Confidence Under Pressure: The Skill Most People Never Train

Ep 140. In a stressful life, confidence can feel like a fragile commodity. When stress, fear, and anxiety become frequent visitors in our personal world, our sense of certainty and control can disappear quickly. The human nervous system is constantly scanning the environment for signals of safety or threat. Every moment, our internal state responds to cues from the outside world, telling us whether we are secure or at risk.

Because of this, confidence is not simply a personality trait—it is often the result of nervous system regulation and emotional resilience.

This is where self-regulation skills become essential. Self-regulation allows us to navigate both high-stress situations and everyday experiences with greater clarity, composure, and control. When we learn how to manage our breathing, focus our attention, and regulate emotional responses, we create the internal conditions necessary for better decision-making, stronger relationships, and higher-quality experiences in life.

But developing self-regulation is not as simple as telling ourselves, “Next time I feel anxious, I’ll just breathe and everything will be fine.” Real skill development does not happen through wishful thinking.

It happens through practice.

Just like riding a bicycle, learning a new language, swimming, or mastering a piece of software, emotional regulation requires repetition and training. Over time, deliberate practice builds familiarity within the nervous system. What once felt overwhelming begins to feel manageable. What once caused hesitation or avoidance begins to feel like a challenge we can face with composure.

This process is known as building conscious competence. Through repeated exposure and intentional practice, the mind and body begin to understand how to respond effectively under pressure.

Eventually, something powerful happens: confidence begins to emerge naturally.

When we have practiced self-regulation during low-stakes moments—through breathing techniques, awareness training, and emotional control—our nervous system becomes prepared for higher-stakes situations. Stressful environments that once caused fear, anxiety, or avoidance begin to feel more navigable.

Over time, the skills become second nature.

We begin to walk into situations that once triggered stress with greater ease and clarity. Confidence is no longer something we hope for—it becomes something we carry with us, built through experience and practice.

The path is simple, though not always easy:
 Practice the skill until the skill becomes who you are.

