Take Back Control with Nervous System Regulation | Neuroscience Advisor Ashley Douglas

Your Nervous System Was Built for Survival. Now Train It for Thriving | Ashley Douglas Transcripts

[Ashley]

And that's what I really love about neuroscience. I'm a total nerd about it. I'm obsessed because it provides language and science as to why we do what we do, why we think what we think.

I just really want to share that as much as possible to have people realize that they're not who they think they are, that there's a version of them that maybe they're feeling or struggling with something and just think it's them. They think it's them personally, there's something wrong with me, and it's not.

[Roger]

You have a good idea of how you want to show up at work and in social circles.

But in the moment, when something gets said, or something happens that provokes you, a fear state switch gets flipped, stress floods in, and now suddenly someone else is driving the bus.

That's not a character flaw. That's your wiring.

And today’s guest, Ashley Douglas, shares that with an understanding of neuroscience and nervous system regulation, you can take back the wheel, overcome your anxiety, and regain your control, confidence, and calm presence.

Welcome to What Do You Know To Be True? where we have meaningful conversations about the superpowers inside each of us, validating that you already have what you need to become more of your possible self.

I’m Roger Kastner and I’ve spent over 25 years working with leaders and teams to co-create the strategies that bring clarity, possibility, and humanity back into their lives and the workplace.

In this conversation, Ashley identifies how to stop fighting your nervous system, and start using it to be more of who you naturally are and want to be.

Her own experience with trauma and burnout brought her to brain science, and now she’s sharing it with the world.

If you’re ready, let’s dive in.

[Roger]

Hey, Ashley, thank you for joining me today. I'm grateful that we're getting this opportunity to be together. And I'm really looking forward to the conversation we're about to have.

Thank you. It's very nice to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

I'm excited to learn more about your superpower. I became aware of you from your writings on LinkedIn and Substack, where you share about neuroscience, nervous system regulation, and resilience so we can be better leaders for others through our own self-leadership. And when we first spoke, I loved hearing about your journey and transformation from being a leader within organizations to now advising leaders with a couple big pivot moments in the middle.

You mentioned that you are a surfer, and I thought that's so perfect because when we're talking with leaders and when we're leading workshops, we often talk about the ocean and surfing as metaphors, but these aren't metaphors for you. They're truly a way of life. So love, love for you to weave this in as much as possible as we go, but so much for us to get into.

But before we get too far, what's important for us to know about you?

[Ashley]

That I will be as human as possible in my answers, as honest, and also as open. There's no hidden things. There's no contrived, just simply what I know to be true, what I've experienced, and what I can share.

[Roger]

I love the authenticity and simplicity of that.

[Ashley]

Simplicity is really my message.

[Roger]

I imagine that we over-complicate things. When we get stuck in overthinking, we over-complicate them, probably because of some of this nervous system regulation you're about to share with us and the nervous system kicking in and maybe telling us who we should be or how we should show up, but now I'm jumping in to the content too far deep. So before we talk about leadership, neuroscience, and nervous system regulation, I'd love to start here.

When you look at your life and work, what do you see as your superpower and when did you first begin to realize it was something you could intentionally develop?

[Ashley]

So for me, empowering people to be who they really are. It's really who are you and who do you want to be away from, who society tells you you should be, who you've been told as a child, who the systems have told you you should be, who are you really inside, what does that feel like, what is the human version of you, and who do you really want to be? It's simple, but it also sounds quite large, but it's really simple.

It's like who am I and it's not the existential question of who am I, it's just who am I as a human, you know, like what do I stand for, what's my values, what matters to me, what doesn't, you know, those really like simple, very honest questions.

[Roger]

As you were describing that, this idea of who we want to be and who the system wants us to be, and that feels like an unfair fight, but the system is so much bigger than us, right? So what are some of the things that you found to be true? And we're just, I'm spoiling that question early on, but we'll come back.

Yeah, we've just, that listener, you haven't missed 30 minutes of the podcast, but I'm curious, like, how do you think about that idea of balancing ourself to be more who we want to be and who we truly are versus what the system's telling us? How do you prepare for that? How do you make that fight a little bit more fair?

[Ashley]

Yeah, it's so interesting because the systems that work without us even realizing, right? On a subconscious level, the system has always been there, whatever system we're talking about, and we have been taught as we grew up, before we even realized who we are, what we should be, what others have told us. With my journey, it took me, gosh, many years to start questioning what the system told me or what the systems told me I should be, and there's a question in itself.

