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Effortlessly Productive
Welcome to Effortlessly Productive with Annie Veblen McCarty, where we dive into the art and science of mastering your time and boosting your productivity without the burnout.
Join Annie as she explores practical tips, strategies, and mindset shifts to help you streamline your tasks, prioritize effectively, and get more done with less stress.
Whether you're juggling work, family time, or just trying to find more time for what matters most, our conversations will empower you to work smarter, not harder.
Tune in and discover how to make productivity not just a goal, but a way of life!
Effortlessly Productive
Harnessing Calm: Why Regulating Your Nervous System Is So Important As an Entrepreneur
Unlock the power of your nervous system and transform your entrepreneurial journey with techniques that foster creativity and productivity. What could happen if you could overcome the fight, flight, or freeze response that often plagues decision-making? Join me, Annie Veblen-McCarty, as I unravel the mysteries of nervous system regulation, offering you practical tools to navigate stress and enhance your business acumen. Discover why maintaining a calm and balanced nervous system is not just beneficial but crucial for thriving in the fast-paced world of entrepreneurship.
Together, we explore an array of nervous system regulation techniques, from deep breathing and breathwork to the rejuvenating practices of kundalini yoga and meditation. I’ll guide you through the significance of the vagus nerve and the role of physical movement and mantras in achieving a serene state of mind. You'll also gain insights into the power of human connection and its vital role in happiness and self-belonging. For those seeking further growth, I invite you to download our free workbook and join the Effortlessly Productive Sisterhood community. Let these resources be your companion on the path to creative flow and authentic expression.
Hey, this is Annie Veblen-McCarty and I'm gonna teach you how to be effortlessly productive. I've been an entrepreneur for over 20 years and I got sick and tired of experts preaching what business and life should look like and what I should be doing as a leader and to turn a profit, only to find myself wasting time, burned out, feeling inauthentic and still not making any money. On this show, we are ditching the shoulds. I'm giving you permission to do business differently. As a certified master coach, I believe that everything you need to have success and build the life and business of your dreams is already living on the inside. I'm going to empower you to lean into what you do best, help you see your path forward clearly and give you the strategy and action steps along the way to become effortlessly productive. Let's dive in.
Speaker 1:Welcome to this episode of Effortlessly Productive. As promised, we are going to be talking today on why it is so important, as an entrepreneur, to know how to regulate your nervous system, and then we're going to be talking about a few ways that you can do that. So let's dive in. What does nervous system regulation mean? Often, as an entrepreneur and just in the course of life, we are going through the process in fight, flight or freeze mode. So basically, we are operating from our sympathetic nervous system and the reason that we do not want to be in this place of fight, flight or freeze is because that is the very primitive part of our brain. Our brain evolved this way for a very important reason Because if we were being chased by a predator or we had food scarcity or another clan of humans wanted to attack us, like there were so many threats to our survival, we needed something in our brain that was going to keep us safe. So this part of our brain is there for a very important, very specific reason and we do not want to get rid of that reaction. Like I said, it is a survival mechanism and even in today's society there are times where we need that survival mechanism.
Speaker 1:However, with modern life and the stresses that we face, a lot of the time that part of our brain is triggered by things that are not actually that big of a threat. So when we are under a lot of stress, when we get a message from somebody on social media that is a hater message, when we get a message from a client saying that they are unhappy there are so many different things in our business. When we look at our revenue numbers, has that ever happened to you? You pull up your sales for the month and you're like, oh my goodness, okay, that is not what I wanted to see and that is not good.
Speaker 1:Any of these stressors financial stress is a huge one. You're sitting down to pay your bills and you're looking at your bank account balance. There are so many just kind of daily life things sitting in traffic, stopping no traffic, the stress right now, as I'm recording this, it is the holidays. There is a lot of different kinds of stress going on that might not be in our normal life, but this is happening all the time and these stressors, these things that our brain perceives as a threat, puts us into that fight, flight or freeze mode, even if you don't really realize that that is happening. That part of our brain is being activated. This is happening just with normal life. So this totally applies to people who have a nine to five, people who are stay at home parents, people who don't work, people who do work, like whatever life looks like, just navigating through life. This is happening.
