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"The nervous system is quite literally the lens through which we experience life."
"Joy is the matriarch of a family of emotions, and she won't come into a house where her children aren't welcome."
"All leadership is ultimately self-leadership."
Raising Men is a podcast about parenting, masculinity, and the lifelong journey of raising sons—and ourselves—to be men of courage, character, and purpose. Hosted by Shaun Dawson, each episode features real conversations with parents, leaders, and thinkers redefining what it means to raising men in today’s world.
what's amazing about kids
from what I've seen is they are
they're like 10 out of 10 in emotional fluidity
like they can go from anger to sadness to joy
to disappointment in like two minutes
that's right they absolutely can
yeah and
and and that's that
you know most adults are capable of that too
but we've just we've learnt to shut it down
hi and welcome back to Raising Men
today I'm sitting down with Johnny Miller
founder of Nervous System Mastery
and the host of the Inner Frontier Podcast
Johnny's work is all about helping
high performing leaders founders and creative find calm
resilience
and presence in a world that never slows down
Johnny welcome to raising men
it's great to be here Shawn
you know I know that I struggle with this
I struggle with remaining present
uh with staying regulated
especially with the kids it feels to me like sometimes
my nervous system and I are just
and we're enemies right
and you
you talk a lot about how our nervous system shapes
how we show up in the world
and how we can be the mastery of that system
as opposed to letting the system be the mastery of
a master of us right
when you talk about nervous system mastery
what does that actually mean in everyday terms
hmm yeah
well I
I like that frame of of like
feeling like the nervous system is your enemy
and I think you know
one way to describe it is
befriending your nervous system and
and listening to your nervous system
and having a relationship with it yeah
um as opposed to feeling like
either
like you're a victim or that you need to dominate and
and kind of like like whip into submission with uh
you know too much discipline
um yeah
that is the framing that we kind of have in our culture
isn't it it's
it's it
you either are the victim of
of of it and there's no
you can't you don't have any control
or you have to have the discipline to
to beat it into submission
that is smash through it have grit
grind hustle
you know all those different
different framings so
I mean I think first and foremost
the nervous system is is quite literally
the lens through which we experience life
and depending on the state of our nervous system
it depends on what we experience and
and that impacts the quality of our relationships
the quality of our attention
the quality of our creativity
so for me it really is upstream of so many other things
and something that I like um
what
what I find really interesting and useful for myself
is this idea of uh
reducing the half life of reactivity
so you know
everyone can probably think of a moment
probably in the last like 24 hours
but certainly
the last week
where they did something out of like a reactive
almost like knee jerk reaction
maybe they said something
or maybe they just picked up their phone and dooms
scrolls you know what
whatever that is and my
I think like you know
practical way of framing nervous system mastery is
reducing the half life of that reactivity
so instead of being in that reactive hijacked state
fight flight for you know
three hours you know
sometimes three days sometimes three weeks
you know people spend like weeks or months in this um
you know with a state of anger or unprocessed grief
or whatever the emotion is
and there are very trainable and learnable skills
um that we can go into
that's help with reducing that reactivity
and then ultimately
creating more agency and creating more intentionality
that is really what I care about
I the nervousness stuff is interesting
but ultimately what I care about is
how can we live in a way that is in line with our
our highest aspirations
and our intentions for who we wanna be
and the skills the nervous system skills
I find a very
it's like a high leverage way of achieving that
yeah I
that's that's a really interesting for
I think about it as you know
we have the two different brains and
and one of them is our Conan
the barbarian brain which we need to be reactive
if we're in a fight or those
sorts of things
and the other one is our Sherlock Holmes brain
which is you know
allows us to to apply the
the more advanced aspects of our brains
and I find
that the more time I spend in my Sherlock Holmes brain
the better my results are
right and
and it's just a better life that I end up having
and my my relationships are stronger and
you know I get to be
you know I
I get to control a lot more of my outcomes if
if I'm in that state hmm yeah
interesting I
I like that frame and I think there's a
there's a risk in that as well in
you know I
I from my
in my 20s I was in
in the tech world and I was
you know very much prized having a strong intellect
you know having high IQ solving problems
like that was that was me
I was like a same type a problem solver
yeah and um
I think one of the risks of that and
and if you know
the Sherlock Holmes approach to life
is that it can be somewhat disembodied
and so if you're and I'm not I
you know I'm not saying this is necessarily true
but yeah
I certainly was almost like numb from my neck down
I had very low what's known as interoception
very low somatic awareness
and as a result I was
missing all of the data and feedback that was coming
from my body coming from the signals
and by not paying attention to that
I ran into burnout you know
when I was working on my startup
I wasn't particularly emotionally attuned
and there's a whole host of
issues and problems that come from
only being in the Sherlock Holmes brain
if that's not also coupled with
more embodied intelligence yeah
if you shut the cone in the barbarian brain off
and you're not listening to those signals
then you run the risk of what you're talking about
and I'll tell you that resonate
that absolutely resonates with me
I I
I don't think I've mastered that at all
I'm I'm looking forward to talking about the skills
you're mentioning and
