brakes.

Yeah, I would think that, at least for me, again, until I went through— it's funny because they, they tell you, like, I had spent a lot of time— you and I have a lot of great mutual friends, right, that do a lot of great work. Rory and AJ are examples of those. And, um, early on, like, when I was, when I was when I was going, when I was getting set up to go through the exit, one of the first things they tell you to do is like, you need to have a plan before you exit. Like, you need to be thinking about, okay, what's, what it is, what are you going to do with your time and energy, right? Because in theory, like, the, a lot of, a lot of us are like, well, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go sit on the beach, drink my 40 days in. You're like, vacation's over, I'm bored, right? You know, you're like, I can do something. So they tell you to kind of like plan. So I started, you know, I started doing that. You know, you and I met a number of years ago.

Yeah.

Um, through Rory and AJ, and you know, both Both of us are ironically doing our own things at the time, and I was pursuing that career, right? Trying to be a quality speaker and all the things that come with that and write books and all the things that come with that, which is, for those of you guys who don't know, personal brands is one of the most expensive businesses you will ever start until it works. Yeah, until it works. So as soon as it works, it works. Um, but at the same time, what I discovered was I discovered I had been running on adrenaline for 25 years, and I didn't know what not running on adrenaline felt like. Yeah, you know, and I hear you talk a lot about adrenal fatigue. I know you've, you've dealt with that yourself, right? And then cortisol, you know, I— it's funny, I, I look at entrepreneurs now and they get up, business leaders get up, they probably check their phone before they do anything else. Handle their morning activities, if you will, still on their phone.

Yeah.

Go right out the door to whatever they're supposed to tackle that day. And as a result, the day perpetuates more anxiety, more performance.

Yeah.

More adrenaline, adrenaline, adrenaline. I'm from North Carolina, y'all. You're like, more adrenaline. You get home, you're completely exhausted. Your partner wants some time and energy, your kids want some time and energy, and you're so depleted you can't even give it to them. Yeah, right. It's not— I don't think it's an act of will. I just think it's like a—

it's a chemical.

Yeah. So, yeah, so the reason— I guess the reason I'm saying that is because, you know, I thought by working out all the time, because I like the gym, I still do it every day, um, that I was gonna keep my cortisol levels at, you know, in a decent amount. But what I realized is my adrenaline levels were here, right? Yeah. The cortisol was just trying to keep up. I think a lot of the times And as I was kind of like just having a bit of this nervous system shock, I feel very fortunate that I was forced into nervous system shock. Like I was very forced to start looking at how I activate myself in the morning. So now, one of the things we talk about is kind of presence practices. So I wake up, I have a mantra I do every morning several times. A lot of times I run over here to the couch, I grab the journal, I write what I hear you say is, which is a listening—

I love that.

Listening thing for me. Today's date, hear some really cool stuff. 9 times out of 10, it's like more profound than anything I can come up with. When it's warm, like it has been, unfortunately, you got the rainy day today, but it's still beautiful.

Still beautiful.

You know, you see the grass out there, I'll leave the front door, I'll do a big grass walk, right? And what I discovered was is that one presence practice taught me that if I start my day in presence, I'll end my day in presence. And so it resists the urge to chase and stuff like that. What's going on inside the body with doing things like that versus just anxious activity every day?

Yeah, so you're tapping into the parasympathetic, and that's the part of our autonomic nervous system that we should be predominantly in. In like science, you would hear rest and digest or rest and restore. And the sympathetic, which is typically only activated when you're ready to like run from a brush fire or bear, that's only supposed to activate for usually 15 to 30 seconds, upwards of 5 to 10 minutes. So think about as an entrepreneur, business owner, you're running at sympathetic rates all day. And so when you have your mantra in the morning and you do your outside walking, you're actually settling down that sympathetic activation and you're allowing yourself to be in a recovery state. And that's why when you get to the end of the day, your brain wants to come back to that. Now here's the beautiful thing about being in parasympathetic. You can only—

I can be a parasympathetic.

You can only access flow from that state.

Yeah.

So the reticular activating system, which is like the part of our brain that's always scanning, if you're in a sympathetic state, what's the thing it's scanning for? Survival.

Yeah.

So that's why like your focus gets so narrow as an entrepreneur if you're just constantly go, go, go. And then there's certain people who it seems like everything just works out for them and they're just happy all the time. Like you are.

I'm abundant. Yeah.

You're hearing the voice of God and you know, because you're open to that and the nervous system isn't clinging to control.

Clinging to control, that's story of my life.

Yeah.

And here's the crazy part is I find that a lot of business leaders, entrepreneurs specifically, like when I say entrepreneur, I mean the person who started it from nothing and is creating something from nothing.

Yeah.

Right? And all the things that come with it, right?

It's a lot.

I find that that skillset, personally, I would call it a skillset. It's, I don't know that, it's like you can learn entrepreneurship, but you almost are, born as an entrepreneur, or at least the mindset of quick problem solving. Like, I don't know, I don't know exactly what I'm trying to say, other than what I realized was after building a business for 25 years, areas that bled into my life was actually the fact that my brain operates in strategy. So I'm one of the weird ones that can do visionary stuff and integrator stuff. Like, I think there's like 2% of the population, right? And maybe that's one of the reasons I was able to build and scale a company and whatever, but And I didn't do it— I wouldn't call it— I wouldn't say I did it successfully because I went through a lot of, a lot of different refinement fires to, to have that happen. At the same time, what I realized was, is the part of my brain that was the strategy piece is probably directly connected to the reticular activating system because I can scan for problems and threats and solve them before they get here. But then I realize when I'm doing that, essentially I'm trying to control the outcome.

Yeah.

Right? So in an entrepreneurship sense, you're creating the environment, you're looking at the team, the old, the infrastructure, the leadership, all of it, to control the environment, to get the outcome that you want. Okay, my biggest aha moment was letting go of the outcome allowed outcomes to come versus trying to control the things, because then that accidentally bleeds into relationships. You don't even realize you're going to say, well, you know, Well, babe, if you want to go do this, what— we wanted this to happen, why don't we just go do this, this, and this? And, you know, I don't— that's— I don't operate that way, you know, kind of thing. So how have you seen control, expectation correlation, freedom, surrender? Like, walk me through kind of like your experience.

