Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #203| How to Handle Fear and Build a Braver Life (Not a Perfect One)

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#203| How to Handle Fear and Build a Braver Life (Not a Perfect One) · Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing

0:00
Mary Poffenroth: Our brains physically can't create, therefore we can't innovate, when we are in a fair arousal.
0:06
Mary Poffenroth: Even a small one.
0:11
Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
0:18
Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach.
0:24
Michelle Gauthier: On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's working woman experiences.
0:29
Michelle Gauthier: And in each episode, you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease, and relaxation to your life.
0:36
Michelle Gauthier: Hi, friend.
0:39
Michelle Gauthier: Welcome back to the podcast.
0:40
Michelle Gauthier: Our guest today is Dr.
0:42
Michelle Gauthier: Mary Poffenroth, and she is a biopsychologist.
0:46
Michelle Gauthier: Did you know that was a thing?
0:48
Michelle Gauthier: I definitely did not know that was a thing.
0:50
Michelle Gauthier: If I were to give her a job title, it would be a fearologist.
0:54
Michelle Gauthier: I'm so glad you tuned in because this is a very interesting conversation.
0:59
Michelle Gauthier: She blends science and psychology and storytelling to help high-achieving people like us understand fear and feel our feelings and stop overthinking everything.
1:10
Michelle Gauthier: In the episode, she's going to teach us how to tell the difference between real fear and the kind that your brain just makes up.
1:17
Michelle Gauthier: What to do in the moment when your brain is freaking out.
1:19
Michelle Gauthier: She's very into creating these biohacks so that you can quickly stop feeling fearful and why perfectionism, people pleasing, and overachievement, raise your hand for each one of those, are often signs of unprocessed fear, not personality traits.
1:36
Michelle Gauthier: So if you've ever felt frozen by fear, and I know you have, because who hasn't?
1:40
Michelle Gauthier: This is a great episode for you.
1:43
Michelle Gauthier: Before we start talking to Dr.
1:46
Michelle Gauthier: Mary Poffenroth, I want to remind you that today is Cyber Monday.
1:51
Michelle Gauthier: It is the very last day to purchase my Black Friday offer.
1:55
Michelle Gauthier: I'll put the link in the show notes, but as a reminder, what I'm offering this year is something that I'm super excited about.
2:01
Michelle Gauthier: It is a full year-long program to work with me once a month for group coaching.
2:08
Michelle Gauthier: And we start off the year in January by defining what you really want your year to look like, what your goals are, when you want to accomplish those.
2:17
Michelle Gauthier: And then we are going to meet once a month throughout the whole year to make sure that you're staying on track.
2:24
Michelle Gauthier: And staying on track means, yes, sometimes you meet the goals and the time frames that you set for yourself.
2:29
Michelle Gauthier: And sometimes you say, you know what, I don't even want to do that anymore.
2:33
Michelle Gauthier: I'm actually going to focus on this other thing.
2:35
Michelle Gauthier: Or I just had a really challenging season and I threw all that out the window and let's celebrate the fact that I made it through.
2:42
Michelle Gauthier: So it really gives you a space to continue to work on what you want your year to be intentionally and feeling really aligned with your life.
2:52
Michelle Gauthier: I'm going to be honest with you guys, this is a steal.
2:55
Michelle Gauthier: If you join this 12-month program, the cost is $726.
3:00
Michelle Gauthier: The normal value on it is $2,000.
3:03
Michelle Gauthier: And there's a payment plan available too.
3:05
Michelle Gauthier: If you don't want to pay the whole $726 up front, there is also an option for you to only purchase the workshop that is at the very beginning of 2026 to plan your year.
3:18
Michelle Gauthier: So that could be good for you if you want the planning structure, but you don't want the ongoing support.
3:23
Michelle Gauthier: That is $26.
3:24
Michelle Gauthier: That is a no-brainer.
3:26
Michelle Gauthier: So click on the link in the show notes.
3:28
Michelle Gauthier: Today is the last day to purchase those offers.
3:32
Michelle Gauthier: Okay, let's welcome Dr.
3:33
Michelle Gauthier: Mary Poffinroth.
3:35
Michelle Gauthier: Thank you so much, Mary, for being here with us.
3:37
Michelle Gauthier: Thank you.
3:37
Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for having me.
3:38
Michelle Gauthier: It's gonna be a fun chat.
3:39
Michelle Gauthier: Yes, I'm excited about it.
3:41
Michelle Gauthier: So first and foremost, I saw that you're adopted.
3:43
Michelle Gauthier: My kids are both adopted, so I was excited about that fact.
3:47
Michelle Gauthier: And you said in your bio that you were raised by a mom who was pretty fearful and that that kind of passed along to you.
3:55
Michelle Gauthier: Is that how you initially got started on studying fear?
3:58
Michelle Gauthier: Or tell me about your backstory and how you got to be this author and professor specifically around fear.
4:05
Mary Poffenroth: Yeah, so I'm a first generation college student, the youngest out of five kids, the only one to graduate high school, the only one to go to college in my family.
4:13
Mary Poffenroth: And for me, growing up, and I didn't really realize this at the time, as many of us don't until we're adults, kind of looking back, that having a full kind of spectrum of emotions wasn't an experience that I was allowed to have.
