Episode Summary
Are you waiting for life to “calm down” before you can finally breathe, focus, and thrive, but that day never seems to come?
If you’ve felt paralyzed by uncertainty, drained by constant disruptions, or discouraged by the state of the world, you’re not alone. But what if there’s a way to both lead AND live well, right now? In this episode, you’ll discover how to thrive even if disruption actually is “the new normal.”
In this episode, you will:
Discover why waiting for things to “calm down” is the biggest trap keeping you from the life and business you want—and learn what to do instead.
Learn the two essential practices that allow you to thrive in an era of nonstop disruption, even when the world feels overwhelming.
Hear how leaders like Mandela, Frankl, and Schultz honed their minds and leadership in the midst of chaos—and how you can apply the same principles to your own challenges.
Press play now to reclaim your focus, energy, and joy—so you can lead and live well no matter what’s happening in the world.
Resources mentioned:
Ep# 98:Detox From Overwhelmed Hot Mess To Create More Easeful Business Growth as Women Entrepreneurs With Lauren Dito
122. Turn Catastrophe Into Triumph in 3 Steps: What We Can Learn From the U.S. Election
Fact checking organizations:
Snopes (snopes.com) – one of the oldest fact-checking sites, covering viral rumors, memes, and breaking stories.
PolitiFact (politifact.com) – focuses heavily on political claims in the U.S.
FactCheck.org (factcheck.org) – nonpartisan, often digs into statements by public figures.
Poynter’s International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) (ifcncodeofprinciples.poynter.org) – global network of vetted fact-checking groups.
Google Reverse Image Search or TinEye – check if an image is old, repurposed, or from a different event.
InVID & WeVerify (browser plugin) – helps analyze videos and images for authenticity.
Wayback Machine (Internet Archive) – see if a page has changed over time.
Links mentioned:
Miller, Claire Cain. “The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting.” The Upshot, The New York Times, December 25, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/25/upshot/the-relentlessness-of-modern-parenting.html
FBI hate crime statistics https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/more-fbi-services-and-information/ucr/hate-crime
Global Sustainability article https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S2059479825100185/type/journal_article
Through the Darkness movie
https://danainouye.ac-page.com/through-the-darkness?test=true
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/the-economic-potential-of-generative-ai-the-next-productivity-frontier McKinsey report titled “The Economic Potential of Generative AI: The Next Productivity Frontier” (June 2023).
Boston Marathon bombing study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24324161/
Social Media
Find Jenna on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theuncommonway/
The Uncommon Way is your go-to resource for mindset mastery, strategy, and power moves tailored to ambitious women entrepreneurs and leaders ready to break the mold and lead with confidence. This top female business coaches podcast covers leadership coaching for women, business growth strategies, and the female entrepreneur mindset to help you craft magnetic messaging, attract your ideal clients, clarify irresistible offers, and leverage your secret sauce to stand out authentically.
Each episode from top-ranked women’s business coach Jenna Harrison addresses common pain points like overwhelm, decision fatigue, entrepreneur burnout solutions, and the guilt of stepping back from hustle culture. Jenna shares tools to streamline your business systems, cultivate powerful habits, and delegate with intention—all designed to help you reclaim work-life balance and boost your freedom.
Dive into transformational mindset shifts and energetic alignment that empower you to become the powerful force you were meant to be—creating aligned growth, breakthrough clarity, and unapologetic success. Whether you’re a female entrepreneur building impact, a leader navigating change, a woman founder scaling your organization, or a business coach for women entrepreneurs, The Uncommon Way equips you to design a business and life that reflect your true vision. Leave behind imposter syndrome, overworking, and people pleasing. Embrace clarity, confidence, and unapologetic success.
Full Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] In this episode, you'll learn the two essential things that ensure you lead a business well and live your life well. In an era where we will likely witness even more disruption in the coming years. And why right now is actually a one of a kind opportunity. Welcome to The Uncommon Way where high-achieving women entrepreneurs and leaders pitch the rule book and design success on their own terms.
I'm your host, Jenna Harrison, a top ranked business coach sharing business growth strategies of mindset, mastery, and power moves to help you attract ideal clients, a leverage your unique genius and scale with freedom. Let's dive in. Welcome. Welcome back to the Uncommon Way. Who could use an injection of hope today, along with straight talk strategies to not just survive, but actually thrive during these turbulent times?
