Is it clinical burnout or just a bad day? with Michelle Grosser

Michelle Grosser [00:00:00]:

Stillness is actually the place where we grow our resilience. It's actually the place, like a slingshot where we like, pull back so we can go forward in strength. So what does that look like? Sometimes it's journaling. Sometimes it's just going for a walk, like without my phone and my headphones. Sometimes it's folding the laundry and just silent. Sometimes it is just sitting there praying or meditating.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:00:23]:

I'm a small town kid born with a big city spirit. I choose to play a lot of awesome roles in life. Mom, wife, entrepreneur, CEO, board member, investor, and mentor. 17 years ago, I founded a marketing consultancy. And ever since, my husband junior and I have been building our careers and our family on the exact same timeline. Yep, that means four kids, three businesses, two careers, all building towards one life we love. When I discovered I could purposefully embrace all of these ands in my life, it unlocked my world. And I want that for you, too.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:00:58]:

Im Tiffany Sauder and this is Scared Confident. You guys, I'm really pumped for this conversation today. I'm going to start by reading the bio and then I'll unwrap why I'm excited about it. Okay. Michelle Grosser is who we have today. And she is a pastor, a master life coach, a wife, and a mom to two adorable girls, like so cute. And I have a place in my heart for girl moms. As we know, she started her career as an attorney and I think we'll double click into that.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:01:27]:

So, attorney turned life coach. I think you're one of one there, perhaps. And today she calls herself a nervous system nerd. And she shares her insights weekly on a top podcast like very successful show called The Calm Mom. So, Michelle, welcome to the show. And I'm excited to unpack a little bit this idea of burnout and our nervous system and we're going to go on a ride together.

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Michelle Grosser [00:01:51]:

Oh, my goodness. Thank you so much for having me. So good to be here.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:01:55]:

So I told Michelle at the beginning of this episode, I want this episode to be called is it clinical burnout or just a bad day? So I tend to roll in a fairly low empathy way. Like for an example, my daughter, I don't know if this is low empathy, but we were at a parade this past weekend, fall community parade. And my 13 year old daughter, who like all 13 year old loves her phone, dropped it in the grate. Like the sewage grate. She was sitting on the curb, drafted down, and my first reaction was, honey, that looks like a u problem. So I don't know if that's low empathy, but I felt zero feels. I was like, that looks like something you're going to do. I'm going to move on with my day and you get to recruit a whole bunch of empathetic strangers to help you.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:02:39]:

So let's start with maybe your own journey, Michelle with burnout, because attorneys, lots of billable hours showing up when your clients need you. The environment of an attorney is wrought with burnout. So walk me through a few minutes. Kind of like how you ran into this topic and why you decided, I got to put this in my pocket, make in my life.

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Michelle Grosser [00:03:01]:

Yeah, so good. So I started out working straight out of law school at a really big insurance defense law firm. As a new associate, you were expected to, you know, sleep under your desk and not have a life and bill your time in six minute increments all day long. And I'm like, yep, this isn't for me. That didn't take long. And then I'm like, I'll start my own law practice. And I did that in 2014. So then I was able to be a lawyer plus a business owner, which totally did not solve any of my problems.

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Michelle Grosser [00:03:30]:

And then I had two kids back to back, 16 months apart, and I just crashed and burned. And it was like, I think years and years of ignoring all of the warning signs, just like my body just got to the point where it's, if you're just going to keep ignoring me, I'm going to shut you down. And that's what happened. And, you know, we were talking earlier, as a high achieving three on the Enneagram who loves all her, like, lists and resources, I'm just like, I must be just like, missing a supplement or like, someone just needs to give me a three step plan out of days. And I went to the doctors and I hired my own coach and I worked with a functional medicine practitioner. And what I discovered was that it was way bigger. It was way bigger than just like this little three step plan or a supplement or, you know, an easy fix. I really had to overhaul a lot of the ways in which I was operating my life, relating to people, defining success and accomplishment and doing whole 180.

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Michelle Grosser [00:04:29]:

And when I did that, holy moly. Symptoms started to fade away and my passion came back. And my, just like, the transition from feeling like a shell of myself back to a human being who can get excited about things really excited me to just share how that happened. And the through line for all of it was the state of my nervous system, learning how to regulate my nervous system. So I started a podcast and I started a coaching business and I started to wind down on my law firm. And that's been the last three, four years now of just really getting the word out how other women who are doing all the things can do the same.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:05:06]:

So I love that. Thanks for sharing that. I want to go back to sort of your crash moment again. I don't actually. I've listened to quite a bit of your stuff, but, like, what got your attention so much that you were willing to put this much energy, this much of your, like, desire to understand this much of your intellectual self towards solving this, like, what was happening? I joke early in my own entrepreneurial career, I, like, played life like a game of bumper cars. I would go so fast and crazy until I like, you know, the car blew into the wall and I was like, oh, no, this must not be the right. Like, I could not pick up on little beeps, little yellow lights. Like, nothing muted would get my attention.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:05:49]:

It had to be so big. I think I'm better now, but I'm just curious, were you wise enough to feel the mutes, like, the muted buzzes? Or was there this, like, I can't get out of bed? I don't know this, but how did it get your attention?

