Micro Changes Macro Results
Season 4- Episode 40
In this episode, Lauren reintroduces the concept of the Window of Tolerance and shares practical tips for breaking behavioral patterns and resetting your nervous system. She explains how to identify your current state of dysregulation and suggests using activities that activate the opposite state to help achieve regulation.
If you haven't already, check out Five Ives to see how strategies like this can be applied to adults, especially in the workplace. Five Ives works with staff in high burnout jobs to help them incorporate regulation strategies into their daily routines.
Try-at-home tip: Eat less sugar!
References:
Ruthless Elimination of Hurry
Other related resources from The Behavior Hub:
Blog Post:
Podcast:
Our Online Courses:
Do you have a question? I can answer it in a future episode!
Email questions to podcast@thebehaviorhub.com or send via text to 717-693-7744.
Subscribe to our mailing list and find out more about the Emotional Brain.
Check out our Facebook Group – Raising and Teaching Respectful Children
Are you struggling with behaviors and not sure where to begin? Let me help!
Schedule a free discovery call and let me be your Guide.
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
___
Transcript:
“Welcome back. Happy New Year. It's good to be here with you all always. We're going to make this episode very short for a bit of a segue into the new year and healthy, happier habits to adopt. But essentially what I'm going to do is I'm going to walk you through a few little things that you could do behaviorally that will reset your nervous system to make a bigger, lasting difference down the road.”
“So let's talk about some of those things. Let's briefly just review here the nervous system. So I have recorded so many episodes about this concept and I've talked about the window of tolerance. So if you're, if you're new here, you haven't heard the window of tolerance. Think of it as like a, almost like a stoplight, although we're not going to talk about it in terms of the actual stoplight, but like three circles or three boxes stacked on top of each other. And that middle circle or that middle box is your window of tolerance.”
“How much can you tolerate before your nervous system gets out of whack and before your stress response kicks in and just things in the body and brain and mind start to go wild?”
“And you might be a person who is prone to going up to that top circle or top box, which is the sympathetic side of the nervous system. That's me. Sympathetic. So tension, defensiveness, like fight, flight.”
“The other group of you may be a person who's more likely or more prone to go down to the sympathetic side. And that's the side where you might be more freeze. And you know, I think about the difference really is like going downward is more prone to depression. Going upward is more prone to anxiety. Though you can be in go into both sides.”
“The biggest thing to note about the nervous system is it is a beautifully designed system from human biology that was created to keep us safe. And it's not a bad thing leaving your window. Tolerance isn't a bad thing. It's the thing that keeps us alive and kept us alive up until this point.”
“The bad part about it that we're experiencing today, today's world, society and era is that we are getting stuck in that upper circle or that lower circle or upper zone or lower zone. And we are not finding our way back into the window of tolerance, which means those upper or lower zones or both are, are growing. And when they grow, they take up space of the window of tolerance. They shrink the window of tolerance. Day in and day out. You can only tolerate less and less and less and less. And little tiny Things are triggering you and setting you off.”
“So here are some things to think about to kind of reset your nervous system.”
“1. Think about the nervous system in terms of opposites. I'm a first. I am a person who likes to go really fast, likes to do all the things, likes to be super busy and work until, or move until, or do until exhaustion and must go to sleep immediately. And I always thought that was a, a good thing. I think somewhere in my childhood it was ingrained in me that if I do more, I will be better. And that's not always true. I mean, there's a lot of stats. I can't remember where I read these stats.Oh, in a book called the Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. I read these stats where it talks about 7 hour work weeks, 6 hour work weeks, 5 hour work weeks, and productivity really maxes out at 50 hours. 5, 0. If you work any more than 50 hours a week, productivity sinks. You don't really get more accomplished. You just drain yourself. And I think that's because our systems were designed to hit like a limit. Like you, you can build stamina, of course, but there are a few things that can override, like basic biology.”
