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06 | The Performance Paradox – How to Stay Sharp Without Burning Out · Spacious Success

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  Hi, it's Kristi here and welcome back to Spacious Success. Today we're going to dive in to the
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  real science, the science of feminine peak performance. What are the rhythms, the recoveries,
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  and the inputs that allow you as an ambitious accomplished woman to perform at your best without
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  burning out and stressing out in the process? If you've ever tried to hack your way to high
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  performance, only to end up exhausted and depleted, this episode is for you. I don't share hacks,
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  just science-backed solutions that have been tailored for accomplished, high-performing women,
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  just like you. By the end of this episode, you'll know exactly how to work with your biology
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  so that you can thrive and not just survive. This is about working with your HOS, your human
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  operating system, so let's get started. I want you to meet Jess today. Jess was one of my executive
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  coaching clients. She joined my elevated performance program late last year, and we worked together
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  for over six months. During this time, I got to know Jess really well. Now on the outside,
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  she had it all together. She was climbing the corporate ladder, she was hitting her goals and
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  her sales targets, she was juggling at all. She was the kind of woman that people looked at and
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  thought, how does Jess do it all? Is she super woman? Jess was climbing fast, she was showing up,
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  she was handling everything that life threw at her, from her work and her caring and her kids,
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  her calendar was packed, it was back-to-back meetings. She was up early and going to bed late.
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  In fact, she was getting up at 5am every day because someone told her that that's what high
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  achieving women have to do. Side note, don't let anyone shoot on you. In fact, when someone
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  shoots on you, it's a signal that you should disregard their advice. She was journaling,
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  she was ice bar thing, she was blending protein smoothies, of course taking her creatin,
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  she was wearing her weighted vest on her walk, she was lifting heavy weights at the gym,
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  she was ticking off all the high performance hacks. From an optics perspective, on the outside,
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  Jess looked successful, but the truth is on the inside, it was complete chaos. She was stressed,
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  she was constantly exhausted, she was prenerly distracted and feeling like she wasn't enough.
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  She was always on, and yet like so many of my coaching clients and women that I speak to,
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  she wore what I call a performance mask. Even though it was chaos, she didn't crumble,
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  she sold it on. And because she didn't crack and because she didn't crumble, no one noticed.
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  Jess was existing if I'm really honest, and I'm sure she doesn't mind me saying this,
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  is a powered down low res version of herself. She could feel that something was off,
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  but she couldn't put a finger on it, she couldn't name it, especially because she was doing
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  everything right, or so she thought, let's dive in. Hi, I'm Dr. Christie Goodwin, a neuroperformance
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  scientist, speaker and executive coach who learned the hard way that chasing success can come at a
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  cost. After burnout landed me in hospital, I made it my mission to help ambitious women
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  who are done trading their health and happiness for high performance. On spacious success,
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  I share science-backed strategies and real stories to help you flourish as a female at work and
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  beyond so you can stop paying the success tax. Here's the truth. Jess was following a model of
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  performance that wasn't designed for her. This was more a patriarchal model of success,
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  hustle culture and the hack mentality often ignores our biological imperatives especially as women.
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  We are not small men with fluctuating hormones. You see, peak performance for females isn't about
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  doing more. It's about aligning our operating system, our HOS, our brain and bodies rhythms
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  with the ways that we operate, the cadence and contours of our days. Let's be honest, what does
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  real sustainable peak performance actually look like? As you've heard in an earlier episode,
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  I have something called the flourishing formula and it has three pillars, building a stress
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  adaptability which we explored in a previous episode. This is where we need to learn to dance with
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  stress and the good news is that our human operating system was designed for stress. We are
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  designed for short bursts and a resolved stress cycle. Turn into an earlier episode so too in fact
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  that I think is all about the stress super storm and how we can actually use stress, believe it or not,
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  to catalyze, not constrain and restrict our performance. The second pillar in the formula is about
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  optimizing our FQ, our focus quotient. We're now living and working in a digitally demanding world
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  that was designed to be distracting and disruptive. Learning how to harness the power of focus
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  detention in a world that has been engineered to distract us is a super skill that will set you
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  apart. This is your FQ. And the third pillar is around reframing recovery. We need as females
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  to stop seeing rest as a luxury. It's a prerequisite for your performance, sustainable performance.
