Web Design Business with Josh Hall

383 - Mastering Your Nervous System (to help you in business) with Jonny Miller

• Josh Hall

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How does working on your nervous system help you as a web designer apart from the obvious fear of public speaking and large group settings?

Turns out, it affects (either positively or negatively) EVERY aspect of your day to day as a web designer and business owner.

In the name of sustainability, longevity and just being healthy and happy as a business owner, I’m thrilled to share a conversation I had with Jonny Miller, founder of Nervous System Mastery, who’s helped top level entrepreneurs and people at the highest level of business manage stress, get healthier and have the tools to handle bigger challenges and hurdles in their life.

What works for folks at this level of business also work for us as web designers, solopreneurs and agency owners.

Can’t wait to hear your takeaways.

Head to the show notes to get all links and resources we mentioned along with a full transcription of this episode at https://joshhall.co/383

Jonny Miller:

Outside of a couple of weeks. Most entrepreneurs and web designers need to get back to work. So how do we get back to work when something's going on?

Josh Hall:

You can absolutely build up what I think it was almost like like emotional debt, in the same way that like if you're struggling financially, you can kind of take out a loan from a bank, pay some interest. I think the analogy holds pretty well. Um the practices that I think are. This is interesting I've already talked about this specifically, but um, both noticing how your body specifically is holding tension and learning how to relax that tension will allow your system to hold more intensity will allow your system to hold more intensity.

Josh Hall:

Welcome to the Web Design Business Podcast with your host, Josh Hall.

Jonny Miller:

Helping you build a web design business that gives you freedom and a lifestyle you love. It's great to have you here, friend, for a very left turn in a different trail that we're going to dive into in this episode, because we're going to get into your nervous system Now, if you're like me, most web designers primarily get nervous when we're out of our comfort zone in meetings or God forbid public speaking or group settings or going to a conference or even online calls or group calls. I know a lot of you are on the introverted spectrum, but the reality is there is so much more that goes on in our nervous system day to day, even just being behind our screen in our safe spot in our home office or wherever we are working. There is so much that's going on that impacts our day-to-day physical and mental and emotional health and also our business, which is why I'm absolutely pumped to have on Johnny Miller, who is the founder of Nervous System Mastery. I actually heard a conversation that Johnny had with a mutual friend of ours, jay Klaus, who has a podcast called Creator Science, which I highly recommend that you check out, and it was so good that I was like I've got some follow-up questions. I got to get Johnny on and he was kind enough to come on the show here.

Jonny Miller:

Johnny has worked with some of the biggest clients around, including Slack, apple, meta, youtube, google. He's working with people on a very high level to manage stress and manage their nervous system. He's been featured on Modern Wisdom, deep Dive and other top entrepreneurial podcasts, and I'm only saying that in his pedigree to say that what is working for folks at a very high level in business in big roles is also filtered down to web designers, freelancers, solopreneurs and agency owners. Johnny really has a lot of wisdom to share, so I hope you'll take this conversation seriously and really think about everything you're doing to make sure you continue to stay healthy as a human in business, because we all know business can take over very quick and the next thing you know your back hurts and it unbroke something. So, so much more is covered in this one.

Jonny Miller:

I do want to share a quick shout out and thanks to Johnny for being so open and transparent. We do both get into some personal stuff in this one, so just a heads up on that and without further ado, here's Johnny. What a guy. What a mission he has. I'm so excited to let you in on our conversation about nervous system mastery. Johnny, it's awesome to have you on the show, man. I became a quick fan after hearing you chat with my friend, jay Klaus, so honored to have you on. I know you've been on some pretty A-level podcasts in the past year or so, so what you're doing seems to be really resonating and working on a big scale. So honored to have you on, man.

Josh Hall:

Thanks, josh. Yeah, I'm excited for this conversation too, looking forward to it.

Jonny Miller:

There's a lot I think we could dive into here tactically and practically, but I just want to get the quick backstory for those who don't know you, the summary of how I mean. How does someone get into creating a nervous sister system mastery program? Hard for me to say how. What led to, you know, creating a program like this?

Josh Hall:

Yeah, yeah, thanks. Uh, it's a interesting, interesting question. Um, so the the kind of short version of my backstory is I started, founded a co-founder of a startup about 13 years ago now back in 2012 and, um, it was really fun, went through tech stars, kind of raised venture funding, did all that and five years into that, kind of ended up going through my own burnout experience, um, and realizing that I just been just been pushing and grinding and I was no longer feeling alive or enlivened by the work I was doing. And then, um, I kind of fell into teaching entrepreneurship in London for a couple of years and, yeah, like two or three years into that, um, I just experienced a pretty intense kind of personal loss. My former fiance ended up having an anxiety attack and taking her own life and that was just like this, you know, really turned my world upside down and um led to me taking a good amount of time off work and just really like not only exploring but like allowing myself to feel the grief of that.

Josh Hall:

And this is kind of speaking to someone who was raised in England, kind of like relatively emotionally repressed.

Josh Hall:

I was quite numb from the neck down, I would say, for most of my upbringing and it really kind of led me through this where it ended up being like a really beautiful journey. And I kind of ended up being like a really beautiful journey and I kind of I kind of started to appreciate how much I needed to kind of unlearn and relearn around what I later realized the common thread was kind of the nervous system, but specifically just even like listening to the feedback of my body, um, coming into like a more healthy relationship with my emotions, um, and all these other practices that I've now kind of started to to correlate. But really it started out as a kind of deeply personal, internal journey and then I, as I started working again, I gradually started uh coaching, burnt out CEOs and founders that evolved into kind of a series of workshops and masterclasses and then at some point I realized there's like there was like enough material to create a course and you know I had a background in in marketing and in I could create like a notion webpage and put that on super. And uh, the first version of the course was, you know, pretty, probably pretty embarrassing, especially, um, for your audience of web designers. No judgment here.

