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If you're living a life that's uninspired and not authentically yourself, then what happens over time is we become cranky, we become tired, we start having chronic issues. Some of the symptoms are poor sleep quality. If you have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. If you wake up fatigued.
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Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. So I've recently become very focused on developing an awareness on the impact of living in today's technology and marketing centered world.
And more specifically, the effect that this has on our bodies and our nervous systems. Never in the history of humanity have we been this stimulated. Most of our everyday lives are spent in front of some screen. And when we're not in front of the screen, we have dings, notifications, ads, billboards, commercials, all fighting to get our attention. Apps, games, TV shows, and foods are all designed to be addictive.
Billions of dollars are trying to manipulate our behaviors in some way, or form. We can only guess what the long -term impact of this will be, but we can already see how it's impacting us now. To dive deeper into this, I've invited author, coach and consultant, Zara Carson to the show. Zara has an extensive background in positive psychology and neuroscience, and is the creator of the Rewire Mindset system, a framework designed to quiet the noise in your head reset your nervous system and allow you to experience more joy and happiness on your terms.
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Okay, Zara, I'm so excited to have you on the show. It's always fun to have other coaches and talk shop and compare notes. And obviously we're both passionate about empowering other people and really having people step into their leadership. So it's always fun to commiserate with other like -minded individuals. So thank you for being on the show. Absolutely. Happy to collaborate. Thank you for having me, My pleasure. My pleasure.
Let's start at the beginning. Well, not the beginning, but like I would love to get into how you when was your wake up call? How did you get into coaching or when did you first learn that you wanted to have your life be about being in contribution and empowering others? Well, I think I always had a sense of that. I just didn't know how or what the vehicle will be. So I'll give you sort of like
I go all the way back to the beginning. was born in South Africa during apartheid. was racially charged time. We lived in segregated societies and all of these concepts are really difficult for a small child to understand and process. Why are we being separated based on skin color or race or anything else for that matter? And so I became very aware that there was this story running in my background called I'm not good enough because of dot dot dot.
And I thought it was just my story. And I think most human beings can relate to this because they really look at everybody around them who is in great health or really successful in business and in finance or doing really well in love and relationships or in health. And they're thinking to themselves, everyone else seems to have the secrets and I'm the one that has it wrong. And people are now starting to talk about things like imposter syndrome. So it's becoming a little more commonplace
Separate from that, I just always was, I had this fascination with human behavior. I was always looking to those people who had that little sparkle in their eye, like they knew that little winning formula for happiness and how to live life in a beautiful way. And then also the other group of people that had enormous visions for their life and were able to create enormous wealth and success when so many other, we're talking about the 0 .1 % where so many other people.
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just leave so much on the table and they're okay to accept a living life that's uninspired and that's exhausting. And I thought, what separates that 0 .1 % from the rest of the world and how can I bridge that gap for people? So that became a fascination. Fast forward to my career in management consulting. So I was a management consultant for 20 plus years. was
trusted advisor to C -level executives. I ran big projects and I did, I took the instructions that we all get for life, which is very basic and sadly not enough to do life well. And so what we get is do well in school, pick a career, any career, and when you get the house, the car, you start an investment account or an RSP or
get the house, get the kids, get the marriage, and all of a sudden, somehow happiness will just show up, I don't know, maybe by Amazon. And so I did the formula. I did everything I was supposed to do, and I reached a very high level of success in my career, and I realized, my God, I'm so strung out. I was exhausted all the time. I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. My marriage had been falling apart.
There was stress, so much stress because being a management consultant, you have a multimillion dollar project on your hands and your team can all go wrong. But at the end of the day, if your project isn't successful, it's one person that's accountable and that's me. And so you have to take a hundred percent ownership. You have to figure out how to inspire people. You have to figure out how to stay calm under pressure.
You have to figure out how to be thorough and explore all risks and deliver successfully no matter what you're up against. And so you learn how to navigate really well. And I was near my own nervous breakdown when I realized, okay, something's gotta give. And it was just this, say in the world, there are no accidents if you believe in energy and the universe and spirituality. We do around. And so it was one of those things where I was really.
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so tightly wound and I caught myself walking to the office kitchen mid -morning to get yet another coffee and I just realized that I've been sprinting for so long. I walk fast, I breathe fast, I do everything fast, my heart was racing, my breathing was short and shallow, I wasn't even taking in enough oxygen to get through the day and I was just firing on all pistons like Olympic speed all the time.
And I was starting to have this awareness that, my God, this isn't sustainable. I can't continue like this. And right then I got a little email from my boss and he said that my project had been put on hold and could I come in and see him. So I knocked on his office door and it was just this moment where he said, okay, your project has been put on hold. And it was almost like all that stress just poured out of me.
