Your Nervous System Is Running the Show with Tiffany Toombs

What if the thing holding you back… isn’t your strategy, your discipline, or your motivation?

What if it’s your nervous system?

In this episode of Joy Unfiltered, Rachel sits down with global expert Tiffany Toombs to unpack the real reason so many high-achieving women feel stuck, overwhelmed, or caught in cycles they can’t seem to break.

This isn’t surface-level self-help. This is a deep, grounded look at how your body, brain, and past experiences shape your reality—and what you can actually do about it.

Inside this conversation, you’ll learn:

•  Why 70–80% of your day may be spent in survival mode 
•  How your nervous system confuses emails with actual danger 
•  The real reason behind self-sabotage (and why it’s not your fault) 
•  How limiting beliefs are formed—and why they feel so real 
•  3 simple, science-backed exercises to regulate your nervous system 
•  How to move from reactive living to intentional decision-making 

This episode will help you stop trying to “fix” yourself…
 and start understanding yourself in a way that changes everything.

Because joy, clarity, and growth don’t come from pushing harder.
 They come from feeling safe enough to expand.

🔑 KEY TAKEAWAYS

•  Your nervous system is designed to protect you, not grow you 
•  Self-sabotage is a safety mechanism, not a character flaw 
•  Most limiting beliefs were formed before age 7 
•  Chronic stress fuels both mental and physical health issues 
•  Regulation is a practice, not a one-time fix 
•  Safety is the foundation for growth, clarity, and joy 

Connect with Tiffany:

LinkedIn

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Welcome to Joy Unfiltered. I'm Rachel, and this is a podcast about joy. Not the shiny performative kind. Not the everything happens for a reason kind. This is joy as a strategy. A way to stay steady when life feels loud. A way to stay human when things are hard. A way to lead, love, and live without burning out or checking out. Some episodes will be just me. Some will be honest conversations with people who have lived their way into a deeper, truer joy. No fixing, no bypassing, just real stories, real tools, and room to breathe. Let's get into it. Welcome to or welcome back to Joy Unfiltered. This is Rachel, your host, and I have a really amazing guest with me today. So I'm just gonna get into introducing her. I have with me Tiffany Toomes. She is a global expert in rewiring the unconscious mind and unlocking human potential. Because most of us, most of what's holding us back isn't out there, but it is inside of us. So with over 20 years of experience, she has helped people around the world break patterns, shift their thinking, and step into a bigger, more aligned life. She is the author of Stop Being a Selfish Bitch, co-host of the Cycle Breaker Show, and has been featured in Entrepreneur Forbes and many more. What I love most about her work is this it's not about fixing yourself, it's about understanding yourself and creating a life that actually feels good to live. That's right. Yeah, so welcome, Tiffany, to Joy Unfiltered. So just always like to start with a little bit of background. So how did you get to all of the things that you are doing today?

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Yeah, so I started out in the fitness industry. Um I was obsessed with like all things fitness from the time that I can remember, like, would save up my allowance money to buy like oxygen and fitness magazines, and I had like a binder of all the exercises. I'm a little bit nerdy, you're gonna find out. Um and through my own course of like my own life falling apart and having to figure out like why the same patterns kept happening, especially in relationships, uh romantic relationships, but then with friendships and whatnot, that the process of figuring out like why this keeps happening led me to understanding the human subconscious, the nervous system, um, and I realized that I couldn't not share these tools with everybody else. So my what what it helped me do was overcome the abuse that I experienced as a little girl. So I was abused by my stepmom, who was actually a domestic violence survivor, so I saw firsthand how hurt people hurt people, how the cycle of abuse gets perpetuated. And then that ultimately after college led me to Australia. I'd been there for about three years, and on the day I found out I was pregnant, I found out my boyfriend had a girlfriend in another state. Um, he was a compulsive liar, as it turned out, and most of what I had believed for the three-year relationship was not true. I ended up miscarrying the baby, and that kind of brought me to the brink of like something has to change, or I'm not gonna survive. So uh that that was what prompted me to go into studying it, and then here I am today.

SPEAKER_01 4:01

Here you are. Well, thank you for sharing your story, and thank you for kind of being transparent and open. I'm sure um people listening that there are lots of people that um can relate to parts of or maybe your whole, but at least parts of your story. So appreciate one you just opening up because I think that's one that's so important. I talk about how do we bring our whole selves to work. So I appreciate you bringing your whole self, you know, to this conversation. And I love that you said that you're nerdy because I love to nerd out on things as well, and talk about um all things like brain and human development, human human psyche. So let's just let's just jump right in. We're just gonna jump right into the deep end. Let's start with and I want to define it a little bit at first as well. Have you define it? Well, let's talk about the nervous system. And I think it's gotten a little bit buzzwordy, this nervous system regulation. So I want to demystify it a little bit, de-woo-ish it a little bit, and talk about it as because it really is a thing, and we really need to learn how to do it and learn what it is. But would love you just to start with what is it? Like, what is our nervous system? What is nervous system regulation?