So it takes a lot of courage to really, courage and resilience, things that I talk about a lot, it takes a lot of courage and resilience to actually start questioning who our brain and our beliefs tell us we are and we should be. There's so much as a human to unlearn or to reframe or to reprogram whatever language we want to look at, because there's just so many layers and there's nothing, you know, I'm not someone who ever talks about the layers. I'm not going to start, you know, rubbishing or beating up all of that because, you know, this is part of life, but it's having the courage and the resilience to actually go, you know, is this right or is this wrong?

Should I really be this? And if that means I should be this, I should be doing that. I find this just really hard on the system to always believe we should conform to what others tell us we should and should not be, because that makes us feel bad about ourselves.

I really believe it's the courage to actually question your beliefs because it's quite difficult, you know, it's like a little hoop on you. So, am I really this? Am I really that?

Have I really got this, you know, this belief about myself that I'm not good enough or I should be that person to be successful? It takes a lot of courage to do that and then it takes a lot of resilience to have the energy and the capacity, and I took a deep breath there, I just noticed, the capacity and the energy to keep asking the questions. But it's, you really have to, like, be close to yourself and you have to have a lot of courage to start questioning what's really there in terms of the systems.

[Roger]

I mean, that makes me wonder about our own internal systems instead of, like, the other systems we exist in, but our internal systems. And you mentioned that these thoughts aren't necessarily, the stories we tell ourselves aren't necessarily good or bad. The question I've heard other people say is, is this story working for me?

And not necessarily good or bad, but, you know, what does it do for me versus what does it do to me?

[Ashley]

Yeah, that's a really nice way to frame it. It felt really soothing and safe on the system when I heard you say it like that, it lands. Here's a nice little tool, actually, that I use with people.

More often than not, our stories are not true. They're a construction, mostly. But if we tell ourselves these stories over and over again, they are true, of course.

But it's something like, if you look at the sky and think it's green, then it's green. You could be colour blind and, of course, it's green. But we all know the sky to be blue.

But if you tell us, tell yourself something over and over, and you do that thing over and over, it becomes true. So to you, it's true. It doesn't necessarily mean it's true in reality, the outside world.

So what I often tell someone is, is there one other way that you can look at this belief? Or one other version of the story that you can create that could be true? And if they come up with it, I'm like, okay, cool.

Your belief is 50% true. Before it was 100%. Can you give me another three versions?

If they give me five, that means the belief is 20% true. So actually, it was 100% a couple of moments ago. Now it's 20% true.

That's pretty cool. So if you can give me 10 versions, that means your belief that you thought was 100% true that was nagging you is actually only 10% true. That tricks the brain.

It almost makes the brain go, hold on a second. I was really believing that that was true. But we default back to what we know to be true, because it's safe.

So yes, you can see something as being 10% true, but you have to do it over and over again, you know, for your brain to actually start believing it, because the brain needs evidence. These are like simple little things. And like you said, is this benefiting me?

Most probably not, if it's a negative belief. So what's a positive belief we want to create? What's a positive scenario?

What's a positive outcome? What's the behaviours that we want to compound with that belief? Because beliefs are multi-sensory.

Often you feel something, you think something, it's associated with a bodily sensation, it might be associated with a behaviour. So if you think, I don't value myself or I'm never good enough, that could actually have a behaviour where every time you think that thought, your body feels a certain way, you don't go to the gym, you're like, oh, I want to stay in bed, I don't want to get up. I want to eat that food that's comforting.

So you see, there's like three things, and our brain is multi-sensory. So neuroplasticity is multi-sensory, it has to be felt on different levels. Because once you actually recognise that whole compounding layered effect, you can start to think, okay, what can I do to create thoughts that are actually beneficial to me, that are actually good for me, versus the ones that take my energy, that deplete my energy, that make me see the world through a particular lens.

So these are kind of like the questions or the perspectives alongside what you said that I try and look up with people, and also myself. I'm not completely exempt from this, not in the slightest. You know, it's just catching yourself and having a little bit of courage to question what's coming up or what I'm seeing and stuff.

[Roger]

I know when I've talked to people about the stories we're telling ourselves, there's something that feels almost inauthentic when we talk about rewriting the stories, as if the original story was true, but we know that original story is a construction. Do you find the leaders you work with sort of feeling a little challenged, and how do you unlock that ability to see, oh, all these stories are manufactured, why don't we write the ones that work for us?