And I burst into tears out of nowhere. And I was really known for being very put together and very composed in the most high pressure situations. So he looked at me shocked. I looked at him shocked. I just was like, what is happening right now? And he said to me, and I will always be grateful for the compassion he showed in that moment. He just looked at me and he said, take a breath. What's going on? And I said, I'm just feeling
really overwhelmed and a lot of stress. And I said, maybe I should just take a few days off. Good thing the project's on hold. And he said, maybe take a little more than a few days. Take all the time you need. We're going to be here when you're ready. And I said, okay, thank you. And so I went on this vacation without an actual return time. It wasn't like I was taking a week or two weeks specifically. I just knew I was going to take some time and reset. And I remember waking up the next morning.
I had this big mug of coffee, I sitting on my sofa overlooking the lake, because I lived in Toronto at the time, and I just thought to myself, I have all these tools, I've been studying self -development, psychology, self -analysis, positive psychology, the study of happiness and well -being for so long, and I'm not actually putting any of the tools into practice myself, so I said, great that I'm fascinated by this,
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Why don't I start putting these tools into place? And I really didn't know where to start. And I just knew that I was tired of feeling tired. I was tired of waking up exhausted and starting the grind. And I was tired of sprinting. And I was tired of so much tension in my body. And I was tired of feeling so stressed. And I wondered to myself, is there a way to still have great success in life, still be focused, still be productive?
but also feel peaceful. And so it just started like that. It was this moment where I said, God, I'm just so exhausted. How does this turn around? Something's missing. And this little voice inside me said, okay, well, what do you want to feel instead? And I said, I want to feel peaceful and calm and happy and still knowing I can get everything done. And it just started like that. And
And then something shifted for me within weeks. just woke up every day and focused on feeling peaceful, happy, calm. And within three weeks, my entire energy shifted. I felt more inner peace, more grounded than ever before. And the world was receiving me differently. Like I noticed people were just attracted to my energy, were speaking to me differently. Doors were opening for me. Opportunities were showing up. And I couldn't...
really understand why. And so I set out to study more neuroscience, the study of the brain and the nervous system, how to bring that back into balance, how to retrain the brain for more empowered thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and how to retrain away from stress and back to balance. And then I studied applied positive psychology, which is the study of optimal well -being and happiness as
And it all just came together and lined up. And I finally had the science to explain the transformation in myself and in my coaching clients. Cause I then left the consulting world, started a coaching practice and thought, my God, I'm seeing the same results with my clients. How do I teach this to more people? And so all of the data and all of these different fields of study, I studied everything related to human behavior and finally realized this is the answer. can give people.
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a methodology, a six week plan to retrain their brain and their nervous systems back to balance. And it was called the Rewire Mindset System and it's in the book, Six Weeks to Happy, which I published in 2021 and it did incredibly well. And so we've been able to help a lot of people and it's super exciting. So good. Thank you for sharing that. I think so many people can relate to that. And it's interesting because
You were a consultant, you had achieved a certain level of success and you were managing these big projects. But I think that dynamic applies to whatever job, whatever career, for so many people. For me, I have a very similar story. I was in consulting. I was actually an art director in my first career. I was a designer working on marketing campaigns.
but I had the same experience of like, yo, this is always stressful. I gotta go on these photo shoots with these artists who want all this stuff and everybody's being a pain in the butt. I was like a baby in my 20s trying to figure this out. So I personally relate and I think so many people will. So thank you so much for sharing that. When you made the decision, when you were having this moment with yourself and you decided something's different. So first of all, I wanna really call
something that I think people miss all the time. You got quiet with yourself and you asked questions, right? You asked questions and then you waited for the answer to come to you, to your intuition, which I think is so beautiful because one of the things that I feel that I wanna get into with you is never in the history of humanity have we been so stimulated.
Never in the history of humanity have we been just have all these devices were constantly plugged in. We go for a walk and we have our ear pods in. We have our phone is constantly trying to ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. We use our cell phones as our alarms. So we the first thing you do in the morning is grab your phone to turn it off. There's all the stimulation. And I think one of the impacts
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your nervous system gets fried, first of all. you just like, you're constantly being stimulated. But the other thing that really happens is that you don't have those quiet moments. You don't have those quiet moments to ask those questions, to really reflect and to tap into your divine intelligence, to your intuition and what your body's trying to tell you. So I think it's so beautiful that you had that moment.
to do that and it was such a turning point for you. Yes, thank you. And it's an important point and it's part of what I teach in the book because for example, I was the biggest skeptic, right? I was all about driving successful projects and delivering results. I had a hundred percent success rate, which is amazing. And it's a lot of pressure that you put on yourself, but I'm not sure that I took that moment insightfully. I think I really just was at the end of my rope and I'm
I'm so grateful in fact. I'm even grateful for my divorce and I remember speaking to girlfriends at that time singing like, how can you be grateful that you've gone through this thing, that you've gone through an almost nervous breakdown and this incredible emotional experience? And I said, because if I hadn't, I wouldn't have learned how to turn it around. I wouldn't have learned how to get quiet. so...