SPEAKER_00 5:14

Yeah, so um, I was actually just talking about this yesterday. When something becomes mainstream, like it's good because then people are like, oh, I have this thing that I need to work on, but then also it it's kind of ends up like a nice car in a bad neighborhood, like it gets stripped down to its parts, and like what are the easiest parts for me to sell? And it kind of loses the soul of the work. So we obviously have a nervous system, right? Everybody knows they've got a brain, they've got a spinal cord, they've got all these nerves that go throughout their body. Now, there are multiple branches of the nervous system, and when we talk about nervous system regulation, we're talking about the peripheral nervous system. So everything outside of bone, brain, spinal cord make up the peripheral, everything else, or sorry, brain and spinal cord make up the central, and everything else is peripheral. The peripheral is broken into two branches: the somatic, which is the feelings, right? So if I touch the desk and I'm like, this is hard, or my mattress is too soft, I'm cold, I'm hot, that's coming in from the somatic nervous system. And then there's the autonomic nervous system. Now, I graduated college in 2008, so almost 20 years ago. And in college, we learned that this the autonomic nervous system was automatic. You could not control it. So, like, that's that's a level of understanding we had even 20 years ago. So this is like still fairly new research. Um, and then the autonomic system is broken into two branches. Your sympathetic, which is your fight, flight, freeze, fawn, it's your survival mode, and then your parasympathetic, which is your rest, your digest, your repair. That's where you're gonna, that's where you're gonna feel like the joy, the peace, the happiness, right? So what we know is that the majority of the population, so like 95% or more of the population, spends at least 70 to 80% of their day stuck in survival mode. Now, the crazy thing is, is like your nervous system doesn't know the difference between like an email or a bill and an actual bear or lion chasing you. So you open up your email and you see something from a client or an employee or something, and you're like, ugh, what now? Your body is responding the exact same way as though a bear or lion is chasing it. And so when we get stuck in this mode, it and we can go into like how how many aspects of your body it impacts, but regulation is it's a combination of things. I know like social media is like, oh, do this breathing exercise or you know, do these arm swings, and you're regulating your nervous system. And that's not wrong, but it's also not totally true, right? So it's the difference between like, okay, I'm gonna do a bicep curl today versus I'm strengthening the whole system to serve me better in life in general, right? So true nervous system regulation also has to look at like what is the emotional baggage that we're carrying around because all of that is imprinted into the nervous system and it ends up blocking people, it causes people to self-sabotage. So all self-sabotage is a nervous system protective mechanism that your system has learned that this is the best way to protect you when it feels like your life is in danger. So we have to look at limiting beliefs, we have to look at emotional baggage and trauma, we have to look at, you know, maybe identities that you've taken on and upper limits that you've created to stay safe because your nervous system's the autonomic nervous system has one job and that's to keep you safe and alive. And so what it tends to do is it tends to pull us back into what most people call the comfort zone. I don't really like that word because most people aren't comfortable there, but they feel it feels familiar, so it feels safe. So the nervous system will pull us back to that familiar zone where we feel safest and it'll stop us from growing unless we so true nervous system regulation is allowing us to feel safe enough to move out of that zone, which means we have to look at the things that I mentioned before.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Gotcha. So just to kind of reiterate for those of you listening that maybe aren't as as as as nerdy as the as the two of us, so just so that everybody really got that, because I think that you hit on some really important parts. And I was taking some notes, so I do want to delve into some um a little bit deeper as well. But we're talking about our autonomic nervous system, right? And it was interesting when you said, I think people know that either we're in the fight or flight or rest and digest, you know, so we can use the technical terms, the sympathetic or the parasympathetic, but that either we're in fight or flight or this rest and digest. But did you say 70% of the time we are in this survival mode? 70% of the time we're in survival mode. That is crazy to me.

SPEAKER_00 10:20

Yeah, because what happens is every time we have a thought, that thought causes our body to release a hormone related to the thought, which causes us to have feelings and emotions. And then those feelings and emotions cycle back up and cause us to think more things of the same quality. So on an average day, the average person has about 60,000 thoughts or approximately six and a half uh one new thought every six and a half seconds. Now, 80% of those thoughts are negative, and only 5% of those thoughts are new. So the most of what we're regurgitating is old negative stories that we've told ourselves, or old negative uh meanings that we've given past situations or that we've predicted onto the future. Then that's causing our body to release stress hormones, cortisol and adrenaline, and then that causes us to feel anxious, stressed, um, overwhelmed, overstimulated, doubt, fear, like however it shows up for us, which then causes us to think more of the same quality, right? That's one way we get stuck in the loop. The second way we get stuck in the loop is when we are in stress long term and we're producing this cortisol and adrenaline, and I don't want to demonize any of these hormones, right? Like God made us with these hormones for a reason, but long-term, high-level um dosage of cortisol causes inflammation in the body, and then that inflammation becomes its own stressor, which then leads to more cortisol and adrenaline release, and then we get stuck in the cycle that way. So it's almost like a two-headed snake that we have to deal with. And what we know now, like newer research is showing that most chronic health conditions, whether physical or mental, the majority of them link back to the body carrying too much stress. And so these are the pieces like when we work with people to regulate their nervous system, we see like, you know, we've had people miraculously heal from cancer and type 2 diabetes and fibromyalgia, um, heart murmurs, sleep apnea, depression, anxiety, bipolar, borderline personality disorder. We've had um Crohn's disease go into remission. We've had rheumatoid arthritis go into remission. We've seen improvements in Parkinson's disease because when we heat regulate the nervous system, cortisol drops. Now the body can start to deal with the inflammation. Now the body puts itself back in a state to actually heal itself.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