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Michelle Grosser [00:06:02]:

Yeah, so I think I can relate to the bumper cars, but I think that was me for a long time, too. And I think part of it is that especially as high achievers, we are just so good in our masculine energy. We're so good in our head. We're so good, like, just pushing through and think, like, I'll give me a strategy and I'm just going to figure this out. And we're so disconnected from our body. And that was me. Like, I was just so disconnected from what my body was trying to tell me. So I think I had been dealing with mental and emotional symptoms for a long time.

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Michelle Grosser [00:06:29]:

Like the brain fog, the feelings of burnout, just anxiousness and irritability and edginess. And I just didn't like how, like, snappy I felt. Like I was coming and waking up dreading the day and, like, little things like that. I'm like, it's a bad day, just push through it, you're fine. But there was the physical symptoms that really caught my attention. Like, all of a sudden my hair is starting to fall out and these gut issues are like, I can't eat anything anymore. Like, my skin looks like a mess, I can't sleep anymore, like, I can't fall asleep. And then I wake up every morning at 03:00 a.m.

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Michelle Grosser [00:06:57]:

and I'm just, like, wired for the day. My joints ache, right? I'm like, it must be an autoimmune condition. Like, why do I feel like crap? And that's really what got me starting to see. And I had small kids, so then it's the question of, like, is this just motherhood with small kids and, like, doing all this stuff? Or, like, is there something really serious going on here? Because I don't want my kids to have a memory of me as, like, oh, my mom was just always tired. My mom was just, like, always running low. My mom was just irritable and snappy. I was like, I gotta do something about this.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:07:23]:

Mm hmm. I appreciate you sharing that. I remember in one, I had just had our third, and it was. She was born in August. We were in the Christmas season. My husband had busted his bicep muscle, like, came undone playing basketball. They, like, drill through his bone. It was like, this big, dramatic surgery, and we had three little ones, and it was Christmas, and my kids wanted lights outside of our house, and I hadn't gotten ahead of it.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:07:52]:

We probably couldn't even afford somebody to put them up there. You know, it was just like, it wasn't a thing. And so it was, like, midnight, and I was like, they wanted lights outside of our house. And so I, like, had pulled some random strings from our basement, and I was, like, at a stepladder in the middle of the winter in the midwest, trying to hang these lights by myself. And all of a sudden, the world went dark. I think I had a panic attack or something where it was like I couldn't feel anything. And I remember just going inside and sitting on the stairs and being like, I need this to go away. Like, I can't not be okay.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:08:31]:

And so I think as I'm, like, listening to some of your things, I'm like, there are place. There are clues in my own past. I think I've somehow in different, with some similar strategic strategies, kind of loosened the vice in seasons of life can be on your body. But that was kind of mine. I was like, I am skating very close to the edge here. Like, I've not had my body abandoned me like that before.

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Michelle Grosser [00:08:55]:

Wow. Yeah, that's scary.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:08:56]:

So I don't know if that's how, like, when women come to you and say, look, I'm. There's sort of these moments where it's like, ooh, my head is failing me. My body is screaming at me, and I don't know how to put all that back together. So where does somebody start? Maybe before we do that, how do you discern between. One of my favorite sayings is you don't get uncommon outcomes in life without uncommon efforts. And maybe that is my own achievement head trash. So walk me through my belief in that statement, or help me unbelieve it. And how you do something extraordinary.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:09:32]:

Build companies, have big families, have big impact. Be community leader. Like, how do you do that? And satiate this achiever that is in us and respect, and be kind to this vessel that is trying to do all that stuff. So how do you think about that? Give me some words and ways to dance through that.

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Michelle Grosser [00:09:54]:

My husband and I were actually talking about this last night, and for the longest time, especially in building my law practice, I had this post it note I taped to my computer screen that said, it's supposed to be hard. And it was just this reminder to myself, it's not that you can't do this. It's not that this overwhelm is too much for you. It's not that whatever is going through my mind, it's that you're doing something really big, and it's supposed to be hard. And in the last two, three years, I was telling him, I'm like, that was complete garbage. I'm like, that was so not true. And I've proven it to myself. And I think what's so interesting now is that the more that I actually come against that, and I remind myself that I get to do all these things and it gets to be easy.