I could. I bet you could too. Times are challenging. You feel it? I feel it. Everyone feels it. But what if the turbulence around us [00:01:00] isn't just draining you? What if it's actually your training ground, the place where you can cultivate clarity and resilience and leadership that doesn't waver no matter what the world throws at you over summer.
You might've been distracting yourself with summer busyness, or you might've been paralyzed with dooms scrolling, but now that falls here. It's time to step into a new operating mode. All signs point to continued challenging times in the years ahead, and I'll share some really interesting facts about that soon.
But here's the reality. We have no idea exactly what kind of world our children will grow up in, but we do know that the time between that future and now is gonna be bumpy if we keep waiting for things to calm down. Waiting for the perfect moment to just breathe. We'll, not only be disappointed. We actually risk our dreams evaporating and our lives passing us by.
Yeah, it sounds [00:02:00] sobering, but this is actually a really positive themed episode. But the straight talk is that disruption is no longer just an interruption. It's the new baseline. This episode, it's both an outstretched hand and an invitation to an uncommon path. The only true path for leaders now, a path that leads not just to coping.
To thriving even when everything feels uncertain. I wanna help you frame the time ahead in the most empowering way and give you tools to lead and live well no matter what's happening. In this episode, you will discover why waiting for things to calm down is the biggest trap, keeping you from the life and business you want, and learn what to do instead.
You'll learn the two essential practices that allow you to thrive in an era of nonstop disruption, even when the world feels overwhelming. And you'll hear how leaders like Mandela, Frankel, and Schultz honed their [00:03:00] minds and leadership in the midst of chaos and how you can apply the same principles to your own challenges.
That's exactly what we're diving into today. By the end, you'll walk away with clarity, with insights that you can actually start acting on, and a sense of hopeful agency that you get to then carry into every decision and every single day we'll talk in a bit about why we're not headed back to unquote normal and how this is what normal looks like now.
If you end up agreeing with that perspective, then the question isn't, when will things calm down so I can finally breathe? The real question is how can I create the conditions to breathe and thrive right now? Even though I have spoken with many women this summer who are stuck in a holding pattern, waiting or waiting for things to calm down, waiting for summer to end.
Waiting until after a [00:04:00] move, waiting for their kids to get a little older, waiting for all these unusual circumstances to just mellow out, waiting for the economy to rebound, waiting for politics to get back to normal, and then finally they will be able to get back to normal. And typically for my clients, normal means devoting themselves to very meaningful work that stretches them because they can.
Because they wanna see what they're capable of and also they wanna start making more time for themselves and the holistic picture, all the things that matter in their lives. But right now, everything feels so crazy and exhausting. I have a client with a fairly new business and two children under five.
She's often solo parenting while her partner travels. She's juggling social obligations, volunteering as a room mom. And also often just feels flattened by everything happening in the country and on the planet. [00:05:00] She told me recently, after several sleepless nights, maybe I just have to accept that this is a season of my life and take a step back.
Another woman, a highly successful entrepreneur with raving fans, told me that with every new headline, she wonders what's the point? Does it even matter? The work she once did passionately, even for free, now feels heavy. She can barely drag herself on camera to do the weekly training that her clients are hungry for.
I resonate deeply with both of them because I've been there too. Whenever I speak about anything here, it's because I've walked the path myself. I've trialed errored, wrestled with the big questions tested solutions. I'm about maybe 70% on the other side, and then I'm able to share what's working for me and my clients if I've had time to test some of these things with them.
A year ago, if you listened to my [00:06:00] episodes, you'd hear a version of me waiting for things to calm down to settle, because in addition to the headlines that affect us and disruption in the coaching industry, and being a mom and a CEO and having parents getting older. My family also decided to totally rebuild our lives from the ground up in a new country, including buying a home here that had some issues to work through.
And I started noticing my interior dialogue and I started noticing my interior dialogue was all about, it has got to calm down. Eventually I'll just push this out a ways until things settle down, or even, why am I attracting all of this chaos into my life? What am I doing wrong? As I looked around, I realized things wouldn't necessarily calm down, and my growth edge was in accepting that and creating new solutions.
So I dove deep into the words of history's great leaders during upheaval, absorbing their [00:07:00] teachings. I worked these themes through my body. I consulted energy healers. I processed everything with my coach, friends and mentors. And as I've come to a far more peaceful place, here is what I've taken away. A stop waiting for some imagined future.