I I love that. So a couple things that I want to make sure that people heard is one, you did say, and I do believe this as well, God made us with cortisol. So there is cortisol, there is a reason for it, right? If a bear is actually chasing us, we do want to be in that, we do need to have our body create those stressors so that we can run away or that we can we can do that. So we do need to have cortisol, but you're also saying, too, even though I heard, and most people, because we hear the negative thing, right? We're here 70% and 80% of the time we're in this cycle. What I also heard is that there are ways to get out of that cycle, right? We're not just stuck there for the rest of our life if we're in those cycles, right? Because, and you talked about there are a lot of those negative impacts from being in that cycle, but I also heard there is a chance, right? There is a chance, and there are some ways, and I'm sure that is how you work with people then is how do we regulate our nervous system? How do we get out of those of those cycles? Um, I loved what you said before as well, Tiffany, about that, and I want to just delve into a little bit about this so that people understand that as well. That you talked about self-sabotage and that being a prof uh um protective mechanism. Because I do think that again, if we feel that self-sabotage and then we're in that cycle, it's hard to get out. But there's a reason why we get into that cycle, and it's it's you know, maybe not our fault, right? So talk a little bit about that piece of it. And again, I do want to get into all of the um the light at the end of the tunnel, like how we can regulate our nervous system, but let's talk a little bit about self-sabotage.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

Yeah, so um, let's take money as the example, right? You're trying to make more money. Who doesn't want that, right? So you're trying to make more money and you find that every time you hit a certain number, whether that's a certain number coming into your bank account or business, or you have a certain amount left at the end of bills, right? You end up in a pattern. Maybe for me, it was overspending. Other people, it's um, you know, I've worked with a lot of people who just completely lose motivation. Like if they have the best month in their business, they have zero motivation to do anything until they're not sure how they're gonna pay bills again, right? So it's not money itself that the nervous system doesn't feel safe with. It's what the nervous system feels, it's the associations that come with money, right? So, me, my my previous um patterns were uh like I'm an overdriver, so I tend to go into fight mode, which is I push harder, um, I work long hours, I ignore my body sensations, so I ignore that I'm hungry, I ignore that I'm thirsty, I ignore that I'm tired, and I just keep pushing, right? And we we can also talk about the way it's that each fight, flight, freeze, and fawn shows up in business, but um, that was mine. I was the overdriver. So what then happens is my subconscious mind and my nervous system link you yes, you can make more money if you take action, but what it actually links effort with is burnout, self-abandonment, um not mattering. Like that when my husband and I got married, that was like one of my main complaints is like I don't matter to anybody, but I'm also not taking care of myself, right? Like, I'll skip workouts or I'll skip meals if there's work to be done, and when is there ever not work to be done?

SPEAKER_02 16:25

Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

So it's the associations that come with it, right? If you're worried that family and friends will judge you or criticize you, or that now all of a sudden they'll have their hands out and take advantage of you, that's an association. If you associate more money with more visibility and you know, more judgment, shaming, etc., people canceling you, that's the association. So what happens is you've set uh what Gail what Gay Hendricks in the Big Leap called the upper limit, right? You set a ceiling. You set a ceiling for how much money you feel safe with, how much responsibility you feel safe with, how many clients you feel safe with, um, how many um, you know, how much visibility, how many followers, all of that. You set the limit. So as you start to get close to that limit, your system says we're not safe, and you've learned strategies throughout your life that pull you back away from that ceiling. And so we have to remember that success for a human being can be kryptonite because you know, like if the only way I know how to make money is by hustling, then when I need to make more money, that's what I'm gonna default back to. And I won't necessarily be open to strategies that are different to that. Yeah, it's the same for our nervous system. So for my nervous system, it went, well, before we would shut her down, make her so exhausted she couldn't get out of bed, make her sick, and that stopped her from moving past this financial marker. So we're gonna do that again. Right. And so maybe it's procrastination, maybe it's avoidance, maybe it's burnout and fatigue and exhaustion, maybe it's a pattern of inconsistency, maybe it's like brain fog and forgetfulness, right? But your system knows, it's learned through the decades that you've been alive how to shut you down and how to pull you back so that you don't go into the realm of where you feel unsafe. So what most people miss is you know, they'll they'll invest in all these new business strategies and AI and all of these things, but you're nervous, it doesn't matter how many tools you have working for you, how great of a strategy you have, your system won't let you go there and stay there until it feels safe to. So this is why, you know, people will talk about quantum leaping. I oh, I hit the $100,000 a month mark, but then I went right back to like 10 to 20, right? So you might be able to get there, but you won't be able to stay there if your nervous system doesn't feel safe.