Jonny Miller:

We've all had those sites at some point, sometime or another.

Josh Hall:

But it resonated and it was really fun for me and enlivening and I felt like Did it work, did it sell?

Jonny Miller:

I mean, sue, even a bad design can sell sometimes.

Josh Hall:

It did. It did work. It worked a lot more than I thought it would, and that was maybe two and a half three years ago and yeah, I've just been kind of iterating on that and learning more and listening to students and refining things, um, and yeah, it's it's fun and it's nice because I get to kind of be in this intersection of like both kind of entrepreneurship and like I'm like designing the website and doing the marketing and writing, but I'm also teaching and holding space and and running like life workshops. So I really like the. The kind of like allows me to play in some of the different like diverse skill sets that I've acquired over the years.

Jonny Miller:

Yeah Well, I was going to ask, like how did you end up and probably a softball question for you, because I would imagine all of this circles back to some been some sort of, you know, moving forward with grief or some sort of trauma related stuff or wellness programs, which obviously that term is a huge umbrella term for so many things. But how did you end up getting into the nervous system side of things, for a lack of a better term, like you know what I mean Like there could have been all these different subsets. You probably could have dove into what, what led to specifically nervous system stuff yeah.

Josh Hall:

So I think for me there was a moment when I kind of realized that the nervous system was kind of the bridge between a lot of these practices and things that you know five, ten years ago were kind of like in the woo category.

Josh Hall:

Like you know, breath works in there as well, but that um, you know there was some really kind of practical both theories and practices that um relate directly to the nervous system that were incredibly helpful for people in the moment and were also a bridge to some of the deeper like emotional work and things that I'd been involved in. So I really saw the nervous system as this like beautiful bridge that kind of speaks to people um where they're at and kind of can can really give a valuable lens on the symptoms that people are experiencing and then also kind of suggests some valuable mechanisms and practices to help to kind of come back into a state of like regulation and grounded safety and aliveness and vitality did you have like a light bulb moment in your journey after what you went through and then eventually get into this point where you were creating material and information off it?

Jonny Miller:

was it a gradual thing into this nervous system mastery? Or did you have like a yeah, like a light bulb moment that was like, oh my god, it's all connected and this is the you know.

Josh Hall:

This is the key the, the kind of, yeah, the kind of words, the kind of a few of them, I think. Um, one of the like light bulb moments, I'll say was like in the depths of the grief, there was a moment where, um, it actually it felt like I was experiencing like awe and wonder and rapture, and it was the sense of like, oh, like, maybe grief isn't so terrible, like the actual experience of grief was was something beautiful and um, yeah, I mean the the more that I just started to see everything through the lens of the nervous system, the more I just saw how it was so intimately woven with a lot of the stuff that I cared about.

Jonny Miller:

Now the nervous system itself is not something. I don't know how it is in England, but in the States it's not ever talked about Ever, like medication, healthcare, everything. There is never a mention of nervous system stuff. I guess, unless you know, you're at a at a point where maybe that's something that somebody looks into or your doctor looks into, but like through school, like I basically never heard it talked about much. So what? I guess this is probably like the most elementary style question ever, but it's probably good to maybe just set this the foundation of like what is it? What is the nervous system? For those, even myself, I mean, I kind of know, but I'm like you know what I guarantee. After this hour with you, I'm probably going to have a very different lens of what the nervous system is, cause I just think about it as something you'd try to control if you're nervous. That's about my extent of knowledge on it.

Josh Hall:

Yeah, yeah. So I mean, there's a bunch of different ways to answer that question. I think one of the most interesting that I like to lead with is it's essentially the filter or the medium of our experience of life, of reality. Like everything we experience, every interaction, everything we do is all mediated through the state of our nervous system, and often a lot of people will feel somewhat disempowered, they'll feel like they're kind of victims of their nervous system reactivity or they'll rely on substances, you know, things like Adderall, uppers or Xanax, to kind of kind of downshift. And one of the one of the most empowering things that I that I learned was that there are these kinds of levers we can like consciously upshift and downshift and control the state of our nervous system, to be in a state where we can kind of be more intentional.

Josh Hall:

And the frame that I like to share is that, um, one of the kind of biggest barriers to our agency in life and to living intentionally, to kind of showing up as the person we want to be, to living according to our values, are these moments where we fall into kind of reactive states.

Josh Hall:

This could be, you know, getting super angry at someone, it could be falling into an addictive pattern or tendency. There are so many ways that reactivity looks. But learning how to reduce the half-life of reactivity so going from spending like two days or two weeks in one in this kind of like dysregulated reactive state down to like two days, down to two hours, down to like you know, two minutes, that really makes a big difference in someone's life because you can dramatically increase the amount of time that you spend in a kind of grounded, intentional, calm, creative place. Um, so I think that's that's one of the like more important kind of lenses through the nervous system. You know, I can obviously talk about like the biology and the science of how it works, but that's less, uh, it's less like practically useful and more just like intellectually interesting.

Jonny Miller:

How do you uh, let's just dive into that right there with like reducing kind of like the mention, like the state that you're in, that could be self-sabotaging for maybe up to you know, days, weeks, maybe even months at a time? How do you? What's, what's the practical element of like how you get out of that? Do you, do you allow yourself a little bit of time to feel it, to go through it and try to rebound? What's the practical ways on getting out of that Totally so two things to mention here.

