E630 | How To Calm Your Racing Mind With Yves Gege

In this episode, Doc Danny tackles the question of how to calm a racing mind, particularly as an entrepreneur, in order to find a balance between work and family life. Drawing from personal experience, Danny shares the story of their own struggle with overwhelming stress and the toll it took on their physical and mental health.

They emphasize the importance of understanding the body's limits and seeking support from mental health specialists and performance coaches to reframe thoughts and beliefs. While stress can be a motivator, Danny warns that it cannot be a long-term strategy, as entrepreneurs risk burning out.

The episode delves into the significance of recognizing and managing stress effectively. It explores the connection between high achievers and their ability to leverage adversity from their past to achieve success. Danny provides practical strategies for stress management, such as self-awareness, understanding personal stress levels, and using tools like journaling and whiteboarding.

They also highlight the power of breathwork to shift one's state of mind and move away from frustration. Additionally, the episode emphasizes the importance of adapting leadership styles as entrepreneurs reach higher levels of success, including trusting others, mentoring, refining systems, and ensuring their implementation.

Taking a closer look at major life decisions, such as career changes or starting a business, this episode acknowledges the fear of the unknown that often accompanies these choices. Danny encourages listeners to embrace the idea of "taking a chance on oneself" and not allowing others to dictate their path.

Drawing parallels to other significant changes in life, such as changing schools or even something as simple as getting a new car, they empathize with the difficulty of these transitions. However, they emphasize the importance of pursuing personal passions and share stories of individuals who have successfully changed their situations.

Ultimately, the episode urges listeners to define their own priorities and desired future state while acknowledging the challenges and advocating for taking the risk to make a change if it aligns with their true desires.

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: [00:00:00] Hey, real quick before we get started, head over to Facebook and join the PT entrepreneurs Facebook group. If you haven't done so yet, we have monthly live trainings going on there. There's an opportunity for you to join in the conversation instead of just listening to what I have to say on this podcast, as well as the people that I bring on.

And it's a really cool place to join about 6, 000 other clinicians that are. Honestly, trying to change the landscape of our profession through these cash and hybrid practices. One other thing that's really cool is we have a guide in there. That's a quick start guide. When you join, you can go and check this out.

There's about seven videos that we've curated that are the most common questions we get in the best case studies that we've found to really help you start, grow, and scale your practice up to seven figures. So if you haven't done so yet, head to Facebook request to join the PT entrepreneurs, Facebook group.

You have to be a clinician. We're going to check you out. We don't just let anybody in, but if you are. Hey there, go ahead and get signed up. We'd love to have the conversation with you in that group.

So here's the question. How do physical therapists like us who don't want to see 30 patients a [00:01:00] day, who don't want to work home health and have real student loans, create a career and life for ourselves that we've always dreamed about? This is the question. And this podcast is the answer. My name is Danny Matei and welcome to the PT entrepreneur podcast.

All right. What's going on guys, Dr. Danny here with EGG and the PT Entrepreneur Facebook Group and the PT Entrepreneur's Podcast. And today we're diving into a topic, this actually comes from a question that we got in our mastermind Facebook group, which is pretty active group within our community.

It's a great place where the people that we work with can have a general topic question that maybe they want to get some feedback on or [00:02:00] see what other people are doing in different parts of the country and get an idea of what's working best. So it's a really interesting place for me to check out.

And every once in a while we see something that's like a question that somebody has that we feel might be best to be addressed on a podcast. And there's probably a lot of other people dealing with the same problem. And today we're talking about how do you calm your racing mind, right?

Especially as an entrepreneur, when you go into business for yourself, how do you shut down the stressors, the things that are, taking your mental bandwidth and actually let you, fall asleep or be present with your family or be a nice person to be around, right? Like how to deal with the mental difficulties, the challenges associated with.

The unknown associated with entrepreneurship, especially in the early stages. I think what might be a good way to start this off Eve is, do you have a a time that you remember where you were really struggling with shutting? Like it was such, such a stressful time that it was very hard for you to shut it down.

And you were like constantly thinking about. [00:03:00] Whatever it was you were dealing with, it was affecting other areas of the life. Definitely. I

Yves: can think of lots of them. I've got one in particular that I think would be helpful to dive into. This was actually during COVID and we traveled a bunch.

We were opening another office and made to move. PT biz was growing. The other company EFT, we were actually having a split with a partner and legal kind of got involved, so it was really. everything happening all at once. And it was super difficult for me to disconnect and not try to solve all the problems because there were so many at once.

So there was a lot of, I was also to, to boot training for my first CrossFit competition too, while on the road for that. So I have this unusually bad habit and I actually have worked. With somebody and talked with somebody about not doing this, where I will say yes to too many things because I can do something right now.

I'm like, cool, I'll do this [00:04:00] because I have the bandwidth now, but I don't think how that's going to a probably affect my health and my family and be how that's going to be long term. What if something goes wrong? It's oh, this works if it goes perfectly, but nothing ever happens perfectly.

So I had all those things. Happening at once, and it was just super difficult for me again, just like you said, to be with my family to fall asleep at night to not be constantly worried about that problem. And I think shutting it down was just super difficult for me and Yeah, I have a lot of strategies that we can put into place, but that was one where it was just like, even with all the things that I was doing, it was too super difficult to truly disconnect, which is, I think, sometimes the hardest part because you're like, you're constantly growing.

