Hey guys and welcome back to another episode of your Brains Coach podcast. My name is Angela Shurina, I'm your host, I'm your Brains Coach and Executive Coach, with 15 years of experience in the field of coaching, and I'm here to share with you my fascination with the field of human change and human performance. The tagline of this podcast is change in days, not in years. I would even say change now, not days and months and weeks from now. Change is hard, but we can make it more simple when we use the tools, the strategies that have been proven by time and now scientific research to work for human beings. There is a better way to change. There is a better way to build habits. There is a better way to learn, to improve and to manage our emotions and our thoughts and our conversations with other people. There is a better way and that's what I'm fascinated with as a coach and also as a host of this podcast and a content creator and a learner. I'm fascinated with things done better, because that is the essence of evolution and I think the beauty and magic of human experience that we can direct our own evolution and speed it up. And direct our own evolution and speed it up. I'm not sure if that happens, that speed on a genetic level, but it's definitely happening faster on an epigenetic level. Or it's a little bit of a geeky talk. Epigenetics is anything that is above genes, those different markers that manifest themselves or express themselves using scientific terms to change us, how we show up, how we behave, how maybe we even look and perform, without changing the genetics. But besides that geeky talk today, I think you're gonna love today's podcast because it's gonna be short, sweet but without any sugar, helping you to also navigate chaos and change and turbulent times.
Speaker 1You know it's definitely been quite a week and hectic wouldn't even cover it and I usually like to be more on the positive side, giving everything a positive spin. But I also not for being optimistic and denying the reality of things being hard or uncertain or turbulent or that I'm going through stuff that is challenging. That is challenging Like yesterday and a couple of days before I couldn't get into my habits to be closing the new gate door. I moved into a new house and my flatmates, my housemates, told me, angela, you should be closing the door, we should find you by now. But then I just shared. You know, guys, I'm just going through stuff and I'm going to get it, but it is a lot on my plate and so sometimes it is a lot on your plate and it's okay to also acknowledge that and then deal with that and then put systems in place to get better. I'm like we're closing this gate, creating the habit, creating the mental bookmarks, so you have the cue that will remind you to do the desired behavior that you want to change. So hectic week moved houses, shifts in business.
Speaker 1I opened up to the flow of universe. I'm like let me talk to more people, let me assume the state of not knowing and ask more questions and see different ways that I'm either not used to or not familiar with, and accept a lot more feedback and a lot more input. And it felt chaotic because it's like oh, there's all these other things that either I'm not doing or maybe I should be doing and I'm not familiar with them. They feel uncomfortable. I need to learn a lot more, but very often not often, but almost in every case when you see long-term success of a business person or creative person, they all learn and know how to navigate, how to oscillate, using the words of Jeff Karp, the author of Lit Life Ignition Tools that I interviewed yesterday for the part two of your Brain's Coach podcast Starting next week.
Speaker 1We're going to have guests regularly, either weekly or biweekly, right and Jeff Karp is going to be the first one. We have part number one, part number two of the podcast, and so Jeff used this metaphor or image of pendulum swinging back and forth, and what I'm learning is that long-term success in life is that pendulum in many different areas, like being open and being receptive and exploring, and then swinging into the other direction, focusing and closing yourself to input, to work on things and try things out and test things out to create a new insight or a new learning or new way of doing things right. This isolation between knowing, not knowing, being confident, being not that confident, being open, and then closing and exploring and exploiting and focusing and this week was all of this like new place shifts, learnings, being open. And then now I feel okay, I got all of this. Now it's time to close, to focus, but before that, we allow emotions to settle down. We also talked about that with Jeff Karp. We allow emotions to settle down and then we sleep on it and then we start seeing patterns, also because your brain has this ability to ferment on things and connect the dots, reintegrate process better when you give it some time. And so now there is clarity, emerging new understanding and new focus. Now it's time to sit down, create the strategy and implement and focus for a while.
Speaker 1So, besides that, how do you also navigate chaos successfully, or turbulent times, or change? You know change, uncertainty. It's always unsettling and sometimes you even would feel like it's stressful, it's stressing you out. Too many things are changing or uncertain or unclear, and for a human being or any animal, uncertainty and change it always feel more on an anxiety and stressful side, not on the side. Well, you also can say excitement, but before you get used to something, it will always trigger your amygdala, your fear, your emotional center. How do you bring that down so you could take action and function effectively in the world with this uncertainty?
Speaker 1There is this psychology trick. We also use it in coaching, any science that deals with human performance, transformation, helping people change, managing ourselves better, leading ourselves better. There is this trick of when going through uncertain times with a lot of turbulence, with a lot of chaos, you want to create a sense of control in different, small ways to give you that feeling of balance, give you that feeling that you have this platform that you firmly can stand on, so you can, like this tree experiencing winds of life, to still stay in place and be able to function and sort of think who you are still even experiencing all these changes and being open to feedback from the universe and people and everything that's around you. So psychology trick of creating control when you're going through turbulent times and when I'm talking about control, it's the little things, it's the rituals, it's the routines, it's the habits of you doing the same thing, like going in, working out, but also as simple as making your bed. Just get up and take control. Make your bed. Or counting calories.