Josh Hall:

The first is that these reactive states are not inherently bad. Right, they are kind of adaptive strategies that our nervous system that is, essentially our nervous system and our brain are trying to make predictions about the world around us the entire time. And at one point the prediction of going into kind of a reactive state was beneficial it actually served us in some way but it's no longer useful or adaptive. Um, there are two forms of this reactivity. One form is hyper arousal, which is like going up into, let's say like anxiety, overwhelm, panic. It's kind of like, um, don't feel safe and there's this, or really hard to downshift. That's like on one end. And then the other end is um, more like freeze, withdrawal, numbness, disassociation, collapse, so kind of like there's two, there's two ways, and most people kind of tend towards one or the other in really high stress situations. But the way that I think about moving out of that state is there's kind of three skills or like three stages that I think about. The first skill is just learning to notice when you're approaching that reactive state. So I think of this as interoceptive sensitivity, which is a fancy way of saying being aware of your body and and like really importantly, noticing like what are the warning signs of like when you're two or three out of ten? So maybe it's like there's like a slight tightness in your throat, or maybe there's like a heat in your chest or maybe there's a kind of like thoughts tend to spiral. You know, everyone has these different like markers, and tracking this for yourself and like knowing what yours are allows you to even have the awareness of like okay, I'm noticing my body without judgment is like moving into this reactive state. I want to take another path. That's. That's actually like one of the most important pieces, because if you, if you miss that, it's really hard to come back when you're like a 10 or a 10 out of 10.

Josh Hall:

The second area is what I think of as self-regulation. So this is essentially building a toolkit of practices. These can be top down, bottom up and outside in. I'll explain. What those mean is essentially most things that people think of when they think of like mindfulness, or like positive reframing or affirmations, or telling yourself a different story. That's like using the mind to kind of change the body, basically, and they for sure can be helpful.

Josh Hall:

Um, but the the kind of category of practices that I think are underappreciated are the bottom-up practices, and these are basically using the body, using the breath, to downshift the system and then change the types of thoughts and feelings that we're having.

Josh Hall:

So this could be things like having an extended exhale breath, it could be humming for a period of time, it could be doing like long hold stretches, like yin yoga, for example, or um, you know, all of these practices that that leverage our physiology to um, downshift our system, and then that, you know, has a cascading effect in blood chemistry and then that crosses the blood brain barrier and then we start to notice that we have like calmer, more relaxed thoughts and feelings as a result of doing these bottom-up practices.

Josh Hall:

And then the third category, outside in, is basically changing our environment, and this includes the people as well. So I think, if our nervous system is like a instrument that we are constantly tuning with the people and the environment and the sounds and the stimulus around us, so you know, a really obvious example is like if someone goes from like a busy new york city street into like a kind of dimly lit, kind of relaxing music, lavender, scented room, they are going to start to feel a lot calmer. And if the people around them in that room are also in a grounded state, that will also have an effect. And so you start to kind of like build a picture of these different ways that you can augment your, the state of your nervous system, and then I'm talking a lot here.

Jonny Miller:

But this is great, this is fascinating the third category is emotional fluidity.

Josh Hall:

So this is, I would say, kind of the crux of what I teach and actually takes a long time to practice and learn. But once you've found that grounded, centered state you've done let's say it's like extended excel practice or some humming you feel okay, I'm like back in my body, but I still feel, I still notice this anxiety in my system. Then the move is I think of it as like courageous curiosity, so it's like dropping whatever the story is Like, let's say. Let's say someone just sent me a really angry email or actually the stocks crashed today. It's kind of a relevant example.

Josh Hall:

I'm like noticing this anxiety in my system. I just lost a shit ton of money, um, which actually did happen, and uh, yeah, and, and then there's there's a sense, a sense of like okay, like what is that sensation? And really following the sensation in your body and like welcoming it and um allowing the body to express and and feel whatever that emotion is. And my view on anxiety is that actually, anxiety in itself isn't an emotion. It's a protective strategy against underlying emotions.

Josh Hall:

So for me, in the stock market example, it might be the anxiety is masking a fear of I'll see if I can make this true a fear of, um, not having enough money in the future for our family's foundations, and then maybe, underneath that there might be a sense of maybe like I did something bad, or a sense of shame that I put money in at a bad time and that makes me a bad person.

Josh Hall:

And that sense of shame is like challenging and sticky to feel. And so, by doing that kind of exploration and specifically feeling the sensations associated with the fear and the shame, and like welcoming them back into the, my experience, there's a sense of like ease, expansiveness. I notice tension, kind of release, and it's like, oh, there's like ease and that's kind of the, that's kind of the the end of the cycle, and then you just repeat that every time you get triggered by something, it's like interceptive curiosity. How do I come back to myself and self-regulate? And then how do I welcome the underlying emotions that are being triggered by this external circumstance and take ownership for those emotions that are arising in me?

Jonny Miller:

What's the highlight of those three tips again, is it essentially some sort of awareness, and then practice, like breath work, the actual physical things you can do, and then practice like practice, like even breath work, the actual physical things you can do, and then exploration. Is that a fair?

Josh Hall:

that's pretty much it, yeah awesome.

Jonny Miller:

Well, my next question was how a lot of this applies day to day for designers, entrepreneurs, business owners. I think your example perfect segue, johnny. That example is exactly what I was hoping we'd get to is like how practically this stuff can work out. I mean, when I think about nervousness as a web designer and entrepreneur, it's typically in the form of, like a presentation or a nerve wracking call that you have a big deal that's on the line, or maybe you have to fire a team member or something like that. That's, you know, a pretty classic nervous. You know you're just nervous, or maybe you're even anxious, but um, and I'd love to dive into the difference between those two as well.

Jonny Miller:

But I do appreciate you sharing what you literally went through today, because I was wondering what this looks like day to day. So how did you? How far are you from that happening? Has this been all day or was it right before the call? Um have, do you have? Has what you've learned over the past few years? Are you at a place now to where you can cause I would have never known that about you today. Are you able to regulate it to where you can still carry on business as usual? Do calls, get shit done and then feel this later, explore it later. Is that how it works?