[Ashley]

Are all the stories untrue? That was what caught me first of all. Are all the stories untrue?

Or maybe just some of them.

[Roger]

I think we have to get into a definition of what true means, which is kind of the reason why this podcast has the name that it is. That truth, I think, what I have found to be true, is that truth in and of itself is malleable, is flexible. We can discuss what's truth versus fact, but I think so much of our perceived reality is observed through our senses and the stories we tell ourselves and the parts that come up to try to protect us.

I wonder if there was a way to measure how much is true, and is everything partially true? Is it fully true? Is it zero percent true?

[Ashley]

What I always tell people, it's a really simple way to look at it, is everything in the outside world, our entire reality is a construct of our brain. All the workings are in there, and as you said, the wiring, the patterns, the beliefs, everything that we see in the outside world goes through here. I don't know if we've ever truly had that drummed into us as humans.

I know I most certainly have not, until I found neuroscience quite some years ago to help me understand my brain, and then I started studying it. So whatever we see, and then the meaning we associate to it, and the language we give it, all goes through here. So if you and I were sat watching something, you've probably heard this, we will come away with a very different version, because our brains have been programmed and therefore work.

Well, you know, the wiring is there, the survival wiring, the science behind the RAS system that filters, you know, all of this is in here. We all have the same programs, or let's say wiring, but our beliefs are different, and our beliefs come from how we've grown up and what we've seen around us, and that's, you know, what makes our version different, what we pay attention to, what we filter. So isn't it important to learn how this works, to then see how it's shaping what we experience on the outside world?

And then for me, that takes us back to the question of, is that true? And we're at a point there, I'm saying that outside world, our reality. So we think it's true, because we tell ourself it's true, so therefore our brain starts filtering to confirm it's true, but it's just a construct of our mind.

[Roger]

So is it true for anybody? A potentially unanswerable question, right? My friend, Asli Aker, who I spoke with about polarity management, has definitely schooled me into thinking anytime I think of something as A or B, or black or white, or between these polarities, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

And it's dancing with that energy in between those two options that we find what is true for us.

[Ashley]

How does that make you feel to dance within that spot, like bodily sensations and stuff?

[Roger]

There's the momentary feeling of, oh dummy, of course. So there's a little moment of like, why do I have to keep relearning that lesson? And then the possibilities start opening up, the creativity, the play, the joy that comes forward just erases any moment of shame, and then gets really excited about like, okay, that's like, would rather be in the boulevard than on the curbs.

Speaking in metaphors, but the problem is you're playing in the street, you might get run over by some metaphorical car, or truck.

[Ashley]

My question, because when you were sharing that with me, I noticed the bodily sensation in myself. And I was really curious for you what it felt like in that space. And I heard you talk about the creativity opens up, so that gives you access to your right hemisphere, you know, and whichever hemisphere you tend to lean on when you have information coming at you, and then you process that was really interesting, because I felt your whole right hemisphere go.

But when you were, when you were telling me about the, you know, the answer lies kind of in between, I felt a little sense of unease, because it's the uncertainty of dancing in between what I don't know, a space I don't know. And I was like, oh, and then I noticed it was like, hmm. So it's interesting how our system responds to that.

[Roger]

Yeah, now I want to go down that path, Ashley, tell me more, because I find you to be extremely curious, extremely interested in learning new things. Your path into neuroscience and understanding our nervous system and how all of this works together, just seems like curiosity on steroids, because not only you're learning about this, you're sharing it in such a beautiful and generous way. Tell me about your, like, you mentioned this idea of finding, you know, when there's something that you don't know, you become uncomfortable.

And is that the spark to go figure out, okay, let's figure out what this is all about? Is that what that's like? Or tell me more about what that's like for you and how that motivates you?

[Ashley]

I love your questions. They definitely have my brain. I looked to the right this time, and I was like, huh, I'm looking for a bigger picture here.

No, but it's just great to, you know, when you know about how your brain works, it's really interesting to see when you look in certain directions, recalling an old memory or joining dots with pieces. And that was me looking to the right. I feel it's the missing piece in where we are in terms of understanding who we are as people, who we are as leaders, who we are as teachers, as educators, as parents.

