Episode 205: The Neuroscience of Calm: Leading Under Pressure with Tracey Gazel

Stress doesn’t have to hijack your leadership. Executive coach Tracy Gazelle joins us to unpack the neuroscience of staying grounded when the stakes are high and the room heats up. We explore how clarity isn’t something you chase; it’s what emerges when the mental noise settles and you choose not to engage the inner critic that sounds so convincing in tough moments.

Tracy breaks down her Calm Clarity Operating System into three practical pillars: sleep physiology, mind literacy, and lived experience. We get tactical about 90‑minute sleep cycles, why waking at 3:30 a.m. often means you’re between cycles, and how to fall back asleep by refusing the “thought hooks” that try to wake your brain. You’ll hear actionable routines for better evenings—no blue light, consistent wind‑downs, and smarter choices around food and alcohol—and a simple morning cadence that protects creative thinking before the day scatters your focus.

• clarity as a natural state when the mind quiets
• inner critic as optional noise, not identity
• labeling emotions to shift out of fight or flight
• body cues as early alerts to pause and breathe
• Calm Clarity OS: sleep, mind, lived experience
• 90‑minute sleep cycles and consistent wake times
• falling back asleep without engaging thoughts
• evening routines: light, screens, food, alcohol
• morning creativity time for instinctive decisions
• practical stories of leaders gaining calm authority

From boardroom triggers to body cues, we map exactly how to catch fight or flight before it takes over. Labeling emotions in real time moves processing from survival centers to the prefrontal cortex, restoring reason without draining your passion. Tracy shares a standout client story of a hospital leader who transformed a “bulldog” reputation into calm authority, improved relationships at home, and earned consideration for a CEO role. We also touch on reading habits, Taoist wisdom, and how to build a personal routine that actually fits your life rather than someone else’s template.

If you want sharper decisions, steadier meetings, and more energy for the people who matter most, this conversation gives you a blueprint. Subscribe, share this episode with a leader who needs calm more than caffeine, and leave a review to help others find the show. What’s the first habit you’ll test tonight?

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 Tracey Gazel:👇
➡️ 𝐋𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐞𝐝𝐈𝐧 (primary):https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracey-gazel/
➡️ 𝐖𝐞𝐛𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐞: https://traceygazel.com/

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Transcript

Quiet Mind And Clarity Defined

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You are not here few. Our comp center, our space of clarity, is the one that's noticing our thick. But for noticing our thicket, it's like channel one on TV. Do I want to listen to that or do I just want to get in the background? And just sitting there, quietly, letting it run in the background, is mad. And it's we're doing it right. So I'm okay to have those thoughts there.

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Hey Uncommon Leaders, welcome back. This is the Uncommon Leader Podcast. I'm your host, John Gallagher. I gotta tell you, I'm pretty good at kind of chatting with you about management systems and processes in your workplace that help you to improve and be more successful. My guest today is gonna go deeper into the neuroscience of some of those things, and she's gonna talk to us about the calm clarity operating system, which is gonna be really cool, the neuroscience behind remaining calm under stress. I know I could use a bunch of this, so I feel like the conversation while there'd be many people listening, that it's gonna be more for me than anyone else today. So Tracy Gazelle, welcome to the Uncommon Leader Podcast. Great to have you on the show. How are you doing today?

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Thanks for having me, and I'm doing very well. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:13

Excellent. Well, Tracy, I'm gonna jump right in and get into the meat of this. I want to ask you a question that we kind of briefly chatted about before we have to record. Is that do leaders actually lose their clarity? That's being fair to them, lose their schnizzle as somebody else often talks to me about in terms of when they do this under pressure, or is it their internal operating system that's just getting there that makes noise uh that makes them do that?

Can Leaders Lose Clarity

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Yeah, I love that question. I love the word schnizzle. I've never heard that before. That's great. So we can never lose our clarity. That's what most people don't know. We always have it within us because it's our state when we access the present moment, when our mind is quiet. A lot of people think we need to learn how to get to clarity, whereas we already always have it. It just, to your question, gets covered up by mental noise, by distractions, where everyone knows we are overwhelmed by distraction these days, so it's easy to do. The more thinking we have, especially busy thinking, the more mental clutter we have that that clouds our clarity. And that's the space of who we really are. So rather than adding extra strategy to find more clarity, it's about learning how to clear the mental clutter to return back to your natural state of clarity.

SPEAKER_02 2:28

We're gonna work on that, okay? We're gonna work on that through this conversation and try to talk about some tips and techniques, how folks can do that. Because again, I've done a little bit of research on how we talked about, and you talked about in our mind where it's always very busy and clutter, no doubt about it. There are also physical uh distractions that we have, like these phones that exist on a regular basis that are always there for us. But even our own voice inside of our head makes a big difference. And I can't wait to dive into that. Before we go there, I want the folks to get a chance to learn a little bit more about you because my guess is you haven't always been that clear in even your thinking as well. Maybe that's what makes you an expert as you've helped to uh fix yourself as well. But let's go way back in time and say is there a story from your childhood that kind of still impacts who you are today as a leader and as a coach?

