Your Body, Your Nervous System, and Your Team, A Recap I Christine Howe & Bekah Bernard

Christine Howe: Welcome Hyper Focus and High Performance with Christine Howe, where we explore how you can work with your brain, build your dreams, and live on purpose with more clarity, creativity, and presence. I'm so excited for the next three episodes that we're going to recap today. Becca, thank you so much for joining me. I am so thrilled with how you have listened to every episode and are ready to discuss and talk about it and share how people can know which ones are gonna be the right ones for them to cue into and which ones will meet them where they are today. So we're starting today with your body loves you. And this was a great conversation with Dr. Cody Goldman. Becca, do you want to start on this one? Lead out. Sure. Well it's great to be here. So first I'll just say it's fun doing these recap episodes because When I first found you, one of the things that kept me coming back to listen to you was all of the knowledge that you had to share. You would share from books and articles and your own past experience. And I loved getting these little like snippets of information. And I feel like the podcast is just the next iteration of that. It's so fun getting to hear from you and from these experts, have these amazing conversations and I think everyone will find as you're listening, there are gonna be some things that you hear that you're like, yep, I know that. I've done work on that, that makes sense. And then there's gonna be other episodes that you're like, I've never thought about that before. That's amazing. So I feel like the Cody episode, Dr. Goldman, I felt like it was something that I knew a little bit about. It aligns with like my own experience, but he was just so passionate about it. It was just fun to listen to. So he was talking about how I feel like the one of the things I walked away with is just that. you really want to get to that core level of having your nervous system be able to just find peace and find rest and that healing will come from within once you do that. Am I remembering right? Yes. It it's such an inside out. It's backwards because you think push harder. Like I know in time management that doesn't work, but for whatever reason with our bodies, I just think, well I've got to go to the gym and lift the heavy weights and run the sprints and do all of that. Like that's gonna get my body to the place it needs to be. And That wasn't the answer for post 40 women. It was something else. It was actually more intuitive and restful. Not that you're not doing the heavy workouts that you those happen, but that's not the only strategy. I think that's the thing. Sometimes we just get like when we have a hammer, we think everything's an ale, right? Like it's just we want to say work harder, go stronger. But he he's giving like a palette of things, a way to look at your sleep, a way to look at your gut, a way to look at just. what you're eating and then your stress in your life and is so powerful. Yeah. I mean, that resonates with my experience because just like you're saying, oftentimes we're coming from a place of stress and overwhelm, and we're treating our lives and our bodies as projects and problems to fix and to solve. And so we often end up stressing ourselves out more trying to solve the problem. Where the irony is where I look back at periods of Healing or times where I've been able to solve a problem, most of the time it starts with like just that same kind of thing we talk about with a lot of our, if you listen to a lot of the podcasts, it's like that acceptance of reality and then the willingness to show up and be humble and learn. And then the ability then to take small steps in the right direction. So instead of hurrying up and going to try to solve the problem in the most obvious way, it's slowing down to really consider what the best. You know, it's like. Finding that goal and that dream and then finding the best way to get there, not just the most obvious one or the one everyone else is taking. Like it's allowing our body and our intuition to participate in the process, and it's just gonna be so much more effective. Yeah. And on this episode, I'm gonna share like a personal story for me. It was about nine years ago that I had my fourth child. Okay. So had my third child, lost all the weight. I was very, very fit, very active. Then I went through a very traumatic experience with very close people in my life and really was hurt. And this is like it was one of those seasons in life where I was in my bed in the fetal position just crying. Like it was deep and it was so hard. And I was trying not to let that go to my baby. Like it was just so painful. And it was a rejecting and all the things. RSD on steroids. After having that baby and losing that initial weight, I had not been able to get below a certain number. And that's for nine years. And I remember talking to a babysitter that had come to my house. And I have like I've got little bones. I'm supposed to be very thin person, you know, so like I'm not supposed to be overweight at all. And my natural state is healthy and small. But this was a trauma that was in my body that wasn't letting go. And I remember specifically after my fifth child, I would run eight miles and never lose a pound. Like it wasn't like I wasn't being fit, I wasn't being active, I wasn't trying, but it was this literal nervous system freeze for me. And it was like, you're not going. Now did I eat cookies and have