From Reactive to Grounded: Your CEO Reset

Are you ready to grow from stressed out solopreneur to confident CEO? You're in the right place. I'm your host, Rachel Cook, and I've spent the last 15 years helping women entrepreneurs to sustainably scale their life first business. If you're serious about building a more sustainable business, it's time to put the strategy systems and support in place to make it happen.

Join me each week for candid conversations about stepping into your role as CEO. The hard lessons learned along the way and practical profitable strategies to grow a life first business without hustle and burnout. Hey there CEO, Rachel Cook here, host of the Promote Yourself to CEO podcast and founder of the CEO Collective.

Today I have a really important topic for you and that is how do we stay grounded as the CEOs of our small businesses right now? Right now, we are in a time of a lot of uncertainty, a lot of unpredictable things hitting us every day from the news. A lot going on that is really threatening us here in the U.

S. And I know the majority of my community is here in the U. S., though I do have clients all over the world. And they are also experiencing this uncertainty and this unpredictability. And they're scared, they're worried about it. I've been talking to a lot of my clients every single week who are feeling the effects of the current administration in D.

C., and it is really unsettling for them. So, we are not in a normal time. We are not in business as usual. Things are not normal right now. And that causes fear. That causes panic. And I'm here to tell you that panic is not a business strategy. We cannot operate out of fear and panic. We need to find ways to take care of ourselves, to take care of the people around us, and be able to stay steady and grounded as we are stepping into more leadership than ever before.

Because we are being called to more leadership than ever before. Women are being called to step up and to be the change that we really want to see. So in my conversations with women entrepreneurs from around the U. S., Canada, around the world, I know that right now we are shaken as a whole, as a community.

And when we are shaken, it can really throw us off. It can throw us off our game as small business owners. And right now we need to be strong leaders for our businesses, for our families, for our communities. So today I want to walk you through some really important strategies to help you stay grounded as the CEO of your small business.

Now I do want to say, just as a disclaimer, if you are listening right now and you're going, Wow, Rach sounds different. Um, I was at a protest yesterday with my husband, Jameson, my friend Cindy joined us and we marched downtown to the state capitol here in Virginia. And I definitely was yelling a lot. So my voice is a little hoarse.

Hang in there with me. I promise that this is still going to be worthwhile, even though I sound a little bit like a frog. I think it's so important for us to use our first amendment rights right now, especially because there are so many things that are under attack, including our rights as women. And I am not going to make this whole episode about that at all, but I do want you to know that our rights as women are under attack.

Our first amendment rights are under attack. It has only been. In recent history, in my lifetime, that women were able to start a business, get a business bank account, go out there and get funding for their small business. And while it's easy to believe that those rights won't be taken away, um, I can tell you that they want to roll back.

our rights and put us back in the kitchen. They do not want women to be the breadwinners. They do not want women to be, um, building and growing these businesses. They do not want women to accumulate wealth. I am here to tell you that we are fighting against that. Because when women have more money, we contribute back to our communities.

When women have small businesses, we're able to build the types of businesses that we wish existed when we had gone into the workforce. So I'm pretty fired up about this. You, if you're also fired up about it. Follow me over on social media. I am on Instagram. I am on Facebook. I am on Blue Sky. I am on everywhere, um, except for X because I refuse to go back to that.

Um, and I'll be sharing more about what I'm doing to actively engage in, you know, what's happening politically in the world. But today I want to talk about just finding the capacity. Right now reminds me a lot of the early days of COVID. the pandemic. And I can't believe it's been five years. It has been the wildest five years of my life.

But I remember early on in March of 2020 when we didn't know what was happening. There was just so much uncertainty. There was, you know, a lot of fear because we didn't know what this virus was. We didn't know what we were supposed to do. We didn't know how fast it would spread. And I remember when we were told it was just going to be two weeks.

Stop the spread, stay home for two weeks, and then it became months long. Well, as somebody who supports small business owners, I spent the majority of those two weeks helping my clients figure out what the right next steps were. If they had brick and mortar spaces, helping them reach out and talk to their landlords, helping them try to figure out how they were going to keep, um, the bills paid.

Many of them had to temporarily shut down their businesses. They had a lot of refund requests coming in if they had physical locations or if they were hosting events because they could no longer do those things. They could no longer offer their services. I had a lot of small business owners who When people got scared because they didn't know what was happening, suddenly they were backing out of contracts.

Um, they were saying, I know we signed a contract to work together, but I'm scared I'm going to pull back on all of my spending. And we are seeing Maybe not to that extreme, right? People can still offer their services right now, but we are definitely seeing a slowdown in the small business space. We are seeing, and this is pretty predictable.

Um, when the world is unpredictable, people pull back. When the world is unpredictable and people are scared, they tend to go, okay, Where can I cut any expenses? Where can I reduce my overhead? And they start to pull back because they don't know how what is happening in the world and what is happening in the economy is going to directly impact them.

