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Yeah, so I would leave everybody with that one
of the most important and impactful things you
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can do to begin with is just become more aware
of your current state.
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Are you calm and coherent?
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00:00:12,080 --> 00:00:15,119
Are you feeling like you're in a fight or
activated state?
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Are you frozen or shut down?
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Notice and become aware of the states that
you're in, and look for ways you can bring
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yourself back into balance.
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The easiest is with balanced breathing.
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Two and a half minutes, even breath in, even
breath out will regulate your nervous system
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and bring it back into balance.
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One of the simplest free tools that I can offer
that has been the most transformative in my
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00:00:39,600 --> 00:00:40,159
life.
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00:00:40,560 --> 00:00:45,965
And I'd also share that I have, if you come to
my website and you subscribe, a huge free
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00:00:45,965 --> 00:00:52,925
library of resources, webinars, tools,
assessments that you can get access to and
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00:00:52,925 --> 00:00:54,445
begin to use immediately.
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00:00:54,765 --> 00:00:57,325
Welcome to "The Inspired Choice" today.
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00:00:57,325 --> 00:01:02,359
I'm your host, Caroline Biesalski, here to
bring you authentic stories, surprising
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lessons, and powerful takeaways to fuel your
journey in business and life.
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In each episode, I'll take you from one
inspiring guest to the next, blending their
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experiences with my expertise to uncover
practical strategies you can use right away.
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Whether you're starting out or stepping up,
stay tuned for insights and actionable tips
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00:01:25,534 --> 00:01:26,814
that make a difference.
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00:01:26,895 --> 00:01:32,549
And stick around until the end for a special
freebie just for our listeners.
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Hello and welcome, inspired podcast community.
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This is your new episode.
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My name is Caroline, and my today's guest is
Jessica Tietjen, and I'm so happy that she said
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yes to our interview.
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How are you doing today?
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I am great.
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I'm excited to have the conversation.
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Oh, me too, and I would like to introduce you
to the audience, of course.
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You bring deep insight into how neuroscience
can elevate both personal and organizational
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performance.
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As a leader, lawyer, coach, and founder of
Evolving to Exceptional, you share how we can
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prevent burnout, reduce stress, and unlock our
full potential both at work and in life.
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Welcome to The Inspired Choice podcast.
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Wow!
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Jessica Tietjen!
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Thank you.
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first question for you is: you've combined
neuroscience, leadership, and talent
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development into one powerful methodology.
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What first inspired you to create Evolving to
Exceptional?
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Yeah, so my story starts with my burnout
experience.
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And I had twins before the pandemic.
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And just like everybody, I've got a pandemic
story.
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My twins were nine months old at the start of
the pandemic, and I had a 4-year-old son at the
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time, and I made it through that year.
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But I really point to 2021.
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I had started writing a book, because that's
what we do when we're high achievers.
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We decide to write books after the most
stressful experiences in our life, and we got
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hit with a ransomware attack.
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When that happened, it was the turning point
that tipped me over into extreme burnout and
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led to me being sick for a number of years,
trying to recover from that experience.
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And that's what really put me on the path to
look at the neuroscience of human performance,
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because our organization had won awards for our
programs.
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We were doing all of the best practices.
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We were recognized by Gallup globally as an
exceptional workplace.
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And so I couldn't figure out how, if I was
doing everything that the best practices said
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to do, I ended up in burnout.
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Why did that happen?
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And so I started to learn about the
neuroscience of human performance and then look
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at our workplace and leadership practices
through that lens to see how and whether those
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practices are supportive to human performance
or not.
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And in most cases, they're not only not
supportive, but in some ways they're outright
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problematic for people operating at their best.
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And so that's what really led me down this
path.
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Wow, what a great story.
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Thank you so much for sharing.
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I'm already inspired, but I want to know more,
of course.
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Next question is many leaders struggle with
burnout and overwhelm, as you said.
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What are the top neuroscience-based strategies
you recommend to shift from survival to peak
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performance?
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Yeah, so one of the things that I discovered as
I looked at this was that the world is changing
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so quickly—technology, just the environment
that we're existing in, the level of stress
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that we are encountering as a result—that the
human body hasn't adapted or evolved, which is
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part of why my company's named Evolving to
Exceptional.
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We haven't evolved to a level to be able to
adapt to the world that we've created.