Josh Hall:

Yeah, so a few, few really important things to mention here. Firstly, um, there is a skill of building capacity, um, and I can talk about what those are, so that, like, it's not always appropriate to kind of feel an emotion in the moment. Like, for me, if I was like go into a deep emotional process right now in a podcast, probably not the best timing yeah, I was like.

Jonny Miller:

I was just thinking. If I was like, hey, john, nice to me and you're like, well, I'm glad you're having a good time, but my stocks and I just start bawling and they're like kind of curling up in a fetal position on the floor like it doesn't make a great conversation, yeah, so.

Josh Hall:

So there is a skill of um, I'd say of like, appropriate timing, um, but so an important kind of caveat is that, uh, our, like human nervous systems have developed an incredible capacity to buffer our emotional responses for the future, and you can see a kind of pretty intense, visceral example of this if you search I think it's like tranquilized bear, or even shaking Impala, on YouTube, and what you'll see is, in the Impala example, it narrowly escapes being eaten by I think it's a lion, and you see it kind of like stumbling over to kind of crouch behind a bush and once it settles down, the Impala starts like shaking intensely for maybe kind of 60 to 90 seconds and then just like gets up and what goes on with this day, and that shaking process was like discharging the, the intense stress of almost dying. And so with humans, we, you know, we equate stock market crashing with some some form of like I'm gonna die. It's basically how that's interpreted by the very ancient kind of reptilian nervous system. And so setting aside time to allow that um, literally like, allow the stress and the mobilization reflex to complete is, is really important, um, I'd say for me personally, I've definitely, um, I've definitely increased my capacity to hold a lot more intensity. So that looks like, you know, things like going on bigger podcasts Like the first time I went on um Lenny Ruchitsky and then modern wisdom.

Josh Hall:

I was really nervous before those calls. I was like like my whole system was activated. There was the sense of like, like my, my mouth started getting a bit dry, um, and there's a way in which you kind of like you, titrate. So you know, a musician wouldn't go from playing in front of a few friends to playing in front of, like, a crowd of a hundred thousand people. There is a kind of titration process where you gradually increase your window of tolerance to be able to kind of um, hold more intensity, let's say so that's definitely part of the process.

Josh Hall:

And then the other piece is is just learning to um welcome and uh, essentially it sounds like woo-woo but like love, the full spectrum of your emotional experience, and that's definitely something that you know. I'm I not perfect, but I think I've got a lot better at noticing when I might be experiencing something like fear or shame or or anger, and, uh, not making it bad or wrong, even something as intense as helplessness, which is something I've seen in. A lot of, a lot of really successful entrepreneurs that I've worked with have a deep, deep, deep fear of helplessness, and so they've constructed a life where they have like maximum agency. They create these like incredibly outwardly successful businesses, but on some deep level there's like I feel terrified of feeling helpless and really like counter-intuitively feeling that helplessness. There's like a kind of deep freedom and like almost like existential relief. On the other side.

Jonny Miller:

That is, um, it's quite hard to describe, but let's dive into this buffer idea a little more here, johnny, just because you know, we talked about some basic examples a minute ago where a lot of web designers and entrepreneurs may feel nervous presentations, you know, awkward relationship stuff in the business or whatever it is.

Jonny Miller:

But one thing I've noticed, because I coach a lot of web designers now, is I'm hearing the stories and getting real-time feedback from people that I had never got in years prior before, like coaching them in some way, and what I mean is like I'm hearing about them having cancer, going through a diagnosis, or their parent dies, or they're having issues in their family, whatever it is, or they're suddenly now like their their nervous system is spent or shot because they've just got so much going on, maybe on the personal side of things, but like the mortgage company isn't going to say I'm so sorry you're going through this, we'll just push our payments back a few months, don't worry about it, you still have to do your job, often depending on your business and setup Bills, don't care.

Jonny Miller:

Basically is what I'm trying to say. So I feel like it's so valuable to know how to channel this and have a buffer in a place for even when life happens. So, with that idea in mind, I guess I'm almost wondering, like what are some of the tips to build that buffer so you can continue? Obviously, there may be a time for a break a couple of days or a week or a couple of weeks but outside of a couple of weeks, most entrepreneurs and web designers need to get back to work. So how do we get back to work when something's going on? I guess that's the more succinct question.

Josh Hall:

Yeah, so you can. You can absolutely build up what I think it was almost like like emotional debt, in the same way that, like if you're struggling financially, you can kind of take out, take out a loan from a bank, pay some interest. Um, I think the the analogy holds pretty well Um, the practices that I think are this is interesting I've never really talked about this specifically, but um, both um, noticing how your body specifically is holding tension and learning how to relax that tension will allow your system to hold more intensity. Like, if I kind of say to you right now, like don't feel any emotion, the only way you could do that would be by like, really like, like, tensing every muscle in your body to like not feel. Um, and so, to the degree way you could do that would be by like, really like, like tensing every muscle in your body to like not feel um and so, to the degree that you can kind of relax and open to the intensity of what's happening.

Josh Hall:

And you know that's what I try and do before these really big podcast episodes. I just try and kind of like it's like, and you can kind of, um, practically speaking, you can, you can literally expand your awareness. So when we're stressed, when we're, um, worried about shit, our awareness gets very contracted almost. It's almost like experiencing life, to like a straw that's like right in front of you and you can just like consciously, like expand that out to be aware of, like the space to the side, behind, above, below, and that sense of like expansive awareness there's.