You talked about the nervous system and this is so important because we evolved as animals, right? We're from the animal kingdom or homo sapiens sapien. We evolved, we know our evolutionary path and we are five percent conscious mind, 95 % subconscious and the subconscious is all of that involuntary stuff. Your eyes blinking, how you walk, how you breathe. That all sort of happens without us intentionally going forward, intentionally thinking about
And your brain is so wired to be efficient. we have two nervous systems. If you want to think about it that way, we have the sympathetic nervous system, which handles our fight or flight mode, which in the animal kingdom before we were living in civilized Western society, like we are today, needed that fight or flight response. Because if there was real danger around the corner, wrestling in the bushes, it could
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a predator for example that we all of a sudden needed to run from and run to safety. And so our unconscious processes worked in that sense. It hit our fight or flight system, put it into overdrive, and what it feels like is it feels like you're pushing the gas pedal down and you get this rush of adrenaline so that you can flee off to safety.
And in past when we weren't living as we are today in such a busy world with so much stimulation coming at us at the same time as you rightly said, our brains would then signal our bodies to say, it's okay, we're safe now. There's no present danger. It's okay to return to calm. And that's our opposite nervous system, our parasympathetic nervous system, which we can learn to activate with the tools. And I think what we've done over time is
because we've had so much stimuli coming at us for so long. I mean, just take your phone for an example. 20 years ago, we used to have maybe a personal email or maybe a business email and one phone number or two. We used to have a landline and maybe if you were lucky enough to have a cell phone, you had a cell phone and some voicemail. It was that easy. Now you have one mobile phone, some people have two.
You may have a personal laptop, may have a corporate laptop, we have all the social media channels, they all now have direct messaging, so it's not just the alerts we're getting and notifications from every app we use, it's also every voice mailbox, every message that comes in, and what it does is every time that phone pings, it's something demanding our time, our money, our energy.
And so it hits our stress response. hits us at the fight or flight mode. And so we're constantly being hammered and our nervous system is constantly being hit with something that demands our attention. And we are exhausted as a nation. We are exhausted globally. We're exhausted as a people. And you're not wrong in saying that we need to now retrain. So the way I like to think of it is it's almost like we've gone to the gym and we've only worked out this one muscle group called our stress response.
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And we have had no knowledge that we actually have a calm response, an entire other muscle that can actually be exercised and retrained as well. And that's what I set up to do with the rewire mindset system is hold on one second. Hold on Sarah, because I want to pause there for a second. Because one of the things that happens is you just said something really key. We've been training one muscle, right? We're practice at one thing. And
But what also happens is that people start to think that they are that way. That this is who I am versus I'm just really trained in this behavior. I'm just really, my muscles really practice. So I think this conversation is so important because it's gonna really give you access to how to develop other set of practices because you are not this thing that you think you are. You're not this fixed being. You're just really practice at this set
of nervous system responses. So go ahead. Thank you so much. Thank you for that. No, that's a great point. And it's exactly how I was wired in my corporate world when I was doing my consulting work. I really thought in order to be a high performer, you have to always be switched on like that. The problem with that is it's not sustainable. We don't have an endless supply of energy. We are very much like our phones. We have a finite source of energy.
like a battery on your phone and when your battery's dead, it doesn't work. You have to unplug and you have to plug back in. So we are very much the same. So part of what I talk about in the six week rewire system is firstly, how to quiet the mind and how to start retraining the nervous system back to balance. What are some of the tools and techniques and strategies that can be really easy, that can be done within 15 minutes per day so that you start your day off peacefully.
intentionally, instead of waking up and immediately going into fight or flight, really starting to retrain our other system, which is our resting up, our calmer muscle, if you will. retraining that back to balance. then part of that is Sarah, sorry, but I want to get into some of this stuff. I want to ask you a question. How do people how can you recognize if?