If you're an entrepreneur, you're like, what can I do next? And how can I be proactive? What should I do? And it's tough to shut it

Danny: down. It's hard. I think for me, I've actually had quite a few times when. I've just been so stressed out that I I didn't, I have like physically we would make myself sick.

And, I think it comes down to overwhelm typically. The challenge [00:05:00] is early on. You're very overwhelmed because you're doing a lot and you're working. You're trying really hard to get something. To work, it's like the whole, when you first push a sled, the hardest part is like getting it going and then maintaining the momentum of it is not as hard as this start, right?

Anytime we start anything, it's always really hard, but there's also these growth phases, these cycles that we go through where it's like things pile back on you at certain times. We're just talking to one of our coaches and she had a staff member that's out on maternity leave and she had a staff member that ended up leaving to go work somewhere else.

All of a sudden, guess what? Guess who's seeing a ton of more patients that and still running the business, right? Like that entrepreneur is and that's a difficult time. It's a hard thing to to deal with. And I remember. For me, probably the most challenging time that I had was when I was still treating, I was still running our local practice.[00:06:00]

I was still doing some stuff with mobility wide with the ready state on the teaching side and PT biz was growing quite a bit, and I remember we had a live event that was like. In the fall and leading up to that, I was such so fragmented. I was doing so many different things that I was like, just constantly, I felt this, like you could feel the pressure like I felt it in my body and even leading up to that event, like the weekend.

Before the event was like a Monday, Tuesday and that Saturday, I remember I had a bunch of stuff to do and my family was like, you guys got to get out of here. I'm going to be busy all day. So they went off and did something and I remember just going down to my office was in our basement and like literally thought I had a heart attack just sitting on the stairs.

Just so much pressure in my chest and like I couldn't even sit up straight and my neck was so can't stand the pressure. Tight there for days to like it didn't feel right because all the muscles in the front of my neck were really clenched up and I tried to lean backwards on the [00:07:00] stairs and I couldn't even do that.

So I'm like hunched over on the stairs and this lasted for probably 1015 seconds. And I honestly I just like I'm having a heart attack. I'm screwed. There's nobody here. And. And after about 10, 15 seconds, it started to subside. And then I just had all this like tightness in my jaw.

And I was like, this is not good. And that lasted for about another 10, 15 seconds. And as soon as it, that resolved, I literally just got up and I just walked to my office and I just did all the shit I had to do for the rest of the day. And completely discounted. I was like, I'll deal with this at some other time.

I'm too busy. I don't have time for this. And leading into that event, the event went fine. And then about a few weeks later, all of a sudden, I end up with this rash on my leg and it's shingles. And it was like, I went, I remember going to the doctor. I want to go see the doctor and. She's this is weird.

You're, 34 at the time. You're healthy. Should not have shingles. What is going on? And what I realized was just like all this stress. And this was at a time where I'd been past the start phase. But it's like saying yes to too many [00:08:00] things and it piles on and it piles on. And next thing you're giving yourself a panic attack and shingles.

And then it's like, all right I can't do that anymore. And I think the stuff that we're gonna share with you guys is based off of not theory, a lot of pain and discomfort associated with not doing a good job of this for ourself. And hopefully if we can save you, the challenges of the stress, panic attacks and, shingles and just stressors and stressing your family out.

At a minimum, like hopefully this will be worth it for this one, because there's definitely some things that I do now that I wish I would have been doing, at different periods of my time as an entrepreneur that definitely wouldn't have led to me being in that position. Yeah

Yves: overwhelm is real.

It's really interesting how your body will eventually. Yeah, your body keeps a score, right? You're a great book by the way. Your body will eventually let you know, if we go back to that same time, I wish Amy was here to tell the story, but we're all traveling and my dad's with us and my body does actually shut [00:09:00] down.

So for 24 hours, I was basically asleep in the back of the van as we were traveling from one part of the country to the other. And I was out, like I was asleep, like half asleep, like my body literally just shut down and it used to happen a lot back when I had my insurance based practice and there was a lot of stress there.

And I was just like, there's probably a lot to unpack about that was very early in my entrepreneur journey, but it happened again because all this kind of happened at once during that time, they were following a GPS. Yes. And she did. I don't remember any of this, but she describes it as she's driving this van.

My dad's, I'm in the back, way back sleep. Kids are there. My dad, Amy, and they're driving. And the GPS is 300 miles this way. And this paved road turns into a road with no. Paint on it and then it turns into a gravel road and then it turns into a ravine and then they start going up in a mountain and I'm asleep.

And just this is epic story. If we tell everybody my dad's cool, just keep going. You're fine. Eventually they get to the point where they [00:10:00] have to turn around and backtrack literally three hours. And they still amazed that I was able to sleep through this entire thing. But it was like, it's just another story of you can, like you said, like we have, unfortunately, or maybe fortunately for the people listening real experience of what it's like to just have so much anxiety and so much stress in your life that your body's just screw it, I'm done. I'm just gonna, you cannot move for the next 24 hours.

Like they went to dinner that night and I was like, I can't go. You guys go to dinner. I'm just going to sleep here in the back, and next day, luckily I was doing a lot better and it wasn't like, and it wasn't like I was sick. It was literally. Purely a stress related thing where the body totally shut down.