4:30
Mary Poffenroth: It was like happiness, great.
4:32
Mary Poffenroth: Joy or, you know, being perfect, not a problem.
4:36
Mary Poffenroth: But any of those big kind of darker emotions like being afraid or being angry just weren't allowed.
4:42
Mary Poffenroth: They weren't allowed in my house.
4:43
Mary Poffenroth: And so, you know, that led into me being a people pleaser and a perfectionist and an overachiever as I was trying to figure out how to cope with not being allowed to have this like full complement of human emotion and experience.
4:59
Mary Poffenroth: And that led me into science.
5:01
Mary Poffenroth: My first role was at NASA Ames in the Bay Area in California.
5:05
Mary Poffenroth: And I went very traditional science because science was a great place to hide when you don't want to deal with your emotions.
5:13
Michelle Gauthier: I bet.
5:14
Michelle Gauthier: I bet that's a job where that might never come up.
5:16
Mary Poffenroth: Right.
5:17
Mary Poffenroth: And it's it's it's self-selects.
5:18
Mary Poffenroth: You know, we train as scientists to pull ourselves out of the equation.
5:22
Mary Poffenroth: It's not about us, it's not about how we feel, it's only about the data.
5:26
Mary Poffenroth: And so me not really having a full understanding of my emotions and like all of the human emotions, other than just being happy and masking all the time, it was great, perfect.
5:37
Mary Poffenroth: And, you know, as I started to make my way through graduate school and after my after my like first master's, I really wanted to kind of dig deeper into what this human experience was.
5:50
Mary Poffenroth: And I didn't have anyone to really reach out to.
5:54
Mary Poffenroth: So I just went and started studying it because that's what weird scientists do.
5:57
Mary Poffenroth: They do, if they don't understand something, they have to study it.
6:00
Michelle Gauthier: What a great quality though.
6:02
Michelle Gauthier: Like, let me get curious about this, let me find out more.
6:05
Mary Poffenroth: Yeah, exactly.
6:06
Mary Poffenroth: And so I switched, you know, my discipline now is more of like a kind of interdisciplinary experience of both biology and psychology.
6:13
Mary Poffenroth: And I really wanted to create the thing that I never had, the tools that allowed me to better understand my human brain and also having access to something that was about human optimization, not trying to fix something wrong with you.
6:30
Mary Poffenroth: Right.
6:30
Mary Poffenroth: I think that so much of older psychology was always about, oh, you're broken.
6:36
Mary Poffenroth: Maybe I can fix you.
6:37
Mary Poffenroth: Where I come at it as we're not broken.
6:41
Mary Poffenroth: We just need better tools to use the equipment that we were given.
6:44
Mary Poffenroth: And we're never taught these things as kids.
6:46
Mary Poffenroth: I wasn't, or even in college.
6:48
Mary Poffenroth: There was no class of how to human when you're a human.
6:51
Mary Poffenroth: There was, there was none of that.
6:53
Mary Poffenroth: And I really wanted to kind of create that resource that is steeped in science and evidence-based learning, but something that's really quick and fun and easy, which brought me to the book as well as what I do in kind of like my keynotes and my corporate workshops to make these learnings accessible, especially for people that are high performers, that are dedicated to excellence, but are burning out because they don't have these tools and to make it fun and enjoyable.
7:17
Michelle Gauthier: I love that so much.
7:18
Michelle Gauthier: And when you were saying that you were raised to be happy and joyful and successful and to be a people pleaser.
7:25
Michelle Gauthier: Yes, I feel like everyone, you just described this entire audience.
7:29
Michelle Gauthier: Like everyone who listens to this podcast is probably shaking their head right now, being like, Yep, yep, I hear that.
7:34
Michelle Gauthier: So, how did you know that that, like the masking and not feeling your feelings?
7:40
Michelle Gauthier: How did you know that that wasn't working for you anymore?
7:43
Mary Poffenroth: You know, I think it's like every journey, it's tiny steps, and you only can really see a clear path when you look back.
7:50
Mary Poffenroth: But in the beginning, kind of like just muddling through and trying to figure out the why.
7:54
Mary Poffenroth: And I was thinking there's like a couple of milestones that were turning points.
7:57
Mary Poffenroth: One was I worked payload for STS-107 Space Shuttle Columbia.
8:01
Mary Poffenroth: That's one of the, you know, like last time we lost all hands, this huge tragedy, and recognizing how all of these astronauts were the best of the best, dedicated to excellence, did everything right, and this very small, tiny, literal tiny thing ended their lives.
8:17
Mary Poffenroth: And it wasn't that the, you know, multinational teams weren't doing their best.
8:22
Mary Poffenroth: Everyone did their best and everything still went wrong.
8:24
Mary Poffenroth: So, what does that mean for my life?
8:26
Mary Poffenroth: Can I do everything perfectly and everything's gonna work out perfectly?
8:30
Mary Poffenroth: Or can I do everything as perfect as I can and it still goes tits up?
8:34
Mary Poffenroth: And I wanted kind of just a better understanding of not only navigating difficult tragedy like that, but just in general, right?
