We are all facing scary and uncertain times right now and learning ways to mitigate fear and anxiety and tools to help reduce stress and help you make better decisions are really important right now.
Mental toughness coach Lisa Tamati shares her insights on how to thrive in the tough times and how to keep control over your physiology.
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For more information on Lisa Tamati's programs, books and documentaries please visit www.lisatamati.com
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Join hundreds of athletes from all over the world and all levels smashing their running goals while staying healthy in mind and body.
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measurement and lifestyle stress data, that can all be captured from the comfort of your own home
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Lisa's third book has just been released. It's titled "Relentless - How A Mother And Daughter Defied The Odds"
Visit: https://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ for more Information
ABOUT THE BOOK:
When extreme endurance athlete, Lisa Tamati, was confronted with the hardest challenge of her life, she fought with everything she had. Her beloved mother, Isobel, had suffered a huge aneurysm and stroke and was left with massive brain damage; she was like a baby in a woman's body. The prognosis was dire. There was very little hope that she would ever have any quality of life again. But Lisa is a fighter and stubborn.
She absolutely refused to accept the words of the medical fraternity and instead decided that she was going to get her mother back or die trying.
This book tells of the horrors, despair, hope, love, and incredible experiences and insights of that journey. It shares the difficulties of going against a medical system that has major problems and limitations. Amongst the darkest times were moments of great laughter and joy.
Relentless will not only take the reader on a journey from despair to hope and joy, but it also provides information on the treatments used, expert advice and key principles to overcoming obstacles and winning in all of life's challenges. It will inspire and guide anyone who wants to achieve their goals in life, overcome massive obstacles or limiting beliefs. It's for those who are facing terrible odds, for those who can't see light at the end of the tunnel. It's about courage, self-belief, and mental toughness. And it's also about vulnerability... it's real, raw, and genuine.
This is not just a story about the love and dedication between a mother and a daughter. It is about beating the odds, never giving up hope, doing whatever it takes, and what it means to go 'all in'. Isobel's miraculous recovery is a true tale of what can be accomplished when love is the motivating factor and when being relentless is the only option.
Here's What NY Times Best Selling author and Nobel Prize Winner Author says of The Book:
"There is nothing more powerful than overcoming physical illness when doctors don't have answers and the odds are stacked against you. This is a fiercely inspiring journey of a mother and daughter that never give up. It's a powerful example for all of us."
—Dr. Bill Andrews, Nobel Prize Winner, author of Curing Aging and Telomere Lengthening.
"A hero is someone that refuses to let anything stand in her way, and Lisa Tamati is such an individual. Faced with the insurmountable challenge of bringing her ailing mother back to health, Lisa harnessed a deeper strength to overcome impossible odds. Her story is gritty, genuine and raw, but ultimately uplifting and endearing. If you want to harness the power of hope and conviction to overcome the obstacles in your life, Lisa's inspiring story will show you the path."
—Dean Karnazes, New York Times best selling author and Extreme Endurance Athlete.
Transcript of the Podcast:
Speaker 1: (00:01)
Welcome to pushing the limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati, brought to you by LisaTamati.com.
Speaker 2: (00:13)
Lisa Tamati here at pushing the limits. Welcome back again, I hope you guys are okay during this coronavirus crisis. That's certainly a big change for us. And today because of that, I wanted to do a session on how to not meet fear, get the better of you all my tips and tricks for helping stay focused at this tough time and how you can stay on track. Um, before I go over to the actual interview, I wanted to, um, remind you that I've just released my book relentless. It is available on my website. Um, you can, I'll put it in the show notes, but you can just hit on over to lisatamati.com and under the shop button you'll find it, the F I'd love you to check it out. And it's actually really good book for this type of crisis because it's all about mindset and it's all about how to keep focus and how to deal with, you know, going up against great odds and really difficult and uncertain times.