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Michelle Grosser [00:10:38]:

I've made way more money, right? I've grown my businesses, I work less. All the things that everyone's trying to teach us how to do, and I think the biggest handle I can offer in how we can shift our way of thinking around that, and then practically put it into practice, is that there's three different ways of being. And this is something I coach on a lot, especially with high achievers. The first way of being is called the victim. But it's really this. You know, we get caught in these traps of everything external is impacting. And the reason for why we can't do the things that we want to do, like when my kids are older, then I'll launch the podcast, or if my husband helped more than, you know, whatever it is. The problem is that it's always something on the outside that I can't control.

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Michelle Grosser [00:11:15]:

So I'm always just over here waiting for things to change, and then I'll be able to get to it. But the problem is, I can't control it, and the things don't change. So here I am, and I'm just stuck and not living the life I want to live. And as hard as it is to admit, we all spend some time there. So that's the victim. And then the second one is where I lived most of my life and where a lot of my clients lived their life. And that's the worker and the workers frame of the world is I just got to do more. Like, the more I do, the more that I'll have, and then I'll be able to be what it is my end goal is, right? So the more I work, the more freedom I'll have, and then I'll have more time to rest.

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Michelle Grosser [00:11:52]:

The more I work, the more money I'll make, and then the more freedom I'll have to not worry about finances or whatever it is. But the problem with that mindset is it is a mountain with no peak, right? We just, like, never reach the end goal. We never work enough. We never do enough that to do. Lists are never ending. There's always a new task. So we stay stuck on the hamster wheel, and we never actually get to where we want to be. So we can ultimately rest and do what we want to do.

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Michelle Grosser [00:12:21]:

We don't work more to rest. It just doesn't happen. And the third way of being, and the way that I've been really intentional about leaning into and the way that I think or the place I think we wanna spend most of our time, I call it the winner mindset. And that is we actually be what it is that we want to experience. And because of the laws of resonance or manifesting or whatever you wanna call it, we actually call in more of that. So if I wanna be someone who is calm and present, I don't need anything externally and I don't work for that. I just wake up and choose to be calm and present, and then that actually calls in common presence to my life. And then I feel common presence, like this beautiful cycle.

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Michelle Grosser [00:13:00]:

And we do that for anything, right? If I want to have a good marriage, I show up and I'd be a great wife. Try it if you don't believe me. And it calls in a great marriage, and then you get to experience a great marriage, right? I want to show up in my business and my practices and be someone who's super disciplined. I don't need the perfect planner for that. I don't need the perfect program or coach. Like, I just choose that I'm going to be disciplined and it calls in more discipline. And then I get to live from place of discipline. And that is where we find that we can work sustainably, I think, and chase the things that we're chasing, but then we just are.

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Michelle Grosser [00:13:36]:

And then they come to us so fast.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:13:39]:

I love that idea. One of the questions I have, though, is, like, this idea of this winter mindset. I can think of seasons in my life where I have been afraid to start those things. Why is that? Why is it that there is this friction in beginning to start the thing you want to call into your life? Why is that?

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Michelle Grosser [00:13:59]:

Because our ego. Our ego. Well, first of all, it's our ego and our nervous system, the interplay, right? Of the both. So our ego does not like for us to try new things because we're not great at new things. And new things are scary and they're messy, and we fail a lot at new things. So that ego inside of us is like, why even try? Don't even do it. It's not worth it. It's not good.

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Michelle Grosser [00:14:20]:

You know, you're gonna suck at this or whatever it is, right? Our ego doesn't like new, messy, uncomfortable things. Neither does our nervous system, frankly, because our nervous system ultimately always wants the status quo because that is familiar, and familiar is safe. So it's learning how to push past that enough. Like, just gently pushing our edge so it doesn't push us into a stress response like fight or flight or these things that we hear about, but does allow us to grow and do a lot of those scary things that ultimately we need to do to be able to walk in how we want to walk.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:14:54]:

Do you think there's a productive role that stress does play in our life? Like, is the goal of your work to get to a place where there's, I don't know, this friction free environment? Is that the nirvana? Like, is that what you're going for? Help me understand kind of what? Because I see a lot of productivity from stress and not like. But even things like running up a hill versus walking it. It's like that stress is good on my body, I think. I don't know, but maybe I'm so screwed up. I don't know.

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Michelle Grosser [00:15:21]:

Yeah. So the goal is not to try to find, like, I don't even know what it is. Just this, like, Zen life where nothing. I mean, that's just not realistic. It's absurd, right? There is stress that's really good for us. The goal is to grow my capacity to handle what life throws at me so it doesn't, quote, unquote, stress me out. Because here's the thing. There's a difference between the stressors in our life and then the stress on our body.

