3 Ways To Regulate Your Nervous System Like Pro Athlete's

So there's got to be maybe some core practices that you actually have embodied over time that really help you to regulate your nervous system. That would be of huge benefit to anybody who's dysregulated on a regular basis.

I don't think what I'll say is new to you. And so I will share all of the practices because they've been materially important. And so let me start with a couple. One is the fundamental commitment to. It is different than looking for a shortcut, a hack, a trick, a tool. So it's like a fundamental orientation. And for what? It's an orientation. So that a commitment. Sorry, let me be more clear. It's a fundamental commitment to work, to go into a place where you can be you in any environment. So I felt whipped around enough by the external world that I had to say bullshit on that. What I need to know how to do is be me in any environment. And that fundamental commitment is the same commitment that great athletes make, is that every day at practice, they're going to the messy edge in front of their peers, in front of people that want to take their job, in front of coaches that hold the power of whether they play or not, whether they're rejected from the team or not. They have to go to the. Be vulnerable enough and take the risk to get to the messy edge where they could fall apart in a thousand pieces or catch the ball. And so that I have such deep regard for that. That's the orientation first to make a fundamental commitment. Okay, now then, I need a place to practice. The way I get to practice is when I'm speaking with somebody, I make a promise, sometimes explicitly, but definitely privately, to be able to hold the depth of the two of us. So these elite performers are motivated to go somewhere. They want to get better, and. And in return, I have to hold the depth of the emotional spaces that we're gonna go. And so if they start to go deeper than I am, I am now useless in that conversation. So I have to know what it means to be grounded and calm and present when my emotions are really high. And so I had a ceiling effect early in my career that they would wanna go somewhere, but I didn't know how to do it. So I keep us at the more surface level.

Where would they wanna go, though? What do you mean by that? Go deeper.

They want to talk about things that are maybe hard for me to talk about or they want to. Like when they want to talk about things about trauma that are triggering for me. So I had to work on my own shit. So that when they say whatever, I'm not triggered. And I can hold a sense of peace and grace. So it's like a bit of like a well is that I need to be. Have a deeper well than they do so that they want to, you know, go deeper. I can hold some space for it. And I do think that that's where healing happens, is that trauma is the nature of traumas, micro traumas, massive traumas, is that it's not the event itself that is the traumatizing bit. It's that that triggers a sense of aloneness, isolation, fragmentation, where others around you don't relate and can't relate. And you feel a sense of isolation from the coral reef of other humans. And when that isolation, when it kind of. You feel broken off from it because of this event, it's the way that you've made sense of that event and the way that you feel alone because of it. Isolated is another word. So healing happens when another person just looks at you and holds space and says, oh, wow, what was that like? Oh, oh, you mean it's this. Oh, okay. And it's that, geez, you know, and you're just holding space for it and you're in it with them. You might cry with them, you might laugh with them, you might get pissed and irritated, but you're holding the space for depth. That's how I think where healing actually takes place for. For folks. So I needed a place to practice. So I practice every day when I have conversations with people and then the other skills and tools. I think this is probably what you're really looking for, but I don't want to miss fundamental commitment. A place to practice, and then the tools. What are you practicing? Breathing. How about it? It's not complicated. There's maybe three basic types of breasts that I'm interested in. Breasts to downregulate, breasts to focus, and breast to build capacity. And I just orientate my breathing practice across those three. There's a meditation, mindfulness practice, which is about becoming more aware, understanding how thoughts and emotions and feelings work together. It's less about the content, it's more about the stitching between thoughts and emotions. And then. And then ways to be able to develop a sense of agility so that I can develop a sense of trust, of self. So agility is the ability when I get. I feel brushed back or knocked off balance. I'm not trying to be flexible and kind of dodge it. I'm not trying to be resilient, which is once I've been on my heels, I can kind of fight my way back. I want to be agile. I get brushed on the shoulder that I can pivot, put my foot in the ground and keep moving forward towards the purpose that is important to me. So to develop a sense of agility, and I can explain that in a minute, allows me to trust myself better. So agility means I need to know what it feels like to be knocked off balance. And I'm talking more emotionally than physically.

Sure.

So in conversations, in an honest way with people I trust, where I'm going deep and they're holding the standard for me and I'm rattling and then they're helping me navigate that space. So there's partnerships with other people. And so the last piece here is a fundamental commitment towards optimism. I haven't met a world's best that isn't fundamentally optimistic, which is a simple little idea of like, hey, it's going to work out. Keep staying in it, keep figuring out it's going to work out. And when you know you need to leave the relationship or you need to exit from it, like, that'll be apparent too, but keep staying and working as long as it makes sense. Not naive optimism. Not this idea that we're going to be different.

Yes.

Because I think magically we're going to be different. Naive optimism keeps people in battered, abusive, dysfunctional relationships. When you think that I'm going to change and so you're like, you want to be friends, but we're. I'm. But I make you feel like shit every time somebody else is around and. And I say to you, oh, my bad, sorry, man. And then I say, I'll be better next time, but I don't actually do any work other than the words of the promise, I got to go do work on that. And when I come back next time, I've trained myself to be better, to see you, to take care of you in that whatever kind of micro trauma experience. So. So that's it. So those are some of the basic core skills. Self talk, breathing, awareness, training, optimism work so that I can be more agile, so I can trust myself a little bit better. And so, you know, how do you do it? Fundamental commitment, place the practice and then getting to the edge.