Speaker 2: (01:02)
So you want to check that out. That's relentless how a mother and daughter defied the odds. Go over to my website and check that out. Also at running hot coaching, we've got a special going on at the moment for 12 weeks during this whole lockdown time and in the whole coronavirus wanted to be able to offer extra value and to make it, you know, really affordable for people because we have a whole, not only the running programs now we have a full live workout program that you can do and it's only $49 US dollars to join for the 12 weeks. So if we'd been sitting on the fence for awhile thinking about joining us now would be a perfect time to do that. Especially if you're in lockdown and you want your running training programs and at home workouts. All of it's in there right over to the show.
Speaker 2: (01:46)
Hi guys, just want me to do a session on not letting fear get the better of you. So about the mix of crosses with the coronavirus, we're probably feeling a lot of fear right now. There's a lot of uncertainty there. Jobs are in dangerous and some of us are incomes and so on. So I wanted to do some practical tips that you can do to control the fear response in your body. Because number one, if you have a fear response going on right now, your immune system is going to be compromised and that's not going to be good as if you're going to be fighting this far as which we hope you won't be. But if you are, you want to make sure your immune system is, is up and running. So the first thing that I want you to look into is done for medic breathing, deep dogmatic breathing.
Speaker 2: (02:30)
Every time you start to feel out of control, feel triggered, feel stress is to do some deep breathing in through the nose, holding for about four seconds out for four seconds and hold for four seconds. Now that is called box breathing. Now you can do it in a different rhythm. If you've got a really good set of lungs, you might get to seven or eight holding it for that long and doing this just I do this 10, 11 times a day. It's, it's my go to as soon as I'm feeling triggered, as soon as I'm starting to feel upset. Now what does deep do? Well, it stimulates your parasympathetic nervous system. You have to submit two nervous systems, your parasympathetic and sympathetic. You want to be stimulating it this time. And there's a lot of fear around a lot of anxiety. The parasympathetic. Now when you stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, you are lowering the levels of cortisol and adrenaline that are being produced.
Speaker 2: (03:23)
Now these are hormones that are really for fight or flight. So back in the caveman days, which our body is still, you know, back there, we haven't evolved to being really where we are in our current world. So we still react to, uh, outside simulates some, you know, I was fear. So back in the day we might've been running away from a tiger, right? And so we needed this fight or flight response. So the amygdala, which is a part of your brain, deep in your brain, that's your limbic brain, that reptilian brain and its mediate responses to put up your heart, a heart rate, increase your breathing rate, uh, make you shit shallow breathe. It causes in your vision so that you have tunnel vision. Uh, it takes away blood from your prefrontal cortex and gives it all the blood into your muscles and so that you're ready to either fight off or run away.
Speaker 2: (04:13)
One of the two, the final fight syndrome, you'll know the SES. So that's all control where the medulla, now when you do this, you are taking away energy from your immune system, from your rest and recovery system. And you know, this was a great thing back in the day when we were had periodic stress was situations where we needed to run away from the line really fast. But in our day and age we are constantly bombarded with things like emails or problems with work or a phone call from your shitty boss or something that causes the same response. And it can get to the level where it's chronically your chronic amount of stress and you are constantly in this fight or flight state. So at this time when the coronavirus is here and you've got all this uncertainty, it's really, really important that we start to calm down the parasympathetic nervous system or stimulate, sorry, the parasympathetic nervous system and get things quiet and down.
Speaker 2: (05:10)
Stop the release of that cortisol and that adrenaline going full bore. And now you want those things at certain times but not constantly because you want your immune system to be operating well and you want to be thinking really clearly and there is a break in your decision making ability when you are in the stressed out state. So going back to the deep breathing now, this deep breathing technique will instantly, and I made really, really quickly start to calm the body down. Another great technique of course is meditation. And this doesn't have to be, you know, sitting on the floor, cross legged in an absolute silence that works for a lot of people and it's fantastic if you can quiet your brain down that way. But it also could just be going for a walk outside and we're all a little bit limited in what we're still at the moment allowed to go outside into get some fresh air.
