Going Blank Under Pressure

SPEAKER_01 0:05

The room is moving. The stakes are real. And somewhere, you know, you are in there. But inside you, oh my goodness, it's like the wires are starting to get crossed. Maybe ten minutes ago, a few minutes ago, when you even didn't enter the room, or when you just sat in there, you knew what you were thinking, what you wanted to say. Now it's gone. You hear yourself answering, but it doesn't quite sound like you. So today's guest has thought deeply about why that happens and what we can practice on any of the ordinary days. So that we have something to hold on to when the ordinary days are over. So, yes, welcome dear listeners to Healthy Mind, Healthy Life. I am Sana, guest hosting, and today's guest, Louisa Hogan, she is here to talk about why we lose clarity under pressure and how. How resilience is something which is quietly practiced every

Redefining Resilience As Steadiness

SPEAKER_01 1:14

day, long before the moment we actually need it. So, Luisa, welcome to Healthy Mind Healthy Life. Absolutely, as always, honored having you here.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Thank you so much. It is always a treat to speak with you, and I'm glad to be speaking with you today.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Oh, thank you so much, Louisa. Thank you so much. So, for the listeners of Healthy Mind Healthy Life, let me tell all of you that uh I got the opportunity to have to host to have a conversation with Luisa on Bispland. So, yes, uh, I would invite all of you to tune and check out her episode in the Bisplend. Whenever it comes out, I'll share that link as well. But uh, today for this conversation listeners, um, Louisa, I want I I would want to start with something that people, including me, uh, we we get wrong about pressure. This uh picture in our heads of that resilient person, um, the one who walks into the hard meeting or any hard confronting situation, stays untouched by it, is always like uh maybe like a uh subtle smile on it on their face. Like the storm even doesn't uh just quite land on them. They're always like this calm and composed. That's how we kind of picturize. Um but the way you talk about resilience, it makes me think that you know you see that picture very differently. So what part are we getting wrong here?

SPEAKER_00 2:40

So uh first of all, thank you. And that's those are lovely examples. I think what people confuse about resilience is there's this image of resilience that we have, that resilience is about being tough and being like a marathon runner, you know. Just we have to endure the pain and get to the end, and we have to tough it out no matter how painful it is. Yeah, and that is actually not what resilience is, because resilience is actually more around it's it's how you can steady yourself through pressure and remain steady, and that steadiness is the springboard to resilience, and resilience is about how we recover from that pressure and how we respond to pressure while we are going through it, and it's not about pretending that we're strong because people will say things like, I am very resilient, you never see me cry, you never see me under pressure. But inside, internally, if they are feeling very stressed, they are feeling like they they are burning out, they're feeling like they can't cope, but nobody can see that. Nobody's allowed to see me burning out, and I have to pretend like I'm okay. That's not what resilience is. So for me, like the resilient people who are truly resilient do come across as calm and capable, but they are not pretending that they are. They truly are calm and clear on the inside, they have steadiness on the inside without needing to pretend they're strong. So if anyone out there has ever felt the need to, I have to show everybody how resilient I am by showing them how tough I am, but internally you don't feel that. You feel very broken or very stressed out, very panicky, anxiety, you know, only seeing problems, but not showing anyone that, then you're you're probably pretending to be resilient.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Alusa, I don't know whether this example it um correctly fits uh the discussion, but uh I was on another uh it it was I think it was done a long time ago, and we were talking about public speaking on stage appearance, and uh and it was not exactly the typical tactical or strategical uh discussion that you do these hacks or these other techniques or just the X factor that will make you a good

Name The Emotion To Lower Threat

SPEAKER_01 5:18

public speaker, but something very uh from from the psychological POV or the mindset POV is you are feeling that uh, you know, not tension, I sh I should say, but that anxiety because we fear public speaking. Um if I get on a stage and hundred people are watching me, it's a it's a different thing. It's it's it's completely different from doing a podcast, you know, virtually doing a podcast. So I would swear, I I wouldn't I would fumble. Um, my hands will be sweaty, my heartbeats racing. Um I I don't know what would what would I do. But at that time, sometimes we we try to override those signals and we say, Yeah, yeah, I'm good, I'm good, I'm feeling very brave, I'm feeling very strong. One thing that she told me is you have to acknowledge your emotions, you have to acknowledge those signals. So that gives your body that comfort, not comfort, but that ease. Okay, yeah. You're acknowledging that, you know. I am I'm giving those signals. Now what? Now what you will be doing.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

