Managing Leadership Anxiety Breathe LEADJITSU Rise in the Dojo

Rhonda Williams  0:02 

Hello everyone. Welcome welcome. We are excited that you are here for another episode of LEADJITSU Rise in the Dojo. I am your host sensei Rhonda and this is the show that helps leaders gain insight and inspiration so they can elevate their influence and impact. So as we think about who we are as leaders how we show up, today’s conversation is going to help us dive deep into that. So if you’re ready, I’m ready. Let’s get ready to rise.

All right, so hello everyone. Once again, welcome. Welcome to another episode of LEADJITSU Rise in the Dojo. We’re super excited. This is Episode Five. You all know that we love coffee with Rhonda behind and we have now stepped into the dojo. So really excited for this phase of our journey. Today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how you can come your chaos. The world around us is chaotic. And it’s up to all of us to know how to manage that. And we’re going to talk about that with our guests expert today by talking about how we can breathe to help us do that. Before we get to our introduction. I want to say good morning to my son PIs and CO hosts Good morning. Good morning Roz. How are you?

Roz Jones  2:14 

I’m great. I’m back home last week I was traveling, but it’s good to be home.

Rhonda Williams  2:20 

Absolutely. You look beautiful. It’s good to see you here. And always great. As usual. Hello, good evening to you marae

Mireille  2:31 

Good morning. This is Mireille here all the way from Perth, Australia and just to change today. Perth is actually the wind Jack country in Australia if you’re talking about the indigenous people. So welcome, everyone. Oh,

Rhonda Williams  2:48 

fantastic. So we got a little history to go with that a little information. That’s always a good thing. Thank you so much. So let’s get to our introductions. I want to introduce our expert guests joining us today. They’ve key Salman is a former professional chef who has taken his experience in some of the most intense kitchens in LA and transitioned into an engaging high energy flow state coach and breathwork facilitator. He works with individuals and groups. He has a pressure management coach who uses neuroscience based approach to help clients problem solve efficiently improve communication, and increased performance, all while making sure that we reduce those cycles of stress, anxiety and overwhelm. Dave, it’s incredibly great to have you here joining us. Welcome to LEADJITSU Rise in the Dojo.

Dave Gieselman  3:41 

Thank you so much. It is an absolute honor to be here. I appreciate being asked.

Rhonda Williams  3:46 

I am really excited about this. And we’ve got a couple of folks out there already. So Regina is out there she says Hello everyone. This is Regina and I’m ready to step into the dojo moms out there also. Hey, Mom, good morning. I’m ready for the dojo this morning with the cherry mango smoothie on the side. Always has the best drinks always Christopher’s out there. Hey, Christopher. Great morning, everybody. And then trainers out there as well. Hey Trina, good to see you Top of the morning to you my friend. Great topic. All right, let’s go. So as we get into this before we enter, we typically do a couple of short rounds of breathing. And since we have a Brett master here with us, we’re going to ask him to do that. Before we do. I’d like to give Dave just some quick stats, so I’m breathing and why is so important to us. Today’s stat is this. Individuals practicing deep breathing exercises have reported a 27% increase in their ability to regulate their emotions with over about an eight week period. 27% breathing does so much we’ve talked about it helping asleep and everything else and The list goes on and on. So Dave, if you wouldn’t lead us in a couple rounds of breathing before we step into the dojo, that would be fantastic.

Dave Gieselman  5:07 

Wonderful. So the breath, the breath we’re going to do today, we’re going to do about three of these. It’s called a physiological sigh. If you’re a fan of the Andrew Huberman podcast, he talks about this. And so what this is going to look like and I will demonstrate one, and then we’ll do about three of these together, you’re gonna take a great big, deep, full breath, fill the lungs all the way up, when when the lungs are full, and you’re going to take a few extra sips through the mouth, and really hyper inflate those lungs, we’re gonna hold it for about 10 seconds, and then a long, slow exhale, when you exhale, you’re gonna lean forward and kind of crushed all the air out of those lungs. And then you take a great big, deep breath again, and we’ll refill it you guys ready to go? Okay, cool. So great, big deep breath in. Fill it up, like really hyper inflate those lungs hold. And a long, slow exhale through pursed lips. Empty those lungs all the way out. And a deep breath in a few sips of the top, hyper inflate the lungs, hold long

getting all that? Everything all that stale air crush all the air out. And last one he brought in. Take a few extra steps, stop it off. All

and the long, slow exhale all the way out. Now take a moment. Couple of deep, nurturing centering belly breaths just deep into the belly

Rhonda Williams  7:28 

I was Oh, fantastic. Thank you so much. I so appreciate that. And with that, everybody, I think we are ready to step into the dojo.

All right, so I’m gonna start us off. Dave, and I have a question that I would love for you to answer for us. First off, and that is do you believe our internal state is connected to our external reality?

