Calm Is Strategy | Dr. Karthik Ramanan | Growing Money with Sean Trace

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Karthik Ramanan, a former Wall Street professional turned naturopathic physician and emotional health mentor, and we get into the real conversation that high-performing entrepreneurs are afraid to have.

Dr. K shares how he walked away from a prestigious banking career during the Great Recession, hit rock bottom more than once, and discovered that the body and mind keep score long before we're willing to admit it. We talk about the earliest warning signs of burnout that most leaders write off as normal, why chronic stress quietly hijacks your decision-making before you even notice, and what it actually means to be resilient versus just repressing everything and hoping for the best. If you've ever told yourself you'll slow down after the next milestone, this one's for you.

What's one belief about money or success that you grew up with, and do you think it's actually serving you now? 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I had gotten my own apartment for the first uh time in my life, uh just my own studio in my late 20s, uh, paid off my undergraduate student loans. I had paid off my parents' credit card debt, which felt uh felt amazing. And I was giving more to charity than I ever thought I could in my late 20s. But I was so unhappy. I just uh every single day, uh I just felt like I was pursuing something that I every time I I set the bar higher. Okay, when I get to this stage, then I'll be happy. Then when I get that promotion, then I'll be happy. When I get that new role, then I'll be happy. And that day never came. And at a certain point, it just made me wonder what what is all of this for.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Uh welcome everybody back to the Growing Money with Sean Trace Podcast. I've got an awesome guest with me today. Would you like to tell people who you are and a little bit about what you do?

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Absolutely. Uh I'm Dr. Karthik Ramanon. I'm a burned out, uh former burned out Wall Street uh professional, turned astropathic physician and emotional health mentor to business owners and their companies.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

How did this all come together? First of all, how did you get into Wall Street? And then how did you transition back to this new career of yours?

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Yeah, it uh it was a journey. Um, you know, sometimes we go through those periods in life that really make us reflect on everything, not just the path we've taken, but uh deeper meanings. Um so out of undergrad is is when I found myself uh uh working at one of the premier investment banks on Wall Street. Uh this is 2005, so I really picked a great time to start in that industry. Um, but uh so first year or so uh things were pretty good. Uh but but soon after that, you know, the the banks around us started to crumble. Uh we were head on into the Great Recession. It's already a stressful industry, but I did whatever I could to just be as indispensable as possible because I knew that, you know, for for any of us, no matter how much of a high performer we are, uh keeping our job in a uh recessionary environment was going to be really tough. So I was working the 12, 14, 18 hour days. Um, again, just working as hard as I possibly could. Responded, that was the only thing I knew how to do, you know, just work harder. And um, you know, a few years later in, it it paid off professionally. I was uh I had gotten my own apartment for the first uh time in my life, uh just my own studio in my late 20s, uh, paid off my undergraduate student loans, I had paid off my parents' credit card debt, which felt amazing. And I was giving more to charity than I ever thought I could in my late 20s. But I was so unhappy. I just uh every single day, uh I just felt like I was pursuing something that I every time I set the bar higher. Okay, when I get to this stage, then I'll be happy. Then when I get that promotion, then I'll be happy. When I get that new role, then I'll be happy. And that day never came. And at a certain point, it just made me wonder what is all of this for? Uh and I don't know if uh anyone listening here has ever been to rock bottom um or multiple times to rock bottom as I have, but uh it is a really interesting place because you're willing to just say yes to the things that you otherwise would never say yes to. You're willing to take a chance on yourself in in a way that you had previously limited yourself potentially. And so I had I was really struggling with my health. I was really struggling with uh my emotional health as well and physical health. And around that time, um, I saw my sister after a three-month span, and she had lost 30 pounds and her cystic acne had cleared up, and she was, it was just that intersection of my rock bottom and seeing this inspirational uh journey for for somebody so dear to me. And uh, and I was like, okay, what did you do? I I'm gonna do it, right? And she goes, uh, I've just been eating whole fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds, mostly uncooked as they're found in nature, this whole food plant-based diet, mostly raw foods. And I thought, God, that sounds horrible. Okay, show me how to do this. And I just went down this journey of releasing all expectation and just um, you know, gradually uh gradually changing my habits. Because the one thing I had recognized is I was always that cold turkey person, all or nothing. You know, if I can't do it perfectly, it's not worth doing it at all. So I just, I just shed all of that mental uh models of how I need to produce change in myself and just embrace, hey, whatever happens, happens. Again, rock bottom, you're willing to take a different shot. And um, within three weeks, I was at the lowest weight I'd been as an adult. And that was what blew my mind open to say, wait a second, what if the confidence and the life that I'd wanted, what if all these things are also possible? And the only thing that was holding me back this whole time was me. And so I didn't tell people at work what I was doing all that much, uh, kept it to myself, but people still still started noticing um as the weight came off and whatnot, and they asked for some advice. And so I I brought some recipes and whatnot, and uh, some people really embraced it. I saw type 2 diabetes, chronic migraines, chronic joint pain, uh uh hypertension, all this stuff go away. And I thought, wait a second, I've got to figure out how to make this my career. And so um did some digging, found out about uh naturopathic medicine, licensed uh uh field where we, you know, can um, you know, do act as a primary care physician primarily and look at the whole body. How does the body heal itself, um, you know, prescribe, treat, et cetera? Um, and so I I went uh down that road. I left my career in New York. Uh I went to Arizona to go to medical school. I met the love of my life in medical school. Um, but after I graduated, I I really had a different pull. And it was solving this burnout problem. And ultimately, that was what led me to focus. And even within school, I was I was definitely more in the realm of emotional health. Um, but that became my singular focus. Like, how do we bring a different approach to emotional health? Uh, and especially for the high performers, the high achieving leaders who have a significant impact on the people uh they lead within their companies, whether they're a business owner or or uh an executive. Um, because when that leader shows up as the best version of themselves, the trickle effect to everybody else is massive. Uh, and I figured that that was the best way that I could have the most leverage, right, in in our work. Uh, Sean, you and I have limited time. We all have limited time, right? What are we going to put that focus on? Uh, and that that's how I got to where I am today.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