and the fact is that that composure and what
what I think you mean
when you talk about nervous system mastery
that is a hallmark of maturity
of success of leadership
of when
when we close our eyes and we imagine our best selves
it often has that component right
you are you are the master of
of your outcomes and so you
you need that in order to be what
who you wanna be yeah
well I
I think all leadership is ultimately self leadership
yeah and um
there's an interesting yeah
I sometimes work with companies and teams
and the nervous system of an organization
is a direct reflection
of the nervous system of the leader
true
and I imagine that's also probably true for parents too
like I imagine your nervous system
or your kid's nervous system
is probably a reflection of your nervous system 100%
yeah and that will probably change
throughout the course of a day
or a week or a month yeah
it it's
I've always felt um
that I was so good at remaining
in in the Sherlock Holmes brain and um
in a way maybe that that
that you're describing is being maladaptive or
or not quite you know
disembodied
in exactly the way that you're talking about
and when my kids came along
it's like
they have a magic button that they can use to just
absolutely just get a rise out of me
I would get I
I would get angrier with my children
I mean at about
just when it was
you know my boy would be screaming
and I wouldn't know how to make him not scream
and it was because he was colicky
or he was feeling pain or whatever it was
and it tapped into something in me that a
a kind of helplessness a kind of um
like like I was
I wasn't fit for the world
I wasn't capable I can't
I can't solve this problem
I can't troubleshoot this problem
how am I supposed to do anything at all
and it it enraged me
and I I'm not used to being angry
I I never
so I I'm not a particularly angry person by nature
and so it was it was something
that I don't have that skill
of dealing with that very healthily
and it was it was really tough for me to deal with and
um and so I'm interested
let's get into the skills I'm really into
so
there's really two aspects that I really want to tease
apart here and that is
what do we do in order to practice nervous
or develop nervous system mastery in ourselves
and how do we cultivate that in our boys also
yeah well
I mean
just sticking with that example that you just shared
is something that I believe
and I and I have seen in my own experience
is that
it's very difficult for us to be with other people
in emotions that we don't feel comfortable feeling
and expressing for ourselves
yeah so
you know I felt this in
in my life um
you know around grief and certainly around anger
but
there is an impulse that a lot of us have to try and
like fix other people's emotions
and I think that core impulse comes from a
like a discomfort or a dis
a disease
with that emotion being brought up in ourselves
when someone else is experiencing it
so I I think that is actually a core dynamic
that is underlying a lot of the nervous system work
is essentially essentially
I can go into the specific skills
but it comes down to
can we just welcome the full spectrum of our
experience as it's arising
like that that's simplest possible way of saying it
that's basically what it comes down to
but within that there are kind of specific skills
uh one of them I mentioned earlier
which is this idea of interception
which is when let let's say that anger is arising
it's like not only being having the story of like
oh this thing just happened
so I'm really angry
but it's like being in touch with there is a
there is like a heat in my chest or there is like a
my palms are like sweating or there's like a um
an an energy or electricity in my belly
you know
there's all of these sensations that come along
with the
with the experience of anger and tuning into those and
and particularly
noticing them when they're like a 2 or 3 out of 10
as opposed to like 11 out of 10
yeah once it's 11 out of 10 you're
you're done right
11 out of 10 I don't know
like full rage blackout like you can yeah
fill in the blank so interception is
is really like um
like a lead domino skill if you don't have that
it's very hard to to do anything else
and then the seconds
let's say pillar of skills is a self regulation um
and I categorize this into top down
bottom up and outside in and this is where the
this is where the agency piece comes online
in that there are
very effective practices and protocols
which can up or down regulate our nervous system state
depending on what is appropriate at the time
so for a lot of people they'll be
let's say
underdeveloped in the down regulation category
so whether they're feeling anxiety
or frustration or anger
it's very helpful to be able to do a breathing practice
do humming do orienting
there's a number of these different things
and come back into a
within what's known as your window of tolerance
which is basically where you can be with what
what is arising without disassociating
without blaming without reacting um
and just be with whoever or whatever is arising
and then the third category is emotional fluidity
which is circling back to the idea of welcoming
all of the emotions as they're arising
without trying to fix get rid of
push away
uh blame
project etcetera um
so I can go into you know
any one of those but that's
that's a um
that's what I describe of
that's what what I describe as nervous mastery in a
in a nutshell yeah
no I love that
let's so let's drill down into each of those in turn
we'll start with introspection um
I'd like to understand go
sorry go ahead
interception different from introspection
interception
uh
what okay
say the word again
interception intero interception
which is the opposite of extraception
which is like awareness of senses
sounds sight around us okay
uh alright okay
yeah that
uh
I I
that is that's a new word to me
so what does that what does that mean
how and how do I
how do I trigger myself to do that
rather than what I would naturally do in
response to stimulus uh huh
and how do I you know
how do I cultivate that in my boy
hmm hmm
so what is it um
working definition is basically
how aware of your
internal landscape are you at any point in time
so it you know
includes like are you sleepy
are you hungry are you too hot
you too cold do you need the toilet
um but also what sensations are you noticing
like what what mood is present
what's uh
