Purpose Becomes Inevitable When the Nervous System Feels Safe, with Jordan Dunin

Keith Hodge: Purposes when we find, you know, that true north, who we truly are. The unknown is much more uncomfortable than the known, whether you're known as extremely painful or not. Welcome to True North Alignment. There becomes a point where strategy is no longer the deciding factor. What matters most is the state that you're building from, for this shapes every decision, every move, and every result. When you're aligned, things work. And when you're not, they don't. This is where purpose becomes inevitable. I'm Keith Hodge. Let's begin. Welcome back to True North Alignment where purpose becomes inevitable. Today's guest is Jordan Dunning. And he's based in Florida in the US. He has specialized in nervous system regulation and most recently launched a book. So welcome, Jordan. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. So my first question to you is as this show is on TrueNorth Alignment, what what is TrueNorth Alignment for you? I think that, you know, we all have purpose. And, you know, ⁓ one of my favorite books is Think and Grow Rich. And everything starts with a positive attitude, but then you need a definite purpose. So my true north was, you know, my health and well being and now ⁓ I believe it's the health and well being of my family, my community and hopefully the you know the it it's growing as hi I continue. But I think true north is to me purpose. And would you would you say that everyone has purpose? Yeah, I mean that's kind of like a Spider Man ⁓ quote. I think that some people are born with it. It's thrust upon them. They choose it. It evolves. I think it can happen in in a different way. But I do believe that everybody serves A per even if your purpose is just to be happy, ⁓ I think there's an ultimate purpose for for everybody. And what what stops purpose really being lived? Yeah. Things get in the way. You know, ⁓ societal norms, belief systems that, you know, are formed over the first seven years of our life, working, parenting decisions, teachers, you know, th things that form things that create this actor persona. I believe that we're all sort of acting, whether we're doctors, physicians, ⁓ leaders, ⁓ journalists. ⁓ you know, we're all playing some sort of role and purpose is when we find, you know, that true north who we truly are. And I think that that's what can get in the way. Yeah, we're speaking the same language here. For me, the roles that we play are based on what I call the protections that that that are, you know, stopping us having to feel emotions that we don't want to feel. So, you know, you speak about roles. What for the audience listening, what is a role and how do they know that they're in a role? Yeah, I think absolutely anything can become a role. I was really sick for a long time with chronic Lyme disease and a traumatic brain injury, and it became like my identity or my role. ⁓ even when I had recovered and ⁓ it was no longer a part of my life, I referred to myself as someone that had overcome that. ⁓ and it had blended into my identity and everything that I did was a resonance of that. But something as simple as, you know, being a student, then going through and following the traditional path of going from a student to your next level, which might be an undergraduate, a master's, a PhD, and you're identifying as a student, your role is, you know, a student and academic, or someone takes a different route and they become a parent or a coach or a teacher. And when we get to, I guess, solidified in in one of those podiums or roles, then it forms identity and That can create interesting belief systems. So yeah, I like to review my roles and work with my coaches as well on on what those are and really focus on my role as a father right now. I have two young children and ⁓ make sure that that's my primary role. So the the Lyme's disease, ⁓ I know I know that ⁓ condition and it can be pretty serious for some people. Yeah. Like y y y you you name that as like an identity or or a role. And then also you name Being a father is a role. Well, they're quite they're quite different things, right? Because one is, well, yeah, you are a father. And the other one is then a like a a a a pattern that stops you from growing further. So you speak into this area because yeah, the audience be like, Well, I I want to be a dad, but I don't want to be sick. Yeah, and I think that that's ⁓ an interesting psychology because I absolutely didn't want to be sick, but ⁓ there's an interesting level of comfort in being sick, ⁓ that I can speak to now that I'm out of it. And the unknown is much more uncomfortable than the known, whether you're known as extremely painful or not. That can become a level of comfort and and changing and becoming well was so difficult that it was hard to do every day. So the same with, you know, becoming a father. I think that there are systems and beliefs in place that create that role, whereas the same thing, you know, it it may not be exactly true, but the same thing was happening with chronic Lyme disease was that I became someone that was chronically ill. I fell into a category that was, you know, ⁓ six tenths of the the world or sixty percent of the world had a chronic illness. I felt community. I felt that I was a part of something. There was, you know, a deeper connection to other people that were sick. It created a persona that I didn't choose but became comfortable. Mm-hmm. Even though it was extremely painful. I was in debilitating pain. And and and you say that this is bit sort of moved you into your purpose of nerve but nervous system regulation. How how how did you heal that? So w what what is it exactly that you teach now that that that was part of your journey of healing this? That's a good that's a great question. That's a very entangled long story, but the simple version is as I found what I could control and that was the the nervous system element, you know. ⁓ I was seeing some of the best doctors, some best practitioners across the US and the world. And ⁓ I just couldn't heal. I was doing every modality. I