whipped cream? Sure. But like I could not get below that number. And if I did, it went right back up. And that was my new set point. And I remember a babysitter coming to the house one time. And I was like, there's skinny person inside this body. And she like laughed. And I was like, that's funny. You've never seen me thin before. Like like it was just this like, all you know is me plus forty pounds. Like it literally like thirty to forty pounds over what I would consider my self identity. And I've been there for a long time and I'm healthy, I eat good food, all these things, but the pain never it wasn't something that ever resolved or healed. And with Dr. Cody's method, I was able to get five pounds below relatively quickly for the first time in a in like a decade almost. And it was just by letting myself sleep. It was eating meats and then vegetables and then fruit. And just not doing the sugar. It was just loving myself. Like I know, like I've done a lot of internal work still, but my body is just it's maintaining some of that. And so I just, from a personal standpoint, for me, I have had a level of overwhelm at times in my life where I've never felt like I could take on losing weight. I'm like, that's too much for me. This hurts so much over here. I can't say no to myself. Like it's it's almost like so felt like a self rejection. And in this method, I didn't feel like it meant say no to myself. It felt more like say yes to myself instead of having more discipline or s depriving myself. And so and this is from someone who has worked out consistently for a decade, who has eaten decently. Like I eat good food for a decade, but the weight was not moving. And so for me it's budged. And I take the budge as I'm not done at all. But the budge was significant to me. To budge five pounds down is very significant, given the decade of not being able to do that. What if the answer to overwhelm isn't pushing harder, it's stepping back? Hi, I'm Christine Howe. I am a licensed professional counselor, turned coach, and creator of Think Time, the first whole brain planner. If you have a visionary, creative, ADHD brain, you probably don't have a shortage of ideas. You have too many things competing for your attention at once. And when everything feels important, it's hard to see what matters most. You don't need more discipline. You don't need more time. You need a way to work with your brain instead of against it. That's why I created the Think Time Quarterly Reset. In a half-day workshop, I'll walk you through my whole brain neuroplanning process, engaging the visual creative strengths of your brain before we make the plan. First, I'll guide you to relax your body to calm your mind. Then we'll review. What are you grateful for? What's working? What's not? And then we'll dream. Because most people think that they struggle with distraction when what they really struggle with is clear direction. Then we'll decide what matters most in the season, how can you get there faster and easier? Turning it into a plan you can actually do with rejuvenating rhythms, dream routines, and actions that fit your real life. You'll leave knowing what matters, what deserves your attention. And what to do next. But the real payoff isn't just getting more of the right things done in less time. It's being able to move your dreams forward without missing your life while you're building them. More clarity, more momentum, more presence. You deserve to be present in your own life. Join me for the Think Time Quarterly Reset. Build your dreams without burning. Out. Interesting. Yeah. Some interesting things I've learned along the way. And I I don't know where Dr. Goldman stands on this one, but like I remember learning for the first time that like we can't out exercise. Like we can't exercise and weight loss don't necessarily go hand in hand. Even though so many of us grow up learning that, it's not a truth. And for me, it all comes back to that word you said before that keeps coming up on a lot of these episodes is it comes back to love. You know, a lot of us are taught to reject ourselves because of the way that we look or feel or the way that our body functions. We're just taught it's not okay and we need to reject ourselves. And can you imagine trying to get to a healthy place starting with rejecting ourselves? So for me, so much of my journey has been coming to understand and love myself that like maybe just maybe the way that I look. is the least interesting thing about me. And I need to start from a different level and a different value and at a different, at a core identity level. And let appearances and let health and let weight and let my eating and let all those things come from that place of true like love and acceptance and identity. And for me that and a lot of that is tied up in my faith. And then let all of that come from there. And so there's Maybe I have a little less of a timeline and a little less control, but it's a lot better for me long term. And I feel like a lot of what Dr. Goldman was talking about is that it's like, am I sleeping well? Am I nourishing myself? Am I allowing myself movement that I enjoy that doesn't feel like punishment? Am I so those pieces of it resonated and I just feel like it's it could be such a hopeless place for people when they feel like they don't like their body. And so Just giving ourselves that permission to go, well, what do I like? What do I like about myself? What features are beautiful? What part of my personality really makes me most excited? Like