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you are being impacted by this. mean, we're making, I think we're making the case that everyone is being impacted, whether you know it or not, but I think it it would benefit listeners if we take a few minutes to point to some behavior that, may let you know that this is impacting you. For me, one of the things that I noticed a lot with my clients and even with myself, I get very reactionary. It feels like I'm being bounced at
around, like I get an email, I have to respond. I have a thought, I have to jump at it. It's like a little almost ADHD kicks in and I find myself bouncing around like a ping pong ball a lot and just working in reaction and not really working inside of an intention or a plan. And it's something that I see very common with clients that I work with as well. What are some of the other ways that you see this manifested for people?
Thank you. That's such a great question, honestly, Gary. And what you're talking about there is an urgency. And that's one of the symptoms. If you feel like there's an urgency to everything you have to do, then you're already tapped out. And what that speaks to in the world of positive psychology, which is the study of happiness and optimal well -being, is it talks to ego depletion. And ego depletion is not ego. It is the fact that we are a finite source of energy.
and we need to understand how to balance our energy. So we need to understand what are the things that take up mental energy in the brain and that cause physical exhaustion. And then we need to understand what are the tools and strategies to replete and restore. And so when you are exhausted and you're running like I was, like so many people are, you don't have to
a management consultant or in a high -powered job. If you're living a life that's uninspired and not authentically yourself, then what happens over time is we become cranky, we become tired, we start having chronic issues. Some of the symptoms are poor sleep quality. If you have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. If you wake up fatigued. If you wake up and your first five minutes are automatically stressing about your day. That's another indicator.
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If you can just take a moment now, take a deep breath in and just do a body scan. Do you have tension in your forehead? Is there tension in your head down the back of your neck? Do your shoulders feel tense? Is there tightness and shortness of breath in your chest? If you have any of those signs, you are dealing with high stress and probably even chronic stress. The other thing you mentioned is
You talked about urgency but it also speaks to emotional resilience so if you are exhausted your ability to manage your temper and manager emotions is also much lower. And that speaks to willpower so willpower and your ability to manage your emotions and your urgency your sense of urgency is a direct.
gauge for how you can see how you're doing against managing your energy levels. And I teach all of these tools in the book so that you learn. really wanted to give people a long lasting set of tools and strategies that they can take and retrain the brain within six weeks, but then stay in that zone and have the tools they need for the rest of their lives. Because I was tired of going to those weekend or week long workshops where you come out and you're all excited and you think your whole life is going to change.
And then within weeks, you don't know how to put it into practice and you just spiral back into old patterns. So I really wanted to give people the tools to learn how to manage that for themselves. So those are some of the top indicators, a sense of urgency, inability to manage your emotions, poor sleep quality, waking up fatigued and waking up already stressed. Those are clear indicators. think another one that I want to touch on that just came to me is I feel that this also shows
in depression and anxiety, which if you kind of look at what's happened, it's like a lot of people now, it's a very common thing for people to be dealing with some sort of depression or anxiety. And I think that this is also a result of your nervous system just being fried and you not having learned these techniques to calm the nervous system and
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bring back some of these other practices. Anxiety is really anxiety is a heightened form of stress where you are almost in a state of panic about something future paced. so if you learn to calm the nervous system and use some of these tools, it actually reduces anxiety by 30%. It reduces stress by up to 75%. So if you're already waking
with 75 % of your stress gone, you're able to think more clearly, you're able to actually be more focused, more productive, and more empowered and more intentional with what you wanna get done in the day. it's that feeling of waking up on vacation, which you get to go to work and be excited about your life. And it's a completely different game instead of waking up exhausted and going into that already always way of being because.
If you asked anybody, how would you choose to wake up today? Nobody's gonna say, I'd like to continue being really stressed and unhappy with my life. Everyone's gonna instead say, I can't wake up to just feel rested and be really excited about what I get to do today. That's a much more empowered state of mind to be in. Yeah, and the interesting thing is also that I wanna point out is that we have these phenomena showing up as stress, showing up
depression, anxiety, and what we're doing about it is self -medicating, either professionally with prescriptions or with eating, with drinking, with other things, other vices that may not be the best thing for you to engage in. And really what's happening is this, right? There's nothing wrong with you. just a really
practice at this fight or flight at this response. And it's such a key conversation, I think, because what's going on under the hood is not what's being treated. You're absolutely right. What you're talking about there is if you're using alcohol, food, shopping, these are all compulsive behaviors, actually. Food is probably the most overused drug, if you think about it that
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And I don't mean food in terms of everyone just overeating. I'm talking about reaching for, so if you just think about the brain and the brain health, there are four groups of neurochemicals that are feel -good chemicals that we all need. And when we talk about this new world of social media, so there are four groups of neurochemicals. One is dopamine.
which is our little reward center, our little brain going, this feels good. This is happy. I like this. Let's do more of this. What all of those social media channels are doing is they're giving us a little dose of dopamine every time, but it's short lived. It's temporary. Ding, ding, ding. Exactly. And then we become addicted to it and we need to keep doing that. But it's not coming from a healthy place. It's not a healthy dose of dopamine.