And I've learned a lot from that and I have I created a list and it's a long list of things that I have done to counteract some of those things in order to, hopefully that will never happen again. Ideally I don't want that. Yeah.

Danny: It was the body. It's interesting.

Everybody will show significant stress in different ways. And it's not that like you can't, I don't think the goal should be to avoid stress. I think the goal [00:11:00] is to understand your own body, right? Like it's like when I was working with a lot of competitive CrossFit athletes, a big thing that, that we're really trying to get them to understand is what is.

Your redlining, what is it? What is it? What does it feel like to you? What can you push yourself to and understand where you're at? And when you do that, and when you need to do that, and when you need to just back off a little bit from to sustain yourself, right? And I think as we look at Entrepreneurship is this long race, it's an ultra endurance event, and you can't, there's times when you're going to sprint and there's times when you're going to jog or walk or whatever.

But you need to know when you need to, take a break and and not just deplete yourself over and over again, which is what, it sounds like we both obviously did. I would say the other thing too is. It's very normal for anybody that's dealing with this stuff to do really well working with someone that's a mental health specialist.

I think this is something that, working with a therapist or [00:12:00] a performance coach or whatever it is that you want to call it it can help so much because it allows you to see what you're doing and the perspective of that through somebody that's not in your shoes as well as is their job is what they're really good at.

To help you reframe some of the things that maybe are causing you to do this to yourself and realize that there's. There's probably some stuff that's deeper than that has to do with your own beliefs, probably of why you do what you do, what you assign value to and meaning and what that comes from and hopefully understand if that coming from a good or a bad place because there's a really interesting there's really interesting study I saw where it was, it basically had to do with how hard some someone would work to achieve a goal.

And they were looking at mice. And they basically tie this tensometer around the mice's tail or the mouse's tail, I should say. And one of the tests, they put like the smell of like food in front of the mouse and they tested to see how hard is the mouse pulling to get to this food. And then in the next test, they put like the smell of a [00:13:00] cat behind the mouse.

And then they tested how hard is the mouse pulling to get away from the cat. And it was exponentially more that the mouse would pull to get away from the cat than it would to be to move towards, this food smell, which, if you extrapolate that to, assuming we can do that to us, probably we can, we're going to run a lot further and a lot faster away from a threat.

Then we are towards a desired future state. The issue is it's not necessarily the best driver. It's a very potent driver, but it, the byproducts are not good. And realizing that is probably step one. Most of us that are higher achievers are trying to prove something because of something we felt.

In our childhood or growing up that we needed to prove in order to feel validated. So it can be great. But at a certain point, you probably have to realize that and come to terms with it. And hopefully it is before you give yourself sort of sickness.

Yves: Yeah, I think in a perfect world, you have these short term drivers and those can be motivations that are more [00:14:00] of running away from the cat.

Like it can, those can be useful, but that cannot be the long term strategy. Like we both know of entrepreneurs who. Have run themselves in the ground. They're very wealthy, but they're at the same time have no relationships or life. They're not healthy physically, they're not happy at all. It is a little bit of a balance, and I what you said.

It's we don't want to avoid stress completely, right? Like we want, like stress is a, can be a good thing, but. Passing out in the back of a van because you can't move because you're like, that's a bad thing, right? So I love the analogy of the crossfit is like, how can I understand where my red lines at, how can I push myself to do more because I have this greater goal but not get to the point where I just totally collapse.

And that's, I think that's what's this about? I don't want us to swing the whole other way and be like, this is not stressful. This is not hard. Avoid all that. That's not a good thing. I think it's going to be difficult to reach long term. Goals. If you don't have some sort of mindset that like, this is going to suck and this is going to be stressful.

And I've got, I've [00:15:00] got to move forward like a really cool analogy. I'm watching Arnold, which is like a new Netflix special on him. And he had what you would think is a terrible childhood, like abusive, like he, he shared a lot of things, but he's I'm not sad about that, that is.

What drove me to be the person that I've been today? Because if you think about it, it's it's three series. It's like the athlete, which I haven't got to the next one. It's the actor. And then it's the politician. Like he has achieved an insane amount in his life. You know what I mean? And he's yeah.

I never want to go back to where I was before. And that was like a big, initial kind of driver for him in the beginning. And he had to move past that. So there's just not of analogies to what we're talking about. And what I saw just in that first episode. So check it out. If you haven't checked

Danny: it out yet.

What do you say that. If you were like super emotionally healthy and you had nothing to prove, you're probably not going to achieve a significant amount. Which is funny because we look at that as a really good thing. And yeah, he might not be. He might not view that as a bad [00:16:00] thing now, but how many people come from that same environment that he came from that are alcoholics or drug addicts or in jail because of not thriving through that.

So it's, it is interesting to look at that. It's man, okay, most high achievers have some sort of, Something that, that is not healthy about, their background or their relationship with their family or themselves or the way they look right. Like for him, it maybe has something to do, like bodybuilders typically, there's something about themselves that they don't really like, and they're trying to build this ability to build confidence. And and that starts typically at a very young age. And I think a lot of males end up like that as well. So it is interesting in an entrepreneur world, the difference being, and he's very much an entrepreneur especially if you look at early on with his, his construction company and I've read some books about Arnold and how they were like slinging him in a Frank God, what's his name?