We, from what I understand, and what I notice, is we think that we are X, Y, and Z as people. We believe that we have all these problems and these challenges, which, of course, you know, we do, but I'm saying this very generally. We beat ourselves up.

Hmm. I'm too emotional. I'm too passive.

I'm too kind. People think kindness is, there's something wrong with it, especially in business. I'm too empathetic.

I'm too whatever. And we all believe that these are personal things about us. What we learn with neuroscience is this is our wiring.

This is who we have been wired and formed to be. Therefore, it's not a me problem. It's a wiring problem.

It's a, not a brain problem, because that sounds like there's something wrong with your brain when there's not. It becomes less personal. And it therefore becomes tangible in the ability to change it.

And it's what I wrote, what I shared yesterday about Eileen Gu. This 22-year-old is literally talking about how she is the person she dreamed she could be as a child, who she wants to be as an athlete, as a public figure. And, you know, she's talking about it in her 22-year-old energy as well, going how cool is this?

We just don't know these things. We haven't been taught these things. And I think more and more, it's becoming more visible about the brain.

It's becoming more accessible, the information. And for me, I want to be able to share it. I want to be able to take this super complex stuff and digest it and share it with people so that it resonates with them to see themselves in it.

It's not a me problem. You know, like it's challenging enough as it is in this world to be who we are, to navigate life with many things that are going on, many things that are outside of our control. This is the resilience piece.

How do I navigate it as me? How do I navigate it with strength? How do I navigate it without losing my energy?

How do I navigate it and still maintain my kindness, my loving energy, my not be all about yourself, not be selfish, but like look at people. You know, and if you learn about how your brain works and you don't take it so personally, which is just looking at yourself like this and you don't see what's outside there, then you stop experiencing the richness of the world. You're not able to connect so much with people and feel that richness.

You can't fully experience, you know, a purposeful work or a work that gives you pleasure or feels like purposeful and you're actually giving back. It becomes so one-dimensional and that's what I really love about neuroscience. I'm a total nerd about it.

I'm obsessed by it because it provides language and science as to why we do what we do, why we think what we think. And if we take that, we start to understand for ourselves what is really happening. Now the brain, like I said a little while ago, it defaults and then it clicks back.

Like we'll learn something, go, oh my goodness, that's really cool. That's really interesting. We have a light bulb moment.

And then the brain goes, anyway, carry on. Let's go back to the default settings. We have to keep telling yourself over and over again.

But it gives us the information that I feel has always been missing. You know, it's that deeper thing that's underneath our behaviours, our thoughts, our emotions. Well, they don't even say it's emotions, they say it's predictions.

So it's just underneath because it's this thing. And I think it's crazy that we haven't actually been shared this information so vastly and so publicly until, you know, recent years. And I just really want to share that as much as possible to have people realise that they're not who they think they are.

You know, that there's a version of them that maybe they're feeling or sensing. They're really challenged with something or struggling with something and just think it's them. They think it's them personally, there's something wrong with me and it's not.

[Roger]

You dropped a little nugget in there that I think we, I'd like to touch on briefly this idea that emotions are predictions. Could we go back to that just briefly and explain what do you mean by that?

[Ashley]

Yeah, so this is actually research from Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett that I talk about a lot. I am a student with a school in the US called Be Above Leadership. The two teachers have been, gosh, involved in studying and teaching and leading in the teaching of neuroscience applied to leadership, to behaviour, to coaching, whichever space that you want to take it in.

They have been very much in this space for over 15 years and they work with, you know, they've worked with Dr Dan Siegel, of course, Lisa Feldman Barrett, Amanda Blake, some of the very forward thinking brains and minds sharing the research within this space and the most up-to-date research as well because it's constantly changing and evolving. So you have to be really at the forefront of it. So these two teachers, they're wonderful.

Our emotions are not emotions per se in the way that we know of them, i.e. we have an emotional reaction. She talks about prediction. So our brain, as I talk about a lot, is wired for survival period, first and foremost.

So back in the day, if a tiger was coming to get you, you need to know that this tiger is coming to get you and what you need to do before you actually consciously think what you need to do because you need to survive, period. Our brain is predicting based on what our senses are feeling, hearing, seeing, and then it predicts, oh, something is coming to get me. I need to run because we have energy resources and only a certain amount in the energy bank.

So if we can predict faster than we can think, we are able to in an unconscious manner, sense, predict, move and the conscious awareness is I'm running from a tiger but your system has already gone. I've heard that or I felt that. I've got myself up.