Yeah, good question. Great question. Um, what I noticed, like you said, entrepreneurship mind, or like you're kind of born that way. One of the things that people aren't really talking about, which I'm hoping they start to and it's just because science hasn't brought us there yet, is neurodivergence.

Neurodivergence. Okay, so I'm not even familiar with the terms, so riddle me.

Okay, so we have been treating people as normal, like having normal brains, right? And so neurotypical, as, as in everyone's the same. Everyone's the same. And when you were back in school, you know, special ed, usually we would say, oh, you know, they were born a little slow, or there's maybe some brain defects, but we didn't have an actual understanding of what was going on neurologically. What we find is that entrepreneurs is probably one of the largest misrepresented group of neurodiverse individuals.

Definitely felt like misrepresented and misunderstood many, many times. Yeah.

And so that brain that is not neurotypical doesn't operate the same way is kind of like a superpower. So if you think of Elon Musk and he's, you know, on the autism spectrum, it allows you to have a hyperfocus.

Mm-hmm.

Um, you know, to see things in complex, you know, ways and then solve problems very quickly. But that same thing that drives the brain cognitively is very expensive energetically and physiologically. So the same, on the flip side, you need the recovery, which is the opposite kind of wiring, so to speak, as a, you know, a neurodivergent brain thinks and runs at. So it feels like you're fighting against yourself, and that's part of the reason why a lot of entrepreneurs feel like, no, I don't know how to relax, it's not in my flow. Or when they do, they feel guilty, or they got to be doing something.

I actually wrote down the word guilt.

Yeah, yeah. And so the, the The thing that I love is once we— because a lot of people, the stigma is still around, like neurodivergence. They're like, I don't want to be labeled anything. I don't want to make excuses. What we are finding is people who are already very driven, they don't want excuses. They want to get it done. So once you—

that's true. You just sum me up in one word, a couple of words. Get it done.

Get it done. And if you ask them, like, what do you want to do right now? It's just like, just leave it to me. I'll figure it out. So the first layer is mindset. You have to have the right mindset first. But if you're a person who's been thinking about having a good mindset, you read Tony Robbins or whatever, you've got your meditation practice and you're still hitting the wall over here, we often say that's likely a system error.

Okay.

So that means it's not mind over matter.

Mm-hmm.

Neurodiversity is physiology over mind. Okay. So when the brain, it doesn't close its loops, then it says it's not safe.

So open tabs.

Yep, a lot of open tabs.

Constant load.

Yes. And, but the way that you help a neurodivergent person come back to calm and safety is on a physiological level. It's not like a, hey, think positive, or, you know, switch your mindset about this. It's like, what does your body need for the brain to come back online? So what's happening with a lot of entrepreneurs, high achievers, high performers, is that they push through it with their mindset and it works kind of, until it doesn't.

Yeah, because until there's a catastrophic failure, I'm paying attention.

Yeah, yeah, because it's very expensive to use the mindset when the physiology or the physiological foundation is not in place.

I love the fact you bring up safety, because safety is one of the things I've been talking a lot about, and it's not something— especially, especially for men, like, at least my experience so far has been we don't think in terms of safety. Yeah, we think in terms of protection.

Yeah, hunt, protect.

Yeah, we're gonna hunt, we're gonna protect. And it's like, okay, there's a rhino running at me, I probably should run too. You know, kind of thing. And, um, one of the most interesting things that I discovered was, as far as I've gotten entrepreneurially and this wacky catwampus job that I used to get there, um, because obviously I learned a great deal, which is why I'm hopefully helpful now, right? But one of the things I discovered was, and this didn't happen until after my exit, and I would call it a bit of an existential, like, reset of sorts. Was I had derived all of my safety on how I performed, and now I get all of my safety for who I am. I love that, right? So think about them, because I know you've been— you are a high achiever. It's not like you're not a high achiever. You're very much a high achiever. You have some incredible things.

Um, still learning.

And, uh, you know, I know that, uh, you know, you— the— a lot of the clients, people you work with, are obviously very high achievers. They've done similar things that we had done and probably some even greater, right? How do you bring them back to— how do you bring them back to self, especially physiologically? Because I felt like that was the hardest one for me to do.

Yeah.

Because I could sit in my room and go, all right, I'm healthy, I'm wealthy, I'm wise, I'm a steward of the Most High, I love you, Stephen.

Like, yeah, that's the mindset stuff though.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I kind of look at like, that's like mindset leading into soul set.

Yes, yes.

But Um, let me set it up this way because I feel like this is a good context. I'll just talk about my personal experience.

Okay.

Up until age 50, which I just turned last January— wow, um, that—

you don't look it. Thank you, I appreciate it.

Peptides. Um, okay, the, uh But up until that season of life, I did not know it at the time until I went through this massive— I went to New Zealand, had a kind of like a rebirth experience after going through 6 months of like really focusing on why I do what I do, why I feel the way I feel, is the word chaos. I grew up in chaos. As an entrepreneur, I was constantly surrounded by chaos. If chaos wasn't present, I would create chaos. Yeah, right.

It's not safe.

Yeah, exactly. Okay. It's like, how can— mentally, I'm like, even got to a point, it's like, How can chaos be safe? Like, reset, dude, right? Of course it's better— it's easier said than done until you have someone that can walk you through different techniques and principles. But I can tell you that when I started operating, because, you know, the big thing I tell the audience now is you can't scale dysfunction. It's true, right? And I say that because I tried, and I lost millions of dollars. I lost great team members. I did dumb stuff, you know. I didn't always get it right. Walked around in inauthenticity, trying to be what I thought everybody else wanted me to be. And all of that is another form of chaos. So then I step into safety or secure environments in general, relationships and friends. And, you know, a lot of the people we associate with, I would consider them safe friends and like they're high vibe people, as you would call it, frequency, whatever. And that felt so freaking foreign to my nervous system. It freaked me the hell out for about 30 days.

Really?

