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Nervous System Regulation for High Achievers Who Can't Slow Down · Harder Than Life

• 0:00
  You don't have a productivity problem.
• 0:01
  Your body is just stuck in fifth gear and it forgot how to downshift.
• 0:06
  And every expert out there is going to tell you the answer is to slow down, which is like telling a shark to stop swimming.
• 0:14
  So you're never going to do it.
• 0:16
  Do me a favor and subscribe if this is landing.
• 0:20
  Stay to the end of this video, and I'm going to give you a two-minute reset that fixed this for me without slowing down a single thing in my day.
• 0:29
  I'm Kelly Siegel, and this is Harder Than Life.
• 0:32
  We're stuck in fifth gear, where this wiring came from.
• 0:35
  The deal at nine, awake at two.
• 0:38
  The same engine that closes deals is the one that won't shut off at night.
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  One system, not two problems.
• 0:47
  For me, as a kid, chaos was home.
• 0:51
  A kid who learned how to read a room for danger before he learns to read gets very good at exactly one thing, scanning the room for threats forever.
• 1:05
  Hypervigilance was my first job, watching the front door, watching the beer count, and
• 1:12
  watching the mood of my mother and my stepfather, watching if anything was going to tilt and get off keel.
• 1:19
  That skill kept me alive at eight.
• 1:22
  And it was a drive that everyone praised at 40, heck, all the way till I was 50.
• 1:29
  And it operated long after the war ended.
• 1:34
  because my wiring, my nervous system, nobody told it that the danger was over.
• 1:40
  So it kept fighting a war that no longer existed.
• 1:45
  It would show up in meetings, in traffic, at dinner, and especially in every romantic relationship.
• 1:56
  Guys, I figured out every single way to not face this fear.
• 2:02
  And it looked like ambition.
• 2:04
  The world rewards a stuck in fifth gear nervous systems and calls it work ethic.
• 2:11
  That's why nobody catches it, including me.
• 2:14
  I thought I could outrun, outwork my trauma.
• 2:18
  Peace felt like a threat for a survivor.
• 2:23
  Calm is unfamiliar and unfamiliar reads as danger.
• 2:29
  So I sabotage the quiet just to go back to a feeling that I recognize, which is the familiar misery.
• 2:37
  Don't be like me.
• 2:39
  Let's get into this.
• 2:40
  The cost of not downshifting.
• 2:44
  Your smoke detector, your high alert, your antenna runs everything.
• 2:48
  It runs the meetings.
• 2:49
  It runs your interactions.
• 2:51
  When your baseline is fight or flight, every email is an emergency.
• 2:57
  Every question is a challenge.
• 3:00
  Literally, I can't unsee how many business decisions I made from that little scared little boy who was in scarcity and just did not want to go back to that.
• 3:14
  Instead of picking our familiar misery, we want to pick our uncomfortable winning.
• 3:19
  And that's how you know the path you want to go through.
• 3:22
  Literally, I can't unsee some of these meetings where I was the problem.
• 3:26
  And believe me, if you grew up with big T trauma and you're an entrepreneur and you're listening to me and you haven't dealt with that trauma, it is running more of your life than you think.
• 3:38
  I would snap at people who didn't deserve it.
• 3:41
  I would argue with my short fuse on the team.
• 3:46
  Decisions made at threat speed, apologies that had to come later.
• 3:51
  The cost lands on the people closest to you.
• 3:55
  If my daughter can remember, I bet you she can remember my drinking days, my irritability
• 4:01
  I can guarantee you there were relationships that I burned through because I was irritable.
• 4:07
  And it was just that underlying, and if you've listened to me about the IFS therapy, it was that underlying shame that kept running that I didn't know was there.
• 4:16
  I would literally make bad decisions at threat speed.
• 4:19
  Your nervous system in survival mode optimizes for right now.
• 4:25
  How do I get out of this feeling right now?
• 4:29
  Right now, thinking is how leaders make expensive long-term mistakes.
• 4:35
  It's how we all get into trouble.
• 4:38
  It's, I don't feel right.
• 4:40
  What is the least path of resistance to not feel this way?
• 4:44
  Sometimes it's drinking, it's drugs, it's the wrong people.
• 4:49
  You have to sit in that shit.
• 4:52
  Feeling is healing.
• 4:54
  And keep in mind, high achievers, your nervous system is your ceiling.