is there an emotional tone
is the joy is the sadness
etcetera etcetera
and um
I find it's helpful to have some kind of like
daily practice to just tune in
and you can think of this as like a
an interceptive weather report
so it can just take you know
a minute or two but ideally before you start the day
before all the inbound from life kind of starts stream
streaming in before the kids are jumping on your bed
yeah um
just tuning in and
and acknowledging and noticing what is there um
and I like to think of
you're tuning into your awareness
is it does it feel contracted
does it feel expansive tuning into your posture
do you feel like straight and upright
and um
present and then tuning into your
your emotions or your sensations
like what is the what is the tone of
uh
that is present um
and then using that as data to inform
you know maybe you notice some tiredness
maybe your kids kept you up for hours
and you wanna schedule a nap
or take a few things off the calendar for that day
to recover um
or maybe you have a lot of energy
a lot of creativity and you wanna tap into that
you wanna schedule some deep work time to express that
um or maybe there's some emotion
maybe it's like
residual anger or sadness from the day before
that you wanna set aside a bit of time to just like
feel through and process and get to the bottom of
so it doesn't come out in a kinked way to your wife
or your kids or whoever it is
yeah and then
it also seems like that
sort of tool is also really helpful
like if you see your your boy start to get dysregulated
and he starts to freak out and get really
really upset I had a
I had a situation this morning where um
uh my boy had gone downstairs
and he was making himself some breakfast
and so he's 6
and then the girl went down and she is only 3
so she's unable to pour her own bowl of cereal
and pour milk in it so she was
asking the boy for help and he was just ignoring her
and it was very frustrating for her obviously
and so she came back upstairs into our room
and was upset and complaining
and so I I
I went downstairs
and I asked the boy to help her with her cereal
and he agreed to do it but he really didn't want to
and so he was kind of grousing and all of that stuff
and I you know
I was I was rushed
I was in I was kind of in a hurry
and I I ended up getting pretty upset with him like
dude I
you know we help each other in this family
and I'm asking you to help me
I'm not asking you to help your sister even
I'm asking you to help me
otherwise I have to go do it
and I'm in a towel I just got out of the shower and um
you know I kind of expressed my disappointment at him
but what I didn't do is
sit down with him and get him to tap into
why are you feeling so frustrated
about just pouring your sister a
a bowl of cereal here and
that
probably would have been a better way to handle that
I suspect hmm
yeah well
I mean this I
I share my thoughts
with the caveat that I don't yet have kids
my wife is pregnant
we're super excited to have our first Dora and pretty
soon now right
in about three months time
yeah so next
well March
March coming up pretty soon wow
um but
you know I
I love what you just said there
and I think that for me that yeah
you know the key is
it really is that non judgmental curiosity
like that's the key piece
whether it's for your kid
whether it's for a loved one
or whether it's for yourself
and um
if it's you know
if it's if it was your own anger and you had a little
you know a couple of minutes of spaciousness
it's it's like tuning in and be like huh
like I'm noticing that I'm angry
like what
what is it what is the sensation
what is underlying this like
what's the story yeah
and it's the curiosity without an agenda
and without judgement which is simple
but also really freaking hard
especially if you know
you're saying you're in a rush this morning
and yeah it's it that's
that's when this stuff is simple
but not easy at all and
you know especially for kids
I think often
kids just want to be seen
and validated in their emotional experience
and curiosity is a great way to do that
you can just say like like hey
like what's
what's coming up for you like
I see that you're see that you're
you're kind of angry right now like
like tell me about that and
and it it
I think I mean
what's amazing about kids
from what I've seen is they are
they're like 10 out of 10 in emotional fluidity
like they can go from anger to sadness to joy
to disappointment in like two minutes
that's right they absolutely can
yeah and
and and that's that
you know most adults are capable of that too
but we've just we've learnt to shut it down
we have yeah
conditioning and contraction
and stories that just get in the way of that
um but really
really
we're aspiring to the level of emotional fluidity of
young children yeah
with some of the higher level
meta awareness and skills that come with maturity
yeah there's attention there right
if you are really emotionally fluid
but don't have any
influence over what emotional state you end up in
that can be really maladaptive
I would think
actually you know
finally like most people would think that
but I I actually don't
I don't think that that um
that's true um
as long as the this is the key caveat
as long as the emotions aren't being
used to subtly manipulate
and what I mean by that is
you know some people when they're angry
they're angry at someone else
and it's basically
a way of trying to get what they want
or trying to actually not acknowledge
or accept ownership of their anger
and blaming someone else for it
that's that's very different from
letting the anger move through you
maybe just like stomping on the ground
be like like
fuck this like that and moving it that way
it moves through very quickly
and then you come back to a place of like
grounded calm and sadness
and and this
you know the same with sadness
like this is actually more common with
this is somewhat controversial to say
but it's somewhat more common with women
who will sometimes use sadness
or disappointment
to then manipulate the outcome of other people
sure and it's another way of um
and I'm not saying this out of judgment
I'm just saying that
that it's a protective strategy that we learn
because it can be
it is often uncomfortable to feel those emotions
for ourselves
and to take full ownership of those emotions
for ourselves
and so coming back to parenting
the more that we're able to learn the skills of fluidly