And that's a scary place to be as a small business owner. They also start to see people take a little bit longer with buying decisions. This is pretty common during times of any sort of uncertainty, any sort of economic unrest. Um, when things seem confusing or unpredictable and we don't exactly know what's going to happen.

We will see that people take longer to make buying decisions. So you might have seen people sign up for your proven tested offer over and over again, but maybe recently you've seen a slowdown in those. buyers. Maybe you see more people take payment plans instead of paying in full. Maybe you see people who had previously committed to your event or your training and now they're like, I actually am not sure if I should do this.

I think I should hold on and wait until things become more calm, more predictable. And this is really stressful for small business owners. So today I want to talk about how to stay grounded and manage your capacity. Because when things are like they are right now, when things are unpredictable, When we have very little control of our external circumstances, when we have zero control over what's happening in the news, it's really, really easy for our capacity to completely diminish.

And when our capacity diminishes, we get into reactive mode. And when we go into reactive mode, we start to get impacted by things triggering us, and we panic. And when we panic, we are not our best version of ourself. When we panic, we make bad decisions. So we need to learn how to stay grounded and how to maintain our capacity more than ever before.

Friends, this is a time when we've got to dig deep. And it's going to seem counterintuitive, the things I'm talking about today, managing your energy, managing your capacity, because when things seem dire, when things seem uncertain, We tend to default to our unhealthy coping strategies, right? We tend to default to the things that might provide short term stress relief, but we do not know how this is all going to shake out.

This could last for a long time. So I want to talk about staying grounded and building capacity today because this is one of the most important things that you need to learn how to do, that I need to learn how to do even better. And I know I have so many people who already have mindfulness practices, but this is the time we need to double down.

Now, one of the things I heard I was listening to Brene Brown's Dare to Lead podcast, which is one of my favorite to listen to. She has a great episode with Erica James, who was the Dean at the Wharton Business School. And she said, Leadership is about managing energy first in yourself, and then in others.

Leadership is about managing energy first in yourself, and then others. Which Really struck me when I heard her say this, and we have all been in situations. We have all been in work environments. We have all been in organizations where leadership did not manage their energy first. And instead of being able to thoughtfully respond to whatever situation was happening, they were reactive.

And when they were reactive, when those leaders were reactive, they caused harm to those around them. They caused harm to the people who worked for them and with them. They caused harm in their communities. They caused harm in their families. And we do not want to do that. We want to come from a grounded place.

We want to come from a place where we have the capacity to face what is headed our way. And that means we have to double down on these types of practices we're going to talk about today. Now before we get into some mindfulness practices and some things that have really helped me, I want to talk about what is capacity.

When I say what is capacity, I'm talking about the window of tolerance. So a lot of us have heard about fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Right? These are things we hear all the time. We've all heard about fight or flight or freeze. FON is a newer one that not as many people have heard about. Basically, these are the states our nervous system are in.

Our nervous system is what allows us to handle what is going on in the world around us, right? There's been a lot of talk. It's very popular right now to talk about nervous system regulation, but no one actually sits down and explains what that means. So I want to for a second, and I am not a therapist.

I'm not a psychologist. I am just giving you my understanding based on the years of doing my own work. Our goal is to not get stuck in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. So on one end of the spectrum, there's fight or flight. That's when you get into hyper arousal. Fight or flight. is when you get triggered and you start to experience anxiety, you start to experience fear, you start to experience anger, maybe you're experiencing hypervigilance.

This is where you might start to experience panic or that feeling of just emotional flooding where every thing just feels out of control. You feel overwhelmed. You feel like I can't handle this. And it's very easy to get defensive when you are triggered up into hyper arousal into fight or flight. Right?

So that is where you start to shift into these very defensive, I'm going to fight against whatever this is. This is where you find yourself in arguments, you find yourself uncomfortable, you find yourself, you know, your skin is crawling with anxiety. We've all felt that. We've all felt those feelings of fight or flight.

We're either going to fight it, we're going to get defensive, um, or we're going to flee. We're going to run away. The other side of that, so that's the hyper arousal, the other side of that is hypo arousal. That's freeze or fawn. Right? So fight or flight, hyper arousal, going up, freeze or fawn, hypo arousal.

And this is basically where we play possum. We feel depression. We feel numb. We feel zoned out. We feel disassociated. And a lot of people right now are in a functional freeze state. And you can be in a functional fight or flight state or a functional freeze state. A functional fight or flight state, you are always overwhelmed.

You are moving at a million miles an hour, but nothing is getting accomplished. You're not thinking clearly. You're always like, Just a trigger away. Somebody's saying one wrong thing away from you being angry or from you getting upset or you getting You know lashing out at people Hypoarousal that Fawn or freeze response is when it's so easy to to just zone out, numb, numb yourself.

