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What if you could get more of what you want in life? But not through pushing, forcing, or pressure.
You can.
When it comes to money, time, and energy, no one’s gonna turn away more.
And Kate Northrup, Bestselling Author of Money: A Love Story and Do Less and host of Plenty, is here to help you expand your capacity to receive all of the best.
As a Money Empowerment OG who’s been at it for nearly 2 decades, Kate’s the abundance-oriented best friend you may not even know you’ve always needed.
Pull up a chair every week with top thought leaders, luminaries, and adventurers to learn how to have more abundance with ease.
Cool thing about nervous system healing is it's not like dental hygiene. You know, with your teeth, you just gotta brush your teeth twice a day and floss every day for the rest of your life. You just gotta do it. But with nervous system healing, yes, do it every day, but the cool thing is your level of nervous system health compounds. So you are actually starting at a healthier level than you were yesterday, unlike brushing your teeth, which is, like, by tomorrow morning, I need to brush them the same amount as yesterday.
Kate Northrup:Welcome to Plenti. I'm your host, Kate Northrup, and together, we are going on a journey to help you have an incredible relationship with money, time, and energy, and to have abundance on every possible level. Every week, we're gonna dive in with experts and insights to help you unlock a life of plenty. Let's go fill our cups.
[voiceover]:Please note that the opinions and perspectives of the guests on the Plenty podcast are not necessarily reflective of the opinions and perspectives of Kate Northrop or anyone who works within the Kate Northrop brand.
Kate Northrup:I have started getting the question a lot, which is, how do you tend to your nervous system on a daily basis? So I thought I would walk you through what a day in the life looks like these days and also some of the weekly and monthly practices that I incorporate, and maybe even quarterly practices that help me to tap into the power of my cyclical nature and really access that divine feminine energy to fuel me, and, also, that helped me to stay in a healthy nervous system response and also invest in a future healthy nervous system response when stressful events inevitably come up. Now I wanna preface this by saying, please, for the love of God, let this not be an experience where you're listening to all the stuff I do and suddenly feeling bad about yourself for not being able to do all these things. I have been learning this stuff for a long time, and I've been practicing and adding things in for a long time. I will also say I'll add things in for a season, and then for a while I won't.
Kate Northrup:And so I like to pick and choose and layer and really sense into in any given moment of my life. Like, there will be kind of like a 3 month period or a 6 month period when something feels really medicinal for me physically and energetically, and then after that, I won't need it. So this is not an episode about all the things you need to be doing to take care of yourself and that if you're not doing them, you're somehow failing. This is just kind of a behind the scenes, like, hey. Look what's in my cabinet.
Kate Northrup:Is there anything interesting in here for you? So please treat this as a buffet, not a to do list. Okay. So first thing when I wake up in the morning I wake up by the way, I don't set an alarm unless I have an early flight. So I wake up when I wake up.
Kate Northrup:One thing I'm really grateful for is that my children are old enough. They know to not wake me up. So if Mike gets up at, like, the crack of dawn so Mike will often wake up at, like, 4:30 in the morning, and then by the time I wake up, he's already at the gym. And so the kids usually sometimes will wake up when I'm still sleeping, but Mike is already gone, and they know to not wake me up. So they go into the living room and turn on the reading light, which is a red light lamp because the sun doesn't rise in Miami these days until 7 AM.
Kate Northrup:They're usually up before 7, and so it's best before sunrise and after sunset to only use red lights if you are using artificial lights. So my kids know, they go in, they turn on the little red light, they read, they play in their room, they do whatever. And then I wake up, whenever I wake up, usually, it's 6:30 ish, and at that point, I do not turn on any lights in the bedroom. I make my bed, which has nothing to do with my nervous system, but I do. And then I when I go into the bathroom, I put on my red light glasses before putting my Oura ring on the charger to charge it.
Kate Northrup:I keep my Oura Ring on airplane mode all the time because I don't like anything that's Bluetooth on my body sending signals to a WiFi device. I just don't want that, so I don't update or ring information constantly to my phone. I do it in the morning. I do it at night. And but I don't look at my phone without my red glasses on because what I learned from Sarah Kleiner Wellness, you can go back and listen to her episode, is that when we look at a screen, first thing, it is signaling to our body that it's like high noon, and it's way too much light.
