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We need a new definition of success—one that harmonizes meaning and money.
Imagine diving into your workday with renewed energy, leaving behind the exhaustion or dread of a monotonous grind.
Traditional beliefs about success and the root cause of burnout are the same:
Prove yourself.
Work harder.
Take care of the business, and it will take care of you.
We’re recycling the mindset and practices that keep us stuck. Our souls need a jumpstart into The Age of Humanity.
Tune in for a new way of working that honors our nervous system and the bottom line, using knowledge of the brain, the Bible, and business. We’ll discuss timeless truths that amplify growth, ignite change, and reshape the world of work. No corporate speak or business BS. Let’s get to the heart of a rewarding career and profitable growth.
We speak human about business.
What’s in it for You?
Value, Relevance, and Impact (VRI): No, it's not a new tech gadget—it's your ticket to making your work genuinely matter to you and your company.
Human-Centric Insights: We prioritize people over profits without sacrificing the bottom line. Think less "cog in the machine" and more "humans helping humans."
I'm your host, Rebecca Fleetwood Hesson, your thrive guide leading you into the new Age of Humanity. I’ve navigated the highs and lows of business and life, from achieving over $40 million in sales, teaching thousands of people around the world about leadership, trust, execution, and productivity to facing burnout, divorce, raising a couple of great humans (one with ADHD), and navigating the uncertainty of starting a business.
I’m committed to igniting change in the world by jumpstarting business into profitable growth with the timeless truths of our humanity.
Sound crazy? It’s only crazy until it works.
Hit subscribe to never miss an episode, and leave a review to help other listeners discover our show.
Want insight and advice on your real career and business challenges? Connect with me on social media or email me at rebecca@wethrive.live. Your story could spark our next conversation.
[00:00:00] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Welcome back to the Business Is Human Podcast. I’m your host, Rebecca Fleetwood Hession, and we’re here to bring you episodes that blend a meaningful work with profitable success here to steward what I call the age of humanity. I believe if we transform the way we work, we can transform the way that we live. As always, my friendly request, if you like what you hear, hit subscribe so you don’t miss any episode and leave a review to tell the other humans that they might like it too. Always looking to help you and connect with others. Alright, let’s get into it, shall we? Have you ever noticed how tightly we try to control things, try to hold on to things in our careers, our schedules, our relationships, even in faith sometimes it feels like the responsible thing to do.
[00:01:03] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: It feels like doing it right, it feels productive and it actually feels like safety. If I can just plan enough, if I can stay two steps ahead, manage every outcome, then I’ll finally feel calm. I’ll finally have it all together. But here’s the hard truth. I love you enough to tell you the truth. Control is a counterfeit, it looks like the real thing. It feels like the real thing. We might even be able to use it with some people and they think it’s okay. It promises that there’s peace when we can control things, but it really delivers exhaustion, frustration. It feels like we’re on the right path to get it all together, but it actually keeps your nervous system locked in a constant state of battle. What I’ve called striving for many years because it is word strive, means battle and conflict, and we have been using it as a moniker of success in our society for far too long. So it’s my job in the universe. God has said to era, eradicate, striving from the world. He didn’t actually say those words, but you know what? I need to tell you something. I don’t even know how to tell you this story succinctly. If you’re new to this podcast, this is going to be an interesting entry point.
[00:02:47] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Love me some Jesus and I’m a very prayerful individual and as I’ve been working on a book for about a year, just noodling it, just putting in outlines, trying some different things out. I haven’t put paragraphs together yet because it wasn’t ready and I didn’t feel like it had the Lord’s blessing. And so I got this idea downloaded in my spirit that I’ve been using these metaphors of counterfeits for a while now. They keep showing up and so I was like, I think this might be the way I want to frame this book up. And so I was like, Lord, I do not want to spend months and months writing a book unless I know it’s something that you want to bless. So let me know, make it super clear. I need to know, and if you say go, I am on it. I got notes for days. Do you know what showed up in my yard yesterday? Now here’s the real funny thing. My yard people had just been there, so the yard had just been mowed, lawnmowers all across my yard and I ran an errand that took me about 15 minutes, came back and this was laying in my yard.
