Fierce Encouragement is for high performers who've mastered everything on the outside and are still waiting to feel it on the inside. Host Mark Walker, a performance coach, speaker, and facilitator for executives and leaders, brings useful, sharp tools from mindset work, meditation, and hard-earned experience, so you can stop grinding against yourself and start leading from within. Real stories. No fluff. Just the clarity you've been avoiding.
You can be crushing it in meetings, saying the right things, and still feel that low static under the surface. That’s the moment we’re talking about today the tight chest, the shallow breath, the jaw that won’t unclench, the buzz behind the eyes that you’ve started calling “normal.” I made Fierce Encouragement for the people who carry a lot: leaders, parents, builders, and the ones everyone counts on. If you’ve been running on an empty tank while looking totally fine, you’re not alone.
We dig into a core idea I call “tuning the instrument” because you are the instrument you play every day, and most of us were never taught how to tune ourselves before we perform. We explore why pushing harder and thinking harder often fails, and why the thing you’re most proud of like discipline, grit, or high performance can sometimes become the very thing that keeps you disconnected. We also talk about how self-estrangement can masquerade as strength, and why real clarity often starts in the body with physical self-awareness, not another productivity plan.
You’ll leave with one small, real tool you can try tonight: move your phone out of your bedroom for a night, a week, or even longer and notice what shifts in your sleep, your mornings, and your baseline stress. If you want extra credit, I share a simple sleep mask tweak that has helped me more than almost anything. If this helps, subscribe, share it with someone who carries a lot, and leave a review so more people can find the encouragement.
the ending plug for pause that matters on Sept 17, 2026.
For leaders who run on adrenaline. The Pause That Matters is a free live workshop on trading reaction for clarity. Seats are limited, and it fills from this list first. Get on the list: Click Here
Hey there. This is Fierce Encouragement. My name is Mark Walker. So I created this show for people who end up carrying a lot. Leaders, parents, builders, and the people everyone else leans on. So you might perform really well, you hold it together really well, but somewhere in between or somewhere in there, you've been running on an empty tank for a while, maybe quietly and maybe without telling anyone. So every episode, I try to give you one real tool, one thing you can put into play today. It's not about hype or hacks, and it really isn't about performing better or getting into that ideal state. I just want to come from a place of truth and just a push from somebody who is in your corner. So let's get into it.
You know this feeling, more than likely. Maybe you're in a meeting. Maybe you're even saying the right things. And on the outside, you look completely fine. Again, on the outside, you're looking good, you're rocking it. Life is going well. But underneath it somewhere, something is off. It could be that low hum, um, a static that you've learned to even just talk over or operate through. I've been there working as an IT product owner and working in a corporate IT environment. It felt like everything was holding me back. And honestly, my energy, my mindset, and all of the ways I approached life were really wobbly. And listen, this is what I've come not just to believe, but to feel and to practice and see others practice as I've been a coach for these past few years. Most of us have never once stopped and slowed down or even paid attention to tune the instrument we play every single day. And that instrument is you. This week, well, this is kind of the first week I wanted to talk about what I'm working on, what I really deeply care about, what I've kind of been trying and building and bringing to you. I call this kind of first week, and this is just a sneak peek inside the first week, but I call this tuning
the instrument. Tuning the instrument, which is you. So before we start to fix anything or make to-do lists, or optimize our workouts, or I don't know, a hundred other things that you can probably speak to in your own journey. But before we optimize or push or plan, we slow down and remember to tune. So today I just wanted to share this with you and give you one small thing to practice with tonight. Not 10 things, just one thing to focus on. So you are the instrument, and no one taught you how to tune it, more than likely. A musician tunes their instrument before they play. You probably are familiar with the orchestra and that sound, that cacophony sound that everybody's tuning their instrument at once. But nobody really sits down to an out-of-tune piano. Nobody picks up a guitar with out-of-tune strings and blames their hands for striking the wrong notes. But this is what we do in our day. We get mad at ourselves. Why can't we execute? Why can't we get better at that thing that's bothering us? We really like walk on stage to perform cold every day, maybe for years. And then we start to wonder why the tuning is off or the sound is weird. That out-of-tune has a feel. And I've seen this with myself, I've seen it in hundreds of clients. It comes through as a tightness in the chest sometimes, maybe a shallow breath, maybe not like feeling down into your belly. Also, at least for me, it's that jaw that won't unclench or relax. And even that buzz or that hum behind the eyes, more than likely you know it, and you might just be calling it normal now. Now, I've met so many wonderful people through the years. And well, there's a few that stand out when I think about this. But there's one in particular, someone who was really high functioning, that came into coaching and kind of resisted that anything was wrong. But behind it, they were running on some of that static and that low hum. What looked good on the outside, when they started talking about it in a deep way, they didn't feel good. Like their body, their instrument was imbalanced and out of tune. And this is an honest truth, something that I've noticed in my life and others. It costs us something. It costs us something not to be tuned up. And when we're trying to make those sharp uh decisions from uh an untuned instrument or a broken instrument, it works sometimes. We can play, but then it eventually you'll find that you are out of tune with the orchestra or that your instrument is just way off. It really works until it doesn't.