Josh Hall:

There's more space to hold, more intensity, and the same goes for many of these other particularly the bottom-up regulation practices. They help our body to feel safe, even when the story might be how am I going to pay rent, etc. Etc. What if I'm going to lose my job? There's a way that you can like allow your body to feel safe and have more capacity, even as these intense situations are arising. Um, let's see it was. It was something else I was going to mention, but, uh, yeah, I'll pause there and, um, maybe it'll come back to me.

Jonny Miller:

Well, that's great. Yeah, I was kind of curious, particularly if it's through a season. Um feel like, if it's an event we've talked before on the show and I know the value, I know it's the hottest thing these days which is some sort of breath work, like you mentioned, and just physically controlling or putting yourself in a state on how you feel. But even apart from that, I'm wondering if you're in a situation where shit has hit the fan, life is happening, whatever life may bring you, and especially if it's in the period of a couple weeks or a month or whatever, I'm wondering, like, is it more of a daily practice? Would you consider doing something that you would normally do once or twice a day and make that into a habit day to day through that season? You know what I mean. Like is there a? You know, if you're like a, like a habitual type of thing with these practices that you would try to make habit, totally, yeah.

Josh Hall:

So it's a great question. So there's a few things to basically like basically increase your capacity and your resilience Capacity is like how much stress can you hold in the moment? Resilience is how effectively can you downshift after a stressful situation? And I think particularly the resilience piece is important to train because you know know someone's going to be able to withstand a, let's say, like a stressful season if they have practices of like micro downshifting um, because if they're in the kind of fight flight intensity the whole time, that emotional debt is going to pile up a lot quicker than if they are going through kind of like mini intense sprints and then downshifting, relaxing intense sprint and then downshifting, relaxing, relaxing intense sprint and then downshifting, relaxing Um.

Josh Hall:

One of my favorite practices honestly is um, called non-sleep deep rest or NSDR, and this is like a. It's like a 10 to 15, maybe 20 minute Um. It's kind of like a power nap, but you're kind of doing a guided body scan of your system and that I'm, even if I'm feeling like pretty tired or exhausted by 1 or 2 pm after that I feel like renewed and nourished and like ready to go for the afternoon. As opposed to the other path of like you know, maybe someone drinking a double espresso or a coffee, which is then going to have, uh, downstream consequences for their sleep that night and then their recovery the next day, and that will kind of become a negative spiral. So I think that there's a large role for um having these practices that allow for deliberate defocusing um in.

Josh Hall:

You know, the same way people have practices for focusing. You actually, like, the human body can't sustain focus for more than an extended period of time. It needs to defocus and then the dopamine kind of gets restored and they can kind of focus again. So having, whether it's, like you know, really practically working in Pomodoro's and having, for the five minute break, not looking at a screen, doing some stretching, doing a breathing practice, some kind of, some kind of simple breath work, um, going outside getting like actual natural light is also really helpful. Um. And then, if, if it's available, I really like to try and add in like an nsdr practice after lunch for, let's say, 15 minutes um and those three things, and then on a weekly basis, if we're kind of talking about cadence, having some kind of spaciousness for feeling any buffered emotional responses from that week. So for me that might be a 60 minute breath work, a journey. There's other things that could look like, but essentially a space to permission anything that hadn't been felt from the previous week.

Jonny Miller:

I want to share this. I've never shared this publicly before, but I think it's important for this context. But I always kind of wondered what happened when so I actually we had to reschedule this call because my daughter recently had a surgery and we just had a rough day a couple days after recovery. So you know, I have a special needs daughter and the fall of 2022, she actually had a traumatic brain injury. She had a seizure that lasted throughout the night. We found her the next morning. I've been really open about this on the show and a lot of people know about it, but the very long and short of it is she had a traumatic seizure through the night, found her in the morning. We called the squad. We all rushed up there. We didn't know what was going to happen. We thought we might lose her. They were able to give her some sort of med that put her to sleep and got her off out of the seizure and then started the recovery process. Seizure and then started the recovery process. We didn't know if we were going to be at our children's hospital for a day or two days or two months. We had no idea what to expect. So she slept for almost two days and started to come out of it, and I'm saying this because I handled that really well. My wife did too. We're both very good under pressure and under stress, and it was purely reactive. We did not have time to sit and think about what had happened or experience the trauma like you mentioned, like really just being awareness and exploring that. We just didn't have time for that. My wife was 37 weeks pregnant at that time too, and the stress of that caused my little guy to be born. Just four days after that happened with my daughter, and she was still at Children's Hospital. So my wife, her water broke. She's having my son at another hospital. We're dealing with my daughter, bria, at Children's Hospital. My other daughter is at home wondering what the heck is going on, and I was with my wife and we had covet all at that same time too, so it was just a shit storm of like lifetime movie script that was going on.

Jonny Miller:

Um, after my I say all this to say after my son was born, the day after, it was our first time where it was literally quiet because my other daughter was still at the hospital and children's recovering and she was starting to make progress. But something obviously wasn't right. She never fully recovered from it. Um, and that day, when we were just sitting down I remember my wife was holding my little guy and I was just sitting down. It was like the first moment, in the first time of my life I've I've always been very regulated, never had anxiety or depression or anything like that, but it was the first time that I ever had.

Jonny Miller:

I guess was some sort of I don't know if it was a panic attack or an anxiety attack, but I just like this overwhelming cloud hit me and I just felt like I had to get out and I was like dry heaving. My wife thought I was throwing up. She's like what is going on, what's wrong? And I just like dry heaved. So I was just like breathing, trying to throw up. Couldn't throw up, so I just breathe. And I just sat back and put like a cold towel on my head. All that to say.