[00:04:14] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: It’s a counterfeit. Sure, somebody probably used this for a marketing thing. There’s no business name on it. You can’t tell me that the Lord didn’t give me that because I know the truth. Anyway, the Lord is answering your prayers, giving you signs, wonders and miracles. You just have to ask him to our regularly scheduled program. Oh, I’m still shook by this. This happened yesterday. We’ll make people do a whole series on all of the signs, wonders, and miracles that I’ve received over the years. I started putting them in a journal all in one place, wild in all the right ways, but control is counterfeit. It promises peace, but delivers exhaustion. So today we are going to unpack this, why it feels necessary and addictive, why it’s actually keeping you stuck. And it was me too. I say this with love and experience in this and how to finally shift towards the real path to safety, which is what our nervous system wants.
[00:05:23] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: And when our nervous system gets what it wants, then everybody around us gets what they need and business thrives. So we’re going to look at the path to safety that’s wired in your body. It just is. You already have it.
[00:06:49] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: The great counterfeit of safety control feels like safety. It feels like we’re mitigating risk. It feels like we’re avoiding problems and maybe even pain, physical or otherwise. It feels like being really responsible in all aspects of life, but especially in business. But underneath control is often, not always, but often fear in disguise, fear of uncertainty. So let’s be really clear because we’ve talked a lot about fear on this show. Our nervous system registers fear in uncertainty, the same as it does if there’s a tiger in the room.
[00:06:49] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: So if there’s an angry email from a customer, your body because it’s uncertain and it feels scary and like an attack, your body registers that like there’s a tornado coming or a tiger in the room. Modern day fear is rarely physical. It’s usually whatever story we’ve made up in our mind because we don’t really know what’s going to happen. Control is fear in disguise because there’s so much uncertainty in our lives and that feels scary. Fear of losing the deal, losing our jobs, losing our relationships, just fear of some sort of loss because there is so much uncertainty in life, fear of not being prepared for what’s coming. So our addiction to control over time has led us to have very little allowance in our lives for uncertainty. We feel like we have to control everything to feel okay, but this is the truth. Fear doesn’t create peace.
[00:08:04] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Those two are at odds with one another. Fear activates your nervous system. Your nervous system is your internal alarm system. And when we’re always trying to mitigate wrist and control uncertainty, what happens is it’s like we flip, the lights switch on of activation and it never gets turned back off. The lights are on in your house all the time. That’s what happens in your nervous system when we’re trying to control things all the time. And can you imagine living in a house where the lights are on all the time completely dysregulating and that’s what happens. We get stuck activated, we get stuck on, then we have terrible sleeping, then we’re kind of short and snippy. It keeps us stuck in fight or flight freeze on is the new one. It’s always bracing for what’s next and it’s not even bracing for what’s next in reality, it’s bracing for every scenario possible.
[00:09:23] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: How can I make sure that I am mitigating risk for every possible thing that could happen? And I know this because I used to be this way and the things that I spent time energy preparing for that never happened. Lord have mercy. I want those hours and days and emotions back. And so that overly activated then starts scanning in really unhealthy ways. So the harder we grip to try to control, literally make a fist with your hands right now if you can. How does that feel? That’s the sign for striving and control and it starts to impact your whole body. Not only if you have long nails is an uncomfortable, but the tension that it creates starts to take over your whole body. The harder your body works to brace itself, the more exhausted, disconnected and overwhelmed you feel. Because if you hold that stance of tight fists, it will start having an impact in your ability to think, your ability to connect.
[00:10:38] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: If you’ve held that first long and you’re starting to get agitated and somebody walks in the room and says, Hey, got a minute, no, I don’t. I’m busy, busy trying to control everything around me, and so you don’t have capacity for connection and kindness and the things that we really want as humans, but we’re blocking it with control. So it feels like we’re building safety around us, but we’re actually building more stress. And let’s be honest, a lot of times if it’s about people when we’re trying to control people, it’s usually more for us than it is for them. There’s a whole chapter in the book I published a few years ago about not being a fixer. When we’re trying to fix and control people, usually it’s because it’s too uncomfortable for us and we’re trying to make our lives better by making them change their behavior.