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Michelle Grosser [00:15:47]:

I want to be able to handle the stressors of life without it throwing my nervous system into a fight or flight response where I'm feeling like everything's urgent and I have to be busy all the time, and I'm always, like, running late and I can't get everything done, and I'm stuck in this scarcity mindset and no one can help me. And I have to like all of those things. We can learn to heal and move past and deal with the stressors that come up in day to day life, and a lot of them are valuable, right? Like, sometimes I do need a time crunch to meet a deadline and get stuff out. Some of that is really good. The goal with our nervous system, ultimately is resilience. So I want to be able to have peaks where I do feel a little more of that anxious, frenetic energy, like, gotta get stuff done today, whatever. I don't want to get stuck there. And that's most of the women that come to me.

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Michelle Grosser [00:16:32]:

They've been stuck in that place for so long, and they don't know how to return to baseline stress level.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:16:39]:

Hey, it's Tiffany. If you've been listening to the show for a while and find yourself thinking, I just wish there was more good news. You can sign up for my newsletter. It's filled with my favorite products, recipes, tips, and stories to help encourage you as you build your life of. And the link is waiting for you in show notes. See you there. So can you walk me through what nervous system like hygiene? That Stella vocabulary, but, like, practically looks like in your life, like we were. You still have two young, busy kids you were just sharing with me before we pushed record.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:17:12]:

Your family just moved, you know, halfway across the country, and you're living in an imperfect environment. It's very uncontrolled. You're in an Airbnb. It's chaotic. So what does nervous system hygiene look like in a time of. I would just say, like, heightened life for you?

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Michelle Grosser [00:17:30]:

Yeah. Okay, so some foundational stuff. I think that's really helpful. One super simple. Everyone who knows anything about any kind of health will tell you this. We got move my body, right? We've got to move our bodies. That's a huge part of healthy nervous system. Regulated nervous system is daily movement.

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Michelle Grosser [00:17:49]:

When it comes to our nervous system, a lot of types of movement, intense movement can actually be additional stress on our body. So if you tend to be someone who's already high stress or wanting to heal. Some of this, like, stress and anxiety, just gentle movement, right? Go over walk, stretching, yoga, pilates, things like that every day. Second, and this is a part that so many of us, well, I guess the next two were uncomfortable with, but that's really where the growth happens. Daily stillness practice every day. This drove me bananas at first. The thought of sitting and doing nothing was terrifying and painful. Like, I just couldn't, like, five minutes, forget it.

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Michelle Grosser [00:18:27]:

I would. I literally, some days would sit down and I'm like, 20 seconds, Michelle, can you sit for 20 seconds and just be okay with that? And then I grew my capacity for stillness. But what happens with stillness? So many different things. One, our brain is literally wired where it needs moments of reflection. It needs moments where, you know, it literally, like, recategorizes the things that are going on and all the input that it's taking in. So if we want to grow our ability to be creative or even logical or all those things, like, we need downtime where we're not constantly consuming. I think also, especially as moms, especially as high achievers, there's just so much stimulation, like information overload to begin with. Right? The sounds and the requests and the lights and, like, all the things.

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Michelle Grosser [00:19:10]:

So stillness is actually the place where we grow our resilience. It's actually the place, like a slingshot where we, like, pull back so we can go forward in strength. So what does that look like? Sometimes it's journaling. Sometimes it's just going for a walk, like, without my phone and my headphones. Sometimes it's folding the laundry and just silent. Sometimes it is just sitting there and praying or meditating.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:19:32]:

Do you allow it to look different for yourself every day? Like, depending on how it needs to fit in?

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Michelle Grosser [00:19:37]:

Yes. And the days where I feel like I don't have time for it. And the days I feel like where I don't want to do it are the days I force myself to because those are the days I know I really need it. Right? And some days it's five minutes and that's okay. And some days it's 20 minutes, and.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:19:50]:

That'S, you know, it's so interesting. I feel like when I was, you know, after babies, like, kind of getting exercise and stuff, like, back into my life, I start in this very rigid way. You know, I have to be at the gym every morning by 530. And this is exactly the program. And, like, it's. Again, I'm just, like, observing this. And then as you start to be like, well, this is kind of fit into my life. And sometimes I have to take my clothes and I walk while my kids at practice like, it.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:20:16]:

Suddenly it kind of like, when you get comfortable with it, it gets like this fluid friend. And I was interesting when I was asking you the question, I was expecting this very rigid response because as a beginner, that's like the cleanest way to start, but at the most impossible, improbable way of beginning anything. Just like observing this, you're like, you know, it's like this thing in my pocket. And I call it out every day, like, I do exercise and, okay, not every day. When I talk about myself, I'm really incredible. But you call it out as the day allows it to be, which is such a more mature relationship with this idea of stillness. And I think I go to this extreme thing where it's like I have to have a room and I have to wake up at 440 and there can't be a kid around. It has to smell good, and my clothes are soft, and.