welcoming
and expressing our own full spectrum of emotions
the more that kids will model that from us
and just like learn that as a default
because kids I'm sure
you know like from
from what I've heard from what I've seen
kids don't really do what we say
but they do model what we do yeah
yeah and
and there's
I think it's an important skill to be able to first
model the thing and then
and then call attention to it
right to
to anchor it in their exactly in their cognitive brain
yeah and
but it's absolutely true that they
don't do what we say at all
in fact they don't even hear you
they just they just go do yeah
and and you have to
you have to demonstrate
so so just coming back to the interception piece
so this is something that um
again this is currently theoretical for my wife and I
I'm sure that when it comes practically in
in three to five three to six months from now yeah
yeah yeah
but but something that I think we're gonna
really attempt to do our best to do is to constantly
um
be referring
our daughter back to her own internal experience
so instead of saying like good job or good girl or um
praising or rewarding or or certainly punishing in
in any way but instead being like
like how did that feel
like how was it
how did it feel in your body to do X
y or Z and do you wanna do that again
like did that feel good
and just constantly um
encouraging that self referential nature
so that she's not looking to us for praise or blame
or reward or whatever
but she's just tuning into
listen to her own interceptive experience
and trusting that and if something feels good
then it's likely that she'll want to keep doing it more
but not because we say that's good
but because it feels inherently good for her to do yeah
yeah I think that's a really
uh
valuable strategy I I
it's it's gonna be really tough
um to do and
and but I
I think I
I think it's
that's the game right there is the whole game
and um you'll
you'll be able to do it
I think you'll be able to do it and um
what do you so we talked a little bit about the
the daily practice of checking in with yourself
and I I
I mean I guess that exercises the muscle
right and gets you started on
it'll allow first of all
it exercises the muscle of being able to
inspect your internal state
but then it also allows you to
change the plan for the day to
you know to
to be more uh
in tune to that that's that
you know
that's part of the purpose of that daily practice
that you were talking about
what about during the day and throughout the day
when you're in the thick of it
you're in the weeds you're
you know you're
you're traipsing through the jungle how
what are some ways that you can start to notice
the state of your own nervous system
throughout the day hmm yeah um
again it's
this can be challenging
especially for folks that have full busy schedules
full calendars um
I like to try and have little check in points
in transition moments during the day
so whether that's uh
between let's say like morning work shift and lunch
have a little kind of 5 10 minute
pause um
if I have time I love the practice of yoga
yoga Nidra or NSDR
which is a kind of 15 to 30 minutes
like guided body scan
that feels like a power nap on steroids
is probably the best way to put it
and it's actually really helpful for
cultivating interception as well
because
when you're scanning different points around your body
you're actually bringing more high definition awareness
to those different parts of your body
and I like in this to uh
like a chef going to culinary school
and you kind of develop your flavor palette
you also develop your kind of
internal palette of the more kind of subtle
high definition
sensations that you might otherwise miss
so I think I'm a huge fan of NSDR
and non sleep depressed if
if time is available and it's
you know it's amazing if you didn't get much sleep
it's I've seen studies that it's you know
the equivalent of about two hours sleep
from a 30 minute practice
so it's very high yeah
like high ROI in in in that sense
um many people do it
like first thing when they wake up in the morning
or after lunch which is yeah
you know in line with your circadian rhythm
so that's super super practical
and I mean that that can that can gain you time
I I mean
if that's really how it works
gain you time then that you know
you at the at you know
you're taking 30 minutes to get way more than that
on the back end of that exactly
exactly wow
yeah so where
where do I learn more about NSDR
um Andrew Huberman actually coined the term OK
it's his version of uh
yoga Nidra and yoga Nidra has more
let's say like mystical and spiritual language
sure throwing in
so he just wanted to kind of like extract the
the practice itself without the additional
like intention setting and
and yes mystical pieces um
I've recorded some
if you just Google Johnny Miller NSDR or YouTube
there's a couple on there uh
we also have an app called State Shifts
where there's some recordings on there as well
and there's also a lady that I listen to
her name is Ali Boothroyd
and she has a bunch of great ones on YouTube
a l l y Boothroyd
and she's great
she has like a nice relaxing voice too
she's probably probably better voice than I do so
I love that thank you for the
those pointers I
that's a that's tremendous
I'm gonna give that a shot
and I I mean I
I've always been so resistant to that sort of thing
and opening up to it now it's
and you know
it's it's much easier than meditation because yeah
you don't have to do anything yeah
you just lie there and listen and
and there's just a very slight trace of awareness
that you're moving your awareness
through different parts of your body
and the feeling that you get afterwards
it's like it's like a second wind
it's like I don't know I
I love it I
I yeah
I can't recommend it highly enough
it's such a good practice
yeah I um
I've done yoga a handful of times in my life
and I just did it again this past Saturday
and I went with my wife
and we did a yoga class together
and it was I felt that at the end of that and I
I it's
it's funny I
I mean I absolutely felt invigorated
and I absolutely felt
so much more energy than I went in with
and that's not normally how I feel
after kind of a workout session
and I I really
really clocked that I was like man I
I'm I need to
be thinking about this sort of thing a lot more
yeah nice
so so that kind of ties into the um
