Managing nerves, anxiety, and burnout | Jonny Miller (Nervous Systems Mastery)

I have this idea that I call the- the feather, brick, dump truck phenomenon and basically what that means is when we are showing early signs of burnout, our body will give us feedback, usually in subtle ways in the beginning. So the feather might be waking up in the morning and feeling a little bit tired, a little bit, maybe a little bit exhausted. The brick, you know, maybe you ignore that or you don't notice it and then three or four weeks later you, you have like a fight with someone, or an argument, or you just, you just feel frustrated and terrible and you- you- you lose your, lose your cool. And then maybe the- the dump truck is a month later or even a year later, there's like a full-blown health crisis or you develop type 2 diabetes or, you- you know, there's a whole range of things. Or maybe you get fired. Like, ideally you want to notice when it's the feather and then make adjustments or shift then and not have to wait until you experience the- the full-blown pain of the, of the dump truck, which unfortunately is what happens to a lot of people, especially when they experience burnout for the first time.

(instrumental music) Today, my guest is Jonny Miller. Jonny teaches courses and does one-on-one coaching with tech professionals, helping them with something he calls nervous system mastery, which is essentially a set of tools and techniques for cultivating calm, upgrading your resilience, and increasing your aliveness. If you can get better at dealing with stressful situations, avoiding burnout, and being more confident in meetings and big presentations, it becomes a superpower and a huge advantage in both business and in life. I actually read a post by Jonny about a year ago and it totally changed the way that I think about nervousness and stress and I still apply many of his lessons today. In our conversation, we dive deep into Jonny's key insights. We talk about why the best way to stay calm in stressful situations is to focus on the state of your body and not your mind, how to create calm and confidence by changing the state of your body through breath. Jonny shares a bunch of very specific breathing exercises for creating calm and also for creating energy that we actually try out on the podcast. We also get into a bunch of advice for how to tell if you're seeing early signs of burnout, how to release emotional debt that you may be feeling, also why feeling the feels gives you a competitive advantage in business, also a practice called APE which reminds you to focus on your awareness, your posture, and your emotions that I've started practicing ever since our chat, and so much more. If you enjoy this chat, definitely check out Jonny's full course at nsmastery.com/lenny. If you use that URL, you actually get $250 off the course. With that, I bring you Jonny Miller after a short word from our sponsors. This time of year is prime for career reflection and setting goals for professional growth. I always like to spend this time reflecting on what I accomplished the previous year, what I hope to accomplish the next year, and whether this is the year I look for a new opportunity. That's where today's sponsor, Teal, comes in. Teal provides you with the tools to run an amazing job search with an AI-powered resume builder, job tracker, cover letter generator, and Chrome extension that integrates with over 40 job boards. Teal is the all-in-one platform you need to run a more streamlined and efficient job search and stand out in this competitive market. There's a reason nearly one million people have trusted Teal to run their job search. If you're thinking of making a change in the new year, leverage Teal to grow your career on your own terms. Get started for free at tealhq.com/lenny. That's tealhq.com/lenny. This episode is brought to you by Vanta, helping you streamline your security compliance to accelerate your growth. Thousands of fast-growing companies like Gusto, Calm, Quora, and Modern Treasury trust Vanta to help build, scale, manage, and demonstrate their security and compliance programs and get ready for audits in weeks, not months. By offering the most in-demand security and privacy frameworks such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, and many more, Vanta helps companies obtain the reports they need to accelerate growth, build efficient compliance processes, mitigate risks to their businesses, and build trust with external stakeholders. Over 5,000 fast-growing companies use Vanta to automate up to 90% of the work involved with SOC 2 and these other frameworks. For a limited time, Lenny's podcast listeners get $1,000 off Vanta. Go to vanta.com/lenny. That's V-A-N-T-A dot com slash Lenny to learn more and to claim your discounts. Get started today. (instrumental music) Jonny, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.