Tracy’s Path To Calm Clarity

SPEAKER_00 3:12

Yep, and you're spot on. I consider myself client zero because I've learned these things to first help myself before helping others. Uh so I've always been a very driven, high achieving type person. Put your head down, grind it out no matter what. Uh we were speaking before we started recording. I'll say there's 10 books I want to write last week, kind of thing. So a lot of pressure I put on myself. And as a result, I've had run-ins with stress throughout my life, uh, burnout. I had a skin condition from stress. And so about 20 years ago is when I started to notice I have to do something about this. I have to learn a better way to be in the world because it was just a lot of pressure and worry and anxiety and feeling driven to a fault. So 20 years ago, I was taking my psychology degree and I started learning about meditation. And meditation was the first thing that helped me then. Learn that we all have a calm center inside of us, and that's the space that people access when they meditate. You don't have to meditate to access it, but it is that space you often hear about that calm center when our mind is quiet. So at the time, that really helped me 20 years ago. Then I just kept going about my life. I worked in corporate healthcare for 10 years and always planned to stay there. However, my big life event that happened was in 2015, my dad passed away from a terminal illness. And that was really hard on me. We were very close. But you know, it helped me see my life in a different light. It seemed as if he's no longer here, but I'm still here. The rest of my life looked like a gift. So, how did I really want to make the most of it? And what I wanted to do was create my dream business, helping more people who are very driven, high achievers, big goals in the world, but do so from a place of calm clarity, of peace of mind, and enjoying life more deeply in the process. So I started out as a meditation teacher on the side of my corporate position, but that evolved into a coaching career as I took coaching certifications and executive coaching, mindfulness, and neuroscience coaching. So over the years, worked with different types of clients, bringing me to today, where I work with CEOs, founders, executives, and help them with this topic that is so near and dear to my heart, being client zero. So calm clarity, peace of mind, and enhancing focus, not only for high achievers, but also in high pressure environments and during times of uncertainty. And that uncertainty piece seems to be a hot topic these days. It's one I speak about regularly. Just with everything that's happening in the world, how quickly the world is changing, we can still access that space of calm clarity in the midst of all of that happening all around us.

What Derails High Achievers

SPEAKER_02 5:40

You know, I love that. And I think about client zero, I love the statement of that. And sometimes folks get tired of hearing me say this either either on the podcast or certainly one-on-one when I chat with them as well as clients. But you know, we're most powerfully positioned to help the person that we once were. That story about your dad and how that inspiration can kick you into that space as well. But ultimately, how you fought through this. I mean, I want to know uh and I who I'm working with ultimately has either been through this certainly or has studied it as well uh and made a difference in the lives of others. So, client zero, I love that as a story, and I'm sure that's probably uh quite the uh uh position of one of the 10 books that you are going to write in your time, no doubt about it. So no pressure on that. Even as I kind of look at it like I have neuroscience, I had to practice saying it a few times. Uh mindfulness, I love that as a piece that's going on. You mentioned that uh meditation may be one of those tools, but uh aside from the tools, even before that, what are the things that appear to get in our way as high performers, as those that are driven to succeed with regards to our mindfulness ultimately and how we don't remain calm? What keeps us from getting there?

The Inner Critic As A Virus

SPEAKER_00 6:52

Well, there's so many things. Quite a few are coming to mind as you were speaking. Um, it can be anything from if you're a high achiever, you're very goal-oriented. So you're just you set your goals, you achieve them. But what happens is that goalpost keeps moving. So you achieve your goal, you're happy, you're proud of yourself for maybe a day, but then you're on to the next. So it's this sense of never being done, never being enough, never truly arriving at the space that you're working hard to get towards. So that uh drive and that pressure doesn't come to an end, and it also comes from within. It seems like it's coming from without. I just need to get, you know, the right job, the right income, the right relationship, whatever it might be. But we're creating that pressure inside of us to get there, but we never truly get there. So that gets in the way. Another thing that gets in the way is we all have that space of the inner critic, the voice of our thoughts. And I like to clarify that it's almost as if we have different voices. And I know that sounds a little like psychology-oriented, like we're hearing voices, but we have different levels of thinking that we get to choose what we listen to. We get to choose which thoughts we engage with. And that voice of the inner critic can be so compelling. And what I mean by the inner critic is that negative voice, we all have it in some form or another. It can speak poorly about us, it can say negative things. Like my example, it can say, why haven't you done XYZ yet? It can also be judgmental on others or, you know, whatever negative form it takes. But what a lot of people don't know is just because we have that voice doesn't mean that we have to listen to it. And there's nothing wrong with having that voice. It's not fun. Nobody likes it, and it's so emotionally charged because whatever we're thinking about is what we're feeling. So when we hear that voice of the inner critic, we feel it. You know, we feel the pressure, we feel the heaviness, we feel tense, all kinds of negative emotions come along with that. And I liken it to a computer virus. So I enjoy the OS metaphor, the computer metaphor. We all have this calm clarity OS, this operating system within us. And the voice of the inner critic is like a computer virus. That's something we probably picked up somewhere as a kid, or maybe from our parents, or who knows what. And it where it came from doesn't really matter too much. It's just the fact that we have it and it pops up. And the more we can get better at noticing when it's there, because it otherwise it looks like real life. It looks like it's something we have to do or we haven't done yet. But if we see it as this computer virus, then we can start to decide, well, do I really need to listen to that? Is that accurate about my life? Is it useful in helping me go forward and achieve my goals, or is it really just dragging me down? And if I don't actually have to listen to it, I can practice not engaging with it and saying, oh, there's that old computer virus. Oh, there it goes again, popping up, telling me why I haven't I written my 10 books yet. I'm doing my best, I'll get there. But I don't have to listen to that. So there's a lot of things to answer your question that get in the way. Those were the top two that came to mind, but I'm sure I could speak about it.