It's, you know, I'm releasing the hormones so you can actually do something, cortisone, adrenaline. So you move and you're off. This is very much evolutionary neuroscience, so our predictive processing.

So when we apply it to emotions, someone comes into a meeting room or someone gives you a funny look or something like that, your system has already been pre-programmed to survive. So a funny look, it's questioning your identity, your ego. It's all about survival.

So modern day survival is hearing footsteps coming into your office. Stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp. It's a shareholder questioning the budget.

It's losing money. You know, like our modern day survival, it's an email. It's anything that triggers our system, that triggers the threat system.

So what we do is we already have this wiring in us, a survival wiring that's already been programmed into our brain. So we're not thinking, is this an email that might say something positive? We're seeing the subject header.

We're already telling ourselves this is happening. I need to survive. So we predict the outcome because we only have a certain amount of energy.

If we just predict that something is going to happen that's about our survival, it's much less energy because the neural pathway is much quicker. And also we pay attention to what we know to be true because of the reticular activating system. All of these things are happening.

All of these systems, all of these programs and wiring are happening within our operating system in a non-conscious way. So by the time we have an emotion about whatever has happened, and also the cortisone adrenaline has been released as well, we're experiencing a reaction, as we call it, an emotional reaction. So actually the predicting system, the prediction system has happened already.

So there's a whole thing happening behind the scenes. But we are only conscious of the emotion because everything else is non-conscious. So that's why we say, yeah, we're having an emotional reaction, but it's like you're actually having a predictive response.

[Roger]

In some of the things I've read about consciousness and the idea of how the body is a prediction machine, exactly what you're talking about, that we are actually having a moment before we're conscious of the moment, before we have that feeling because of our predictive ability. So when you mentioned emotions are predictions, I'm like, let's go back and touch on that one because it's really, really important to know that.

[Ashley]

But hey, imagine just knowing it and thinking, what do I do with this?

[Roger]

Yeah, that's where I was going to go. What do we do? I mean, how do we, when we find ourselves having that emotional reaction, how do we get out of that?

How do we, you know, the juices will flood out of us at some point, but how do we make sure we're not going off those wrong predictions?

[Ashley]

Yeah, it's so interesting, isn't it? Having the information and doing something about

<<PASTE>>

[Ashley]

Having the information and then doing something about it are two completely different things, right? We can have, and I think I've written about this as well, we can have so much information and our bias tells us that we know exactly what, you know, we should do with this. This is work.

This is, that's all I'd say.

[Roger]

No, no, no, no, no. Boil it down to two or three hacks, please.

[Ashley]

But it's, it's work, right? To constantly catch yourself when this happens is work. But one thing that I do a lot, breathe.

When you start feeling a sensation, that's your body telling you something is going on. You might not consciously be aware of it yet, but when you're feeling something, that's your opportunity to start slowly changing the chain or start breaking the chain. I always look at it as all these like little neurons and I'm like just cutting them for a second, like breaking this little path that you walk on.

Taking a breath, a physiological breath is a small nervous system reset, a long breath out. You know, there's so many people that do a lot of breath work now. So the box breathing or two and four out, three and six out.

The longer the exhale, you can even feel it as well, but you have to remind yourself or you have to train yourself to know to take that breath. Because remember, we have this, this prehistoric wiring that is in us for survival. So it's racing along at a speed to keep us alive.

So to even catch that, and that's why I'm saying it's work, you know, it's, we have to start questioning and having the courage to question, what is this? Do I want to respond or not? But even before that, you've got to feel it.

And when you feel it, take a breath. So when you start doing that, it breaks the chain. It breaks that racing along at a speed to keep you alive.

You might not have the answers, but it starts to make a change in terms of, I feel this, I think this, I'm going to do that. Because that's what's happening. You know, when people have burnouts, because modern day stress is constant, the constant coming at you, the email, the footsteps, the this, the that, it's constantly spiking.

So that's why our system gets so out of energy, because it's constant. So even that small thing can start breaking a big chain. But it really does take, it takes work.

I'm sorry, that's how it takes work. And it's even for me, it takes work. I mean, constant.

[Roger]

Yeah. And I love that response. And I love the simplicity.

Like we were talking about what's the hack to hack our system. And hacks are meant to be simple. And yet, coming back to the breath.