We are living in a time of upheaval. B, when disruption is the baseline, resilience isn't optional, it's essential. And C, the upside is that those who learn to lead well inside chaos will be the one shaping the businesses and lives that flourish now and in the future. If you are the kind of person who feels knocked off your game by simple life events, international crises, or anything in between.
Now, not later, is the time to develop resilience and the ability to stay relatively unruffled. Of course, we all take hits. We nurse wounds, we recharge as needed. [00:08:00] I'm not saying we become robots. I used to have an acupuncturist who would tell me, Jenna, your energy is like this. And she would motion up, down, up, down.
And we wanna see it more like this, flat, steady, and that's more of what I'm talking about. It just took me 30 years to cultivate it. So ask yourself, what is your general disposition right now? Are you resilient and unflappable or not? You'll know the answer. If you have been feeling like it's all too much, you are not weak, you're human.
For hundreds of thousands of years, our biology acclimated to pretty predictable rhythms. People would live in one town their whole lives. Things didn't change much. Maybe a crop failed. Maybe there was a war. But then life returned to a baseline and people rebuilt. So of course, everything going on today takes a toll.
Even the constant, you know, higher [00:09:00] stimulation of, of the content we read is not what we're wired for. Can you imagine a time when people would sit on their front porches, rocking back and forth, maybe chatting with a neighbor? That was the stimulating event of the day, or when radio came along, a 30 minute show was a big deal.
Now we are bombarded constantly with sensory stimuli, even though our biology has not evolved to handle it. On top of that, we're dealing with social, political, economic stressors, and that a lot of those just didn't even exist before. A friend of mine recently came back from the US and said, everyone, even people you pass on the street, they're all so stressed, even more than usual.
10 years ago, she was living in Korea and I was in Japan, and we'd talk about how jarring it was to visit the states. It felt so stressful. We wouldn't realize that until we'd been outside of it and then come back into it. But now [00:10:00] stress is amplified even more, and pretty much the whole world is feeling, at least the tremors of what's happening in the United States.
Understandably so. Inflation keeps rising at a time when jobs and income don't feel as secure. Your loved one might be losing medical coverage and you don't know if they're gonna get care. Or maybe you're in the middle of some home renovation and you've paid for all the supplies, but then construction halted 'cause everyone's afraid to come to work.
Or worse people you know from your community disappeared like a puff of smoke. There's the rising authoritarianism. You know, all of the social upheaval institutions are eroding. You're watching absolute devastation and horrors around the world. The point isn't to panic, it's to notice and to validate that yes, this is a lot, but also we can get clear on what we can control right now and look for ways to stay grounded even if the world isn't, [00:11:00] the world isn't grounded, but you get to be grounded and it's important for your business, for your wellbeing, but possibly you're trying to navigate your children's questions too.
Maybe your children are Ukrainian or Palestinian or otherwise affected, and your focus and energy is going into just helping them cope. I was talking to a Jewish friend the other day telling her I cannot imagine the weight of raising Jewish children now who are old enough to hear about and understand the events of October 7th and the current war, and then are also witnessing a huge wave of antisemitism.
I'm not saying that all criticism of the state of Israel is antisemitic. Antisemitism itself is rising. I heard this crazy statistic that Jews make up just about 2% of the US population, yet they experience more hate crimes than any other religious group. And I looked it up. The FBI shows it was almost 70% of religious hate crimes in [00:12:00] 2023.
And incidents are surging now in France, in the uk, Canada, Australia. It's not just in the states. We could spend hours unpacking tragedies and stressors around the world, not to mention the environmental crisis. And each of us has our own front and center stressor that we carry privately. And on top of that, so many women, including myself, are affected by the expectations placed on us today.
We're the first generations of women benefiting from shattered glass ceilings and new opportunities, which is of course a blessing. But also a lot of pressure. We're told how to be better partners, better daughters, better community leaders, better moms. In 2018, the New York Times published this article called The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting, and it showed that working moms now spend more time with their children than stay at home moms did in the seventies.
My husband and I remember, we'd get home from school, maybe you'd do your [00:13:00] homework if you had some, and then you got kicked out of the house. We had to find our own entertainment, go find friends to play with all weekend too. We spent much less time in the house than we spend now with our son. My parents were super loving and involved for that time, don't get me wrong, but they had so much more rest time, decompression time.