The other bodybuilder that was like the first Hulk. They were just like slinging like bricks that were like laying patios cause the guy was like Italian and. He [00:17:00] was like, Oh, this is like this handmade, like fine Italian workmanship or whatever. And Arnold would sell it. And this guy was actually like a Mason and he would do the work and stuff like that.

And then they were buying buildings for investment stuff. And he made more money in real estate than he did off his movies early on in his career. So he's an interesting guy, when we look at okay, how do you deal with your ability to control your own mind when it's going bananas, cause you're stressed out, you're thinking about all these different things.

That's a tough skill set to develop and there's a few really simple things that I do on a regular basis that really help a lot. But I think the first thing you have to realize is like I said about those athletes is understand when you're redlining yourself and I know now what that feels like.

And I know when I start to get to that point, what I need to do, which is to like. Say no to more stuff to block more time to be able to catch up on things so that I don't feel like it's overwhelming and I'm not able to maintain, where I want to be. So part of that is like you [00:18:00] understand yourself, right?

So you can do that very subjectively, on a scale of 0 to 10. How stressed did I feel today? 10 is like I'm maxed out 0. You feel fine, right? It's like nothing at all. So you have to figure out where you're at on that. If you have too many days where you're above, like for me, if I'm above an eight for multiple days in a row, then I know, all right, I got to block some time to catch up on things at a minimum because it's just going to keep snowballing and snowballing.

And I'm going to feel really bad. So part of it is being self aware enough to know how you feel to start there. I don't know if you do anything like that as objective of that, or if you it's like you sense it, and you

Yves: know. Yeah, for sure. I think it's been trial and error. And I do sense it.

There's things that I do I think Amy helps me a lot. Obviously my wife and my kids, like I can see how, she'll call me out nowadays, which I've asked her to do, I'll just know that I'm being short with the kids or, I definitely. More of a of a sense when you're getting close to that red line and I try not to even to touch that anymore.

You know what I [00:19:00] mean? I want to be as far away. Absolutely as possible because you're right. To go back to the, it's just interesting. You said that about the Arnold analogy. So he had a brother and his brother. Was a died in a car accident and was drunk in the car accident. So he became an alcoholic.

So he made this analogy of how it strengthened him and it didn't really work, so it's a it's just definitely something that can be a double edged sword. I think so. When it comes to. Specifically I feel like the one thing that maybe I've learned when you were talking that helped me a lot is that I understand now before it was more fear was like, I have to do these things or my business will go under.

I will not be valuable. I'm not being productive. There's a lot of eyes in there like I am failing, and now when I get to that red line. It's honestly just through experience. I know my business is not going to go away. Like I know if I like, if I take another day or two, or I push this off a week, like things are not going to fall apart.

And I feel like that's probably been the most [00:20:00] useful for me. Shout out to Kim. Who's helped me work through this and like my definition of what productive means and how I can be productive. It's not always about just doing more. Like I always just thought I had to do more. The only thing that's what I knew how to do.

I knew how to just work really hard. And I thought that was the only way I could provide value. And as soon as I realized. That wasn't necessarily true in my own thought of myself as well as my business won't fall apart if I just, give it some time and I don't, I push a meeting off every once in a while.

That's, that's okay. But that was a lot of hard work, man, a lot of hard work to

Danny: get there. I tell you, I think here's the other thing. And this is what most people don't even realize is it's once you dial, once you build that endurance up to where your work capacity is just like.

Very high, right? There's a years where I was working 60 plus hours a week, like probably I don't even know, six years straight, right? And sometimes it was quite a bit more than that, especially if I was traveling to teach and things like that. And. You can hold that for a long time and you build this tolerance to the discomfort of it, to [00:21:00] where it's almost like this superpower that you have.

Then when you get to a place where you have people around you and you've built an actual business, it's hard to turn it off in a lot of ways. So you've built this endurance, you've built this this stamina and then you, now you can't be the one doing everything. You have to learn how to change the way in which you're leading.

And then it's even harder because you have to trust other people and you have to mentor other people and develop other people, and then you have to refine your systems and make sure that they're being followed and that they, could they be better or are you missing something? And there's a lot of non direct work that happens that making that transition, I think for a lot of people, it's very hard because they feel like they're not putting the work in that got them where they're from, where they were to where they are now, but.

But they know they can't do that to get to the next stage and that in its own right can cause a lot of frustration and challenge because the thing they got really good at, they can't do that to go any further, right? They're limited. They're the bottleneck at that point, right? And that can be just as hard for you as far as like the mental bandwidth side [00:22:00] and being stressed out and constantly thinking about it.

And for me, if I find myself. Like staring off into space and just completely thinking about something else, right? I'm very aware of that now and it's, or if I'm being a dick like it's basically dad being a dick. If dad's being a dick, he needs to go for a walk. Or something like that yeah, dad's being a dick, get out, go for a walk, right?

Go. And I'll talk through some of the things that I like to do that help me, but our, my family is very aware of it. And I'm very aware of it now too. If I'm just spacing out for no reason, I'm like, all right, I gotta do something else. I gotta change what I'm doing, change the location I'm in, change the state that I'm in.

And there's a few ways that I like to do that. The very first one. Is journaling or using a whiteboard. So I'm a huge fan of both of these. I write in a journal and I use a whiteboard almost every day that I'm in, in the office. And what I like to do is just at least in a journal, right out, just.