This is when we find ourselves, you know, rotting in bed all day. Not for the rest, but simply because we can't function. This is when we're doom scrolling all day long, right? Um, this is when we are not able to get things done. We can't even think at all. And we've all had these moments where we're just completely numb, where we're, we can't even hear what people are saying to us.

We can't even focus on what needs to happen. So it's really easy to find yourself triggered up into hyper arousal, fight or flight, or triggered down into Freeze or fawn. Where we want to be is right in the middle of that. Right? So if hyperarousal, fight or flight is above, hypoarousal, freeze or fawn is below, we want to be right in the middle, that window of tolerance.

That window of tolerance is where we can face what needs to happen. We can face the things that are coming our way. This is where we are emotionally regulated. This is when we feel clear, we feel calm, we feel in control. And this is where we are able to function effectively. This is where we're able to take on the challenges that life throws at us, that the world throws at us, the news throws at us, and instead of getting triggered and reacting, being reactive, we can take it in.

and digest it and thoughtfully respond to it. This is where we want to be as grounded leaders. We want to be able to stay in that window of tolerance. We want to be able to face what is coming our way. But here's the thing that we all need to know, and this is why nervous system regulation is so important, and this is why this conversation is so important, is that window of tolerance, your ability to face what is coming your way, can get narrowed if you do not care for it and you don't strengthen that muscle.

If you don't have practices in place to help you stay calm, collected, and clear minded. If you don't have practices in place to discharge that energy as it's coming at you, then you will find you have a very, very narrow window of tolerance. Right? And if you have a narrow window of tolerance, then you're going to find yourself going either into fight or flight or back into freeze.

You're going to find yourself constantly feeling overwhelmed. You're going to feel yourself constantly hypervigilant. And instead of thoughtfully responding to what is happening in the world, instead of being able to take in what is happening, digest what is happening, You're going to be stuck in one of the other modes, and you might find yourself jumping from functional freeze, where you're basically zoned out, to hypervigilance very, very quickly.

And this is what I'm watching with a lot of people, because they simply don't have a wider window of tolerance. They don't have the capacity to handle all that is going on. So if you're feeling this way, if you have a very narrow window of tolerance, then chances are you're feeling super hyper vigilant when you are in work mode.

This is what I'm hearing from a lot of people. They have their to do list. They're checking things off the list. They're getting things done. But the minute they walk back in the door and get home or the minute they shut down their computer, they collapse into freeze. They're giving everything they have.

in a very kind of panic, hurried fashion, reacting to things as they're happening. And as soon as they turn around and get home, they collapse into functional freeze. Well, that's not what we want. We want to widen that window of tolerance. And in times of stress, we actually have to double, triple, quadruple down on the practices that help us maintain that window of tolerance.

Because the truth is, all of us are going to get triggered up into fight or flight. All of us are going to get triggered down into, um, freeze or fawn. The goal is to not get stuck there. The goal is to have practices and coping strategies that help you to come back to yourself. That help you to come back to who you really are.

And that takes a little bit of effort. Right? No one is cool, calm, collected without putting in the effort to expand their window of tolerance. So here's a few strategies that I use that I think can be incredibly helpful. Okay, the first thing I want to talk about today is the concept of the thrive list.

The Thrive List is a tool that my friend Tara Newman developed, and I absolutely love this concept. It is literally a list of things that help you to show up as your best self. These are practices that you engage in every day, every week, every month. And the best part is, These can be absolutely free tools, absolutely free things that you just need to make space and time for and build them into your daily habits.

So open up your notes app on your phone. This is where I keep my thrive list. I keep my thrive list on the notes app on my phone. And I add to it on a regular basis, and I share it with the people who are in my support system. So I've shared it with my husband, I've shared it with my team, I've shared it with my friends.

Because when we are in moments of stress, and we're going up into that fight or flight, or we're going down in that freeze or fawn, we forget! It's like our brain gets scrambled, and we cannot you know, reach out and grab the tools that are actually going to help us. We tend to go to our default coping mechanisms, which aren't always the best.

So having your thrive list documented is incredibly helpful because then when you are in those periods of stress, you can reach for it and you don't have to use You know, any decision making capacity, you've already made the decisions. You've already made a list of things that help you to be your best self and you've already shared it with the people who can remind you that these are the tools that can help you to be your best self.

So what is in my thrive list? I'm going to give you some examples because I have to remind myself of these on a regular basis. The first thing on my thrive list is a slow morning routine. A slow morning routine is essential for me. I found very early on, especially as a mom of young kids, that having a super rushed morning was the opposite of what I needed.