Take care. Walk well.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Welcome back, folks, to episode 140 of the Running Man Self-Regulation Skills Project podcast with me, your host, Dr. Armando Dominguez, PhD in health psychology, licensed professional counselor, and an adjunct professor at a local community college. And what we're going to be discussing today is self-regulation skills and what that looks like. What is self-regulation skill building look like? And what does the development look like as you're doing it? And when do you know that you can use self-regulation skills? Often people get stuck in the idea of, oh yeah, I gotta breathe, I've got to change my mind to do this and that. And fact of the matter is when it stays at that level, the skills don't work for you. So what we're going to do today, we're going to do an immersion into what it looks like to skill build self-regulation skills. They're not all equal, not all the same, and they all apply differently at different times. And it's not a complexity thing, but more so knowing what it is that you need and how to apply it. And we're going to touch upon that today. To kick this discussion off, uh I want to start with self-regulation skills and what do we mean by self-regulation? Self-regulation, without using the term self-control or controlling self, often um we look at what it is that's happening to me during a stressful event. That could be elevated heart rate, breathing change, that sense of anxiety, panic, nervousness, or feelings like people are looking at me. And uh, those are all things that are symptoms of anxiety going up. And often sometimes you hear people talking about feeling of paranoid, like people are looking at you. That's not paranoia, that's actual uh information overload, wherever you're trying to pick up, where there's a sense of that doesn't look safe to me within your immediate external environment. And this is where we start looking at, well, how can I stop this discomfort? This is what we start figuring out later that I stressed out and I made decisions under duress, under stress, and I felt like people were looking at me. I felt very socially insecure. I felt what people call social anxiety in the colloquium, not necessarily clinical level, but at the same time, these are the things that uh are reported where I feel uncomfortable out and about because there's a sense of vulnerability. Some people don't like to say that word when they're out and about, because then that makes them feel like I can't go out and about because that means I'm always vulnerable if I'm always anxious or worried or panicky. And that's not necessarily the case. It doesn't mean it doesn't exist out there, but we tend to jump to the extreme and tend to believe that thought process whenever we're experiencing that. This is where we start reaching for well, what do I do? And what am I gonna accomplish by not being able to go out and get my own groceries and stuff? Well, starvation maybe, and I'm saying that as a joke. But uh fact of the matter is there's a lot of living that doesn't occur because people stress or they're already anticipating. And the anticipatory fear is exaggerated that something's gonna be a lot worse than what it actually is. The experience rarely is to the degree that our mind will tend to paint it for us, and uh, we are visual creatures, so whenever we make that, there's a compelling quality, not unlike the lemon that we think about that we ate or saw somebody biting into many years ago that still makes us salivate today. There's a compelling quality that creates physical change. In this case, it's adrenaline, um, that makes us feel like we're in that panic state and our heart rate goes up and we feel a great degree of discomfort, because chances are we're probably sitting there versus walking when we're experiencing this. So, therefore, it becomes a little more exacerbated as far as that pressured quality, the blood pressure going up, the breathing changing, and the panicky feelings. So these are the things that we're going to be trying to regulate. So the next part of this discussion starts with, well, what do I do? How do I mitigate these symptoms of discomfort? Well, the first thing that most people go to whenever they complain about, well, these things don't work for me, and I'm starting from the complaint process because I'm going to validate these tools because I've not only used them myself for well over 30 years, but I've also taught them clinically for the last 16 years, and people have gotten really great results. And the only people these tools do not work for are the people that don't use them. And I'm not doing a clinical class here, but I'm showing you what skill building looks like whenever you're getting self-regulatory skills, and we can all pay it lip service and say, Well, I learned how to meditate, I'm doing mindfulness, I do the breathing. If it's not working, I still'm still anxious. I'm just an anxious person. Well, there's a number of things that are going wrong there. And one is that we're the tone uh that I'm speaking with, we're believing what it is that we're saying, and there's a quality of repetition, so there's some auto-suggestion, self-hypnosis, as it were, um, that is being applied to myself by myself, and I'm limiting my ability to gain a little faith in the process, and I'm not asking you to go on faith. I'm not, in that sense, somebody that encourages people to believe, or I'm not trying to get people to believe what I say. I don't convert. I give people tools and tell them work with this. Don't believe what I say, try this. Tell me what that works like, tell me what it looks like, and then we'll fix it, we'll tweak it, and we'll make it work. Because these tools are physiological. That means they're across the broad spectrum of human, they're pretty effective. And the only way they don't work is if you don't do them. The only way that they don't work is if you get yourself riled up in the sense that you get embarrassed that you're having to do this. And what's really cool is that the two tools I teach for self-regulation are ninja. Nobody sees you doing them, and nobody knows you're doing them. You could be doing them out in public in a bus stop, sitting next to people, and people wouldn't notice the difference that if you were doing or not doing these tools. That's how ninja they are. The only way they'll know you're doing this is if you tell them. So, on to the skill building. So, as far as building the skill of self-regulatory um skills is going to be this. First is being mindful and aware of what