Whatever's top of my mind, especially if it's like first thing in the morning, before I go to bed, [00:23:00] especially if I'm trying to solve a complex problem where I'm dealing with something that, that is is challenging that I'll just start to write out random things that I think about around that or whatever, just what's going on in my mind.

I'll just dump it onto a piece of paper or I'll dump it out onto a whiteboard. And it's so helpful. That helps me. Just that one thing helps me so much to just it's almost like you're cleaning out all this junk that's in your head and you get it out somewhere else. And then you can look at it at a later date.

Like it's there. You don't have to think about it. It's not just running in the background. You just leave it there. You come back, look at it the next day. Give yourself some time. Like that one thing for me. And not everybody's going to be the same, but that works so well for me because I'm just like, visually, it helps me a lot.

I like the fact that I'm writing it out and then it gives me some spaces and time where I can go back and look at a different time. So that's my number one thing. What do you like to do? Oh man, this is a

Yves: tough one. Like I, I feel like all, like I created a list and what I realize is all of these things helped me at a certain [00:24:00] time.

Is there one that's my absolute favorite? Probably right now. Yes. But like that could change over the next six to seven months. I think you know this about me. Like I like diversity. I like change, like I like to travel and change my environment. Yeah. Recently, I literally just started picking up journaling again.

I took a break from that. And I'm doing it in the morning and I'm doing it in the evening. I like the morning version where I'll grab like the daily stoic and it helps me just set the tone for the day, cause I'm seeing myself being a little bit more scattered and maybe like even Full transparency, maybe just not prioritizing the right things in my life again, where I'm like thinking about maybe it's like too much growth and not about family or just too much of grow.

And not what am I grateful for and gratitude? We can go into that. If I see that kind of happening, I reel it back in and it's just super helpful to just what am I thinking? Why am I thinking that way? Why is this helpful or useful in my life or not yeah, it's the same thing I love a whiteboard too.

Like my whiteboard's full right now as I look over at it Yours is too. I'm sure but [00:25:00] that is it's just super useful. The journaling I think getting it out of your brain And onto a piece of paper cannot be understated like it's also such an easily Actionable thing to do and i've always done some form of journaling, To do lists, like I think that act in and of itself.

Yeah, it's just extremely cathartic and freeing and cool. I can, it's written down. I can come back to this tomorrow. You know what I mean? That's also super helpful.

Danny: Yeah. And I think it's a very easy, simple thing to do. Don't need much instruction. Just write down whatever's in your head, write down whatever you're thinking about as far as your business decision that maybe you're struggling with or a thing that you want to do.

And your brain dump it and then, give yourself some time, come back and look at it. Or don't, and just leave it there. So the other thing I would say that I really I really that doesn't involve, and these don't involve like working with anybody else, right? You don't have to go and work with a professional to do any of this stuff.

Like you can do it on your own. So it's very, it's free. It's easy to do. But I'm a huge change or a huge fan of breath work when it comes to state changing. If I catch myself and I'm in like. [00:26:00] I don't know, like a heightened state or I'm like, I'm frustrated and I'm just like, down in the dumps.

And I can feel it, man. If I get really, if I get really frustrated, I feel like I'm, not if I don't feel like I'm gaining momentum and the things that I want to do, if I feel stagnant, I will get It's almost like my head gets heavier and like my eyes, it's like I can't focus on things as well.

I'm not very engaged with people. And I can feel it. And for me, 1 of the things that works really well is breath work. So you could just literally just do simple breath work to change your state and different cadences to different things. I like there's an app called the state app. And it's.

Yeah. It was designed by I believe it was Brian McKenzie and Rob Wilson who taught, and I think they still do teach, a course called The Art of Breath, and That what's cool about that course is it's performance driven in a lot of ways about how to upregulate and downregulate yourself around training and understanding how you can use [00:27:00] breath protocols to objectively measure whether you're recovered or if you're making improvements and it's a great course.

Rob in particular, one of the smartest people I've ever met and. When you look at that app, it's as simple as do you want to increase your, awareness? You want to upregulate? Do you want to downregulate or are you just trying to stay neutral? So for me, like we did a webinar the other night, I have a very hard time going to sleep after I just present for like hour and a half, two hours.

And I'm like, just super into something. And I always like, if I look at my whoop the next day, like my sleep is awful. Every time we do a webinar in the evening, my sleep is off. I can't fall asleep. So for me, like Breath work that's down regulatory helps me a lot with changing my state to go from now. I'm excited to now.

I'm down regulating. I'm calming down. I'm ready to go to sleep. And you catch yourself in those same state. So let's say you're like down the dump. So you're going to want to do something that's going to help you raise your state, like increase how you're feeling. If you're like really jacked up like me after a webinar, [00:28:00] you got to down regulate and just something as simple as like the state app and there's a free version of it.

This is what I use. It's great because it's guided. I hit the button. It's a couple minutes and you tap into your nervous system in such a unique way that you can't really do with many other things. Aside from, maybe physically moving, going for a run, going for a walk, working out.

You can change a lot just by doing that, but if you don't have the time to do that, or let's say it's late at night, breathing or first thing in the morning, breathing is such a great way to tap into your nervous system and change your state to some degree.

Yves: Yeah, I think we all have. We used to do this at made to move and they still do like these non negotiables, right?