And let's talk beauty too. I'm actually of an age where I can remember life before Photoshop. Yeah. And even with photographic retouching, that was still something that you only saw, you know, on magazine covers that came out once a month. Actual people weren't expected to look like that. Have you ever watched movies from maybe the two thousands with actors who are still popular today and notice how different their teeth look?
Veneers weren't really a thing even for stars. Nowadays, all sorts of people have veneers. Yes, I just went from the Ukraine to tooth veneers. [00:14:00] But that's the point. Everything piles up. The weight you're carrying is real. And even though I'm outside the US and I tend to talk about positive topics here, I'm not living under a rock.
My heart aches too. I feel multiple pressures too. But here's the good news, there's a way forward. Our human brains are capable of adapting. We just need to practice new tools intentionally in this new way forward. Even though disruption is the new normal, it doesn't mean you have to be swept away. You can move through hard things and still love your life and the work you do in the world.
Just like in 12 step programs, you can't move forward without first accepting what is getting real with ourselves. The times will be bumpy for a while. That's the first step towards acclimating and creating a life that works even now. Now that idea that we shouldn't be waiting for things to [00:15:00] settle back down is so different.
It's such a different perspective than what most of us were brought up to expect. Because for centuries, experts have said that globalization would equal peace and stability, that countries would become way too interconnected to go to war. 'cause what hurt one country would in turn hurt the attacking country just as much or more.
Thomas Friedman famously said in the nineties that no two countries with McDonald's had ever gone to war because globalization created middle class consumers who wanted stability and prosperity more than conflict. Well. You know who proved that wrong? Putin by invading Georgia, Crimea and Ukraine. It turns out nations will act against rational economic interests, especially when led by non-rational leaders.
The takeaway for us though is that because the world is so interconnected now, when disruption hits a one part of the world, the ripple effects are global. [00:16:00] That means we're likely to experience disruption more frequently, not less frequently. And while that sounds scary, it's also exactly the kind of environment that becomes a mental and strategic training ground.
Those who learn to stay calm, adaptable, and solution oriented now are the ones who will thrive, not just survive in the years ahead. The World Economic Forum has described this current era as a poly crisis. Overlapping disruptions in the economy and politics. And climate and technology. And here's an example of how it plays out In Sub-Saharan Africa.
In 2020, there was a locus outbreak, but the region was already battling food insecurity because the supply chains had been thrown into chaos by the pandemic, which of course started thousands of miles away in China. At the same time, way up in Northern Europe, the war in [00:17:00] Ukraine caused bread prices to spike and it contributed to a shortage of about 30 million tons of grain, and it worsened that famine much more.
What once might have been localized disruptions affected a region far, far away. And these examples aren't limited to land. There are huge non localized domains that can affect the entire world simultaneously. Climate's the obvious one, no one escapes its effect. Though the impact is more acute in vulnerable populations.
Of course, technology's another. McKinsey predicts that half of today's work activities will be automated somewhere between 2030 and 2060. Half. That is massive. Here's the optimistic side. Those who practice adaptability and develop the complimentary human skills now, like creativity, judgment, leadership, those who [00:18:00] understand how to wield their own uncommon edge.
Those will be the ones designing and leading the new economy, not replaced by it. And then there's space, I mean, outer space. Specifically the low Earth orbits where our most critical infrastructure like GPS satellites are orbiting. GPS isn't just about directions on your phone or measuring how far you've walked that day, it's the backbone of financial markets, air travel, telecommunications, emergency services, the energy grids, military security.
Most people don't really realize this. I certainly didn't. It's only because my husband teaches it. I learned about it. But GPS is vulnerable to cyber attacks or to being shot down and also to space debris. Every time you explode a satellite or even just accidentally drop a screw when you're fixing [00:19:00] something in the space station, that little tiny piece of metal becomes a major projectile.
It doesn't fall to earth. It continues to orbit the earth forever, but it's moving at a speed of about five miles a second. That means even those little tiny things can pack a huge punch. When a paint chip floating in space hit the windshield of the space shuttle, it caused a two inch divot in the glass.