Dave Gieselman  8:07 

And that is a it’s a great question. And it’s one that a lot of people struggle with. Because our our external realities are, are chaotic and hard to control. And life is busy. And there’s all kinds of stuff that we don’t get to control. And we it pushes our nervous system up. And it affects our perception, our nervous state affects our perception. Right? When we are when we’re feeling stressed out, then we know that confirmation bias we look for the things that stress us out when we when we believe that there isn’t enough time. When we believe that things are chaotic. We look for reasons why that’s true, right? That that confirmation bias that all humans have. And so, the really great news about that is that the heart send 60 times more information to the brain than the brain sends to the heart. If you want to control your brain state, you control your heart rate. If you want to control your heart rate, you control your respiration, which means when you are in a stressed state and everything you see around you, is looking for reasons why you should be stressed. When you can slow your heart rate down by slowing your breathing down. You can you will drop into out of a fight or flight you’ll drop back into your parasympathetic nervous system back into rest and digest and you will begin to see possibility you will begin to see space you will begin to see room abilities to move which is which is directly affecting our perception of our external world. Right when we shift ourselves internally, our ability to perceive new a new way Ways to move new options and new possibilities for us come into come into focus. So absolutely our internal state Aflac can can affect our x Terrier, our external surroundings. Wow,

Rhonda Williams  10:15 

that’s really powerful. So Christopher says Davis has such an awesome experience and inspiring guests. It’s breathtaking. Aha, see what you did there, Christopher. And then Regina said the breathing was great. Well, I, so you said a lot there. And I love the fact that we actually can’t control or heart rate through our breathing. But did I teach you that and chef school? Like, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t get the connection. I don’t get the connection between you being a chef. And now breathwork Can you kind of give us a little bit of how that happened?

Dave Gieselman  10:54 

I am happy to so I started cooking professionally very, very young. And like, like many young cooks, and it’s a stressful environment, right? It’s high performance environment, you know, and, you know, you don’t need to watch that many episodes of the bear to go okay, that’s a, that’s an intense kitchens are an intense place. And I like many young cooks attempted Better Living Through Chemistry, I attempted to regulate my nervous system using substances and absolutely flamed out on that in my early 20s. You know, it just so substances stopped being an option. Even stuff like caffeine, you can only drink so many Red Bulls before you’re just you know, you’re you’re kind of useless. And so I had to learn a way other than substances to regulate my nervous system. And so 23 I’ve been sober most of my life. And so 25 years ago, I went diving into neuroscience, I went diving into an understanding of how the machine works, because I had to learn how to operate at a really high level, and operate in really high performance environments. And so I had to learn how to regulate my nervous system in high pressure environments. And so I went diving into neuroscience, flow states peak performance, transient hypofrontality breathwork, meditation, mindfulness, because I learned that I can regulate sort of my dopamine, endorphins and adrenaline through those methods. And it kind of saved my brain cells, because substances just weren’t a choice anymore. So I began studying these things. And, you know, helping other young cooks manage their nervous systems in high high intensity kitchens, your culinary skills are not top of the list. Your ability to manage stress is top of the list your ability to manage pressure. When you are in a in a high performance environment, if you Redline and lock up I don’t care how good of a cook you are you useless. Right? I need you calm I need you centered, I need you to focus and operating from the best part of your brain and getting to work with other cooks and teach them that was really kind of the beginning of of my coaching career. Wow.

Rhonda Williams  13:14 

That’s, that’s pretty incredible. Because you see those cooking shows on TV and you think, oh, man, this is just it can’t be this intense. It’s just for the show. But But you’re saying that it really is pretty intense. It’s

Dave Gieselman  13:27 

gnarly. It is it is gnarly, particularly when you get into the into the really high end kitchens, you get into the Michelin star kitchens, and they it’s it’s an absolute pressure cooker. And different people deal with it differently. And some people deal with it really well and others not so well.

Rhonda Williams  13:47 

Yeah, so it reminds me a lot of leadership. And Dave today, our leaders are under intense pressure and stress on a regular basis. But I feel like we deal with it by just ignoring it. And pretending that it’s not, it’s not really there. Or you either ignore it and just pretend it’s not there. Or you say well, of course I’m stressed I’m the leader, that’s what we do. And this is what this is how it’s supposed to be in and if you can’t handle the stress, then that means you’re not cut out to be a leader. Talk to me about that kind of mindset and, and the potential damage.

Dave Gieselman  14:23 

That that mindset in particular is I’m gonna say it’s Paleolithic it’s, it’s old, and it’s got no place in our society today. Right and what I what I mean by that is there was a time when when just bearing down on the stress and ignoring it and pretending it wasn’t there, or working through it or whatever, was what was what everybody did. And then our fathers started dying of heart attacks and strokes and and and all of the Health associated conditions of, of living in high stress living and not in a high cortisol body. And we we began to the medical community began to observe all of these things as being directly stress related. And so yes, being a leader is stressful. So we as leaders need to find healthy ways to regulate that stress, you don’t have to stay in it, you don’t have to remain stuck in it. And I teach several different types of breathing when I work with either leaders or groups or in or or organizations. When we talk about this, the breath work that I led you guys in this morning, for attorneys for about to enter the courtroom, if you’re about to give a presentation, if you’re about to give an event to sit down with a client for a conversation that is not going to go well and you knowing, right? That type of reading, drops your body out of your sympathetic nervous system drops you out of fight or flight, and it puts you in a calm state. And when we are calm, we radiate calmness to the people around us. Look, it’s human nature, when it all breaks loose human beings look for the calmest person in the room. And that person is automatically the leader, be that person, and be that person because you know how to regulate your nervous system better than anybody in the room?