Breathe. Simple. And that, you know, if you remember the breath, and then realize, okay, wait, why am I taking a breath when I'm feeling this emotion?

Oh, yeah, I'm trying to understand, you know, does this, does this emotion serve me in this moment? Is it right sized for this moment? It's that emotion might be right size for the saber tooth tiger.

And it's just an email.

[Ashley]

When you take the breath, your prefrontal cortex comes back online. Because when you're in survival mode, it's offline. So the prefrontal cortex is the executive functioning part of your brain.

And it's responsible for making clear decisions, focusing, being practical, I am having empathy, making or evaluating the stress that's in front of you. So as you said, is this a saber tooth tiger? Or is it just an email?

That breath allows the prefrontal cortex to come back online and do its job, evaluate the situation. But if you've got so many hormones racing through your body, you can't do that as your prefrontal cortex is offline, meaning your brain is offline. And when I say that, it's just not functioning properly.

You know?

[Roger]

Oh, it's so good. I know with my coaching clients, I will often when they say something really big, really powerful, and I take that big breath, just just a little process what I've heard, then they've told me they will take the it's a good reminder for them. So I don't even tell them anymore.

Like, hey, let's take a breath with that. I just take it. And they go with me on it.

[Ashley]

Mirror neurons. Yeah, they're beautiful thing, right?

[Roger]

So Ashley, what or who empowered you to have the superpower of empowering people to be who they really are, and who they really want to be?

[Ashley]

Yeah, it's interesting this one. I worked in corporate for a long time. And I worked for some fairly large organizations, global organizations, a couple of fortune, would you call them 10?

Yeah, probably. And in very senior positions of a young age, I was really driven to be successful in work. I really was so excited by work about travel, about working with these big companies.

And just being part of this corporate world is definitely drawn to the working all over the world and having a global footprint in a role, because that meant connecting to different cultures and different people. And seeing that one way is not the only way. That's definitely something I got out of that.

Because if you just stay in one place, you just think your way is the only way. But then when you start working with multiple cultures, and multiple cities, and multiple brands, also, you realize that there's so many different ways of doing things, and really your edges get pushed. And it's so interesting, because you have to be very courageous, and also very responsible, and just very, just put yourself out there and work hard.

I think I just really loved all of that. I just, it gave me a lot. The couple of incidents I mentioned, so I had a near death experience about 12, 13 years ago.

I had salmonella poisoning, and it was misdiagnosed. It happened when I lived in Sydney. And the reason it was so bad is it was salmonella poisoning, which normally, you would expect to be quite easy to solve and heal.

But in Australia and Sydney, it's not something that many people come into the hospital with. So they misdiagnosed me a few times because my symptoms read something else. So after multiple visits and multiple IV bags, I was sent home.

And I was taken into hospital after collapsing, and put into intensive care and isolation. And five days later, after various tests, and lots of morphine, and all kinds of different tests and injections, they found out I had, it was salmonella, and then they began to treat it. At this point, my body was like withering away.

It was such a strange experience. I didn't really know it was happening. I decided to sign myself out of the hospital, probably a couple of days too early, but I didn't want to be there.

I was in hospital for, I think, two weeks. It's all a bit of a blur. Then I came home, and I was on my living in the room floor, in and out of consciousness, probably for about two more weeks.

So it was like a month period. And then after that, I had to heal. And physically, psychologically, energetically, I was quite unwell for maybe six months.

I was very depleted. And it probably took me maybe about a year to recover from that. Then I had a major burnout, actually.

And I was diagnosed with PTSD from bullying in a very large organisation. So this was about seven years ago that this happened. That was a very profound moment in terms of my recovery.

So when you're an ex-athlete, as I am, you push yourself to a point, because discipline is part of your system. It's what has been ingrained in you. So you can push yourself, and you can work harder, because your stories and your capacity is different to someone who hasn't been trained and has spent years working on strengths, working on performance, working on mindset, working on belief, that all goes together in one system, to work for you as a performing athlete.

So you push yourself further. You feel the, I'm exhausted, or you feel those moments of, this is hard. But you're like, oh, no, no, no, I can do hard.

So what's the story I create around that? So your baseline is more different. So when you break, you really snap.

And that's how my PTSD support helped me understand it. So this was a whole relearning for me, relearning how I live, relearning how I think, relearning what I eat, my sleep. I had to completely change my health and wellness, my physical activities.

So that was a really interesting process. That took quite a few years. Again, I still worked.