To like to opt to operate in a like a very steadfast, very anchored— like I was, my brain for months was, okay, where's, where's the shoe gonna drop? Okay, yeah, apart, like, and like, and now it's funny, now I even, even now I've got a couple business dealings that are not ideal, but I'm not losing my shit, pardon my French. Like I'm, I'm not like spiraling, I'm not telling stories in my mind, I'm like It's going to work out.

I don't know how. Wait and see.

Yeah, it's going to work out because I look back and I'm like, everything in my life up until this point, even when I was freaking out, we got to the other side of it and it worked out for my benefit, not for my hurt. Right. So what's going on inside of me in times like that?

Yeah, you— your nervous system has stored activation. So obviously there's psychology involved with trauma. This is home base. And so we're always looking for homostasis, which is just where we are, like where we're used to being.

Yeah.

So what you haven't done is shifted the identity. So your brain is going back to homeostasis. And what I love about leaning into the challenge and suffering, because I think for your story, right, you— things didn't really change until you started embracing that. Yeah, you can say that.

I would say, I would say that my biggest transformation was not resisting the challenge before me, but instead I would call it walking to the forge willingly. Yeah, like, just, just because I realized that the more I resisted it, the longer it took.

Yes.

Right. The moment I said I accepted, okay, well, I'm gonna have to walk through this, it's going to be okay. I don't know if I'm gonna have hair when I get done because clearly I don't. It probably got burned off in the forge, you know. But, uh, at the end of the, at the end of the day, now it's the first, it's one of the first places I go.

Yeah.

I'm like, what am I supposed to learn?

Right. And so it was like Viktor Frankl that said, um, like, suffering without meaning is catastrophic. I mean, I'm probably making up words here, but then if—

it's okay to paraphrase, I do it all the time—

if there's meaning in it, then there's change, there's adaptation, there's something, you know, a gift there. And so what happens is when you're fighting against yourself, you're actually just perpetuating the cycle because your brain is looking for patterns of behavior that secure its identity. It wants to be safe, so it's coming back home. Now, in order for you to change and you lean into that suffering, then things— the, the whole system comes online. You've got, first of all, elevated, you know, nervous system reactivity. So you've got elevated cortisol, elevated adrenaline. Your body is ready to move and react because you're in this, you know, moment of challenge. But then you assign it a different meaning and you say, I have to show up a different way, or I want a different result. And so the dopamine spikes bigger during those challenges and those points of suffering. And that creates radical change. So that's why it's so powerful to say, okay, let's look into this and see what gifts, like how is this gonna show up differently for me? Because now your brain is adaptive instead of in survival mode.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, that's so good. I was also thinking too that one of the things that, I mean, again, I'm speaking from my personal experience after going through a bit of a journey, right? This essence of understanding that my emotions didn't have to have control over me, that I could influence my emotions. Um, so in fight, flight, freeze, flee, whatever you want to call it, right, in that whole episode, right, I've done all of those. I've ran, I've fought, like, whatever. Yeah. The difference is now I— before I, before I choose any action of any kind I'll sit in presence and I'll breathe. Like, I'll, you know, I call it, I know the Navy SEALs do 444, I do 777. I just find that that's how long it takes me to like get my wits about me. Why does breathwork work so well for calming the nervous system?

Oh, great. And I love it because breath is like free right now, right? And you can do it anytime. Nobody has to know.

No one can put a meter on it, so that's good.

Um, that's great. Like, so our brainwaves and our breath and our heart rate are all connected. And so you're actually gaining control of your physiology. So again, physiology first, so the mind can come back online. Um, when you talk about taking a moment to pause and breathe, the way that every brain, no matter what we're doing, perceives and experiences life is it goes through the amygdala first. So it's scanning immediately for threat. If it says, okay, this could be compromised, compromising or threatening, then the limbic system comes online and it's like trying to figure out what's the threat, what's going on. So survival brain, right? So fight, flight, freeze, um, freak out, right?

Somewhere in the middle.

Somewhere in the middle. And, and so as soon as you start breathing, you're calming that reaction down and you're able to think. So we call this like the cortical processing. And so, I mean, these stages kind of overlap, right? But for the sake of simplicity, your brain is starting to say, Oh, what's that that scared me? Oh, it was my, you know, kid and he was just playing and he's non-threatening. And so now you're kind of like, okay, the threat signal can calm down.

Mm-hmm.

And now prefrontal cortex, which is your executive thinking, so that's thinking brain. Now we got executive brain. Mm-hmm. Can come back online. The beautiful thing about this, yeah, is this works in every aspect of life, not just for yourself, but if you're arguing with a partner or spouse, if you are trying to lead a team, if you're trying to parent children, if you're trying to make a sale, if you can identify identify whether they're in survival or thinking brain, then you can help them get to executive brain where they can open up and say, okay, I'm open to new ideas and how that's going to affect me in the future.

You're, you're going to come into Lion's Den, you're going to teach my people.

I'm excited.

Yeah, we're gonna get you in for sure.

I think everybody needs to know this stuff.

Yeah, I mean, really, I mean, honestly, I might— so, you know, the, some of the core functions that we try to help business leaders solve, right? A lot of people we work with are just— or they've been trying to break through the million-dollar ceiling forever, and they're forcing it and forcing it and forcing it. They have no idea what's in their way, why it's not working. So we help them identify that, right? But in doing so, they live in burnout.

Hmm.

Like, they live in burnout, overwhelm. And I know exactly what that feels like. It's terrifying. It doesn't feel good. Um, I don't— I— it's not pleasant to be constantly disrupted by your own mind that's just scanning for threats, right? You know, it's like Okay, a, a business deal or a team member conversation or financial stress, like, your— my brain goes into, I'm gonna look at 3,000 different ways. Yeah, like somebody from Marvel, like scanning the universe, right, of how it's going to work out. And then historically, I would just take action. I found that that was really impacting burnout, and then I just put two and two together. So when I'm in a grounded, regulated state, my executive function comes online.

Yeah. Yeah. And then you can access flow. And when you're in flow state, your vision widens, right? It's like, oh, that's a possibility. Oh, I noticed that's an opportunity. But when you're stressed, it's not wide at all. It's like, how do I just get to my destination safely? So even if there is other options, you're not even, seeing it and maybe not even open to it because it's not safe to be.