So like breathwork could be one of those things that's like a tool in your toolbox. You basically are doing it regularly, for me I never did a ton of breathwork. I do it sometimes like after workouts for that exact reason to, there's a lot of science bound down regulating and that helping your ability to recover to do the next workout.

But. Dude, just working out in general, like we have a lot of people, in the mastermind general, like that falls off for them. That has never really fallen off for me. Like I can't [00:29:00] not work out. Like maybe that's unhealthy. I don't know. But it's six or seven days a week, I'm doing some form of, lift run, interval work on the bike.

It's just it would be. If you took that away from me, it'd be very difficult for me to thrive. And that's just it's a non negotiable. And I think that is also super helpful in just keeping my, ability to do a lot of work and handle a lot of stress and be able to continue to thrive and work towards multiple things.

So it's just it's just something I don't give up. It's essential. And I think if you're one of those people, do not let that go by the wayside. Like I've always felt time for that, like even during the most stressful times. Yeah. And,

Danny: And these, again, these are free things, right?

If you want to go for a walk, it's free. You want to go for a run, you want to do some pushups. It's free, right? Like it's just, these are just things you can do to change, getting yourself out of this funk that you might be in and you feel bad. And this challenge of not being able to control your own thoughts is.

It's very frustrating. Because there are, it is your brain, [00:30:00] like it's yours, you just, you let it run wild. It's if you have a dog that is not trained, it will be a bad dog. But if you have a dog that is given consistency and discipline and care, it's gonna be a great dog, like it's very different and we need structure where they're within our own our own mind as well.

And it's just something that for a lot of people they have to figure out what works best for them. Another thing that I like to do, and I do this with my kids a lot, actually, is I'll do either a postmortem, like worst case scenario, what's the worst thing that could possibly happen, right?

My, like Jack's my son's about to start middle school. He's new in sixth grade, new school. It's a new building all a sudden he's I don't know. I've heard middle school's pretty tough. There's a bunch of big kids school's hard. I'm like, all right like worst case scenario, let's go through it.

We go through the worst case scenario, and. Just doing that with him and be like, okay, now let's say all that happens. What does that mean for your, for you? Okay. Are you still alive? Do we still love you? Do we still care? [00:31:00] Are you still going to be able to be, able to do the things you like to do?

Are your friends going to all, still want to be your friend? And as you go through that and they realize, Oh, even in the worst case scenario, it's still not that bad. It can take some of the, I guess the fear and anxiety away. The other thing that I like to do, I can't do this with my kids.

Cause they're so young, but I think about this with myself or sometimes I'll talk to entrepreneurs that are really stressed out about something. And I'll ask him and I'll say okay, Let's say we have a time machine and we can go back let's say it's you in this example. So we have a time machine, we can go back, to Eve GG, 10 years old, right?

And you're frustrated because you're not making progress in something or whatever, or you have an employee that left and, it's really creating a lot of stress for you because you're picking up all this extra work. We go back on the schoolyard and you're like, yo. Little Eve, come here for a second.

And you can tell him what the next, however many years looks like next 25, 30 years looks like, and how much he's going to do and the cool shit that's going to [00:32:00] happen. And then would you think that 10 year old Eve is going to be super excited about what his life looks like going forward, or he's going to be bummed out when he goes back to math class, right?

Like it, for most of us, we have done a lot. We've accomplished a lot. If you're listening to this podcast, you're in this group. You're probably like very much a high achiever and. If you went back and told your 10 year old self, what you were up to, they would probably be over the moon. They'd be like, this is awesome.

I'm a bad ass. And we forget the fact that you've actually accomplished a lot, but when you look at it from a different perspective it can make you feel a lot better about where you're at and less dissatisfied with maybe the lack of. Speed in which is happening, the lack of momentum that you have at this point in time, and you realize this little snapshot of where you're at, you're bitching and complaining about something that's insignificant because you're already so great at what you've already done.

So that can be really helpful thing to re reframe the negative way in which you're looking at something and really make it look silly

Yves: in some ways. Yeah, I think as a theme, what we're trying to do is [00:33:00] disconnect from the situation, like disconnect emotionally and be able to look at this in an objective way, right?

Like almost everything is doing that. And I think that is one of the most powerful things. We talked about environment change. We talked about going from a. Going for a walk. We talked about state change, right? And I think being able to have tools in your tool belt to allow yourself to change the perspective on a situation is absolutely huge.

Every time you say something like this, I can think of an exact scenario. Like I remember being at made to move. Talking to Dane, nobody's I know exactly where I was sitting. I was sitting on a weight bench. We were chatting about how tough this was. And he was like, man, but we wouldn't have it any other way.

Would you want to go back to being an employee? Like as hard as this is, would you want to go back to being an employee somewhere? Absolutely not. He's this is a gift. You know what I mean? This is the life that we chose and we would never have any other way. I'm like, dang, that's a good point.

Thanks a lot. Dan, that's just like these just little things I think can be so helpful and it gives you, because what I see. If people have a really tough time and they can't pull themselves out of this, like the, most of the time I see where they don't feel like [00:34:00] they have any agency around it.

Like it's like you said, like the dog has run wild and there's no way to reel that back in. So what we're trying to do is just realize that you've got some semblance of control over these things. And there are tools that you could use to help you get through this. Cause that's the frustrating part.