But this is where I found neuroscience. I wanted to understand what was happening in my brain. I got wonderful support from, it takes a system.

It really takes a village to get you to a place that's healthy. And I really didn't understand burnout back then. I refused to accept it, actually, because I was an athlete.

What is burnout? It's not a term that I associated with nor accepted. And it took a lot also psychologically to accept that.

But once you accept it, that's when you start healing. What I found is neuroscience gave me that missing piece. So it was from the books I read, from the courses I did, and just trying to understand the brain, because it was my brain that was actually momentarily protecting itself and shutting down, let's say, because it had too much stress.

It had too many hormones that were flooding the system. So nothing was working properly. That gave me the missing piece.

And then I just continued to read from then. And then last year, the third piece was I lost my mother. It's actually almost a year to the day.

And I was in Australia when we got the news this time last year. So there's a lot of things that have come together recently. Neuroscience gave me the language of what I was experiencing when I went through this very traumatic event.

It's the first time I've lost someone who's so close to me. Your brain cannot comprehend this level of trauma and loss. It's too big for your brain to process.

And through my school, I brought this up quite a lot. I observed what was happening in my brain as I was going through this process. It was, it helped in a really horrific experience, as we all sadly have to go through in our lifetime.

But I didn't understand certain things that were happening. Things stopped functioning. And again, because I was able to bring it up in a group and talk about it with my teachers, I was able to associate the science of what was literally happening in my brain as it was happening in real time.

And it kind of gave me just a capacity to understand it was a process. And it's something that, you know, I can't force, I can't change. And just to observe, you know, the different processes that were happening in my brain at the time.

And eventually, you know, you come out of this period. And I watched myself come out of the period. I had the science again in the language.

You've now gone through this. You've gone through that, etc., etc. So, it was just, it was interesting.

Interesting is such a funny term, but it was an interesting way to experience a really awful thing. Yeah, you have to relearn everything, actually, because you have to create new stories, new patterns, new ways of living, new lifestyle, to get you to a place where your body is strong again, where your mind is strong again, where you're mentally and physically well again. So, that was a really interesting process.

Neuroscience for me is, and you said, what's the hack? What's the hack? Neuroscience is the hack.

For me, neuroscience is the hack.

[Roger]

In this moment, Ashley, what do you know to be true about your superpower?

[Ashley]

You know, it's such a revolution to be who you are. You know, it's such a, it's so unusual to be who you are, when every single thing outside of you wants you to be something else than who you are. Being human and being who you are is really the superpower out there.

Being human and showing up with who you are is really, you know, like everybody else's superpower.

[Roger]

Understanding the neuroscience, you know, the nervous system regulation, understanding who we truly are so we can be human is a little bit of a paradox, because it's our human system that pulls us in opposite directions. So, we're dancing, we're surfing with polarities. Oh, yeah.

[Ashley]

And I didn't talk about the surfing. Let me say quickly about surfing. Surfing is such a connection to yourself.

When you're connected to yourself, you're connected to what's in the outside world. You're connected to the ocean. You're connected to the feelings, the murmurs, when you start seeing, you know, a line coming towards you, you know, a wave coming towards you.

Do I take this one? Do I not? This is instinctual.

This is both contextual intuition, but it's also your intuition. It's really about sitting in the moment and actually being present and also having confidence in yourself. It takes a lot of confidence to paddle out to a lineup, especially as a female.

It takes a lot of confidence to go to some of these waves that are super challenging because you get beaten down a lot, you fall a lot. I mean, sometimes to get out of the wave, you have to duck dive like 20 or 30 times. That takes strength, that takes commitment, that takes resilience.

But the moment you get when you ride a wave for say, you know, some waves are about 400 meters long and that's like 20 seconds or something. To be on that wave, to turn, to connect, to feel yourself on the board, there's a whole lifetime and there's a whole amount of experience that goes behind that to be in that moment. And you really have to challenge yourself.

You really have to have courage. You really have to have patience, tenacity, resilience, strength. I also believe it keeps you young.

I believe it keeps your energy young because of the joy. It brings you so much joy. It brings you so much presence.

It's my meditation, but also the strength. And up here as well, you've got to be strong up here to go out there because you never know what's coming at you. You can have really bad sessions for a week and you're like, why am I searching?

I should not be out there. Sometimes I say to myself, what am I doing? I have no business being out there.