that's not prideful to embrace our strengths. And then it's also there's nothing wrong with admitting that we have some things that we don't love, but like being willing to patiently work with ourselves rather than working against ourselves. I feel like that's a another piece of it. So You know, I do think it's a great conversation and a great place to start. And it's a great resource for people when they're ready to take some healthy steps, you know, that when they're ready for that. But everybody, we take that journey in different directions. And I think we need to let our own needs and our own intuition be a part of that and let it be a loving journey as much as possible rather than something that we come at from a fixing, problem-solving, punishing place. So many of us. learn that from the culture. And it is not, it is not okay. Like we need to give ourselves some space to be and to be okay, regardless of where our health and our appearance and everything else are coming from. So to me that's a really important message to to put out there for people because the older we get, the more we may struggle with certain health things. Maybe some people are young and certain struggling with health things. There's always going to be a piece of acceptance first and then we can start from there. And I think such important conversations to have. So yeah, thanks for letting us meet and hear from him and then have this conversation. I think it's such a good one to talk about. Yeah. And I'd say for the person who's curious about it but not sure if they want to like jump in and have a call to see if they want to be coached, like he's got a community that I believe is free where you can go in and I think it's called Rise and Release, where you can just go and learn more and feel it out and see. But I've never really had anyone in the weight loss space that I've thought, I'd like to hang out with you. You know. And so and Dr. Cody is is one of those people that like it's affirming to be in there. It's not shaming. It's a you know, to think that your body's protecting you from pain by holding on to weight because there's something to be protected. And so when you can feel safe, let that be your norm and he can guide you through that and then release things emotionally. The episode goes so much deeper. I told him in the middle of it. I was like, I thought I was just gonna be talking to a jock, you know, like a doctor who's like this athletic workout guy. No, no, no. This is deep. This is really great. So conversation's fabulous. Go listen to that episode, Your Body Loves You, with Dr. Cody Goldman. Okay, which one's next? The hinge beneath high performance. Ooh, Jason Allen Bohr. This was so good. Okay. This was a hit too. Like, I mean Goodness gracious. Jason's I had one person who listened to this three times and requested the transcript because they kept highlighting everything in this episode. Jason was he showed up and he was ready to go and he he value dropped. Am I wrong here, Becca? Like I just feel like he was like boom, boom, boom, boom the whole time. Yeah. It definitely feels like he has been doing this work for a while and he knows his stuff and he knows. the important things that people need to hear when they're coming from it sounds like when people are coming from a burnout space, a turning point in their career, that they might be coming from an identity crisis time in their life. Like it sounds like he meets people right there and he's got a lot of wisdom and knowledge to share with people. And it sounds like he was really intentional with his own journey and then in learning how to Talk about it in a way that he can offer value to people who are going through similar things. That's kind of what I walked away with. Yeah. And honestly, it's a very similar conversation, just different setting as Dr. Cody's conversation, which was I thought I had to push harder, but it turned out I needed to find safety first. So he says, Regulate before you evaluate. Like, So much of the elite performance isn't in pushing harder. You can get up to management level right that way. But if you're going elite, it is an inner game. It is calming the nervous system. So you're not like narrow in your focus. You can expand. That's I think that's the biggest takeaway I had from this episode was he reminded me something I knew but hadn't thought about in a while. And I can't say how many times it's come up, which was that. When you're stressed, when your nervous system is just really hyped, your field of vision goes like this. Your blood flows to your legs so you can run. Like the cortisol just it just shifts. Everything in your body shifts to this defensive, protective state. And so he showed he has a 90 second exercise that you can get in the link in the episode. about how to reset your nervous system in 90 seconds. And the one that stuck out to me was like the looking up at the horizon and looking far and seeing into the distance because that is not what you do when you're scared, right? When you're scared, you're shunk. And it reminded me as well with think time why creativity works so well because you're thinking of options. So when you're stressed, you can't think of options. But when you're getting into the creative space, the brain waves get into this space where you can problem solve and ideate and think in big terms. So I really love this. This has been something that my awareness has been blown on and the last two years I've been listening to a lot of nervous system regulation as I