Speaker 1:However, as an entrepreneur, because we are the ones who are solely responsible for the outcome of our business are the ones who are solely responsible for the outcome of our business, oftentimes entrepreneurs. Yes, you might have a nine to five that is bringing in that income, but there's another group of entrepreneurs that solely relies on their business income for literally their survival and their family's survival. And so when we have things that happen in our business that our brain perceives as a threat, as stress, as the fact that we are maybe not safe, that our security is at risk, that triggers off that very primitive part of our brain. Now what happens when that part of our brain is triggered off? It actually starts to turn off other areas of our brain. This is where it becomes so important, especially for those of you who are entrepreneurs, who are more in the creative realm creatives, coaches, healers, spiritual entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1:Parts of the brain that turn off are our logical part of our brain. So the part of our brain that actually is using logic to process what is going on around us gets turned off or slowed way, way, way down. Because that part of our brain that is doing the fight, flight or freeze that comes online, the logic quiets way down the other parts of our brain that turn off, and this is why it's so important for creatives is because that creative part of our brain also goes quiet, and so for any entrepreneur even if you are not somebody who is a creative entrepreneur, any entrepreneur that visioning, that knowing what direction you want to take your company and your business, that excitement, that place where those new ideas come from, it is really, really important to have that online and the logic part of our brain, because so much of what we do as an entrepreneur also we need to think through logical steps that we're going to take to get to this outcome. We need to be able to put a plan into place, we need to create business systems, we need to be leading a team. It's really important that we have that logic part of our brain active and online, and so we as entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1:It is really really, really important that when that fight, flight or freeze is starting to be triggered by any kind of stress and I'm going to put a little side note mention, especially if you have employees or VAs or people working for you, or VAs or people working for you, subcontractors all of that interpersonal communication and interactions some of those can trigger off that primitive part of our brain as well, because it can be. Sometimes you have to have uncomfortable conversations with people. Sometimes people come to you with an uncomfortable conversation. So it is really important for us to be able to start to learn how to shift from that sympathetic nervous system state that fight, flight or freeze response, and to be able to regulate our nervous system and get back to the parasympathetic nervous system, which is where we feel safe. We feel secure and where the parts of our brain are turned on that regulate our logic and our creativity and our ideas and our vision and all of that good stuff.
Speaker 1:We can also kind of look at this from a life coaching perspective that when we have that perspective, that when we have that story, when we have that belief that things are out to get us or things aren't safe, that's coming from a very head voice place and we if you listen to other episodes you know what those beliefs create you actually create more of those beliefs. So if you have a feeling or a belief you feel unsafe for whatever reason, you have a belief that is creating that, you're actually going to manifest more of that. So it actually becomes the spiral where you're in this place of fight, flight or freeze and you then manifest more of that, whereas if we are more operating from our heart voice, which is more of that parasympathetic place where it's a voice of abundance and hope and love and purpose and potential, we're coming from that. We are gonna manifest more of that. So we can dive deeper into more of the life coaching aspect at another time.
Speaker 1:But I wanted to also point that out too, because it's not actual threats that we're facing in our daily life. We're not getting chased down by a saber-toothed tiger. Most of the time. Most of us, we don't have that as a threat, but what is coming through it is still triggering off these beliefs that are creating that place of fear and insecurity or that place of love and hope and abundance and purpose and potential and strength and all of those things that we want to lean into Part of the way that we can regulate our nervous system. This is part of why life coaching can be so powerful, because it helps us become aware of the subconscious beliefs that are happening in the background without us even knowing. Sometimes those beliefs are actually part of what is putting us into that sympathetic nervous system response or the parasympathetic nervous system response. So it's important to be able to identify what beliefs are triggering off the fight or flight and learning how to be able to shift into that heart voice, into the parasympathetic. So we can do that once we have some life coaching, a coach to guide us, or if you are a life coach and you know how to self-coach super, super powerful skill. So for anybody, even if you don't want to incorporate life coaching into what you do with clients, just being able to coach yourself is a very powerful tool. We can create affirmations, using those affirmations along with our coaching sessions. That is something that we can do to start to regulate our nervous system.