So I think uh it kind of fits into what we are doing. It does. It absolutely fits, and it's um it is actually a really great example. And I can speak from my own experience. I do a lot of speaking, I'm a professional speaker and I I will do a lot of speaking, but there's a couple of things that's happening inside your brain. You know, speaking is a high pressure situation, or people perceive it as a high pressure situation. There's this need to perform well, you don't want to sound silly. So in our minds, we see that as a danger. It's dangerous. And we have a voice inside of our heads that tells us, be careful, you're going to humiliate yourself. It's dangerous. And it's important that we have that part of our brain because that keeps us safe. But when you're public speaking, you don't necessarily need to be kept safe in the same way that you need to be kept safe from, say, a lion attacking you, right? So our brain's doing what it should do, but it's not helping you to feel calm and clear before you're going to your public speaking event. So there's wonderful research, neuroscience research out there that states that when you name the emotion, it is the first part in telling your brain that this is not a threat because you recognize what it is. So I teach very, very cool technique to my clients. I mentor people on steady leadership. And the first thing I do is I tell people to pause, all right? Let's pause because an emotion really only lasts 60 to 90 seconds. But the reason why we'll feel the emotion over two, three hours, four days, two weeks is because we replay the danger in our mind over and over and again. So what I suggest is you pause, you name the emotion, which is what the advice you got. It was really good. So you run towards the emotion, not kind of run away from it, because when you run away from it, you just push it down and then you keep reliving the emotion. So you name the emotion. You might say, I'm feeling nervous, or I'm feeling threatened, or I'm feeling whatever the emotion that it is that you're feeling. And those two things, pausing, taking a few deep breaths, deep in, hold it for a few seconds, a few breaths out, name the emotion. Those two steps are going to start telling your body, I am safe. You trick your brain into thinking this is not a lion, this is something that I can handle. And then the next thing you got to do is instead of thinking about, because you're probably prepared for your talk, right? You've already prepared all your little slides, all of your speech, you've you're prepared. So the next thing you do is, okay, I've I'm I'm had a pause, I've named the emotion. You anchor yourself so you breathe out again, you exhale all of the air, and you just say to yourself, what is the first next thing I need to do? That's it. Don't think about the whole talk, all of the things. What's the first thing I need to do? And the first thing that you just need to do is maybe step out and say hello to everybody and do your introduction. Instead of thinking about, I got to remember this, I've got to remember to say this, I got to remember to, if you're trying to remember the whole thing, you're just going to make yourself feel like there's too much and you start feeling like you're under threat again. And then what you've got to recognize, the last thing is that you are going to have that first voice that is telling you to keep safe. You're going to be humiliated, you're going to make mistakes, you're going to fail. Everyone's looking at me, they saw my mistake, they can hear

Anchor To The First Next Step

SPEAKER_00 9:54

my voice just shaking, they can see my handshake. That's the first voice. It's normal, it's telling you to be safe. Then you have a second voice inside of you that when you calm down, you take a free base, and you know what your next step is. That voice is the second voice that teaches you or tells you what the reality is. Okay, I've done my introduction, I know what I'm doing, I know my talk. It's all the calm, clear things. And if you can go through that process, you start to take control of pressure situations rather than letting the part of your brain that makes you panic and anxious and feel nervous and narrows your thinking, and you start being able to think a little bit wider than the the danger that's right in front of you.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