was in like hyperbaric oxygen ther therapy. I was doing like ivy drip cell. I was doing whatever I could to try to try to get better. I was even gonna do hyperthermia in Germany. But the reason I you know, in hindsight, ⁓ that I couldn't heal is because I was in such a state of chronic stress that my nervous system was stuck in fight or flight, that even if I had the magic pill that could cure everything, which unfortunately for er it doesn't exist. ⁓ it wouldn't have worked because I was in such a, you know, chronic state of stress. So the nervous system element was understanding that that layer. And I was extremely reactive. I was angry. I was against the world. I was isolating myself. I was a completely different person than I am today. And I had to learn to regulate. And it took a long time. I started with meditation. I had no idea what that was. I was uncomfortable with the feeling of being calm. I did deprivation therapy, so saltwater deprivation therapy in a float tank. And understanding that, you know, I could definitely calm that monkey mind or that that nervous system that was overactive. I called it brain on fire when I tried to sleep. I couldn't go to sleep because I just felt like I couldn't turn off and working to make sure that it was a priority that I could get to sleep. And it was a process, but it was the one thing that I could control. And then everything else started clicking and working, all the therapies I was doing. My nutrition started to absorb better, if you will. ⁓ Everything started to fall into place once I was able to calm my nervous system down. And and to this sixty percent y you speak of that have a chronic illness, but perhaps some of those guys are listening right now. What what tips could you give them as as as steps to take towards healing their own nervous system? Yeah. ⁓ I th I think the the first level is to become aware. Chronic stress is the most inflammatory thing that you can do to your body. So even if you're on like a an inflammatory diet like I was, like removing everything, like gluten, dairy, you name it, sugar, caffeine, everything, alcohol. Nothing was in my diet. The biggest form of inflammation is coming from your stress. So everybody is different in the way that you can handle stress or deal with stress. But doing things that enable you to calm down, I think that there's two things that we can do. We can do hardening things and softening things. So something like a cold plunge or a sauna or a a treatment is typically something that Is tougher on a nervous system. Whereas something like meditation, breath work, ⁓ yoga nidra, getting to sleep is more soft on the nervous system. And we live with two nervous systems, the parasympathetic and the sympathetic, and we need both. But when you're overly chronically stressed, you're stuck in that hardening process, you you typically want to do more of it. It's addictive. So you want to get in like cold plunges, you want to do more treatments, you wanna take the next supplement. I challenge you to do something lighter, like rest. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I have a I have a morning meditation practice that I do before I also I'm also a dad and two years old and ⁓ I I find the best time for meditation is before there's there's any movement in the house. So I get up at my meditation and focus on gratitude for the for the you know in my life and it's really, really helps me personally to start the day in what I call true north. You know, what is what is your practice? Of of like meditation, is it in the morning? Yeah. Absolutely so mine is when the kids go to sleep. So ⁓ I have a a two and a half year old and one year old, or almost three year old and one year old, and they sometimes nap at the same time at around one till three. And my morning routine is really simple. ⁓ I wake up, I don't want to grab my phone, ⁓ you know, brush my teeth and And kind of and and get to it. There is a layer of gratitude. And I used to overdo my morning routine. I called like the entrepreneur's guide to wellness. I was getting in a cold plunge at 4 a.m. It was the exact opposite of what I preach now. So I try to simplify that. But my meditation routine, I usually use something called a wudra mat, which is a haptic mat that with your meditation or your your I just use Spotify and I put on something like a a deep sleep hertz, it'll vibrate to the frequency of the music. ⁓ and I find that with my aura ring or my aura ring data that I actually see that when I get into that meditative state that my stress levels drop exponentially. I go, if I'm in a stress state, I can see those levels drop and you can feel it when you get into that state of it's almost blissful, isn't it? It's like a feeling of freedom where everything kind of releases and it's almost like this nervous system reset for your body. So I absolutely I try my best. I'm human so it doesn't happen all the time. But I try to meditate midday and and for me that's what works. ⁓ and then before bed, my before bed routine is where I try to make it extremely wind down. So ⁓ our kids start their nighttime routine around six, we do bath, my phone goes away. I no longer have my phone. ⁓ I'm with my kids and I like to like when I'm putting my youngest down, he's one, I rock him to sleep and I like to co regulate with him. And I can feel like as I'm becoming sleepy, I can feel my son becoming sleepy and then I don't grab my phone until the morning or like after I wake up a few an hour or so after I wake up. But ⁓ I like to make sure that my heart rate is the absolute lowest it can be before bed. So I read, ⁓ I might do another light meditation or yoga nidra. And then I feel as soon as I'm feeling extremely sleepy and I can't hold my eyes anymore, I just let myself go to sleep. And sleep is my I guess most valuable resource in my and y as a dad you probably recognize that ⁓ you gotta be up sometimes. But ⁓ when you do get sleep, it's it's important and it's kind of ⁓ changed the way that I operate. So Yeah, and the sleep is something I focus on. I think it's the ultimate nervous system reset. Yeah. Yeah, fantastic. I'm