SPEAKER_01 19:04

Yeah. No, and I love that. And I love that you referenced that book too. I love that by Gay Hendricks, The Upper Limit. That's what it's called, right? It's called the Upper Limit. Um, and it's so if if any of you that are listening haven't read that, it's a fascinating read and it goes exactly into that space about how we self-sabotage when we get there. And you have to recognize, which kind of goes into limiting beliefs as well. We have to recognize what that upper limit is because that's not that's not fixed, although it's fixed in your brain. You don't have to stay there. You can change what that upper limit is, but knowing that you have that so that you can then create those strategies to get beyond that instead of getting into that self-sabotage loop. So talk a little bit about then, let's go into limiting beliefs and how um, I mean, you talked a little bit about that in self-sabotage, but how limiting beliefs then play into all of this regulation of our nervous system as well.

SPEAKER_00 19:58

Yeah, so throughout your life, you have been creating these imprints in your nervous system. Now, the subconscious mind in the nervous system is primarily imprinted between the ages of zero and seven. And some research even says from like conception to seven, because we know the baby is impacted by what mom's feeling, the baby can hear what's going on in the outside world. So let's say conception to seven years old. Whatever was most common, most like normal in your life during those ages, your nervous system starts to A, say, this is what's safe, right? So, me, there was a lot of chaos. I was being abused by my stepmom. While my mom and my stepdad were amazing, there was a lot of scarcity, right? We were very lower, I don't even know if I'd say middle class, but there was a lot of times where it was like we don't know how we're gonna pay the bills, or you know, there was just a lot of scarcity conversation, a lot of anxiety conversation. So chaos was what my nervous system got imprinted to know was normal, right? And so again, we're gonna come back to whatever's normal. 95% of the belief systems that we have were imprinted between the ages of zero and seven. So before we even fully understood what the world was, right? Now, this comes from what people say to you. So one of the most common things that I hear from entrepreneurs and women especially is things like you're too much, you're too loud, you're too good at this, dull it back a bit so that you don't make other people feel bad, you know, how dare you ask for that much, all of those kinds of too much conversations, right? So now you learn in order to be accepted, which we are tribal creatures, right? So in order to survive, we need to be part of a tribe. So in order to be accepted by my tribe, I can't fully be myself. I can't laugh too loud, I can't ask for too much, I can't be. Too smart, I can't be too pretty, I can't be too blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I need to pull it back. Um, so things that are said to you, things you hear being said about you, um, and then even conversations you hear going on around you. So growing up, we would have family friends that my parents would hang out with like multiple times a week, and then they would start making more money. And I have no idea what the number was, I just know that it was more. And my parents would stop talking to them and then start talking crap about them. Right? So for me, it was if I make too much money, my family will abandon me. And that held me back for a long time at this level of like, well, I can't make more than this, even though the opportunities were sitting right there. So our limiting beliefs are essentially how our nervous system learned to interpret the world and keep us safe. And so that's where we need to do some reprogramming of that because which is like a re-imprinting of the nervous system of it's okay for me to be fully myself, right? These people might not be my people, but there's another group that will accept me for being too much, too loud, too pretty, whatever it is.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

Yeah. So let's move, let's move into that. So we spent some time talking about, okay, just kind of reality. Here's how our bodies work, here's how our nervous system works, and that 70% of the time we are in this negative feedback loop. So we we get this picture, right? However, clearly, if there wasn't the light at the end of the tunnel, we wouldn't be, we wouldn't have jobs, right? And or we we wouldn't be talking about joy, we wouldn't be talking about a lot of things. So what how I want to talk about tools or techniques or things that those people that are listening that are stuck there, like, okay, but what? Like, what do we do besides reach out to a coach, which is one of the things, but how do we start to move beyond this negative um these negative feedback loops that we are telling ourselves?