It ratcheted up my anxiety and then I would start the day trying to pull myself back out of anxiety. So instead, I started embracing a slower morning routine. That means I take my time. I get up before my kids get up, which isn't hard. They're teenagers. They want to sleep to the last minute. But I give myself time to wake up when the house is quiet.

I have a playlist that I turn on in the morning so our house is filled with music. I sit down and enjoy my coffee. I watch the sunrise. I have a little basket by my chair in the living room that is full of journals and books that I'm reading, tarot cards, um, intuitive reading cards, all sorts of things that I can incorporate into my slow morning routine.

And because I give myself, it's just like 15 minutes before the kids wake up, sometimes 30 if I wake up early enough. But that allows me to get settled and have everything I need just a fingertip away. And I can stay present for my kids as they come downstairs. And you know, at this point for the teenagers, it's just like, Did you charge your laptop?

Do you have this? Do you have this? I don't have to be doing anything for them. I just have to kind of coach them through their morning and make sure they have everything they need. Slowing down my morning routine has made my life so much better. And when they go out the door to go to school, Everybody is calm.

Everybody has everything they need. No one had to yell or rush or run around and look for something because I made sure everything was right where it needed to be first thing in the morning. So a slow morning routine, highly recommend, especially right now. And I also recommend not scrolling first thing in the morning.

Instead, turn on some music, light a candle, get yourself your coffee or your tea or whatever you want, and just be for a little bit. I find that it's so easy to default into picking up your phone right away, but because I leave my phone downstairs most days, I am able to not get on and scroll right away and it just makes my mornings so much more pleasant and it helps me get centered first thing in the morning.

So that's one huge thing on my thrive list. I also have on my Thrive list the basics. The basics y'all water, making sure I have my big cup of water ready to go every day. I have to stay hydrated, making sure I'm getting enough rest and have my evening routine so that I can fall asleep and actually get good quality sleep.

This one took a lot of intentional work on my heart, on my part. Um, I actually found out last year. that I needed a CPAP machine. And that was huge to discover that because I was struggling with quality sleep. I was using my Oura ring and waking up every day and going, why am I waking up feeling so tired?

Turns out I have sleep apnea. It's very common for people with Ehlers Danlos syndrome, and I realized okay, I actually there's a reason I'm not getting good sleep. I need to get the support I need. I'm going through perimenopause and I was having a lot of night sweats and a lot of insomnia, two common symptoms of perimenopause, brought them up to my doctors and I started HRT because I knew that if I wasn't getting quality sleep, I wasn't going to have the capacity to do what I needed to do.

I don't know about you, but if I don't get good sleep, I turn into an absolute nightmare to live with. So I needed to prioritize that. Other things that are in my thrive list, um, my skincare routine. This is so silly maybe, but during the pandemic, I really got into skincare and so I started trying out a lot of different things, figuring out what my skin needed, especially as I'm aging and things are different.

I went from having very oily skin when I was younger to now having you know, dryer skin, I needed different products. That became something so simple, but it's such a routine now in the evening before I go to bed. And my kids laugh at me because they know I keep everything where it is easily accessible.

This is a hot tip for anybody if you're struggling with habits. Don't worry about if it's pretty, worry about if it's functional. So I keep a little basket of all my skincare. I keep a basket of all my vitamins and my medications right on my nightstand. And that way, when it's time for my evening routine, about nine o'clock every night.

They know I'm getting ready for bed because I, you know, wash my face, my hair gets pulled up into the bun and then I start doing my skincare and it takes me about 20 minutes to do my skincare and to do a facial massage and lymphatic massage and that helps me get ready for bed. It helps prepare and somehow starts to signal to my brain that it's time to power down.

I also, um, really love and have brought in some fun hobbies. Which I really encourage everyone to find right now. Scrolling your phone is not a hobby. Scrolling your phone is going to keep you in functional freeze, or it's going to keep you in fight or flight. Right? It is not going to make you expand your capacity and have a wider window of tolerance.

But what will help you with that? Music. When was the last time you put on music and danced in your kitchen? When was the last time you put on music just to listen to in the background as you did something creative for yourself? I listen to music all the time. I always have a Spotify playlist. In fact, I made sure that I had the Sonos speakers that are Bluetooth speakers all around the house so that I can listen to music anywhere I am.

And I have music for every mood, every playlist. My kids know the music I'm going to put on if it's time to clean the house. They know the music I'm going to put on if I'm trying to pump myself up. They know the music I'm going to put on if I'm trying to have like a relaxing, calm yoga practice. There's music going on all the time.

I love music. And I'm a musician, so it comes to no surprise that I love to have music on around me all the time. I also realized part of my thrive list was, um, having a creative outlet. So I have started playing with flowers every week. I go to Trader Joe's, I pick up flowers and I spend a little bit of time arranging them.