I had um I had a conversation with someone today, and my wife and I were talking about it. And it was a conscious decision that I want to be focusing on conversations that are lifting me up, validating me, and making me a better person, and not to play these, these, some of the games that I used to play, you know? And recognizing that helps me prioritize one of the some of the conversations that I want more than anything, those with my daughter, you know. Between podcasts, I run upstairs and I sit there and I check them with her. How are you doing? Are you reading books tonight? It's so that I can have that time. And you're right, there's only so much time. And when you start realizing that, you start realizing, recognizing what am I compromising my time for? You know? And I think that that's something that a lot of people are thinking about. And if you're not recognizing that, you can start getting to that burnout point. And I want to ask you this because from your experience, what's the earliest sign that a high-performing entrepreneur is heading toward burnout long before they admit it?

SPEAKER_01 8:14

It happens more often than you'd think, uh, in terms of that pattern of there's there's early warning signs, right? Um you know, if the from a medical standpoint, there's there's a lot more uh signs that something might be happening than we usually just push through, right? Uh I'm I'm just a little fatigued right now. I've been working hard, of course, fatigue. But there's certain patterns of that fatigue, as an example, that could be what's called uh, you know, the casual term would be adrenal fatigue. That's not actually what's happening, but it's uh a uh an imbalance in our cortisol curve, which is our alertness hormone. And sometimes what happens, you have a normal healthy curve where it peaks about 30 minutes after uh waking and then gradually trails off as the day goes on. Well, if that peak is not high enough, we might need a little more coffee than we normally needed in the morning. Uh we might find that crash at two o'clock, or maybe it happens at 12. I got to a place in my own life where I started crashing at 10 a.m. And that's when I said this is really bad. I got to do something about it. And so um, so that could be a pattern. Um, you could find potentially some gut issues start to pop up. You know, one of the interesting things um when I was in school, and you know, we're learning about all these conditions, and and you got to memorize all the signs and symptoms for for every single one. And you know, when you're when you're trying to study, you're trying to minimize the number of uh data points that you have to hold in your head and rather look for patterns that you can apply rather than having to memorize, you know, each one like a database. And like the one sign and symptom for almost everything was stress, right? We always just kind of well, you know, I'm stressed, so of course, yeah, we just gotta write it off. But that could actually be something to pay attention to. Um, you know, libido changes can factor in, sleep disruptions can factor in. But also from a behavioral standpoint, if you just notice, even if none of those things really stand out when you're going through it, because one of the challenges with that, and this is why it's so important to just get your regular checkups as well, is when when generally when we start to deteriorate in our health or uh accelerate and increase, the change is still gradual from day to day. You can't take a snapshot of how do I feel now, and then like, how did I feel a year ago and compare those two. It's gradual and you don't always notice it. Um, but one thing you can look at from a behavioral standpoint is especially if you're more of a purpose-driven uh leader and business owner, you got into that business because you care about what you do and and who you serve and and the team that you built and everything else. If the things that used to give you joy before don't give you joy anymore, that might be another reason to kind of dig in a little bit. Um but it's definitely one of those things that people go through a bunch of things that in retrospect they go back and say, Oh, yeah, that, you know, I had paid a little more attention. Maybe I could have caught this ahead of time. But, you know, it's a learning process for all of us. I've been through it too. I get it. Um, but those are some of the uh things I'd look out for.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