SPEAKER_00 24:12

Yeah, so the first place that we start everybody is with creating a nervous system routine, and this is basically like taking your nervous system to the gym every day. I'll give you three exercises that people can try out, but this is basically like taking your nervous system to the gym. It you don't need to do this for more than two to five minutes a day. We typically recommend around 10 minutes a day. Um, but if 10 minutes is a stretch, start with two to five. What's more important is that you're doing these exercises consistently, so as close to every day as possible, versus you do it once a month for an hour, because our nervous system is re-imprinted through experience. So when we can create more experiences of feeling safe, in calm, in peace, in gratitude, in joy, etc., then our nervous system starts to shift faster and say, okay, I'm this is this actually is safe.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

It's all about, like you said, consistency, right? It's all it's not about perfection. And that's almost in anything that we do. It's you can't go to the gym one day. You can't go to the gym one day a month and be like, ooh, I like I did it and now I'm healthy, right? You can't just eat one piece of spinach. You can't just do, you know, you can't just meditate once, or you can't just read about this at once and then be so it is, or what I'm hearing from you is the things that you're gonna share with us. It's it's not about perfection, it is about starting and it is about consistency and building that, building that habit. And I love how you said too, you prefer 10 minutes a day, but the things that you're gonna talk to us about, even if they start at two minutes, two minutes is better than zero. And two minutes consistency, consistently is better than 10 minutes once in a while.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

Yeah. And I mean, the good thing about these exercises, like I do five minutes in the morning and five minutes at night. And I have been doing these exercises, my son's almost four. I've been doing them, you know, throughout his entire life. So you don't, it's not like you need to carve out like with meditation, right? It's like, well, I need 10 minutes away from the kids where somebody else is watching them so they don't like, you know, burn the house down. These exercises you can do with your eyes wide open. Some of them you can do while you're driving the car or cooking dinner, things like that. So it's not necessarily like I have to find 10 uninterrupted minutes because I can't even go to the bathroom right now without you know my toddler following me in there. So that's what I like about these exercises. So, first exercise is a breathing exercise called box breathing. Most people have probably heard of it. And I will say, as a as a caveat on this as well, or as like an enticement, is within a week or two of doing these consistently, you are going to notice your like overall anxiety stress levels start to drop because it is starting to teach your nervous system like, hey, things aren't as dire as we feel like they are. So, box breathing, you're going to breathe in for four minutes, hold for four minutes, breathe out for four minutes, hold for four minutes, and do that at least four times. My husband likes to do this for five minutes in the morning, five minutes at night. Um, so you know you can do it for a period of time or do a minimum of four rounds. Okay. Second exercise is called the easy exercise. This one's not going to feel like you're making much change, but there's a nerve that starts in your brain and it innervates with all of your major organs, your gut, your heart, your lungs, it's called the vagus nerve. And your vagus nerve is basically the gear shifter from that sympathetic to the parasympathetic. So when we get stuck in sympathetic for long periods of time, your vagus nerve, it's almost like it loses its strength. It's called losing its tone to move you into the parasympathetic. So this one you're gonna be laying on your back, you're gonna clasp your hands behind your head, keep your chin and your nose pointed towards the ceiling, and then you're just moving your eyes to the left or the right to start as far as you can go with no pain. So this shouldn't be painful. You're going to hold it for one minute or until you yawn, sigh, or feel tingles down your spine, whichever you get. So there's my comes pretty quickly, but I've been doing this for like four years now. And then you're gonna repeat to the other side, whichever side you didn't start on. You'll take your eyes that way for one minute, or until you yawn, sigh, or get tingles down your spine. And then the third exercise that I'll share is called shake it out. So this one you can either like put on a song that you love and have a little dance party, or just like shake your body. However, you feel like you need to shake your body, like just shake the whole thing out. And what that's doing is it's allowing the emotion to get released from your nervous system because when it gets trapped, that's where it starts to create an imprint or re-imprint something that's there that doesn't serve you. So it's just letting that emotion out of the nervous system.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

Those are great. So, well, a couple of things, and I want to go over those three one more time so people um, if you're driving and you're not actually taking notes, at least you can hear them, hear them a second time. But a couple of things is one, I like these, I really like these exercises, Tiffany, because it's not, I don't have to stop. I'm not doing some like deep soul searching. I'm not doing like, I'm not gonna, I don't gonna cry. I and I also love it that you can do it with your kids in the room or with your spouse in the room or when your cat is crawling on you and all the things are happening, or you know, some of these things, box breathing. I'm assuming you can do it in line at the bank or at the grocery store or wherever you are, because it doesn't require ultimate concentration, as you said, like you might want for meditation or journaling or something. I can be doing something else while I'm doing it. Um, I don't have to think so hard.

SPEAKER_00 30:20

Yeah, and like things like the breathing and the shake it out, we've taught our son. So when he starts to get agitated, I mean he's three, but he'll come up to us if he's agitated and be like, we need to do breathing, and we'll just do it with him, right? Because the other misnomer is like, you know, with like the cry it out method that was popular 10 years ago or whatever, is kids don't learn how to regulate themselves automatically. They learn by watching mom and dad do it hundreds of times. So when we get agitated, if we're stressed out about something during the day or whatever, we'll do it and we'll demonstrate it in the moment, right? We'll do our box breathing, we'll do whatever exercises we have. When he's agitated, we do the same thing. We'll stop and do it with him, and now he's learning how to regulate himself so that he knows how to navigate stressful situations instead of becoming super anxious.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

That is that's amazing. And and so a question. Well, first I want to repeat them. So the one was the box breathing, that is the four count. So think of I like to think of a square when I'm doing it just because I am visual, so I like to think about that. That's what's happening. Um, and you recommend it's four counts. So four counts in, hold for four counts, four counts out, hold for four counts. Um, the easy exercise. So, can you explain that one again? Because that one maybe is a little newer to some people, but I'm laying on my back.