So what's, so what's going on neurologically for the burnout to come up? Like, with burnout specifically, I know you, you and I both went through major seasons of burnout and all kinds of stuff. Um, in fact, I'd love, if it's okay with you, I wouldn't mind you sharing, uh, a true story of your own because I feel like that leads credence to how you learn what you've learned and how you help, how you help.

Yeah, absolutely. So for me, when my husband said, I want a divorce, It was kind of, you know, one of those moments where I was just sitting there and I'm like, gosh, I don't even know what to do. This is like unsolvable in my mind. And I was listening to Tony Robbins and he was saying something like, you know, 90% is mindset, but you know, like 20% is the systems. But if you don't got the mindset, it's not going to work out for you. And I had this aha moment where I was like, all I've been thinking about is mindset. What are the systems? And so I started getting tested. I got my adrenals tested. I got my, you know, gut tested, everything tested. And what I found was just mind-blowing, because this whole time I thought there's something wrong with me, and I always connected it to, oh, maybe it was past trauma, or maybe I'm just lazy. Guilt, right?

Yeah.

And what turned out was my body was making almost zero cortisol. Now, cortisol is the hormone that makes you say, okay, get up and go. It gives you drive, it gives you energy. If you don't have cortisol— it also regulates blood sugars upwards, right?

Okay.

So you've got insulin that brings the blood sugars down, cortisol that brings the blood sugars up. So So you literally just feel flat, like, like you're carrying a ton of bricks. It's the worst feeling in the world. Um, and so this whole time I'm thinking I am lazy, so I'm forcing myself to exercise more, I'm forcing myself to grind harder, and I'm only perpetuating the problem.

Yeah.

Um, on the flip side, I also found out that I'm autistic ADHD.

I got ADHD. I don't know how much I'm on— I might be on the spectrum.

I mean, they all have their own spectrum, right? But it's just a difference of like hyperhypofunctioning in the brain, and it also changes the way dopamine cycles work.

Okay, I didn't know that.

Yeah, so for a lot of them, the dopamine cycles are a little bit different. For ADHD, um, you know, for simplicity's sake, you basically don't have, uh, like, don't receive the dopamine hit in the prefrontal cortex, which is why we're a lot more impulsive. Um, also the way our brains, uh, the sensory is kind of like unfiltered in a lot of these. So we, um, think, uh, what is it called, wide instead of linear. Like, most people are like this thought to that thought. We're like, okay, a thousand things in one go. If you tell me elephant, I'm gonna think of every association of elephant in my mind.

I'm gonna have visions of trunk in my head all of a sudden.

Trunk, circuit, everything, right? So, yeah, exactly. We can go on all day. So that changes the way that you need to approach things. And again, like going back to what we said earlier, you can mentally like force yourself through this, but then it gets really expensive. And so the burnout tax is higher. And already, as a neurodivergent brain, it's already high burnout tax. Then on top of it, you're forcing yourself to kind of like go in this direction instead of saying, okay, how does my brain function and what do I need to do to actually leverage it instead of fight against it? And that's like a game changer for all. So once I found this out, the guilt was gone, and I was like, I have an idea, a string that I can pull on and kind of just follow. And, um, Turns out I wasn't really crazy and lazy at all after I resolved my nervous system. And then I started leaning into what my neurology was. It was like all the EQ issues I had gone. My ability to be present, like instantaneous, instead of having these huge wind-down periods, right? Like, um, decision-making became really easy instead of fighting, like, you know, chasing dopamine highs because I don't, you know, get a lot of it as an ADHD brain. So all these things gave me what I would say, like, control of my life. Got my life back. We didn't get divorced. Good news. We're happier than ever. And then really, you know, I had other businesses that I was running and it wasn't like I kind of just threw this up online because people were like, hey, how'd you reset your nervous system? And people were having like amazing results from it. So it's kind of a calling. And now, now super passionate. I'm like, everybody's got to know this because it's like like it's super easy once you get it.

Well, clearly, am I seeing why you had to come on the show? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thank you.

I, I mean, one of the things I try to do, and I've been mindful of this, is for a long time, you know, I, we had a lot of people just really large platforms and stuff like that, and, and they were, they were, they were great and helpful, but then I also wanted to get people that were really, that are really applying their own work as they're building and scaling themselves. And because I have such a high value for that, um, because pretty much everything that I've learned and shared with the audience, whether it's, you know, you know, on a podcast or on the show or in the— with our Lion's Den community, you know, it doesn't matter. Like, I just want it to be real and authentic.

Yeah.

More than anything else.

I love that about you.

Yeah, thank you. I feel like there's, um, we're, we're living in a breakdown of the— what I refer to as breakdown of a trust economy. A good friend of mine, Connor, told guys. Like you said, you were watching a breakdown.

Yeah, right.

Because people are— have been trying all kinds of different things, investing all kinds of money and things that aren't really serving them because someone told them it would serve them and committed to that and stuff like that. So it's one of the reasons why I love doing the show is because when I put people on the show, invite people like yourself— which I love you to death, by the way, you're amazing.

Thank you. Um, love you too.

Yeah, it's, um, it's really cool for people to be vulnerable and share, well, I learned this because I went through it. Yeah, I learned this because I had to, I had to refine how I thought, how I showed up for myself, and things of that nature. Um, I find that a lot of marriages even struggle, uh, you know, it says they get into the, the 40s and perimenopause starts to send in menopause, or men kind of go through something similar but different, um, identity call it identity crisis, go get the sports car, right? Whatever.

Yeah.

Um, you know that a lot of that seems to come down to nervous system responses. But like I tell the audience all the time, I want to— I'm trying to train them how to become one part lion and one part lamb. So in its simplest form, an immature lion is aggressive, controlling, manipulative, etc. A mature lion is bold, courageous, and active, right? They can stand in— and, and the anchor to both of those is presence, right? Lamb, immature, people-pleasing, rescue, over-functioning, etc. Immaturity, loving, compassionate, resilient, like connected, like they have the ability to communicate, divine wisdom if you will. And what I've discovered is, is the nervous system and the ability to regulate, or even co-regulate in some cases, is like, is like the heart of transformation. And I think we've thrown everything else but the kitchen sink at transformation without just being present with ourselves. So do you have a specific practice or something you follow routinely that you found that really works well for you that I'm sure you teach your clients what works well for you? 'Cause that's what I do. So I'm just curious, what kind of, what's your flow to that?