Rhonda Williams  16:33 

Hmm, fantastic. I want to get rods and Moran here to just sort of reflect on some of what we’re talking about. I feel like another area that we see this kind of accepted, high levels of stresses in entrepreneurship are like just push, push, go, go go, doesn’t matter if the wheels fall off. Doesn’t matter what nothing matters. Nothing matters and to just go, go go until you get there. But there’s a cost to that. So Roz, let me just get you to reflect on anything that we’ve talked about so far. I

Roz Jones  17:04 

was also listening to him talk about the breathing and how the breathing regulates the heart and heart regulates the head i i knew how important breathing was, but I didn’t to this magnitude, what you’re talking about. And then I was wondering, because I deal with a lot of patients that are all high MERS patients, how can I take this and use it with them? Even though they may not remember, after we get done implementing this? How can that possibly help them as some of you know, so my day to day work?

Dave Gieselman  17:38 

That’s actually a great question. And specifically, because they may or may not remember, to do this, for you to just remain calm, right for you to do your own work. Right. As leaders, we must do our own work as we lead others into into doing their work. If you had a couple of breathing techniques that you used, and including just slowing down the breathing, go, You know what I call it the remembering breath. And you just do it whenever you remember, you take a great big deep breath

that immediately calms you, right. And so when your patience when the people you’re working with are getting aroused, getting agitated, getting getting agitated, you can say hey, let’s just breathe. Let’s just breathe for a few moments, we’ll get that taken care of. Let’s take a moment and breathe and you’ll slow their heart rate down. Right and the the mind, the body must tell the mind that the body is safe before the mind, lets go of fear. Okay, and this is really important to understand. Meaning when your body is in a stress response, your heart’s beating quickly, your your breath is shallow and rapid, right? These are indicators to your mind that your body is in danger. When your breath slows down, your begets gets deeper, your heart rate slows down, get slower. You are your body’s sending a signal to your mind that your body is safe. By the way, that’s the only direction that information travels. So when we can slow your breath down, the mind goes way when we go to the heart rate. What are you doing? You’re slowing down? I thought we were freaked out about the thing. And the heart goes, No, dude, you’re freaked out about the theme. We are just fine. We are safe. We are in an OK environment. And so and then the mind goes I didn’t I didn’t know I thought we were I thought we were being concerned about the whatever and and then the mind will slow down. So slowing the breathing getting your patients to and they’re never going to remember this they don’t have access to to that type of memory and so when they they start getting agitated. And your immediate response is, that’s great. Let’s just slow the breathing down a little bit. And you don’t need to need to explain all this to them, it doesn’t matter to them. The fact that you know, it means you can utilize it, you now have a tool that you can pull out and you go, let’s just take a moment and let’s do a few breaths. So rule of thumb, if your inhale is longer than your exhale, you’re going up. If your exhale is longer than your inhale, you’re going down. So deep breath in. Long, slow, exhale, deep breath in. Long, slow exhale, you do this with your patients a few times, and it doesn’t take more than 30 seconds, you just drop them out of fight or flight, you just drop them out of an aroused state, and now their bodies calm, which means their mind is calming, which means you can move forward with whatever you’re doing. Thank you.

Rhonda Williams  20:59 

Really, really powerful. So I want to acknowledge a couple of people and then I’ll come to Moray and, and get her to share any thoughts. So Trina it said a little while back the breathing method relax me. Now. I think I’m sleepy trying to wake up. You can’t miss this. It’s gonna be too good. Ravens out there also, Good morning. Happy Thursday. Happy to be here. Awesome. So you know, Moray, your thoughts on this, that was a fantastic response. By the way, you just gave Roz a whole little mini masterclass on how she can help navigate that. So thank you for that.

Mireille  21:34 

I mean, I mean, pricing. And when I really started to understand that breathing was important is when I started to, you know, when I learn how to swim as an adult, like 20 years ago, when we started the training, we actually spent a lot of time on the briefing. And, and the briefing, actually, when I actually mastered a briefing, I could actually swim now. But before that, I was just panicking. And the instruction, strictly told me just work on your breathing First, don’t try to do you know, too many things. And then things are gonna come, you know, and live by themselves. And it was true, it was really true. And that’s when I really realized that, you know, proving is very important, but I’ve not actually use it in a professional environment, I know how important it is, but I’ve not actually had the opportunity to use it in you know, in a professional environment, the only thing I do when there is panic, when there is stress, is just stop and, and maybe go outside or, you know, try to come down but not really in a structure way, you know, breathing in the structure way. So that’s, that’s really the law, I understand that, you know, it can actually be used in, in a professional environment, especially when they are at, you know, debate and, and people are really starting to become emotionally high. Yeah,

Rhonda Williams  23:13 

that that is fantastic. And that is a, I think a perfect entry point into this diving deep into leaders and the things that show up for us because I heard you say something, Dave, about leaders while you were talking about yourself and your own life, and I want you to build on this because it was so powerful that I was doing something in the background, that’s I was listening, and it stopped me and I had to stop and pay attention to what you were saying and what you were talking about. Here’s how I summed up what you said we need I want it to deserve to serve. It wasn’t exactly that but what you were talking about is the opportunities that you were being given in life to show up as a as a husband as a dad as a leader as a coach. You want it to be able to deserve that can you talk to us Do you know what I’m talking about and referring to

