Episode Summary
Ever find yourself taking action in your business based on reactions rather than intentions?
Learn how minimizing reactivity can transform your business trajectory.
In today's episode, Jenna Harrison dives into the connection between reactivity, dampened business results and even manifestation, providing practical tools to help you tolerate discomfort, make aligned decisions, and achieve consistent growth in your business.
In this episode, you will:
Gain a clear understanding of the connection between your thoughts, your nervous system, and manifestation.
Develop the ability to tolerate discomfort, maintain aligned action, and make powerful decisions in your business.
Access somatic practices to regulate your nervous system, leading to increased clarity, confidence, and maturity in your actions and decisions.
Ready to detox your reactivity and unlock your full potential in business?
Listen to the full episode now and download the free Somatics in Your Pocket tool at theuncommonway.com/reactivity-cleanse.
Schedule a call with Jenna about joining the Clarity Accelerator to dial in signature offers and strategies and a first-rate mindset. https://www.theuncommonway.com/schedule
Sign up here to get on the waitlist for Power & Potency, the new mastermind for accomplished women entrepreneurs, and hear all new information as it's released: https://www.theuncommonway.com/waitlist
Leave a voicemail for Jenna and get her personalized advice for your business: https://www.theuncommonway.com/talk
Episodes mentioned
#94 Spring Cleanse: 7 Day Guided Thought Cleanse to Detox Your Mindset & Encourage Growth for a Successful Business
#92. Get Through High Stress and Overwhelm Quickly for Peak Performance & Mindset Growth, Joy and Better Results as a Service-Based Entrepreneur
#67. Revelations from the Clarity Collective with Women Entrepreneurs Amanda, Gabi, Ale and Kat
The Uncommon Way is led by business coach Jenna Harrison, who helps women entrepreneurs feel confident, find their ideal clients effortlessly and avoid overwork so they can manifest abundance in their business and life.
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Full Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Hey, welcome back to the Uncommon Way. I have a great episode for you today that is going to get you feeling so grounded and confident and secure and mature in the moves you're making and how you're showing up in your business. I can't wait for you to experience this.
You're listening to the Uncommon Way business and life coaching podcast. The podcast that helps women entrepreneurs get clear on signature offers and strategies that sell themselves. So you can lean back and stop the hustle. You will learn to maximize your mindset, messaging, and strategy, and step into the uncommonly successful business and life you are creating.
Here's your host. Top ranked business coach and reformed over analyzer turned queen of clarity. Jenna Harrison.[00:01:00]
What we'll be talking about is, it's really my latest passion topic. I tend to spend a year or two going really deep in one subject, and now I am fascinated with the nervous system and the study of somatics, which it just means body based rather than thought based work. Of course, we still incorporate all of it at The Uncommon Way.
We're not throwing out the baby with any bath water. It's just kind of layers that I add on. But with this, I just feel like if everyone could understand this one thing, we could change the world, and definitely change our business trajectory. Now, specifically today, we're going to be talking about reactivity, which just means that rather than making a rational decision or acting the way you'd really like to act, you ping pong in another direction because something set you off.
But in a broader sense, we're talking about the connection between that and [00:02:00] what you are manifesting, also known as the actual results that you are seeing. So why does reactivity happen? It's because something makes you feel discomfort and you are trying to move away from discomfort, or your body is trying to move away from that discomfort.
And unfortunately, this situation is responsible for 80 percent of your wrong turns. burned bridges, and stunted growth. So this week we're going to eliminate that tendency and get you seeing new results. I want to help you tolerate discomfort, to manage it, and then be able to get back to you being your awesome, well regulated self who makes powerful, brave, and consistently aligned decisions.
And takes corresponding actions 'cause otherwise this cleanse is incomplete. If I help you prepare to really uplevel and get better business results by detoxing your [00:03:00] thoughts and cleansing the systems and strategies and all the components in your business that might be weighing you down and we stop there, then unfortunately you are not fully set up for success.
This thing we're talking about today is what allows you to keep moving forward, rather than getting caught in reactive mode. If you're saying you want a business with less hustle, but as soon as we clear space for you, you get uncomfortable, and then react by filling the space back up with stuff, then it really defeats the purpose.
