[00:00:00] Vesna: Today, I'm going to talk about how emotional wellbeing leads to better results for leaders. So whether you're a business owner, a manager, a team leader, the way that you handle your own emotions impacts the results that you get in those areas. The ability to regulate our emotions is seen in nearly all top performers, and it's not about having the right circumstances. It's about the tools that we can access to access our emotional resilience using nutritional psychology habits and our mental game, which I'm going to talk about on this episode.
[00:01:09] So Warren Buffett, The famous billionaire, he had a famous quote and he said,
[00:01:14] If you can't manage your emotions
[00:01:16] you cannot manage money now I think this is very true and I see it in business. Cause when we look at business, it's an emotional rollercoaster. And if we don't know how to handle our emotions, we are going to go in the highs, really highs, and then in the lows, very low.
[00:01:33] And so we can catastrophize, get overwhelmed, which is very draining when we have to run a business or we have to manage a team, or we have a lot of responsibilities. I see this in a lot of clients who are kind of heading towards functional freeze or burnout is that they are very overwhelmed and highly strung because of this inability to regulate emotions and it does lead to burnout So what can we do to influence this? Cause as I said, when we look at top performers, it's not that they don't have challenges and stresses, they do. They just navigate it differently. And the difference can mean a lot in terms of if you're feeling very, very stressed. Emotionally overwhelmed, there's too much of a mental load in your current work.
[00:02:16] You are not going to enjoy that work as much. You may even dread going in and it's going to affect your performance. It's going to affect the way that you speak to your team, the way that you lead, the way you deal with problems, it's your ability to stay calm and confident amongst everything that's going on.
[00:02:30] So how do we influence it? Number one, we're looking at nutritional psychology. So our nutrition not only affects our body, it affects our brain. And so we need building blocks of nutrition to make sure that we create the right neuro transmitters which are chemical messengers in our brain to produce the feelings of calm, confident, collected, got it together, everything's going to be okay. And one of the first things that's really overlooked is dehydration. Water has a huge impact on our brain you know, just slight dehydration will increase the levels of cortisol, our stress hormone, and lower our serotonin, which is our feel good hormone.
[00:03:08] It makes us feel like everything's okay. So that's number one, check that you're, you know, you are drinking enough water. It doesn't have to be the full eight glasses, but even if it's five to six glasses a day to make sure that you're hydrated The second one in nutritional psychology that I often talk about is blood sugar level fluctuation
[00:03:24] So when we're living on this roller coaster of, the wrong kind of carbohydrates, we're missing meals, we're living off caffeine. And not having enough food, it sends the sugar levels up and down, And our brain needs glucose as its main source of fuel, and it can really affect our mood.
[00:03:42] So low glucose or glucose disruption mimics anxiety and depression. It can make us irritable. It can rob us of our focus and our productivity because the brain simply doesn't have the fuel. And the biggest one is that it affects our ability to make decisions.
[00:03:58] There was a study done really prove this, right?
[00:04:02] They looked at what judges ate for breakfast and how it determined their outcomes or their decisions for people who had the opportunity to go on parole. And they found that after breakfast, they gave a favorable response. So they basically gave a yes to parole to 65 percent of the people. before lunchtime, so on an empty stomach when they were hungry, they actually gave zero percent parole.
[00:04:27] So they could really see that obviously the best time if you have to go to court is in the morning. But secondly, is that how much our glucose influences decisions that we make.
[00:04:37] So what are we doing to balance glucose? I've talked about this before, but we want to make sure we don't have the sugary foods or processed foods. And we want to combine protein with each of our meals because it helps to keep the glucose steady. it only has this slight, um, decrease during the day rather than highs and lows, which is really going to create all of those symptoms in the brain.
[00:04:57] Next we want to include smart proteins. Proteins are our building blocks They're our building blocks to our neuro transmitters These are the chemical messengers inside of our brain. So we're looking at tyrosine, tryptophan, serotonin. It is important that we have proteins in order to make those neuro transmitters So it's pretty simple. If they're not in the diet, we cannot make those neurotransmitters. Okay. So we want to make sure that you're having the right protein requirements throughout the day. So the very, at the very minimum, you need to have one gram of protein per kilo of body weight. So this is for someone who's not really active.
[00:05:32] So at a bare minimum, if you weigh 70 kilos, you need to have 70 grams of protein. Okay. during the day, spread out through the day. If you're exercising and quite active, that goes up, But if you're looking at just 70 grams, what you need to look at is that a protein portion like chicken, meat, fish is your main animal sources of protein, which gives you the complete building blocks that you need for these neuro transmitters a piece of chicken.