One of the things that I think that we all know signs, but then we don't know the signs. Like let me explain. You know, your car, you're driving it, and suddenly there's a weird noise, and you're like, well, that's a weird noise, but hang on, is that a weird noise or is that a weird noise? You know, because like you don't know, you know something's off, but you don't know how off it might be. You know, maybe it's a little off, you know, it's just a little change. But then then your radiator goes out, then your transmission goes out, and you're like, oh man, that sign was there, and I just didn't pay attention to it. And I think the same things happen to our health. But we have even less of a connection to that at times because people are so like, well, I've had that that ache and pain for a while, and they just kind of push through and they think that it's normal, but like it's not necessarily normal. You should really be looking at that, you know?

SPEAKER_01 12:28

But I don't like there's certain things you might not even notice, too. Uh, when when I cut dairy out of my diet, I noticed a change that I didn't anticipate previously. That sounds silly when I think about it now. I used to always be so sinus congested that I could only breathe out of one nostril at any given time. Maybe neither, but rarely both were open, right? And I just thought that, yeah, whatever, it's normal, right? I lived in New York and it was a pollution, whatever, right? And so I but after cutting out, all of a sudden I'm like, huh. I didn't know that's how it was supposed to work. And then you think about it and go, oh, wait, that's always how it used to work. Now I think this is how I used to feel when I was younger. Um, you're not aware of it. You don't know what good feels like anymore.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

I think that's 100% it. You know, we we get into that place of like the grind becomes normal. And, you know, you see it with so many, like as I'm growing my own company, I find busy days, and I'm like, where do I slot my workouts in? Where do I slot my healthy meals in? You know? And you'll see that many leaders will say, I'll slow down after this next milestone. But why does that moment almost never come?