Jonny Miller:

After that I literally got up and I just had to go see my daughter at Children's Hospital and that helped calm me down. But it was the first time that I ever experienced that buildup, like you talked about, of that emotional debt that was not released in any way. So I think it would have really benefited me in that week that we went through and that was just the start of well a few weeks after that, but that initial traumatic week that we went through in so many ways it would have really benefited me to know some of this nervous system stuff, cause I think my nervous system was completely shot and that was the way my body reacted.

Josh Hall:

Yeah, wow, well, thank you so much for sharing that. And that's such a beautiful example, um, kind of demonstrating exactly what we've just been talking about. Um, and you know, as you, as you say, like that, that's maybe a kind of like a much more intensified and extreme example of what can happen to a lesser extent on a kind of weekly and monthly basis. Um, and you know, our nervous systems are like very, they're very intelligent, and so, as soon as you have that kind of um period of like quiet safety, like down downshift, that's when all of the emotions that were triggered during the intensity it reminded me of the the story with the bush after yeah yeah exactly that's how I felt.

Josh Hall:

It was like my 30 seconds exactly, and and cultivating the skill in those moments to just allow the body to do whatever it needs to do, even if, you know, I've been through some processes where, like, my entire body will be shaking, my like arm will be moving in weird ways. It's essentially the way that I think of it is like the body's way of like unwinding the tension that has been created in that time. And sometimes, um, there's a, there's a book by Peter Levine called waking the tiger, where he saw in his clients that they will literally recreate the exact movements that they couldn't do at the time of whatever happened, and so I think there was a. There was a patient who was, like she was maybe like attacked or something bad happened and she couldn't run away, and so on. On his table, her feet would start like peddling because that's the thing they couldn't do at the time, and that that completes the reflex and then that allows the kind of like everything to be released and to and to move on.

Josh Hall:

So, um, yeah, uh, I mean it's definitely not easy to kind of create space, especially when things are still really intense, and so kind of having some degree of just compassion for yourself and for the people around you is, I think, also super important. Um, but it is. It's. It's very good to at least have this perspective of, like, what might be happening and that, if you know, if your body does start to kind of go into that kind of response, it's. There's nothing wrong, it's just the body's way of like the Impala shaking after nearly losing its life.

Jonny Miller:

It's actually healing itself by doing that. What are some of the immediate helpful things in that type of state? Is it breath work? Is it drink a cold water? Get sunlight if you can. Is it just the? You know the basics of what we're probably wired to do.

Josh Hall:

Yeah, and in that type of state it's um creating a sense of internal and external safety. So you might've heard how in in psychedelic journeys they'll talk about set and setting. It's basically the same. It's like be in a, a, in an environment that feels safe to some degree. So you know, not like crazy loud music or hard, you know soft surfaces, things like that, and then internally just uh, reinforcing the fact that whatever is is happening is like okay and is welcome and like can continue, and not kind of trying to shut it down or um be any different, if that's, if that's available, um, gotcha and and then for the and then for the integration piece, like, let's say, say that, like later that day or the next morning, really to the degree that it's possible, some degree of like deep rest.

Josh Hall:

It's really in um deep sleep that the nervous system rewiring actually happens, and so, again, it may not be possible depending on the scenario, but to the degree that you can just allow yourself to rest after something like that experience, it's very, very helpful I was just gonna say I mean, that was the icing on the cake probably, for what I personally went through during that first week was sleeping on that hospital couch when I could during while having COVID and waking up nonstop.

Jonny Miller:

So I think it was probably the perfect storm.

Jonny Miller:

I will say one thing I've noticed in dealings and I'm just basing this off of my personal experience mainly with my daughter and with how many surgeries she's gone through.

Jonny Miller:

I don't want to say that surgery like waiting for your child to have surgery, as all parents know, it's just one of the worst feelings when you have to send them back and do that. But I don't know if I want to say it's gotten easier. But I will say I've just naturally learned how to deal with it better to where, like the first couple surgeries she ever had, I'm just kind of pacing and you can't help but worry a lot. Now I tend to like I think I've built in that buffer like what you've talked about. I've got a little more used to it and unknowingly probably went through some of the steps that we've outlined here to kind of get through those steps. And, by the way, I know we're talking a lot about personal stuff here. But I feel like all these lessons can translate to business in the business world, particularly if you're going through stuff on the personal side and you need to keep your shit together for a call or, you know, to get something done.

Josh Hall:

Yeah, I mean 100, and I I tend to you know my work and like personal life and business blur to some degree, um, and you know stress. So I I think of, I think of like intimate relationships, entrepreneurship and creativity as being like three arenas for basically like surfacing my own, my own stuff, my own stuff to work through. And, um, with that perspective, like in the moments when I get activated or triggered or I'm like afraid, that's like, I'm like, oh, that's kind of an opportunity for me to like work through this thing and to kind of increase my capacity for future. Um, so, even though it might not be pleasant, there's, there's part of me that's like huh, like I wonder like what'll, what it'll be like on the other side of this.

Jonny Miller:

Um, what is your main mission with your mastery program Is it? Is it to help folks avoid burnout in some way, or to get past burnout or something where they've, you know, basically spent their own nervous system? What's? Maybe I'm completely off, but yeah, like, what's your mission with what you do?

Josh Hall:

It depends who I'm talking to. Um, I think that you know, know, externally, it's about spreading nervous system literacy and helping folks to really understand these concepts, because I think it really does make a huge difference in people's lives, especially if they're paired with practical tools as well. Um, I think personally I care most about the word aliveness really stands out and I think that when there is a large amount of emotional debt or in burnout or in these reactive states, there's a way in which, like our experience of life and aliveness and fundamental well-being that is, I believe, available to everyone, it just can be occluded for periods of time because of this like emotional debt that we've just talked about emotional debt that we've we just talked about.