in the self regulation strategies I mentioned top down
bottom up and outside in
so top down are things like cognitive reframes
maybe mindfulness practice
maybe affirmations where you're like
using your mind to change the state of your body or
yeah nervous system
yeah and then the bottom up ones are things like
yoga practice things like breathing exercises
um humming
um where you're basically leveraging your physiology
to activate the parasympathetic branch
of your nervous system which activates the relaxation
and then from there
you generally have calmer
thoughts and a more relaxed mind
because your body is more relaxed
okay so
so top down means
use your mind to try to influence the state
exactly your body and then bottom up is
use your body to influence the state of your mind
precisely and
and there's actually a little
little neuroscience nugget
there are four times more efferent neurons
which are neurons going from your body to your brain
than from your brain to your body
so it's like a super highway of data going up
and like one single lane of traffic going down okay
and I kind of take that to imply
that there's just more leverage to be had from
influencing the body than the bottom up
and then so what's outside in
outside in is um changing your environment
or changing the people around you
so yeah obvious example is like
think of the difference you feel between
standing on the edge of a cliff
with a broad horizon at a sunset
versus New York City downtown subway
like
they're gonna
result in two very different nervous system states
and you can I like this phrase of
we design our environments
and our environments design us in return
so to the extent that you're able to influence your
environment your surrounding um
a very low hanging low hanging fruit is
is like changing the lighting
have using incandescent bulbs that are um
more skewed towards the red light end
of the spectrum as opposed to typical LEDs
which have a lot of blue light
yeah and a lot of flicker as well
and the flicker and the blue light
especially after sunset are really bad for um
inhibiting the melatonin release impact sleep and
and you know
they just don't feel good to be around
like if you're in a in a supermarket
or a hospital with terrible overhead lighting
I know exactly what you mean
it's like it sucks the energy out of your eyeballs
yes exactly
exactly so
so lighting is is a very
and you know
you just change the light bulb in the house once
and like it's done
like that's that's like a very easy fix
but and then
you know also a huge category is co regulation
which is you know
what your kids are gonna be coming to you for many
many times a day because when kids are young
they don't yet have the wiring to self regulate
they require a care
a caregiver to help them to regulate
yeah and so
but as adults it's the same
same as well
like when we're outside of our window of tolerance
when we're um
you know at the edge of our capacity
having someone else who is grounded
just their presence or even better
like a hug or some touch
is incredibly effective at downshifting us
and just helping us to feel safe again
cause we're we're wired to be social creatures
we're not wired to be like independent lone wolves
right and that is
if you're lucky enough to have someone around you
that has a grounded nervous system
and they they have a few minutes of time
that's probably the best nervous system hack you can
you can find is is
is connecting with somebody else who's it's yeah
it's almost like connection yeah
I I think I like that
that metaphor that you're kind of touching upon there
where it's it's like there's an
it's an electrical circuit and
and you're getting wound up
you've got all this electrical charge in you
and you need to discharge it somehow
and there are healthy ways to discharge it
and there are unhealthy ways to discharge it
one of the healthy ways to discharge it
is to find somebody who's grounded
and complete the circuit with them
I mean even physically
you're saying like hug it out yeah
right yeah yeah
yeah and there's
you know
there's a few other ways I can extend that metaphor
one is that um
when our when our vasculature
when our bodies are clenched
that adds constriction to the circuitry and
and so you know
anxiety the word literally comes from the Latin angio
which means to constrict and anxiety is actually
in my opinion not an emotion
but it's a
resistance to an underlying emotional experience
and so when a lot of people have
say they have anxiety
it's because consciously or unconsciously they
are constricting against an underlying
emotional experience and if you're able to release that
that clenching in the body
and
a really practical way that people can think of what
what this means is
if you imagine turning on your shower to cold
and the moment before you step into the cold shower
think about what your body does
like you'll just like you like clench
like bracing against it
that's exactly the same motion that we do
when emotions arise that don't feel safe
and so the degree to which we can relax and open up
and breathe into and just like
it's like take an exhale yeah
that allows that
that energy in the system to flow more fluently
I feel like
I was trained to do the opposite of that as a child
like I feel like all of the models of masculinity
the Marlboro Man you know
Clint Eastwood
you know all of that's
all of the models I had available to me
all of the feedback that I got from my culture
that I grew up in
all taught me to suppress my emotions or just
you know shoulder the Grindstone persevere
push through the stress and I
you know that's one way to do it right
one one way to dis
you know get rid of the electrical energy
is to put it in a capacitor
somewhere in your circuit where
you know it stays in the system
but it's not active it anymore
right it's not
it's not circulating it will at some point
I'm sure but
but it's not doing it right now
and it's just like pushing it down yeah
um but what you're describing is
is developing the skill and developing the habit of
discharging that naturally
and you know
just to again build on that
I think of that move of repressing or storing for later
as building emotional debt
and it's actually a very useful skill in the short term
yeah in many places absolutely yeah
very helpful if you're in a
in a borderline situation
or if like shit hits the fan and you need to act