Kate Northrup:And it's not a natural source of light, so it throws off our whole circadian rhythm. So I do that, you know, I go pee, brush my teeth, then I immediately, ideally, go outside. So I go through the living room, I kiss my children, I say hello to my husband, and then I open the slider door and I go stand on my balcony even if it's only for a minute and I look in the direction of sunrise. Now sometimes I wake up well before sunrise, so I don't do that immediately because there is no sunlight out yet. So if it's, like, at 6:15, I I can't do that because the sun again doesn't rise until 7, and it's not even any, like, early emanation of light until about 6:45, so I kinda time it depending.
Kate Northrup:But if I'm not gonna go out and get natural light immediately, I read by the red light. I've been experimenting lately with drinking some hot lemon water with a little spritz of, like, a little sprinkle of sea salt in it. That feels really nice to my body, but whatever I'm doing, whatever kind of water is, just gonna be water first thing, Try to drink a lot of it. I don't know, like, 24 ounces or something before I have anything else. Getting morning sunlight in your eyes first thing within the first few moments of waking up within the first 15, 20 minutes is so critical to resetting your cortisol levels.
Kate Northrup:And also getting morning light in your eyes is actually critical to melatonin production, which has to do with your wind down and your body's ability to rest and repair at night. So you're setting yourself up for a really good night of sleep in the morning based on what kind of light you're getting in your eyes. Natural sunlight, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely, and not through a window. Like, it has to be actually the light. Now if you can't go outside, like, maybe it's 30 below, you know, maybe you live in the Midwest and it's the middle of January, just getting something is better than nothing.
Kate Northrup:So we live in a condo right now where I can't open a lot of windows, and so I'll go outside and get that morning light, but then I'll just leave the slider door open a crack on our balcony door just so that natural light is coming into the home. And so even if I'm in the kitchen, which is kind of around the corner, there's still natural light in the environment. So the light thing is huge. Then I try to have 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking up for my muscles and just for, like, my metabolic health. I used to skip breakfast.
Kate Northrup:I used to do a lot of intermittent fasting. I kind of, like, fried my metabolism that way, so I'm working on rebuilding. I'm not really doing fasting anymore. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just telling you, I used to do it a ton.
Kate Northrup:It ended up kind of not being great for me in for that long, I was fairly extreme with it. So I just eat breakfast, and I try to wait 90 minutes to have coffee from the moment I wake up because of protecting my adrenal glands and because of wanting my body to kind of do its own thing to wake me up without jolting me awake. Some days, though, I just really want coffee earlier, so I have it. But what I'm noticing is when I give myself more time to wake up, I feel naturally energized much more easily than if I'm using the synthetic energy of caffeine too close to the morning. But for sure, I need to have eaten something before I have my coffee, and it is protein based.
Kate Northrup:So that's kind of the morning. In the spin of that, just to be clear, I'm, like, tending to my children's needs and making them breakfast and, like, trying to fit in making myself breakfast and coffee in the mix. Mike and I alternate mornings where one or the other of us is the lead parent. So if it's one of my lead mornings, I'm all in going for it. If it's one of his lead mornings and I'm not taking a walk or haven't gone to the gym or something, I'm sort of spacing out and doing my own thing and knowing that he's on it.
Kate Northrup:But, like, if it's me in the lead, one of the things that we're doing recently with our 6 year old who is incredibly aggravating to get to leave the house, she really takes her sweet time. And when I used to wear a CGI, a continuous glucose, monitor, CGM, CGI is computer generated illustrations or something. Anyway, CGM as a continuous glucose monitor. What I found is that I didn't get blood sugar spikes from food because I'm really good at eating for my blood sugar balance. I would get blood sugar spikes from stress, And the biggest times were in the morning getting my kids out the door and at night getting them in bed.
Kate Northrup:So I know that those are gonna be stressful times for me. And so one of the things that we've been doing, I'll just pass this along to any parents who also struggle with getting their kids out the door. We've started making Ruby a checklist because what was happening is we were like, have you brushed your teeth? Have you brushed your hair? Where are your socks?