That is actually very, very useful. Actually very useful. Yeah. Good. No, I'm I'm really glad that you shared that because uh I think a lot of us we need to hear, we need to hear that because not only public speaking, but uh if you're going to have a very, let's say, uh high pressure, high-stakes meeting or uh a confronting, um honest conversation with your team member, or maybe in your personal lives as well, when you know that the situation is very, very uh critical, tense right now, a lot of ambiguities. But now you want to you want to uh remove those ambiguities, those clouds, and you want to uh bring clarity. I believe that you know um these very small uh I shouldn't say techniques but practices, they can really, really help. They do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

Yeah, I mean they absolutely and it the reason why they help too is because when we feel under threat, we actually narrow our thinking. We we only see the immediate danger in front of us. And again, it's a wonderful thing that our brain does that because it's designed to keep us safe and we want to be safe, right? But it doesn't help us when we need to be able to thinking, be thinking about the big picture or listening to the conversation without getting defensive, all of that. And so when we are able to turn off that automatic response and and calm down and remain steady and regulated, then we're able to open up our mind to big picture thinking rather than to the narrow thinking. And so these little practices that you can do, I do pauses every single day before I speak, before I come on podcasts, before going any into any meetings with my clients, I practice the pause, the anchor, the you know, the naming my emotions, all of those things because doing that allows me to just open up my thinking so that I'm able to have the discussion and the conversation in a clear and calm way. And that it definitely helps. Think of it in this way: like if you're driving in your car and another car pulls out in front of you, or somebody walks out into the road, okay, what happens? You suddenly can only focus on that thing in front of you. There's no way as you know what's going on around you. You can't see the cars around you, you just focus on not hitting the car in front of you, or not hitting that person who's jumped out in front of your car. And your heartbeat goes up and your breathing goes shallow, you feel very tense, and then that person passes, or you avoid the collision and you get going again. You can keep driving. And so you turn on the radio and your breathing slows down, your heart rate comes down, and now you can focus on all of the cars around you again and on the traffic and on the road rules. Now, what we want to do and what we try to achieve is when you're in that state of I'm trying to avoid this collision, what you can do to allow you to keep your eye on the traffic around you much faster than if you just stay in that state of panic. Oh no, I nearly had a crash, what am I gonna do? And those practices definitely help you do that.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

It does. It does. Okay, and also, Rona, one uh question that comes is is coming to my mind. When pressure hits and clarity starts to slip, and this has happened with me a lot of times. My I went blank, I froze. I froze like a like an antelope in front of headlights. Um we name the symptom, but as you are explaining this, what I realize is you have done the deeper work here. Um so what what exactly, apart from the

How Past Patterns Hijack Clarity

SPEAKER_01 14:40

the uh brain, in in our body, what's what's happening, the patterns, the things that have been forming quietly for years, do they have any role to play here as well?

SPEAKER_00 14:50

Yes, because uh we also we do something, our brain is not very good at predicting what will happen. It predicts based on what it's already experienced, and it does that to be efficient. Yeah. So whenever we've had an experience, whatever that experience may be, anytime we have a similar experience or we go into the same experience, our brain predicts based on what it already knows. Everything we think about things is based on the past. It's not based on the future, it's not based on the present, it's based on the past. And so our body automatically reacts to what it knows or what has it has experienced before. And that's a very interesting thing because that means whenever something challenging comes up, it doesn't matter what that challenge is, you feel it, you feel it in your body as you know, danger, as pressure, as difficulty, and your body remembers the way it was in the past and it triggers you to um respond in the exact same way that you had in the past in order to protect you. And it does that because in the past you responded in that way, and then the the difficulty passed, and your body and your brain got the message that okay, if I do that again, then I'll be safe. And so you have to train yourself and retrain yourself over and over and over again to regulate yourself through pressure situations. So it takes practice and commitment and consistency so that you can train your body and your brain the next time pressure comes up to respond on past responses that weren't the panic, that weren't the freeze, that weren't the heart rate going up, that wasn't the, you know, what you experienced. Because unless you can break that habit and teach your brain that the past, I was safe in the past, and so I'm going to be safe again in the future, you're always going to have that memory in your body stored to respond in that way.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