Dave Gieselman  24:10 

I think it was one of the meetings we were in not too long ago the the IV W meeting that that we were in and yes I I wanted to be able to serve people at the very very highest level and you know as my you know, I started I started cooking professionally very young over the over the years I got you know I got married and became a dad and became a an actual i a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu competitive Brazilian Jiu Jitsu player, you know, and all of an all of these things I became a an endurance athlete, and all of these all of these opportunities. These things in my life gave me the opportunity to serve others at a very, very high level. Right and And I wanted to be able to bring the very best of what I had to bear. And I wanted to I wanted to become the person that the people in my life deserved. Right? I wanted to be the leader that that the the the guys, the men and women who are cooking underneath me, I wanted to be the leader that they deserved. I wanted to be the father that my son deserved. I wanted to be the husband that my wife deserve the the other competitors on my on my competition team, I wanted to be the the leader and the teammate that because everybody’s working hard, everybody’s trying to to make their own thing to make their own thing happen. And serving others at a very, very high level is just it’s where it’s where I am. I’m, it’s funny, I the work I do now, people go, how did you go from being a chef to doing this? My job hasn’t changed. I am a prime nurturer. I nurture things, I feed things. It’s what I do. It’s what I’m built for. It’s why I’m here. I used to do it with food. Now I just do it in other ways, although my wife loves the fact that she has a retirement chef as a husband. So, but I still feed things, my job fundamentally has not changed. And I get to, to offer people my best and nurture them every single day.

Rhonda Williams  26:33 

Hmm. Wow, that’s really, really powerful. Because if we think about our roles in that way, there was another element to it. And that was, what do I, what do I need to do? How do I need to be in order to deserve this right? To stand in front of people and service them? Right, that requires a bit of shedding of ego can breathing help me shed my ego too, because it feels like there’s a little bit of that that needs to be shoved in there and training says awesome 100%.

Dave Gieselman  27:11 

As a matter of fact, when I get into flow state breathwork one of the things that that flow state breathwork does my entire system, my entire modality is built around flow state. And when we get into flow state, what we are what we are getting into is transient hypofrontality transient, meaning it doesn’t last real long, you can cultivate it, but not capture it, right? Hypo meaning slower or less than Tality referring to the prefrontal cortex, right? This is the newest, most human part of your brain is the part of your brain that’s responsible for your understanding of time, your understanding of self, your ego, your me, the part of you that scrolls through Instagram and compares everybody else’s awesome life to your crappy life. Right? Right, that that part of you that the long range planning the risk assessment, I was and we’re very intentionally in specific types of breeding downregulating that part of the brain and so the ego falls away, and who I truly am the things that I truly need to work on the parts of me that I need to shed, the parts of me that I need to heal are able to come up and they’re able to move forward and I’m able to let go of old energetic blocks old emotional blocks old trauma that maybe holds me back and tells me that I’m I can’t serve that old liar impostor syndrome shows up and tells me that you know, and asked me who the hell I think I am, you know, who are you to stand up in front of these people, you know, and tell them anything about how to live you’re just a greasy Cook, right and, and I get to do my own work in this process, and learn that I am I am completely I am I am completely worthy of teaching of leading and demonstrating a life that is that is led by my own principles. And by the by the things that I teach.

Rhonda Williams  29:20 

It’s really powerful because you said something now a couple of times on this show, and I don’t know if anybody else has caught it, but you said do your own work. Look, yeah, right. Do your own work. So as leaders, we show up, we got the title, we got the money now, and then we just show up. But there’s so much more and doing our own work. And Raj just share with us sort of what’s resonating with you from this conversation.

Roz Jones  29:46 

When I heard him talking about doing your own work I thought about investing in me. And part of that is adding this breathing into into into my work. To my daily, you know, I get up and pray, I can breathe, I can do some breathing. Prior to praying, how powerful is that? How’s that gonna help my neck is going to cleanse my plate. So I can have a bit better relationship a better prayer life, because now my mind is really clear, you know, to where before I would get up just like okay, go you know, and you know not to say that, you know, the prayers weren’t weren’t as effective. But now if I can take him regulate my body, in my mind, how much more powerful? Can I be? More work? Can I get done? Because I’m able to do you know, maybe two minutes of a breathing exercise? Just two minutes can change my life?

Dave Gieselman  30:52 

Yep. Yeah, absolutely.

Roz Jones  30:54 

I’m just yeah, that’s here.

Mireille  31:01 

It is huge. And what I like to do your work is really to understand that it starts with us, and we have to go inside, ready. And because we do we do it the other way around, we go outside, and we start to, you know, compare yourself and really regulate our life based on the external factors. But with the breathing, we go inside, and really just focus on our own energy. And, and really regulated the way we want things to be done, according to us. And but it’s it’s a work to be done. And I really find it powerful.

Roz Jones  31:42 

But you know, isn’t it? Isn’t it amazing? That we already have what we need? Yeah, exactly. Isn’t isn’t that crazy? You know, you hear it, and it’s all free. I’m just saying, you know, a lot of times I hear a lot of wouldn’t you know, when I go out to these different conferences, you have everything that you need in your hand. And now as I get older, you know, I’m starting to understand what, you know, my mentors and other people saying you already have it, have it, we’re just not, we’re just not using our benefits correctly.