[00:11:41] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: It’s harsh, and I’m only telling you this because I live through it and I can give you my examples. No shade, no shame, just love. But we change what we don’t see. So I’m here to help you to hold up the mirror and help you see what we might be overly controlling. Think about a toddler that’s learning to walk. They need to wobble, they need to fall down. That’s how their little bodies learn balance, that’s how they build strength and if we’re rushing in to control every move that they make and hold them tighter, they don’t build the strength and the balance and the resilience that they need and it’s not because it helps them. The reason we go in and control isn’t really because it helps them. It’s because they’re wobbling and falling makes parents uncomfortable. So the same thing happens in business and leadership.
[00:12:50] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: We’ve even tried to control how people help one another. This is the one that just this one sent me over the edge when this came to mind. You know how your business probably has a care fund, which is you volunteer to allow a little bit of your money each paycheck to go into this care fund and then the company decides how they’re going to use it to help people. Maybe they’ve had a house fire or something catastrophic has happened that an insurance isn’t going to cover all their medical bills or something. Somebody in the business needs care. This just boggles me because we’re controlling how we care for one another and here’s what ends up happening. And some of these people have been my clients, so I know intimately this is what happened and I’ve experienced it in places that I worked. Whoever is in charge of deciding how that money gets spent has the worst job in the company.
[00:13:52] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: I guarantee you somebody going to be pissed about something all the time and it’s really hard to put regulation and control around care. It’s like the hot potato in business sometimes. I don’t want to do it. You do it, put it in this department, put it in that department. You know how it used to work? Not all that long ago, quite frankly, you’d come into work and somebody would say, Hey, did you hear about John? I know his family had that house fire last night. I hope they’re all okay. We’ve been praying for him. And then somebody comes in and says, Hey, they need clothes for the kids, they need meals they need. And then everybody just started messaging people and talking about it and next thing you know, there was a meal chain. There was donations of clothes that showed up in the break room.
[00:14:54] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: There was care that wasn’t controlled. It was around the feeling that you get when you help one another. You did it because it felt good and it was the right thing to do. Now that $12 that comes out of your check every day that goes to the care fund and then there’s a bunch of people in the care fund department fighting about who gets care. That is not how it’s supposed to work in our humanity. I get calmed down because that one just gets me wound all the way up. This is an example of how control has gone too far. We’re not letting people naturally care for one another the way that our systems have been designed. I see a need, I feel a need, I fill it in whatever way I can. I gather others to help me fill it. I used to say to my kids when they would go into school in their elementary years, especially because I wanted to teach them how to notice when people needed things, I would say, Hey, especially at the beginning of winter, if you notice any of your friends in class are coming into school without a coat, I don’t want you to say anything to them.
[00:16:18] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: I just want you to come home and talk to me because maybe we can help them get a coat, but we don’t want to embarrass them or call ‘em out in front of your friends. But just notice if people need things. If you notice that somebody doesn’t have a snack or a lunch or they’re not bringing in their supplies that they need for things, you don’t need to embarrass them. Just come talk to me and we’ll figure out how to make sure they get it. Teaching people to be aware of what people need and then you can go in to be helpful is different than being controlling. We think that control eases our anxiety. Somewhere in the system. Somebody said, you know what would be great? Let’s just all have a little bit of our money taken out of our paycheck and we will have a care fund. The intent wasn’t bad, but it violates so much of our humanity in the way that we’re built and that’s what happens with control too often. It creates more tension for us and everyone around us and it’s not just your nervous system. This is also biblical. The religious leaders did not like the influence that Jesus was having so they controlled him and killed him and stuff.
[00:17:50] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: When we are plotting and manipulating and grasping at things in the name of control, it never brings peace. It only reveals fear. So I want you to kind of look around at your life and ask yourself, whereas control showing up in ways that are robbing your peace and what kind of fear might that be rooted in? Because this story is playing out in our homes, in our relationships, our businesses gripping for control and then really only finding fear. So then our nervous system gets stuck on high alert. So let’s look at how your nervous system is designed to work. Your nervous system is wired for safety, meaning your nervous system is constantly scanning for danger and safety. It is built into our cells. It’s not something we think about. It’s feelers that go out. A cat has whiskers to be able to feel if they can fit through places.