And this is a really hard part to say out loud and even to hear myself say because it kind of strikes down at my core work. The thing that we might be most excited about and proud of in ourselves might be the exact thing that is keeping us disconnected in a way. Now hear me out. We treat our great skill or our organizational skill, we treat that as strength, getting clear. We might even see the ability to perform when we're hurt or exhausted as a badge of honor. We keep pushing through that uh hungry part of us and keep going. We even just keep driving forward when the tank feels empty or when it is empty. And again, this is something that's common in our culture, especially in our work culture. We drive on when we're exhausted and kind of disconnected from ourselves. Dr. Gabor Mate, uh, one of my favorite books that I read this past year, and it's called The Myth of Normal, but he talked about how self-estrangement can show up looking like a strength. This ability to keep running, keep pushing forward, keep performing when we're depleted with no awareness that we need to slow down and pause. Sit with that. Where are you kind of in front of your skis? Where are you running when you might need to slow down and pause? And sometimes we can get in the intellect or the thinking mind. But when we sit with it and feel our way into the body, feel our instrument and how it's vibrating, this strength can even be a symptom to some bigger issues. Uh, that static you learned to talk over or work through is literally your instrument trying to tell you that it's out of tune. And we can get really, really good at ignoring it or sweeping it to the side.
So the tuning starts in the body. It really does. It starts in the body, especially for people that may have been out of tune for weeks, months, or even years. So, how do we tune? It isn't by thinking harder. It isn't through to-do lists, it isn't through productivity apps. Most of us try to think our way to clarity. We try to think our way towards it. And this does not work because I don't think the problem is in our thoughts all the time. Of course, we can argue there, but I'm talking about from a gentle clarity of what you really want. I think it starts in the body. Bessel van der Kolk, who wrote The Body Keeps the Score, they put it really plainly. It's another wonderful book, big one, but a great one. They said this physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past. The first step. This is before insight, this is before the to-do list, this is before productivity hacks. This is before any change, really. We need to feel first. And it's smaller than you might think or even consider. We just notice one sensation in our body. We slow down, pause, and tap into that sensation. And then we just kind of have that stream of consciousness. We notice what happens next and next. And this is the important part. We're not fixing anything. That's kind of going back into thinking mind. We don't try to fix anything or everything. We're just letting ourselves feel it in that moment. And really, if you haven't practiced this, this is the whole beginning. We do it, you do it in small little ways, and you do it daily. Even seven days of this in small little beats helps us overcome that idea we need to have that perfect hour once a week. So consistency over quality or even quantity of time, that's the most important thing. We do it small, we do it daily. And just like a garage full of tools with all the best tools. Well, if we never go out to that garage and pick up a tool and go start building with it, it isn't practice. It's a bunch of theory. The tools are theory sitting in the garage. The practice is how we actively build that, how we actively tune our instrument.
So here's a challenge for you tonight if you're up for it. One thing that you can practice move your phone out of your bedroom. Seriously. I know maybe a lot of people gulped and said, no way. But try it for a night or two or a week. Experiment with it. Notice how it helps you tune your own instrument and keep your morning or your evening in tune. So just throw it into the kitchen, uh, let it charge overnight. Um, maybe put out in the hallway, but just get it away from that arm's reach when you wake up in the morning. Again, full disclosure, this is a challenge I've been going through. And well, it's hard, but it's also worth it. Why? Well, I think that the bedroom and our sleeping area is where we're supposed to tune down half step or relax a little bit. And more than likely, you've been letting that whole warped fun house mirror uh phone light just follow you into the bedroom and follow you uh into sleep. Because even when we sit down the phone, that mind is still chewing on what we fed it right before we went to sleep or tried to go to sleep. But yeah, give it a night, give it a week, see what your body does without that uh fake uh glow next to your head all night.
And if you wanted to get some extra credit here to kind of boost your sleep, one thing, one cheap thing that I've purchased over the last few years that has done more for my sleep than anything, I think, is a sleep mask. Yeah, grab yourself a sleep mask, give it a shot, get that phone out of the room, and see what it does to help you tune up your instrument as you go through your days and week.
You are not broken. And I really want you to hear that. You are not broken. You're just out of tune. And that you and me and everyone can start to fix tonight. So I will see you next time on Fiercer Encouragement. Thanks for being here. I hope you get something out of this. Let me know how it lands. And of course, have a great day, a great evening, wherever you're at. Be well.