“So think about the system in opposites. As a person who's used to going really, really fast, I tend to do a lot of things in my life in a hurry. For example, I am notorious for leaving at the last second and showing up right at the minute something's supposed to start or like before or maybe even possibly late. And the anxiety I feel when I'm driving or getting to the place, I'm like, oh, I'm going to be late. I didn't need to be late. I didn't need to be anxious, I didn't need to be in a hurry. I just could have left five minutes earlier. But here's the thing. Since I'm so used to putting myself in that type of situation, my subconscious mind is just used to functioning that way. It just subconsciously does it without even my thinking or acting. So I have to consciously choose to break that behavioral pattern.”
“So what I do for that, what I'm going to do, what I'm working on this year, is what does it look like to leave not even five minutes early. What does it look like to leave 15 minutes early, get to an appointment, a place, a thing in myeyes super early, and then sit in the parking lot for 5, 10, 15 minutes and read. Read a book. Like read a book I really want to read that I don't create time to read. And I I did it today for the first time. It's second day of the year. Recording this episode. It's going to out next week, first full week of the year. It was glorious. I was like, wow. Not only am I creating time to read the book I want to read, but I don't feel anxious, stressed out and overwhelmed. Therefore, I am not kicking myself up into the sympathetic side of the nervous system into the upper tier. I am staying in my window of tolerance. I do this more and more and more and more and more, my window tolerance grows out, my upper tier shrinks.”
“Now that's not the only thing that sends me up into my upper tier. There are lots of things, but think about doing things that are the opposite of what you normally do. So if I'm always going faster, I'm always late, what's the opposite of that? I'm also trying to drive in the most right handed lane and drive at or below the speed limit. I don't tend to speed a lot, but I, I do find myself like wow, I'm going so fast, I'm going, going above the speed limit, maybe 5, 10, 15miles above the speed limit, which at some point earns you a speeding ticket by the grace of God. I haven't gotten many. But not only that, I think about when I see a yellow light, it's like, ooh, stop or go. And I tend to be a person who will try and go versus stop. And I, I'm not gonna be the person that breaks the last second and like rocks everyone in the back of the car. But I am going to make an attempt to not gas it through the yellow light and instead be the one that slows down and stops and just move a little bit slower on the road into places.”
“But it's not only that. There are other little habits like just doing things that are the opposite, that are like micro doses of hard, but they make the harder, bigger things easier.”
“For example, brush your teeth with the opposite hand. I always brush right handed. What would it look like to brush left handed? Use my key to any doorway or fob joint doorway with my left hand versus my right hand. You know, anything that you would normally do like left handed versus right handed, do, do it with the opposite hand. It's like a little tiny thing that's slightly hard but not very hard. But that micro behavior tells your brain and body like, oh, this little hard thing is easy to do. If I do lots of little hard things that are easy, then doing bigger harder things becomes easier. It's, it's A strange subconscious rewiring and repatterning in your brain. But it's resetting your nervous system to get to long term changes where you change little habits that influence you long term. Your subconscious mind, it's like 95 of your functioning. Our, our conscious brain is what makes us so different from like other animals. Yet we are so ruled by like our animal, mammalian brain. We do so much of our daily things without really thinking and being consciously aware. So if we can use our thinking brain to kind of rework the subconscious, then we begin to break patterns that have been in place for many, many, many weeks, months and years, maybe even decades for some of us.”
“So really working on rewiring your nervous system. I'm also thinking about like, what other things in my life can I slow down and do? I always stand to eat my food? Cause I'm always in a rush. I'm scarfing it down and moving on, trying to sit. And not only that, I'm trying to find ways. I used to be like, okay, well what kind of like meal prep company can I order from to expedite cooking so I don't have to chop so much and think so much and do all. I think there's some beauty in, in making less decisions and not having so many choices. But I'm no longer using meal prep all the time. Like I'm. I think it's good to meal prep, but like services like Hungry Root, Blue Apron Factor, Daily Harvest, all these things that like, they just send you basically meals ready to make. I am trying to slow down and just actually plan out and make some meals. Like don't be in a rush, just slow down and cook the food and be really mindful and be present and that's really hard and something I value. And I love cooking and I love experiencing spices and flavors and things.”