I love that. Yeah, 'cause let's be real, it's actually messy and ugly. I'm sitting here, we're like, yeah, our marriage is great. And it's like, it was like a hot mess. And so, um, I was able to find a system that works, and that's what we implement in the Level Up, you know, structure with my clients. So the first thing is get tested. Then we're in this day and age now where it's not going to cost thousands and thousands of dollars. When I first got tested, I think I spent over 10 grand getting all these different tests, right? Because you got to do one panel and go to each doctor each— now you can do something like Function Health. They just dropped their prices, $365 for over 100 biomarkers. And the reason that's important is because when you get your annual blood work done, it's just very general.

Yeah.

So they're looking from a high level. Is anything on fire? Nothing's on fire. Nope, we're good. When you go and get like the functional test done, you're walking into the buildings and inspecting them.

Yeah.

And so that like nobody's ever come back with like all green.

No, I bet. First time I did it, I had, what do they call it, the MF for gene that I didn't know I had. I had My testosterone was gone.

Yeah, makes sense.

Adrenal fatigue as well. Like I had a whole host of things and I was popping vitamins every day. I thought, well, I'm popping vitamins, I'm gonna be good as new. Yeah, you know, it's like, well, this is why you're, you know, this is why you're tired.

Yeah, well, 'cause you've been pushing it so long, your brain's literally like, I'm not gonna listen to what my body's saying. So even if we're like, listen to your body, your body's not telling you because you haven't been listening. So the test takes away all doubt and it'll let you know which things, you know, are missing. And so we try to fill that gap first, learn how to regulate on, on, we call them progressive flows. So, so we're working with, you know, how the brainwave cycles peak and then come down instead of just waking up and getting to emails right away. That's what we call like overheating the engine.

So are you tracking brainwaves at at the start of this?

We're tracking more heart rate.

Okay.

Heart rate, like you have, is that an Oura Ring?

Yes, it is.

Okay, awesome. So the Oura Ring's great because it can tell you like, hey, when you are stressed here. A lot of times our clients say, well, I'm really having a lot of fun and I enjoy doing this. And it's like, okay, but what do your metrics say? Are you in a sympathetic state or are you in a recovery state?

Yeah.

And we wanna see more recovery than we see sympathetic. So we wanna insert those recovery periods at the start and end of the day, in between, you know, context switching. And then we also wanna see recovery periods on a weekly, monthly, and seasonal basis as well.

Okay.

So a lot of us aren't thinking about how to strategize our brains and bodies.

Most of us pay more time, pay closer attention to a family vacation than we do our lives.

Or tracking KPIs and conversion rates. But I'm like, treat your body the way you would your business, 'cause you are the operator.

Ooh, that's good.

And usually the operator The operator's the bottleneck, right?

Yeah, yeah. 9 times outta 10. I know I was.

Yeah. Did I answer your question?

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay. I just wanna make sure.

Yeah, absolutely. No, I know. I mean, I think this is a great discussion because when I hear recovery, my initial thought goes to rest.

Mm-hmm. That's not necessarily the case.

And that's what I want to hit on because rest has improved for me when I started presence practices. When I started trying to like get excited, like I, again, I had a business thing happen literally over the last couple days that old Stephen, I would have gone into a downward spiral. I would have been firing off emails, I'd have been talking to attorneys, like I would have been on it, right?

Yeah.

New Stephen's like, you have no control over this. All you can do is— all you can choose to do is show how— show up how you, you show up. So okay, well, this is a Stephen thing, so what does Stephen need to do to get his nervous system in alignment right now, right? So walk through, if you don't mind, how rest and recovery are different. Because again, my brain goes— so I'm thinking, if my brain goes there, I'm sure a huge part of the audience is doing the same thing.

Yeah. So the progressive flow, which means noticing where your brain is at, and obviously the Oura Ring helps, um, and it's something that I wish I could give you in 2 seconds, but, uh, basically understanding whether you're in this like activation, like loop mode. Yeah. Versus like you're present. I like that word. You can't get off of like a workday or a heavy call day and then be like, hey, I'm gonna just go meditate right now, right? Like you have to wind down from that. Likewise, in your day, you gotta rev up from being in a sleep state. So rest does not mean sitting down and scrolling your phone. Just because your body is resting, your brain is not. And unfortunately, the screens are like 99% of the time going to activate a sympathetic brainwave. It's just too much information and processing happening too fast.

Mm-hmm. Sure. Everybody close your eyes right now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I, well, it's like, it's a context switching of scrolling, right? So that's really, again, cognitively expensive for the brain. So what we want is low cognitive costs, low physical costs. So we split our, um, our audit between mental and physical exertion.

Mm-hmm.

Um, but I think a lot of entrepreneurs don't give credit to how much mental exertion actually costs. And so you talk about being present, your brain isn't doing that, who do I gotta call? Like, what do I have to cling to to feel control and safe? It's like, you know what? We're just gonna let that go and just be right here. And so all of a sudden your nervous system calms down and you're not using all the expendable energy.

But then like a half an hour later, all of a sudden have ideas.

Yes, yeah. And so it's like, it's way more ROI to be in that position because again, expensive. And we have this, you know, algorithm called the energy calculator. And then it kind of like says how much like energy limit you have throughout the day. And it's a nice way of measuring.

He's an Energizer Bunny. Listen, just kidding.

His number's 100. Yeah. But really it spits out a number and it's like, it's nice 'cause if, and I always say you can do this by like do an R&D on yourself. So it's a joke, but it's R, is this restorative? N, is this neutral? Or D, is this draining?

Okay.

And you wanna see more Rs in your day. And if you don't, it's okay. Your work might be draining, but then insert those Rs in between.

Okay, I have a random thought on that.

Yeah, go for it.