• 4:59
  I say healing is your ceiling.
• 5:03
  The real cheat code for leveling up isn't more effort.
• 5:07
  It's training your system, your nervous system, to handle high levels of success without self-sabotage.
• 5:17
  The deal...
• 5:18
  size you can hold is set in your body, not on your profit and loss, not on your team.
• 5:25
  It is being able to sit in that uncomfortability and know that you are worthy and you will figure it out.
• 5:34
  Your wounds cannot be outworked.
• 5:38
  I tried to outlift it, out-earn it, out-run it, out-sex it, out-drink it, out, out, out.
• 5:45
  I did everything the wrong way so you don't have to.
• 5:50
  Listen to me, folks.
• 5:52
  Maximum sustained effort with no momentum isn't a discipline problem.
• 5:57
  It's disguised avoidance and we all do it.
• 6:01
  I was running from that wound.
• 6:04
  That's why you're hearing me say, face your fears, live your dreams.
• 6:07
  The one thing that is the most scary thing, and usually it's the worst thing that ever happened to you.
• 6:13
  For me, I had several of them.
• 6:15
  If you're listening, you probably have had several.
• 6:17
  Yeah.
• 6:18
  My mother beating me on my birthday at nine.
• 6:20
  My stepfather drowning me in bathwater.
• 6:24
  Those are just two.
• 6:25
  I have many other ones.
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  My mom lit the house on fire.
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  Stabbed my stepdad.
• 6:30
  My dad abandoned me.
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  My dad dying at a young age.
• 6:33
  My dad, I walked in on my dad shooting up.
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  These are just a couple of the things that I was running from.
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  And I would make that shame like I wasn't good enough.
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  I was unlovable.
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  I was unworthy, I would make it true.
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  So I would make dumb decisions.
• 6:53
  Why slowing down advice failed me?
• 6:57
  It literally is like I just said, it's like telling a shark to stop swimming.
• 7:02
  Telling me to slow down and not work felt like death.
• 7:06
  It felt like certain death.
• 7:08
  If I stopped moving, then my mom would find me and finish the job she started when I was nine or my stepdad would catch up to me and finish the drowning.
• 7:20
  And this advice isn't wrong because rest is bad.
• 7:23
  It's wrong because it asks a driven man to amputate the thing that built his life.
• 7:29
  So we ignore it and we stay fried.
• 7:32
  We're on the doom loop again, or as I call it, life's merry-go-round.
• 7:37
  You don't need less gear.
• 7:39
  You need more gears.
• 7:41
  Regulation isn't driving slower.
• 7:44
  It's getting a transmission into fifth gear when you choose it
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  And second gear, when you choose that.
• 7:53
  That's why there's five gears.
• 7:55
  You need to use all of them at different times, which looks like regulation.
• 8:02
  And regulation is not relaxation.
• 8:06
  You're not losing your edge.
• 8:08
  It will feel like it.
• 8:10
  You're gaining command of it.
• 8:13
  A regulated nervous system can go to war when it chooses and come home when it's done.
• 8:19
  I never slowed down.
• 8:21
  The proof is in one line, literally.
• 8:24
  Same company, same training, same output.
• 8:27
  Nothing in my calendar got smaller.
• 8:29
  What changed is what my body did between demands, which was literally exhale and beg and plead for mercy.
• 8:42
  I just said it, guys.
• 8:43
  I can look back at my life and see all the times my body, my mind,
• 8:48
  was screaming for me to slow down and for me to address the real issue in the room, which was what was going on in my head.
• 8:57
  And if you don't, you will repeat the same habit that I, the same patterns that I did.
• 9:01
  Hate to say it, I've interviewed over 300 people.
• 9:05
  What you don't repair, repeats.
• 9:08
  So let me say it plainly.
• 9:09
  That IFS therapy that I've talked about in multiple podcasts, the parts work on camera,
• 9:17
  No shame.
• 9:18
  The strongest thing in the gym wasn't the weakest thing in my life until I walked into that IFS room.
• 9:25
  220-pound beast in therapy.
• 9:28
  And the parts, in plain English, there was a driver, a protector, and a kid.
• 9:33
  And I'm not one voice.
• 9:35
  It was one system.
• 9:37
  And the parts that saved you as a child are the ones that were redefining your engine right now.
• 9:42
  There is a part of you.