So, in this episode, which, again, is going to be a different format than our typical format that has the three kind of down and dirty tips, but you're still going to pick up on lessons that cross a broad range from tactical to mindset, and then some ways forward that are a bit more woo. But in this episode, you will get a sample plan for a reactivity detox that you can implement this week to make the best use of the two other parts of this cleanse.[00:04:00]
You will quiet that voice that says maybe something's wrong with you, and instead walk away with a clear understanding of this interplay between your thoughts, your body, your business, and even manifestation. And you will move into feeling calm, measured, strong. And, like I said before, extremely mature.
We're going full adulting here. And I'm going to be sharing a free tool that I've created for you to help beyond this episode. I'm calling it the Somatics in Your Pocket tool, and you can find it at theuncommonway forward slash reactivity dash dot com. Cleanse. Now we'll have that in the show notes and I'll also be talking more about it in a little bit.
I was planning to talk about the business part of our cleanse work today, but I saw something in a Facebook ad that I just knew I had to speak to. Now maybe you've seen it too, if you're a coach or a digital [00:05:00] marketer, you might've been hearing a lot of fear language about how the economy is so tough right now and nobody is buying.
I want to talk about that in kind of a short separate episode. Here, what's relevant is that the decisions people make in times like these are very telling about their levels of emotional reactivity. So please forward this episode to whichever friends you think need to hear this. Because I think collectively, we just need to take some deep breaths.
And the other point this highlights is, did you know you just get to switch things up whenever you want to? When you're responding in alignment. I think we forget that sometimes. We forget that business can be fun, that we can have fun in it and make it fun, and we forget that we're grown ass women and that the business belongs to us.
But all of this really is just [00:06:00] so key to, to keeping our business enjoyable, really, and just staying away from the have tos. True have tos are actually very minimal in business. Now, sometimes we get inspired by somebody saying something like that, and so we use it as an excuse to cloak our reactivity, where we really are avoiding something, we're really feeling discomfortable about it, and we don't want to do it, and so we come up with great language of alignment about why we don't want to do it.
That is not what I'm talking about here. And if you're not sure exactly if in fact you are moving in alignment or if you're making changes because of reactivity, that's actually the subject of another episode. We'll link to it in the notes. It's called Should I Say Yes or Should I Say No? But today we are not talking about decisions that are pivots of alignment, we're talking about the reactivity.
Now reactivity comes from either [00:07:00] our thoughts or a nervous system activation. We already talked a lot about thoughts in the last episode, so I'm going to leave that there. And here we're going to talk about what happens in the body. Now sometimes the thoughts cause the activation in the body. Other times, activation in the body starts causing catastrophic thoughts.
They're quite intertwined, but I find it very helpful to piece them apart in this manner. And one of the very telling signs of being in a nervous system activation, otherwise known as fight or flight, is that you don't think straight. I have another episode with more detail on nervous system mechanics and neuroscience in episode 92.
We will also link to that. I know, I'm sending y'all all over the place. But this is a very high level episode, and I do have others that are more detailed, for those of you that completely want to geek out like I have been. But we know that activation shuts down parts of the brain, and we even know which [00:08:00] parts of the brain.
It shuts down. And when I say shuts down, what I mean is that we're not paying attention to them, we don't even have access to them in those times. And wouldn't you know it, a lot of those areas deal with our decision making and our ability to think at our highest level and make great long term decisions for ourselves.
So that can show up in lots of ways. It can show up as rumination. It can show up in taking a long time to think through a decision and just feeling very, very unclear in ways that we normally would be able to find clarity on. It can show up as making rash decisions that then later on we realize were not very helpful.
It can show up as wanting to do nothing at all. That is a freeze response. Maybe you lash out at somebody and you're burning bridges. It may be price reactivity. You go to raise your prices and you notice a whole slew. of nervousness and a lot of thoughts that come up about what this means about you or how you'll [00:09:00] never sell or how you're gonna die penniless.