Speaker 2: (06:01)
And that brings me to the next point. It's taking, you know, um, control of, of some of the things that you can and not focusing on the things that you can't control right now. Taking control of the basics, good hydration, good nutrition, good sleep habits. All of these things are going to help you to stay in control and make good decisions. Okay. And not focusing just on the negative. The next technique that I wanted to give you is visualization. Now I use this a lot with my athletes and I've certainly used it in my career as an athlete. Visualizing a positive outcome. Visualizing yourself as if it's in a, if it's an a running race, obviously envisaging the whole race and the more real you can make this visualization, the bidder in the cause that we are facing, visualize yourself being in control and being healthy.
Speaker 2: (06:51)
Visualize yourself and being able to adapt really quickly to this, to the situations at hand and you're getting on top of it and your business is going to be okay and your job is going to be all right. And when you visualize, your brain doesn't differentiate between what is real and what is imagined and okay, you can't control whether you're going to lose your job next week. You can't control movies outside variables, but you can stop your body going into this panic state because that isn't going to help anybody. What you want is your decision making ability on fire. So these visualization techniques can help you to start to regulate that into see a positive outcome. The next thing I want you to think about is the challenge versus threat scenario. So if we see something is a threat, and let's be honest, the crime viruses a bloody big threat right now to everything, to our health, to our loved ones, health to our society.
Speaker 2: (07:50)
But if we can start to really position they in their minds to see it more as an opportunity or a challenge, then that changes the way we perceive it and we are able to then coat a whole lot better. I'll give you an example from a noncurrent divorce situation, but again from my aesthetic Korea, okay, so if I'm looking at this massive race that I'm doing, it might be in death Valley, it might be in the [inaudible] and the Gobi desert or a Niger. Now, as I'm saying that as a threat and it's going to be terrifying and it's gonna be horrific, then guess what's going to happen? My body's going to shut down. I'm going to be in the fight or flight mode. I'm not going to be reacting really well. I'm not going to be coping when you, well, if I can reframe it in my mind to being an amazing opportunity to have this wonderful adventure and to have to turn it into a challenge in an a, an ability to be able to see this in a positive light.
Speaker 2: (08:48)
And I want you to think about this. Cisco rhino virus is going to give us some benefits. There are some good things that are going to come out of it for each and every one of us. It might be a complete pervert in your lives and you're going to end up doing another job and get out of that dead end job that you've been stuck in but too scared to leave and now you have to leave. So you're going to have to think and learn and redirect. Maybe that's going to be a good thing at the end of the day, none of us actually know. So they're good. They could be real positive things. Going back to a situation like with my mum and I've, you know, I've got my books here in the background. This the story is a really powerful one for the situation that we're going through.
Speaker 2: (09:28)
When I was faced with mom's aneurysm and that's the fact that she was probably not going to survive and if she did, she was going to have massive brain damage, which she did have and that she was never going to do anything again and I could've taken that prognosis. And just accepted it and taking no action and stayed on decided, no, I'm going to use this. These people telling me that there's no chance and there's no way I'm going to use that as motivation to prove them wrong and I'm going to make this the greatest comeback story and I'm going to get my mum back. And those were the thoughts that I feed into my mind so that I was able to take big, strong action and so that I was able to cope with the stresses that were come at us and it's been, you know, a four year long battle, don't get me wrong.
Speaker 2: (10:12)
There were times when I was on the ground balling my eyes out and not knowing which way to go forward. The thing is I did keep moving forward and I did keep looking for the next decision. I hate to make the next situation. The next opportunity and that attitude of going all in is one is lead to him miraculous recovery. This is a one in a million recovery, but it's not a one in a million because she was anything special or because I'm anything special. It was a one in a million recovery because we never even gave up and we kept fighting and we looked for the opportunities and we saw the beauty in this process, and this is why I've written the book, is because I want other people to have a blueprint for your mindset and what it takes to go all in on a challenge.