8:43
Mary Poffenroth: And I knew that there was something missing.
8:44
Mary Poffenroth: It was, you know, a je ne sais quoi.
8:47
Mary Poffenroth: I can't really put my finger exactly on it, but I knew that other people had different experiences of the world and were able to access more of their emotions than me just being like, no, I need to be perfect and happy all the time because that's the only way I'll be loved.
9:02
Mary Poffenroth: So just kind of started to to dig at it initially, not doing formal research around it when I was still in traditional biology.
9:08
Mary Poffenroth: And like many people do come to other people's books, learning about other people's journeys and be like, oh, you can you can do that?
9:17
Mary Poffenroth: Wait, you can, I didn't know that was on the menu, especially, you know, pre-internet really.
9:21
Mary Poffenroth: When you when you wanted to find out how other people lived.
9:25
Mary Poffenroth: And having curiosity and and access to to information just kind of kept reinvigorating that internal motivation to want to know more and to figure out this puzzle of, well, why don't we have these just tools that are available to everyone?
9:42
Mary Poffenroth: Why isn't this something that we're teaching in schools?
9:44
Mary Poffenroth: Why isn't this something we're teaching in universities so that people don't have to suffer through all of this normal human stuff?
9:52
Mary Poffenroth: We can have an easier time of it.
9:54
Mary Poffenroth: Doesn't mean that it goes away, but we can have an easier time with it.
9:57
Michelle Gauthier: Yes, I love that.
9:58
Michelle Gauthier: And is it focused?
10:00
Michelle Gauthier: Is your work focused on specifically fear and how fear can hold you back and what to do about it?
10:07
Mary Poffenroth: Yeah.
10:07
Mary Poffenroth: So my kind of work is in the intersection of fear, courage, and innovation, depending on who my audience is.
10:12
Mary Poffenroth: And initially people are like, what do those things have to do with each other?
10:16
Mary Poffenroth: I get the fear, courage part, but what's the innovation part?
10:19
Mary Poffenroth: And I do work with a lot of corporations around the innovation space because if you think about if we start an innovation, right, that's gonna have a new solution to a really big problem.
10:30
Mary Poffenroth: It's gonna create something that's never been created.
10:32
Mary Poffenroth: But before you have innovation, you have to have creativity.
10:35
Mary Poffenroth: Creativity can mean a lot of things, but essentially you're coming up with something new, a new thought, a new plan, a new way to collaborate.
10:42
Mary Poffenroth: But our brains physically can't create, therefore we can't innovate when we are in a fear arousal, even a small one.
10:49
Mary Poffenroth: So in our brains, we have kind of two opposing dancers in this mix.
10:54
Mary Poffenroth: We have the amygdala, which is going to be for you know terms and purposes, a the center of our fear in our brain, two almond-shaped structures.
11:02
Mary Poffenroth: And that's going to get kicked up whenever we have some type of what we call stress or a fear arousal that's going to come online.
11:09
Mary Poffenroth: And when that comes online, our prefrontal cortex, which is, you know, if you smacked yourself on the forehead very gently, it would be right behind your hand there.
11:17
Mary Poffenroth: That's where all of our great ideas come from.
11:20
Mary Poffenroth: That's where all of our creativity and thus innovation comes from.
11:23
Mary Poffenroth: That goes offline.
11:24
Mary Poffenroth: That takes a little nappy nap when our middle is fired up.
11:27
Mary Poffenroth: So we cannot come up with creative solutions.
11:30
Mary Poffenroth: We cannot innovate until we deal with our fear and our stress.
11:34
Mary Poffenroth: Our brain literally can't do it.
11:36
Mary Poffenroth: And so a lot of the work that I do with corporations and executives is getting those tools, getting those frameworks in so that when it's a high-risk situation or when it's a stressful situation, they have these tools to be able to move through that sensation, get the amygdala to take a little backseat so that they can create and innovate with their prefrontal cortex.
11:57
Michelle Gauthier: That makes so much sense.
11:58
Michelle Gauthier: That's so interesting.
11:59
Michelle Gauthier: I work with a lot of people, what my one-on-one clients, many of them start businesses.
12:05
Michelle Gauthier: And I think that the fear of doing something like that, something new, even though it's not like a mission critical NASA thing, but I can just picture the first time that I even put out an offer on the internet, like I'm doing this class and you can sign up, and I think it was $29 or something, and I had to post it and then just like turn off my computer and go in my room and run away.
12:29
Michelle Gauthier: And I felt like so much fear.
12:31
Michelle Gauthier: So I feel like anytime we do something new, that fear just tends to come up.
12:37
Michelle Gauthier: So I like that you're saying, okay, it's gonna come up, and that's the way that our brain works, but also you can't get to that higher state of like creativity or creating something new if we can't get out of that.
12:49
Michelle Gauthier: So, how do we, first of all, because the other thing I talk about a lot here is when you feel a feeling, just go ahead and feel it, right?
12:56
Michelle Gauthier: So if you feel fear, it's okay.
12:57
Michelle Gauthier: You can feel it, it can be there.
12:59
Michelle Gauthier: But when does it become the point of diminishing returns where the fear's not helping you?