And so in reactivity, in not being able to tolerate that discomfort, you move back to a different price. Which is not always a terrible thing if done with eyes wide open, but usually our eyes are not wide open. That's the whole point I'm trying to make. It could be rejection reactivity. So, somebody says no to your offer.
Or somebody criticizes you on social media. And then you make changes in your business just to try and make that discomfort go away or to avoid that discomfort ever happening again. It could be expectation reactivity. You expected things to happen this way, and then when they don't, you have thoughts and feelings about that that feel very uncomfortable, and you make decisions to shut down your business, or cancel that launch, or change your offer.
It could be vulnerability [00:10:00] reactivity, where you react to this sense of being vulnerable. Oftentimes, even before it happens, you're creating more stress in advance of what might happen. There's interpersonal reactivity. We all know about that one, right? Somebody says something or their tone is some way, or they don't say something, and we have a huge response and reaction to that.
And this all completely detracts from your business results, from your time. You end up spinning for days sometimes over that thing that person said. You end up losing so much traction and momentum that you were gaining because you deviate in some other way. You close off opportunities that you could have had because you just snubbed that person who later on might have been a great friend.
Or a great partner. And all of this, hear me when I say this, all of this is perfectly [00:11:00] normal. Hey, if you want true clarity about your secret sauce, your people, your best way of doing business and how you talk about your offer, then I invite you to join us in the Clarity Accelerator. I'll teach you to connect all the dots, the dots that have always been there for you, so that you can show up like you were born for exactly this.
Thanks. Come join us and supercharge every other tool or tactic you'll ever learn, from Facebook ads to manifestation. Just go to theuncommonway. com slash schedule and set up a time to talk. I can't wait to be your coach. I was messaging with a client last week who noticed herself really, like, blowing things up, which I think is a great thing that I haven't mentioned yet, that we often do, right?
We get into this nervous system activation, And then we make everything worse. We make it more of an issue, right, and then we're telling all our friends, and then she said this. And we cherry pick the facts that we [00:12:00] want to see, and we build our case, and this is why I need to really change everything, and these people were never really my ideal clients.
And she said, you know, I would really appreciate hearing, does this ever happen to you? I messaged her back and I was like, of course it does. Yes, all the time. This is the sign of a working brain. That's it. It doesn't necessarily mean deep childhood trauma, although deep childhood trauma might come into play.
But you know what else comes into play? All of our conditioning and the experiences we've had in our lives. And all the trauma we've inherited from generations of women that were told that they shouldn't speak up or stand out or do the wrong thing or get rejected in any way. And we won't even go into past life stuff because I'm way out of my depth there.
All I do know as a business coach that has worked with over a hundred women, that this is a [00:13:00] very, very typical response, reactivity. It is endemic. We all have it. There's very good reason for it. It keeps us safe. It just tends to be dialed up a little too high, right? We all have a general level of nervous system activation just living in this society.
Extra hypervigilance, extra attunement to social media, waiting for the next ding. There's all the scary news around us. There's people with strong opinions and strong emotions all around us. And so none of this is unusual, but that doesn't mean that we need to live in it. We have so much power to help our brains react in new ways, and that is exactly what this cleanse is about.
For the purpose of this cleanse, we are just talking about, over the course of this week, you having two or [00:14:00] maybe three days. of enforcing regulation in your nervous system rather than reactivity. So every time you start to feel like you're spinning up a little bit or you're avoiding something or there's resistance before you act on it, before you make a decision, I want you to do what we're going to be talking about in the rest of this episode instead.
And what that's going to do for you is you, I keep saying this, you're going to feel very mature. Am I the only one who likes that word? That just makes me feel so calm. It's like, Oh, thank God there's an adult in the room, but you get to be that adult for yourself. So you will feel mature and grounded and calmer.
And you get to then access your best thinking. But not just that, when you're in that place, your higher self finally has more access to you. You have more room for hearing intuitive downloads and [00:15:00] great creative ideas and problem solving. It's very much a virtuous cycle. And it feeds directly into you manifesting the things that you want to manifest, attracting the things that you want to attract.