That's a story I'm telling myself. You have to get up the next day, get out there, forget what's happened the day before and just go. And this is like connecting to yourself again.

And also you just never know what's going to happen. It's like life. It's both beautiful and brilliant and challenging all in one.

And that's the beauty of it as well.

[Roger]

And I love that as a metaphor for showing up authentically, whether it's with a coaching client, whether it's in a leadership consulting engagement, whether it's doing a workshop or public speaking, there are moments where we get to show up authentically, being ourselves, reading the room, reading the energy, dancing with that, feeling connected or not. And then waking up again tomorrow and doing it again. And to your point about showing up with that level of courage and resilience, that just comes through as well.

So I teased earlier that surfing is a metaphor. I wonder, is surfing really the metaphor or is it the paradigm that we should try to turn everything else to be more like surfing?

[Ashley]

Yeah, interesting. I think if you're a surfer, it's definitely the metaphor. And it's so interesting when people say, you have to ride the waves.

I remember before I started surfing, people would say that. I was like, yeah, that's true. But then when you actually, you know, surfing is a part of your life, that is, you know, what you do.

If you're into cycling, then that's your metaphor for life. If you're into hiking, that's your metaphor for life. It's whatever is emotionally relevant to you.

You can then learn from that. Because if it's emotionally resonant and relevant, then you can explore it. So surfing is a great one.

But to someone who hates water and is terrified of water, they're like, oh. So you know what I mean? And again, it's all personal, isn't it?

We all think everybody else is the same as us. But actually, everybody's different, really. And it's how can we do the best with the information that we have?

Like we started at the beginning, how do we have like a fuller experience of life as a leader? How do we have a fuller experience of being a leader? You have deliverables.

You have a job to do. You have a responsibility. How do you have a fuller experience of that?

You know, if you have these challenges or these biases or these belief systems that are holding you back, how can you work on them? And how can you be more human? And how can you have fuller experience of the CEO role, which you have longed for, of course, because you're in this role.

You're not somewhere where you don't want to be. How can you have a better experience of that role? And therefore, how can the people around you have a better experience, better, have a richer, fuller experience of working with you and for you also?

That's really what we can strive to achieve working with neuroscience and applying neuroscience into your life. You can be who you want to be. Therefore, you can perform at the level you want to if you work with your brain and understand your brain.

But I like to make sure that you don't just have to be a leader, it's you can be the human you want to be. And that's why I say it's the hack. It's like you can be the human, you know, that you want to be and have a much richer experience.

And then the people around you as well. And that's the nervous system piece.

[Roger]

I mean, it's the hack, but it's really the path. It's not a shortcut. Yeah.

Ashley, if an audience member wanted to ask you a question or follow you, where do you want to point them to?

[Ashley]

I have my LinkedIn, Ashley Douglas, please. And I'd love to hear what people have to say about what I'm sharing. I love comments or points of view.

And then my Substack, Ashley Douglas also.

[Roger]

And again, I love the content you're putting out there because it is so instructive. It's also an invitation to go deeper into the work to better understand my own neuroscience. And it's so fun interacting with you there on LinkedIn and on Substack.

So thank you for all the work you do to put that out and share that with us as you're empowering all of us to be who we really are and who we want to be. Thank you for taking the time today to share with us about neuroscience, about the nervous system regulation, about resilience and how we can show up in our more authentic self as we understand our systems and the neuroscience and what's going on in this big pink muscle between our ears. So thank you so much.

[Ashley]

Oh, it was such a pleasure. And your questions, I love them. Made me think, which I appreciate.

Thank you.

[Roger]

Ah, what a gift. Thank you. Take care.

Okay. Bye-bye.

[Ashley]

Okay, then. Take care. See you.

[Roger]

Thank you all for being in this conversation with us, and thank you, Ashley, for making us more aware of how we can better regulate our nervous system and spend more time in a calm and confident state.

The question I’m asking myself now after the conversation is: What can I do to increase the space between stimulus and response, so I’m the one driving my emotional bus more often? 

What Do You Know To Be True? is a Three Blue Pens production. I’m your host, Roger Kastner.

We are recording on the ancestral lands of the Duwamish and Suquamish people.

If you enjoyed this conversation, I know you’ll enjoy this episode on Resilience with Bill Hefferman and this episode on IFS, Parts, and Self Energy with Janet Livingstone.

Be well, my friends, and, love you, mean it!