Dave Gieselman  32:27 

Taking your example of that morning routine, you so you get up in the morning, and you go or you pray. And and I would love to offer like the three most powerful things. And I say this, on every podcast, every time I speak the three most powerful things that you can add to your daily life, the highest leverage, lowest cost, like easiest to implement is daily breathwork daily meditation, daily journaling. And if you can add 10 minute meditation, five minutes of breath work and and, you know 20 minutes of daily journaling to it defrags the mind just like yeah, to restart your computer, restart your phone, every now and then if you can start by doing some breathing, get your mind clear, get your get your channel clear. Do some do some meditation, meaning just get quiet. Just get and and not like squeeze all the thoughts out. Stand behind the waterfall. Let the watch the thoughts watch the emotions, watch the memories as they are as they float by just don’t grab hold of them. Right Just stand behind the waterfall. And watch it That’s meditation, standing behind the waterfall of your thoughts, your emotions, all the things you have to do. And let let the shopping list happen. You don’t need to squeeze that out that it happened. Just don’t grab hold of it. And then when we journaling, we let it all go. And we can we can let it hit the page. Just like when you dream. When you dream a dream makes sense, right? When you dream, the plot makes sense. The history of it makes sense. It all makes sense. Right? Then you try to tell somebody about the dream and you’re like yeah, but then it was you and and me and some other people and we were in San Francisco, but we were on a submarine but the armadillo was still there but like it just it just falls apart. Right? You try to tell me about your dream and it falls apart. When we write it does the same thing. When it’s in our head. It makes sense when you’re just thinking about your dream. It makes sense the moment you try to write it down, it all falls apart. So all this nonsense that’s going on in your head. Although I’m not worthy. I can’t do it self doubt hesitation indecision imposter syndrome. As soon as you start writing it down you go oh no once. Wow.

Rhonda Williams  35:04 

Wow. Okay, so that’s a hold on rod because that’s a gong moment. On the first Gong of the Rise in the Dojo show, we’ve never done that before. I want to acknowledge a couple of comments. And then Ross, let’s get your words in here. Christopher says if only people in the West could understand how magnificent the capacity to renew their map of reality is daily, and empower themselves through breath. This is a great mission, everyone. And then Trina said, you may not be able to control your surroundings. But taking time to breathe sets the tone for your mind, because it helps your body tell your mind your seat. I just threw that in there, just based on what you just told us.

Roz Jones  35:46 

That’s true. Ross. Dave, for people like me who hate to journal, how can you persuade us in a nice, warm and fuzzy way to journal?

Dave Gieselman  36:04 

If if you’re if you’re really if you’re really adamantly against journaling, talk to yourself out loud. Right? The point is that you are forcing your brain to language, your thoughts. And as soon as some crazy mess comes out of your mouth and then goes into your ear, you’re gonna go Oh, that

Rhonda Williams  36:34 

was Oh, man. All right. So wait a minute, anybody is listening. It’s not our fault. If all of a sudden people are walking around just talking to themselves all day long, saying crazy stuff that is not on us. That is the disclaimer for the show. Thank you Please continue.

Dave Gieselman  36:51 

But if you if you have a hard time with journal start with start with just kind of like, like talking I mean, obviously not in public or whatever, you know, but But talk about it, like sit on your couch after your meditation. And, and just like you would write. So here’s what I’m thinking about doing today. This is what I have to get going on. And as soon as you start talking, you’ll you’ll want to start writing it all down. But you can also challenge yourself, right for half a page, right for five minutes. If you don’t know what to write, right, I don’t know what to write over and over again, you will get bored of writing I don’t know what to write, something will come out the hand holds the truth. Right? All of the truth is in. And if you set that pen free and stop trying to control it, I don’t know what to read. I don’t know why you would have shaken right but I don’t even I don’t even know yet. If the guy said to journal I don’t know what to journal about. Right? You just free The truth is in the pen. And the truth will hit the paper if you just let the pen go.

Rhonda Williams  37:56 

Okay, so there’s a couple things now that I want to ask you to elaborate on because this is really really good. So first, my mom said I love the gong. I knew they was going to earn it today. I just I just knew it. Regina said I love the gong moment and she says I’m all over those three things daily Raven says I’m definitely trying this and Trina says I’m telling my age the gun reminded me of

Dave Gieselman  38:24 

what what’s the gun show I had

Rhonda Williams  38:30 

guns show was crazy. I love way too young to remember the gong show that I hope they never bring that you know in Trina’s laughing with us. So as we are talking about this so I have a question about writing down stuff. You can write down craziness to nonsense all day long. Is there a reflective action in there? Like are you supposed to really reflect in there hold yourself accountable because you just can’t be right and crazy stuff all day. And then don’t just be like, Oh God set out my system and then write a bunch more crazy stuff. It’s like what’s the reflective, elevating growing action in that?

Dave Gieselman  39:18 

Are you ready for this? I’m ready. There isn’t one. It’s like vomiting into a bag. Throw it away.

Rhonda Williams  39:27 

Okay, no,

Dave Gieselman  39:28 

no reflective element of daily journaling. Literally, it’s like taking out the trash. There’s nothing useful in there is this anything useful will remain in your head. Okay, there’s a reason why you don’t remember phone numbers anymore. Right? It’s not because your phone remembers them. Right? And as soon as you put it into your phone your mind lets go of that number. Because you know some it’s written down out somewhere that that is written down somewhere. So you don’t remember phone numbers anymore, because something else is remembering it for you. Right? I mean, you can remember your childhood phone number you can remember your your first boyfriend’s phone number, but but but you wouldn’t point a gun at me Get Media recall my son cell phone number like it’s in my phone, my phone remembers it. So the minute you write it down, your mind goes, Okay, that’s somewhere and then let it go. The point, not letting out the crazy, let the crazy out. Your mind needs to be defragged. Just like your computer, your mind you need to take the trash out. Just like in your house. You taking out the trash is not a reflective process. To take the trash to the curb, you don’t look in there and go, did I leave anything in here that shouldn’t be abandoned? No, you just take it out.