So one of the things that I've struggled with my entire life is what some people consider work. For me, to me, it feels like painting. Yeah, right? Seriously, like, I'm giving you an example. So I, um, my team tells me I talk in fortune cookie, so part of me wants to create fortune cookies. Yeah, right? So, um, I've been tracking, you know, these one-liners that just fall out and stuff like that so I can and do something kind of fun with it. Like, I gotta figure out a way to do a really cool protein, like, base or something.

That'd be fun.

Anyway, um, see, I'm chasing a squirrel. Um, but like yesterday, for example, um, we do— we've been doing a monthly virtual event for 90 minutes to introduce people into essentially what we call the Integrated Leader, right? Which is a lot of nervous system work, it's a lot of strategical business principles as well. So it's like bringing the two together. And then we will do like a 2-day right? So a 2-day virtual event to kind of say, hey, well, if you want to go deeper, this is like day 1 is identity, day 2 is tactical. Like, it's like you then business, not business then you.

Yeah, right.

It's just getting— let's get them right in the order. And the reason I say that is because I enjoy creating the content and methodologies and frameworks and strategies and all that stuff for that. Like, I— it lights me up. Yeah, right. But then my kids would say back in the day, you're working. Right now, granted, there's probably times, as I've admitted before, that I could have been— wasn't the appropriate time to be my creative painting self, right? Um, but why, why, you know, because I would assume if I feel this way, there's got to be other entrepreneurs and business leaders that feel this way as well. Why do— like, if you really enjoy what you do, it's not work, right? It's just what— it's what you do with who you are. So it's like, how do you How, what's going on inside of, like, what's going on?

Everybody's different. Yeah, everybody's different. And this is kind of a side answer, but like, one of the things that I noticed that I really love doing is things that, um, have to do without sound. So like scuba diving, shooting guns, like, is that appropriate to say?

Yeah, I have a couple. Okay. I know Kass does.

I love music, but that's kind of like, and so I I was wondering, okay, why do I like this stuff? Like, I don't get where this comes from. Is it genetic? Is it— when I found out that I was autistic, ADHD, and then I learned that I was sound sensitive, like very sound and texture sensitive.

Yeah.

Um, a lot of the EQ issues I had was like this neurological, like, yeah, you're going overwhelmed. And yeah, and all I did is just like put my— and so, you know, yesterday at the airport, first time that I used noise cancellation headphones on the plane, I was I was like, oh, I can work on the plane.

I went to my computer.

Like, I've never been able to do that. So I know I'm going off to the side here, but you know, to answer your question, um, everybody is different for different reasons.

Yeah.

Um, the thing that gets flipped is a lot of entrepreneurs will consider the thing that they like doing work because it has to do with the business. But we want them to be really clear, like, is this what's moving the needle? Or are you just doing this because it's fun?

So yeah, or is it just busy work?

Is it busy work?

Yeah, so a little fun side story. One of the things I've discovered recently by looking at my own journey, and I think a lot of business leaders and entrepreneurs feel this way, which is why I'm going to say it, is we like to feel needed. So we will create busy tasks that will create— I could call it dysfunction or chaos, if you will— um, where someone has to need us. That's why we don't let go of things. That's why we don't trust. That's why we don't feel safe when we're letting go of things. Um, and as a result, I think the reason I'm bringing this up is because when business leaders have to feel needed, are they actively doing busy work or actually doing something that moves the needle, as you were saying?

Yeah.

Yeah, like, I, I would much rather go and go downstairs right now and create content than deal with one of the one or two of the business things I got going on. I'd much rather do that. Like, I would just, you know, but then my— I've been training myself for a long time. It's like, okay, no, this needs to be addressed, uh, to its resolution in a most regulated, grounded way, um, at its most appropriate time. Yeah, because I used to like force the deadline. Deadlines today, make a decision.

Yeah, well, that's good. That really speaks to like the ADHD profiling where, uh, because the dopamine, you know, receptor in the front is like very low, we seek something that gives us a high hit of dopamine. So when we close those loops, like, ooh, I have this awesome idea, fortune cookie, let's do it. And we're like making progress. We're getting those dopamine hits again and again. And so we're more likely to follow the dopamine than we are like the actual thing.

Okay.

Yeah. And so that's why— that's partly why it's different for everybody. Yeah. Um, my husband has OCD, and it's the exact opposite. They have a hyper-functioning prefrontal cortex, which is executive functioning. So it's like overthinking everything, very slow to make decisions, but once he does, it's solid.

He's already been through all the arithmetic a thousand times. It's like, this is going to work out.

Yes. And then it's got— and the loop's got to close that way. So there's like less flexibility, whereas like our ADHD brain is like squirrel, shiny object, like everything, yay, and let's get the dopamine, very hopeful, you know. Um, so I hopefully that answers a little bit of what's going on there, um, and why we're kind of addicted to, you know, feeling needed or getting other stuff done, even if it's not the stuff that moves the needle.

All right, so I'm gonna ask a fun question. If you can, you can say I don't want to answer that if you want to, okay? So, but just, I'm gonna ask it because I feel like there's a lot of folks out there who are walking So obviously, you've been very honest and upfront about walking through some marital challenges, which was what it took to shake the tree, right? Yeah, kind of wake everybody up. What is one thing that you learned as part of this journey that brought a lot of benefit to your marriage? And what is one thing your husband learned that brought benefit to your marriage as part of this journey?

That's a hard question, Stephen.

This is why we do the show.

I'll speak for myself first. I think it was autism thing. I always thought— when I got my test results, it said subclinical autism. It was only a few points below. It's kind of like this phase thing. And then it wasn't until recently that my friend was like, hey, you need to get reassessed because she has a high-functioning autistic kid and she knows me intimately. And she's like, I'm pretty sure you're You know, um, yeah. And same thing, don't want the labels. Like, I can handle it myself. I don't— obviously I'm fine without it. But, um, that opened up a whole set of tools, like, kind of like the noise cancellation, that, um, allowed me to self-regulate better by leaning into those tools. And then it allowed both of us to say, okay, when I'm having this neurological meltdown because all these triggers happened, we know what happened, and all I need is just safety. So it's a physiological thing where he'll come behind me and just hug me with his hands in my chest like this, and it just resets.