Then there's serotonin which is another feel -good drug. There's endorphins. What did I mention? And then there's oxytocin which comes from love and connection. So the way I've taken this whole approach to the rewire mindset methodology is to give you all of the activities so that you are developing a healthy dose of those neurochemicals so you're retraining the brain and the nervous system and your entire body or neurology in fact.
back to balance with the right behaviors and the right choices. And so having an understanding of how to get nice levels of serotonin, how to boost your metabolism, that includes all of the things that are available to us in nature, fresh air, sunlight, grounding with nature. For example, if you get outside, we are not meant to live in buildings, so just getting outside, shut the phone off.
Shut the phone off and just nobody's saying don't use social media. Nobody's saying don't read the news. We all want to be informed. We want to know what's going on in the world. We want to know if Justin Bieber or Bruno Mars or Dua Lipa is throwing an impromptu concert or whoever your celebrity musical crush is. No, we don't. really don't. Music is good. Music is good for the skull. It pleases the skull.
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So you need the things that feed you, but in the right way. You have to move your body. Physical activity, nobody's saying you need to look perfect and have a six pack, but you need to engage in the activities that feed your brain, that feed your body, and that give you optimal energy. And we need strength, we need muscle mass. So you need to figure out some way of including that training and getting endorphins. Endorphins are the best, most natural antidepressant we can
And physical exercise is also one of the top two ways to prevent cognitive decline as you get older. So that's number one. We have to move our bodies. You don't move it, you lose it. It's that simple. Number two, grounding with nature. Just the simple act of getting outside and putting your bare feet on the grass or in wet sand or wherever you live. Just being with nature. That whole saying of hug a tree, it sounds ridiculous and I won't do it, but I'll lean against a tree.
I'll stand in the grass, I live on the beach, so I get to put my feet in the water, get in the ocean. What happens is our brains are so overloaded, fried as you said, our nervous systems are fried and our brain waves are overloaded. And so the earth's electromagnetic frequency actually resonates at our brain's calmest frequency. And we've all heard the term grounding.
So if you think of any time you've gone on vacation, so if your happy place is the beach, that first moment where you get to put your feet in the sand and hear the ocean waves, can you just feel the peace washing over your body just as I described that? And the reason that is is because the brain doesn't really know real from perceived. So even
remembering a moment and getting into a guided meditation where you're remembering a moment that you were on holiday, whether it was the mountains or the woods or an ocean or a lake or the stream, whatever your happy place is, if you can get your mind to just go there, what it does is it tunes your brain waves in like a radio knot, tunes it in to its calmest brainwave patterns. So it's really, really important. And then you want to know as well, oxytocin is
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You know, it's the hug drug, it's the love drug that we talk about when that feeling of falling in love and somebody you love holds your hand or gives you a great big hug or if you're lucky enough to have a beautiful partnership in your life or kids in your life, even pets. So making eye contact can give you a rush of oxytocin. So if you're isolating yourself because you're not feeling good.
you have to force yourself to have some social interaction. What it does is it feeds your body and gives you that rush of oxytocin that you need. And then serotonin is the fourth one. It actually comes from a lot of our foods. Most of our serotonin is produced in our gut. And I was such a diehard fitness freak for most of my life. I was doing high protein, low carb. And all of a sudden, I had this health issue a few years ago
I was trying to get back to fitness but everything I did in the past wasn't working so I finally said, because I understand the mind -body connection, I said to my body, okay, let's start a new dialogue. You tell me what you need and I'll make sure, but be loud, be really firm and really clear with me. Tell me what you want me to eat, tell me when you want me to work out, tell me when you need me to rest and I will do what you say and we will, instead of working against each other,
we'll work together to get to the optimal health and wellbeing. And all of a sudden, I started getting the strongest messages, eat salmon, don't eat the steak tonight. And then at 10 o 'clock at night, it would say, eat potatoes. And I would think, why am gonna eat potatoes at 10 o 'clock at night when it's just gonna be stored as fat? Well, potatoes actually are a source of serotonin. And my body had worked out hard that day.