It's a little out there for some of you, but I'm going to talk about it later in this episode anyway, because it's all tied together. All right, you may be thinking, okay, great, Jenna, so how do we do this already? Well, we're going to work on this in three separate ways, and these are the three things that I would like you to cycle through on these days when you're doing this cleanse and you're moving yourself back to a more regulated place, every time that you can notice yourself, Not there.
Which, believe me, is going to change over time. When you start doing this work, you tend to be fairly disconnected from your body, and so you don't even realize how wound up you are. As you do it more and more, you're going to start being able to notice subtler [00:16:00] differences. Doesn't matter where you are, just start now.
And the three things are very active somatic moments, quiet somatic moments, and then Moving towards some form of bonding or co regulating. Now, I'll explain what all of these things are. The reason all three of these work is because they're all about getting out of your head and into your body. So, whenever you're having an experience of what it feels like, feels like to be in your body, what your posture looks like, the sensations that you're noticing.
Whenever you're there, it helps speak to your limbic brain and tell it that actually there is no tiger present. Even though it feels like it should be running for something, that there's some imminent threat that it needs to get away from, actually, There isn't. And so it is able to regulate the nervous system and calm down.
And the approach that you [00:17:00] might choose to take will change depending on your level of activation. I mentioned this in episode 92, but if you are very highly activated, then no amount of breath work and meditation will help you. Your body needs physical movement in order to believe, I guess, that it's removed itself from this threat.
You know the expression, shake it off? It comes from dogs physically shaking, and that moves the body and it gets that energetic tingling, that heightened prickle sense that you get when you're scared. It removes all of that from their body. But as humans, we're not taught to do that. So whether it is a good shake that you give yourself, or some high intensity exercise, or a dance party, whatever it is, do some movement.
We all know how much better we [00:18:00] feel after a yoga class or sex or a good run, I've heard. I'm not a runner, but people tell me that the high is really nice. But did you know that really what this is helping you feel is a baseline nervous system state? So are drugs. So many drugs are just helping us replicate what a truly regulated nervous system feels like.
And we're so out of touch with it these days. When we went on our retreat, our group retreat for the Clarity Accelerator to Mexico, you can listen to episode 67. We were so zenned out that I even made a comment at one point, and I said, people are probably going to think that we're smoking pot right now, and we are not.
We had just completely detoxed from reactivity. If I could, I would take all of you on a retreat right now. That would be the reactivity detox this week. And you would move into a state of being able to make very [00:19:00] powerful decisions, like my clients did. I just had my own little break yesterday. My son's kindergarten class went on a field trip to a farm, playground type area, and I was the room mom.
And wow, if there's anything better than perfect spring weather, And happy little kids for really getting you out of your grown up problems and into the moment. I don't know what it is. But your task when you feel any kind of discomfort over this couple of days that you're choosing to do this reactivity detox, your task is then to immediately move into movement of some type.
Oh, you know another one I love? Squats. Sometimes I'm writing, I'm creating content, and then I just get to this place where the brain kind of stops. Right? Or there's something uncomfortable that comes up that I notice. Maybe something that I'm afraid to say [00:20:00] to you. And I'll stand up, and I'll just do some squats.
Or I'll swing my arms around. Again, this is dependent on your level of activation. If you've really, if you've just noticed a thought spiral where you're going into some catastrophe in your head, then maybe it's a dance party. It's something more high intensity to get your blood pumping and really help your body feel like it's escaped.
And then you can engage in the second step, which is a quieter form of somatic work. Again, this is an opportunity to be nonverbal and it can be as simple as sitting down, looking around your room. And instead of trying to label things, just notice the colors coming in, notice shapes coming in, notice the seat beneath you, and remind yourself that you are safe in a house.
Feel that sense of safety in your body. Notice your [00:21:00] posture. Notice your breathing. And all of this is you giving direct signals to your limbic brain. That, hey, it can relax. And that slush of chemicals that it has been pumping into your bloodstream, all of that adrenaline, it can taper off now. As I've mentioned before, the process of moving into dysregulation happens much more quickly than the process of moving out of dysregulation.
You do need to metabolize. But that's okay. You're not feeling as impatient when your nervous system is very regulated. If you're really short on time, you know what you can do? You can just let out a big, huge sigh. As begins practically every yoga class and meditation that we've ever done, take a deep breath in and let it all out.