SPEAKER_02 9:50

I know we talk about the barriers all day. That's the good part, is that that becomes uh maybe job security for neuroscience coaches that we have all kinds of problems and voices in our head that keep telling us things we don't want. But you touched on this and I've heard you talk about it before as well in meditation. So it was an actually an aha moment for me in listening to some of the things you talked about where meditation is maybe not necessarily the absence of those voices, but the recognition of those voices, that they're always there. Because I look, I have another critic, I beat myself up because I can't sit there. I have a trouble sitting there and meditating and you know, having thoughts go away, so to speak, and just being calm in my in my quiet time. I'll call it quiet time and I'll call it meditation because I get hung up on the word meditation. What's what's there in terms of how you talk about meditation or quiet time where we really just try to calm ourselves and it's difficult to do?

Meditation Myths And Practical Framing

SPEAKER_00 10:42

I love that question because I get asked it all the time. It's so common, just so you know, pretty much everyone sits down and tries to meditate, they hear it's good for you. And then, especially when we try to be quiet, we notice actually how much thinking we have. And it's a lot. Neuroscience estimates from 50,000 to 70,000 thoughts per day. And so, yes, it's meditation or quiet time is not about turning those off. And that's a huge misconception out there. You know, maybe there are some monks or some enlightened masters that can do that, but for the vast majority of us, we don't, it's there's no tap. I wish I could give some kind of tap and turn off your thoughts. Uh, but I don't have that either. And so, yes, it's about sitting quietly and noticing your thoughts. It's not necessarily about turning them off. And it's about choosing to not engage with them. And so when we start following our thoughts, especially a lot of our thinking that's circular, it's kind of like pulling on a string with no end. And it seems like we're getting somewhere and we're thinking about something and we're figuring something out, but it's also this sensation of just this never-ending following of this thought. So, an example of that for meditation then would be noticing, oh, there's a thought. Whatever it's about. Maybe it's about what you had for breakfast yesterday or it's about something that's really stressing you out. It doesn't really matter what the thought is, but it's not engaging with it. And a lot of the people I work with, because we are these very high achievers, we have a lot of thinking. And so just because we don't engage with it doesn't mean the thinking goes away. Something else might pop up. So, what I tell my clients in that situation is, well, try treating those thoughts like a radio playing in the other room. And it's something you don't have to listen to, or maybe it's something you don't want to listen to, or maybe it's a channel on the TV and you want to try changing the channel. But it's all about creating that separation between yourself and your thoughts and starting to see, well, I am not my thinking. You are not your thinking. Our calm center, our space of clarity is the one that's noticing our thinking. So for noticing our thinking, it's like channels on a TV. Do I want to listen to that or do I just want it in the background? And just sitting there quietly, letting it run in the background, is meditation. And it's you're doing it right. And it's okay to have those thoughts there too.

SPEAKER_02 12:55

So I appreciate that. Maybe I can start meditating again then. I don't feel so bad about that. And you touch on this, like your clients, high achievers uh driven. When do they come to you? Okay, and how do you get started with them? So this is both a even an opportunity for a sales pitch here, but also I'm just curious like, how do they end up saying or recognizing I've I've got to clear myself up? I'm just a mess, kind of thing. How do they get to you?

SPEAKER_00 13:19

Yeah, it's a combination. Sometimes it is that, oh, I'm overwhelmed, I'm a bit of a mess, I want to clear myself up. Sometimes they're wanting to move up the ladder. Sometimes they're in a VP level, they want to go up to the CEO role, and they see that where they can improve is to show up with more calm clarity and calm authority as well, because it does you lead from a different place when you sit in that place of poise. Some of my clients are wanting to retire from whatever role and they're scared of slowing down because they've never done that before. So it's really a little bit of everything, or sometimes they feel like the common these days is they can't focus. That's a really common one that will start a conversation around. They have used to performing at such a high level, but as focus is diminishing, it's difficult to do all the tasks that they're used to doing. So it's a little bit of everything. Uh or it's wanting a deeper enjoyment of life, it's even a better relationship with your family that comes up with teenagers or spouses. Because when we bring work home with us, it can be hard to connect with our loved ones. So just a bit of everything.

Who Seeks Coaching And Why

SPEAKER_02 14:15

Well, even that in and of itself is a challenge for leaders at time, right? To the ability to turn it off when they walk in the door, to turn the work off and jump into, if you will, the family or the spouse kind of mindset and be focused on them. So I certainly can understand that. And I'm even going back to you talked about the 70,000 thoughts per day, which is fascinating in itself. There's 86,400 seconds in a day. And if we sleep for at least 20,000 of those, you know, quarter of the day, six hours, that's more than one thought per second. Sorry, that's the engineer in me that kind of walks through that math. So I can understand why I can't set it off for 15 minutes to meditate because that's like 900 or a thousand thoughts that are going through my head in that time period that goes on. So the calm clarity operating system or framework that you have. So this is your, in essence, solution to that noise. Tell me what that operating system is. And uh you won't be able to go into all the steps of the framework. I want to dive deep into a couple of them, but uh what that operating system is.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

Yeah, so it's the idea that we all have this inner system already built in. So again, it's getting away from the more strategies and you know, there's so many books out there these days, self-help books, business books are wonderful, but we end up piecemealing together all these different theories and strategies, trying to improve things and feel better and better ourselves. ComClarity OS is the idea that you already have the system within you. It is your natural operating system. And so it's about removing the noise that's covering it up. And the framework for doing that is three pieces. So the first is physiological health, but it's primarily about sleep, optimizing sleep, which is so important as a foundation. Number two is about the mind, understanding your mind in a different way and thoughts and how you relate to your thoughts. And then the third piece is your experience. So bringing this out into the world, into your relationships, being a better listener, understanding triggering situations, which are so common for my clients, how to respond intentionally to triggers, how to be a better communicator and show up with that calm authority, that space of gravitas.