And it has become such a little simple pleasure that like 30, 40 bucks a week gives me and being able to bring them home and do something creative with my hands. And I've even been recording some Instagram lives with them. If you haven't seen those, come check it out. But it's been something else that just helps me feel more grounded and more connected.

I love having these little beautiful things around my home. And the flowers really, really helps me. I love having candles. I love having all these little things that I used to tell myself were so frivolous and not necessary. In the last couple years, I've actually really invested in making sure I have things that I love that give me that hitadopamine.

And if you've seen, um, any of my YouTube channel, you know that I have a very colorful home. I decided years ago that having a beige, uh, all neutral home was boring and it was making me feel kind of sad. Yes, it was calm, but it wasn't happy. And so I started bringing in more color. I started bringing in more art.

I started collecting art when I went out to, um, different things around Richmond. When I went traveling, I always tried to bring home a piece of art because it makes me happy. And that's what I'm going for. So I try to surround myself thing with things that not just make me feel calm, but that make me feel truly happy.

Other things that are on my thrive list. So I make sure I have all of my self care on my thrive list. And as someone with chronic illness, it's really easy to forget these things. So I have all of my medicine, all of my supplements on an auto ship. This ensures that I never run out. Because there is nothing worse than running out of your anxiety medication, or running out of the supplements that help manage your anxiety, that help manage your pain, that help manage your fatigue.

I want those things to be automated because it makes my life easier, it ensures that I don't forget them. I automate anything that I need day to day. Y'all, if you're running out of toilet paper, if you're running out of hand soap, go automate shipping on that. I love Grove. I think it's Grove Collaborative.

I keep that stuff on auto ship because I know I'm going to need it. It just makes it easier. I also auto ship all that stuff to my mom because she's disabled and I have to manage her care and her nursing team. If it's stuff I know she needs, all of her medical supplies. Um, all of her care needs, all of the supplies the nurses need, you know, they need gloves, they need wipes, they need all sorts of things.

I auto ship all of that. It just makes life easier and what it really does when you auto ship things that you use on a regular basis, it reduces the decision fatigue. And I know so many of us are going through the decision fatigue right now, even when it comes down to like, what are we going to have for dinner?

Reduce the decision fatigue, y'all. Set things up to be automated. If you're feeling overwhelmed, again that feeling of overwhelmed, that feeling of hypervigilance, that feeling of I can't do everything, that panic, that is fight or flight. So what can you do to reduce the decision fatigue? For us, it's having a very simple meal plan for the week.

So we have Fend for Yourself Nights with the kids. At least once a week, everybody just fends for themselves. The kids are big enough now, my kids are big enough now, they can make leftovers, they can make ramen, they can throw, you know, chicken tenders in the air fryer. My kids actually can cook a little bit now, so they'll make dinner sometimes.

We've simplified the decision fatigue by having pizza and movie night on Fridays. We simplified the decision fatigue by having like soup and sandwich night, or salad bar night. Keep it simple. Do things that are crowd pleasers that you can rinse and repeat. There's no need to overcomplicate any area of your life.

So look at any area of your life where it's causing you to feel stressed, or you know you're defaulting to not the best coping mechanisms, by going, what can I just simplify here? All of that goes on to my Thrive list. And again, I keep it in my phone, in my notes app, and that way my husband can support me, my team can support me, and they will point to that.

They will tell me, hey, have you had a chance to get your massage this month? Have you had a chance to go see your chiropractor this month? Would it be helpful for you to go get a float this month? So whenever I'm feeling like I'm going into that fight or flight, I immediately pull up the thrive list and go, okay, what do I need to add in right now?

A walk in the sunshine, going to get fresh flowers. Those things help me so incredibly much. Now another tool that I love that I've used a lot comes from Glennon Doyle and her podcast, We Can Do Hard Things. And in that podcast, she talked about the easy button.

The easy button are the things we do to avoid our stress, our pain, or our loneliness. These are our default coping mechanisms, and they don't work long term. They seem easy in the moment, but over time, they actually backfire. Over time, they actually keep us stuck in that fight or flight or in that freeze.

They diminish our window of tolerance. They do not work long term, but the reset button, these are the things that help us to come back to ourselves, that help us come back to who we really are, to our best self, that help us get back in our body, that help us get grounded again. And when we use these coping skills, We build that capacity.

We build that window of tolerance between fight or flight and freeze or fawn. And that's what we really want, right? We want to build that capacity. But it takes really intentional making decisions around what coping skills you're going to go for. So here's an example. One of my easy buttons. is a glass of wine.

Or let's be honest, half the bottle of wine. That is my easy button. My easy button, my default stress, um, coping skill is to pour myself a glass of wine. But long term, that doesn't help. Long term, I do not sleep as well. I'm more likely to have night sweats. I'm more likely to have hot flashes. It's going to ratchet up my anxiety.