We have so many native tools that we just don't utilize. It is mind blowing [00:22:00] to me how much more quickly I can This is kind of going back to the movement, but how much more quickly I can release this flood of anger sometimes that I feel towards my son when I just take a minute and like roll my neck out and move my shoulders around and move my body.
Instead, what I used to do back in the day when I would find myself sometimes like erupting or exploding is that as soon as I would feel that, I would hold it all in. I'd contract my body, I'd turn it in, and that is only exacerbating this fight or flight response without knowing it. It's a very natural reaction, but it's actually making things worse.
And so I would be telling myself, like, don't lose it. Don't lose it. Don't blow up. When it was just so much more helpful if I just relax, put my shoulders back, move my body, and let it process, let it move through, move that energy through my body. Now for this specifically, I have created a tool, like I said, [00:23:00] and it's a very short, I think three minute guided practice.
That I've recorded for you that you can just download to your phone and over these couple days whenever you need to, you just reorient yourself by listening to this and I'll walk you through some somatic steps so that you can really feel it in your body. And then the third step is co regulating or bonding.
Have you noticed, I know you have, especially here in the U. S., how Nasty some online conversations get and how, of course, divided our politics have become. That type of division and vitriol is challenging when you are face to face with someone, when rather than letting yourself spin out for days, you can just take some deep breaths and get on the phone with someone https: otter.
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But it's also wildly helpful, even if you're not speaking to that person, or sometimes there is no person, it's just this kind of abstract threat, right? Like sales will go down, and then to be in a very supportive group that is not there to help you amplify those feelings, but is just there to witness and support you in like the normalcy of those feelings.
And in helping you regulate your system, that is priceless and more and more needed in this world. I want to play you this recording that I got from a client lately. I know you'll be able to feel into the power of. I truly feel this week has been so emotionally challenging for me that I really and regularly have been having the thought like, how would I be doing this without Jenna and [00:25:00] also without?
It's an amazing experience to feel the power of the group in tandem with your coaching. I feel like I'm like fully the recipient of your business model this week. It has just been so amazing to know, okay, I'm actually not alone in this. I have solidarity in this group. I have safety in myself, but also in this group and.
I feel so grateful for that. Oh, this is so good. This is why we need strong networks. This is why we need strong groups of friends and need to put in the work to continue to maintain those friendships. And we need people who understand what we're going through. And not everyone out in the wild really understands this journey of entrepreneurship.
Please find a group for yourself of strong women that understand. The importance [00:26:00] of simply being there for somebody, simply hearing them out, simply saying, I've been there too, simply saying, I got you, and then yes, also sharing some wisdom that can help you along, give you that one little nugget that really sinks in for you.
If you don't have that, you are welcome to use me this week. So as you've noticed yourself, feeling maybe a little reactive, you're tempted to do something, or you're feeling a little activated, you're going to have some somatic movement moment, right? And then you're going to have. A quieter moment that's still somatic based, perhaps using the tool that I'm offering at theuncommonway.
com forward slash reactivity dash cleanse. And then if there's some person on the other side actually getting on the phone with them saying, Hey, I'd like to hear about this from your perspective or really understand more, maybe share a little bit about what was [00:27:00] going on for me. And, or share. You can, like I said, send me a DM, send me an email, reply to any email if you're on my list that I send you, go to the website and use the contact form.
You have so many ways to get in touch with me and I will happily be that person for you this week. Now, I have a couple more points to share with you to really round out your understanding of this subject. We can get so easily activated and then react in a reactive manner when we're thinking certain thoughts that start getting us escalated, for instance, being afraid of something.
And the opposite can happen because sometimes there are situations or occurrences that trigger you and on a body level, you start feeling anxious. And as we've talked about, that gives you [00:28:00] access to fewer parts of your brain. Which stimulate more fear based thought. This is very, very interrelated. And you're trying to do all this with this human biology, um, as you're logically trying to move this business forward.