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Michelle Grosser [00:21:07]:

Everyone'S being nice to me today.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:21:08]:

Totally. But it's impractical. That's not sustainable. I love use just being like, yes, it has to be fluid in the way that it needs to be called into that day. So.

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Michelle Grosser [00:21:20]:

Yeah, and that was me, too, like, with the structure. And I actually did a lot of study around this. I made a quiz about it about five different personality patterns. And my personality pattern is the rigid pattern, which it sounds like you might share a lot of.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:21:35]:

I think that. Yeah, we could be neighbors.

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Michelle Grosser [00:21:38]:

Exactly. And I just got curious. I'm like, why is it so important for me to, like, have this stuff perfectly time blocked and need all the equipment and, like, whatever. All, like, the rigid stuff that. Because it makes me feel safe. Right? Like, it makes me feel safe to have a plan. And a lot of us that fall into that pattern, when I look back, it's like, man, even from a really young kid, like, I'm the oldest of five, right? So, like, the oldest daughter, five kids.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:22:01]:

I'm the oldest of four. Yeah, there you are. Yeah.

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Michelle Grosser [00:22:05]:

I was finally, like, noticed and praised when I was accomplishing things for, like, my organizational, but for being a go getter. I was not someone who was asked, like, how I was feeling about things. It was just assumed I was going to take care of everyone else's stuff. And what that did is it created in me a pattern of always referencing something on the outside and not my own intuition. So that was, like, for me to release a lot of that rigidity and, like, I was obsessed with rules. Like, I became a lawyer, for God's sake. But, like, even my husband would do a U turn, and I was like. Like, the girl.

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Michelle Grosser [00:22:39]:

Like, it drove me crazy, and it was just like, a practice of, like, how can I do the things I want to do while it's messy and not perfect every day? And that bleeds into everything, right? Like, our workouts or our meditation practice or whatever, but also, like, our relationships and our parenting and our business and all the things.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:22:58]:

It's so good. It's so good. Was there another thing you were going to say? I feel like maybe there were three. Oh, yeah.

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Michelle Grosser [00:23:02]:

The last one, my favorite. It's incorporating daily play, and I think so often, especially as women who are doing all the things, we're like, I don't have time for that. We don't buy in to what, like, the ROI is going to be. We think it's for kids or it's another task or whatever it is. But, man, doing something every day that lights you up, that, like, you're not getting paid for, is such a powerful igniter to, like, how you want to be every day. So I don't know, what are the things you did when you were a kid or, like, a teenager? Like, is there an instrument? You love to play, right? Is there a hobby? Is there. Do you love to cook? Do you love to skateboard? You love to. Like, I just started going out in my driveway before we moved and, like, just shooting free throws.

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Michelle Grosser [00:23:41]:

I'm like, a 38 year old woman.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:23:43]:

I'm just, like, in my driveway ribbilling a basketball. That's incredible.

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Michelle Grosser [00:23:47]:

It brings you right back to, like, 8th grade.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:23:50]:

I hope you had on high tops and really bad gym shorts, you know, like, we had to roll 87 times. Yeah.

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Michelle Grosser [00:23:56]:

Oh, yeah. But there's just something about that for, like, ten minutes that when I came inside, I was just so much more pleasant to peer out and, like, the things that went through my mind while I was out there. Right. The ideas that came to me, the business strategy, the people to reach out to it created space for all of that. So I think. I think those are three things that we can all incorporate, like, ten minutes a day that will make such a huge impact.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:24:21]:

Do you. I don't want to put a rule around play, but is it ideally something you're doing on your own so that it's not this, like, social? You know what I mean? Like, is it something where it's like, hey, it's you in a tactile way? With yourself. This is not with a friend. That does that matter? Again, I don't want to get legalistic about it. I get the ideas play, and I'm. I'm hating myself right now for this question. Like, what a buzz kill. But I'm just asking for a friend.