Like when you're like crap, I'm not, I have no control over this. That's scary. Or if you

Danny: feel stuck, I think for a lot of people like you and I, the, the one thing that I've taken away from the last damn near 10 years of just, being self employed and the, there's this unknown factor, I remember having.

A conversation with Kelly and Juliet's Tourette when I was getting out of the military and I'm like I feel like I don't know what's going to happen. And it's actually quite stressful. And I remember Kelly laughing about it a little bit and being like. That's entrepreneurship, dude.

It never goes away. We feel like that. We feel like people are going to stop paying attention to us, next month. So we've got to do as much as we can right now because it's all going to go away. And I [00:35:00] remember hearing him say that like, how could you possibly think that? Like you guys are like, obviously you're thought leaders in the industry.

You've done all these things to this point. And how could you even imagine that it would be possible for all of that to go away overnight? But that thought is there all the time. The unknown is the thing that really is scary for people. It's I've heard people describe it as being like hunted by an invisible wolf or something like that.

It's it's behind you. It's possible that something could just take you out and you don't know, but you start to get very accustomed and used to that unknown to that stress level. And once you realize that's just part of the game. It's like you can't go surfing without the likelihood of getting attacked by a shark or drowning.

You can't do it, there's, did you see the the surfer from Hawaii that had his femoral artery cut by the blade of his surfboard, bled out, died professional surfer, right? Who knows how many waves he's caught? And that is, I've never actually even heard of [00:36:00] that. Happening. Not that I'm like, I know of all every surf injury ever, but that seems like a very rare thing to happen, right?

This guy's professional servers and servers whole life and he goes out that way, right? So there's inherent risk with anything that you do with a physical activity. There's inherent risk. But it's fun. It's like fun fucking thing to do. You're going to, you're going to avoid something over the tiniest chance of something negative is going to happen.

You're going to, you're going to limit yourself from having a great experience and something that really you get a lot of enjoyment out of maybe with people you enjoy being around when business, you're going to rob yourself of the chance of changing your family's, Trajectory for generations because of the fear of failure, because of the fear of not being able to make it work.

And that's what so many people do. And then even when you get into it, it's the fear of loss. It's the fear of Oh, what if I lose all this stuff that I built now? What? And that fear of loss is in some ways worse than whenever fear of getting started, not knowing what's going on. Cause you, at least, you built, how hard it was to get there.

And if it gets taken away, you're like, Oh my God, I don't know if I can go back to square one and do it all over again. But I promise you, you would do it [00:37:00] if you had to, you may not want to. So that's tough. And being able to deal with that and understand that it's just part of the game. You got to come to terms with it.

You got to come to terms with the fact that you go surfing, you might get bit by a shark. Is it worth it? Ask yourself that first. And if it is, get the hell out there. And if it's not, then don't do something else.

Yves: Yeah. This is a scenario where the juice is worth the squeeze, so to speak. Like I talked to a lot of people, like if you follow, PT biz on Instagram, I will message you back.

And, a lot of people like, I'm not sure, is this worth it? And I tried to just talk them through, like, how long have you been thinking about this? It's man, this is like a year. And I was like you probably, I feel like you're pretty sure that you need to, take the seat.

But I know. Yeah. The fear of unknown is tough and what's going to happen and will it provide for my family. But, at the same time, I was like, this is something that it's going to be difficult to stay where you are, and it's also going to be difficult to start this thing.

So I would choose the one that has. The gold at the end of the rainbow, so to speak, like I'm just going to choose that path first and foremost, like I'm going to take that chance on myself, and we've talked about at length [00:38:00] how, it's not as risky as you think let's say it falls through, like the overheads that you can always go back to being a, a clinician wherever you want to ultimately, but Taking that chance on yourself, I think is huge, and that first step.

And yeah, hopefully this conversation helps people too, because, that can be stressful, just like the in between stage of man, should I just go do it? Oh, like I had a newborn and a two year old when I was like, man, I'm just going to start all over in a CrossFit gym.

Let's see how this cash thing works out.

Danny: It's it is. The worst part, the in between is the worst. It's like the the Dr. Seuss book, all the places you'll go, you're stuck in the waiting room. I don't know if you've ever read, if you read that book, your kids very often, or did used to, cause it's obviously they're older now, but like the waiting room is the worst place.

You're waiting for the phone to rain. You're waiting for the break. You're, you're waiting for Friday night. Like you're waiting for these things to happen. And it's a terrible place to be. And when you are a in between stage, when you are [00:39:00] waiting to see when the right time is going to come around, when you're waiting until you feel like, all the circumstances are ideal when you're Unsure and waiting to see if you should hire somebody because you have to grow past yourself or you need to move to that standalone space is going to dramatically increase your overhead, but it's the only way you're going to be able to scale the service based business that you have or you're employed and you're just like back and forth about whether you should make this transition to your own clinic or whatever you're going to do.

Maybe a different career. That is hands down the worst place. The worst place I don't think, and I've had plenty of times when I've been stressed out in the business that I have, I've never been more stressed out than trying to make a decision of whether I should get out of the military or stay in, and it is a, it is because it's such a big transition.

It's such a huge, it's a huge change of your identity, your life. And for [00:40:00] people that are going into, from being in a clinic to your own business, like it's a huge shift. And man, it's just so uncomfortable to be stuck in that position. And the reality is you got to make a decision because the longer you stay there, the more discomfort you're going to feel.