SPEAKER_01 13:47

The moving goalpost is reactionary, right? I know I need to do this, but this is more important. And so I'll take care of this after this proceeds past a certain point. If you're scaling, especially, there will always be another level. It's not gonna wait for you. Yeah, right. None of these things are gonna slow down. Now, if you want to just take a product to maturity and just hold it at that point, but then even then, what's the longevity, right? You get a competitor in the marketplace, they take your market share, company's gone. Or you want to grow it to sell it. Maybe after the sale, there's a okay, good, got the exit, right? But that's uh kind of the far and few between. I think to count on that is uh probably not the best strategy, especially when I mean you're talking about your daughter and being very intentional about the time that you spend with her. You know, what if the goalpost just keeps moving and all of a sudden 10 years pass? You know, how's that gonna feel? And uh so, you know, you taking that time to be intentional, I think is vital. And really, when you think about it, um the, you know, when when we say that, okay, I'll I'll slow down after the next milestone. What if slowing down allowed you a little bit of time to think, to recover, et cetera, so that you are more creative and more focused and productive and a better leader for the people around you? And and that little bit of rest actually leads to a lot more productivity. I've seen that pattern happen over and over. Um, so there's a gentleman that I uh was uh working with for a couple of years uh here in in Phoenix, Arizona. Um, business owner, uh scaling, been really well respected in the community. And he uh he's one of those people that is always busy. He's got his hands in a whole bunch of different things. Um, and you know, one day he comes in for our session, he goes, Yeah, Dr. K, I didn't do my homework. I said, Okay, well, well, what's uh what's what's that about? Uh what happened? He goes, uh, well, I'd like to say that I was in the middle of a bunch of meetings, but uh yesterday I was planning on doing it. I sat down and uh I picked up my iPad and I was playing a game for four hours. By the way, this is not the type of person that you would have thought to hear that answer from, right? Just go, go, go type of person, everything else. Like, but it was a moment of clarity. It was just like, look, I can lie to you or I can just tell you what happened. It's really what happened. Um, he had kind of that crash where he just felt like I got to reach for this iPad and play. So I said, okay, well, next week, we looked at his calendar, we found a little spot, like two-hour block. I said, Okay, block that off and write in, play iPad game. And he's like, Really? That's my homework for the week. I said, just do it, trust me. Right. And he comes back the next week. He's like, okay. You made me treat my self-care as a uh calendar item. Um, honestly, that is not even a self-care item playing that game, but I played for like 10 minutes, I got my fix, and then I was like the most productive for the next hour and 50. Um, just that permission to slow down a little bit was for 10 minutes was enough to change everything. And so uh it slowing down is a strategy to accelerate forward.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

I love that. You know, like sometimes, I mean, with everything you do, you some I try to power through my day, but when I moved to Asia, I learned and live in Vietnam part-time, that napping is one of the most effective things I can do. Like, middle of the day, I'll lay down for 15, 30 minutes, my whole team does. I used to like, we used to go straight through the day, but the whole team, 12 to 1, everyone takes a nap. They all find a spot in the office, everyone sleeps. And you know what? That second half of the day is just as productive as the first. And they they just hammer it out. But yet, if I when we were just making people go straight through, nothing was getting done from 4 to 5 p.m. You know, there was nothing getting done. And so it's like I had to redefine what it means to be focused, what it means to be taking care of ourselves, and what it means to be productive, you know?

SPEAKER_01 18:12

Yeah, yeah. I love that. That's a I think I might incorporate some of that myself. 12 to 1, huh?

SPEAKER_00 18:18

Right? I want to ask you about this because you've worked with people who look successful on paper but feel empty inside. What's usually missing for them?

SPEAKER_01 18:27

I I can speak from experience on that too.

SPEAKER_03 18:30

Um you know, when we define our worth by achievement, there's always something next to achieve.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

Yeah. And even if there isn't, then it's do I need another game to go conquer? Yeah. You know, there's very few Tom Brady's in the world where there's nobody that has matched and maybe ever will match their resume in their craft, right? Yeah. But uh there's always somebody else that's winning at some other game. So if our sense of validation comes from achievement, we'll never win that. And so if instead we can understand, okay, what actually drives a human being to feel fulfilled in life? And you know, you've got my Maslow's hierarchy of needs, ERG theory, a few of these other ones. Um, there's just four areas I like to look at as far as human needs. One is stability, like, okay, can you pay your bills? Do you've got some predictability from day to day? Okay, you don't have to worry about too many things, then that's level. If that's not addressed, it's kind of hard for anything else to matter. Belonging. Do you have the right set of people around you? And not just people, but people who get you, understand you, you connect with, you feel like part of a tribe together. That is your families, that is your communities. Um number three is growth. If we are don't feel like we are better uh today than we were yesterday for a long enough period of time, we feel stuck in life and it becomes very difficult. And then number four is a sense of purpose, uh, where we know the answer for ourselves, the answer to that everlasting question of what's the meaning of life. And if that's not for that's not some general answer for everybody, we have to define that for ourselves. And if we understand, okay, I get my sense of meaning, but my sense of purpose for why I'm here on earth, by contributing to other people in this capacity, by building this, by making this better, then it's it's very hard when that's at the forefront of our existence day to day and it becomes part of our identity. It's very hard to not uh feel fulfilled, right? And that's what I would really encourage anyone listening here to do is it is one of the hardest questions. I I've I've worked with founders who are toward the end of their careers, um, looking into retirement. They say they want to retire, uh, having a hard time letting go of the business. And I ask, you know, what do you want your perfect life to look like 10 years from now? Mind you, that might be in their 80s, let's say, right? And they say, I haven't thought that far ahead. And so how are you supposed to let go of the business that's given you all of that, you know, area for growth and things to feel fulfilled because you're doing a good good good work and not yeah, how how can you let go of that, right? You you have to have a way to define who you are and what and and the impact that you make. And once you do, then again, like I said, it's very hard not to feel fulfilled.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