Speaker 1:There are lots of other things that we can do to help regulate this nervous system and get us back into that parasympathetic mode. Even when we are at that heightened state of fight or flight, it's important to start to be able to recognize hey, I've had a little bit of stress, I might be triggering off that fight or flight and I am ready to shift back into my body, right. So when we talk about somatics, that's our body. That's learning how to be present and sit in our body, feel what our body is feeling. It's really important to be able to learn how to do that, to get out of that reaction mode and into our bodies and then have tools to be able to start to regulate that nervous system, to calm ourselves down. So some other things that can be used to do this. Some examples are deep breathing. That's really easy, right, we can just sit there and take some long, deep breaths. There's lots of different breathing techniques that we can use in the deep breathing category. We also then have more of your breathwork side of things, where this is not deep breathing but this is more heightened breathing patterns that are going to help regulate that nervous system. We can use kundalini, yoga and meditation specifically, because kundalini combines the breath work along with body positions, hand positions, mantras, all of that. So kundalini is a great way to kind of take a bunch of these different nervous system regulation techniques and blend them all together into this one very powerful way to help us regulate our nervous system.
Speaker 1:Meditation is a fantastic nervous system regulation technique. Very easy to find some guided meditations. If you have never meditated before. I actually have a done for you workbook that is my effortlessly productive routine and that gives some meditation. So if you're interested in that, you can go to my website, avmcoachingcom. It is totally free. We will also drop a link into the show notes in case you want to check that out and download it. That will give you some meditations and some breath work, both deep breathing and some of that more sped up breathing. We can also activate our vagus nerve. That is a really powerful nervous system regulation technique.
Speaker 1:Moving our body this can look like gentle movement going out for a walk, maybe doing some stretching, some yoga, or doing something more intense. Go out for a run instead, weight lift, do some cardio. So there's lots of different ways we can move our body, depending on what you are able to do and what you enjoy doing. That does help us get back into that parasympathetic mode. Mantras, like I mentioned, are really powerful as well, and a mantra that's different than an affirmation is a mantra that tends to be a little bit shorter and we repeat it over and over and over and over and over again. It's a very good calming method. Right, we're returning to that state, that we're not in that heightened stress state.
Speaker 1:I also want to bring up one more way that we can regulate our nervous system and that is through human connection. So I mentioned that, sometimes our interactions with other people. They actually trigger off stress, but we are social beings. If we do not have that social interaction, that is one of the biggest corollaries to happiness, to thriving, to survival. Even so, having those connections with other people where you have that shared bond and you have that feeling of belonging.
Speaker 1:If you want to dive more into belonging, I highly recommend listening to some Brene Brown. She is amazing. I have listened to, I think, all of her books. I love her voice so I tend to do audio. I have read her books as well, but listening to her audio books and she has so many shorter talks and different things that she has done so good.
Speaker 1:If you are really interested in that connection piece and belonging and what the difference between fitting in and belonging means, she is absolutely amazing. So that place of belonging, that safe place, those safe relationships and those safe connections where you feel like you can truly be yourself, that is true. Belonging that's not changing ourselves to fit in somewhere. That is being ourselves and being 100% accepted and loved. If you are looking for a place where you can belong, that safe, sacred place, I highly recommend checking out my brand new free community. I am really excited for this sacred space that I have created. Again, we will drop that link into the show notes, but it's the Effortlessly Productive Sisterhood. Definitely hop in there. Amazing place to meet people just like you and to feel welcomed and have that place of connection. When we have those places of true connection that we can go to, that actually helps us regulate our nervous system as well.
Speaker 1:We will be diving in in future episodes deeper into some of these nervous system regulation techniques, but I wanted to just share a whole bunch of them today. You probably or may have explored some of them before. Maybe some of these were brand new to you though. So this is gonna give you some ideas to go out and learn and explore and, of course, you can always follow along with me. I am incorporating a lot of these nervous system regulation techniques into the teachings and the trainings that I do, so you can always come to me to learn more as well. I hope you have a beautiful rest of your day and I hope you enjoyed this episode. I cannot wait to see what you create from this, how you get your creative energy flowing, as you're able to get that nervous system regulated and just become that beautiful place of being yourself and of operating from a place out of the stress and the grind and the hustle and into that creative flow. Have a beautiful day and I will catch you on the next episode of Effortlessly Productive.