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Michelle Grosser [00:24:47]:

So for your friend, we have a social connection aspect to our nervous system. Our nervous system is wired for social connection. So if you can go out with a good friend and have a cup of coffee and that really fills your cup, that's beautiful. Or you can share activities together, whatever that will be regulating for your nervous system. However, if that's causing you stress to plan or be around people who are sucking your soul or whatever it is, then that's not the key. So I think the bottom line is, like, the things that really light you up, whether it's by yourself or with others.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:25:17]:

I actually recently got out my sewing machine. My mom's an amazing seamstress. So we grew up sewing, and my daughters say, I'm in my sewing era right now, and I'm wondering if it's as connected to play, because it is very childlike and, like, going into hobby lobby and buying a yard of fabric somehow brought me this. They still have to use a pencil. Nothing. You know, I was like, this is incredible. I just jumped back to 1994. Here we are, you and me together.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:25:43]:

And I was like, this is very playful. It's interesting. Just helps me bring vocabulary to it. So thank you for that. Okay. I wanted this. I probably should have done at the very beginning. That's so helpful.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:25:54]:

Define nervous system, because I am, like, not medical, and I think I know what that means. But if people are, you use that word in a way where you really understand, hey, what this means. But, like, what is the nervous system? And how does that operate in our bodies?

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Michelle Grosser [00:26:10]:

Yeah. So our nervous system is basically how our body sends messages, right? Top down and bottom up. So messages from our brain down to our body, and then also messages from our body up to our brain. And it's really our body's command center. So our nervous system is constantly gathering information, and it's storing it away from conception, ultimately. Right. And it's our command center. So it is governing all of the things that we think and the things that we say and the things that we do.

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Michelle Grosser [00:26:41]:

And the research is showing that more than 98% of the things that we think, see, and do are all unconscious and just run under the surface by our nervous system. If our nervous system is its ultimate goal, always right, its first priority is to keep us safe and alive and continuing to exist. So its gathering information to help keep us safe. If you think through our evolution, at some point we would perceive that we were being chased by a saber toothed tiger and our nervous system would catch that, right? And it would do what it had to do and start all these different physiological responses in our body so we could run from that tiger or fight that tiger and continue to survive. And that sends us into what we call our fight or flight response right now, a circuit in our nervous system, and it releases cortisol and adrenaline and, like, activates our body and prepares us. And that is awesome. And it's really helpful in short bursts when we need it, even now. But now in 2024, we don't experience stressors like once every few weeks or once a month or whatever it is.

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Michelle Grosser [00:27:46]:

It's like chronic everyday stress. So for the majority of people, our brain is constantly being like, alarm, alarm, alarm, right? It's like the bank account or the relationship status or the parenting or the health issue or whatever it is. And our body is constantly sending out all of those chemicals, the adrenaline and the cortisol, and we're stuck in that heightened state and we don't know how to get out of it, first of all, which is a huge part of what I teach, and then the second part is that when our body doesn't feel safe, what we're learning as we study the nervous system is that only 20% of our nerves send messages from our brain down to our body. So often we're so focused on, like, mindset, willpower, discipline, like, all of this stuff to, like, get through. Like, I'm terrified of giving this speech, but I'm just going to push through it and have the right mindset and be prepared or whatever. But 80% of the nerves in our body are sending messages from our body up to our brain. So if we're only focusing on mindset, ultimately it's like a four to one tug of war, and we're not going to have much success. So we have to be able to know how to, like, show our body that it's going to be okay, not just tell our body that it's going to be okay.

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Michelle Grosser [00:29:01]:

And our body doesn't understand words and it doesn't understand a verbal language. So, like, when you talked about that experience of having a panic attack, you can't talk yourself out of that. You can't just be like, calm down, this isn't a big deal. You've got this, chill out, or if someone else tells you that, like, how enraging is it when someone tells you to calm down? We have to show our body and our nervous system that it's safe in a way that it understands. And we do that through movement and sound and breath and touch and social connection. And those are ultimately the tools that we all need to learn. So we can have our brain telling our body and our body telling our brain the same thing.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:29:43]:

You have a private podcast feed or something, and I listen to all those. And I was at my daughter's. She was trying out a new volleyball gym. Anyway, it doesn't really matter, but it was kind of this stressful thing for her, and I think I was, like, absorbing some of it, and I was totally doing the, like, touching my belly and, like, breathe. And I was like, this is wild. I am looser. It was wild. It was like, it really does work.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:30:04]:

I mean, you know, it works, but, like, for people listen. It really does. I was like, this is crazy. I'm, like, more settled. I'm more present. I can feel the air around me. My senses were, like, looser. That's.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:30:15]:

I don't know. That's how I would describe it, so it's so good.