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  Taking micro breaks, having quality sleep, embedding physical movement in your day, having
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  deep play, these will fuel your brain and sustain your performance. Skip recovery like I once did
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  and many of my clients do and your output, it'll collapse. No matter how hard you grind, no matter
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  how many grains smoothies you sip and how many ice bars you sink into, you'll simply collapse.
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  You cannot outperform your biological blueprint. I often say the basics work if you work the basics.
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  So why do women need this? Well, more ambitious women often pay the highest price when it comes to
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  peak performance. You see many of us have adopted masculine models of performance where we hustle and
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  grind. Women also have the double digital burden. School apps, family admin, caring and domestic
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  responsibilities. We have hormonal shifts through perimenopause and menopause that will change our
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  biological and recovery needs. We see this manifest in sleep disruption layered with constant
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  multitasking. You see, this isn't just about willpower. It's about your biology. And I have to
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  be honest, your biology will always win. What did Jess do? Well, Jess shifted things and you can too.
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  When Jess and I worked together in elevated, we tracked her biometrics with a warp strap.
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  This data was clear. Her data was really clear. Her 5am wakeups weren't serving her. We used my
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  chronotype assessment and report and we identified that Jess was in fact a bear, not a lion. And Jess
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  was much better suited up, waking up between 6 and 6.30am and not 5am as she was. We also found
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  that Jess's nightly ice bars were compromising her sleep. Her recovery windows each day were too
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  small, sometimes even non-existent. Jess wasn't getting enough restorative sleep. Her deep sleep
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  and her REM sleep weren't sufficient. We could also see through her stress monitor on her warp
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  strap that her high daytime stress was causing her 2am wakeups with her brain buzzing and elevated
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  cortisol levels. So we made some shifts. We adjusted her sleep schedule to match her chronotype.
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  We identified her peak performance windows. Her evening ice bars moved to morning cold showers
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  and in smaller doses and we actually increased the temperature, not at night because her wearable
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  data on her warp strap showed us that her evening ice bars really adversely impacted her sleep.
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  We started to prioritize micro breaks in her day, closing her eyes, going for a walk,
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  sighing, rituals that helped her manage her stress in real time, not 20 minutes of the downward
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  dog. We started to create some predictable wind down routines, power down protocols to
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  signal to her brain that her day was done. So she didn't go from running at 120 kilometers an hour
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  and get into bed and expect to fall asleep the minute her head hit the pillow.
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  And what happened? The results were phenomenal. Jess went from chaos to calm. She transitioned from
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  surviving to thriving. Jess became the high-res version she knew she wanted to be. What we did,
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  we tracked her chronotype. We mapped the contours and the cadence of the day, her day to meet her
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  chronotype. We created those recovery rituals. We worked roughly for 90 minutes and then just
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  took a break. She breathed, she'd stretch, she'd do some squats, she'd go outside, she'd make a cup
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  of tea. Jess set some really strong digital curfews and boundaries. She didn't let her screens
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  dictate the rhythms of her day and just prioritized connection. She saw it as fuel, a chat with a friend,
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  lunch break with a colleague. These were her performance boosters. What I want you to know is that
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  you can achieve results like Jess too. Peep performance isn't about hustling harder for females.
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  It's about micro shifts, small habits that align with your biology, your human operating system
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  as a female. It's about rhythms, recovery and inputs that will compound over time and will
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  serve you, not in slave you. You don't need an overhaul, you don't need new hacks, you just need
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  to make small biologically endorsed changes that will support you. Jess is now living as what I
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  call a high-resversion of herself. Not because she did more, she actually ended up doing less,
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  but she worked with her human operating system and you can too. So ask yourself what's one micro
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  habit? One micro shift that you can make this week to support your rhythms, your recovery,
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  your inputs. In our next episode, we're going to unpack the attention economy. Why your FQ,
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  your focus is a company's profit. What can you do to reclaim your attention in a world that has
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  been designed to hijack it? You're going to learn some simple sides back ways to optimize your FQ.
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  Until then, protect your rhythms, prioritize your recovery and remember.
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  Ladies, true performance is sustainable. It's science.