SPEAKER_02 16:19

I love the three steps, and I can't wait to dive into sleep. That's the one I really I told you before I really wanted to get to because again, I'm selfish. It's something that I'm working on right now. But you mentioned this word trigger, and there's so much inside of that word as well. And when I hear calm and I hear leadership, many times folks struggle with that. And I'm gonna use an example. If I'm too calm and I don't show emotion, okay, or I don't get emotional, then folks may think I'm not passionate about something. And so, how does a leader, in this case, that you know, recognize the trigger, but show emotion without being emotional? So remain calm in the midst of a chaos type situation.

Calm Clarity Operating System Overview

Triggers, Fight Or Flight, And Choice

SPEAKER_00 17:02

That's a great question. So it's about staying grounded. So the opposite side of being triggered is going right into reactivity, right? The opposite of what we're discussing here. And that's the neuroscience piece, that's how our brains are wired. Our brains are wired for survival instincts. And so our fight or flight center in our brain is in response to a threat. And for so long in human history, that threat meant survival. So being chased by a predator, by a saber-toothed tiger or something. So that would spark the fight or flight in our brain. So fight or flight, we either want to fight or run, basically. Today in the modern world, our brains are operating in the same way, but it's in boardroom type settings or at home. But let's just use the boardroom for this example. And somebody says something that you find you're being treated unfairly, you're being disrespected, you're feeling unappreciated, you're being held to unrealistic deadlines. Those are all triggers that have the same survival fight or flight response in our brain. So we're sitting in the boardroom, we feel slighted, something happened, and you go right into fight or flight, it happens in milliseconds. It happens so fast that we feel swept up in our reaction as if we have no choice to either get really mad or to just book it out of the room kind of thing. And so, yes, you're showing passion, but it's kind of the wrong kind of passion usually in those situations, because if you're doing the fight part of fight or flight, voices are raised, we're speaking, uh, we're upset, we're fighting back, and from a place of feeling slighted, right? Or being treated unfairly. Ideally, in those situations, oh, sorry, phone's ringing, is uh what neuroscience shows us is that we can take a deep breath in that moment and by noticing that we're starting to slide into fight or flight, and it has to be quick because it happens so fast. But if we can notice and label what we're feeling, so I'm feeling frustrated, I'm getting tense, I'm getting upset. By doing that as almost a third person point of view, that changes the rooting in the brain of where we experience the situation. So we go out of fight or flight and we come here to the prefrontal cortex just behind the forehead. That's the area of slow rational thinking. And so just by labeling, oh, I'm this is upsetting me, I'm getting tense, we come into slow rational thinking, we take a breath, and then we choose a response. And that doesn't mean we speak without passion. It doesn't mean that we're not showing that we're not very interested in something that's happening, a challenging situation, but we're doing so from a space of gravitas, of grounded, calm authority. And we're still speaking with passion. If something needs to happen, action needs to take place, but it's not that you're jumping out of your chair kind of thing, and a little bit of rational uh reactivity happening in that situation. Is that like this is a huge topic that I'm trying to contend myself?

SPEAKER_02 19:53

And I love the the conversation because you touched on like it first of all, it happens quickly that again, you feel like you're being attacked to a certain extent, fight or flight, and there's normally a physical body reaction, I would make up, at least for me, it's in my hands. My hands will start to clench. I can tell that there's tension there, oddly enough, that I think there's going to be pain in the dentist's office, and I grab my legs really. They're like, Are you okay? I mean, yeah, I just think there might be pain more than anything else, but I recognize that I'm that I'm tensing up in that space. You don't always have a lot of time, but there is a certain awareness that you've got to be prepared for, and it's practice. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

And I love that you said that. I work with mostly men, and this is what works with men is noticing in your body something physical that's happening. Women, for whatever reason, we can say, Oh, I'm feeling irritated, frustrated. You know, we can check catch the emotion. For men, yes, it's a tight jaw, it's clenching your hands, it's tightness in your neck or your back. So everyone that's listening today, take note of where you feel that in your body when you're starting to get triggered or get tense and what that's doing. That's your body doing you a favor. So when you clench your fists like that, John, that's your body giving you a tap on the shoulder, saying, hold on, pause, take a breath, John, catch yourself. So it's actually helping you. So that's great that you know that.

SPEAKER_02 21:12

Yeah, I think it's something that took me a while. There's no doubt about it, because I I could be uh very emotional with some of my responses and respond quickly. It's taken a long time. There's no doubt about it. Now, but that's actually what I want to ask about too before then we're gonna dive into sleep. Is you got a success story that you like to talk about with a client that you've worked with where they recognize and have been successful uh remaining calm? Are you tired of being tired? I know I was. That's when I was glad to find own it coaching. Now my resting heart rate's down 20%, sleep quality up three hundred percent. You know, I just ran my first Spartan rage at age fifty six. I feel better than I ever have. So if you're ready to stop settling and start owning your own health, go to coachjongallagar.com. That's coachjongallagher.com forward slash own it. Now let's get back to the episode.