Yeah. Well, it's interesting too, because you know, that chronic stress uh changes things. And I want to ask you how does chronic stress quietly change the way leaders make disp decisions, especially under pressure? Because I know that when I get stressed out, my decision making ability drops. And I think that other people do, and you know, I've got a mild level of stress, but some people, they're buried with it, you know, under it. What can people do? And like, how does that affect them? And what can they do to kind of unload some of that?

SPEAKER_01 22:13

Yeah. So there's uh there's some things that we can do structurally in how we live our lives. So my my core uh framework is what I call the five pillars of emotional health. There are five areas that you optimize to become emotionally healthy. The analogy is if we had a plant that wasn't doing so well, we're not going to look for the right medication for it. We're going to first look at does it does it get the right sunlight? Is it getting enough water? Does the soil need to be changed, the nutrients, those type of things? And for the human being, that's understanding our psychology, our personal psychology, understanding our own mind, how do we become who we are, relationships, the people we spend the most time with, our nutrition, because our gut health and our emotional health are intricately connected, sleep. We kind of talked about some of that earlier, and then body movement. So exercise and those type of things. So when those five areas are optimized, it allows us to handle that chronic stress and just bring that baseline level of chronic stress lower. Um, easier said than done. We have different, you know, uh ways of making that happen. But the other thing to think of is, you know, as far as why stress is so important to take care of, is our brains effectively have two modes in terms of the nervous system has two modes of its own, sympathetic and parasympathetic. So your fight and flight, fight or flight, uh rest and digest. But also the brain itself is structured in such a manner that um we have the limbic system, this area, the amygdala, the hippocampus, this these very emotion-driven, quick to react, um, survival instinct focused systems, because we were made for nature. We weren't made for this world that we live in, right? And those structures are say are preserved in other mammals. So if you think about our dogs uh at home or cats, uh, they might recognize our patterns for when we're leaving for the day and things like that. Uh those are quick emotion-driven. Then we have our our prefrontal cortex, where our which sets humans apart in terms of our ability to think deeply, uh, rationally, calmly, it's a little bit slower of a mechanism. So when we are in constant uh mental overload because of all of the things going on in our world and all the decisions that we have to make. So if you're the founder that every decision goes through you, there's a limit to how much you can grow. There's a limit to the only thing you're scaling at that point is your stress. And so that is uh one of those moments where you have to be able to step back and say, okay, uh, because now we're making faster decisions and I'm feeling more stressed, those decisions are going to be made by that limbic system that isn't even designed to think through and do things rationally. You have to lower that stress level, reduce the number of decisions you make so you can really think about the most important things that you have to do. Even Steve Jobs talked about this back in the day when he was talking about the difference between signal and noise in a business as a leader. You have to look at what are maybe the three out of 20 things that are the true signal and the 17 that are noise. Um, and if you can focus on the true signal, now you have more space, more time to think, you reduce that stress because there's fewer other things that you can either delegate, eliminate, automate, you know, especially now with AI, you can automate a lot of stuff to um empower your people to automate things so you don't even have to do that necessarily yourself. Um, and focus on those important things. And as you're doing that, that chronic stress level will come down.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

100%. I love that. And I love it because you're right. We don't have to carry as much as we think we do. We really don't. Like there are so many tools out there, but I know that for my myself, I get into this loop where I feel like if I'm not doing it, everything's gonna fall apart. But the reality is everything's gonna fall apart if I'm not delegating, you know? And I want to ask you about this too, because what's the difference between resilience and emotional repression, you know? People, someone's like, I'm bouncing back from this, and someone starts burying that thing. And why do so many achievers confuse the two, you know?