sure everyone's hearing a lot of what what they could implement here. The with it with re regulation, I I see in my work, at least this is what I teach. There's the there's tools for regulation and there's tools to shift the room of why the system 'cause the question is for me, like why is the nervous system going out in the first place? Yeah. And and for me it's it's about the emotions and how we can't be with them. So if something happens in our life that str is flaring up an emotion from the past, then then we've learned to protect ourselves from that, then we we our nervous nervous system will will react, right? And then meditation something can bring it back to balance, but it it's almost like a toxin that's gonna keep flaring up until we understand what that is. Is this something you y you speak about in your work? absolutely. Yeah. I think that if you're using meditation as like medication ⁓ where it's like almost like ⁓ a band-aid to the the root cause then it's not necessarily that the systems that I would like to implement. So yeah. So we built something called the regulate framework ⁓ in our practice. And you know, each letter stands for something and ⁓ it's interesting. But but but at the root of it, yeah, it's understanding what those triggers are and why they exist. And something as simple as ⁓ respond instead of react. ⁓ getting that level of awareness is super important. Our work is all about within the workplace. So creating a culture of care of of community and and and not like frightening. Mo a lot of leaders lead with fear and it and it it creates problems in the workplace that stem all the way through where people are scared to bring issues to their leader ⁓ because they know that there'll be a reaction that will cascade. So ⁓ something as simple as responding instead of reacting is nervous system regulation. It's looking at a situation, taking a beat, and Dealing it with it without emotion. I think that we make our worst decisions from emotion, whether it's extreme happiness or extreme negativity. And when you make an a d decision from emotion, there's no clarity. So yeah, reactions come from heightened nervous system states. And a lot of us live w with our nervous system at max capacity. And meditation is a great s great tool to kind of take the edge off. But if you're meditating to take the edge off without understanding where the edge is coming from, ⁓ you'll you're just putting a band-aid on the wound. I think what you're talking about is absolutely correct and in dealing with those traumas, those omission ⁓ those spiritual or emotional residues that are coming from somewhere deeper and understanding them will enable you to have a much more regulated life. So you so you're working with with everyone in companies or or or just just the the leaders to implement like a regulation across the board? Is is it something like that that you're aiming to I mean our our mantra is kind of like a head of the snake mantra. We have two products. We're in benefits, which are distributed across organizations or we're in cohorts and typically our cohorts are leadership cohorts. But I think that, you know, ⁓ regulation inside of a company starts with the leader. So if the leader's reactive, the managers will be reactive, the employees will be reactive. And I think that the number one skill that a leader can l ⁓ then understand is is regulation. Parents too. I know that If there's an unregulated household, the trauma and the energy that that creates on the child is, you know, traumatic. And as leaders of anything, sports teams, ⁓ education with with students, ⁓ coaching ⁓ individuals, ⁓ leading companies, ⁓ empathy is is not an option. There needs to be empathy and and it needs to come from a place of non non reactivity. So like ⁓ instead of reacting, responding and clarifying and optimizing and understanding. So One of the big things that we see from from leaders is they think that everything stops when someone enters the workplace. You know, we have over five thousand hours of transcribed sessions on our s on our platform. We don't look at them, but we we use them and we pull themes, but we see things that people are struggling with. And, you know, some people, you know, have have children that pass away, have absolute traumas that we could never understand, and they're coming to work and then we're putting stress on their on them to to accomplish a task that to them is almost meaningless. And the workplace w as a leader you you may think that someone's coming to work as an employee, but they're coming to work with everything else that they have in their life. And understanding that as a human being is is so important. Yeah, interesting. So you you know, and then you take an organization that's got fifty people say, and they're they're they're all carrying these different frequencies interacting with each other out of regulation and and then it leads the company in a direction that's not the the ultimate purpose of the founders, right? That's what I can see is going on there. Yeah, like every single company was founded for a specific purpose. And ⁓ the purpose of the founder or the creator or whatever it may be shifts over time until the purpose is unrecognizable and it's a profit seeking enterprise sometimes. And that's not sustainable. That can't be, you know, there has to be an impact or a purpose driven reason that something exists. A company, a non profit, a charity whatever organization, like it they exist for a reason. You can't just create something and not have a reason for it. So I love what you said there. Yeah, the purpose becomes diluted, and disorganized and ⁓ dysregulated. ⁓ because the people in the organization are all of those things too. And ⁓ understanding that and ⁓ I think that culture is maybe not the right word, but culture is so important. Like ⁓ creating a culture of care where people are understood, heard, empathized with, ⁓ communicated with, there's camaraderie, there's teamwork. I think competition is like what A lot of companies are looking for now in their workforce for people to like scale the workplace ladder or