then yeah like that's great
um if you're
if you're a Navy seal or a Marine
that's a very helpful skill
yeah but in the same way that
you know when Navy Seals come back from deployment
many of them have PTSD
because they haven't found a way to metabolize
that emotional debt that has been stored from the time
that they've been pushing it away
you know
you've worked with a lot of really high achieving men
and I'm
I'm so interested in touching into that about like
what shifts when they start to
to put this into practice and they're starting to
to to actually feel the emotion
and starting to feel that
and check in with their bodies
instead of just trying to fix it or
or suppress it hmm
what shifts well
I I mean to
be to be honest
I meet a lot of these folks
um not always
but sometimes when they're in the midst of
or just following some kind of crisis yeah
like some kind of either existential crisis
maybe they're a founder and they sold their company
and they've got eight figures in the bank account
but they still feel empty and hollow and dead inside
yeah uh
or maybe they just hit burnout
and they're going through a health crisis
or maybe they just broke up with their wife
you know all these things and
and so unfortunately
it often does take some kind of
crisis yeah
tragic event to wake us up
to humble us sometimes humiliate us
to the point where we realize that the current model
the current mental models that we have
aren't serving us or they're not sustainable yeah
and so in the beginning um
you know it very much depends on
on the person and the case
but I think most of these folks
they've been rewarded for um
for pushing for grinding
for hustling that's absolutely right and
and you know
society rewards that in the short term
right in a lot of cases
like you get money status
fame from from that
and there's many of
your ability to do that is how you feel
like you got to where you are yeah
not not
not not all of them
but a lot of folks I think do get that um
but it's often at the detriment of their
relationships to others
their relationship to their self
a vicious inner critic a lot of them have as well
um
diminishing circle of genuine friendships
you know
the things that actually in my opinion contribute to a
a life well lived in a meaningful life
um they might have the kind of external school board
taken care of
but in terms of like their inner experience of life
it's there's a lot
there's a lot to be gained
so yeah um
it really depends on
I try and meet people with where they're at
but what I noticed is that over time
and this stuff does take time
like there's
there's really not like a kind of week long quick fix
um
but once their adrenals have kind of come back online
if they've gone through burnout
once they've got a bit more resource and capacity
and a little bit of spaciousness
then um
it really I think
it's the emotional work that has the biggest ROI
like the biggest bang for the buck
yeah um
because once you stop
orienting your life to
habitually avoid feeling certain emotions
it creates so much more freedom
so much more agency and actually so much more joy
um there's one of
one of our guest speakers in
in Nervous System Mastery
Joe Hudson has this phrase
he says joy is the matriarch of a family of emotions
and she won't come into a house where
her children aren't welcome
and you can apply you can apply that to parenting
but it it's
it's really very true that joy is
very hard to touch into
especially sustained joy or deep levels of joy
when there is repressed anger
unprocessed grief uh
etcetera etcetera
and so
and going into the deeper somatic work
I I work with breathwork in person with
with clients but there's also practices like hakomi
somatic experiencing
some people use MDMA assisted therapy
ketamine assisted therapy
um I'm a big fan of those to the degree that they're
that they're on contraindications
um but really it
for me it's the
deeper emotional excavation
that creates the lasting freedom in people and
and that combined with shifting to uh
to habits that include you know
non sleep deep breaths a few times a week um
breath work and and really a lot of
a lot of what underlies this I think is a sense of
courageous curiosity which is
is like the willingness to be curious about
the shit that you've spent the last 20 years
running from
and that that like
that's really the fundamental thing
is like going from achieving pushing
grinding to run away from that stuff to doing a 1
80 turn and moving towards it
and courageously embracing it
yeah that is so powerful
and I you know
I what that it makes me think of
so there's it's like what you described with the NSDR
where you feel like you don't have the time to do it
but then when you do it it gives you more time
it gives you time it gives you more bandwidth
totally right
totally and Steven Covey has a
has a had a great metaphor for that
he said
it's like you're too busy driving to pull over for gas
yeah
yeah yeah
and that's what this makes me think of I've
I've heard I think that maybe the Dalai Lama
someone has said like if you don't have
if you have three minutes to meditate
you need three hours you know
something like that hahaha
yeah I totally get it and um
yeah and I'm definitely one of those people that
doesn't necessarily have three minutes to
to meditate
it's giving me something to
something serious to think about
now let
let me ask you so if someone right now is listening
and they're caught in that cycle they're
they're in that situation
where they don't have three minutes to meditate
right and
and they're just absolutely caught in stress
what is one thing they can do
one practice they can do right now in real time
to get themselves regulated
or get themselves back on track
or start on the process hmm
yeah um
in real time
I'm I'm a big fan of um
a practice called expanding awareness
which comes from uh
this guy who created the Alexander technique
and very very simple is just noticing the space above
you behind you to the sides of you and below you
and there's
there's almost a one to one relationship between how
expanded our awareness is
versus how stressed we are
like when we get stressed
it's like we experience life through a straw
it's almost yeah
we get that tunnel vision
tunnel vision blinkers on
and so it's actually a bi directional relationship
where I'm kind of doing it right now
like you just remember that you have space behind you