• 9:44
  Remember how they say, there's a part of me that wanted to kill him, or there's a part of me that wanted to tell him off.
• 9:48
  That part was my shame, my victim.
• 9:52
  And that part made every decision weighed out of my subconscious.
• 9:56
  And
• 9:57
  And it was also the part that made my life harder on purpose.
• 10:02
  There was a part of me that was self-serving to make my life harder.
• 10:09
  Because if it got easy, the old me would have died in another way.
• 10:13
  That's literally why I call it harder than life.
• 10:16
  And what you're hearing out of all my content is talking, can it be easy?
• 10:20
  And the answer is yes, it can.
• 10:22
  I somehow made hard work.
• 10:26
  my new normal, which will get you here, but it won't get you there.
• 10:31
  Keep in mind, naming the issue doesn't retire it.
• 10:37
  Awareness is step one, not the finish line.
• 10:40
  You can quote your pattern perfectly
• 10:43
  and still be run by it.
• 10:45
  The work is what comes after the naming.
• 10:49
  Literally, I've heard people say, that's just the way I am.
• 10:52
  Or it reminds me of the two twin kids.
• 10:55
  One's an alcoholic and one's not, both because of his father.
• 10:59
  So you get to choose.
• 11:02
  And choice is what sets us free.
• 11:05
  I use the gym as a nervous system tool.
• 11:08
  And notice, training is not slowing down.
• 11:13
  Lifting heavy discharges stress chemistry that my desk built up, which is why the fix never required going soft.
• 11:24
  Keeping things hard was in my freaking DNA.
• 11:27
  So I had to do lightweight versus heavy.
• 11:31
  So I literally would always trick my mind.
• 11:35
  Whenever I'm doing something hard, I trick it and say, this is easy.
• 11:41
  A lot of times when I'm lifting really, really heavy weight, I'll say, this is lightweight.
• 11:43
  Okay.
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  And if I said, this is heavy, what do you guess?
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  Either way, I'm right.
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  And your body intakes the instructions from your mind.
• 11:53
  So every single rep, remember that.
• 11:54
  The engine behind the rest coming at the end is operating off of what you feed into it.
• 12:01
  I've been very vulnerable, and I'm gonna continue going that.
• 12:04
  Something very recently happened I'm gonna share with you where I took Ari, my daughter, to a concert.
• 12:09
  And I always left early because I hated being in traffic.
• 12:13
  in with crowds and I literally would be scanning and deciding when I would leave, map the parking lot and leave before the end because it felt like safe.
• 12:25
  But what it was doing was not allowing me to be present and enjoy my life.
• 12:31
  So the last concert I went to with my daughter, it was a packed Sunday night.
• 12:35
  I made a decision ahead of time.
• 12:38
  I was gonna be present with my daughter.
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  I set a single intention.
• 12:43
  presence with Ari, and I skipped the wargaming.
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  I walked in smooth, sat down, and stayed to the very end.
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  And guess what happened?
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  The same crowd, same traffic, same schedule, smoothed out.
• 12:59
  The world's parted like the seas of Moses.
• 13:03
  And I got out so simple, so easy, because I've reframed it in my head.
• 13:09
  The world didn't change that night.
• 13:10
  The gearbox did.
• 13:12
  By downshifting, by choice, I didn't quit anything.
• 13:17
  Same person, same daughter, same concert, same triggers, different outcome.
• 13:25
  Keep in mind, the reason why I told you that story about Ari is because your kids can feel the nervous system.
• 13:31
  Believe me, that's how I got this nervous energy.
• 13:34
  My mother, my stepfather, both drugs, passed this nervous energy on to me.
• 13:40
  The memory Ari keeps isn't the seats or the band.
• 13:44
  It's the dad who was all the way there.
• 13:46
  The people you love read your body before you say a word.
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  You've stayed for 15, 16 minutes.
• 13:53
  Here's the payoff.
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  The two-minute reset.
• 13:56
  And it's anywhere between minutes, meetings, in your car, before you walk in the house.
• 14:03
  No schedule change required.
• 14:06
  I want you to take a two-minute reset.
• 14:09
  Minute one, exit longer than you inhale.
• 14:12
  Here's the mechanics.
• 14:13
  Breathe in for four, out slow for eight, and repeat.
• 14:18
  The long exhale is the only manual lever a human has on the downshift.