[00:05:55] Say a hundred grams of chicken will give you 25 grams of protein. So it's not as if a hundred grams of chicken gives you a hundred grams of protein. if you need to reach 70 grams of protein a day, you need to spread that out throughout the day.
[00:06:05] fourth thing is essential fats for the brain again, Omega threes, which is your essential fats. They are found in sardines. Salmon, walnuts, flaxseeds, so these are a rich source of brain food. So one of the most researched nutrients for mental health and mental well being, uh, for anxiety, depression, and mood, is omega 3, right?
[00:06:27] So you can take it in a supplement. My recommendation is to get it through your diet because such a, so much more bioavailability of omega 3 if you get it through the diet. So if you're not a sardine lover, which is a great way to get the omega 3, you can look at salmon and your walnuts and your flaxseeds.
[00:06:42] Thanks.
[00:06:43] As well as increasing omega 3, you want to make sure you reduce trans fats so this is your fried foods, Uber Eats, right? They're going to have trans fats, which impacts your brain's ability to communicate, right? So really impacting, your brain function. The second part is the mental game. So yes, our nutritional psychology or our nutrition affects our brain health and our mood and our emotional wellbeing. But then we also have the inner game. So what's actually going on in our head, because a lot of people I see who are stuck in this kind of emotional rollercoaster, unable to, balance their emotions or deal with their emotions in a, in a healthy way.
[00:07:24] That they really get stuck in these, thought traps where they catastrophize their problems, they get
[00:07:29] stuck in a loop
[00:07:30] overthinking they can't let it go, it's always on their mind, they're worried, they're anxious, they're tense, it's a problem, right?
[00:07:36] So that kind of thinking really keeps us stuck in that stressful place. It really makes our emotions high and low. Now there are two types of thinking. That thinking you may recognize, okay, being stuck in that loop and overthinking and the mind never shuts up and that mental load, right?
[00:07:53] So that's the noisy, busy, overthinking type of thinking. There is another kind of thinking which comes from a
[00:08:00] clear and calm mind
[00:08:03] that's kind of this intelligent, intuitive thinking that helps us to navigate our life and our challenges. Now, when we get stuck in a lot of that noisy thinking, it's very hard to have a clear mind and have clarity in order for that more intelligent thinking to come through.
[00:08:20] So just to kind of give you an example, I have read in the past that Einstein, when he was stuck on solving a problem, His mind was stuck in that problem. He knew that he couldn't resolve it from that place from that level of thinking He knew that he couldn't resolve it. So what he would do he would leave it all alone.
[00:08:37] He'd drop his books He'd walk away He either go have a nap or the other thing that he really did was play the violin and he knew that by playing the violin Eventually the solution to the problem would come to him and that was his method when he got caught up in that Noisy thinking he had to move away from it and something that would be totally different in order for him to gain Clarity to problem solve and we are no different, right?
[00:09:02] I don't think we make any good decisions in a busy nervous tense worried panicked mind But we really do when we have clarity we can really see things from a higher perspective And make the best decisions that we need So the way that we kind of shift that focus away from the noisy thinking and allowing more of this clarity to come through is to, you know, number one, really value the clarity of mind and seeing that from that place, you will find the best solutions to move forward.
[00:09:31] From the busy mind, you will stay stuck in that place for a long time. And this is something, the busy mind is something that we are so used to and accustomed to being in, but we really need to place more value on clarity. and so that might mean slowing down, pulling back, giving yourself some headspace, putting less in the calendar, creating more spaces.
[00:09:51] So you have that clarity of mind so you can perform at your best.
[00:09:54] And one of the most powerful habits for emotional well being is what I call
[00:09:59] the power of 8 before 10
[00:10:00] this is getting to bed by 10 PM or before and getting eight hours of sleep. When we sleep, our brain detoxifies, but it processes our emotions. So when we wake up in the morning, we see our problems in a different light.
[00:10:15] Okay. So if we're not getting that sleep time, we're not getting those functions happening. Okay. When we were asleep, we're also getting the correct hormones being produced to help our body to recover and to heal. And again, if we're going to bed too late, say you're getting eight hours, but you're going to bed at midnight, you're missing the deep sleep time.
[00:10:33] And it's in that window, up till midnight that we get deep sleep, get our body goes through so much of this restorative work.