[00:19:02] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: It’s their guiding system, our nervous system, our cellular structure has vibrations that go out and it’s constantly scanning. It’s called neuroception. It’s a term from Dr. Stephen Porges who founded Polyvagal Theory and you’ve heard Eliza Kingsford and I talk about this on the podcast many times in the past. If you’ve been around for a while, neuroception isn’t logical, it’s automatic and subconscious. It doesn’t come from the prefrontal cortex. Your body decides if you are safe before your mind does let that one sink in your body decides if you are safe before your mind does. It looks for cues of safety like connection, calm voices, eye contact. It doesn’t come from perfect plans or spreadsheets. In fact, sometimes the more perfect you try to create something, the less safe and comfortable people feel in it. I think about that when I was hosting people at my house before I understood more about what it meant to be hospitable.
[00:20:25] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: I would create perfect little environments. People don’t necessarily feel comfortable in perfect little environments because they’re afraid they’re going to mess it up or that they’re not worthy of something so beautiful. There’s all kinds of weird stuff that comes in or I spent too much money or perfection and control and spreadsheet level, perfect plans sometimes send out a cue that this isn’t a safe place because your body is deciding that, not your logic or your brain. So control is a cognitive strategy. It’s thinking about it and planning it and it’s mindful, but your body doesn’t calm down just because you’ve checked all the boxes. Now think about that. Listen, I love a good check off the list and you and I both know there are times that when you do something that wasn’t on the list, you go write it on the list so you can check it off.
[00:21:34] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: I see you, I am you. I love you, but I want to ask you this question for you to really steepen for a minute. When you get everything checked off the list, is it really a sense of peace and calm or is it just a momentary pause and then your brain goes looking for the next thing to control? It’s almost like, okay, I got that controlled. Now what am I going to go to? Just ask yourself the question, okay, we’re not really going to fix it as much as we’re going to be aware of it, okay, that’s going to change some things, but getting into that fixer mode is part of our problem. True safety comes from connection. Humans are biologically wired to regulate through in the nervous system words. It’s called co-regulation, meaning when you are with someone or you’re in a place or internally feel either the person that you’re with has this calming force and so then it creates a calming force in you connection or you are in a place that evokes a sense of calm for you.
[00:23:00] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: And so you connect with that place and it’s calming. And ideally this happens through prayer and meditation and being safely still that we can hand over heart, connect to ourself, connect to our maker, connect in a way that in any place we’re at, in any environment where we can say, I’m okay. You’ve connected to yourself in a way that you and your voice is making you feel calm and regulated. That’s what we’re wired for. We’re going to scan for safety. If I’m with somebody that doesn’t make me feel safe, my nervous system is going to be like beep, beep, beep, right? Alert. If I’m in a place that is a bit chaotic, there’s stuff everywhere and my mind is just scanning for like what is this chaos, nervous system activating. If the words you use the way that you talk about your situations and yourself are not safe and calming, you’re going to be the disconnector or the dysregulation of your own nervous system.
[00:24:20] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Research shows that social connection, safe social connection, being with good people reduces cortisol, distress, hormone. You know that feeling when you finally get with your friends and you’re just like family or whoever, colleagues, you know who your safe people are and you know who the ones that aren’t eye contact. Physical presence, supportive words are what puts you into a safe feeling. It’s called the parasympathetic of your nervous system. This is where you can rest, you can restore. That’s the snow globe analogy that I often use when a snow globe is shook up and everything’s spinning all around. That symbolizes activation or dysregulation of the nervous system. And then we have to sit the snow globe down so that all the things spinning around settle and what’s inside of the snow globe can see out and what’s outside can see in. That’s where we get connection.
[00:25:30] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: When we have been in too much isolation or in a state of hyper control trying to control everything around us, your system gets in this stress loop where it might look like everything’s under control on the outside, but on the inside just spinning, still activated. So groundedness like the snow globe analogy, set it down on the ground or regulation is what leads to safety not control. When you set the snow globe down and ground your nervous system, and you can do that through breathing breath, work in for four breaths, hold it for four breaths, exhale for four breaths, and just do that until you feel calmer. Literally just sitting in stillness, just sitting. And I love it when you do it with nature. Observing the flowers and the trees and the grass and the wind and the sun sometimes movement is the best way to get there.