Catching Body Signals To Pause

SPEAKER_00 22:09

Yes, I've got lots, but one is top of mind. He is a high-level leader at a hospital, and he wanted to learn about more about how to be calm. He's a veteran as well. And so he's got that combat experience. And so going from being in the military to being in an executive environment was quite a change for him. In the military, it sounds very black and white. You get things done, you speak directly, but then you come into corporate boardrooms, you've got office politics, you've got gray areas, all those things. So he and he was still getting quite upset, fired up, quick to fight or flight, was described as a bulldog personality by his peers. And we've been working together for a little while, and he's shifted so wonderfully to see all of these things that we've been speaking about, to catch himself being triggered, to turn work off at the end of the day, to have better sleep so he's rested. His relationships at home with his teenager and his wife have blossomed and bloomed, and now he's being considered for a CEO position, which has always been his dream because he's mastered this side of himself. And I'm so proud of him. I could, yeah, it's wonderful.

SPEAKER_02 23:13

When it's rarely ultimately, when you talk about that from a leadership quality standpoint, that calmness is very important. It's not always recognized as the strength inside of organizations, but it's rarely like learning how to do finance if you're going to be promoted to a CEO or something like that. Because I can teach you that all day long. But it's how you behave uh in the role and in the seat that you're in that is really important. Okay, that's kind of the experience, those triggers being grounded. Let's go to the topic that even uh excites me, the physiological side. You know, you say that our quality of sleep ultimately impacts the quality of our decision making. Tell me more, help me.

Client Success: From Bulldog To Poised Leader

Sleep Drives Clarity And Decision Quality

SPEAKER_00 23:52

So with sleep, uh sleep's a big topic. Everybody hears how important sleep is. But if we're not having great sleep, it's almost we have a more thinking, more concern about it. Uh that makes it even harder to sleep. So it kind of compounds itself. But ideally, we want to be uh sleeping and getting a certain number number of sleep cycles every night. I'll jump into that. And then through those sleep cycles, we want to access a deep REM sleep. And when we access that deep REM sleep, our brain does like a maintenance on itself. It cleans up debris and it rejuvenates itself and it gets ready for the next day. And if we don't reach those deep sleep cycles and we don't have that cleanup happening in our brain, that's when we wake up feeling that brain fog, feeling cloudy, and it really does impact our clarity. Something I love to talk about is sleep cycles, and I'm happy to share about it here because it's so beneficial for so many people I've worked with. So for myself, before I had my daughter and I used to be able to sleep all the time, I would always go for eight hours and I would still wake up tired after eight hours. You know, and you always hear in the news eight hours is what you want. But then I learned about the neuroscience of sleep cycles. This is from Dr. Michael Bruce, by the way. So his sleep cycles say that 90-minute increments is how our body best operates for sleep. So what that means is we drop into one of these sleep cycles, we drop into a light sleep to begin with, and then we dip into a deep sleep. And then at the end of the sleep cycle, we go back into a light sleep. And at the end of that sleep cycle, we either wake up or we go into another sleep cycle. So if we have these 90-minute increments, and let's say eight hours of sleep, right? So eight hours, you're actually waking up in the middle of one of these sleep cycles. And if you wake up in the middle, you're in that deep REM sleep. And that's that feeling of your alarm clock's going off and you're trying to wake yourself up and you're groggy and you're in a dream. And that's when we wake up feeling really groggy. Ideally, we want to start planning our sleep around these 90-minute increments so that we wake up at the end of an increment and then it's that light sleep and we're refresher at the end of a cycle. So that wouldn't mean a full night's sleep is either six hours or 7.5 hours or even nine hours. And I would argue I feel better after sleeping six hours than I do after eight hours because I wake up at the end of that cycle. So not only are you getting in all those deep REM uh maintenance periods in your brain, but then you're waking up at the end of a sleep cycle and it feels really natural. And then you even train your body over time to get that same sleep schedule. So if you're going for six hours, you train your body and it just starts to fall into sync and feel really natural.

SPEAKER_02 26:19

Oh no, I love that. I'm thinking about that because I watch the number. I track my sleep quality on my whoop every day. I mean, it's very, very something that's very important to me as I wake up each time and those sleep cycles, uh deep sleep and the amount of time. I don't know how it calculates which one of those that you're in, whether it's based on heart rate or activity or whatever it is, heart rate. I guess I could learn more about that as I look to improve that. Okay, so those are the 90, 90-minute buckets. How do I get better sleep? How do I prepare? Because you're talking about kind of turning it off at night, if you will, before you go to sleep and getting prepared for sleep. What are some habits I can put in place either before or after that'll help me improve that sleep cycle as well?

90-Minute Sleep Cycles Explained

SPEAKER_00 26:59

Yeah, you bet. And before I jump into that, are you because another thing that the people I work with, they often wake up between one and three in the morning and have trouble falling asleep. Is that something that impacts you too? Because I can speak about both.

SPEAKER_02 27:10

I'll say it used to, absolutely. And it was the it almost set a clock to it at 3 30. I mean, in terms of when I was waking up, it was 3 30. And I said a clock, I don't mean I didn't have an alarm, but it seemed like why am I waking up at the same time during the middle of the night? Tell me about that. Why do I wake up at the same time?