SPEAKER_00 31:48

Yeah. So clasp your hands behind your head and just hold your head. And then keeping your chin and your nose pointed towards the ceiling, you're only moving your eyes. It doesn't matter if you go left or right first, but you're just moving your eyes over and then holding it for one minute or until you yawn, sigh, or feel tingles down your spine. So your vagus nerve runs right beside your optic nerve. So when you move your eyes and hold, what it does is it brings a bunch of fresh blood into the area and that strengthens and nourishes the nerve. And because the vagus nerve happens to be there, it gets the benefit of it.

SPEAKER_01 32:26

I love that. So we're just holding either to the left or to the right first. Then we're gonna pause or whatever, and then we're moving our eyes to the other side and holding to the to the other to the opposite side. Love that. And then shake it out. I mean, really, it's so interesting that you talk about that because I had this practice of after, or I have this practice of after my meditation in the morning, I do a solo dance party. So I didn't really know that that's what I was doing. I just thought I was, you know, getting up and moving my body just a little bit because it just uh whatever, but I didn't, I clearly am like helping to regulate my nervous system as well by doing that. So you can do it to music, or you don't have to do it to music. You can just, you can just shake it out. But if you think about that as adults, or you think about people that are doing that, you see people do that before. Like I'm thinking about Olympic races, like the Summer Olympics, and people are they're shaking it out before they get into their um sprinter stance, or that when you get so mad, you just start your body starts to shake, or some things, so that that must be something that, yes, while we can um demonstrate that to our kids, that our bodies we just want to do those things, and it does make us feel better whether we recognize that that is what is happening or not.

SPEAKER_00 33:39

Yeah, so like if you ever watch like Animal Planet or National Geographic, and you see like where the lion's chasing the gazelle catches the gazelle, gazelle plays dead, and then the lion wanders off and the gazelle gets up and shakes, it's the same thing, right? It's a primal aspect of our all of our nervous systems, all mammals. Dogs will do it, you know, if they get if they feel threatened, they'll shake out after. That's why animals don't get traumatized, but our logical brain kicks in and tells us, like, oh, this isn't appropriate to do, or don't do that, or whatever. And that stops us from shaking and releasing the energy from our system, which is what ultimately causes emotional baggage and trauma to imprint the system.

SPEAKER_01 34:25

Oh, I love that. And because I think about watching, even though I'm pretty sure my cat is not, he's a house cat, so it's not like he's got that many stressors. There's nobody, nobody's chasing him. Um, but that you know, when he gets up, he'll stretch or do that shake thing. So maybe there is some kind of stressor or something, but is that releasing that energy? So that's really what we're doing. So okay, so the box breathing, the easy exercise was that second one, the the shake it out. What quick question? Um, do I have to do all three of them together? Does it work best? I mean, am I getting a am I getting a cumulative effect if I'm doing them together?

SPEAKER_00 35:02

So that's a great question. We like to give multiple options um because not everybody's gonna like the same exercises, right? Like I use a different breathing exercise to what my husband does. And so everybody's gonna just have different preferences. So the reason that we give a couple is I would recommend try each one one to two times and then see which ones you like. Which ones, the easy exercise, you're not gonna feel a massive like emotional shift like you will with the box breathing or the shake it out, but just see what fits into your world, right? Like I do the easy exercise before I get up in the morning, and last thing before I go to sleep because I'm already laying down. I don't have to make extra time to do it. So it just fits in, right? So see which ones you like, see which ones give you a shift, and then maybe you choose one, maybe you decide to do all three, right? Um, maybe you, you know, check out our community and you we teach you more there. Whatever it is, it's more about like even just having one exercise that you can repeat, repeat that you can do repeatedly um and consistently, that's more important than doing all of them. So, like I like to do shake it out at the end of the day if I've had a stressful day. Um, the breathing I like to do because I can do it anywhere. Nobody really knows I'm doing it. I can be gardening or cooking or watching my kid or whatever while I'm doing it.