Whereas in the past, we would like just go back and forth, back and forth.

Like, he'd be like, well, why are you thinking that way? That doesn't make sense. And I'd be like, no, like, and it was nothing to do with what was actually going on. Um, so for me personally, that was like the biggest lever, because again, this whole time I'm hitting my head through a wall being like, I'm a crazy person, like something's wrong with me. And it's just like, no, I just didn't understand my brain.

Yeah.

Um, I think for my husband is forgiveness, if I could speak for him. Yeah, it was— it took a lot for him to build that trust back. Um, and really understanding on my side the neurology and being like, okay, like instead of me freaking out and trying to control the outcome of the relationship, I really trusted what I was studying And, you know, sometimes we'd mess up and I would say, "Hey, I think I know what happened." And I could articulate it like, "This made me feel unsafe. And so I reacted this way because of whatever, you know, habits or whatever. I apologize and I wanna move forward trying it this way." And so it's kind of weird 'cause from the outside we might appear a little robotic or transactional.

I don't know, I get, the couple times I've met him, I thought he was, everything was great, so.

Oh, like, it's like, do you have feelings? Like, but, but, you know, I'll be like, hey, I hear what you say, um, but in this moment, my point of this conversation is just to be heard, right?

And there's that, like, framework, like, her awareness, especially as a, um, I call it divine feminine energy, like, is having, is having the ability to be self-aware to actually say, I just want to be heard this moment. Because a lot of relationships that I've witnessed and even been part of Yeah, it's like, I'm, I'm like, I don't understand even what's going on. Like, what's wrong? Yeah, all you want me to do is hold the trash can. Okay, well, just tell me to hold the trash can.

Okay, so it took a long time to get here. I have, I have this thing, it's on my phone still, it's called, it says Emotional Engagement Protocol, and that means when I'm absolutely losing my shit, yeah, like, follow these steps. So I like pull up my phone and it's like, do not engage, go to a quiet place alone, uh, brain dump onto a journal, pause, breathe. Like, it has all these steps because like when you're in hyperactive, like hypervigilant, like survival mode. What's happening? You cannot think. And, and you'll notice that when people are arguing or talking over each other, if you're not a part of it, you're looking at them like, these guys have lost it. Like, but all they're saying is, make me feel safe. No, you make me feel safe. Well, that's not making me feel safe. And back and forth and back and forth.

Well, that's why for me, safety started with me. I had to feel safe within myself.

Yes.

And then safety was easy to find in a variety of other places.

Yes. So instead of dumping it on somebody and being— and it's literally us freaking out. We're little children like, ah, I'm freaking out, somebody save me. And the other person's like, you're freaking out, it's making me freak out. So I had these rules of like, okay, I have to like get into that, you know, cortical processing first. And then it started off with just text. And my, like, the rules for myself was 2 to 3 sentences max.

Now you can ChatGPT, please make me, please help me say this better.

Yeah, you can just dump it like, whoa. But yeah, so—

This is what I want to say. Can you make it sound sweet?

And it worked out, you know, he'd sit in the other room and we had this like little therapy session with ourselves. And over time that moved from texting in real time to ClickUp, believe it or not. Okay, I had a little—

whatever works, right?

We have like a ClickUp board just for our relationship and it's like we have, you know, money, family, children. Yeah, well, you have to have systems.

That is an expression of intention regardless of the system that you build that works for you guys. That's an expression of intention. That's ironically at a subconscious level there. If I'm in the other person's shoes, I'm like, well, they're being intentional. So there's a high value there. There's real love there.

Yeah.

Just because the intention is there. So you can go through that, that work of setting up the ClickUp board and putting the stuff on the wall.

I was like, I'm in.

Yeah, I'm still in, you know.

Yes, exactly. I like my, my pastor always uses this term guardrails. Like discipline isn't about forcing yourself, to do the thing you want to do. It's about setting yourself up for success, right? Having the guardrails in place. And, um, and I think that a lot of us, we think that we have to be the hero and we have to do it all. And if we're not, that it's—

or we're the only one doing it, we're the only one doing it all.

Yeah.

So I tell people all the time, and it's funny, I've gone deep in this, and the deeper I go, the deeper the content gets around it. But, uh, the constraints. Arrogance, ignorance, fear, impatience, insecurity. Yeah, like every time. Like, if I, I even— it's funny, and once you fully appreciate and understand this and you start leaning in, because I believe in contrast. So if you like, these are the attributes that create behavior that you don't want, or the outcomes that you don't want, then the opposite would be true. So lean into the opposite, right? So arrogance, humility, ignorance, teachability, impatience, presence. Right?

I love it.

Um, fear, trust, like these types of things. And I can look back at my own journey, I can look back at last week and say these are times where I was operating in these zones because I was amplified. Fear, fight, freeze. Like, I was, I was, I was, uh, triggered, I guess, using the word you can use. Like, activated is another word people can use, but but, but it's because it became more aware of understanding the state that I was in that gave me a choice to choose a different state. Yeah, yeah, right. Um, when I— and now, and it sounds like this actually happened in y'all's marriage, which I think is really cool. It sounds like that once you guys both became aware of the external forces that neither of you had control over, it allowed grace to happen, and grace allowed truth to come out, and truth was allowed to build safety over time.

Yeah, yes, and over time is the key. I love that because we oftentimes are so subscribed to our emotions like they are what is reality. But when you can separate yourself and say, I am not that, you know, then you can think actively outside of that. And that's what you're calling grace. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, grace is, what did they say, mercy, grace is mercy on, well, uh, what's it— what's the word I'm looking for? Grace is mercy unrequired, like, or something like that. It's like grace is— it's the extension of— it's almost like the extension of trust and safety and love simultaneously without having to expect it to happen in return. Yeah, like, it's, it's something beautiful. Well, tell me more about the app. I know we only got a few minutes left, but I want to know more about the app, um, why you created it, um, how this is part of this, this new program you guys are launching. And like how we can get access to it.