Rhonda Williams  41:05 

So it’s so All right, that this is just so good. All right, let’s take a quick commercial. Let me see who there’s a comment out here. So Raven says Finally, I’m allowed to unleash my crazy Dave, Dave says Raven that you have permission to do that. So let’s take a quick commercial break. And then when we come back, I’m gonna go into our mastering the math section, where you talk a little bit more about get calm, and then get clear and just kind of talk us through that process as a way of Hope helping us all become better leaders better people as we show up every day. So let’s do our quick commercial break first.

Commercial  41:48 

leaders today are faced with an exponentially evolving dynamic workplace. But leadership is not a solo sport. It’s critical to know who’s on your team. And to understand cutting edge approaches to communication and influence. We invite you to experience the profound rewards of membership in essential leaders. And above the grind community. We’re in today’s leaders are empowered and inspired. With unprecedented support to create modern magnetic cultures. Modern magnetic cultures, also known as MMCs are the ideal performance and fulfillment culture prized by successful leaders and their teams, we urge you to carefully consider the edge our members gained from this extraordinary group choose to achieve the clarity, velocity and momentum of a modern ascension leader.

Rhonda Williams  42:43 

And we actually have an open house coming up next week. So if you want to join us, we’ve got a TEDx expert speaker joining us who’s going to talk in the ascension leader mastermind group, he’s going to talk to us about conflict and collaboration. And he’s got a free gift for everyone. So you can visit ascension leader.com. and register for the open house doesn’t cost you anything. And we’d love for you to join us. All right, so let’s talk a little bit more about this. Because as we’re doing this, we’re talking a lot about it. But I want you to bring some perspective to this Dave, let me show everyone the mastering the Met slide as you sort of start to talk us through it. Okay, so it says first get calm, then get clear, be intentional, and everything that you do, you’re allowed to do anything you want, just as long as you do it on purpose. So talk to us a little bit about what that means for you, Dave.

Dave Gieselman  43:39 

Okay, so first get calm, then get clear, what we are talking about is becoming the master of your own nervous system. So when you are in your stress response, right, many of us when we are in our stress response, when we’re stressed out when when we’re overwhelmed. We’re in our inner sympathetic nervous system, we’re in fight or flight, right? And there’s a really good really evolutionary reason why when we are in our stress response, why we feel like we got one toenail to the ground. And we’re just turning in circles trying to figure out what to do next. Like I know what I need to do. It’s hard to prioritize it, and it’s hard to explain it and, and I feel I feel stressed out by it. The reason you feel that way. And the reason why most people feel that if they can just solve the problem, the stress level will drop. The truth is the exact opposite. When we are in our stress response, you lose access to your neocortex and your frontal lobe, you lose access to it. And like I said, there’s a really good evolutionary reason for that. I’m going to take real quick I’m going to 50,000 years Okay, A and you’re walking through a field, it’s been an amazing day, you’re going down to the creek to get some water, you’ve been snacking on nuts and berries and having an amazing hunter gatherer life. And you’re going down to the water and a wolf pops up, right wolf pops up, you snap into fight or flight, right. And since you’re not going to take on a wolf, your option is to run. And so you you go into flight, so you run, you know, for five full minutes straight down the stream bed, you find yourself in a clearing you look around, there’s there’s no wolf, right, and so now you’re You’re fine, you’re safe, your body drops back into your parasympathetic nervous system. Okay, so when your only job in the world is to escape the wolf, deep, complex, long range abstract, abstract thinking does not serve you any more than being super horny having to poop having to pee real bad, like those things don’t serve you. So when you are in your sympathetic nervous system, your body shuts those things down, right to gestion and elimination, libido, all kinds of things, which is why people who spend a lot of time in their stress response, develop tummy problems, bathroom problems, bedroom problems, right? When your only job is to escape the wolf. The body shuts that part of your mind off, it shuts those pieces of your of your your physiology off when you calm down. Right, when you come back to your parasympathetic nervous system rest and digest, you get access to your neocortex, you get access to your frontal lobe again, they when you are in fight or flight, your amygdala is running the show that part of your brain, your amygdala and hypothalamus are running the show that part of your brain has no capacity for the language, it is not going to solve your problem. It is completely emotionally completely reactionary. That part of your brain is not going to solve your problem, it doesn’t have the capacity. So when we can stop slower breathing down, slower heart rate down, our body tells our mind we’re safe, our mind relaxes our nervous system, we now get access to our neocortex and our frontal lobe, that part of the highest functioning parts of our brain come back online. Now we can solve the problem until you get calm, you cannot get clear. And you cannot solve the biggest problems that you face from your sympathetic nervous system. You just don’t have the gray matter of vailable to you. So we slow our breathing down. When we’re in our stress response. We slow down when you’re trying to figure out the answer to a problem. Something’s been bothering you have a crisis, you have something on deck, slow the breathing down, get calm, then get clear. And as far as being intentional, that means you’re not being reactionary. That means you’re not doing these knee jerk, like reactionary emotional responses to things. I encourage you make mistakes, like create chaos, like do whatever, like you can fix anything. It’s it’s fine. When you are intentional, like even if you make a mistake, I meant to do that I didn’t just fire off what I thought was going to be a React and answer in a reactionary state. I got home I thought about it. I thought this was going to be a good idea turned out not to be but that’s okay, I can fix that. So be intentional about what you do. And in order to be intentional, you cannot be in an emotional reactionary place you got to drop out of that you got to drop out of your sympathetic nervous system, you got to drop out of fight or flight.