think everyone in the world has been really cueing in since Bessel Vanderkoelk's seminal work, the body keeps the score. We're all like, well, that makes sense. So it's, you know, when you have these emotional things happening, it's stored in the body. And so it's changing the architecture. So what's in the body needs to be solved with a body based solution for the body based problem. Here's my next like, I'm gonna jump off from there because you're talking about What I loved the interview and I think it would be worth listening to. And it looks like he's got a lot of other content that's free out there that people can go listen to, which is really cool. But what he said was the, you know, not narrowing your thinking, looking wider, and like allowing yourself in his story, he had that space and time where he took time to really evaluate and make a decision on the next part of his life and where he was going. And so that's one of the things that for the past six years or so. Think Time has been that place for me. Like we talk about it as a dashboard. So here are some specific ways that it's helped me to do this. So first of all, when we get stressed and say we're going all in on a career and it's stressful and it's overwhelming, and we put those blinders on and we narrow in on the career, what do we see happen? People stop taking care of themselves sometimes. People stop investing in their relationships sometimes. They stop investing in these other parts of their life that we know now. Loneliness is really unhealthy for you. not having good relationships leaves you a less happy person. So we we're starting to learn all these things. And so when you have something like think time where you're showing up regularly to evaluate all the parts of your life, it's reminding you that, yeah, I want a full life. I want a sustainable life. So that when you build a long-term career goal, you're building in space and time for all of the other things that are going to help you stay grounded and help you stay rested and help you stay related to people and help you stay connected. So those intentional pieces and the other thing that's super helpful for me about think time is the visual piece of seeing your time. So when I realized I cannot commit 60 hours a week to work and then still expect myself to do X, Y, and Z. So it's allowed me to see that as my career continues to evolve, as I continue to choose work projects, I need to fit them into the actual hours that exist for me to work or something's not something's got to give. And I'm not willing anymore to trade time with my family, time for sleep, time to take care of myself for work without a really good reason, without an intentional purpose and without an end date. Like we can all do extra work at times. That's inevitable. But it needs to have an expiration date. It needs to have a really good purpose. So those little things and then it allows us to give ourselves space. Like what I've been able to do over the years is create a lifestyle that is sustainable where I can have space to heal, space to rest, space to reflect, space to enjoy, space to work. So I have created all of that intentionally for myself. That's not something that we're taught to do in school. That's not something that people talk about. But when do we usually find it? We find it in those midlife years where things start falling apart and we get a choice. Am I gonna lean into my unhealthy tools that I've been leaning on even further? Or am I going to lean into the solutions and the dream that I have for my life? And am I gonna choose to believe that I can build something a little bit better? And I'd much rather be on the path of people who are choosing to build something better. And so that's where you get around people. like Dr. Goleman and like Jason, and you're like, yes, they are doing something. They're building something. And even especially when they're authentic with the failures, it's just so cool because then you you can learn from them as well. You can see what's working, what's not working, and then you can decide how to apply it to your own life. All three of the people that I interviewed in this episode that we're talking about today, every one of them led with their own personal failures and said, this is how I learn. And so I think that helps us to move into our learning path, our growth path. Is that we're like, this is like for me, like my rejection sensitive dysphoria was out of control nine years ago, right? So now I teach a class. I'm like, how am I not that way anymore? It is profound when you've gone through something so deep and so hard to come out the other way and say, Hey, I found the path. It was really terrible to try to find it by myself. I don't want, I don't want that for you. And then same thing with the visual creative planning. I'm gonna show you guys the page that a lot of people love when Becca's like your whole life. Like everybody knows that you have these different areas of life, and maybe once every five to seven years you come across a grid about it and you think, yeah, that's right. I've got all these areas in my life. But we visit that four times a year and once every year and then four times through the quarterlies to just check in, like, where am I in my whole life? And so it's just this like It's really you're applying the things you already know to do, but you have a structure to do it. So we help you know you help you do what you know. You already know what to do. But that leads me to Chad Becker. my