SPEAKER_00 27:27

Again, so common. That's why I bring it up. And a lot of the people I work with, falling asleep at night isn't a huge issue because they're just exhausted from a busy day, but it's getting up between one and three or one and four, that's so common. So if you were getting up previously at 3:30, uh like clockwork, that would be the end of that sleep cycle. And again, in between sleep cycles, our bodies want to naturally rouse and they want us to flip over or move, change positions so we don't get bed sores. And so at the end of that sleep cycle, you just ideally you want to change positions and fall back asleep. But what happens to so many people is in between those sleep cycles, we are we're still thinking, our subconscious mind doesn't sleep. And if we have a lot going on in our brain, we've got a lot going on in our life. In between those sleep cycles, we can notice all that thinking that's happening in the background. And as we start to engage with that thinking and pick it up, start to listen to it, follow it, our brains, the activity in our brain increases. We move up through the brainwave states, and before you know it, we're basically wide awake as if it's first thing in the day. And it's really hard to fall back asleep. So, yeah, so there's strategies for how to fall back asleep if that's something that happens.

SPEAKER_02 28:34

Um, but to go back to tell me as you come if my mind is going to here again. Here's the thoughts that one of the 70,000 thoughts, and I'm trying to listen to you and my brain saying, you know what? I find that my mind starts to look at a bunch of things, it doesn't matter what it is, but that's when I'm falling back asleep. It's allowing me to like when my and like don't pay any attention to it. Just if I can, if I can anyway, tell me, tell me what I do if I wake up. How do I avoid uh getting wide awake?

Waking At 3:30 A.M. And Falling Back Asleep

SPEAKER_00 29:03

Yes, yes, it's so common. As I said, I've even I talked to somebody recently who got gets up at two and just starts making food, like chili and thing and baking, because she's an executive that just cannot fall back asleep. So ideally we don't want that, we want to fall back asleep so that we wake up refresh and we have better clarity. And of course, everyone knows sleep is really important. So in the middle of the night, if this happens to you, John, or anybody listening, it's the same principle as what we were saying earlier in our conversation about meditation. So if you wake up in the middle of the night and you notice, oh, there's oh, there's that, I'm thinking about that work thing or that relationship thing. We don't want to engage with the thinking. So I like to look at it as if my thoughts are trying to hook me. They're actually trying to wake me up. And I will see this little hook. So I'll lay there and I'll notice, oh, it's trying to get my attention, it's trying to wake me up. I don't have to think about that right now. So you can say to yourself, I don't have to think about that right now. And it's actually going to be to my benefit to leave it until the morning when I'm in a better state of mind. I'm rested. I don't have to think about that right now. The other thing to do is to just focus sensations on your body. So, what I mean by that is taking deep breaths, maybe visualizing yourself somewhere relaxing, floating somewhere, being on a beach, listening to waves, whatever is very relaxing for you. And that way you're not engaging with the thoughts, which are increasing activity in the brain and waking you up. You're focusing on the body, which keeps you in a lower brainwave state and helps you drop back into that next sleep cycle. Because ideally, we all want that next sleep cycle. So if it's 3:30, you know, you want to sleep till 5, or maybe even 6:30, you know, whatever that time is for you. But more 90-minute increments. I'll pause there before I go to the evenings. But how's that landing with you?

SPEAKER_02 30:46

We're gonna go to evenings because I'm gonna ask a couple questions. So part of that is where my mind goes. Like, I actually at times will feel when I wake up, whatever that is, that 3:30, that I feel like I'm pretty well awake. I'm like, it's gotta be five o'clock or it's gotta be whatever it is the time that I wake up because I feel refreshed. And you're telling me really that if my body's getting me up at the end of that cycle, it can try to fool me as well. So you're okay, go ahead and get up now, but you don't, you still need the volume of sleep. Um, inside of that, what are your thoughts on like the white noise machines or the wave machines that exist that can actually have that sounds as well? Do you do you use one of those or do you suggest those?

SPEAKER_00 31:23

I don't use them. I've heard they work well. I've heard there's even research done that shows that they do help people sleep. So that's great. It's anything that just helps you not pick up your thoughts at the end of the day. So if that's a white noise machine or if it's taking deep breaths, whatever that might be. And I also want to add, some people I know they have to get up and use the washroom in the night. That's common, especially as people get older. And so, someone I knew, one of my clients, uh, he said he realized if he used slippers to go to the washroom, that helped a lot because he didn't have his cold feet on the floor, which would wake him up.

SPEAKER_01 31:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

So it's whatever we can do to just keep ourselves in that very much calm and relaxed state. If you have to use the washroom and then roll over, fall back asleep, just really not thinking about things, leaving that for the daytime.

SPEAKER_02 32:07

Okay, excellent. And yes, I'm reaching that age where I have to go to the washroom as well. The then nighttime. How do I get ready so that I can fall asleep and get into that deep sleep? Get into that.

SPEAKER_00 32:18

So it's giving yourself at least an hour with no screens before bed. So that's even TVs, uh, but of course phones. We've all heard of blue light. E-readers, a lot of people read on tablets and iPads, and unfortunately, that has blue light in it. Blue light inhibits melatonin production in the brain.

SPEAKER_01 32:35

Okay.