13:04
Michelle Gauthier: And then what do we do to get out of it?
13:06
Michelle Gauthier: What are some of your tips and tricks for that?
13:09
Mary Poffenroth: Yeah, well, I mean, that's like a the first part of that question is a really big question, right?
13:13
Mary Poffenroth: And it kind of depends on what type of fear that you're dealing with.
13:17
Mary Poffenroth: When I talk about like my rain method framework, which I'm not entirely sure if we have enough time to do that, we'll definitely have time to do some quick neurohacks.
13:23
Mary Poffenroth: But in the rain method, you're really starting to think about okay, when we look at fear as a whole, there's a couple of divisions that we can do that really actually helps to not just in the understanding, but in helping to calm the amygdala.
13:34
Mary Poffenroth: Because when we calm the amygdala and give our amygdala kind of a sense of control in a chaotic world, that helps to bring down that stress.
13:43
Mary Poffenroth: Because the amygdala hates to be out of control or the perception of not control, right?
13:47
Mary Poffenroth: Or not being not enough.
13:48
Mary Poffenroth: And that's a big problem for it.
13:49
Mary Poffenroth: So anything we can do to kind of bring that down a notch.
13:52
Mary Poffenroth: And when we look at fears in general, we have what I call fictional and non-fictional fears.
13:58
Mary Poffenroth: In the psychology literature, they're referred to as clean and dirty fears, but that kind of language is super problematic for me.
14:04
Mary Poffenroth: So I'm just like, what is this?
14:06
Mary Poffenroth: I'm so like when I teach it, you know, like I'm I get a whole different image.
14:10
Mary Poffenroth: I like your fiction.
14:11
Mary Poffenroth: Non-fiction, non-picturebooks and stuff.
14:14
Mary Poffenroth: Yeah, right.
14:15
Mary Poffenroth: Yeah.
14:15
Mary Poffenroth: And so like fictional fears are gonna be the ones where we have the most power to change our navigation through.
14:22
Mary Poffenroth: The, you know, like non-fictional fears are gonna be a fear that's shared in the moment.
14:27
Mary Poffenroth: It's not something we're thinking about that happened yesterday or something that could happen tomorrow.
14:31
Mary Poffenroth: It happens right in the moment.
14:33
Mary Poffenroth: Let's say you're out in a restaurant and you know, um a server drops like three dishes.
14:39
Mary Poffenroth: It's huge, it's loud, everyone turns to that noise, right?
14:42
Mary Poffenroth: Because we immediately like, oh, okay, our brain is asking, do we need to do anything about this?
14:46
Mary Poffenroth: Is this an emergency?
14:48
Mary Poffenroth: No.
14:48
Mary Poffenroth: Okay, well, we paid attention, nothing we care about.
14:51
Mary Poffenroth: We're just gonna go back on with our day.
14:53
Mary Poffenroth: Now, maybe that server is going to go home and go, oh my God, I can't believe I did that.
14:58
Mary Poffenroth: But the rest of us are already, we already forgot about it, right?
15:00
Mary Poffenroth: We shared that moment.
15:01
Mary Poffenroth: It happened in the moment.
15:02
Mary Poffenroth: We paid attention to a sound that could possibly be something and we went back on it on our day.
15:07
Mary Poffenroth: However, it's the fictional fears that are the ones that keep us up at 3 a.m., are the ones that tell us to launch that product and then go hide under our blanket for it and not come out because what if they say, I'm not good enough?
15:20
Mary Poffenroth: What if they say, I don't want to buy your thing, right?
15:22
Mary Poffenroth: And that's all really scary.
15:23
Mary Poffenroth: Being an entrepreneur is really hard.
15:26
Mary Poffenroth: And being a leader is really hard.
15:28
Mary Poffenroth: And having the ability to recognize that being afraid of people not liking your art or not liking your project, it may come true, but it's not going to be the type of fear that's going to hurt you physically.
15:43
Mary Poffenroth: Now, it may feel like it.
15:45
Mary Poffenroth: And if you don't resolve those tensions, then it can turn into something physical like heart disease and you know, stroke and high blood pressure, all those things can turn into a physical thing.
15:55
Mary Poffenroth: But it's those fictional fears, the ones that we worry about of things that have happened or things that could happen and not something in the present.
16:03
Mary Poffenroth: And I feel as an entrepreneur or as a overachiever, we're constantly thinking about, oh, I should have done XYZ better, even though we may have like gotten an A.
16:12
Mary Poffenroth: You're like, oh, but if it was a 99 out of 100, why'd I miss that one?
16:16
Mary Poffenroth: Why didn't I get like I should have got a hundred?
16:19
Mary Poffenroth: Or worried about, oh, am I gonna be good enough for that role that I'm trying to go after?
16:25
Mary Poffenroth: Am I gonna be good enough for whatever type of experience you're looking to push yourself beyond?
16:31
Mary Poffenroth: And it's it's a constant battle, right?
16:34
Mary Poffenroth: It's it's something that I feel the more successful you are, not the worse it gets, but it's more predominant because in order to be successful, you have to like stretch yourself, you have to reach for the top shelf.
16:46
Michelle Gauthier: Yes, yes.