[00:26:41] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: A nice walk is good, way better than a 5:00 AM. Bootcamp, prayer, meditation, those things create a sense of connection and internal safety. And in that allows your bodies scanning for safety to work better. So your body’s ability to sense your own body changes internal signals like your heart rate and your breath. It can be connected again to what’s who I am and what’s happening. That’s how we regulate our own sense of fight or flight because control tries to manage everything around us, but true groundedness comes from within. So instead of trying to control everything around us, for us to feel okay, we shift to if I can do these things to feel good on, okay, on the inside, calm and regulated on the inside, then I have the capacity to handle all the things that are happening externally on the outside. So your body isn’t designed to feel safe with back-to-back schedules, perfect plans and checking and triple checking and quadruple checking, micromanaging every detail for you and others.
[00:28:17] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: That’s not creating safety. It only feels safe when you’re with good people. You’re using those tools or regulation and getting grounded and connected. So control feels productive, but connection is what calms your nervous system. And we have such an addiction to control that. So many people, my clients, my friends, my family, people I know and love are having a really hard time pausing the productivity because they feel like it’s wrong and that’s why it’s a counterfeit. It feels like we’re doing all the right things. Then why do I still feel like crap? I went and got the degree, I got the job. I excelled at the job, I got the family, I got the mortgage, I got the grand counter hops, I got a nice car and my yard has those diagonal lines and all the mulch is always done. So why do I still feel that or not at peace?
[00:29:27] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Just something to pause and think about. Please. The real path is not gripping harder, it’s grounding deeper connection to God through prayer. And meditation is an invitation to peace, connection to yourself through breath awareness, moving your body, getting really grounded in who you are, who God created you to be. Not who everybody else wants you to be, but who are you. And connection to others. Spending time in meaningful relationships, not being so tired at the end of the day that you can’t have a real connection conversation with your loved ones or spend some time with your friends. That’s what your body’s really needing. I love the verse. Be still and know that I am God. Stillness, trust, connection. That’s where safety lives. And when you do that, boom, your brain opens up to better decision making, more creativity, more innovation. So this counterintuitive thing is I feel like I’ve got to control and keep going.
[00:30:48] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: And I’m saying hold on, connect, get safe, and then you will solve problems faster. You will have better ideas than you’ve been having in this striving, controlling place. Your business, your career, your life actually gets better when you have less control and more connection. And again, it feels wrong. That’s why we call it a counterfeit. It feels like I was supposed to do all these things and then I would feel great and you did all of those things like you were told to do and you don’t feel great. It was a counterfeit, it was a little bit of a lie. That was a lot of a lie. And so now it’s kind of not our fault that we got here because there are years of reasons and things in society about how this happened. I’m going to attempt to cover the in this book that I’m writing, but it is up to us now that we know how our nervous system works to make the changes necessary and stop taking the counterfeit cache.
[00:32:02] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Stop taking the counterfeit of control. Stop taking the counterfeit that we know isn’t going to lead us to the piece that we really want and deserve. Control feels like safety, but it will never deliver the peace that you’re craving. Your nervous system knows it, faith confirms it. The real source of safety is connection to who you are, to whose you are to. If you’re ready to break free of that counterfeit life, it’s available to you all the time. You don’t have to go get another degree, you don’t have to spend money for it. It’s available to you right now today with some breathing and some peace. And if you want more help with it As a coach, that’s what I do as a keynote. Speak for it. That’s what I do. And this is a movement that we’re creating with the age of humanity. And so if you choose it, you are now a part of the movement too. Alright, thanks for being here. We’ll talk soon. Love you mean it. I’m not coming down. I never locked it on the ground. I’m not coming down. Thanks for being here. You can follow us on Instagram. Business Is Human or TikTok. Rebecca Fleetwood Hession. It’s a great way to share some of the clips with your colleagues and friends. Alright, make it a great day. Love you mean it.