Night Routine: Light, Screens, And Cues

SPEAKER_00 32:36

So it tricks our brain into lessening melatonin. It keeps us awake. So the best thing you can do is reading an old-fashioned paperbook, which I love to have a paperbook beside your bed, reading before bed, and it's routine as well. So the body responds to routines. So having a regular-ish bedtime, maybe reading 30 minutes before bed each night. It's just starting to train your body, okay, this is the time that we're slowing down. And then in the middle of the night, of course, I don't I mentioned this just in case anyone doesn't know this. It's not picking up your phone. You know, I do have clients that do that, they'll hear a ding or they'll check their emails, and there's that blue light, and there's that waking up your brain and having the thoughts. So, really putting your phone away or putting it on do not disturb until the morning.

SPEAKER_02 33:19

Speaking of the phone and the alarm, I'm gonna go back to the start of the day and we'll come back. Uh, the snooze button. I was thinking about that before. So tell me again, your 90-minute sleep cycle absolutely destroys the theory of I just need nine more minutes of sleep and it'll make me feel better with the snooze button. Uh you're probably saying don't you hit the snooze button, right?

SPEAKER_00 33:38

Well, so let's say, so for myself, I love 10 p.m. to 5 30. That's the sweet spot for me. And so about 9 30, I'll start to get ready for bed and I'll read. And then of course it's not people say to me, How do I fall asleep exactly at 10 o'clock, Tracy? How do I plan that? Well, of course, you can't do that perfectly, but it's just somewhere around there and getting ready to fall asleep at that time. And then for the first little while, it's setting your alarm for your time. So for me, 5 30. And if that's the case, it gets, you know, my alarm goes off and I'm tempted to hit the snooze for nine more minutes, but I'll know. Well, wait, I'm at 7.5 hours here. I'm just going to get up. I'm not going to hit the snooze because it only takes not even a week. And your body starts to really get on that schedule. So you don't need the alarm anymore. And it will just start to get up naturally at 5 30. So if you know you're on your time frame you're shooting for that sleep schedule, I would really say try not to hit the snooze and just start to train yourself to get up at that same time every day. Of course, weekends, vacation, we go a little bit off schedule, but staying on it as much as you can, even if you can on the weekends.

Snooze Buttons And Consistent Wake Times

SPEAKER_02 34:41

I'm going to try the experiment of the seven and a half. I think six, it's funny because I've been setting a goal the last year and a half of saying I want to get from how the whoop says I got six hours of sleep or whatever it was, six point one, wanting to get to seven. But what you're really telling me is I need to get seven and a half or stay at six is what you're really telling me to do. So I'm going to work on that in terms of that seven and a half and try and get that to work, see how the experiment goes. Okay, one hour, no blue light. Any other tips getting ready to turn it off at night in terms of how I get ready to go?

SPEAKER_00 35:10

Yeah, so of course, staying away from sugar and eating too late. Alcohol does make a difference. I'm not saying, you know, no drinking ever, but for me, I save it for the weekends. I do really notice it makes a huge difference. I find it's a depressant and a stimulant, is what I believe the science says. So it helps you fall asleep in the evening, but then it's like a stimulant later on in the middle of the night where it but 1 a.m. it seems to wake me up. Yeah, and then nothing too, you know, stimulating before bed. You know, I have one client, he's a COO of a big uh government-run agency. And he said to me, Tracy, I love my cat videos before bed. I love my funny cat videos. Do I really have to stop watching those? And I said to him, you know, if you don't have trouble falling asleep and you like cat videos before bed and there's no problem, then you know, keep doing it. It's only if there's a problem. If you're having trouble falling asleep, then try something new. Try no, you know, phone before bed kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02 36:08

Just use your blue light glasses while you're watching the camera.

SPEAKER_00 36:11

Or you could use your blue light glasses. Yeah, and then of course the light makes a really big difference. We're in winter right now, so we don't notice it so much, but in the summer it's closing the drapes. And uh in the morning, it sure makes a difference to have sunlight or just daylight, even if it's not a sunny day, expose your eyes to daylight. It really helps you wake up in the morning.

SPEAKER_02 36:30

Excellent. I love that. Even you know, waking up in the dark red light, is that something that you you would uh ascribe to as well? Have you used red light?

SPEAKER_00 36:36

I've heard about it. I haven't used it myself, so I can't really speak to it, but I've heard that it's really great.

Evening Habits: Food, Alcohol, And Light

SPEAKER_02 36:40

I think those are some great tips for the front end and the back end to help us improve our sleep quality. And again, the part you're saying, even as you wake up and how it impacts decision making, is ultimately the clarity of your mind, the quality of the sleep. What is it that helps you with the decision making during the day coming up?

SPEAKER_00 36:56

Yeah, well, it's probably both. It's there's so many things. I could talk all day, honestly, with you about all these things. And then we access that creative thinking first thing in the morning when we move more slowly through the brainwave states and we have new creative ideas. So if we have this major decisions that we're working on, we can sit quietly in the morning and open up our mind for new creative thoughts to come through and access that space of, I like to call it instincts, where it's like, oh, of course that's what I need to do. I've got this big decision. I can't, it's so complex. But we can access the space of instincts, of gut instinct, of that's you know, that's what I need to do. So it's also carving out time every day to sit in that space versus just the intense, heavy cognitive performance space that so many of us spend all day in, but it's not really as productive or as healthy as moving more slowly throughout small periods throughout the day.