16:47
Michelle Gauthier: So if we're going down this path and we realize, okay, that's fictional fear, and I'm projecting into the future or looking back on something and wishing I had done it differently.
16:57
Michelle Gauthier: How do we?
16:58
Michelle Gauthier: I'm sure noticing it helps, like just noticing that you're doing it.
17:02
Michelle Gauthier: And then what?
17:03
Michelle Gauthier: Then what should we do to try to move out of that fear?
17:06
Michelle Gauthier: Yeah.
17:07
Michelle Gauthier: So we I have a couple of things.
17:08
Mary Poffenroth: Actually, I have a lot of things.
17:09
Mary Poffenroth: I'm all about that.
17:10
Mary Poffenroth: What's in your bag of tricks?
17:11
Mary Poffenroth: Tell us.
17:12
Mary Poffenroth: I'm like, whoa, do it.
17:13
Mary Poffenroth: No, I I for me then when I first started, you know, getting into this idea of changing how I perceived the world through my emotions.
17:22
Mary Poffenroth: Of course, I went into like kind of mass media self-development types of titles.
17:26
Mary Poffenroth: And the thing that frustrated with me is that I felt really inspired while I was reading it, but there was no actionable steps after.
17:34
Mary Poffenroth: Like I was like, oh, that's so great.
17:36
Mary Poffenroth: Yeah.
17:36
Mary Poffenroth: And then like, now what?
17:38
Mary Poffenroth: Yes.
17:39
Mary Poffenroth: And that's the part that kind of like felt like, okay, I feel really like energized, but I don't know where to put this energy.
17:44
Mary Poffenroth: I don't have like a pathway forward.
17:46
Mary Poffenroth: So I'm big about creating structures and frameworks and pathways and the neurohacking cards for your audience.
17:51
Mary Poffenroth: If they go to hello brave new you.com, they'll be able to download the neurohacks I'm going to talk about today, as well as the Ray method.
17:58
Mary Poffenroth: So one of my favorite, this is coming from the Neurohack Deck, which is something that was born out of the book.
18:04
Mary Poffenroth: The book has more of like a narrative structure where I'm sharing stories of my own from riding an inflatable banana in a cyclone in Croatia to like getting chased by a bear because I had a pizza and like lots of fun misadventure stories to illuminate these TVs.
18:20
Mary Poffenroth: They must have all ended well.
18:22
Mary Poffenroth: Right.
18:22
Mary Poffenroth: Yeah.
18:22
Mary Poffenroth: I'm still here.
18:23
Mary Poffenroth: I have all my toes and all my fingers so far.
18:25
Mary Poffenroth: So knock on wind.
18:26
Mary Poffenroth: Good.
18:26
Mary Poffenroth: And but I I I love stories that are entertaining and funny to try and cheat you.
18:32
Mary Poffenroth: Because when people think like, oh, you teach about fear and courage, that seems awful.
18:38
Mary Poffenroth: Why, why would you want to like do that?
18:40
Mary Poffenroth: So I want to make it fun.
18:41
Mary Poffenroth: I want to make it enjoyable and also valuable to people's lives.
18:44
Mary Poffenroth: So one of my favorite neurohacks is pinch the valley.
18:47
Mary Poffenroth: This one you can do absolutely anywhere.
18:50
Mary Poffenroth: No one knows you're doing it and can activate your vagus nerve to help to calm down your kind of like stress or fear arousal response in the moment, immediately.
18:59
Mary Poffenroth: So I'll describe it and then if you want to, you know, follow along.
19:03
Mary Poffenroth: And I personally love this one, but the reason why I have so many neurohacks is that everyone's a little bit different.
19:07
Mary Poffenroth: And this one may work really well for you, or you may want to try one of the other ones.
19:12
Mary Poffenroth: But all my neurohacks are things that you don't ingest anything.
19:15
Mary Poffenroth: You they're just, you know, kind of like things you can play around with in like a lab structure where you can experiment and see, ooh, I like this one, or oh, that one's really not for me.
19:24
Mary Poffenroth: So that you can build your own toolbox of these things to have on you whenever it is.
19:29
Mary Poffenroth: I love that.
19:30
Michelle Gauthier: And are those you guys can't see, but Mary just showed me a card, an actual card.
19:35
Michelle Gauthier: So do you have a real deck of cards that are like neuro?
19:39
Mary Poffenroth: Yes.
19:39
Mary Poffenroth: I have like a whole deck of cards.
19:41
Mary Poffenroth: We're at make, you know, cards take surprisingly long to think about the imagery and then getting the description of how to do the neurohack in a very small amount of words.
19:51
Mary Poffenroth: Yes, right.
19:52
Mary Poffenroth: But now, like me and my team have we're at 25 and I use them in my keynotes and my corporate workshops, but they're also available online as a like physical card deck for people that liked physical stuff.
20:02
Mary Poffenroth: Like it in my too.
20:04
Michelle Gauthier: I was like, oh, there's an actual card, fun.
20:06
Mary Poffenroth: Yeah, so like they're like, so like it has like each one has its own little different neurohat.
20:10
Mary Poffenroth: And you know, for me, having the physical cards, you can actually like put the ones down in a pile that you like.