And my body was saying, you need more calories if you want me to build this muscle. And by the way, serotonin is also really good for your brain health. So let's get a little dose of happiness right now. So I would eat a dose of potatoes when my body told me to. And all of a sudden my fitness came back on track within no time. So it's just a really, really beautiful way to retrain the body back to balance. If you've got all of the education and the right tools, it really is simple,
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I haven't found a program that has it all in one place. And so I put it together myself. Yeah. And what I love about everything that you're sharing. So first of all, so many great tips and so much great advice and it's all free. It's all free. being in nature is free. Going for a walk is free. Moving your body is free. Hugging somebody, spending time with your pet. It's all free. Going, getting under the sun. It's all.
It does not require membership, a trip, a fancy anything. It's so simple and it's all around us. And it really just is a matter of putting it into practice. Much in the same way that your practice, all of these things, other behavior, your practice working through and just pushing through. That's the practice of mine. mean, similar to you, I...
And it was like a badge of honor. It's like a badge of, I work hard, I'm a hard worker. I'm the son of immigrants and I made my, it's like all that. Something I'm trying that I've implemented recently is I've actually split my day in half. I work for three to four hours in the beginning. I take a two hour break and then I work for three or four hours in the afternoon.
Yes. And those two hours in the day are for me to rest, to go for a walk, to read a book, to cook a meal for myself. And it's a way to prioritize these things, right? It's a way for me to prioritize the taking care of myself as well, because let's face it, if I am depleted, I can't continue. I'm building a business.
If I'm running on low, if I'm running on empty, not to mention that the work that I do, it's really important and people depend on it. And so if I want to continue to make an impact with others, if I want to continue to have my life be about service, I need to make sure that I'm also taking care of myself and doing the things that are going to retrain my nervous system to relax. And I'm doing this
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as well, guys. This is not something that you do. And Zara, I'm sure that you do this work actively yourself. Like when we talk about this stuff, it's not, we're not talking about it because we've arrived at the mountaintop and we're not, you know, we're healed, we're fixed. No, we're sharing this stuff because we are actively doing this day to day in our lives.
something that I started implementing. I've been talking a lot about this in my show, but something that I started implementing with, I coach entrepreneurs mostly, but like, so they come to me, how do you grow my business? How do I increase my sales? How do I bring in new leads? And I'm like, okay, before we get to that, what's your morning practice? How do you meditate? How do you journal? How are you taking care of yourself? We'll get to that. We'll get to that.
But like, let's implement these basic foundation first, because otherwise we're creating in reaction. We're creating in resistance to what is. And you might be successful that way, but you'll have that experience that Zara was talking about where you're overwhelmed, you're tired, where you're... I mean, I have so many people come on the show and share similar stories where they've had some success. They've arrived.
to achieve some level of their dreams and then they get there and they realize this is it. there's no, I thought I was gonna be amazing and you realize you get there and it's like, eh. I love this conversation so much. gonna bring me happiness. thought it would be fulfilled and where is all that? Absolutely. Yeah. So as,
I think what advice do you have for people who are building this muscle? Because I think one of the things that happens is people will, I tried meditation and it didn't work. And it's like, well, you tried it once or two times. Or I try to work out and then I miss a workout. so I find that people often give up before the muscle is built, right? Yeah.
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And when I've come to realize, it's a great question, Gary, because when I first started this, I thought I need people to understand the concept of meditation and mindfulness and just this way. But what I came to realize is because the formula for happiness and success is not a one size fits all formula, there is no chance that you and I and our five best friends are going to sit at a table and order exactly the same meal at the same time. It's just never going to happen. We're not all going to go to the gym and do exactly the same workout.
What works for you is what works for you and what works for me is what works for me and that's okay. So not everyone is comfortable sitting cross -legged in yogi position and sitting there in a meditation. Some people feel like they're doing it wrong. Some people feel like their mind is going a mile a minute. If you're like me and you were type A, my meditation isn't sitting there and trying to focus on my breath and being silent. My meditation is first doing some deep breathing.
Which triggers the vagus nerve which triggers my body to get calm. It triggers my heart rate to slow down. And then I go into a guided visualization meditation because I prefer to be thinking about something than not focusing on something for other people. A walking meditation might be better. Just put on your headphones. I make it super easy. I used to actually have a meditation
as an addition to the book we've now put everything free on the YouTube channel and we'll send your audience all of those links as well. If that doesn't work, maybe people go for a long walk or a bike ride. Anything that connects your breath, anything that connects your mind to your body and how you're feeling and reduces tension. I promise you Gary, if I were to ask you on those two hour breaks when you take your long walks, don't you get some of your best
inspired ideas then? absolutely. Absolutely. Because what would happen to me was that I would work through the day and then by the late afternoon, I'm running on fumes, but I'm pushing through. And now what I find is when I do this, I can I have energy for the second part of my day. So me taking that break for myself actually allows me to be more productive in the later half of the day. Yes.