And unfortunately, as far more debris is created, there are already tens of thousands of pieces of debris. There's a possibility that a chain reaction of impacts could render entire orbits unusable and impassable. It would be too dangerous to pass through them. Of course, the more satellites and other objects that we throw up, the higher the chances of debris fields being larger and more impactful, and it doesn't look like we'll be slowing down anytime soon because there [00:20:00] is a space race going on.
Many new countries are developing capabilities, so there are more players. Currently, there are about 2,500 satellites going up each year, and SpaceX has created an even bigger rocket that can hold even more satellites at once. But this is also a huge opportunity. The technologies, the systems, the safety protocols that we develop now will define how we manage critical infrastructure for generations, the norms that we're putting into place now, and there's an opportunity to generate billions of dollars in profit from new industries and the technologies that are going to ripple out into all sectors of the economy, all around the world.
The same way it did during the race to the moon, but now you see why I say disruption is the new normal. But here's the part most people miss. The turbulence has a hidden gift. [00:21:00] We are witnessing the death rows of systems that are no longer serving us, and the bumpy initiation that comes with new advancements.
Eventually society sets up the bumper rails. For example, during the industrial Revolution, there were horrible, horrific working conditions, and that went on for decades. But over time, society decided, Hey, we want some labor laws. You know, we want some safety regulations. Workers decided we wanna unionize and, and correct this, and now we take those things for granted in many countries.
Another example. The introduction of cars initially led to really chaotic deadly streets in the cities, but eventually traffic laws and pedestrian zones and other systems were implemented and it really reduced risks and made cities so much safer. So here's the mental model. I suggest you hold.
Disruption is [00:22:00] uncomfortable, but it's also a training ground. Every time the world feels chaotic, it's an opportunity to strengthen your focus and strengthen your resilience and strengthen your decision making to become more acutely aware of who you are and how you wanna be. If you can learn to lead and thrive under these conditions, you will be ahead of the curve, way ahead of the curve for decades to come.
Which brings us to the question, what do we do with all of this stressful information we're absorbing? How do we take it in without getting paralyzed and instead use it as fuel to build an uncommon advantage? Well, first, let's talk about the stress we're absorbing from other people, stress that isn't even ours, the stress that you experience from other people's stress.
Sean Ker, hopefully I'm pronouncing that right. He wrote in the Harvard Business Review and calls it secondhand stress. He found that simply [00:23:00] observing someone else's stress can raise your cortisol by 26%. Of course, I'm linking to all of this in the show notes, but think about that for a second. You are waiting in the doctor's office scrolling through your phone for a quick distraction, and suddenly you are absorbing someone else's outrage or fear post.
Or maybe you meet a friend for coffee and spend half an hour listening to her spiral about politics. Just like that you are carrying stress that wasn't even yours a few minutes ago as if your plate wasn't already full. This isn't just anecdotal, right? The Washington Post highlighted research showing that when stress spreads through social media, it literally elevates stress hormones.
It disrupts immune function and cognition, and it hijacks your clarity. Outrage spreads faster and farther than joy. Especially through really loose social connections. So a stranger posts about her [00:24:00] excitement or happiness, it really doesn't move your mood that much usually, and you're probably not gonna share it, right.
But outrage that is very sticky. It's very contagious, and it can spread like wildfire. It happens in the 24 hour news cycle too. Watching the news excessively, especially after moments of collective trauma is very unhealthy. We're drawn to it, but it's very unhealthy. After the Boston Marathon bombing, people who consumed six or more hours of news per day experienced more acute stress symptoms than those with direct exposure to the bombing itself.
So no wonder your creativity feels blocked. No wonder decisions feel heavier. No wonder motivation feels suppressed. You're not just carrying your own load, you're carrying everyone else's. But here is the good news. Once you recognize the invisible weight of secondhand [00:25:00] stress, you can start creating boundaries.
You can adjust your exposure. You can reclaim the conditions that your biology needs to thrive. And once you do that, something remarkable happens. You start freeing up energy for your own creativity and your own action, your own focus. That is the first step in using this turbulent environment as your personal training ground.
It's a new era. It requires a new set of tools, a new way of being. We can't just get carried away, but leadership isn't about waiting for calm. CS either. Actually never has been Turbulent times have produced some of our greatest leaders. Leadership is about learning to sail in the storm, and you and I are leaders.