20:16
Michelle Gauthier: Yes, I was just thinking like spreading them out and telling your kids to pick one.
20:21
Michelle Gauthier: Like if they're upset about something, just pick one of these and try it.
20:24
Michelle Gauthier: Okay, all right.
20:25
Michelle Gauthier: So tell us about the first one.
20:27
Michelle Gauthier: You said pinch the what did it?
20:29
Mary Poffenroth: Pinch the valley.
20:30
Mary Poffenroth: Yeah.
20:30
Mary Poffenroth: So pinch the valley.
20:31
Mary Poffenroth: Okay.
20:31
Mary Poffenroth: So what you want to do, it doesn't matter if you start right or left.
20:34
Mary Poffenroth: I'm just right hand dominant, so I do it this way, but you can do it the other way.
20:38
Mary Poffenroth: So if you take your left hand and make an L, and then take your right hand and use the same, you know, like the thumb and forefinger and kind of make a little pinchy, you know, motion with it.
20:48
Mary Poffenroth: And then not where the webbing is of your left hand, but kind of just above the webbing where the thumb and the forefinger meet in the kind of meaty bit, take that right hand, thumb and forefinger and just start to massage either side between that valley made by your left thumb and forefinger.
21:05
Mary Poffenroth: And what you're doing is you're activating the vagus nerve, the longest cranial nerve in the human body, and you are physically signaling to your nervous system that everything is okay, that you're safe, that you don't need to be keyed up over whatever's causing you stress, that this is a way to help calm your body, that no one knows what you're doing.
21:27
Mary Poffenroth: You're in a meeting, you're about to go on stage, you're about to do something really stressful.
21:32
Mary Poffenroth: People just think that you're holding your own hand, right?
21:34
Mary Poffenroth: It's something that I love that anytime.
21:36
Mary Poffenroth: And I I love doing these on calls because like immediately, because I get very excited when talking about stuff.
21:41
Mary Poffenroth: Like you can tell in my voice, I'm like, oh, okay.
21:45
Mary Poffenroth: I'm taking it down a notch because I'm so much more relaxed.
21:48
Michelle Gauthier: That's right.
21:48
Mary Poffenroth: I'm pinching my own hand, but it feels good.
21:51
Mary Poffenroth: Yeah, right.
21:52
Mary Poffenroth: And and you know, like the firm pressure, you don't need to like dig in there, but like enough pressure where you're being able to like activate the the vagus nerve.
21:59
Mary Poffenroth: And that's one of my favorites.
22:01
Mary Poffenroth: Something very quick with the rain method, which is again going to be at hello brave new you.com, is going to be a little bit, you know, step by step more involved, but that's a really powerful tool that these neurohacks also slip into.
22:14
Mary Poffenroth: And another fun one is the near and the far.
22:18
Mary Poffenroth: So you can do this with a pencil, you can just do it with your finger.
22:20
Mary Poffenroth: So we'll just do it with my finger since that's what I have in front of me.
22:23
Mary Poffenroth: I'm using my index finger and I'm taking my index finger, I'm just gonna like stick it up, pointing up to the sky and put it next to my nose.
22:30
Mary Poffenroth: And I'm going to focus, although it's a little weird with glasses, but I'm taking my glasses off and focus on my finger almost to the point where like my eyes are crossing.
22:39
Mary Poffenroth: And then I'm slowly gonna pull my index finger away from my nose, still pointing up to the sky, until that finger becomes one finger.
22:47
Mary Poffenroth: Then I'm going to pull my finger back towards my nose.
22:50
Mary Poffenroth: And so you want to pull your finger until you're like, oh, I have like two fingers, and just keep doing that slowly.
22:56
Mary Poffenroth: And what you're doing is again, you're resetting that stress reaction.
23:01
Mary Poffenroth: And through this is through the power of convergence and divergence of the eyes, you are training your brain to relax in a moment of stress.
23:09
Mary Poffenroth: This one is a little more obvious.
23:12
Mary Poffenroth: Like if you're trying to lead a meeting, right?
23:15
Mary Poffenroth: Or driving or something.
23:16
Mary Poffenroth: Right.
23:17
Mary Poffenroth: So it's a little more obvious, but still something that you have have on you.
23:21
Mary Poffenroth: And, you know, one of the things that I suggest to my leaders of teams is the normalization of using these tools.
23:29
Mary Poffenroth: So let's say you're doing your Monday stand-up meeting and you have the deck of cards, and you're like, okay, everyone, whether you're stressed or not, let's just practice this one and pull out a card, right?
23:38
Mary Poffenroth: Like, let's just practice the near and far.
23:40
Mary Poffenroth: So if you're doing it in community, it's it's not weird.
23:43
Mary Poffenroth: Right.
23:43
Mary Poffenroth: And when it comes from the leadership, the leadership showing that, yes, of course, I feel fear.
23:49
Mary Poffenroth: I'm human.
23:50
Mary Poffenroth: It's a normal thing to do.
23:51
Mary Poffenroth: And that helps to really quickly build trust with teams and other people because you're being authentic.
23:58
Mary Poffenroth: You're you're not trying to say, no, I'm fearless, which, you know, is nearly biologically impossible.