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Michelle Grosser [00:30:17]:

And, like, for us, when I say us, like, you and me and all the people listening who, like, want to do all the things, when we are stuck in that fight or flight, like, that heightened state in our nervous system, it actually shuts down our prefrontal cortex, which is the part of our brain that lets us be, like, awesome people, and it sends us into the survival part of our brain that's just run or hide. Imagine how that informs decisions and risk taking and hiring and all of the things that we need to do well. So when we are regulated, just like you were saying, when we can bring that safety to our body, it turns our prefrontal cortex back online. And that's where we have access to, like, our highest levels of communication, and we have access to compassion and empathy and seeing things from different perspectives. And we can think more rationally and logically and all of this stuff. So it's not just like, oh, I want to feel better and be happy all the time thing, but it's actually, like, one of your greatest business strategies, relational strategies, parenting strategies, to know how to, like, get yourself out of that really activated state and back to feeling more present.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:31:23]:

So, how has that. We've talked a lot about kind of the inside game and application of this and, like, getting more comfortable with yourself. And I love the distinction between stress and stressors. Because you're right. It's an ongoing conveyor belt of stressors. How has your relationship with your husband, your family, like, how has that evolved alongside this journey? Has it always been like, oh, we were match paced the whole time, or I he thought I was he married? I really don't know. How did that go, and how has that evolved? And how is your relationship look today versus in 2014 when you were like, okay, I can't. This is not sustainable.

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Michelle Grosser [00:32:01]:

Well, it started out, like, Jeff and I were just best friends from the beginning, and it was, like, super easy. Like, I was in law school. He was, like, working in restaurants. So we were going out to dinner at, like, you know, 11:00 p.m. on South beach and just living that life. And I'd hear people say, like, marriage is hard. I'm like. Like, they don't know what they're talking about.

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Michelle Grosser [00:32:19]:

Like, marriage is actually so fun and so easy. And then whatever. It was, like, eight years later, we had a child, and I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is so hard. I can't stand this person. Or, like, whatever it is that comes up, like, real life. And part of, I think, my fall into such a deep state of burnout and all the things that were associated and contributed to that, right? Like, perfectionism and people pleasing and my self worth being tied to my productivity and all these things. I thought about myself and my disconnection with my own emotions and the paradigms I had around what it meant to be strong or weak or, I don't know, all the things right. Really contributed to, I think, just me being kind of, like, irritable and edgy and short fused.

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Michelle Grosser [00:33:04]:

And that's not a fun person to be married to and then add on two small children, and then I became an even less fun person to be married to because I had all of these unspoken and, I think, uneven realized expectations of how he was gonna show up as a parent. Because my dad, as I remember it, had five kids and, like, did the diapers and did all the things and was there for every dinner. And, of course, my memory is so whitewashed, and it took so much humility, I think is probably the biggest part of it for me to realize how much of a part of the problem I was and the role that I was playing. And then the more that I would try to change Jeff or take him along on the journey, the more resistance there was for him, and that would just grow a divide between us. So what was so fascinating is that the more I just let that go and just focused on myself and, like, healing my own stuff and being more present myself and healing all that stuff I talked about, right. Like the impatience and the perfectionism and the people pleasing and the high expectations and the busyness and all those things. Our whole relationship changed. It really did.

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Michelle Grosser [00:34:14]:

And the more I gave him freedom to just do things on his own, the more that he actually did evolve in his own way. And the more that I. You know, where your focus goes, your energy flows, they say. So the more that I changed on, like, the things that I focused on for him and my gratitude for him and the really beautiful and strong things about our marriage and spoke of them to him out loud without it being, like, passive aggressive. The more that he continued to show up and do those things and meet those needs that I had, the more I learned what my needs even were. Because I had no idea before, I think, and how to express them in a way that wasn't confrontational and didn't cause him to be, like, so defensive, which is both an art and a science, I think it really grew. And two and a half years, for the most part of our marriage, we're like two ships passing in the night. Because I worked at a law firm during the day and he ran a restaurant at night.

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Michelle Grosser [00:35:07]:

So it's like I would get home and he would go to work. And then two and a half years ago, we planted a ministry together in Miami at church, and we're both doing it together. And for the first time, we were, like, working together. And that was wild. And I'm like, wow, I never thought we would be able to do this, but we've grown so much that this is, like, actually working and fun, but a lot of that is us just, like, staying in our own lanes, which is interesting. So I don't know if that answers your question.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:35:33]:

Yeah, well, yeah, it totally does. I think that we can sometimes talk about these things in a vacuum, but they don't exist in a vacuum. Any effort in our life of getting better and changing and deciding to address some of the things that are keeping us from life. And so I just appreciate you sharing. I just think it's important the context in which we have to live in is relevant, and it doesn't all grow at the same rate I've seen in my own life and journey. And so knowing that sometimes fixing something can create not tension, but change in a different area of life and that can be unsettling at the same time. You're finding your feet. So I don't know.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:36:14]:

I appreciate you sharing that. One last question, and then we'll let people kind of learn where they can learn more about you. But how did you keep stamina for the journey in this, like, world of quick fixes and 90 days to your perfect body? And we, like, know intellectually it's not true, but when we're in pain, the idea of it being fixed fast is appetizing because we want the pain to go away quickly, but it didn't show up quickly, and so it usually doesn't go away quickly. How did you keep stamina for the journey? Or how when you're working with people, how do you encourage them in that? Because I find we just quit sometimes too early. So how do you think about that? How did that journey look for you, Michelle?