These are great. So if somebody's taking notes, that's a good start. But don't buy a T shirt that says good vibes only.

How about it?

Because you're essentially bypassing. So I love what you say. And I actually saw this in some different media. Optimism is at the center of mental toughness. Yeah, and I really love that because, you know, David Goggins of the world is like, stay hard pussy. And it's like, well, is that really being an optimist, that fuel source doesn't seem sustainable.

No, it's not. That's not sustainable.

I'm curious for you and maybe you could articulate this in a deeper way. How do we hold both of the worlds? One of them being, I'm an optimist, I'm seeing the best in myself and others. And also not spiritually bypassing, emotionally bypassing the pitfalls that are right in front of us. How do we see the tar pit and the sunset at the same time?

Well, that's not optimism and pessimism. So orthogonally optimism is this idea that something's going to be good out of this pessimism is like, what is this shit? This shit's not going to work out. This is terrible. Why me? Why us? This is lame. So what I hear you saying is like getting to the truth of the duality of something.

Exactly.

Like. So like, you know, the holding the tension between duality and trying to work from non duality is an ancient idea. And the world is complex. Humans are incredibly complex. And to be able to think that we have it all sewed up is kind of silly. And so if you can understand your experience and be curious about others, that's cool. And you and I can experience the same perceived event and you and I have very different takeaways and actual experiences of it. So the best coaches that I've been around, like sport coaches, true masters at coaches, they ask way more questions than they give direction. The most amateur of coaches, they talk a lot now. And I know I'm talking a lot here, I'm monitoring myself beyond belief of how much I'm talking. But like they, they, they point in directions that are maybe accurate, mostly inaccurate, but high performance coaches have a nice, interesting blend. Not master coaches, but high performance blend out. High performance coaches have an interesting blend between being directional and accurate and asking a lot of questions. But true masters ask way more questions than not.

So in the process of finding mastery, if you're a coach, if you're somebody that works with people at all, it's not about dominating the conversation, which I think at times can be like perceived as something good. I'm talking so much, I'm telling somebody what they should and should be doing. When you are in the, maybe the beginning stages of being a high performance coach. It's been about 30 years now, 30 years of you doing this work. Can you reflect back on times where maybe you couldn't hold this space? You said I would go back and do the work. What exactly was that work?

The work going deeper with emotions.

Yes.

Yeah, so it's exactly what it sounds like is like feeling something and following the thread. And what you'll notice is that even joy, if you follow the feeling of joy, there's like this threshold where you want to pop out of it. And because joy is an overwhelming emotion, and so we touch it and then we pull back out. Or you'll see people that are kind of in the throes of joy and then they'll need to look away or they'll smile and start laughing. And it's a way to kind of pull out of it because it is a radical emotion. Same with sadness is like if you're just sitting on a pillow, you know, and you're doing your kind of internal work and. And you're like, oh, there's sadness. Oh, it's in my chest, it's in my throat, it's in da da. Okay, I'm just gonna follow it. And then the content could be really scary as well. As you keep following, the content of the idea is like, wow, I feel like I'm 6 years old and I'm back in the da da da. Oh my God. Wow. And like I feel really small. And like you keep going into a place you feel. It's time under tension with sadness. And as you have time under tension with anything, you tend to get better at it. Time under tension of being self critical, you get better at it. Being critical of others, you know, being funny, you know, like whatever it is, you tend to get better at it. So time under tension with sadness is a way to get better. And for me, it's sadness and anxiety to get better at those two. And it's more sadness than anxiety. Like, I'm pretty good at anxiety.

Okay, well, maybe that's a high performance trait. You know, a lot of us that want to do big things that fuel source of anxiety and maybe the wounding of childhood, it fuels us for a while. And I'm sure at some point you were like, well, I want something else. I want a more sustainable fuel source of how I can accomplish things. Do you remember now you said in your life it doesn't happen in lightning bolts, but what was the amalgamation of that for you?

Well, looking back, I know where this lightning bolts or the origin of me going after it started, but I didn't know it at the time. So this is not. I'm going to share what would be considered a lightning bolt moment because I'm tracing it back, but I didn't know it at the time, which is kind of my point earlier.

Did we ever really. I mean, unless it's like, totally outstanding.