24:03
Mary Poffenroth: And you're also giving them not just an insight into your humanity, but you're giving them tools to be able to move through their own sensations themselves and normalizing it for the team.
24:14
Mary Poffenroth: Right now, everyone is going through lots of change.
24:18
Mary Poffenroth: And when it's time of change, even if you're trying to do something like a really big project or make something that's never been made before, that's gonna be really scary.
24:26
Mary Poffenroth: And acknowledging that that's normal, that's just how it is, and not just acknowledging it, but giving your team tools to be able to move through those sensations so that they can get back to creating those amazing solutions is a really powerful message and a really powerful way to lead.
24:42
Michelle Gauthier: I love it.
24:43
Michelle Gauthier: I love that it's so simple.
24:44
Michelle Gauthier: Sometimes I get the question from my clients when they're feeling afraid, especially to try something new, whether that be like, should I get a divorce?
24:53
Michelle Gauthier: Should I take this new job?
24:55
Michelle Gauthier: Should I just, I don't know, stop doing all the laundry and making dinner at home and hope somebody else does it, you know, whatever it is.
25:02
Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, exactly.
25:03
Michelle Gauthier: I'm always like, yes, the answer is yes on that one.
25:06
Michelle Gauthier: But sometimes it feels like fear is giving us the message of like, this is a bad idea, don't do it.
25:13
Michelle Gauthier: And sometimes I feel like fear can almost be close to excitement, where the message is keep going.
25:20
Michelle Gauthier: This you're following in the right direction.
25:23
Michelle Gauthier: Do you have any thoughts on that?
25:25
Michelle Gauthier: Like when fear is should keep us away from, you know, you just get a bad vibe or you're scared of somebody or something like that, versus when it's just okay, this is new and exciting, and I should keep going with this fear.
25:37
Mary Poffenroth: Yeah.
25:38
Mary Poffenroth: And this is such a great question.
25:40
Mary Poffenroth: And there's both a really long answer and a really easy answer.
25:43
Mary Poffenroth: So I'm gonna go with like the easier answer and it's it's practice, right?
25:47
Mary Poffenroth: Because it's a nuance.
25:48
Mary Poffenroth: Now there's gonna be things where we have our spidey senses going off.
25:52
Mary Poffenroth: We're walking down the dark alley in New York City, and of course we're gonna like be hyper-aware of everyone walking around me because it's really scary or something like that.
26:00
Mary Poffenroth: But most of life is nuanced.
26:03
Mary Poffenroth: Whether we should take that next step, should get that divorce, take that new job, stay where we need to stay because that's the smartest move.
26:12
Mary Poffenroth: To really make good decisions around those nuances means that you have continued to practice being afraid and get a sense of what the intangibleness of those feelings are like.
26:24
Mary Poffenroth: Right.
26:25
Mary Poffenroth: So more data.
26:26
Mary Poffenroth: Even doing things that scare you that aren't necessarily jumping out of an airplane, which I talk about in the book.
26:31
Mary Poffenroth: The first time I did, I sprained my ankle on the landing, did not stick the landing.
26:35
Mary Poffenroth: That could have been a lot worse, though.
26:38
Mary Poffenroth: Right.
26:39
Mary Poffenroth: Yeah.
26:39
Mary Poffenroth: And so, you know, like there's things like that where you're like, oh, of course I'm afraid.
26:42
Mary Poffenroth: I'm about to jump out of a perfectly good plane.
26:45
Mary Poffenroth: But what about the things of should I ask for a promotion?
26:49
Mary Poffenroth: I mean, people are getting laid off.
26:50
Mary Poffenroth: That seems weird.
26:50
Mary Poffenroth: Should I do that?
26:51
Mary Poffenroth: And understanding that nuance and how your body reacts and how it feels when fear is a supportive push towards greatness or a way that you're getting sensations that you need to hold back or you know, pivot is such a delicate nuance.
27:09
Mary Poffenroth: It really is just practice.
27:10
Mary Poffenroth: And I think the power of the neurohacks practicing with these fear things because you're like, ooh, even if I stick my you know toe into the deep end, I have the security of having these tools with me wherever I go.
27:22
Mary Poffenroth: And it's it's just that constant practice.
27:25
Mary Poffenroth: I know for myself, you know, pre-pandemic, I was always at events, constantly going, and then we didn't.
27:31
Mary Poffenroth: And I really had to rebuild those muscles of putting myself in a room of people I didn't know and walking up to people like, hi, I want to be my friend.
27:41
Mary Poffenroth: It's a muscle, just like you have to do squats if you want that good booty.
27:44
Mary Poffenroth: It courage is a muscle, and it's something that when we practice it, we get better at courageous decisions.
27:52
Mary Poffenroth: And courageous decisions aren't something that's just one and done.
27:55
Mary Poffenroth: You're like, oh, I just do one a year, and I'm always right on.
27:59
Mary Poffenroth: It's it's in the small things, and the small things help us to really make the best decisions for the big things.
28:05
Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, I love that.
28:06
Michelle Gauthier: I love the idea of you just have to practice feeling fear and then see what you can learn about that particular brand of fear.