Rhonda Williams  48:56 

And that’s the challenge. Right? That’s, that’s where we get ourselves into trouble because we react from that other state. And then we ended up backtracking and apologizing. And while I didn’t mean to and everything goes off the rails, when if we act from a place of calmness first, practice our breathing. Make sure that our body and our brain are safe and then we are making intentional decisions. Then if you met to do that, then okay, there’s nothing to apologize for. And that sort of thing. Right. So wow, really, really powerful. I’m gonna get Christopher’s comment. Christopher said landmark show everyone. Breathing improves everything in orders of magnitude. What isn’t? What isn’t great, get so much better. And what is already good becomes extraordinary. Wow, that’s really powerful. And a trainer said, I’m gonna make sure I take time to breathe so I don’t get clouded. And the other thing I want to say is if you’ve got teams, right, you’ve got sales teams with pressure and quota and all of this stuff going on. You got teens who are running in high stress environment, introduce breathing to them. Alright, doesn’t have to be the super woowoo thing, just introduce breathing as a regular basis, right? Oh my gosh, I can’t believe it’s already 950 This is crazy or wherever you are in the world, but it’s 10 minutes till the end of the show here is what I’m thinking of. And so I want to just quickly get rods and Ray to respond to that. And then we’re gonna go into our leaders code segment. So he said a lot there about really getting your brain sort of in to calm down, right to go into that place where you can make intentional decisions. And then you can do anything you want, and you can play and you can not worry. So sounds easier. Moray sounds easy. I’m not sure it’s as easy as it sounds.

Mireille  50:53 

Yeah, it’s, you know, the way it said, I mean, some easy, but it’s not as easy as you know, like you said, it’s not that easy, that it’s some. But you know, when you look at things in perspective, everything that we do, we, we prepare for that, I mean, if we want to travel, we prepare, we, you know, we plan anything else. But strangely enough, when it comes down to, you know, our mind and our, you know, energy, we leave it to chance, I think what I get from, you know, today is that we have to also be intentional about, you know, how we want to spend our energy, how we want to react and breathing will help us to do that. And, and it is very important that we start to introduce it on a daily basis, because we make decision every every day, and, you know, the number of decisions that we make need that particular, you know, discipline of how we want to, you know, spend our energy and how we want to react and really start from, like Dave was saying, you know, take, you know, start to take things from a, you know, environment, instead of reacting. So being prepared, basically.

Rhonda Williams  52:11 

I love it. Love it. Love it, Ross.

Roz Jones  52:15 

I wish I’d have known this long time ago. Because I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t make a lot of decisions out of emotions, you know, motional decisions that have impacted me probably still until today. So I, there’s some things that would have been different. It’s not that I still can’t make the changes. And then you know, my alter ego wouldn’t have come out either if I could have had these types of, you know, resources.

Mireille  52:48 

So you can suck your alter ego now.

Rhonda Williams  52:54 

That is, that is amazing. All right. So, mom said, I liked that, Chris. She said, I’ve definitely I’ve known about breathing techniques, but it takes practice. Well, I think that’s a really good point. We know a lot of stuff. This isn’t rocket science stuff. It’s not that we’re teaching everybody new stuff. What is the gap? And this is what we address in Legion to with and this is why we introduced the martial arts into it, because what’s missing from leadership is not knowing, right? We don’t have toxic workplaces because we don’t know what’s missing is our ability to execute what we know on a consistent and regular basis. That’s what’s missing. And so how do we do that we practice, right. And that comes back to this breathing. We’ve got to, we know we should do it. But practicing it getting ourselves routine, right getting our habits done. Practice, practice, practice, I said to someone the other day. Intentional when I said to someone the other day when I learned to first start an IV as a registered nurse. I didn’t know how to do that, right? There’s no I wasn’t born knowing how to start an IV, how do you learn that you practice. So everything really in terms of mastery, self mastery, it’s about practice. So let’s go into our leaders code segment. And this is the segment every one where LEADJITSU and LEADJITSU at the core is the leaders code. It’s 15 principles, that leaders that we installed in organizations and leaders to help them learn how to navigate these challenging situations that they come up with. And then in this segment, we look at the code and we identify one of them that resonates based on our discussion today. So if you need a copy of the leaders code, I’ll share it at the end. But you can go to leaders code fifteen.com And you can download your own really beautiful copy. And when we come back from this little intro segment, I’m going to start first rods with you so just get ready to go into your leaders code.

All right, so Miss rods, what leaders code is resonating with you.

Roz Jones  55:16 

Number seven Mindful self control leaves practice Mindful self control, maintaining emotional and action based restraint crucial and mastering one’s response, much like martial arts in combat. That’s the one for me. And the other comment was really quick. Breathing always for me in the way I was brought up was taught that it was something you know, wrong with it, you know, the meditation, the yoga, so lack of knowledge made me not use it, and say that you get the right information. Now I can implement this the right way because I was only Oh, no, we don’t do the breathing ting, ting, ting, you know, that kind of stuff. We don’t you know, so. But but now I know better. So I’ll do better. Awesome.