Speaker 2: (10:57)
And in this Corrado bar situation, we're going to have to go all in. Some of us, this is gonna be, you know, a threat to our incomes and our lifestyles and a massive of change. And we can either crawl up into a facial ball and start crying our eyes out and go, well I can't take any action or we could be warriors and we can stand up and go. Not a lot. I'm not going to take this line down. I'm going to go down sliding if I'm going to go down in going all in with this, with a situation with mum, I know that I could have done all of that and still failed and still lost here. That wasn't the point though. I had no option but to go all that because the alternative was certain days in certain loss. So I had a tiny chance and I took that tiny chance and when everybody told me it was impossible, I just kicked all moving and kept ignoring the people that told me it was bad.
Speaker 2: (11:49)
So right now what you also want to be doing is surrounding yourself with positive people. If you're listening to this, but you know this video, then you probably want of those people that is looking for a positive input and good messages. And that's fantastic because you are the sum total of the five people you spend the most time with. So if you are around positive people who have a direction, who are saying, right guys, this is the way we're going and this is why we're going to think this is the way forward. And you start listening to positive messages instead of the ones who are, Oh my God, the world is ending. It's apocalypse now and it's all going to be horrific. And you know, like we all have moments like there, don't get me wrong that I don't have those moments, but I keep them in check.
Speaker 2: (12:34)
And then I turned my mind around again and I tune it again and I tune it again. Every time those negative thoughts come up, I start to turn them around. So I wanted to now talk about, uh, exposure therapy. Now this is another therapy that can be really, really helpful if you are feeling a lot of fear. Now this is not exposure to the virus. We don't want that. But this is like when you are feeling fear for a certain situation or a certain thing that you have to do. And it might be like having to change your profession because you know someone's going to has to. Um, I want you to understand that the more you do something, the more it's going to be, the less you're going to be reacting to it. So I'll just give you a simple example of getting on phone calls.
Speaker 2: (13:19)
If you hate sales calls, which I used to hate doing sales calls. Now I've changed my perception of what that call is about in term repetition and doing it over and over and over again. It becomes actually a conversation with a friend if the coms nothing to be scared of and most of the things that we face in our life that we are scared of are actually not physical threats. Okay. The coronavirus could be a physical threat to you or your loved ones. I'm not mitigating them, but a lot of the fee is that we have running around in their tummy and then their minds at the moment that it's just going around and around like a hamster wheel is things that I'm never ever going to happen. I even say that the thoughts that we have in our head, the disasters scenarios that we're playing out are not going to happen, so why focus on it?
Speaker 2: (14:07)
Why not put your energies into focusing on how can I make this the best opportunity for me, for my business, for my profession? How can I help other people? How can I turn this into something that is good for me and my world and my business? I am using this as an opportunity to pivot, to change very quickly, to be adaptable. And I've lost my income. I'll be honest with you, at least six months, I don't have any income. Now I'm a speaker. That's what I do. I go around to conferences, well there are not conferences going on, but I'm not going to sit here and start crying about it. I'm gonna change my perception of what I can do. And then I'm going to pivot really quickly into doing other things and focusing on the positive and they don't get to be prepared also for when life comes back to normal.
Speaker 2: (14:52)
And we'll we go again. So it's your perception of things is controlling your thoughts. Now I want you, I'm also studying at the moment the functional genomics and this is the study of DNA and genes and how they affect the way everything in your body from methylation to mood and behavior to cardiovascular health, to um, detoxification. All of these areas. Okay. But I wanted to talk to you briefly about a couple of the genes that are in your head and I won't go on to the specifics. I'm going to be writing a couple of blog posts, uh, over the next few weeks and I'm still studying this area of science, but it's absolutely fascinating. There are a couple of genes that really, um, control or give you a predisposition to thinking a certain way and you can get yourself tested and DNA and all that sort of stuff later on when all this crosses over and you find out what you have a predisposition for, um, your edge or to being a gene for example, sample, which is y our adrenal, uh, Jane, if you like, the pains are which variation of the gene as to how long that adrenal and is going to be active on your sip as in your body.