space below you
and then from that often I'll notice a sigh
the physiological sigh is
you know one that's been popularized by Huberman
that's also very effective
yeah um
but just reinvigorating the body
um also feeling your feet on the ground
feeling your hands coming back into the senses
I like coming back into um
there's a practice called orienting
so naming three things you can see
two things you can hear and one thing you can feel
okay and just doing that
and that will bring you back into the present
it'll just like
bring you out of whatever loop or mental
kind of thought pattern you're in
yeah um
and that's that's a way to almost like return to center
and then you know
once you have a bit of centeredness
let's you know
use the example of someone that has a crazy
busy calendar um
honestly the practice of setting boundaries is
is very important
and saying no to things that aren't completely
essential yeah
um because people that have
you know the
the most successful founders and execs
typically have close to empty calendars
like they they might have 500 person companies
but they'll have like two recurring meetings
in their week and um
yeah so
so there's a and and
but that requires fairly fierce Protection of time and
and and often
it takes having morning practices in the beginning
whether it's breath work or meditation
or whatever people are drawn to
to then make decisions from that place of spaciousness
which then typically is self reinforcing
and you get more spaciousness over time
as opposed to just like
filling your calendar with more and more
and more and more
yeah that is such a tremendously powerful statement
right
there is the most high achieving people have very
very light calendars
and because they have leveraged
I mean they've used all the leverage they have
uh huh
to create to go out there and create the value there
and and they have they have boundaries
really
really strictly enforced boundaries to enforce that
and they have the spaciousness
so that when the right opportunity comes by
they can go all in
they can put 110% of their energy towards that thing
I think of it it's
it's like I mean
I went surfing this morning
and great surfers will sit out back
like waiting for the waves to come
but be in the perfect position so when that set comes
they're
just like right there and they can paddle in and
and catch that wave
as opposed to folks who are like in the whitewash
just getting pounded by ha ha
ha ha yeah
and wave surfing all of their energy
that is the perfect metaphor for that concept
you know I
I I was
I was listening to a podcast over the weekend and um
somebody was talking about how our modern world
with all of the available stimuli
uh we've got our computers and we have our devices
and we have all the noise of the world
and the TV and the radio and all of these things
there is just a tremendous amount of stimulus that
that is all over the place and we're not naturally
predisposed to be able to handle that properly
and it keeps us from being able to think it
it we're too busy
we're reading
or we're listening to podcast or watching YouTube
or we're we're doing all these things
we're processing our email
we're doing all of these things
there's all this activity
but none of the thinking and the introspection and
and the true creativity and we're in a
the we're in a pending crisis here
because we've got AI coming online
that it has no creativity
but it can it can do a lot of the activity
or it will be able to do a lot of the activity
that humans do today that we think is creating value
but it's actually not
or it's not going to be in six months or a year
or two years and we're losing the ability because of
because of the screens and because of our modern world
we're losing the ability to do that
that thing that is uniquely human
and we need to recapture it
and I think that this nervous system mastery concept
exactly what you're talking about
that's one of the ways we can recapture it
isn't it
hmm yeah
I mean I
I agree with you and
you know if I think about the social media and like
content landscape and what AI is already doing to that
especially on TikTok where right
the majority of videos are already AI generated
and the algorithms are gonna be so tailored to
the precise ways that they can hook you in
and often the way they hook you in
is through emotions
that you haven't welcomed in yourself
so like rage bait is
is a great way of getting clicks on Twitter and TikTok
these days um'cause
people don't have a healthy relationship with anger
so they click on everything that makes them angry right
um but I agree with you
I think that you know
that episode was titled I think
defense against the Dark Arts of distraction
and it is gonna be so so so hard to maintain
a sustained sense of nervous system regulation
in that kind of environment
yeah and they are
they're already incredibly good
at pulling us out of presents and pulling us
you know so
I think the average
number of phone pickups is something like
150 a day for like
most adults and even higher for kids
and kids spend three to four hours a day
looking at screens looking at their phones
um and you can just feel what it does to you
like I I certainly can
like I know
if I spend even 30 minutes or 10 minutes looking at
like a social media feed
the way that I feel it's like
it's like I I lose some of that internal presence
and speaking of masculinity
I lose some of that like my capacity for attention
and so I you know
I do think that these practices and
and also setting very clear boundaries with yourself
around notifications around screen time
around what apps you even have on your phone
I think will be increasingly important
combined with increased actually like interception
because if you can tune in and
and notice that actually after scrolling for 20 minutes
you feel a bit shit inside
yeah
and then you make a decision from that place of like
oh actually
like I don't want to be doing that every evening
instead of connecting with my kids
or connecting with my loved one
or whatever it is and so you make different
hopefully more aligned decisions from that place
once you've listened to that internal feedback
um yeah
I you know
I've I've never been a smoker
but I had a a really close friend who was
and I ended up reading a book about quitting smoking
and and the quitting smoking
I guess is is one of the most and I can imagine I