SPEAKER_02 37:48

I'm gonna shift gears here a little bit. We're coming up on time. I just looked at the clock and I'm like, oh my gosh, I knew it was gonna go fast. I knew our time was gonna go fast. Uh you mentioned that you're a reader as well, both in the suggesting the hard books. I love that. Uh, I do have a book on my nightstand each night that I try to read. I'm gonna probably think you're not suggesting an Agatha Christie novel or anything like that before we go to sleep. But do you have a favorite book that's influenced you or a favorite author that's influenced you on your leadership development journey?

SPEAKER_00 38:14

Oh, well, back in the day when I was starting to really look at sleep cycles and morning routines, it was the 5 a.m. Club by Robin Sharma.

SPEAKER_02 38:22

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 38:23

And I really love that I've adapted it to my own routine, but I loved what he said that world's and this goes back to the driven high achiever part of me, but the world's most successful people get up an hour earlier every day to get not only get more done, but to spend that time in creative thought and to be inspired and to visualize what you're creating. So I always really love that. And then the other side of things is I also do a lot of reading about philosophy and meditation as well, because I marry the neuroscience and the psychology with philosophy and meditation. So in the mornings I'll read about Taoism, which is uh Taoism, it starts with a T, T A O, and it's from 2,000 years ago in China. It's related to Buddhism. So I'll read about the Taoist sages. Okay. So I'll combine that with uh yeah, leadership books.

Morning Creativity And Instinctive Decisions

SPEAKER_02 39:07

I'm a fan of Robin Sharmer as well, and I've got a really good friend who changed his to the 415 a.m. club. I'm like, dude, you're crazy, man. This 415 thing is not gonna happen. Although if I could get it to a six-hour sleep cycle, maybe that's what I really need to do. Maybe at you know 1015 to 415 or whatever that is, we'll figure that out. I'd rather be a seven and a half hour sleep cycle, though.

SPEAKER_00 39:26

Yeah, it's finding what works right for you. That's one thing I say, like I love the idea of the 5 a.m. club, but it 5 a.m. doesn't work for everyone. So it's finding your right sleep schedule, finding your right morning time, finding your right morning routine.

SPEAKER_02 39:38

And I love that you've kind of found that for you. So what works for you? What works best for you in your routine?

SPEAKER_00 39:43

Yeah, so the 10 p.m. to 5 30 is the sweet spot, and then I get up, and it's also intentional to get up before the rest of my household. So my husband and my daughter are still sleeping, so I get that quiet time for me. So I get up, I make a coffee, and then I sit and I have my creative thinking time, my grounding quiet mind time. And then when they wake up, I'm in this really wonderful space and I feel really good and we start the day. So that works well for me, and I always recommend that to everyone. If you can get up first, have that quiet time, but also that well-being work-life balance time so it's checked off for the rest of the day. Because if we try and leave that until the end of the day, we're tired. We just want to put our feet up. But do it first thing in the morning, and you'll feel really good. And it helps you access that space of clarity too to get started.

SPEAKER_02 40:24

There you go. Absolutely. Tracy, I so appreciate the time that you've invested with us. I'd really uh hate to bring it to a close, I but honoring our time, I want to ask you kind of that one question. I'm gonna give you a sticky note, and you can write any message on that three by three sticky note that you want to uh for folks that are listening in. What's the message that you're gonna write on that sticky note to those individuals and why do you put that message on there?

Books, Taoism, And Morning Routines

SPEAKER_00 40:47

Yeah, it's such a great question. And I guess it would be for me find your well-being first. So many of us are chasing these goals to then find our well-being and feel content and feel happy in life. You know, once I do XYZ, then I'll feel better. But there's this secret out there that most people don't know that we can find our well-being first through optimized sleep, through understanding the mind better, and through understanding how we experience our life better. So we always have our well-being, no matter what's happening in the world. And then we go out and achieve our goals from the space of already having our well-being and sitting in our well-being. And it's a game changer. And then life becomes this magic carpet ride where we just enjoy the process and enjoy living our life, even with everything happening in the world.

SPEAKER_02 41:33

Excellent. Love that. Thank you, Tracy. Where do folks get in touch with you or learn more about you?

SPEAKER_00 41:37

Yeah, I'm quite present on LinkedIn. So anyone watching is welcome to connect with me on LinkedIn. It's Tracy Gazelle or check out my website, tracygazelle.com, and I'd love to connect with anyone who's interested in learning more.

SPEAKER_02 41:47

All right. And that remember that's gazelle uh 1L uh and 1E as you look at the end of it versus the animal, but it sounds just like it. Tracy, I am this conversation immensely. I know that the listeners are gonna find tremendous value in it, and I want to thank you for investing time with the Uncommon Leader podcast. I wish you the best in going forward, including in those 10 books that are going to be coming out, okay?

SPEAKER_00 42:09

Likewise, thanks so much for having me.

SPEAKER_02 42:11

I hope you enjoyed that episode. I know that I did. I actually found myself just getting ingrained in what I could learn with regards to improving my sleep and ultimately recognizing and being aware of my presence and how calm I am when I show up in certain situations. I'm quite sure that you heard in this message that someone else needs to hear. That's the best share of the episode so that even more folks can get a chance to hear the messages of the uncommon leaders who come on the show. And I would appreciate you sharing that. Certainly a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify would be helpful to get it in the hands of other leaders as well. But I appreciate you listening all the way through. Until next time, go and grow champions.