Totally, totally. And this is actually, uh, I believe one of the most important uh parts of this this particular conversation. And of course, anything where where we talk about habit building or uh overriding our are uh you know sometimes those triggers and fears, because um when we begin with it, uh it it it will feel like, yeah, this is working, this is feeling I'm I'm feeling good, I'm feeling better, I'm able to hold myself in a much better way. But then it's it's not always dramatic when you are in all of your good uh self, uh life may happen, and once again, you know, that auto response, it will once again come back. It's you then you feel like nothing is working on me.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

No, and the important thing is not to give up because look, even me, I I I mentor people on this stuff, I I speak at events about this stuff, and I still sometimes get it wrong. And it, you know, a a perfect example where I got it wrong, you know, this just this

Awareness Over Perfection In Real Life

SPEAKER_00 18:04

week, and it was over something so silly. My daughter, she's five years old, we're getting ready to go to school, and the five minutes before we're due to leave to get to school on time, she tells me she wants me to do her hair in a certain way, and that's the way she wants me to do her hair today. And to do her hair in that way takes me 15 minutes. And so I said yes. I should have said no, but I said yes, and I started doing her hair. It took me 15 minutes. So by the time I was finished doing her hair, we were already running 10 minutes late. And so now what happens? I I it because I didn't consciously think about my regulation, I allowed myself to become dysregulated. Why? Because in the past, I've been late, and what did that cause? Teacher gets upset, she's late, we have to rush going into school. So straight away my brain went into that mode. Yeah. But I didn't stop myself. I because I was in a rush, right? And so then I started rushing. My daughter, put your shoes on, hurry up, we're gonna be late. The bell's already gone, we need to get to school. And then my daughter reminded me, she said to me, Mama, don't worry about it. It's not a big deal if we're late. What's the worst that can happen? And she said that to me, she's five years old, the wisdom from this little girl. And I said, You know what? You're right. And I paused, I stopped rushing, I paused, I took a deep breath, I let all of the breath out of my body. I named what I was feeling. It was frustration and anxiety about being late. I didn't want to disappoint anyone. And then I said, What's the first next thing I need to do? I just need to get her shoes on and we need to drive to school. That's it. I don't need to do anything else. And I tell you what, we got to school. We were a little bit late, but not so late that she missed anything. We still got in there, we got in time, and she was in calm, and I was calm. And can you see how it's just the more you practice it, the more you can bring yourself back and also forgive yourself. I've I have to say, you know, this isn't about perfection. This is not about perfection because when you make it about perfection, it's another thing that you're putting pressure on yourself to do. So if you're out there going, oh, I never get this right, you know, you're just adding more pressure. So don't. I get it wrong. I I'm I'm human. You're human. We don't get it wrong. The point is awareness. Are you aware enough to notice the difference between you being able to regulate yourself and allowing your dysregulated state to carry on and on and on and on so that it's not a short event, but a long event? Because I could have got upset about being late, rushed my daughter, made her upset, crashed my car on the way there, been even more late, rushed into school, apologizing. Can you see how if you're not aware and you don't stop yourself, it can turn into something even worse. So it's not about perfection, it's about awareness.

SPEAKER_01 21:04

That's it. That's a that's a brilliant example. Brilliant example. Yeah, very fitting one. Oh wow. And uh, I know we are short on time, but uh it's it's a big one because for for the listening, the listener right now, you know, maybe they are in a season, uh, they are right now in and this is such a personal question for me as well, Lisa, because um um sometimes it's it's actually very difficult to find that clarity. Um maybe we would tend more to kind of compartmentalize that or just ignore it or maybe kind of sleep on it, or it's it's going to like the entire uh time, it will feel like um there is no way out where pressure has us on a loop, you know, we cannot get out of. So what would you want them to hear from you?