It's not going anywhere. And you just need to be able to decide what values you have, what's important, what's the desired future state of your life that you want to achieve and does the position that you're in need to that if it does. Then stay and be happy with that and be content, try to be the best person you can be at that job.

And if it doesn't, then you need to make a change. But change is hard. Change is so hard. Try to think about this, man. Change schools if you're a kid and see how easy that is. Move and see how easy that is. Change your damn car and see how hard, how long it takes you to get used to all the other things.

Or you're like, I don't know if I like this as much, right? Like any change is hard. So changing career. Oh my God, it's massively difficult, but it's gotta be worth it. And you have to decide for that for yourself. You can't let other people tell you that. You sure as hell can't let people [00:41:00] tell you that you shouldn't do it because they don't know what they're talking about either.

It has to be internal. Yeah.

Yves: Yeah. And I think what surprises people sometimes out enough conversations to realize this, you're like, man, this is so hard. I barely have any time. I don't have any energy. What's going on. There are just employees somewhere. They're a clinic manager. And then they make that transition in that shift.

Like we talked about to do in their own thing. And all of a sudden, guess what? They're working towards something bigger. They're working towards them and their energy level goes up. They can produce more work. That was a pretty big shift. I think that I've seen, and I noticed as well too Holy crap.

I seem to have, again, almost to a terrible degree of the ability to just like my workload is increased dramatically, because it's exciting. And because, there's a lot more on the line, like the freedom is pretty, pretty awesome. As I do think you're very right.

Like it's the in between stages. Typically the hardest, but once you make that decision, I think a lot of people will be surprised. Not necessarily how easy it is. That's not it. It requires a lot of effort, and it's hard, but I [00:42:00] think you'll be surprised about, like, how much energy you have, how the path is pretty straightforward, how, things will.

Work for you as you push harder. I do think people will be surprised.

Danny: I I just finished reading this book. I can't remember the name of it. But it's the author's Felix Dennis. He's a guy. This was this prolific magazine entrepreneur. And he's he's English, but he's, he had a number of different magazines, media companies, stuff like that.

And he talks about the individuals working within his companies that he knows damn well would be successful if they went and did their own thing. And his goal was to keep him as happy as he could. So they would stay there and continue to work with his company. And intentionally and what he said, all we said was it.

If you can find somebody that can like thrive and love what they're doing within an organization, like there's really no reason to leave because people can be great at their job and hate it. Think about that for a second. Like somebody might be listening to this. It's at a clinic that they don't like to go to, [00:43:00] but they're professional and they just kill it.

They're great. They're probably the best person there, even though they don't even like being there. And one of the things he said was like, it's always interesting to watch people that. That weren't in a great place that would leave and go do their own thing. And if you take that professional person, that's a hard worker and they can thrive in a setting where they don't even like it.

And now all of a sudden you put them in a setting where they love it. What do you think happens? They're exponentially more successful because of it, because they're working on something they actually really like, and it doesn't feel as draining for them and they're a players and they crush it. I like to think like the change is hard, right?

And transition to something different is challenging. But man, if you're like a six out of 10 on your satisfaction with where you're at right now, imagine how much more successful you'd be if you were working on something that was like a nine out of 10. And you would just crush it if you did that.

Yeah, I

Yves: think for a lot of people, that's what happens. The pain of staying where they are is, greater than the pain of leaving. And ultimately they make that decision. We saw it during COVID with PT Biz, we had a pretty big influx of people who were let go and then decided to do their own thing forcibly and it ended up [00:44:00] being a huge blessing in disguise.

Danny: A hundred percent. Yeah, that's a good point. Cool. Guys, I hope this one is helpful. This is something that, yeah, I feel like every time we talk about stuff like this, we do get quite a quite a bit of positive feedback. If you like this one, do us a favor, take a screenshot of it, share it on Instagram, tag me, tag PT biz.

Let us know if you like it by doing that, it's really helpful for us to see visibility with that and know what what people like. If you really like what you're listening to we'd love it. If you leave us a review on iTunes or Spotify and and that does help us get this information in front of more people.

So if it takes a couple of minutes and it's worth it for you, that'd be awesome if you did it. Other than that, I hope this helps you. I know this is a difficult topic. This is something that it's hard for people to, I think to really for it to resonate with them unless they've experienced it. So if you've experienced what we're talking about, hopefully this is really helping you.

And if you're like, I don't know how bad it is just yet. Hopefully you never get there. But in my experience. Usually you have to at least feel some of that before you realize what you don't want, your life to look like as you're stressing yourself out over everything. So that's it, man.

I appreciate the [00:45:00] conversation. It's always cool to have these these conversations and I hope this helps you guys. We will be on here again next week. If you have any suggestions, leave a question in the P Town Nurse Facebook group. We watch it like a hawk. We look for things that we can share and do a podcast on if we get enough questions about the same thing.

So if you have a question, drop it in there. We'll see what kind of responses you get. And if we like it, we might do a podcast about it. So Eve, anything to add with?

Yves: No, perfect. The more, just like you said, the more people we can reach, the better, I think there's a lot of people who feel stuck, not sure what to do.

And if this is helps, one additional person, I think that could be absolutely huge. So we appreciate you sharing.

Danny: Awesome. All right, guys, take care. We'll catch you next week.

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