I feel this
one of the most difficult things you can ever do
but the key to it
and most of the people I've ever known
who have successfully quit smoking
said something along the lines of this
at at some point
it just clicked with me
and I never needed to smoke anymore
and it was tough
I had some physical withdrawal for some period of time
but after that after the mental thing was over
it was done and the mental thing is
realizing
that it's the cigarette that makes you feel shitty
you think you the the
the connection you have
is that the cigarette is the solution to the
the feeling of shittiness
but it's not it's the cause of the shittiness
it's just delayed and once you make that connection
you no longer feel the need to have the cigarette
and I think there's a similar
thing going on with picking up Facebook or
or or scrolling through social media
and we're gonna have to break that cycle
if we want to get out of it
mm hmm mm hmm
yeah yeah
and it's um
I don't know man
like
it's gonna be increasingly hard with the way that AI
is going yeah
um and just the incentive that these enormous
multi million dollar companies have to
mine and extract the resource of our attention
like that's literally what they're designed to do
so yeah
um I yeah
I just I do think that these some
like some especially especially for kids
I mean like I
I'm really somewhat I don't wanna say fearful
but just I'm just not optimistic about the number
the amount of screen time that
the average kid has these days
I just I just don't think it's gonna lead to good
but the hopeful message there
and is that your biggest problem
you know a big problem is also a big opportunity
and the big opportunity here is
being able to retain your presentness
through that distraction
and not get distracted and all that
that's a superpower
and that is gonna turn you into Superman
compared to the folks who can't do that yeah yeah
I I agree and
and making decisions from that grounded regulated yeah
intentional place yeah
um I mean
just think what what
what what a superpower that is
you're able to do that
where the rest of the world cannot
mm hmm mm hmm
yeah and
and you know
that that also gives you
the ability to make great decisions
and to think clearly
and to be creative and to build deep relationships
like those are gonna be this
the only skills really of the a few
a handful of the few skills that will be valuable
in an age where content creation
and even product generation
the costs go to zero with AI and robotics
um yeah
really the the
the most valuable thing will be our capacity for
attention presence
and from their decision making
and building deep relationships
yeah
and so what a gift we can give to our sons if we can
yeah make that easy for them totally yeah
totally yeah
well I
I always like to finish up these conversations with
the same question and that is
what is one principle
that you'd like to leave our listeners with
something that they can
explore or incorporate into their lives
I love that I yeah
I will just on a meta note
I I really like the idea of developing intentional
operating principles for life
yeah and I think you do going through and
and experimenting with them yeah
is such a such a high value activity
um OK
so if I was gonna give one
1 operating principle to experiment with
let's see um
the thing that's coming up is explore
welcoming your emotions
see what happens
like welcome may maybe to put that more concretely yeah
embracing intensity
yeah embracing emotional intensity
embrace emotional intensity
that is a really really
really powerful principle
and I move towards it instead of run away from it
culturally we
that is the opposite of what and
and also
you know allow your children to do that
give them the space to do it too
I mean one of the things that happens often is
the kids will start disregulating
and your instinct is to get in their face
calm down calm down
you basically yell in their face
and you scream at them to calm down
of course how does that work
it it doesn't work at all
but yeah because the problem is that you
yourself are becoming disregulated
yeah and but
you know think about if you
if you're able to welcome the intensity
the emotional intensity
and welcome their emotional intensity too
so it doesn't dysregulate you and they recognize ah
I see you know
when I can behave this way and it doesn't
it doesn't have to blow up into this thing yeah
and I don't have to blow up into this thing either
that's really really a powerful principle
what one of my one of my friends
he's a dad and he has this he
they like do anger together
so when his kids angry they were like yeah
let's let's get angry together
they like stomp around on the floor and just like go go
go and like kid kids love it
it's like yeah
like a space where anger is like welcome
like great like that's a yeah
it's a great practice to have
and it's connecting and it's fun yeah
I remember this time when when the boy was gosh
he was 3 weeks older no
he was a little older than that
but young I mean very
very less than 2 or 3 months
and he was he was having colic and uh
I was driving him around this is
I lived in Chicago
and we were driving around at 2 o'clock in the morning
in the snow and he was just screaming
and he'd been screaming for an hour and a half
and there was
there's nothing I could do to give him comfort
and I just started screaming with him
I wasn't screaming at him uh
but I just started screaming with him
and we were both just screaming together in the car
at 2 o'clock in the morning
and it really helped I think it helped both of us
yeah and eventually yeah
pretty soon he fell asleep
I love that that's so good
well Johnny
this has been just an absolutely
delightful and powerful conversation
I really appreciate it
if you wanna go deeper into Johnny's work
check out Nervous System Mastery at ns mastery.com
and his podcast The Inner Frontier
for more conversations on resilience
and embodied leadership uh
and the links are in the show notes Johnny
let's keep doing the inner work that helps us raise
strong grounded and emotionally aware men
and thank you for all of the work that you do
hmm beautiful
thank you Shawn
this is super fun and I appreciate it
and thank you for listening to Raising Men
I'm Shawn Dawson and you're a great parent
raising men is produced by Phil Hernandez
this episode was edited by Ralph Tolentino