SPEAKER_01 36:32

So yeah, no, that's great. And the one thing that I'm sure you probably um coach your clients to do as well is I always want to want people to kind of take a mental note or maybe even write it down like, how are you actually feeling before you do some of these things? Because one of the things that I heard you say, Tiffany, is that once you do these in a couple of weeks, you'll start to feel better. But I know as human beings that we don't often remember how bad we felt. So if we make that note, like this is really how I was feeling, and then after a couple of weeks, go back and be like, oh, yes, I really am, or I can notice the difference in how I'm handling different situations or how you know how I'm how I'm feeling. So just I would just I would just encourage people to do that because we can often forget how much progress we've made because we get to those next benchmarks and we're like, oh, I'm already there. Now I'm looking for the next benchmark, and we forget, oh no, you started way back there. Yeah, exactly. So just remember. So so once I've got this, so let's say that okay, I'm doing this, I'm doing this regularly. One, what are some of the big benefits that I am getting? Because we talked about okay, here are the negative implications of if we have a dysregulated nervous system. Like what are some of those benefits? And then what's step two? Is there something more that I can start to be start to do after I have implemented these these simple, these I'm not easy, but these three like straightforward exercises?

SPEAKER_00 37:59

Yeah, so in when we're in survival mode, the dangers of like running a business, really the dangers of doing anything in survival mode is that we make short-term decisions, right? Like if a bear is chasing me, I don't care about how to make $10,000 next month. I care about how do I survive this second, right? So three, five, 10-year plan goes out the window and we make decisions based on instant gratification. This is why people drink, do drugs, uh, emotionally eat, right? Watch porn, all of those things is because it's it cuts the the survival fear in that moment, even though long term it might not lead you where you want to go. So the what you're going to notice is A, you're gonna have more clarity, like brain fog clarity, that's going to improve. B, you're going to be able to start having, like taking a step back from your decisions and saying, is this the best decision for long term, or is this just the best decision for right now? Right. And that's going to allow you to make better decisions based on where you truly desire to go. Um, then the second step is this is where we can then start looking at uh, and depending on where people are, depends on the next step that we go. But I would say the next most common step is to start challenging limiting beliefs, right? So you find yourself triggered in a moment, and we start to ask the question, what is the story I'm telling myself right now? Or what meaning am I giving this? Because what most people don't realize, I'll give you an example. We were in a fairly serious car accident last week. We got hit head on as we were coming home from church. And um, like the other person, we were coming around a curve less than a mile from our house because that's the way it always happens, right? We were coming around a curve and a guy was like fully in our lane. My husband could only swerve so far because there was a guardrail and then a 15-foot drop-off. Um and so he ended up hitting us like the lot head on. And as we were kind of processing last weekend, my husband was like, he was really angry, right? He was like, Well, the other driver didn't have insurance, so now you know we're having to fight our own insurance to get reimbursed for our car, the whiplash, everything else. And my husband's like, so I did everything right, right? I had insurance, I was driving safe, I was driving under the speed limit, blah, blah, blah. I did everything right, and I'm I'm being punished, but this other person, they're gonna get a $300 ticket for not having insurance, maybe lose their license for a year, but it's like a slap on the wrist in the grand scheme of things, right? Our car was paid off, now we're gonna have to get a new car payment. All of these things. But the and this is not saying that my husband doesn't have a right to be justified in that situation, right? But this kind of injustice feeling is something that my husband has had since childhood, right? He um had an issue with one of his cousins one day when he was like 10, and he said to his mom, like, this is what's happening, and even though he was in the right, his mom made him apologize, right? Or, you know, he'll go above and beyond for clients, and then they'll just be like, Oh, I ran out of money, I don't want to pay anymore, and ghost, right? So it's been like this story his whole life around you have to take the higher road, you have to be the bigger person, and you'll still get punished when you do. And what most people don't realize is we bring that lifetime of baggage into every situation. So my husband was far more angry than I was at the situation because I've dealt with those pieces from my life, right? He hasn't yet dealt with that emotional baggage. So what tends to happen is let's say you're walking down the street and you see your friend Bob and you're like, hey Bob, and Bob completely ignores you, right? That might be the story you tell yourself. Bob ignored me. Bob must not like me. Uh, Bob must be mad at me for something, and then you kind of start to spiral and give all these meanings. Maybe Bob had a bad morning. Maybe he just got bad news and he was so lost in his own world that he didn't see you. Maybe Bob had earpods in that you didn't see, and he was like jamming out to his music or listening to a podcast and was wrapped up in that and didn't see you. Right? There's a million other stories that could be true in that moment, but we give a meaning to each and every situation we're in based on our past experiences, based on what's already been imprinted into our nervous system. And now it becomes another piece of evidence that we have, right? That we're not good enough or whatever. So by doing this, you're going to be able to start asking yourself and getting a little bit more clarity around what is the story I'm telling myself right now? What is the meaning I'm giving this? And then now we know the belief systems that we can start working on, and we can start asking ourselves, okay, what else could be true here? The other benefit to doing these exercises and even asking the question of um asking the question of um what's the story I'm telling myself here is that um you'll start you'll stop worst case scenario projecting as much because that's also a protective strategy. Right.