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Oh, that is a very that is a very good question, a very deep question. Um you know, if you feel like pressure is on a loop and you can't get out of it, I would suggest that you look at what you are I mean, this is a very complicated question because there's lots

Break The Pressure Loop With Boundaries

SPEAKER_00 22:20

of things that could be creating that loop, right? But the things I would suggest is look at the things in your day, in your diary that are unnecessary but maybe pushing you over the edge. Okay. Uh one example, and this might not be the example that you're experiencing or listeners be experienced, but somebody might relate to this. I have a client or who used to schedule their diary from 7 a.m. right through till 7 p.m. back to back meetings all day, so that they didn't have time to work, and then go home and then work until 10, 11, midnight to catch up on the work they didn't do. And they were in that constant loop. And so they never had time to think, they never had time to get clarity, they never had time to pause, they never had time to do anything. And she would say to me, Well, I have to, I have all of these meetings. And my argument is if you have to meet everybody all the time, then you're not clear on what your priorities are. And so we committed, she committed to making space in her diary for half an hour every day just to think, just to think. And in that half an hour, she started committing to that, and she would think every day for half an hour, and she started realizing which meetings were necessary, which ones weren't, what was a priority. And so she started decreasing meetings. And then as she decreased meetings, she had a little bit of more time. And just understanding that one little thing started to take a little bit of pressure off. And then she had space to think clearly because now she wasn't in that rushing pressure, got to get this done mode all day. And that started, so we did a few more months of work after that, lots of things that we needed to do. But that just started her on the path to having awareness as to what was causing the pressure and what she needed to do to start pulling that back. Now, that might not be helpful to everyone there. You might be experiencing pressure from a boss who keeps throwing work at you all day and you've just got work, you've got no choice, you've got to do all of this work, right? But for me, it's about then understanding out of all of that work, where are your boundaries? Where can you don't have to say yes to everything? Everyone thinks they do, but you don't. And where can you start being a little bit more smart about how you manage that? And it might not be what you think, right? And so for me, it's always about understanding what the triggers are and then starting just to make a little bit of space in there so that you can find a little bit of time to regulate yourself because the minute you're regulated for a little bit of time, you start to think more clearly. Because if you're in that loop of pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure, and you don't find the space to think, you're you're gonna get stuck there.

SPEAKER_01 25:14

Um and uh of course, you know, Louisa,

Where To Find Louisa And Closing

SPEAKER_01 25:18

for our listeners who would like to explore more about your work and uh they would like to connect with you, uh, what where where will they can find you?

SPEAKER_00 25:29

Look, I am most active on LinkedIn. If you are on LinkedIn, you can find me there, Louisa Hogan. Or if you're on Instagram, I started a couple of months ago an Instagram account, Louisa HoganHQ. It's new, there's not a lot of followers on there, so go give me a follow there. I give lots of tips and advice, so you can go find me there and I respond to DMs on both of those platforms if you want to chat to me. Or you can head over to my website um www.vermelo.com.au. That is my consulting practice. I have other consultants working with me. Um, and you're welcome to reach out to me there as well.

SPEAKER_01 26:09

That's amazing. So, yes, listeners, uh, to make that easier and to make sure that Luisa, you get some followers in your Instagram because that's exactly how you know uh my Instagram journey also has started. Very recent, not many followers. So, yeah, listeners. I'll have all the links in the show notes. So connect with Louisa, find her on LinkedIn, find her on Instagram, check out her work. And uh if you want to share something, you can just mention that you heard her on Healthy Mind, Healthy Life Podcast. And um also uh Louisa, thank you. Thank you so much for bringing this much needed clarity and lovely, lovely examples. You know, those moments I'm very sure many, many of our listeners are going to relate with that. So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 26:57

You're very, very welcome. Thank you so much for having me again. And I am so pleased to have been here with you, and I am glad to have shared my journey with you, even as in the short time that we have. So thank you.

SPEAKER_01 27:08

Thank you so much, Lucia. And yes, listeners, thank you so much to all of you. Um all I can see is uh I believe our steadiness is not built in the crisis, only in the crisis, but it's built in the ordinary days that nobody's watching. Okay. So with that, we conclude this episode of Healthy Mind Healthy Life. I am Sana, and uh, I'll catch you in the next episode. Thank you so much.