SPEAKER_01 26:26

That's like this idea of uh I have to be strong for my team. I have to be strong for um so suppression is this idea that I I'm just not gonna deal with this. Like I can't, I don't have the time, I don't have the space, I'm not dealing with this right now. Uh, it could be conscious, it could be a repeated pattern throughout life. The problem with that is eventually it catches up to you. Um, you know, we see time and again uh these chronic stress-related emotional suppression-related um conditions that can show up medically in the body, right? So we won't want to avoid that uh wherever possible. Uh but also, you know, what is resilience actually? Resilience is the willingness to identify, process, and then to act upon those feelings in a moment and over the course of time. Because the willingness to say, let's say, okay, uh, we uh we were uh we we we pitched, you know, what could be a life-changing, you know, client opportunity um to work with this other company, whatever it is, and we made the pitch and it didn't work out, right? We we the hopes were super high. If we just say, all right, we'll get the next one and move on, okay, if that is truly because you said, man, that's a bummer. Or and hey, if you're gonna be, if or you lose a big contract, right? Feel it. Be willing to feel it. Now, if you reduce the duration that it bothers you, and you reduce the severity that it bothers you, but you're still feeling it, you're still processing it, you have an operating system, a SOP, so to speak, for how you deal with these things. Like, okay, in these big setbacks, you know, I go for a walk or um, you know, do 10 push-ups or go to my car and listen to some music, sing, whatever it is, get it out. The more severe it is, the more you'll you'll have to process. The less severe it is, it might be okay. Ah, all right, that stinks. All right, regroup. Let's go. You know, it could be that simple. But if it's more severe, yeah, suppression is not a great strategy. So being able to think of it almost like a sine wave, right? If it bothers you for a long period of time, that wave is longer. You compress that. And if it's more severe, you reduce the the amplitude, so to speak. And um so you're still identifying processing and acting, it just happens more quickly, and you're thrown off your game less severely. That's true resilience.

SPEAKER_00 29:21

That definition of resilience, because I like to think about resilience, and I I talk about this a lot of the time. Uh, you know, in a boat, those those sailors that would be sailing in boats across the ocean, and a storm would come, and they weren't like ignoring the storm. They they dealt with the storm. They wake up the next morning, the storm has pushed them off course. And what do they do? Well, they have to reorient and say, okay, we were going that way. Now we gotta kind of get back that way. There's no like hiding it. There's no like, why did that storm come? They're just like, well, let's deal with it now. Let's get back on track. And it's that simple realignment that I like to think of. But you know, um, when when people we've been kind of dealing with this, but not fully. But, you know, when you talk about money as well, you know, it it we start balancing money with all of this because money has this huge emotional to like um huge, this huge emotional pull on all of us. And you talk about caring for two bottom lines, your profit and purpose. What happens emotionally when one is prioritized at the expense of the other? I got I got some pushback from this last week on a post on LinkedIn where I posted about a family. I posted my family and I said winning isn't always about the hustle and the grind. And I posted a picture of me and my family at the movie theater. And someone's like, well, if my family life is great, but my business is suffering, am I, you know, am I a success? And I was like, you are missing the point of my post. I'm just saying it's about balance. But I want to hear your perspective on all that, man.