“So another habit that I'm adopting, I asked that about movement and workout. What would it look like for me to not do the hit or always strength training or boxing? What would it look like to do more yoga, Pilates, bar, whatever. That moves a little bit slower.”
“So I'm thinking a lot in terms of opposites. Getting away from watching TV shows at night and trying to adopt reading a book. If I can't read a book, can I listen to an audiobook? Can I not always listen to learning books? Can I listen to some fun books? Can I listen to children's storybooks? Can I read children's story books? All these things that are little shifts throughout my daily life that move me from fast paced quick, busy to slow, present, mindful. And that reworks my entire nervous system.”
“It's not easy, y'all. And it takes a lot of time to experience that change. We're talking about many weeks, months and years and decades of the way you have been functioning and showing up in the world. And you're trying to shift your nervous system into a healthier state. You're not going to do that tomorrow. It's going to take some time.”
“Okay, that's it. Think about where you are in the window of tolerance. Are you in the upper tier, lower tier? If you're in the upper tier, do slow moving things. If you're in the lower tier, maybe do some things that kind of wake your body up a little bit more, a little more fast paced things a little bit more like body resistance, movement based things to get your oxygen flowing and moving around your body and into your brain. And that's how you begin to heal and reset your nervous system.”
“Okay, there's, there's the mind side of it, the breaking, the psychological patterns and we'll talk about that in another episode. But this is like the physical acts and the behaviors that start to move you in that direction.”
“To wrap up the show, I'm going to give you a try it at home tip. Your try at home trip. Stumbling on my words. Your try it at home tip is to eat less sugar. And I know that's not like a no brainer, like oh shocker, Lauren. Like we already know that it's hard enough to have self control to even try and do that. But not what I'm, what I'm asking you to think about is like where might sugar be that you don't even realize you're eating it? For example, like condiments are horrifically known for sugar, mustard, ketchup, jellies, jams, processed anything, honey maple syrup, syrups like especially like coffee syrups, flavored anything. So trying to reduce your sugar intake even through the ways that you don't even realize you're getting sugar, by being more mindful of where actually does sugar live. Alcohol turns into to sugar. So just doing your body a favor and reducing your inflammation and improving the way all things are functioning by trying to do a little bit, eat a little bit less, take in a little bit less sugar.”
“That's it for today's episode of Returning to Us podcast. Don't forget our try at home tip, which is eat less sugar. You're not gonna be a will yourself, like willpower yourself into the self, control yourself into that one you're just gonna have to probably take it out of your house. At least if you're me, I can't have it here. But just buying less of it.”
“If you are looking for more support in the areas of stress, trauma, behavior in the brain, Jessica and I, my business partner, we would love to be a part of your learning journey. We have so many programs going out in 2025 for people who basically help people. Like, do you work for an organization or do you work in a field where you're a person helping people? Nonprofits, policing, airline, medical education. So many helping fields that help people. And we are working on keeping people in these fields by preventing burnout, by preventing nervous system dysregulation, reducing the the effects of of PTSD symptoms and just rewiring. And there's so much available for you as individuals and for you as a collective whole organization.”
“So go to the 5ives website, F I V E I V E S. See what we're doing, reach out, we'll schedule a call, we'll talk about how we can support you or support your program or both. But we would love to be a part of that learning journey. And don't forget to lock what you learned today by sharing this episode with someone else, talking about it with them, getting an accountability partner, commenting below on something you learned or something you're doing or something you're going to do to hold yourself accountable.
“Until the next episode, I'm Lauren Spiegelmeier and thank you for joining me.”