Kate Northrup:I've asked you to put on your socks 35 times. What are you doing? Where's your water bottle? All that stuff. And so she has started to read.
Kate Northrup:She's, in 1st grade now, and so she we make her a little checklist every day, uniform, brush hair, brush teeth, make your bed, get your snacks, put your socks on, put your sneakers on, get your water bottle, get your sweatshirt, and she loves walking around with her checklist and checking off the items. It gives her a really nice sense of agency, and it it's so much more calm for us because instead of needing to continue to remind her, this keeps her organized, and she feels great about doing the checklist on her own. So that's, like, a little parenting tip, but also really excellent for my nervous system. Also, adding a little music in the morning can be really helpful. It can just, like, lighten the mood, adding in a little dance break makes it more fun for everyone, especially if it's, like, a stressful morning.
Kate Northrup:Really adding in music can be so, so helpful in adding in a little dancing. Then I will go to the office or go work out, but I walk the kids to school. Walking, getting outside, so good for the nervous system, and then I walk to the office after I drop them off. I will often then drop my stuff at the office and walk to the gym, so that's more walking, so good, more outdoor time. Sunshine is so good for us.
Kate Northrup:It is so nourishing. It is so regulating, so beautiful, and then I'll have a workout. I've been shooting for 3 weight training days lately and some yoga, little Pilates, and a dance class. But any kind of movement any kind of movement is really good for your nervous system. So try to move every day even if it's just the bare minimum, the walking I do to and from school, to and from the office.
Kate Northrup:My new thing this season is sitting in a dry sauna. I love it. It is that thing that is deeply medicinal. I crave it. My body loves it.
Kate Northrup:The sweat is so good. I don't really know about getting hot in the nervous system and that kind of, like, I don't have the data for you on that, but I do know that 59 minutes a week sitting in a 180 degree sauna, so 59 minutes total, not all at once. That's too long. Not all at once. Activates your heat shock proteins, which are really good for regeneration, and there's something like a 70% decrease in all cause mortality when people sit in a sauna for a total of 59 minutes a week.
Kate Northrup:So I just feel like that's gotta be good for me. I also just find it really relaxing. There's something about the intensity of the sweating and the intensity of the heat that really, really does it for me. So these days, that's I I don't go every day, but, you know, maybe every other day, something like that. And when I'm feeling activated, so that those are sort of some of the more daily things.
Kate Northrup:I'll come back to the evening stuff. But just during the day, if I'm feeling activated, if I've gotten on a call off a call that was really intense, if, I feel stressed out, I know by now that it is better to get in my body than to try to work it out with my mind. So if I'm chewing on a problem, I'll go for a walk around the block. I'll put on a song and do a dance break. I'll do one of my nervous system healing drills.
Kate Northrup:Sometimes I'll do one of my nervous system healing drills like havening, which is rubbing your hands over each other slowly and over your forearms. Sometimes I'll do that on a call underneath the screen. So the other person on Zoom can't see me, but I am actively signaling to my body that I'm safe. That's helping me in the moment metabolize the acute stress and tell my body that there's no imminent threat. We are safe right now because the truth is even if I'm having a stressful conversation, there's actually no imminent threat.
Kate Northrup:My body thinks that I'm getting chased by a tiger, but that is not actually happening. So doing a nervous system healing drill in that moment or right after will help me to metabolize the stress even when the stressor is no longer present. So I do acute nervous system healing tools as necessary, you know, spot treatment throughout the day. And then again, at the end of the day, I do my best to, like, wrap up my day, give myself a moment to pack up my backpack. I walk from the office to school to pick up the kids or just to home if somebody else picked them up.
Kate Northrup:And that walk, that movement, it's about a 7 minute walk from the office to our house, That walk really, really helps me to kind of dump my day and transition. And then at nighttime, we dinner really early, like, 5:30, and then I try to finish eating, by 6:37 so that I have a couple of hours of time to digest so that during sleep, my body can focus on restoration and repair, not digestion. I stop eating before the sun sets. Same thing. Our metabolism is the most available when the sun is up.