it is you're trying to work with. If you're having panicky and anxiety feelings, often, whenever we have that occur, we have to realize that anxiety is a reflex. Now, talking about clinical anxiety, that brought on by thought, that is hijacking the response and exacerbating our fear and fight-flight response and making it worse in many cases. Not intentionally, we don't do it on purpose, but our very first natural tendency is to look for the stick in the environment before we look for the carrot, because if you know where the stick is, you can avoid it. You know where the carrot is, but you forego looking for the stick. While you're eating, someone's gonna smack you with it. And well, you know, pain hurts. We don't want to have that. So as far as development of skill, let's shove off with this. The first thing that we're going to do is be aware of what it is that I am regulating. Am I having a tension response wherever I get tense physically? Am I noting my breath as I've as I'm going through stress? Am I inhaling gasp, this sort of thing, and I'm holding my breath because that pressures you and that gives you that sense of I can't breathe. I'm not breathing, but not thinking it yet, but rather feeling it, and then the think comes up after the fact. And I guess I did say think versus thought because it is an active process I'm describing. And that's where we start getting that sense of freeze, because to suspend breath means you're and if you're not moving, you're not in the survival sense able to run the risk of maybe making it into the next moment. So recognition of the stress, sometimes the muscle tension, suspension of breath, structure. Am I tightening up or am I closing off? Am I moving more into what looks like a shelled up or fetal position standing? Do I feel that tail tucked? Do I feel my shoulder shoulders rolling forward? Is my chin sticking out? And are my arms moving towards my center? Or am I crossing my arms and legs while I'm sitting? And am I rocking forward as is to make myself a smaller target, so to speak? If I were sitting across the table from a tiger, for instance, you would have to make yourself small and you're covering all your center line, all your vitals where your organs, your liver, spleen, and your throat and all that, uh, from top to bottom is right in front and easily accessible whenever you're relaxed and open versus tensed up and shelled up, waiting for impact. Now I said that with that emphasis and a little bit of speed on purpose, because often this is the part that's missed. We don't pay attention not only to our internal speak, but also the tone and cadence at which we speak to ourselves in our mind. We tend to have that sense of hurry up, hurry up. And not unlike the military military, I remember whenever we were learning, uh, whenever I was on basic training, I still say this once in a while in my own mind. Whenever I am a her hurry, safety dust cover moving. Whenever we used to run with an M16, we have to make sure dust cover is closed so that way you don't get any dirt in the chamber, and also you don't have any jams unnecessary. You'd have your gun on safety, so that way if you do fall, you don't automatically shoot your neighbor that's your buddy next to you. And also you move. Once you get those two checks automatically worked in in your mind, you start doing it with your body. Once you do that with your body, then you start moving and it's second nature, and it's no longer having to yell safety dust cover moving. Now it's doing safety dust cover protocol and move. And this is what skill building is like. We have to repeat it. And sometimes the urgency of which we speak to ourselves tends to be with a sense of urgency and hurry when it comes to dealing with anxiety because often stress, often fear, anxiety, and shock are things that we are not starting within our body, but starts in our immediate external environment. And once we recognize that, we recognize that the environment became stressful. Not that it became dangerous, could have been sudden, it could have been novel, could have been something flying across your eyesight or your line of sight in the dark with that, oh, it's a bat. And we have natural tendencies to shirk and sense of fear, especially if we don't like bugs and little animals at night and things that are creepy, crawly, and fuzzy that might resemble a spider. Notice I said Mike, because uh we tend to project what we expect and we tend to predict what it is that's occurring to us, and we name and label it within fractions of a moment, mind you. And we tend to make sure that we avert such circumstances and potential consequences based on our past experience. So there's a whole lot going on. But w wondering what to do next is not what you need to do if you want to self-regulate appropriately, which means you have to build skill to where it becomes second nature. And that means practice and repetition. Recognition of what symptoms you're dealing with, or you're dealing with dealing with an immediate physical uh threat that you have to get up. And let's say you're sitting uh out in a park and all of a sudden there's a big animal moving towards you, even though maybe it's not unfriendly, but just the fact that it's loping towards you really fast can cause you to have a startle because you don't know. There is a quality of the unknown that can be very scary, and the unknowns are the problems. The I don't know's, the what-ifs, the I don't know if this dog is friendly. Is he gonna bite me? And the dog just maybe want to go up and run to you, but you may not have a liking for animals of that size or just dogs in particular, and that's not a bad thing. We have preferences, but all of those things are part of our filter that we experience our world through moment to moment. So recognition and being aware of these things means that you have to be mindful of yourself. You don't have to keep those at the forefront of the mind because you've practiced your your predilections and your preferences since you were very young. You've built those, and those aren't necessarily personality, but those things are part of how we, as a person, move through our world. So we will move towards things that are noisy. We like those things. Some of us like more chaos, some like a little quiet, some really like to not people a whole lot, only come out when they have to. And uh, I understand that too, but that's kind of a nervous system uh predilection, once again, a preference uh that that we develop over time based on experience. Now, the next thing, how do I build self-regulation skills? What