Jonny Miller:

Well, and like you mentioned earlier, as entrepreneurs, I think it's easy to fall into some sort of workaholic trap to where, even if we're not actually behind our screens working all the time, we all know it's very hard to turn it off mentally and we can often work 24, 7, at least waking hours, and I think it's really easy to fall into the trap of avoidance, like avoiding your feelings and avoiding looking at what's really going on internally, because you just got so much to do and you got stuff on your mind and it's, I almost feel, like it was. Maybe you'd agree with me and saying, like you have to rewire your intentionality with, like, your thoughts, I guess, probably to like start to turn that stuff off and give yourself more attention. I guess it sounds kind of weird, but I've certainly run into that trap. I know a lot of folks a lot of my friends and colleagues and people I coach run into the like I just can't turn it off, I can't turn the business mind off.

Josh Hall:

Yeah, yeah, path to avoidance, I guess it's for sure a really common thing that I see with my clients as well. Um, there's a few things I kind of suggest as like experiments or like avenues to explore. I think one is kind of like getting clear and honest about the fuel source for what you're doing. Um, and a lot of people, when they start out in entrepreneurship, the fuel source is I want to prove myself, I want to, or I'm like afraid of going back to whatever it was that I came from. Um, and it's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's not really sustainable to kind of be drawing from that fuel source all the time. And so I think about like swapping the fuel source to some degree to like genuine excitement, curiosity, love of the craft, love of process. I think that's kind of a big piece, um, yeah, yeah, there's. There's probably more. I could say that, but I'll pause.

Jonny Miller:

That's great. No, I think you're. You're totally right too. When somebody gets to a new stage in their journey I've I've seen that a lot to where whether it's um, whether it's like a why, like you have to reevaluate your why. Or I had Chris Doe on the podcast recently and he said he said something that stuck with me in this realm, which was once you're killing it, you need to re-evaluate your definition of success, and I love that idea, I love that frame of like. Okay, yeah, because maybe success at first was just to make enough to pay your bills and do this full-time. Well, now, maybe that, maybe that changes a little bit.

Josh Hall:

So well, what's what's really interesting there? I mean, mean so I'm currently working with a couple of post-exit founders who have made an insane amount of money, like millions, millions and millions, and they still don't feel fundamentally okay and it's actually a really scary place to be because they'd oriented their life essentially towards thinking that if I get x amount of money in the bank I will feel good, I will feel okay and it's, I think, actually, like you know, underrated. It can be really terrifying to have achieved that but not to feel good deep down. And so then then there is this like kind of complete existential re-evaluation of how they're orienting and so kind of coming back to the workaholism piece you know we will have these kind of compensatory patterns or defensive accommodations is, like the technical term, essentially our means of disassociating, numbing out, um, getting a dopamine hit.

Josh Hall:

That is typically to kind of avoid feeling a certain thing, and you can do this for whether it's like weeks, months, years, maybe even decades in some cases, um, but usually it requires some kind of deep introspection and exploring like what are the? What are the feelings that I'm kind of deep introspection and exploring like, what are the? What are the feelings that I'm kind of running away from here and actually like turning towards as opposed to running away. Um, that's generally the only path available, which a lot of listeners are probably gonna be like fuck you, I don't want to do that.

Josh Hall:

That's fine. Um, yeah, I I don't, I don't, it's not a moral thing, but that's just what I've noticed from people I've worked with.

Jonny Miller:

Let me ask you this here, johnny, because, as a fellow course creator, I experienced something I was not prepared for the first couple of times I created courses, but I want to ask you to see if you experienced something similar or the same thing, which is well, let me just ask you how, when you got your the first time, if you can put yourself back to when you created your first program, how long ago was that? 2022. Okay, so just just a few years ago, when you finished the program and launched it. I guess it depends on how you're delivering that, but what happened to your nervous system after you launched and after it was quote-unquote done?

Josh Hall:

there was a um, a deep sense of like relief.

Jonny Miller:

Yeah, yeah, it was like a drop of some sort, because I've always experienced maybe it is relief every course I ever put out or redo. There is the weirdest like yeah, I guess release is probably the best. It's like a drop, it's like oh, and sometimes it it feels weird because I feel like you're on such a high when you're creating and you're marketing and you're just it's on your mind nonstop and then once it's out, it's probably the same with anything. It's probably the same with producing a movie, it's probably the same. I used to be a musician. I felt the same way in some ways when we released an album. Um, I just I've.

Josh Hall:

I've found that like my nervous system gets depleted after doing something like that and you're just like oh, well, it's like a micro version of what you experienced in the hospital to some degree, and so for me it's actually more at the end of the marketing period, because that's where there's more uncertainty and there's more like I'm putting myself out there more. I'm actually pretty comfortable and confident in the teaching side of things. Like we actually finish our cohort like tomorrow and I'm like great. So for me the drop is more after the sales end. And yeah, it's because there's a degree of activation, there's some degree of like in my system at least like what if I don't make enough sales, especially with cohorts where, like, a lot of people tend to come in the very last minute? You're kind of like like is this going to work? Every time it's like are people going to come, and so that's yeah, and that creates tension and then that tension gets released.

Jonny Miller:

I think this has become a therapy session to help me realize why I transitioned from a course model to a membership model Right A couple years ago, because that was the big shift and pivot I had in my business. I still have my courses that I used to launch one off, but now they're just wrapped up in a membership model. So it is interesting I don't have those feelings as much now, because I used to launch one off but now they're just wrapped up in a membership model. So it is interesting I don't have those feelings as much now because I don't launch anymore. I have, like, many launches but it's not like you mentioned. You know some people with certain models. You live or die by the launch. So if a launch goes bad, you're in thick water for a little while.

Josh Hall:

But I'm still in that camp, for better or worse.