Yeah, so my app is just a free resource. I do webinars, master classes. It kind of is like the central hub, so it's got my YouTube videos, podcast, blog, and just a place for people to get into this idea because it's a little bit, you know, like disorient—

we don't— it may be, but it seems like it's becoming like more, like more important than ever. Like I'm seeing more and more people Um, which I'm happy about. Yeah, lean in more into regulation and into alignment and what's going on and why the body operates the way it does. Yeah, today's the first day I heard the term neurodivergent, so I'm like, now I gotta get— now I'm gonna spend all day in ChatGPT. What is neurodivergent? Like, tell me more.

I have a resource for you. Um, so yeah, the app is just a place to get the information, and then, you know, if people want to engage further, they can request a free audit. We do a call where we kind of audit what's going on with their life and and what specific, you know, levers they can pull to hopefully get them on track towards more safety. Yeah, yeah.

Reset that nervous system. So we have a very diverse audience, which is awesome. Very, very blessed, very grateful for everybody.

Yeah.

Who's the app for? Who does it seem to serve the best?

So we primarily target like high performers, business owners, leaders. Reason being is 'cause they're the most—

'Cause we're the ones activated all the time.

Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. Yeah, but I mean, anybody can get good information out of there. But really, um, a lot of times I always say sometimes if you have like, you know, emotional problems or things at home, you might want to, you know, seek therapy or like mindset work first before coming into this, because this really works for people who can apply. And it's a very, it's a very easy, but has to be a consistent implementation process to install what we call the Level Up system, which is basically just the habits and the state of being to be in a regulated nervous system and understand your neurology. So yeah, yeah, that's awesome.

It's a lot of body that stuff, man. Yeah, it's repetitions.

And I love it.

Well, before, as we wrap up with this final question, um, first of all, thank you for coming out here and enjoying Safe Haven. Hopefully you've enjoyed the conversation.

It's such a haven.

Yeah, it's, uh, it's lovely. Yes. If there was one thing on your heart and mind that hasn't really been discussed in the marketplace that you wish the world knew more about, what would that be?

That's a good question, Stephen.

Um, it's okay, we can sit here for a second. It's cool.

Personally, I'm really passionate about this work, but specific to our first responders and our healthcare givers, right? Like our doctors, our nurses, our teachers. They're the people who are affected really strongly by this type of nervous system dysregulation, but they're also the people responsible for so much. We're talking about people's lives, our children's education. So yeah, like I think if anything, make it a priority to learn yourself.

Yeah.

On a, you know, on a systematic level and to do something about it. Like I always say, it's our, anything we want to have a certain result is our responsibility. It doesn't matter if it's financial, the way we parent our children, our spirituality, but your health and wellbeing is, kind of the crux that affects everything, right? Like you're the center point of what your life, it doesn't matter if you're a business owner or not. And so if you don't take the time to really invest in yourself and treat yourself like a priority, like an asset that needs to be managed, I like the word you used, stewarded, stewardship of this gift. And you can't get another one, not yet, right?

Yes, but we're aware of it.

Not yet, you know, but this is, You got one brain and body. So, you know, prioritize it because that is such a huge leverage. Like when you're regulated and you know, you are good, now you can thrive and now you can help. But if you're in survival mode, you can't think of anybody but yourself.

Mm-hmm. So yeah, that's good. That's good. Can I have 2 more minutes? Just 2 more.

Of course you can have all the time you want. If I can stay longer here, we can be here, you know.

Um, as we're looking at one of the things that just popped in my mind, especially with people that are caregivers, and like they, they chose paths that they're constantly having to be present for people who can't be present for themselves at different situations, different times. I would assume that many, most of them are similar, and they're, they're probably empathic in some way, shape, or form, right? They— that's why they have this massive heart to serve. Um, when you're looking at nervous system and self-regulation and, and kind of doing this work, how does one separate their own needs from the needs that they've typically carried for other people? You know what I'm saying? Like, um, uh, at least for me, I, I'd realize— I discovered I had a bit of a rescuer thing from 9 years old all the way to like, you know, where I'm at now. And so I would jump in and try to save the day for everybody. Body, and I would self-abandon in the process. And a lot of caregivers I know, they'll literally, as you mentioned, run into a fiery building, which is the definition of this is not necessarily what's safest for you, um, to do that. So I kind of feel like there's, there's a— sometimes there's an unspoken weight. Like, how can, how could somebody maybe like not necessarily disassociate but start to like really like love self a little better?

It's like the oxygen mask first, right? Like you are trying to save everybody else, but you can't do it optimally. I mean, let's be honest.

Yeah.

You know, if you wanna really be able to show up as the person that you expect yourself to be, then you need to treat yourself as that person.

Yeah.

So it's like you wanna be a NASCAR, but then you're putting cheap tires and like cheap gas in it. Like that's not gonna last for so long. I mean, Just for practicality's sake, it's like, then if you look at it, you know, like data-wise, the amount that you're able to do when you're good first is multitudes than when you're running on burnout.

Yeah.

Yeah, so.

All right, final question. Where can I find out more about you? Where do you wanna send them to?

Well, we could go anywhere. I'm all over the internet, so, you know, it's just MJ Gordon.

We'll put links to the show notes.

I know so cool, but yeah, I'm like, so far I'm really on YouTube and Instagram. If you're on socials, um, that's @MarinJaden, or if you just type MJ Gordon, I'll pop up. Um, and then if you want to find out more about this work, the app, or my website.

I love it, love it. Thank you so much for coming on again, Stephen.

This is wonderful.

Oh, great. Totally agree. We'll do it again for sure.

Yes.

Okay guys, that's gonna do it with this episode. Look, I, I hope you learned a ton. I did. I learned a lot of new stuff, and this is work that I've been studying myself now for a better part of 2 years before I realize how important it is. A lot of times we want to focus on the external stuff, and it's actually the internal stuff that's causing the external stuff to be a bit dysfunctional, chaotic. So if you want your external life to change, you got to learn how to do the internal work, which MJ could obviously help you a ton with. With that in mind, we hope you enjoyed this episode. Please, please, please share this with a Share this right now with somebody who you know can benefit from what we talked about today. And I know you know a few people. Until then, please like, subscribe, do all the things. We love you and we can't wait to see you again on the next show. God bless.

Peace.