does that look like? Well, here we're gonna start on that next. And I did mention repetition, and I do teach uh addiction science, I teach a substance abuse course load at the community college that I teach at. I'm gonna be teaching second semester here soon, and going over addicted family counseling theories was last semester. That was wonderful. But uh when we deal with the human stress model, the the running man model that I'm teaching from for this podcast for now almost two and a half years, uh three years actually, uh, here this uh July, um what we're looking at is how the body responds to stress generally and being aware of the symptomology of stress, not just how it looks in me, but also what it looks like in the person that I'm interacting with out there. So it's a signs and symptoms model. And here is the really important part. To be able to use that information, you have to practice recognizing. To be able to use that information to benefit you, you have to practice recognizing the symptomology of how I would repet report a symptom to a doctor. I'm having a headache, have the sweats, for instance, and I have diarrhea. That's probably the ugliest one. But fact of the matter is when we have such things, we report those to the doctor. That's a symptom. The signs are the things that I read in my external environment by virtue of my ears, my eyes, smell, taste, touch, all of those things are symptoms that I can palpate, not unlike a pulse, a pulse, uh, that we keep our hand on as far as the social environment that may cause me stress. So very important stuff. So what we do when we're doing skill building is repetition. And the reason I mention addiction science is that many things that we become addicted to, whether they be substances or whether it be behavioral, uh, such as, you know, like gambling and porn and shopping and all those things that become problematic that can cost us our livelihoods and even our homes and freedom. Um, these are things that haven't been done just once and all of a sudden you lose everything. Can you lose everything in one gambling episode? Absolutely you can. But that is after a long time of getting that dopamine to override our best reasoning wherever it motivates us to repeat that behavior. Anandamide rides along with dopamine, and that has to do more with the bliss that occurs while we're getting the dopamine high that reminds us, oh, you did that, that felt good, do this again. And being aware of those things academically helps us develop a plan as to how to manage myself under stress. So here's going to be the repetition part. Addiction is repetition. Football, riding a bike, learning how to kick and punch, all of those you do not get, and you're at top speed, top form at expert level, even what we would call world class level, with the first repetition. It doesn't happen with that one. There has to be a lot of ones, individual pieces that over time you string those together called practice and repetition that builds skill over time. And this is getting into the the competence model, the learning model that says that whenever we're unconscious and incompetent, that means I have no skill, and it's not being disrespectful, but I'm unaware. That means it doesn't even exist in my world, my mind, uh, and my consciousness, so to speak. And then whenever I become aware of, oh, that's neat. I remember playing Dungeons and Dragons, it came into my awareness that I had no skill. Years later, I was a dungeon master and I was running campaigns all the time for about six years throughout my junior high and high school years, and it was just kind of part of what I did. And uh can't say I became very good at it, but it entered my awareness, and at the very end of the exit, I had become unconsciously competent, meaning a level of mastery, so to speak, and um that's the direction we go with skill building. And some of us don't like to work on self-regulation because it makes us feel like somehow that there's presupposed idea that there's something wrong with me. I'm broken, I'm anxious, I'm worried, I'm depressed, I'm angry, that's me. Well, no, that's not you. Your experience is not what defines you. You define who it is that you are as far as identity goes. But the stressors that we experience, if they're chronic enough, we tend to associate ourselves with that and somehow say that that's my fault. And in some cases, if you're bringing trouble to yourself, that's a decision-making process, but we can even effectively uh work on mitigating the negative choices that we make by learning how to manage the stress that we're in, or ambient stress, external environment, ambient stress, internal. When we learn how to manage that and regulate to where we have a sense of comfiness, so to speak, that means I have confidence in my skill and I have confidence in my ability to manage my stress. So therefore, that comfort level goes up. And this isn't the comfort that people talk about you shouldn't be comfortable because they you know, growth that's business talk. We're not doing that. We're learning how to manage what it is that is our stress within us so that we can manage and have higher quality of life in great greater quantities. And that's what the goal is of self-regulation. Getting to the way we're supposed to be, relaxed, healthy, happy, sexy, enjoyable, comical, and being able to connect with people. That's what you want. Those are all the realms and ranges of what we do in our own unique ways, and we want to reiterate this is a practice thing. You have to practice being happy, yes. Do you have to practice not being depressed? Yes. Do you have to practice not being anxious? Yes. Well, how do you do that? This is the next part of the how-to, and we're stepping into it right now. First off, with recognizing stress and anxiety and anger, that they all have this component of uh uh elevated heart rate and also breathing change that's like exercise, sitting down, and also tension in the body, and reflective uh thought that manages to look like the stress states that we're in, and knowing that it starts in our body way before it ever gets to our mind at about twelve hundred milliseconds or what we call 1.2 seconds is where our conscious mind picks it up and starts making sense and narrative about, and now I'm telling myself a story that is believable to me because I have all the emotions that's my evidence, and I like what I think, and I trust me. So we tend to like what we think, and therefore we give ourselves authority and give ourselves sway. So, how do I practice self-regulation skills? One of the