the ⁓ organizational ladder and and create competition to create success. And ⁓ we see that with companies like Amazon, with like they celebrate being one of the toughest places to work for and Google and all this stuff. But is that sustainable? You're gonna burn people out, you're gonna create a culture that's disorganized and there's a lack of care. I absolutely s see that. And I suspect a lot of people are burnt out. You know, I've personally have got burnt out from from pushing the candle, the burning the candle at both ends too too frequently in the past and now like the having that regulation is absolutely key. And my question to you is so working with these companies and teaching them how to lead from a regulated place, do do you see that they they they they create success at the same well not the same not comparing it to the other companies that are doing the the the compete, but What what what is the difference in terms of the results that are achieved in a company that is helping that way? Yeah, we actually have an ROI calculator on our on our website and and we see on average about a four point three return. So that's insane. So if you look at an employee, it's a like the data's out there, like seventy-seven percent of the workforce states that they face burnout every single day. That's insane. ⁓ people are optimized at like 30% capacity and ⁓ they're showing up to work without clear direction and you know, ⁓ turnovers an all time high. We see things that are like absenteeism, so people missing days and getting paid. And unfortunately we have to talk in these numbers that, you know, corporations understand. But when you create a culture of care, when you create a regulated workforce that where people are feel comfortable, excited to come in and work and make a difference, you we see about a four point three return on investment. So if someone's investing in their entire that's huge. That's like if we're looking at a Let's say that you hired a consultant for strategy, and then there's two to five percent increased returns on those. And that's like huge, huge investments that companies make to like improve strategy, improve all this. But if you work worked on your number one resource, which is human capital and team, you can see upwards of four hundred and thirty percent, which is, you know, four point three return on investment. Yeah, it's amazing, you know, because when people are regulated, they they they they can make coherent decisions and and Do less work in the in in the direction of true north, right? Exactly. And you've seen and your stats. Yeah. And this stuff's not hitting the bottom line. So people aren't understanding that their employees aren't optimized because they're dysregulated. Things are happening at home and work. They want to pay bills. They've the they've real life. But when they understand that they don't need to hire more people, need to focus more on their employees and keep them almost as like well in that as a family, the results speak for themselves. ⁓ And we're we're very grateful for that. I never wanted to make this ⁓ this company into something that optimized workplace bottom line. But in order for us to create an impact, we to figure out what the language of businesses were. And and it is true that when people feel cared for, they'll perform. I know if someone does something incredible for me, my first reaction is to either do something incredible for something else or back for them. And it's reciprocity, it's human nature. If you do something bad to me, it's gonna be the same thing. I wanna continue that. Energy. I know, like as someone that's regulated, I don't I don't feel that anymore. But neat human nature is interesting that ⁓ we pass things on. So it's exponential. You impact one person, you impact the entire organization. Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like everything is is founded on abundant exchange and then then it grows exponentially and everyone wins. Yeah. Absolutely. So my my last question to you is speaking to Purpose becoming inevitable. Is your purpose becoming inevitable? What you know, what what what does it look like for that to be a reality? Yeah. Yeah. I I mean my purpose is I think I've already fulfilled my purpose. I'm I'm very and I think that's enabling me to lead more from purpose, which was tough for so long. Like I didn't know what it was. I didn't know how to find it. And it's that you know, when you're searching for something, it'll it's elusive that you can't catch it. But I feel like I've stumbled into it, we've created an impact, we're passing like almost a thousand. Five star reviews on our platform, the impact that we've created is undeniable. And I just feel grateful that we were able to lead that. So now everything else comes as a bonus. So my family's healthy, my boys are healthy, which I'm extremely grateful for. And my ultimate goal is to work as as least as less as I can. I know that there's like a hustle culture and people celebrate sacrifice and you know, there's a there's a time and a place for that, and I understand it, but ⁓ my ultimate goal is to spend as much time with my wife and my boys as as physically possible. Yeah. Amazing. That's that's really living life, yeah, when you reach that place. Yeah. So if anyone wants to to reach out to you, Jordan, ⁓ how how can they do that? Yeah. So ⁓ on our website, which is ⁓ www.hatchpath.io, we have like a contact us section. We're on socials just as hatchpath coach on Instagram. Me personally is just Jordan Dunan on Instagram. But yeah, you can reach us almost anywhere you search for us and we love to to communicate and and connect and and and do things. So ⁓ feel free to reach out for any questions and we'll we'll answer for sure. Jordan, thank you so much for joining me on True North Alignment. I've loved this conversation. And thank you to the audience for being here. We will see you next week. Thank you for being here. Take a moment. Where are you in alignment? Because in True North, nothing underneath your actions distorts them. And from that place, purpose becomes inevitable. See you next time.