Speaker 2: (16:03)
And if it's, if you've got the gene where it's going to be attached it to the recipients for a long time and active, you're going to have a harder time meeting golf things. You're going to have a harder time, you're going to have a stronger emotional and printer reaction to things. Um, then another person, another saying is that the brain derived neurotrophic neurotrophic factor, which I'm writing a blog post on now because this has to do with brain rehabilitation, but it also has to do with your mood and your behavior and the how, how susceptible you are to depression and a negative frame of mind. And if you have that, the hamster wheel brain that goes over and over and over. So what I want you to take away from this, without getting into the specifics of which Jane is to realize that every single person is different.
Speaker 2: (16:49)
Hey, do have a different set of genes. And so we all do experience things in a different way. So if you have someone in your most ho is very prone to panic, is very prone to having neurotic thoughts or the hamster wheel going over and over and getting stuck in a thought pattern and not being able to shift at least understanding some of the factors that are in play here and that their genes just may be predisposing them to doing that. And I'm going to share this blog post that I'm writing at the moment on BDNF, brain derived neurotrophic factor and what you can do to increase set, uh, in order to help elevate your mood. One of those things for example, is to uh, for the baby and is a example. This is to go and do exercise. Now if you're doing at least 30 to 45 minutes of exercise at 70 to 75% of your heart rate, you're going to increase the production of brain derived neurotrophic and that's going to elevate your mood.
Speaker 2: (17:51)
And this is why I run, let's get the run is high and I know all of us just enjoy running for the running site. Sometimes we don't even feel like going out there, but after half an hour out there, what happens? You mood elevates. What's that? There's some brain derived neurotrophic factor, inaction, other things that also stimulate that and what elevates your mode. Things like having a hot shower or hot bath or being in a hot warm environment or getting more sunlight to make more vitamin D, which will also help you produce more brain derived neurotrophic factor. All of these things are really important also in the brain rehab side, but I won't go into that right now, but just to understand, genetically speaking, we all have different ways of processing things in our brain and having some love and care and empathy for people who've, who don't see them.
Speaker 2: (18:39)
Some things the same way as you do, who react very differently and some people will have more a deeper emotional imprint. Then other people, some people will be able to get over things much easier because they have the right combination of genes and another person doesn't have that. That is not to be fatalistic and say, well, those people are babied, is to find out the what can you do? Like the saunas and the hot bows and the exercise and the right supplementation and all of that sort of stuff to help you if you are one of those people affected, increase or head of HIPAA. What resilience when it comes to your emotional wellbeing. So more about that later, but for today's podcast it just wants you to think about some of those things that I've covered off. So I want you to be stimulating your parasympathetic nervous system.
Speaker 2: (19:31)
That means calming your body down. That means stopping the stress and the adrenaline, the cortisol from pouring out all day, all day long. How are you going to do that? You're going to do that through meditation to that true connection to nature, which I've forgotten to mention. You know, like going outside, listening to the birds, looking at the beauty in the trees, looking at the flowers, standing and staring at the beach. If you're still allowed to do that, anything that will connect you and ground you to mother nature will calm your system down. Doing a exercise of course is also going to do there anything that's going to calm the system down. However one portion, don't go and do extremes, amounts of exercise because that will have the opposite effect. Don't overreach at this time. Firstly for your immune system and also for your, you don't want to upset your whole minds and get everything out of balance.
Speaker 2: (20:23)
Okay, so you want to be, um, a little bit conservative with your training at the moment. Just nice chain tool and doing things like working in and state of just working out. So not just the, you know, running and breathing and hard, hard work, but also aiding and the stretching, the, the yoga, the plankung. So things that are going to calm the body down, especially in the evening when you're wanting to get that slate. Because remember, sleep is absolute King, so doing these basics right and getting good sleep, if you can get it. I was sleep right now would be really gold. It'll help you emotionally cope with the situation and not fall off the DPN and be short tempered and doing all those crazy things. Now, just before I go, you have this thing in the, in the Brian like I said, called the amygdala, which is a very formative part of the brain that controls a lot of these trigger responses.