Yeah. Like, I think some people are really good at it. They're like, this is the moment. That was it. Yeah. So I was in third grade. I couldn't figure out some basic math. My mom's frustrated, she's pissed off. She calls dad up. Dad hovers over my right shoulder. Mom's over my left shoulder. I'm sitting at my little desk in my little room and. And he says, okay, I got this, honey. And he kind of leans over and he says, mike, it's this, like, how do you do this problem? And I said, I think it's this. I think this is the answer. I think. And he got frustrated. This? No, this like, Mike. Okay, how about this one? And now he's agitated, quick to temper, and he leans over and he says, babe, maybe he's just stupid. Now, my dad tried his best. He reached his limit of being compassionate and kind and thoughtful and aware. And he called me stupid as a seven year old, or as a not seven year old, third grader. Third grader, whatever that age is. And I remember feeling like, ooh, wow, maybe I am. Because I really don't understand what I'm trying to do. And so I just went numb. And so that was the beginnings of me saying, am I stupid? No, I don't think I'm stupid. Well, you know what if I try and I really go for it in school and I don't get a grade, man, I'm gonna be stupid. They're right. So you know what? I'm gonna be a punk. I'm going off access and I'm just gonna kind of make my own rules. I'm gonna do my own thing because I'm never gonna be vulnerable enough to see if they were right. And so I got shitty grades. I barely went to high school. I surfed a lot, you know, like the, the dean. So I married my high school sweetheart. And the dean of discipline at the school pulled my wife aside, my girlfriend at the time aside, and said, you know, what are you doing hanging out with him? You got so much going for you. And so like the world does not need an 18 year old or 22 year old, Mike. It was. It wasn't good to be in me and it wasn't good for my friends. And so, so Then I figured out my parents gave me this ultimatum. Hey, we tried again. I love my parents. You know, I was just high school the senior year and they pulled me aside and they said, hey, we tried. We didn't go to school. We don't know. We know all of your friends are trying to figure this thing out. You got a zero on your sat. You just don't have a lot of options here, Mike. And we're going to give you an ultimatum now because we can't keep going the way we're going. So get a job and move out. We'll help you find a job, but like, we'll give you a couple months to find something or go to community college. I thought, that's for losers. All my loser friends go to community college, you know. But I knew I could keep surfing and going to school, quote, unquote, going to school. So I chose that route. And it was a two year college and there was three professors there that were best friends. And it was a theologian, a psychologist and a philosopher. It sounds like this is a bad joke beginning. And they saw me coming and they're like, hey kid, let me show you the world. And the invisible. You got a fire and a spirit about you. This shit probably is going to make sense to you. Meanwhile, I got an F in psychology in high school. I didn't understand any of it. And so I liked one of the guys. I liked the psychologist a lot. He had a spark, he was awesome. And. And so that's kind of where that Navigation and here's the dangerous part. I started to like studying. And now I needed to make a decision. Be off access punk rock, Fuck y'. All. Like, I'm gonna get Fs, but kind of because I don't want to show up or really apply myself. I applied myself. It worked. I got good grades in this two year school. And then I thought, shit, I gotta keep this thing up. So now I gotta front that I'm smart. That looks like I might be. I'm getting good grades. It's kind of making sense to me. So then I had to flex being smart to my friends, to my people that I was around. And that carried me into like early 30s where people didn't want to really do work with me because I just stayed up in my head and I'd use knowledge as a weapon.

Big words.

Yeah, and like double clicking, you know, like. What do you mean by that? Why'd you say that? You know. Oh, you think it's that really? Well, did you read this? Well, the Research according to what? And it was just I was in a shithead, you know, with all this knowledge, fronting to other people that I was smart because I needed to know that myself. And it wasn't until, like, I had to settle in, like, the fuck you are not cool. This is not a nice way to be. You know, you're a shitty piece of the reef. So what are you doing? Like, is this really the way you're going to go? And so it wasn't until it was my wife, basically, that was like, hey, can I hold a mirror up for a minute?

Yeah. I was going to guess either wife or kids.

Yeah, I didn't have kids at that time.

I've learned the most about myself through sacred union and through being a father. Almost like that movie Stargate where Kurt Russell goes through the portal. When you have children or when maybe you have a spouse that mirrors back to you how you're being. There's no way you could ever go back to it being the same. Like, you're going to fundamentally be different.

Yeah.

So that seems like it was a lightning bolt moment. Would you remember there was one talk with your wife where she was like, hey, this isn't working again.

At the time I wouldn't have known. But looking back, she said, you need to move out. Seven years into our marriage, that seems.

Like a lightning bolt, Mike.

Dude, I'm telling you, I wish that.

I was more like, you're just a contemplative dude. You just, you.

But see, I needed it. Like, I, I, I've studied what I needed. And so, like, I need to be more aware. And I was. How old was I married at 25. I was 32. And I was like, no, come on, we'll figure it out. Like, really? Come on. Okay, I'll be better, I'll be better, I'll be better. You've said that before. I'm telling. So I'll never forget this. Now she says, I'm telling you as your best friend, I can't be me around you. It's suffocating. You're a good man, but you gotta go, holy shit, did the world change? You know, this was my best friend and I fucking selfishly was blowing it. And so I try to share with the greatest transparency that I'm a work in progress, trying to figure it out. And I needed better awareness. I was breathing. I was doing my practices, but I was more fronting that, look, I'm breathing. I'm the. I didn't like yoga because of the community, but sorry, it's just pissed off like a billion people. But I would flex that I understood things rather than having the applied wisdom of being about it. That's it. Yeah. And that was the early version versus what I'm trying to do more.

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