Speaker 1With a lot of people I work with, it happens the other way around. They're like well, there is all this turbulence. I don't have time to think about that and what we are working on is switching that around. But you see, it's also a way of you to control and once you create better routines, once we create better routines in this eating area of your life, you can actually use it to create more sense of control and you can actually rely on that and keep them the same and stable and that will help you to deal with everything that happens in your life without burning you out or stressing you out or overwhelming you. When you have the routines and these small moments of control from your food to exercise to different rituals like making your bed or taking a shower, a cold shower or whatever shower when you have this rituality, habitualness I don't know if those are even words when you exploit your sense of control in those small ways like counting calories and making sure you are on a track with your nutrition, in simple ways, you actually create a lot more confidence to deal with a lot of other uncertainty happening in your life and or in your business, in your relationships.
Speaker 1And speaking of calories, I also wanted to share with you my favorite summer drinks. First, back to psychology trick and treat. Whenever you're going through a lot of challenging times, to make those challenging, turbulent times stress you out less, exploit your control in small ways like making your bed or counting calories. And when yesterday I went out for a meeting at local coffee shop, seattle Coffee, one of my favorite coffee places here in South Africa, and we went out for a meeting with a business owner, a consultant I admire. I often seek advice from. He doesn't have a lot of time but he makes the time when I ask for it. So that's amazing and we are both into self-improvement and success and keeping our waistlines sharp and staying dialed in physically as well, and so when ordering we kind of exchanged notes. So what's your favorite drink to get in a coffee shop and how can you make it more fun without breaking the bank with calories? So he actually went for an Americano classic drink, no calories added. You can't really get wrong.
Speaker 1And then I decided to go once I spotted my favorite almond breeze, unsweetened milk. I spotted that and I'm like you know what? I'm going to make it a little bit fancy and still be calorie wise and no added sugars. So I spotted that milk almond breeze, again available, probably globally. It's quite a big brand, so they have this almond breeze. My favorite actually is the one with vanilla flavor, so zero added sugars. It has added vitamins, calcium tastes nice. Only 30 calories per cup, very low calorie. I don't think I've ever seen almond milk with less calories than that and with that like nice flavor and texture etc. So check it out, but anyhow. So what I ordered in Seattle Coffee and you can make it at home is my favorite summer drink, and it is summer here in South Africa, my favorite summer drink, so Americano, whatever brew of coffee you like, whether that's at home or a coffee shop ice cubes and your favorite or my favorite almond vanilla breeze, unsweetened milk.
Speaker 1And then you shake things up and you get this cool drink that doesn't have any sugar but has this vanilla aftertaste. And that's what I went for less probably like 10 to 15 calories because you don't pour the whole cup in there. More like maybe half a cup and that's what I had. Totally enjoyed it, the conversation and the coffee, and it helped me to feel over the course of this week, with all these small tricks and twists and still looking sharp and feeling amazing in my body even with all this turbulence. I felt like you know what. It's a lot, at least for me, and I'm handling it well.
Speaker 1And the small rituals they work. It's from playbooks of top high-performance coaches, of top high-performance coaches, high-performance psychology. Create control in rituality, in habits and all the small ways when some part or several parts of your life feel out of control and in the process of change in the turbulent time. Create more control with habits and rituals and you'll be able to handle a lot more because you'll feel like you still have, if not very solid ground, then some platform to stand on, to launch into the unknown, creating new outcomes, growing and staying resilient. I hope this helps.
Speaker 1Do try the drink. I highly recommend it. Do also order it in any of the coffee shops. Just order your favorite unsweetened milk black iced Americano and milk with that unsweetened version of whatever milk you like and enjoy. Let me know how it tastes. And if you use as well this trick in your life, think about that. You probably do. If not, and if you're going through turbulent times, think about all these small habits and rituals you can maintain to give you a sense of control so you perform effectively even in the most turbulent times.
Speaker 1And, guys, thank you for tuning in, thank you for listening, thank you for paying attention. Have an amazing day, weekend. If it's ahead of you, it is ahead of us here. And don't forget to share this podcast with at least one person to socially learn together, to practice together, so you change together in days or even faster, not in years. Thank you, I appreciate your attention. This curses the resource of our times. Get out there, explore, exploit, swing between chaos and focus, get things done, keep things simple, control the controllables and you'll do amazing things. Talk to you soon. Have an awesome day and stay in flavor and wise in calories. Talk soon.