Long term, that does not work. So while once in a while, you know, it's okay to have some wine. Long term, I need a different coping skill. And so my reset button becomes getting a mocktail. Anyone who has been to Richmond, Virginia, all my clients who have been, um, to my event, the CEO retreat in Richmond, Virginia, they know I'm a beverage girly.

So I always have. sparkling water in about a million different flavors. I've tried out different adaptogen waters. I love recess. The blood orange recess adaptogen, um, sparkling water is one of my favorites. There's also a version that has CBD in it. It has L theanine, it has magnesium in it, so it has like a calming effect.

but it doesn't create the other issues that a wine would. So that is my reset button. I want the ritual of having that glass of wine, of having something that's a little bit different than my normal, you know, bottle of water, but I don't want the other negative things that come along with drinking wine.

So my reset button is to grab a recess instead of grabbing more wine. Another easy button, scrolling social media, doom scrolling social media. I know you've done it. I know I've done it. We've all done the doom scroll, but especially right now when it feels like every day we're getting breaking news of some other insane thing.

What do we need to do instead of doom scrolling? If we find ourself doom scrolling, how can we redirect that energy? So for me, it could be reading fiction. I'm someone who loves to read. I read all the time, but I tend to get a little too cerebral sometimes, and sometimes I just need to pick up a smutty fantasy fiction book.

You know, sometimes you just need something a little fun, a little light, a little brain bubblegum. Cause that's what you're looking for when you're doomscrolling. And I remember I used to scroll social media and learn all sorts of things about skincare and makeup and um, other things, you know, that were just interesting.

Fashion, art, but it's hard to control that. So, where else can I get that? I can pick up a fiction book. That's my reset button. Maybe your easy button. is to go for comfort food. I know I also have struggled with this one. So if I was feeling stressed, I would drive through and grab some junk, grab some fries.

Maybe that is an easy button you lean on. But again, long term, it's not just a little treat. Long term, it's harmful. And you don't like the way you feel afterwards. So what could the reset button? Maybe instead of going to get junk, You take a bubble bath, or you go outside and take a walk, right? So hopefully you can start to hear how this can work for you.

And you can sit down and go, okay, what are my easy buttons? What are the bad coping skills that I have picked up that I know are doing more harm than good? Especially right now, if you're leaning into these too hard, and you're going through the drive through every single day, you're not going to feel well.

Your body is not going to feel well. And you're going to either find yourself stuck in fight or flight, or in freeze. So maybe your calendar is overloaded. Maybe your calendar is so freaking packed that you don't have a minute to think. And what you really need to do is create a model calendar, where you have a lot more breathing room in that calendar.

If you don't know what a model calendar is, go check out the Fired Up or Focus Challenge. Um, it is absolutely free, five day challenge that I run. And one of the days is all about how to create your model calendar with a lot more breathing room. Maybe you're easy button. This is a coping skill, believe it or not, is to allow the itty bitty, shitty committee in your brain to take over.

Maybe, instead of listening to the itty bitty, shitty committee, we all have one. We all have one in our brain that tells us how much we suck. Maybe you need to phone a friend. Maybe you need to call a friend. You need to get out of your house, you need to get out of your office, and go have lunch with somebody.

And actually get some real perspective from another human. And the last easy button is fake rest. This is a big one. We're going to dive into rest for a few minutes. I heard about this concept of fake rest from, I believe it's Shawna Nyquist book, um, present over perfect. And she talked about how so many women.

We don't allow ourselves to really rest. We wear busy as a badge of honor. We feel like if we're sitting, we need to be doing something active. And think about this. Have you ever sat down to watch a movie with your family, but the whole time you're responding to emails on your phone, or you're folding the laundry, or you're trying to have, you know, family dinner, and you instantly jump up and start clearing the table.

Like, you can't just let yourself sit and enjoy. the moment. This is really common for women. We feel like we have to constantly be productive. And so we don't allow ourselves true rest. Well, rest is more than just physical rest. In fact, I want to talk quickly about rest because this is such a hot topic for my clients inside of the CEO Collective.

So we all know we need physical rest, right? We know that we need quality sleep. quality sleep, restful sleep. That is when your brain is actually clearing away everything that has built up overnight, right? That is when your body restores itself and heals itself. That is when your digestive system actually works.

If you're not getting real rest, then your body is going to stop functioning the way it's supposed to. So we need real physical rest. This could also include Things like gentle restorative movement. This could be going on walks. This could be yoga. This could be stretching. This could be physical rest where you're getting a massage or you're going to get acupuncture.

One of my favorites is a float. If you've never done a float, they are so amazing for me with chronic pain. When I go to do a float where you're in a basically a sensory deprivation type of tank, but it's water that has so much magnesium and salt in it that you float on top of the water. I sleep so well after I do one of those and it did take me a while to build up to being able to do a full hour long float.