• 14:24
  It's physiology, not spirituality.
• 14:27
  Minute two, ask the question, can this be easy?
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  Not will it be easy, just can it be?
• 14:35
  The question interrupts the it has to be hard program the same way Light Wet changes that bar in my mind.
• 14:43
  Can this be easy?
• 14:46
  Newsflash for you.
• 14:48
  Everything can, and it will be if you listen to this and implement it.
• 14:52
  Instruct the body like a lift.
• 14:54
  So you already instruct your body when you're doing anything hard.
• 14:59
  Whether you know it or not,
• 15:01
  You're probably saying hard things.
• 15:03
  Oh, I don't want to talk to this person because they're going to yell at me.
• 15:07
  I don't want to confront my boss because they're going to tell me I'm stupid.
• 15:10
  We're all energy.
• 15:12
  You know that.
• 15:13
  You've heard it a thousand times.
• 15:14
  And this is karmic law.
• 15:16
  What you put out in the world will come back to you.
• 15:19
  So keep in mind, put out good things.
• 15:23
  When do I want you to run this two-minute drill?
• 15:26
  Here's the list of triggers.
• 15:28
  After the hard call, before walking into their front door when you're coming home, the 2 a.m. wake-up call, you already know the moments you have, which is why it costs your day nothing.
• 15:40
  These two minutes compounded, I run it over and over and over, sometimes five to ten times a day.
• 15:48
  And it's like I've spent ten minutes retraining a 40-year-old alarm system.
• 15:54
  Actually, it's a 50-year-old alarm system.
• 15:56
  Winning is boring, but regulation compounds exactly like reps do.
• 16:01
  In fact, I have a new scoreboard now.
• 16:04
  It appears on my phone every single day.
• 16:07
  I'll show it to you guys.
• 16:08
  It says, did you stay in self?
• 16:10
  So I replaced outcome metrics.
• 16:12
  Did I make more sales calls?
• 16:13
  Did I lift more weight?
• 16:15
  With one daily question.
• 16:17
  Not did I win, but did I stay grounded while I played?
• 16:21
  And it's a scoreboard a high achiever can't game.
• 16:26
  Did I stay in self today?
• 16:28
  I was built for a war that was over years ago.
• 16:31
  And you probably are too.
• 16:32
  Nothing's wrong with you.
• 16:34
  Your wiring did its job and kept you alive.
• 16:38
  The job now is teaching that the war is over.
• 16:41
  And that is trainable like anything else in your life.
• 16:44
  Here's your challenge.
• 16:46
  Change nothing in your calendar.
• 16:48
  Just run the two-minute reset daily.
• 16:51
  Train hard enough to discharge the stress.
• 16:54
  Track it like workouts.
• 16:56
  Again, you can do this five to 10 times a day.
• 16:59
  It only takes two minutes.
• 17:01
  I have a timer and I set it and I go.
• 17:05
  Sometimes I do it while I'm walking on my gratitude walks.
• 17:09
  And keep in mind, get help like you'd hire a trainer.
• 17:13
  You wouldn't build a physique without a program.
• 17:15
  Don't build a nervous system without one either.
• 17:17
  Therapy is coaching for the inside game.
• 17:21
  I haven't talked about my TLC approach in a long time.
• 17:23
  Remember, TLC, train, learn, coach.
• 17:27
  Train meditation, this two-minute reset, and workouts.
• 17:32
  The learn, coach.
• 17:34
  is through reading 10 pages a day or a chapter and podcasts.
• 17:40
  And the C is for coaching and counseling.
• 17:42
  You need both TLC train, learn, coaching, counseling.
• 17:46
  If this explained yourself, if you were doing the whole time going, yep, I know what you're talking about.
• 17:53
  Please subscribe and send it to someone whose engine never shuts off.
• 17:57
  Okay.
• 17:59
  Face your fears, live your dreams.
• 18:02
  This is Harder Than Life.
• 18:03
  I'll see you Thursday.
• 18:05
  Please rate and share this podcast.
• 18:07
  I'm active on all social platforms and love to hear from my Segal supporters.
• 18:11
  Each and every episode is sponsored by my company, National Technology Management, the easiest and best IT company to do business with.
• 18:17
  Delivering peace of mind with technology every day, even simplifying cybersecurity.
• 18:22
  Visit trustntm.com for more info.
• 18:25
  Until next week, be harder than life.