first things is learning how to manage breath. There are two tools that I teach. One is the square breath, it's known as the box breath. If you go on Google, look up box breath, it is uh a cycle of inhale count of four, hold count of four, breathe out for a count of four, and then hold again for a count of four. And that is probably the most effective tool that I've been using within the last 16 years, once again, teaching people that have been getting off cocaine, getting off of uh anxiety meds, benzodiazepines uh in particular, and graduating off of those safely under doctor's care to make sure that um they don't go into any kind of withdrawal and learning how to deal with their stress without having to reach for a pill necessarily. Now, I'm not saying that psychiatry isn't important. It is. There are some people that need those things. I have no problem with that. It's not the end all be all, but part of the the cure for oneself is to be able to learn how to manage consciously what's going on and realize that you can manage it and that you don't necessarily have to run around with the level of stress you have. But the four count breath, the box breath, the square breath, they have little diagrams. It's not four seconds hold and not four seconds inhale. It's your internal count of four. Inhale, one, two, three, four, hold. One, two, three, four, let it go. One, two, three, four, hold again. One, two, three, four. Test this. Don't trust what I say, do it. And when I mean do it, get yourself a stopwatch, get yourself a digital uh stopwatch that that you can look at the readout, do it for a minimum of 15 seconds. And when I say just do it, I would tell you to do something before you do that. And that's take your pulse. Literally just turn your wrist over, take your pulse for 15 seconds, multiply that times four, and let's say you get a 20 and it's about 80. You will, on the average, get a drop of heart rate or about six to fourteen beats per minute, on the average, by my experience and and by the studies as well. And uh, this is an important thing. That means that our heart is no longer racing as much as it was. It doesn't mean it's gonna bottom you out, but it will definitely give you a sense of relief in the immediate moment. Now, whenever you inhale, you don't hold it under pressure. It's not inhale, counter four. No, it's not pressured because if you do any kind of gasping or deep breathing, you're doing wrong. Wrong in the sense that you're activating your sympathetic nervous system, and that is only right for survival speed, wake up, run, fight, flee, that sort of thing. And that has its place. Deep breathing works wonderfully when you already set, and your setting is in that you're on the recliner, you're already relaxed, you have your doors closed, you're nice and safe, you have some music. Deep breathing, then it's very, very calming. But you have to have that set up first. So to be able to do this frequently enough, the forecast breath, do it wherever you're at, standing, seated, driving. It will not put you to sleep. It is a safe tool. You don't have to tell your neighbor if that uh makes you feel like your self image is unsafe in their hands. Don't tell them you're doing it, just do it. But whenever you're doing it, do it in the commercials between the Shows that you watch during the advertisements, and then pay attention to how much more you get out of the shows that you're watching because your heart rate is down, your anxiety is down, and you tend to be a little more well-focused without having to work hard at focusing. You don't have to tell yourself to focus. You will just have that ability, that bandwidth to be able to attend, pay attention without paying attention. You're already paying attention to what it is that you want to versus all the stressful things that could cause you to freak out in the environment. Your attention is always on. It's not something that you turn on, it's on. As soon as we're awake, attention is there. And that means energy is there, blood flow, and blood sugar being burnt while we're attending to things. So not anything you have to work at. When we say that, that means someone wants us to be more focused. And a lot of times we're dealing with external environmental factors that detract from the focus because whatever it is I'm looking at, it's not a survival orientation. If I'm looking at that and there's a fight going on in the background. So just to use that as an idea, uh, the competing need for attention is determined by environmental stress external, environmental stress internal, and also what it is that I need to do as far as my goal. What do I want to look at? Do I want to enjoy myself or do I have to do something such as job? So, next part. Uh, the next tool that I want to show you is something that Andrew Huberman and the Huberman Podcast came up with. And um, well, he found it. And uh he led it out to the world, so to speak, and it's probably one of the more effective tools as well, and that's the double sniff technique. These actually help you deal with the elevation of stress as it's occurring. And this, if you've ever run before, I used to run a lot when I was in my early 20s. And whenever you're breathing, your body naturally does this where you're inhaling, you and you do two quick sniffs, and you're not consciously doing your body resets. Whenever the sympathetic tone in the body goes up, the body naturally wants to knock the tone down a little bit and makes you parasympathetic. It helps you cool off, so to speak. Now these tools don't take much time at all. And I did talk about skill building. What's that look like? Well, we have to not do them just once. Practice them. Do them whenever it's not stressful. And if you remember to do them when it is stressful, when you're just learning this, remind yourself to do this. The only way we get gain skill is through repetition. Repetition, they say, builds reflex. I would say more accurately, build second nature. Reflex is first nature, and that's within our nervous system. And it this becomes part of our nervous system response. We wire it in by virtue of repetition and practice. Now, another thing that we can use, that's tool one, tool two, is the opportunities when we're driving, when we're seated, when we're watching TV, even when we're seated at our desk or doing something actively, or you have just a moment wherever you're sitting still, you could be riding on an elevator, do your breathing then. Allow yourself to environmentally immerse yourself in your environment and do these methods while you're in it, when it's