I'll put in some music, they have some like, Spa, zen, music. Sometimes I'll listen to a podcast if my brain's really having a hard time settling down, but I get so much out of going on a float. So physical rest is extremely important, but it's not the only rest that we need. You also need mental rest. I know I am not the only one who has felt like my brain is fried, I'm overloaded, I just need a mental break.

So sometimes we do not give ourselves enough white space, enough breathing room in our day to day. This is where mindfulness and meditation practices can be incredibly helpful, but I also know that a lot of us struggle with that. Right? We're so used to being plugged into something all the time. I encourage you to find things where you can just let your mind wander.

When is the last time you went on a walk without any headphones? Not listening to a podcast, not talking on the phone, just let your mind wander. You know how we have those moments in the shower where suddenly you'll get the best ideas? That's because your brain is getting a break. That's because you're not actively doing a whole lot.

You know, you, you know how to shower and so your brain can wander around and that's where it makes connections. So it's incredibly powerful. It builds a lot of capacity when you give yourself that mental break. So I encourage you to go on a walk without a podcast. Next time you're going to the store, don't turn anything on.

Just allow it to be silent. If you need to keep your hands busy, pick up something that is easy to do. And you can let your mind wander. I love paint by numbers because I can let my mind wander as I'm doing it. I love, um, I do a lot of crochet. I do a lot of making things with my hands. Because it keeps my hands busy, but I can just let my mind just completely go wherever it wants to go.

And I come up with so many great ideas when I'm doing that. This is one reason my husband will get a little crazy at me, but I'll start a project around the house. Like, oh, I want to paint this room. And it's because that just lets my brain have the space that it needs. Now, if you're really struggling with the mental rest, Just do a brain dump, get all of the things out of your head and onto paper.

It's probably because you're carrying so much mental load that you haven't really given yourself some room to get it out of your head so that you could ask for help, so that you could get a break. So do a brain dump and share the mental load with other people. The mental load is what is going to wear us down right now.

And so you have to get it out of your head and you have to start sharing it with others. Another type of rest that we all need is emotional rest. Now, I don't know about you, but there are a lot of situations and people in my life that take up a huge amount of my emotional capacity. I'm married for how many years now?

I think we're going on 18 years now. I have three kids. I have teenagers. They take up a ton of emotional bandwidth, and if you have kids, you know. They will push every button, right? And it's up to you to stay cool, calm, and collected so you can navigate that. Because they're just kids, right? They don't have the skill set yet.

If you are also caring for your parents like I am, they can push those buttons. They installed those buttons. So I have to give myself emotional breaks and that emotional rest, for me, a lot of that comes from having support in a place where I can talk about how I feel with people who aren't going to judge me or people who are going to support me as I'm navigating that.

That's hugely helpful for building that emotional capacity. I think the ability to step away from emotionally draining situations, if you know that a certain situation or a certain environment is going to take a lot out of you, give yourself boundaries around that. And remember, boundaries are how you show up and how you act, not putting them on someone else, right?

You can tell them what the boundary is, but it's about what you do. So, for example, one of the boundaries I have to have in place, um, with my family, and I love my family dearly, but it takes a lot out of me when I have to go help out my parents. So, one of the boundaries that we have in place, with my family is that when we're going to do something with my family, we're only going for the day.

We're not going to stay for a long period of time because it just takes a lot out of me. I love them dearly. I check in with them on a regular basis, but I don't set myself up to be totally depleted. If I know I'm going down to help my parents for the day, I will also make sure the following day is a rest day.

Where I don't have anything on my plate. And that helps me recover. And make sure that I'm not emotionally drained. And make sure that I'm actually able to show up for my kids the way that I want to show up. And I think that's just crucially important. Okay. There's four more types of rest. Can you believe it?

I know there's so much. Sensory rest. This is a big one. And I think a lot of people don't recognize this one unless you happen to be neurodivergent. Um, neurodivergent people definitely recognize when they have sensory overload. I recognize when I have sensory overload. So, things that can cause sensory overload, devices can cause sensory overload.

Um, I often find noise causes me to have sensory overload. So, I learned this from my dear friend Layden Clark and she actually recommended to me because I was getting really overwhelmed when the kids were little. She was like, just wear your earplugs in the house or wear headphones when the kids are, you know, running around.

They're just being kids. And it really hit me, I was like, oh yeah, they are just, they're fine, they're happy, they're healthy, they're like screaming and yelling because they're running around having fun. It's not that I need to stop them from being little kids and being loud. So I started getting in the habit of if I'm going into an environment or, you know, there's a lot of kids over, there's a lot going on, I will wear my headphones, my noise cancelling headphones, or I will wear earplugs if I'm getting overstimulated by too much noise.