Speaker 2: (21:16)
And you know, in the past, I'll be honest with you, I've had a lot of problems with anger management. So I think I've got some warrior dreams from my, my Maori side, either that or the German or Irish sort of data. Um, and I've been triggered in the past and reacted in ways that I, you know, was not proud of afterwards. Um, and also learning to, to manage these reactions. Now a lot better. I wouldn't sound perfect, but I'm a lot bitter. The amygdala reacts before your, uh, your prefrontal cortex kicks into gear. It's very primitive. It's very lightning fast. So if you're feeling triggered right now, you know one of the things that I'm worried about in this crosses is the mystic piece going up is people doing things that they wouldn't normally do because they are stressed out and they're frightened and they're doing all these things and they were make deliver, starting to take control.
Speaker 2: (22:07)
So I want you to learn just a couple of trucks to keep it under control. One of them is that deep breathing, if you're feeling triggered, if you started to have fights in the family cause you're in close quarters, you've got the kid screaming, you don't know how you're going to pay the bills, your businesses going on the and you're fighting and you know this, this is all us. I think we are all feeling this type of stress right now. Then getting a controlling amygdala and not acting in a triggered state. You know, walking away, going to the other end of the house, doing some deep breathing, starting to tune your logical brain on the way I do this. And getting blood back to the logical brain. Cause the amygdala takes it away from the and helps you, makes you make bad decisions. The rang, I get a controller that as I start to do some logical problem solving things in my brain, like counting backwards from a hundred and lots of seven and I have to go, Oh, how much is that 193 and so on.
Speaker 2: (23:04)
And I have to actually think about it. And that makes me calm down again and gives me a chance to get on top of that adrenaline and cortisol that's come out and makes me want to have a scratch. Um, cause that's not good. And what you're doing when you get into this triggered state also in, in the anger response is you, uh, releasing the cortisol, which is, which is pumping out your blood sugars. So remember those begin angry and you're going to weight problems. You making things worse. You're going to put on more weight because you've increased your cortisol, you're going to leave the four have, have more, a whole warfare. Okay. So there's one, there's a really good reason not to get angry and to stay cool and calm. And this is one of the reasons why doing yoga and [inaudible] and all of those debriefing and all that actually helps you lose weight, which is not the topic of today's conversation, but it does say it because it's actually lowering the cortisol, the stress levels in the body.
Speaker 2: (24:01)
Interesting, isn't it? How we, uh, such complex characters and if we understand more about our physiology and our biology and how things actually interplay, then they can really, really help us in overcoming all these challenges that we're facing. So that's makes us very, guys, I hope this has been helpful to you or please decide that the, or if you want to reach out to me, please do. I'm, you know, this is what I, I'm begging to the mental game. I'm big into the mindset and mental toughness and leadership in, you know, um, some of the lessons that I've learned along in my now quite long nights, um, and sharing those insights with you. Not from a place of I know better because God knows I still have a hell of a lot of things to learn. But from applied, so via I've, I've experienced a few things, bring around the block a few times and wanting to share some of these insights.
Speaker 2: (24:53)
I do that also on my podcast, which is called pushing the limits. I would love you to go and subscribe to pushing the limits because I have some of the greatest minds. I don't know how I get some of these amazing people on the air, but I do, if you look back over the episodes that I've managed to record in the last four years, you've got Nobel prize winning scientists. You've got, you know, some of the top scientists actually in the world, some of the top doctors in the world, some of the top athletes in the world. And I'm not exaggerating, there's been some absolute legends on my show. Say, you know, I be a good way to spend a few of those nails we stuck at home. Um, uh, listening to the podcast is called pushing the limits. You can find it on iTunes, on Lipson, on Stitcher, or via my website, at least at [inaudible] dot com and while you're the gone grab one of my books, one of my friends, uh, especially running this right now is a super book for you to be reading, to strengthen your mind. And, um, really thank you for your time today. And we'll see you again soon.
Speaker 1: (25:49)
that's it this week for pushing the limits. Be sure to write, review and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com