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Michelle Grosser [00:36:57]:

I think it's both. I think one, you can have an understanding and appreciation that, like, the real good, true things just take time, right? Even like podcasting. Right? Like, that is a long game. That is a game where I'm like, I'm going to go at least two years before I decide if this is working or not because it's just slow, but it's awesome and it's powerful. So I think that is part of it, like, having a realistic understanding of the why. Why is this going to take time? Because it's actually going to work, right. And I'm willing to invest. And then the second part of that is that I think with all of these things that we want to do that are really big and feel like they can take time, there are also parts of it where we can see quick wins.

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Michelle Grosser [00:37:34]:

And I think, like, keeping our eyes on that can be really helpful, too, because that can be really motivating. And then I think another thing that I did, two thoughts that are coming to mind. One is I, as far as sustainability, I made a promise with myself or commitment to myself that I was going to allow myself to have seasons that felt like sprints, but I was no longer going to have seasons that felt like marathons. So if I had, you know, a big launch coming up or a case that was going to trial or, you know, whatever it was, I was like, all right, I'm going to put a start date and an end date to this, but I'm like six weeks and I'm like, scheduling time to rest because before that pace was like my default and that was not sustainable. And then the other thing I think that can be really helpful is that a lot of times we get discouraged when it feels like things are going slowly because we're caught in the comparison. Trapden. It's actually not going slow. It's just you have a bunch of people lying that it's going, it went faster for them or that they think it should go faster and they don't know what they're talking.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:38:32]:

Yes, that is, yes. Say it again for the people in the back. It's such a thing.

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Michelle Grosser [00:38:38]:

It's a thing. I went through my instagram. I just slashed it. Probably took me months because I did like 20 a day or something of people I was following. I just started unfollowing, unfollowed every influencer. I unfollowed anyone that was just giving me crap like that. And I started following women in their sixties, really experienced entrepreneurs who I can look and see like they've been doing this for the long haul and, like, have made a ton of money doing it. The people that I'm like, I buy what they're selling.

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Michelle Grosser [00:39:10]:

So it, like, really helped me put the blinders on and set my expectations because there's so much noise out there.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:39:18]:

It makes me crazy. My thing right now is like, if you say to a 25 year old, you can build, maybe this is, again, my own achievement trap, but that you can work 22 hours a week, four days a week, and it's like, at some point, you need reps, you need exposure. You need, like, you have to takes doing a podcast to know how to do a podcast. You can't just phone in and it works. It just takes so much doing things when you're bad and uncomfortable and it's messy and it's inefficient and it doesn't work, and you're annoyed and, like. And then those cycles speed up as you start to put your experience, lived and mentored experience towards new projects, then, yeah, you're successful a little faster and then a little faster because there is a formula, but, oh, my gosh, yes, yes, yes.

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Michelle Grosser [00:40:06]:

I even remember when I started my podcast. Like, don't go back and listen to the first episodes of my podcast, please. Like, nobody do that. Because I would record an episode, and then I would just put my mic down and be like, well, that was the worst episode I'll ever record. I'm just knowing that the next one just has to be better, but I'm gonna keep going. And that's true with everything, right?

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Tiffany Sauder [00:40:26]:

Everything, yeah, exactly. So, okay, Michelle, if people are like, oh, my word, I need you in my life, how do I begin this journey of unwinding myself from my overactive nervous system and my drug of achievement, Tiffany's summary. Where do they start?

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Michelle Grosser [00:40:45]:

Awesome. You can find me at my podcast, which is called The Calm Mom. And it's probably the best place to get a bunch of information about your nervous system. And we really focus on resourcing high achievers who are also raising kids and trying to manage and heal anxiety, overwhelm and burnout. The quiz that I mentioned is super enlightening and I get most more feedback on that than anything else where people take it and they're like, oh my gosh, I feel so seen. Like, this is crazy. So you can find that@michellegrosser.com quiz and my website is just michellegrosser.com dot. You can can find all the things there.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:41:19]:

Awesome. And we'll link in show notes. So thank you so much for Michelle, for being on. You were so present and honest and I really appreciate the double click into who you are, what you're doing. And I'm reminded that I can chill a little and maybe things will be great.

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Michelle Grosser [00:41:35]:

They will. They will be great.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:41:36]:

That's right. They will be great. I believe. I know.

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Michelle Grosser [00:41:39]:

Thanks for having me. It's been a joy.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:41:42]:

Thank you for joining me on another episode of Scared Confident. Until next time, keep telling fear. You will not decide what happens in my life. I will.

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