Um, I love. a weighted blanket. I use weighted blankets. I use weighted sweatshirts. Um, I love those for helping me to calm my nervous system. Weight is really good. Pressure is really good for calming your nervous system. So if you don't have a weighted blanket and you also struggle with anxiety, I highly recommend, even if you just sit, um, with it while you're watching TV.

I find it can be really, really helpful. I also have to limit, uh, the time I spend in chaotic environments. So, if you need to give yourself breaks, that is okay. So, for example, when I go out, if I'm at an event, if I'm speaking, if I'm going to a networking event or a conference, if it's too much to be, in a room with lots of people, it's okay to take yourself out of that room for a little bit and to go on a walk outside and to give yourself a little bit of a break.

Creative rest is probably one of my favorites and I do think this is something that a lot of us forget about. Remember how when you're little you used to create all the time? You would play with play doh or you would build with legos or you would Um, color or paint or whatever. And as we get older, we let go of that.

And that's something I really believe we all need to tap back into. And here's the thing. You don't have to be good at it. You can suck at it. Just suck at it and have fun with it. So I've really tapped into creative rest. I love creating things with my hands. I've picked back up crochet, I swear. I've had so many little babies in my life.

I'm always making a hat or a baby blanket and it just gives me a creative outlet. Just picking out the yarn and coming up with a new pattern that I'm gonna do. It's so relaxing for me. I will put on a musical and sing as loud as I can. I can't tell you how many times I have watched Wicked and just sung every single song as loud as I can.

Turn on the Eras tour. and turn it up in my house and just sing my heart out. You can enjoy creativity without the pressure. You can make a meal. Try creating a new meal. Go to a class and do something you've never done before. A lot of my friends, I'm going to go with them soon, I promise, are taking up pottery or other creative things that are just outside of their norm, outside of their day to day, and it is so fun and helpful to have these outlets.

Social rest is another big one. Now, people are surprised when they find out I'm an introvert because, like, I just went to a wedding this past weekend and I danced my heart out, I had so much fun, then we had a birthday party for my kid, then I went to a protest where I'm surrounded by hundreds of people.

Like, people are sometimes surprised that I am an introvert, but I am. I require a lot of quiet time, a lot of me time. And sometimes that means that I literally need to be like, I'm out of office now. I am off. I'll tell my kids too. I'm off duty. Mom is off duty. Go talk to dad. Um, it is so important if you know your social battery is charged, if you have peopled a lot, And introverts, I know you know.

If you've just peopled a lot, you've been around people a lot, it is okay to say no. It is okay to reschedule. It is okay to cancel something. You know yourself best and sometimes your little introvert battery is just at the end. It's totally empty, it's depleted, and you need to give yourself some quiet time.

So what do you need to do this? I will always advocate for myself if I've had too much, if it's been too much going on, if I've been in front of too many people, I will take a day off. I will even check myself into a hotel room so that I can have a night to myself. It is okay to ask for what you need, especially if you haven't had any quiet time.

And the final type of rest is spiritual rest. I think spiritual rest means something different for a lot of different people. Um, I would always say I am more spiritual than religious. I don't follow any type of particular religion. Um, though I was raised very much in the Christian faith, I don't think I identify with it a hundred percent anymore.

I would say I definitely identify as a spiritual person though. So how do I connect with my spirituality? I do a lot of time reading about spirituality or going to different workshops or different events where we have meditation or yoga or things that are connecting us to our higher power, our higher selves.

Um, this is where I really feel like For me, it is a spiritual practice to get involved in community engagement, to get involved in volunteering and giving back. To me, that is a highly spiritual practice, that spiritual um, practice of service, of giving of yourself to other people. So those were a lot of different types of rest, right?

We talked about physical rest, mental rest, emotional rest, uh, sensory rest, creative rest, social rest, and spiritual rest. Think about what type of rest do you need right now? And again, add this to your notes in your notes app. Go to the show notes for today's episode. We're going to put in all these different things.

Make yourself a note so it can be your cheat sheet. And then you can tap into it when you are feeling like you're going into that fight or flight or you're dropping down into that freeze or fawn state. These are tools that you can pull out to build your capacity. And we need them now more than ever before.

We need them now more than ever before. Right now you need to double down on all of these things. So if you're finding yourself in any of those states, You know you need to take better care of your nervous system. I want you to come over to share with me on social. What are you going to be adding in?

What is the reset button? What is on the thrive list? What type of rest are you embracing right now? Because we all need it. We all have our own role. in this world that we're all playing. But we need to come from a place of being cool, calm, and collected, grounded CEOs versus highly reactive, frantic, panicked CEOs.

Panic is not a business strategy. I hope you liked this episode. Um, I'm going to work on getting my voice back before I record the next one, but please make sure you are subscribed to the podcast so that you can get all the upcoming content. Really, really excited about what I've got on deck for you.