This is exactly when we kick into action. Our time has come. The world needs role, models of sanity and resilience and perseverance and [00:26:00] joy too. The world needs your specific brand of leadership. Howard Schultz did this when he returned to Starbucks during the 2008 crash. Instead of panicking over numbers, he first centered himself and he gathered employees in to listen closely to what they had to say.
He took the space and time for that, and that grounded leadership helped Starbucks rebound stronger than before. Or Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison, but famously said prison was his mental training ground. He didn't let apartheid win the war for his inner world. He trained his mind daily and he practiced what he called a mental diet.
He limited what he consumed mentally. He focused on selective reading and reflection and hope, and he emerged stronger. This is something you can apply right now. The first simplest step [00:27:00] if you wanna lead your business well and live well during chaos and difficult times, is to be selective with your mental diet.
Whatcha feeding your mind with. Is it giving you strength or slowly draining your power? I am not suggesting you bury your head in the sand. The world needs aware, educated citizens now more than ever, and whenever you feel moved to take action. I thank you so gratefully, if you're not sure how or where to take action, I recommend my episode 1 22 for feeling into that decision.
But I'm advocating for your discernment and your discipline. To be more specific. Limit the time you spend consuming news and upsetting things, and make intentional choices about where you receive your info. It's different if you're engaged in pro-social work. That can be really healing even though you're surrounded by really upsetting circumstances.
But [00:28:00] absorbing someone else's strong emotions over a long duration is never healthy. By the same token, we need to take responsibility for not stoking secondhand stress in others. If there's something important to share, fact check it first. This one step alone would totally change the game and think about how you wanna frame that information.
I will link to multiple fact checking organizations in the show notes. Bottom line, you limiting your exposure. It's not selfish or weak, it's self preservation. It means you understand the brain's biology and that we are not wired for chronic stress. And you realize that if you wanna do good in the world and truly live fully with your one precious life, not just get by in life, you need to create the internal conditions that allow it all, because there are a lot of things you can't control, but what you can control is your inner world, right?
To live well [00:29:00] doesn't mean everything around you is perfect, and you have mansions and fancy cars and are totally insulated from the world. Living well means living fully. If you catch yourself thinking, I can't feel joyful because of X, Y, Z, or I can't do anything because of A, B, C, remember, that's rarely, entirely true.
The lesson we can take from Nelson Mandela is you cannot use external circumstances as an excuse not to feel joyful and whole or anything that you personally have not given your express permission to. You decide, and he is not alone. People who have endured some of the worst conditions imaginable have reached the same conclusion.
Viktor Frankl, for example, survived four Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz. He lost his wife, his parents, and his [00:30:00] brother. But rather than despair, he leaned into meaning as a survival strategy. He observed that those who had a strong sense of purpose were more likely to survive. He chose to believe that suffering could be meaningful and that no one could take away his freedom to choose his attitude.
After the war, he published Man's Search for Meaning, which has sold over 16 million copies and transformed the field of psychology. And thankfully, we also have present day examples lighting the way. Remember my Jewish friend I mentioned earlier, her children are old enough to witness and absorb everything happening around them.
Her teenage son, Sebastian Aye, is an accomplished filmmaker. He created a documentary interviewing people in Israel, Jewish, Arab, Palestinian, who have endured personal hardship, but choose peace and coexistence because of their pain, not in spite of it, he and his mom brought it to life and it's being [00:31:00] released soon.
I'll share the link where you can sign up and get notified of its release. All the people involved, including the filmmakers themselves, are demonstrated firsthand that power to choose, showing why that choice matters and how it shapes their lives and their way of being, even Amids turmoil. Everything I've been talking about here regarding choice and remaining steadfast, it brings us to what I call mental sovereignty, the second essential component for leading your business and living well during chaos and difficult times.
Mental sovereignty is the ability to rule your inner world to feel the stress without being hijacked by it. To process emotions without collapsing under them. To notice outrage, without letting it run your day and actually allow those emotions in so that they can transform. It's not about shutting down emotion or powering through.
That [00:32:00] is the misunderstood version of the term mental toughness. The research shows that real resilience is flexibility. It's about adapting, processing, regulating, and returning to your center. And the good news. It's a skill that anyone can develop. Vitor Frankl said between stimulus and response lies choice.
As we've come to understand more fully how the brain and nervous system work, we know that interrupting our pattern, stimulus response can be challenging, but is always possible. And it's most effective when we work on both the body level and mind level as a woman entrepreneur. This kind of mental sovereignty, it is not optional.