low stakes. To gain skill at anything therapeutic, even whenever you're looking at talk therapy in a clinic, you have to talk about it first. You have to get an idea. Then you have to do what they call the homework. You have to go and practice this. Homework isn't just done for an hour and then you go and put your homework up and go eat dinner, go to sleep, and go back to class. It's not like that. Your classroom is every day and it's moment to moment. And whenever there's a potential for stress, no matter what, you have to understand that for you to use a skill, you have to be aware of it and know that skill. And um that means you have the requisite knowledge to make it happen. But to really make it work, you have to allow your body to do things naturally to where you no longer have to think about it, where you've gained conscious competence, I'm aware of it, to the point of unconscious competence, wherever it is now what we would call second nature. Second nature means you don't have to think about it. When things become that natural, they deploy fast. When they become that natural, we also don't have to think a whole lot about it. It just kind of happens. And whenever stress comes up, we recognize the symptom. Now we start dealing with it as it's occurring. So repetition throughout your life, in your life, and you have to immerse yourself in your life like you usually do, but bring these tools along because they do not detract or take away. But practice these things low stakes, and when things become tense or high stakes, they will be there for you and they will work for you. And I won't say perfectly without fail because things do occur and uh they tend to change, and chaos is what it is, but we will have tools and adaptability that otherwise we wouldn't have been able to walk into. And you may realize that over time you're able to tolerate being out in the grocery store when there's a lot of people during a holiday, and you just want to go in there and get your checks mixed or whatever, but yet everyone's wanted to go to the barbecue and do this and that, and they're like hyper focusing and hurrying and noisy, and those things don't throw you off as much, or they don't throw you off at all. Not that you're not aware, but you have a greater degree of safety and comfort, and also that is born from confidence in what it is that you know at the physical body's energy level, in the sense that neurologically you're trained, but you have a sense of I can do this, but you're not having to tell yourself, you don't have to pep talk yourself to do it. You will feel competent, you will have a sense of confidence and also comfort. Comfort arises from the competence that gives you the confidence in what it is that you know and do, which means I feel safe and I have recourse, I have a way to get away from stress, I know what to do, I know how to do, and it's gonna come up and it'll be okay. And if you have to get out of there because things do get dangerous, well, you can always leave if you can. And if you know that there are some limitations there, being aware of that's important, and you can make whatever concessions you need to to accommodate those needs. And once again, what does skill building look like? Like I said, it's something that we do every day a little bit at a time. Don't just leave it for whenever, uh, okay, when I'm not busy. Now you might want to schedule some time initially so you can start getting into the habit of it, then you realize that's not an another habit that you're layering upon bad habits, upon good habits, upon other things. And it's not going to take time away from what you do. These things occur. Realize that when you're doing the things that you do, even when you're stressing out, and your breathing is what we're working with, and you're and that thinking is something that you do throughout as well. And what we want to do is to intend and think about the things that we want as outcomes versus worrying about those things that are going to be the worst case scenario and not feeding into that. By self-regulating, we limit the amount of negative thought that can actually create a sense of expectation because we tend to believe what we tell ourselves, and often what we tell ourselves isn't of the best nature when our state is uncomfortable. Now, this is going to be a part one of a number of let me show you how to self-regulate, and this is one of the how-to's that we're going to do today for the sake of reiterating how to develop skills. I'm going to show you that. And these skills are things that you'll be able to use and be able to benefit others if you share them. Now, I'm going to go and cut this short and tell you thank you for listening today on this lovely Saturday morning. And I want to tell you that my self-regulation skills have been tested over a long period of time. Not just myself, and it's not just me patting myself on the back, but many of the people with whom I have worked with, trained with, and actually counseled over time, uh have always said, you know what, I wasn't aware of this. They read about it, but they weren't aware in the sense that their body was aware. They were cognitively aware. But when they started putting it to work, they were like, wow, this is different. It's a changer. And a game changer it is. And that is my word telling you by based on my experience, I use these tools every day as well, that they're useful to you. Make use of them. Give them away. Share this with people. It's not copyrighted that, oh, I learned from here, therefore I can't talk about it. It's not like that. Give it away. Share it with people. Teach your kiddos. It's fun to teach your kiddos when they're young because that way when they get to the stresses of their life, they will automatically do those things. And even though it was a game, they will realize that it is inherent within them and they will manage stress better. Teach them, model that. The earlier we start, the better. But it doesn't mean the older you are, you can't use these. I've taught these to people in their 80s, and it works really well. So, with that, once again, I want to tell you thank you for passing this time with me today. And certainly please like, subscribe, and share on YouTube. I'd love to have you uh grow my YouTube channel and please share this podcast with people that you think could benefit and appreciate your time. Certainly take care, regulate well, build some skill, practice a little bit. Don't worry, it won't take time away. If anything, it'll give you higher returns on your quality time. Take care, walk well.