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Yes, so here's what's interesting about what you're doing there. For example, the brain uses a different region of itself to do task -based work. So if you're sitting at your computer and you're trying to solution something, the solution doesn't always come because your brain actually needs to engage the creative part, the innovative part, the strategic thinking part, and that's a different part of the brain. And how that works is you actually need to get up and walk away from your computer and go and do something else.
My best ideas come, I say to myself, because I'm so wired from the corporate world, I'll say, I just can't do anymore. My brain is dead for the day. There's no point me sitting in front of my desk trying to get something done. I'm just gonna relax. And while I'm off relaxing, I get a flood of ideas and solutions coming to me. And I've had to retrain myself and realize, that's also work, actually.
And some of those ideas come because here's a fascinating point in my studies of neuroscience, which is the study of the brain and the nervous system. If you want to spark creativity and innovation, your brain actually needs to be relaxed and happy. So take time for self care, take time to rest and recharge, take time to go and play, laugh.
Listen to music, go see live concerts, have social activity with the friends that bring you joy, your family members that bring you joy. Because if you're relaxed and happy, you're actually going to be more creative and more productive. Yeah. It sounds counterintuitive and yet it's not. Yeah. And there's something about that. there's a lot of talk now about self -care. But I almost don't like to call it self -care because there's something about that that feels indulgent.
for a lot of people, right? But the way that I talk about it, it's really like maintenance. Like if you don't do that, you're not maintaining the car. And if you don't stop the car to get a tune up, to get the oil changed, to get the filters, you're gonna have a problem, right? This car is gonna break down and then it's gonna cost you more to get it fixed later down the road. So it's not even like, there is something about it that feels
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a reward that you haven't earned in a way, but it really is, it needs to be part of your strategy. It really needs to be part of your strategy because if you don't do this, it's just gonna impact your ability to keep going. And let's face it, the game that you guys are playing in life, if you're building a business, if you're launching a nonprofit, if you are working for some lofty goal in your life, that's a marathon, it's not a sprint.
You need to be able to sustain that long -term. You need to be able to stay in the game. And anybody who's run a race knows that, yeah, when you start a marathon, you have a lot of energy. So you can push really hard, but you know that the strategy is you have to start easy because if you just push really hard, you'll burn yourself out and you won't be able to sustain that the whole time. So even though...
you can go faster, you actually have to push yourself and train yourself to slow down and maintain a certain pace. Yeah, I like you calling it maintenance. And I think I have the same view of self -care, but it's probably because we're socialized in the same way, right? We come from that mindset that if you're not exhausted, stressed, and strung out, you're not doing it well enough. You're not working hard enough. So we come from that mentality. But I think we need to shift the narrative.
whether it's calling it maintenance or just taking time to recharge your energy stores, you can't keep pouring from an empty cup. we already know we need to sleep, we need food and water to survive. So if we already know we're like a battery that needs those three ingredients in order to survive, then we have to think of self -care or maintenance programs as a way to recharge and restore energy. Because if we have
we're actually going to be more focused, more productive, more innovative, and then we have proper peak performance. Then we can step into our most empowered self. And there's a part that's missing that we haven't discussed yet, and that is we talk about authenticity or being your true self. And what that even means is, what I discovered in my coaching practice is that most people don't really even understand who they are or what makes them happy.
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And so as part of what we talk about and part of the tool set you get in this program is you get to actually map out all of the different areas of your life. Spiritual, emotional, mental, social, financial, career, purpose and passion. And you get to figure out who you are and what are the things that actually light you up, excite you, make you feel strong, capable. What are your values? What are the things that are important to
And then you can see a gap between who you are, what really makes you feel as though you're doing life well, as though you're happy and successful, and then what you need to take in terms of bridging that gap. And once you bridge that gap, you can make small shifts in your relationships, in your work, and how you spend your time and your energy, just like this two hour break, which the Spanish and Portuguese do very easily, by the way. This is just part of their culture.
They take that two hour siesta every day. And they're serious And they work slightly last day. And they're serious. They're serious about Oh my God. Oh yeah. Listen, I was wired to be in North America and the UK when I was working abroad and it was head down for eight to 10 hours. And if you weren't working a 10 to 12 hour day, you weren't working. And so if you got up to leave at 5 .03, the commentary you would get is, oh, you're working banking hours.
Yeah, I would do a joke where I'm like, oh, you're working a half day today? Exactly. Isn't that awful? But here's what was amazing. I worked in the Portugal office for a little while. It was just a few weeks and I was so wired to be on guard, head down all day for that eight to 12 hours. I turned up, looked up out of my desk, looked up from my laptop at 1201.