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And so one of the things that I focus on with
leaders is how do we rethink how we look at our
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performance and our systems based upon how the
human body actually operates?
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And one of the key things that underpins that
is recognizing when we're in a coherent or
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balanced state versus a survival and
dysregulated state.
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And one of the things that I recognized in my
own burnout experience was that I had spent
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years in a high sympathetic dominant
fight-or-flight state under high stress,
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getting lots of things done, accomplishing a
lot of things, but I didn't know how to
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discharge that stress from my body.
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So it built up and built up like boulders of
stress, and eventually my body said, I can't do
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it anymore.
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And that's when our bodies start to have pain,
they start to get sick, they start to develop
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autoimmune conditions.
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And so if instead, as leaders, we can recognize
the states that we're in and learn strategies
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for how to shift out of survival and into
coherence, and discharge that stress out of our
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body, we can reduce the likelihood that we'll
end up in burnout and begin to build a larger
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window of tolerance to get ourselves out of
burnout.
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Wow, I love that how you explain it with the to
discharge or not being able to discharge.
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I had a different thought today but it's in the
in the same direction because I had the thought
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of being discharged.
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You know, you said you were not able to
discharge the stress.
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I thought today about being empty, like being
discharged but being empty or it's not so good
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either.
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What would you say?
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Yeah, yeah.
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I mean if you think about it from a survival
perspective, when we were out running the
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saber-tooth tiger, we were running away, so
that would discharge that stress or that
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emotion or that experience.
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Now we're sitting in front of screens and
computers and TVs and phones, and we're just
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looking at and experiencing that stress without
the normal mechanisms that would move that
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stress out of our body.
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And so, we have to shift the stress that gets
stored in order to have that more energy,
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right?
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So if all that stress is there, then I don't
have any energy for other things, and I'm more
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likely to snap at other people, I'm more likely
to perceive other people's comments negatively,
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I'm more likely to get frustrated more quickly
because I don't have that extra capacity, I'm
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full.
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And so I often use a visual of like a jar of
rocks.
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Like, if it's all the way full with rocks and
water and like it doesn't matter how you
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organize it if it's full, we need to get a
bigger jar, we need more capacity.
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I love that analogy.
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I never thought of it that way because you said
we are charged, I would say, with the wrong
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things.
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Or yeah, and you say we need a greater jar.
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Yes, I think I understand.
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Thank you so much.
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My next question: Can you walk us through a
success story where your program transformed
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not just performance metrics but the well-being
of a team or individual?
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Yeah, so I work with leaders and organizations.
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I've been working with an organization and
their leadership team through a pretty
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turbulent transition and time of change.
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And there's a lot of dysregulation that comes
into that and a lot of heightened emotions that
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come into that.
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And so one of the things that we do together is
a lot of embodiment practices around how to
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notice when we're having an experience where
we're feeling it in our body.
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And that's a good indicator of what's really
going on, so we often like to stay in our heads
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and think about things, but a lot of it lives
in our body.
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If we can drop out of our head and notice, I'm
feeling that in my chest, or I'm feeling that
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in my gut, then we can get back into our body
and start to look at how do we rewire that, how
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do we change that to better serve us.
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So that's what I do with my teams: teach them
how to do that for themselves and then work
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with them to remove the things that are holding
them back or keeping them from performing at
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their best.
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Oh, I like this method of going into the body
and seeing where is this feeling or what is the
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feeling, and then, yeah, noticing it and then
to work on how to release it or?
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Yeah, how to release it and rewire it.
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It depends on what it is, if it's negative or
sometimes it's positive, right?
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It's information the body is trying to provide
us that once we have it, we see our situation
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differently, we can be more creative, and I use
a lens of multiple brains.
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So we have our head brain, of course, it has
lots of neural connections in it, but we also
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have neural networks in our heart and in our
gut.
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You've probably heard of the gut brain or the
heart brain as the little brain, and our heart,
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the neural networks in our heart are about the
same as a lobster, the neural networks in our
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gut are about the same as a cat or a dog, and
so they are very smart, they have a lot of
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intelligence in there, and they're trying to
send us messages, but our head is very, very
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loud.
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And so if we can tap into that embodied wisdom,
we can find better solutions, we can be more
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creative, we can be more courageous, we can be
more compassionate in our decision-making and
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problem-solving and
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Wow, I love that.
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Thank you so much.
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I will pay more attention to what my body wants
to tell me.