So there's some competing agendas going on. But here's something else that is critical for you to know. When you are trying to change your beliefs and adopt new ways of thinking, you are changing the biology of your brain, which luckily we know is entirely possible, it's neuroplasticity, but it's also challenging.
It requires a lot of calories and a lot of effort on the part of our body, but that process of change is facilitated with the more parts of the brain that you can engage. That's why sometimes when you're doing affirmations and you're thinking the same thought over and over and over again, But the true beliefs deep down don't change.
It's because of this. It's because you're only engaging the rational [00:29:00] part of your brain. When I included a somatic tool in the free takeaway from last week's episode, that was very strategic on my part. I knew that if I could get you to feel the release of that thought in different parts, like to really feel it in your body, and I talked about your posture, and I talked about sensations and lightness.
All of that was engaging different parts of your brain, and that really facilitates the change. It's the same reason why visualizations can be so powerful for some because they've learned how to really Not just think about this and watch it as if it were a movie, but to really feel it in their body.
And then for some people they're like visualizations, visualization, I don't get it. But the other thing that I'd like to highlight and this is the part that's a little more woo is that from what I've seen, the universe is watching us and it's watching us. Specifically, watching our reactivity to certain events [00:30:00] and how we handle things.
This is the barometer of the lessons learned, of how ready we are to move forward. If we have a windfall 100k month, and then we freak out and start getting into fights with our family, or we start overcompensating with extra work, or we immediately spend it all down because deep down it's very uncomfortable for us to hold that money and have that money, All of these are things that I've seen my clients do, or I've done myself, then it really wasn't a helpful endeavor.
The universe isn't here to freak out your nervous system. It's helping you grow and evolve so that you can open yourself to receiving all that's available to you. When you're bouncing around reactively, you're really putting chaotic Frequency. Out into the world, and you get a lot of chaos in return. If I say I want to work with these kind of clients, and have them come in to do this [00:31:00] kind of work with me, and I want the value exchange to be this much money, but then two weeks later, I'm like, I don't like the fact that nobody has responded to that social media post or signed up for a discovery call or whatever it might be.
So I'm deciding to change that. The universe is like, really? Not only does it then need to go about looking to create all of the different synchronicities and chain of events that will help your next group of clients come to you, but it also understands that your nervous system is not yet ready for primetime and that your beliefs are not yet ready.
The best interest of the universe for you to be fully confidently expressed in who you are and the work you're here to do in the world. And what might seem like challenges and obstacles to you along that path are actually opportunities from the universe for you to ground more fully into the truth of what you are absolutely here to do.
And through your determination and [00:32:00] steadfastness, you show, you demonstrate to the universe that you want that. And through your ability to regulate your nervous system when you have obstacles and continue with the actions along that course. You are able to receive and create more and more abundance.
Now, it does work the other way, too. Sometimes people stay with where they are and don't move towards their alignment, again, because of reactivity. That thought of pivoting or changing feels uncomfortable. It's creating that slush of neurochemicals in the body of adrenaline and all the things that are kind of making it feel unsafe.
And so, you stay where you are out of reactivity. And in that case, you're probably just going to get a whole bunch of nudges and little signs and things that keep pushing you slash calling you forward. But I believe this nervous system work. is a key tool for manifestation that so many people miss. [00:33:00] Okay, my friend, if this subject is interesting to you, if you feel that you haven't mastered this yet, and that you would love some support in your business, that's not just tactical.
That's not just your thoughts and mindset, but that it also ventures into these realms. And if you want to focus on aligning signature offers and strategies so that you can lean back more and hustle less, and you want to do it with me and a group of women who have your back, and if you're a woman who's leaving hesitancy behind and is a hundred percent in it to win it for life.
Then I invite you to join us in the Clarity Accelerator, the only mastermind of its kind, and my business baby, which I love and believe in so strongly. Okay, that pocket tool is waiting for you. It is at theuncommonway. com forward slash reactivity dash cleanse. And let's go detox some reactivity [00:34:00] this week, and I will see you back here next time.
Thanks for joining us here at the Uncommon Way. If you want more tips and resources for developing clarity in your business in life, including the Clarity First strategy for growing and scaling your business, visit theuncommonway. com. See you next time.