Rhonda Williams  56:06 

Thank you so much. For us. That’s great. marae what leaders co resonates for you.

Mireille  56:12 

So I was going to say seven. But I think three is also valid for you know, to actually fit the conversation we had today, the Cata discipline, which is, you know, a leaders exhibiting Kara this week, reflecting the meticulous dedication and unwavering commitment to excellence similar to the discipline practice of Qi jutsu, which is about you know, we talked about the repetition, you know, having this discipline of, you know, practicing, and preparing and, and really being intentional. So I think this you know, the intentionality actually require the discipline, so that you know, that every single day we talk about breathing, you have to do it, you have to plan it, you have to put it in your schedule in your daily schedule. So, that’s, that’s why I chose I chose the school, the first principle,

Rhonda Williams  57:10 

we had love that thank you so much, Dave, what about for you,

Dave Gieselman  57:14 

you know what for, for me, and I love this. It was always it’s 10 the flow adaptability, you know, flow flows is my my entire my entire kind of watchword and so the digital leaders exhibit flow, adaptability, the ability to fluidly adjust to new challenges and environments akin to the adaptive, flexible and flexible nature of jujitsu fighting styles. So the ability to shift easily to seamlessly move requires a great deal of resiliency, a great deal of flexibility, the ability to move with our changing challenging times, requires leaders who are able to move without without, like friction without it, rigidity is no longer the thing that serves us, right? It is it is the flexibility. It is the and the resilience, that a daily weekly breathing practice gives us allowing us to control our own nervous systems and our own emotional responses. Hmm, I

Rhonda Williams  58:26 

absolutely love that. I, I love all of those. And, you know, I think for me, I’m going to choose something a little bit different. I’m gonna go with senseis humility, which is code number five in insensate humility to just two leaders embody the perpetual learning and openness to feedback exemplified by the humility of a jujitsu, sensei. And the reason I’m choosing that one is because just like we’re doing here today, being open to learning, and also being I think about the feedback that we get, because I just did a such a video on feedback that’s difficult to hear, right? How do we get that feedback? How do we navigate these difficult situations? How do we deal with all of these life events, if we are not in that humility, if we are not in that state where it actually allows us to receive that information and our breathing can help us get there, shed that ego, make sure that we are being humble and how we’re approaching these situations, particularly if we are so honored enough to be a leader. So that’s it. We’re gonna wrap up in just a second. Let’s get a couple of comments here and my takeaway, Dave explains it better than when I learned it. Thanks so much. Dave. Training said thanks for another great topic. Knowledge is powerful. Christopher says breathing meditation journaling, flip open the pressure release valve in our lives. Oh, love that and it will positively impact everything else. Thank you, Dave for a sensational show. And Um, before we wrap up, as we come out of this leaders code segment, if you want your own leaders code, you can get it here. And in this little outro, it will show you that

all right, we’re wrapping up. Dave, I want you to share any last thoughts you also mentioned a free gift, which we love gifts. And, and we want to know how to connect with you as well.

Dave Gieselman  1:00:33 

All right. So to wrap up, really be intentional about your breathing. And it doesn’t take much begin with something, something simple, and there’s lots of really great resources YouTube is, is full of them. But I would also like to, and daily breathing is an important thing. But there’s some bigger breathing practices that I want to invite your listeners to, I teach I do a flow state breathwork session, every Saturday morning at 10am. Here in Los Angeles in Highland Park, it is a hybrid session. So I would like to offer your listeners to join me either live or on on Zoom for a free session. And I will put the I will put the information in. I can’t, I’m going to put it in the in the chat in here. Okay. And so there’s a link in there to join and you use the code LEADJITSU one and join for free, come check out what flow state breathwork is, it’s about 50 minutes of focused, intentional breathing, you’re going to be lying on your back, it is a completely immersive experience. And I’m going to get you high on your own supply, you are going to go to a different place and have an extraordinary experience. Oh

Rhonda Williams  1:02:06 

my goodness get high you and your own supply. Who wouldn’t love that? Normally, normally, you can’t use your own supply. But with this, you certainly can’t

Dave Gieselman  1:02:16 

100% And so I want to invite all of your listeners to to see for themselves what flow state breathwork is, I can’t explain it. If if I described it even even partially adequately, you would not believe what I just said. So come experience it for yourself. Try for free either live here in Los Angeles or on Zoom. My session every Saturday morning 10am. Pacific is both in person and virtual, please come join me. I

Rhonda Williams  1:02:48 

am actually I want to join one of those sessions as well. So I will definitely do that. Because I do want to experience this sort of flow state that we’re talking about. It sounds like something that would be really, really valuable to incorporate into just kind of who I am and what I do. So definitely going to do that. Thank you so much for being here, Dave, incredible segment today incredible show such great information. And so much for us to think about for all of you out there. We’re super excited and always glad that you’re here to join us. We’ll be back next week for another episode. And guess what we’re talking about next week. Next week, the topic of the show is going to be leaders in action. We’re going to bring on two amazing ladies doing incredible work and dealing with the human trafficking crisis that is happening in your zip code. I didn’t say in somebody else’s code, I said in your zip code. So join us next week as we talk about the human trafficking crisis and how we as leaders can make a difference. Alright, everybody, that’s it for us. I can’t manage to get the show done on time. We always go like five minutes over. But it’s all good. Thank you for hanging in there with us. And we’ll see you back here next week on another episode of LEADJITSU Rise in the Dojo