The Lisbon office was empty. Dead. It was a ghost. Yep. Dead. Dead. They didn't fill back up until 2 .30 or 3 o 'clock. And when I see people went to lunch there, they didn't just go and get a salad for takeout or a wrap or a sandwich and come back and eat at their desk. They got in their cars. They drove to the ocean to a beautiful restaurant. They met their friends. They had a glass of beer or wine with their lunch.
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They took it easy, they took time to relax, laugh, connect, be social, and then they came back to work and I swear they were much more productive for it. So it's all about understanding how to look after yourself in a different way. And luckily in certain European cultures, they have that work -life balance worked out. I'm not sure why it got toppled over in North America, but I think changing the narrative, and this is part of the important work that you're doing with your show, Gary,
allowing people to see that this doesn't work, it's not sustainable because if you're running a marathon as you say, there are parts when you're gonna feel fully energized and you're gonna get this goal and there are gonna be parts where your body is crying and you're exhausted and you're tense and you're wanting to quit and what are the things you do in those moments to talk yourself through to get to the finish
And that's what we're talking about here because life is not a sprint, it's a marathon. So how to give yourself the tools you need when you need coping strategies or when you're dealing with stress or anxiety or depression. And instead of just blanketing it by treating the symptoms or reaching for a temporary coping strategy, what are the tools you need so that you can actually retrain the brain and the nervous system back to balance?
and understand the root cause of all of that stress and anxiety and depression and really change it from the inside and have a long lasting change. And that's really what's important. I love it. Love it. Love it. Such a great conversation, Sarah. Thank you so much for coming by and sharing all your wisdom and sharing your personal story, which for me personally, I got a lot out of and it was.
saw myself, it mirrored a lot of myself in it. Guys, go get this book, Six Weeks to Happiness. We're gonna put all of Sarah's information in the show notes. We'll have her website, there's a quiz there also that she's gonna have available for you and a link to the book. Sarah, thank you so much for being with us and I hope you come back because this was such a fun conversation.
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thank you so much for having me here. Just a small correction there, the book is called Six Weeks to Happy and the website is the same, sixweekstohappy .com. Got it. Thank you so much for the work you're doing and for this beautiful conversation. I will come back anytime you would like me and let me know how I could be of service to you and your audience. It's all about you guys and making the shift towards happiness and success for everyone here. I love it. Here's to happier days.
I've said this before and you're gonna hear me say it until my face turns blue. Having a mindfulness training and practice in place is no longer optional. It's now a necessary condition of not just getting through, but thriving in today's world. We just were not designed to live this way. And technology and lifestyles are evolving and growing much faster than evolution can keep up with. I don't mean to be an alarmist here, but we are in trouble.
Living in this constant state of stimulation has this toll. We end up living reactionary lifestyles that rob us of our peace of mind. We are seeing massive increases in reported depression, anxiety, and ADHD, just to name a few. We have to start incorporating mindfulness into our everyday lives, much in the same way that you would take a bath or wash your hands or brush your teeth. Your nervous system
has to reset once in a while. You can't just run an engine hot all the time and expect it not to crash. Meditation, slowing down your breathing, walking in nature, planting your bare feet on the ground outside, journaling, gratitude. These are all free, simple practices that can have a huge impact. And most importantly, you have to develop an awareness of your mindset. What are the beliefs that are no longer serving you?
What are some of the beliefs that are having you take actions that are inconsistent with the things that you want? And how are you going to address those? You gotta work with a coach, a therapist, a good friend to challenge and dismantle and create new ones. So much of the programming that we receive goes against the things we want in life. So many of the beliefs that supported and protected us as kids now hold us back. They get in the
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Until you learn to understand what's under the hood and how to dismantle and rebuild it, then you will always be at odds with yourself. And that only gets amplified by your exhausted, overstimulated nervous system. It's time to get off the ride. If you're not already doing this, then it's time to start. Consider this your wake up call. I want to give a special thanks to Zara Carson for sharing her insights with us this week.
To learn more about mindfulness and resetting your nervous system, check out her Wall Street Journal bestseller, Six Weeks to Happiness. As always, if you have enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with two or three people in your life. Also, don't forget to click follow or subscribe. I can't tell you how much it helps the growth of the podcast. And if we keep growing, I can keep doing better and better episodes. I'll see you next week.
Thanks for listening to this episode of The Ownership Game with your host, Gary Montalvo. Make sure to like and comment on your favorite podcast platform, as well as subscribe so that you never miss an episode.