Kate Northrup:And so when the sun is down, we really wanna be done eating. I find that that really helps me to get a much better sleep, and you will be fighting an uphill battle to heal your nervous system if you're not getting good sleep. So so much of my day is organized around getting good sleep. I know that morning light helps my sleep. Stopping eating 2 to 3 hours before bedtime helps my sleep.
Kate Northrup:Putting on my red light glasses, my blue light blocking glasses, as soon as the sun sets and turning off the overhead lights. I light a candle. I put on that red reading lamp, and then Mike actually just, got little red it's like red transparency plastic that he cut and put over the lights under our like, on the overhead of our stove. You know how you can turn on the light over your stove? So now we actually have red light over our stove for at nighttime, so we can have a full red light living situation at night.
Kate Northrup:And then if we're gonna watch a show, I will often put on my this mat that I got. It's like a amethyst PEMF infrared heat mat thing. It's the best. It feels amazing, and I can just feel it deexciting my nervous system and downregulating me, or sometimes I'll just read a book. And that's pretty much it.
Kate Northrup:So that may sound like a lot of things, but for me, the movement is key, prioritizing sleep is key, prioritizing natural light is key, and minimizing blue light. So those are what I focus on and keeping my my blood sugar balanced and getting in my body instead of trying to solve problems with my head. I will say that when really stressful situations arise, the other night, I had a interaction with my daughter that was really hard, I felt incredibly stressed. She was wildly dysregulated. And as the parent, I know that my job is to be the thermostat.
Kate Northrup:We cannot let our children be the thermostat. We need well, we can. It just doesn't work very well. If we want to have calm, healthy homes as much as possible, none of us is gonna be perfect at this. I've screwed it up a 1000000 times, but I do my best to be the thermometer I mean, sorry, the thermostat so my kids can be the thermometer and switch and coregulate to my nervous system regulation.
Kate Northrup:That takes practice, and that takes the investment daily on relatively normal days that aren't particularly unusually stressful. I'm making deposits with all this stuff I do so that on a day like the other day when I was having a really hard time, I had a reserve to pull from. So, luckily, I didn't snap at my daughter. I felt like I wanted to, but I didn't. I was able to come back to a state of regulation after taking a couple of breaks and allow my body to signal to her body that it was safe to let go, that it was safe to come back into her body.
Kate Northrup:And we were able to sort of deexcite and unravel together and have her come back into regulation and presence by bedtime. And that was really hard, but it was very sweet. And then after that, I put on my blue light blocking glasses. I got on my heated amethyst, PMF, whatever it's doing, magnetic mat, and I watched the Gilmore Girls, and I downregulated myself. So know that there are acute nervous system healing tools, and there are daily investments that we make that compound over time.
Kate Northrup:The cool thing about nervous system healing is it's not like dental hygiene. You know, with your teeth, you just gotta brush your teeth twice a day and floss every day for the rest of your life. You just gotta do it. But with nervous system healing, yes, do it every day, but the cool thing is your level of nervous system health compounds. So you are actually starting at a healthier level than you were yesterday, unlike brushing your teeth, which is, like, by tomorrow morning, I need to brush them the same amount as yesterday.
Kate Northrup:So we're not starting at 0 when it comes to our nervous system, and that is something that just feels so beautiful and actually not dissimilar to investing and using compounding interest with your money. You can also use this as compounding interest with your body and your nervous system. So that is my nervous system healing day in a nutshell. That's what I do right now. I'm sure it'll change a little bit in 6 months, but pick and choose, grab one of those practices that sounds like it's gonna be helpful for you, and I will see you next time.
Kate Northrup:Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to this episode of Plenti. If you enjoyed it, make sure you subscribe, leave a rating, leave a review. That's one of the best ways that you can ensure to spread the abundance of plenty with others. You can even text it to a friend and tell them to listen in.
Kate Northrup:And if you want even more support to expand your abundance, head over to kate northrup.comforward/breakthroughs, where you can grab my free money breakthrough guide that details the biggest money breakthroughs from some of the top earning women I know, plus a mini lesson accompanying it with my own biggest money breakthroughs and a nervous system healing tool for you to expand your abundance. Again, that's over at katenorthrup.comforward/breakthroughs. See you next time.