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Yes, and my next question is what do you see as
the future of leadership and workplace culture,
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especially as more companies prioritize mental
health and sustainable productivity?
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So what I see as being really critically
important is upgrading our current systems,
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looking at the ways in which we interview,
hire, onboard, develop, train, manage, and
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partner—all of the things that we do with
people.
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We need to look at them through this
neuroscience-based lens, and we need to upgrade
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those systems and practices to reflect what the
human body, what human beings really need in
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order to perform at their best.
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And today, based on my interactions with
organizations and looking at this, most systems
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are still very stuck in their traditional ways
of doing things, and most have not really
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upgraded yet to become aligned with what we now
know, where science is with how the human body
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operates, where psychology is with how human
behavior works.
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If we can align our workplace practices with
what we know to be true now, we will really
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create the momentum and the change that people
need today.
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Wow, I love that.
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Thank you so much for sharing and also for
being my guest today.
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I would like to know about your coaches and
mentors.
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Do you have coaches and mentors for yourself,
and who is the best coach you ever had?
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Oh gosh, that's such a good question.
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Yes, I do have coaches and mentors and partners
that I use.
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I've worked with many different ones throughout
my career.
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I am especially fond of the multiple brain
integration technique and approach, and my
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coach in that space is Amy Mercer, and she does
phenomenal one-on-one work.
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And so she's been a real partner to me,
supporting me through my own journey.
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Oh, I love that.
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Thank you so much.
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And my next question is about where can we find
you when people want to reach out to you after
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listening to this episode?
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Yeah, so I am on all of the social media
platforms.
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I have my website Evolving to Exceptional.
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You can look up, I've got multiple books that
I've published you can check out as well, and I
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also have a podcast, Evolving to Exceptional,
so lots of spaces that you can connect with me
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and explore some of the different solutions
that I have to the modern-day problems that
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we're experiencing.
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Oh, that's so great.
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Please reach out to Jessica.
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She's amazing.
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She shares her knowledge and wisdom with us.
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I'm so happy to have you as the guest today.
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My last question for you is about your goals.
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Do you set goals for yourself or intentions?
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And what is one of your next projects?
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So my goal right now is to work through
creating success system upgrades for
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organizations, and I have a few already, but
continuing to work through those current
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systems and how do we upgrade them to make them
more effective, to make them more impactful,
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and to better support the human beings in our
workplaces and organizations.
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So that is the space that I am mostly pursuing
right now, and I also have a goal to write my
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next book around this topic, and around how do
we expand human capacity, how do we evolve
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human beings so that we can have greater
capacity in the world.
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Oh, I love that.
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Thank you so much.
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I'm inspired now and I love books as well.
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Of course, I'll put the links in the show
notes.
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Now it's time for your final thoughts to the
audience, please.
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Yeah.
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00:15:43,174 --> 00:15:48,549
So I would leave everybody with that one of the
most important and impactful things you can do
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00:15:48,549 --> 00:15:52,389
to begin with is just become more aware of your
current state.
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00:15:52,789 --> 00:15:54,470
Are you calm and coherent?
217
00:15:54,709 --> 00:15:57,830
Are you feeling like you're in a fight or
activated state?
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Are you frozen or shut down?
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00:16:00,325 --> 00:16:05,445
Notice and become aware of the states that
you're in and look for ways you can bring
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yourself back into balance.
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00:16:06,965 --> 00:16:09,044
The easiest is with balanced breathing.
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Two and a half minutes, even breath in, even
breath out will regulate your nervous system
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and bring it back into balance.
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One of the simplest free tools that I can offer
that has been the most transformative in my
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life.
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And I'd also share that I have, if you come to
my website and you subscribe, a huge free
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library of resources, webinars, tools,
assessments that you can get access to and
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begin to use immediately.
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My goal and my intention is to help impact as
many people as I can in the world and that is
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one of the ways that I do it by making
resources available to anyone who wants to
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check them out.
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Oh, that's so important.
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Thank you so much for doing this.
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Yes.
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And thanks for being my guest.
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Thank you so much for having me.
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And I see you in the next episode.
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Transformation.
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Don't forget to hit follow or subscribe to stay
connected and never miss an episode.
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And here's something special: Grab your free
20-minute breakthrough session with me.
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It's designed to help you kick-start or level
up your business.
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Just check out the show notes for more.
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Until next time, keep making those inspired
choices.
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See you in the next episode.