Jonny Miller:

Yeah, water for a little while. But I'm still in that camp for better or worse. Yeah, for better for worse. Yeah, I know, I saw your numbers. I I listened to your chat with jay. I know you've had some amazing launches, so hopefully that, you know, buys you enough time for a while. But, um, yeah, man, that's interesting. I really think that made subconsciously. I think that may have been a part to me thinking through, you know, like, could I make this more sustainable without highs and lows?

Josh Hall:

Yeah. So a really interesting kind of direction is like to what degree do certain business models and approaches create the conditions for, like long term regulation? So what I like about mine is that it's actually very seasonal. So I work pretty intensely for, like you know, two weeks of the promotion period and then run it for five weeks and then there's like a big break, there's like a lot of spaciousness and I don't really have many commitments. So that's my time to like really kind of recharge and reset and whatever it is. But you know, if I was doing that, if I was doing six, eight cohorts a year, screw that.

Jonny Miller:

Like that doesn't feel sustainable in my system that's such a good point, man, because with my, with my model now, it's different than that in the way of I don't have the extended breaks that you have, but I also don't have the intense couple weeks with with that type of model. But there's definitely there's pros and cons to both. For sure, like I do think it's probably worthwhile going back to what you said earlier, like being really aware of you know, like maybe how you deal with things and what you like to do and what you're willing to take on. Some of this may be, you know, seasonal in times of life too. If you're traveling, maybe that model is good to where you could do a launch and then have a few weeks to be able to travel and downshift a little bit, to travel and downshift a little bit. But yeah, I have less high highs and low lows now, but I don't get the extended breaks that you might. But yeah, there's pros and cons to both models.

Jonny Miller:

That's interesting, I guess. Hey, whatever works right, how does that work with results, with your clients? Do you just get to a point where you're like you just got to do what works for you? In what sense? Uh, just with how they're, you know, managing their, their nervous system and how, like in this type of scenario, you know, if two course creators came to you and they're like should I do the launch model have big launches but extended breaks, or should I have a subscription that I'm on often kind of on call, but I'm not having the big, you know the roller coaster emotions like it was previously? Yeah, how do you?

Josh Hall:

yeah the approach that I take with pretty much everything is just like self-experimentation, so kind of like jay talks about with marketing, like design a hypothesis and then test it and then reflect exactly the same with your own kind of um cyclical approach or your own approach to work. So I, to the degree possible, test both and pay attention to how you feel and which you prefer, because I I think you know two different people, um could both have very regulated nervous systems but prefer different setups. You know, like me, and you are probably a good example like I, quite like the cohort approach, particularly at least for where I'm at in life right now, but that might change over time. It's kind of hard to say.

Jonny Miller:

That's well said, man. Well, johnny, that was a fast hour dude. This has been great, learned a lot, got a lot of ideas. Kind of fun to share some of this stuff that I don't.

Jonny Miller:

You know, there's usually not too much of a space to talk about in the business of web design, but I think this is really important, man, whether it's on a low level of just like you know, you're nervous for a presentation, or like what you went through with some some, you know, some serious, I mean trauma, let's call it what it is. I mean you, I really appreciate you sharing that. By the way, I had, no, I didn't know about that part of your story. And then even you know to what some of the things that I've gone through in my past, like the reality is at the core of us moving forward in our lives. It's the nerve, it's the nervous system. I feel like all roads lead to that. So, um, I really appreciate this man. Where should people go to to connect with you and to maybe hear about your next cohort? That's going to be open, because you open and close, right go yeah, yeah, yeah.

Josh Hall:

Thanks, josh, and I really appreciate you sharing some of your story as well. Um, that's really meaningful to hear and, in terms of um, yeah, where listeners can can go next, the best place is nsmasterycom. Um, that has links to. There's a free self-assessment that people can take. It'll give them like a score of how regulated they they are in that moment. There is a new app that is like a little bit buggy, but I think it's still pretty good. It's called state shift and it has a bunch of these practices that you know, some of which I talked about. I think there's like 25 ish on there right now. We're going to be adding more and then the cohorts we run every spring and fall. Um, there's also kind of like a lifetime membership model as well, where people can get instant access to the curriculum, and that's all available on the nsmasterycom website.

Jonny Miller:

Awesome, sweet, we'll have all that linked up, and I've got you the uh waking the tiger book linked up as well, so I'll make sure we put this in the show notes. So well, johnny, appreciate it, man. Love your work, love what you're up to, so keep doing your thing and uh, yeah, I really appreciate you taking the time, man.

Josh Hall:

Thanks, josh. This is a great conversation, Appreciate it.

Jonny Miller:

Hope you enjoyed this one, friends Again. Uh, eye opening, mind opening on this one learned a lot from Johnny, as I'm sure you did. If you would like to connect with Johnny and potentially join one of his cohorts to take this idea of your nervous system mastery to the next level, you can go to his website, which is nsmasterycom. That will, of course, be linked to the show notes for this episode, which will be found at joshhallco slash 383. Big thanks to Johnny for this conversation and so much more. So be sure to go to his website again, nsmasterycom. Leave us a comment, if you would, if there's anything that stuck out to you here that you would like to share with both Johnny and myself. Leave us a comment at the show notes for this pay or for the for this episode.

Jonny Miller:

Joshhallco slash three, eight, three. I read all those and I always make sure my guests see those as well. So drop us a comment if something resonated with you and if even some of the tips we went over help you and your nervous system and your overall health as an entrepreneur. Cheers, my friends. Cheers to being sustainable and enjoying our life as a web designer, solopreneur, freelancer, agency owner, whatever bucket you fall into. Stay subscribed because we've got some amazing conversations ahead and I really appreciate you listening and taking the time to be with me here, so can't wait to hear from you. Cheers, friends.