SPEAKER_01 43:53

Yeah, I like that and I love the question that you just said too what else could be true? Right, what else could be true? true because there's so many different realities. I mean there is some I mean there generally there is the reality but what else could be true. So love, love, love that. And I like, you know, even going back a step further when you were talking about so if we start to do some of these things like address our limiting beliefs, doing those exercises that we're regulating our nervous system, that we really will come to this space of the ability to have more clarity. Right. And some of that is some of that is biological, right? Because we have more blood flow to the parts of our brain that are making decisions. So we have more clarity, that we have the the ability to make better decisions. It's it's interesting the same things that you're talking about I talk about if we if we experience when we're experiencing joy we have some of those same things. So so many like parallels just using different language. But going deep into challenging those limiting beliefs love that that's kind of the next place to go and asking ourselves what else could be true. Like that story doesn't necessarily great that is the story I'm telling myself right now. What are the other stories? Right? How do we and then how do we move beyond some of those things?

SPEAKER_00 45:11

Yeah it's a lot harder to have self-awareness when you feel like you're fighting for your life every single second of the day. Right. So and so this is where I also like um tell people if you just jump straight into shadow work or somatic you know somatic exercises when your nervous system is in survival mode, you might find that it pushes you over the edge and pushes you fully into a freeze state where you shut down and then what I've seen in the past is people go, well, like I I have a client right now who has severe PTSD and has worked with other people in the past who've just jumped right into the deep end in terms of clearing out his trauma and he's like then I can't sleep and it like sends me into a spiral and I completely shut down and like I'm running a company that makes a hundred million or a hundred thousand dollars a month and I've got a family and I've got employees and I've got clients and that can't happen. Right? So we if we jump into the straight end into the deep end with a dregulated nervous system that is stuck in survival mode it might not give us the shifts as quickly as we desire to and it might set us back and then we you know create this story around well I'm too broken to heal or it's not safe for me to heal or any of these other stories that you might create that stops you from actually transforming your life moving forward.

SPEAKER_01 46:39

So what you're saying that is you are not kidding do these those three exercises first let's really get a hold of that piece of things really start to regulate from a biological sense start to regulate our nervous system. Again nothing about any like any mental emotional any stuff let's start with the physical piece of it and then we are better able to because then our bodies can support us going into some of that other work that we have to do. So if we skip that first piece it's like jumping right into the middle like that doesn't that doesn't work because we didn't do we didn't create a good foundation. So we have to create that firm foundation first before we can do some of that other that other work. So great the the great I I mean this is really helpful. I love how clear that you are and how concise and how you are able really to break things down into concepts that we can understand even if you haven't read all about the nervous system and you're just starting to hear about it now. I mean maybe you heard about it when you were in school and now this whole thing that we're talking about nervous system regulation and you don't know what it is or what to do and then you go into another spiral because you're like oh and I'm supposed to be doing this I think that the the awesome thing that you've given us today is that you know what take two minutes take two minutes consistently to do some of those exercises get a hold of that that physical piece build that firm foundation really regulate on a holistic sense regulate your nervous system and then you can start to do some of this other this other work. I think that's fantastic. So if people are because I'm just looking at our time here if people are um in their cars or on a walk or wherever they're listening to this podcast and they're raising their hand they're like yes this is me yes I will commit to doing some of this foundational work and then I am ready to or when I'm ready to move to this next thing how do people find you how do they work with you how do they get more Tiffany in their in their life yeah the best place we're actually about to launch a new podcast called the Regulated Entrepreneur.

SPEAKER_00 48:54

So that'll be coming out in April 2026. The other places I would say would be check out YouTube the Regulated Entrepreneur channel and then we have a school community that's totally free called the regulated entrepreneur and I can give you those links as well in that school community we have an entrepreneur reset. It's a seven day like mini challenge 10 to 15 minute videos where we're going to take you through going a little bit deeper giving you some more tools to recalibrate your nervous system and then starting to dive into how do I build momentum in a way that feels safe for my nervous system so I can achieve my goals.

SPEAKER_01 49:35

That is that's great. And I will make sure to drop all of those things into the show notes but anything Tiffany that as we kind of close up any other tips or anything you want to leave the the listeners with today?

SPEAKER_00 49:50

I would say the biggest thing to know is that because you've been carrying it so long it can feel like Mount Everest right I've got Mount Everest in front of me to climb but when we do the right order of steps right we start with helping the nervous system feel safe help with getting it out of survival mode first and then we dive into some of the heavier stuff it feels a lot easier and a lot more attainable and you see the shifts a lot faster than you could possibly imagine.

SPEAKER_01 50:22

Oh love that that is such a great place to end um again I know that some of the listeners are going to want to hit rewind and listen to this one again because it was full of really good actionable advice. So thank you I appreciate the gifts that you shared with us and again I will drop all of those links in the show notes. So go listen um listen again join Tiffany's school group get all of the things there and remember Rachel I am celebrating you today and every day so have fun live well enjoying it