SPEAKER_01 30:57

My gut instinct, and I I say this compassionately, I I don't know the person. I wouldn't know unless I actually talked to them. Um, just as a fellow business owner who has been through phases where business is not good. Yeah. Is our personal life really that good? It's hard for any of us to separate when the business is doing poorly, it affects what we can take home. It affects how long we're going to be able to do this, it affects our personal plans, whether it was, you know, getting that house or going on that vacation or getting the kids what they need for like everything flows together, right? So if if the business is not doing well, how good can personal life be? And to your point, if the business is doing well, but the personal life is not, how good is the whole picture, right? And I think they have to somewhat flow together. You know, they go together, they're correlated, they're not necessarily all, you know, one cause the other. They they just float together. And you know, I would say it's easy to only look at revenue and expenses and profit, right? And you have to, because if a business is not solvent, you're not doing, you're you're not gonna go very far. You have to take care of that no matter what. It's that's not optional, right? Because otherwise you just won't be able to, especially if you're in a business where uh my emotionally healthy company clients, they are business owners who have incredible businesses, right? They do great work for their clients, whether it's a product, service, or a service. Um, but the thing that they have in common is that the favorite thing they have about being that business owner, the reason they deal with all the stress and everything else that goes with it, is it gives them a vehicle to take care of their people and their people's families. It gives them an immense sense of purpose. So for that type of person who derives, and and you have somebody like that, how are they gonna show up at home? Very fulfilled, right? All things are raised. But if they only look at a profit, then there's not necessarily room to do the most good with the whole picture, right? Maybe you compromise a value in order to maximize that profit. And if you compromise those values, you might lose some of your best people. You might lose your sense of self a little bit to go like, why did I do that? It doesn't feel good, you know. Uh, you're out of alignment. That doesn't feel good. Uh the flip side is if you only focus on your people, you just won't be in business very long. Yeah. And so how that tends to show up as well, even when the business is, the profit line is still doing pretty well, is that business owner that might give somebody eight chances, right? Because they are that compassionate. And that is something that their people really love, is that we're encouraged to be creative. It's okay to make mistakes as long as we own it and we're good teammates to each other, et cetera. But that one person that has decided not to get out of their own way and they create a little office drama and everything else, but they're given eight chances because somebody's compassionate about their people actually ends up being more damaging to the other people, the culture, and potentially even the bottom line as well. And so this ability to be um, you need to have kindness plus accountability. And when you can, when you can blend those two, uh, that's what allows you to maximize profit and uh, you know, the impact that you make purpose-wise.

SPEAKER_00 34:56

I love that. I wanted to ask you too, because for someone who feels constantly on, what are some practical steps they can take today to regulate their nervous system without overhauling their entire life?

SPEAKER_01 35:12

Yeah. Uh you know, breathing techniques and uh some of these uh approaches are are very quick little resets. Uh moving your body can shift your emotional state. Your emotional state can affect your physical body. They both go both ways, right? Um so one of the things that that you could do is this thing called the mammalian dive reflex. This is gonna sound super simple, like really cold water on the face? Yes. So we're generally in sympathetic, like I said, fight or flight or parasympathetic. Most people are in more sympathetic overdrive. We're just what's next, you know, reactionary. Parasympathetic is, you know, we're when we're sleeping, but it doesn't have to just be when we're sleeping. And if we're not in a deep enough state, even during sleep, we might not get good sleep. But that parasympathetic state is when you um are able to create more of that, you know, moment to moment resilience. So to move us closer to that parasympathetic state, one of the things you can do is actually go to the sink, get cold water, run it real cold, splash it on your face. What it is, it's called the mammalian dive reflex. And it's one of those um when when uh when us uh mammals jump in the water, generally we're going head first. And so the trigeminal nerve has this really uh interesting pattern where it detects this cold water and basically signals the rest of the body to, okay, lower the heart rate variability, you know, you know, relax, don't be stressed, we're gonna be underwater, we need to be able to preserve oxygen, all these things. So that can work for you. Uh, but one of my favorite ones is actually just um a breathing technique that increases heart rate variability and increases uh parasympathetic tone, which is diaphragmatic breathing, which means you breathe into the belly, you feel your belly expand with air, and you breathe in for five to six seconds on the inhale, and then five to six seconds on the exhale. The other thing you can do even quicker than that is just uh like this physiological sigh, which is a normal breath in and just you lengthen the exhale, you move more toward parasympathetic. You do that three times, you do that three times in like, you know, 20, 30 seconds, um it can quickly, you know, you you can do something like that before you're gonna get on stage or uh, you know, go into a big meeting or something like that, and that can make a big difference too.

SPEAKER_00 37:50

This next one too, because why do you think so many entrepreneurs feel lonely even when they're surrounded by people, teams, and success and money, you know? But they don't have that emotional anger.

SPEAKER_03 38:06

We all need to feel understood by somebody, you know? And loneliness doesn't mean you have nobody near you.