28:13
Michelle Gauthier: Like, what is this one telling me instead of trying to just immediately get rid of the fear?
28:19
Michelle Gauthier: Because I could tell you for sure, but it would be very hard for me to describe the difference between this is not the thing for you, fear, and oh, this is the next thing for you, fear.
28:29
Michelle Gauthier: And I would say they both feel like fear, but there's just a difference in my body, and it's just a different sensation that I would have a hard time describing to someone else, but I know it.
28:38
Mary Poffenroth: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
28:39
Mary Poffenroth: And it really depends on this, you know, the season of life that we're in at that time.
28:44
Mary Poffenroth: You know, are we feeling strong in other areas?
28:46
Mary Poffenroth: Are we not feeling strong in other areas?
28:48
Mary Poffenroth: Is there a million other things that are pulling our attention?
28:52
Mary Poffenroth: So having some grace with yourself and just just practicing to understand that this is what this sensation that's more of a positive type of fear feels like, so that you can know it when it happens a little bit quicker.
29:03
Mary Poffenroth: And this is what the sensation of, oh, don't do it feels like.
29:07
Mary Poffenroth: And, you know, the more you more you practice, the better you're gonna get, the quicker you're gonna get.
29:11
Mary Poffenroth: And like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
29:13
Mary Poffenroth: I know that one.
29:13
Mary Poffenroth: That one's a good one.
29:14
Mary Poffenroth: Yeah, ooh, no, no, that one's a bad one.
29:15
Michelle Gauthier: Yep, yep, exactly.
29:17
Michelle Gauthier: Oh my gosh.
29:17
Michelle Gauthier: Okay, this has been so great.
29:19
Michelle Gauthier: I absolutely love it.
29:20
Michelle Gauthier: I'm definitely taking away that we don't have to be afraid of fear, but that we can talk back to it a little bit, see if it's fiction or non-fiction, fear, and then we can use these neurohacks if it's the fictional fear that we're creating.
29:37
Michelle Gauthier: That's a great takeaway.
29:38
Michelle Gauthier: I know you mentioned your book and you mentioned your website.
29:41
Michelle Gauthier: Would you just one more time wrap it up for everybody for where they should go if they want to get that deck of cards or if they want to buy your book, or if they want to book you for speaking engagement or a team thing for their work team?
29:53
Mary Poffenroth: Yeah, so I know that my last name is a beast to spell.
29:57
Mary Poffenroth: And so if people just go to the name of The book is Brave New You.
30:00
Mary Poffenroth: So the website is hello brave new you.com, and that'll get them to all of those things.
30:06
Michelle Gauthier: Okay.
30:07
Michelle Gauthier: Okay.
30:07
Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, you're right.
30:08
Michelle Gauthier: People would surely leave out an F or something in.
30:11
Mary Poffenroth: It's very Harry Potter.
30:12
Mary Poffenroth: I get it.
30:13
Michelle Gauthier: Yes, it is.
30:14
Mary Poffenroth: You're right.
30:15
Mary Poffenroth: It totally is.
30:16
Michelle Gauthier: Now that you say that, that's funny.
30:18
Mary Poffenroth: I think there's something that once we start to share them with other people, we take the stigma away from the F-word, right?
30:26
Mary Poffenroth: People don't even like to say the word fear many times.
30:28
Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, I agree.
30:29
Michelle Gauthier: Because we're supposed to be fearless.
30:30
Michelle Gauthier: It goes along joyful.
30:33
Mary Poffenroth: Totally like, totally false.
30:34
Mary Poffenroth: Like I hate those mugs.
30:36
Mary Poffenroth: Yeah.
30:37
Mary Poffenroth: That is the worst like suggestion of advice ever.
30:42
Michelle Gauthier: Um, yes.
30:43
Michelle Gauthier: Oh my gosh.
30:44
Michelle Gauthier: I have an 18-year-old boy, and I want to get him one that just says fear, just fear some stuff.
30:49
Michelle Gauthier: Oh my gosh.
30:51
Mary Poffenroth: Right.
30:52
Mary Poffenroth: Because it creates shame and it makes us feel alone.
30:54
Mary Poffenroth: And instead, what if we just talked about like, yeah, I mean, no one shames other people for breathing because that's what you do when you're human.
31:01
Mary Poffenroth: You have to breathe.
31:02
Mary Poffenroth: It's just part of the package.
31:03
Mary Poffenroth: Yeah.
31:04
Mary Poffenroth: But we shame people and we shame ourselves for being afraid.
31:08
Mary Poffenroth: And what if we just did it?
31:10
Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, that'd be great.
31:11
Michelle Gauthier: I'll sign that if you have like a petition.
31:15
Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, petition.
31:16
Michelle Gauthier: Exactly.
31:17
Michelle Gauthier: I would sign that petition.
31:18
Michelle Gauthier: I was so nice to meet you.
31:20
Michelle Gauthier: I love what you're doing and what you're putting out into the world.
31:22
Michelle Gauthier: That's awesome.
31:23
Michelle Gauthier: Thank you.
31:24
Michelle Gauthier: It was such a pleasure to connect.
31:26
Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
31:33
Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at MichelleGauthier.com.
31:39
Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.