I've argued in the past that it never was, but now it's even more critical when disruption is the new normal. The companies that survive and thrive will be the ones with adaptable, unflappable leaders. Who can navigate the chaos with competence and clarity. [00:33:00] Every challenge you experience now is your mental training ground.
Think of Mandela. He faced so many pressures, yet his inner world remained his domain. That's what mental sovereignty does for you too. And as women, the expectations and scrutiny are higher than for men. We're conditioned against many of the things required for entrepreneurship, resilience, and even mental health.
You're likely juggling multiple roles, you know, business, caregiving, relationships, and community, and navigating all the disruptions I outlined earlier and many more that I didn't even name. And if you're like my clients, you want to create impact. You wanna see what's truly possible for yourself and to lead in some way.
Mental sovereignty is what gives you the edge to keep showing up with clarity, you know, with, with conviction, even when the world is trying to pull you off [00:34:00] center. And it gives you the confidence and agency to trust your own voice and decisions, especially in spaces where historically they've been dismissed.
Imagine feeling fully in control of your mind and your response even as the world shifts around you. Feeling steady, clear and powerful no matter what comes your way. And no matter what you think might come your way, because there's something very real called pre traumatic stress. The stress we give ourselves ahead of events, which makes our experiences much worse and diminishes our capacity.
But mental sovereignty, it breaks that wave of victimhood. And it lets you not just focus on the here and now, but thrive in the here and now and know that you can make the most of whatever comes your way. Next, I have an episode all on this topic. It's episode 96. I'll link to that as well, and I'm gonna say it again.
All [00:35:00] of this work, that is what sets you apart as a leader today. The earlier you prioritize this mental training, the stronger your impact can be. The greater results you'll see, not just for your business, but for your life. When you cultivate this, everyone benefits too. Your family benefits because you model stability instead of transmitting stress, your presence becomes an anchor for them.
The anchor of the house, your business benefits. You show up, you make clearer, bolder decisions, and you move through the world with a sense of authority. Your team members benefit if you have them. They experience a more grounded leadership that inspires trust and productivity. Your clients benefit. They interact with the most clearheaded centered version of you, which elevates their experience and the results that they achieve, and your community and society benefits.
You have the mental [00:36:00] and emotional space to intentionally decide how and where to contribute rather than just being inundated by. All the negativity and the beautiful part is it is a virtuous cycle. Research in psychological science shows that taking action for communities during crises doesn't just help others.
It reduces personal stress and boosts resilience. It's the antithesis of consuming endless negative news. When you're grounded, you're more capable of making meaningful contribution and making those contributions in turn keeps you even more grounded. I'm on a mission to help women develop this kind of sovereignty, the kind that transform businesses and lives.
If you wanna learn how to remain unflappable and still be able to feel joyful and alive in the most challenging circumstances, my seven week reset is an excellent place for you to do so. Because yeah, you can meditate, you can [00:37:00] journal, you can take breaks. Most women don't have a structured container that helps them train their nervous system and learn the skillset of mental sovereignty so it can become second nature.
This is your opportunity to create the right conditions, to lead powerfully and to thrive, to live beautifully, even during chaos. For many women, what stands between them and a sense of thriving isn't fear of success or failure or anything like that. It's simply not knowing how to manage the pressure and stress they're feeling.
The seven Week Reset gives you the tools, the practice and the support to close that gap so you can step into your life and business more aligned, calm, capable, no matter what the world's throwing at you. So in this episode, you learned that disruption's the new normal, but that doesn't mean you have to be buried by it.
When you set boundaries around your mental diet, you're giving yourself the [00:38:00] opportunity to conserve energy, to lower anxiety, to maintain a healthier immune system, and to think more clearly. You're protecting your inner world so you can respond rather than freeze or fight. And by accepting what is and learning and developing your mental sovereignty, the real flexible kind of mental toughness, you can lead your business care for, your loved ones, contribute to your community.
But also squeeze the juice out of the precious life you're living, even when circumstances are challenging. If you're ready to build that skill or to embody it more deeply, you already know where to go. I'll link to the details of the new program in the show notes so you can step into it, because training your mind to work uncommonly unlocks a whole new level of impact and possibility.
Okay. If you know someone who needs to hear this episode, please share it and I'll talk to you again on Tuesday.