SPEAKER_01 38:18

That is alone. Alone is when there's nobody near you. Loneliness is feeling like nobody's with you. So you might have your family who loves you, but you don't really want to come home and share the stress of the things that happen at work because, well, they just want you to be present and enjoy the time you have together. Okay, so you can't talk to your family about it. Something happens at home or even at work, you can't really tell other people at work about it because you're the leader. You know, you can't be stirring the pot. Okay, well, can't talk to that. Before you know it, you realize, like, man, I'm if you if you're not careful as a business leader, right? You're you you can be move the needle quite a bit in the business and not really have a peer group to understand. Um, so sometimes the peer group helps. The other time is just knowing that you've got um, you know, a coach or a therapist or somebody on your side who can really understand where you're coming from and give you objective, clear um advice when you're seeking it on how to handle things. That is vital. And I think when you can be around more people who are striving for the same caliber of life that you want to live, it serves two purposes. One, you won't feel lonely, you'll feel that sense of belonging. But also, we are elevated by our environments or brought down by our environments. And our social environment is a huge component of that.

SPEAKER_02 39:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:57

And so when you're around the right people, it takes care of the loneliness problem. And it also inherently uh starts to change the way we think, act, and feel, because we're around people that um are also moving toward a place that uh that we're striving to be. So for instance, if you're around business owners that only care about the bottom line, you'll become one of those too. If you're around business owners that want to maximize their quality of life and the impact that they make through their business, that's who you'll become too. And so when you find those right people, um, it's magic.

SPEAKER_00 40:28

Yeah, I love that. And I want to ask you one last question. For someone listening out there today who's trying to reset their relationship with money and finance and their their own um, you know, money scripts. It's not it's not an easy one, but what do you think they can do to kind of reset their own, you know, North Star?

SPEAKER_03 40:53

Well, we all change in life when it hurts enough.

SPEAKER_01 41:01

So either there will come a time when it hurts enough that we're willing to re-evaluate everything. Sometimes that happens with a health scare, sometimes that happens with the loss of a loved one, sometimes it happens with some sort of loss that leads to grieving. The other way we change is we actively choose to question the things that we have taken for granted, this lens through which we see the world, and actively ask ourselves, is there a different way? Doesn't mean I have to accept it, but I'm at least going to be curious. Because curiosity is what allows us to not fall into groupthink, to be able to think for ourselves, to be able to uh move into a different way of being. So the money scripts that any of us have have just been accumulated from our life experiences. Uh, we've none of us are born. Like, think about any baby that's born, they don't have a concept of money. Money itself, when you think about it, is simply an intermediary. Money is an exchange of energy. So I provide a service to my clients, I get paid, and then I pay my marketing team with that. Uh, they exchange their energy for that money, and then they take that and exchange the energy, you know, the energy from their CPA, let's say, right? And that that same hundred dollars goes around. It's just an exchange of money. It's just an exchange of energy. So if you think about it that way, uh, okay, well, uh, is if you have a script that money is bad, then okay, well, are there things that I could do with more energy? Yes, it could. Okay, well, energy equals money, that's all. And you change that and you move it forward. Like, what is the life I want to live? And what if I is my assumption about money correct that is in a manner that will let me get to that outcome? If the answer is no, then we change it. But if the other way is true where it's like, okay, well, I just want to accumulate more and more and more, okay, great. There is a point of diminishing returns and in terms of happiness. And however, more money does give us the ability to create more change in a manner that means something to us. So exchange that money that you've accumulated for some type of um investment that creates an emotional return because you know that you're making a difference, you know, whether that's philanthropy or it could be starting another business that disrupts the market in a way that you feel is better for people. You know, it doesn't have to be one or the other. And so you test the assumptions all the way through. You weren't born with the money script. That means you can change it.

SPEAKER_00 43:56

I love that. Where can people go to find out more about you? And what you do?

SPEAKER_01 44:02

Yeah, so probably the easiest thing uh to learn uh more about some of the things that I uh teach the frameworks, um, you can check out my book, The Emotionally Healthy You How to Own Your Past and Love Your Future. Uh, this is on Amazon. Um, and uh, but you can also go to drkarthicromanon.com or any of my socials uh there.