goodness, Coach Becker, whoa, a winningist coach. He's nationally recognized in sports leadership for 30 years of coaching experience in Tennessee, 600 plus wins, dozens of championships. And in this episode, he talks about what happened when he first became a coach and why it was actually a bad thing that he won. He was like, I wish I would not have won. Like that was the worst thing that could have happened to me. And he shared how he developed this habit throughout life of showing up and what it takes to be a coach and an athletic director and how much that took from him and his family. And what he learned one moment when he walked in the door and knocked over a Lego castle. And read a note from his daughter that said, Dad, how are you? I haven't seen you all week. Days and days and days and days. And he realized something's upside down. I've got to change it. And then he shares his path forward. And he has got a frame you got a problem? Chad's got a framework and he drops so many valuable things. Any takeaways about Chad? Yeah. I mean, it was so cool just to listen to him share his story, share his wisdom. share how he is using all of it to help people. It's great when you hear someone who has wins. It's great when you hear somebody who has a failure and then figures it out. It's even better when you see someone who's willing to go back, package it all up and then use it to help people. And that's what I see with him. And I just love how he talked about how sports are a like a jumping off point for the rest of your life. And that like real teams are about the teamwork and they're about the relationships among the players and the coaches and the managers and all the people. Yes. It's not necessarily about winning, which is always my thing with sports. Like I will coach youth sports, but only until people start caring too much about winning. And then I'm like, sorry, they've aged out. I can't do it anymore. I want the early times where they're learning the sport. They're learning how to get along. They're learning to play like a team. That is the important part of sports to me. And so I just love that he is talking, he's doing the thing. He's winning. He's Teaching coaches, he's teaching players, but he's teaching them about how the relationships that they form are the most important part. And the learning how to work with people, that's really what matters more than anything. And that's more lasting, right? Any other last takeaways from you? Anything similar or different that you picked up? I'd say yes, and it's not that the relationships are separate from the performance. It's like when things broke down, he always tied it back to the relationship. He's like, there was a breakdown in the relationship. And it wasn't that. we need to have good relationships. We're going to use sports to have good relationships. It was like, actually, this is the elite performance strategy. It is that, you know, and he says, like, your job is to have the team c connected to each other. And that is your role as a coach. So I could not have been more grateful for my hour with Chad Becker. Like it was just, it was such a delight to just sit and learn at the feet of all three of these men. They're just Fabulous in their fields, very similar hearts, right? Like I invited them all because I connected with them for how we roll here at Think Tonight. But I just could not be more grateful for what they have. So if you are looking for I just want you to everyone to listen to all three. They're all absolutely. Just put it I mean and move through. I love a good podcast binge. I wait for my time in the car or my time doing housework or whatever and I or a long walk and I just want to listen to them all in a row. So these are three that are really great to just listen to together if you can. So yeah, I had a I had one person who wanted to binge my podcast and just did ten thousand steps. And he's like, I just kept listening and listening and listening and listening and listening. And so apparently this is a very bingeable podcast, and I'm very grateful for that. So thankful for Dr. Cody, Jason Allenbour, and Chad Becker. So thank you, Becca, for coming for this podcast and highlighting these three shows. I appreciate it so much. And we'll see you in the next one. This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only and isn't a substitute for individualized medical, mental health, or professional care. Every brain is different. Results will vary. Thank you for listening to Hyper Focus and High Performance. If today's conversation helped you think differently about how your mind works, I invite you to take the next step. Visit think dash time.com/slash podcast and grab my free training. Why can't I find a planner that works for me? If you've ever felt frustrated, judged, even by yourself, overwhelmed, or simply wondered why everyone seems to be able to follow a system that simply doesn't work for you, you're not alone. In this free training, you'll discover how your brain naturally approaches focus, planning, and productivity, and why many traditional systems were never designed for minds like yours, and whether neuroplanning could help you increase your opportunity to experience more clarity, calm, confidence, creativity, and meaningful progress with peace, not pressure. And if this episode encouraged you, please subscribe. Share it with a friend and leave a review so more brilliant, creative ADHD visionaries can discover what's possible. 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