Is your brain constantly on overload? Discover the science behind it so you can take steps to regain control.
In this episode of Influence By Design, Samantha talks to Naomi Oyston about the concept of cognitive overload. Naomi shares insights on how the massive influx of information we process daily is impacting our brains. She shares practical strategies to manage this overload and maintain high performance without burning out.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the constant stream of data and looking for ways to reclaim your mental peace, this episode offers valuable tips and techniques to navigate the digital age with a calm, focused mind.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:
- How our fast-paced lives is affecting our mental load (00:37)
- Transitioning from physical labour to mental strain in the technology era (01:22)
- How AI acceleration and COVID stress have combined to create the perfect cognitive storm (02:09)
- Understanding new terms that describe our overloaded brains (03:53)
- Feeling constantly overstimulated? You might have popcorn brain (04:57)
- How our phones have turned us into 24/7 night watchmen (05:36)
- One in five managers is in fight or flight mode. Are you one of them? (06:21)
- Recognizing the danger and opportunity in this cognitive crisis is key to change (07:04)
- Understanding the chemistry behind stress (10:34)
- Why you can’t run a marathon at sprint pace without burning out (12:43)
- Too much cortisol can hurt your memory and put your health at risk (14:16)
- Living life by design for a joyful, stress-free life (17:45)
- Early stress signs you shouldn’t ignore (20:32)
- Why happiness isn’t just a feel-good factor — it’s a health necessity (21:46)
- Why looking after your physical health and getting enough sleep are crucial to proper brain function (23:15)
- How simple routines can be your secret weapons against cognitive overload (24:51)
- How to outsource decision fatigue and lighten your mental load (26:15)
- Two minutes of this deep breathing technique can reset your brain. Try it! (27:40)
- How small changes make a big difference in reducing overload (28:43)
QUOTES
“Cognitive overload is very broadly when we have a stress response, which is created from not feeling safe and in control from the increased amount of data that we’re processing. And it occurs when we’ve got more going on in our brains than what our working memory can actually deal with.” – Naomi Oyston
“We need to understand the stress response, we need to think about how we work, we need to think about understanding our brain and the functions of a brain and how we can actually be proactive in getting some strategies to be able to support us to remain healthy, because otherwise, we’ve got an avalanche of burnout and illness and sickness.” – Naomi Oyston
“This is why I really love human design — it’s really understanding the way that you’re designed to be so that you can find your joy in your particular way, living your life in alignment the way that you want to live.” – Samantha Riley
“Looking after our own happiness is not selfish, it’s actually an investment in continuing to be your best.” – Naomi Oyston
“I call that outsourcing your decision fatigue. Let someone else tell you, ‘Hey, this is just the next step. And that’s all you got to do.’ It’s just taking away all that mental load, that noise.” – Samantha Riley
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ABOUT NAOMI OYSTON
Naomi has more than twenty years leadership experience within the Corporate, Financial and SME Business sectors. She has had extensive executive level success, with direct responsibility for leading the implementation and performance assessment of Customer Service Excellence, Sales Performance, Productivity & Leadership training within Commonwealth Bank Business Banking. She has also led the Leadership Performance Coaching Team at Suncorp, with responsibility for Branch, Financial Planning, Home Lending and Business Banking Leadership Development. Within Heritage Bank, she has designed and delivered a group wide Sales through Service program along with playing an integral role in developing a contemporary customer conversation framework and has also delivered a Risk Management program for leaders.
Naomi is passionate about helping her clients to focus on results that matter. She creates continuous incremental improvement through combining street proven systems & processes with exemplary people skills and a culture of sustainability, using a head, heart & soul approach to success.
WHERE TO FIND NAOMI OYSTON
- Website: https://shineexecutive.com.au/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/naomi-oyston-3257001a/
CONNECT WITH SAMANTHA RILEY
- Facebook: Samantha Riley
- Instagram: @thesamriley
- LinkedIn: Samantha Riley
- Twitter: @thesamriley
TRANSCRIPTION
Samantha Riley 0:03
Welcome to today’s episode of Influence By Design. I’m your host, Samantha Riley, and I’m here with Naomi Oyston. Today we’re going to talk about cognitive overload. And when I first saw, well, I’ve known Naomi for years and years and years, but she actually posted about this on Facebook. And I read the post, and I took a link to it straightaway, sent her a message in Messenger, I went, Oh, can you come on to the podcast and talk about this? Because this is some fascinating stuff. So welcome to the show. Naomi, it’s great to have you here.
Naomi Oyston 0:33
Thank you, Sam. I’m delighted to be here.
Samantha Riley 0:37
Now cognitive overload. Can you just give our listeners a little bit of an insight into what this is, because I saw in, one of the stats that you had on that post was that we process on average 74 gigs of data, which is more than our ancestors did in their lifetime. And when I saw this, that I was just like, Oh, my God, that’s exactly how I feel every day.
Naomi Oyston 1:01
Absolutely Sam. So in the past, our ancestors worked very hard physically. Right? So what we found in our past is, as we were ageing, our bodies started to get things like RSI, and injuries and things like that. Our physical body was being impacted by the way that we worked. But what’s happening now is that we’ve moved away from the physical side of working into more the mental side. So using our brain, and particularly in the technology era. So what’s happening now is the work that we do is through our brain, it’s cognitive, and we’re processing 74 gig on average of data a day, which is more than our ancestors did in their lifetimes, right? So but guess what, we’re using the same human operating system, the same biology, the same brain, our brains haven’t changed, right? So, the wear and tear, if you like, has gone from physical to mental. You know, 90% of the world’s data that we’ve got at the moment has only been created in the last two years. So you know, what’s happened is, which is crazy, right? So what’s happened, you know, and the perfect storm here is that we’ve had this AI acceleration and information overload, if you like, or massive growth in the amount of information that we’re processing right on the back of COVID. And COVID produced an increased level of stress on our nervous system, which we all had to deal with, with the uncertainty and, and ultimately, our brain wants to feel safe and in control, that’s what the brain is looking for. So COVID, basically made us feel not safe and not in control. And, you know, just as we’re coming off the back of that, our nervous systems, now we’re dealing with this, this massive influx and, and certainly the AI thing has been coming for a little while, but in the last six months, I think just this year in 2024, you know, I think most of us are seeing that it is really getting legs, and it’s becoming not something that people did in the IT department, but it’s something that we’re all starting to see as part of our lives. So the AI is real, it’s part of our lives. And it’s starting to have an impact on our thinking, and, you know, all of these things are starting to come through to our ability to process information. Now, cognitive overload is very broadly when we have a stress response, which is created from not feeling safe and in control from the increased amount of data that we’re processing. And it occurs when we’ve got more going on in our brains than what our working memory can actually deal with, right? So we’re actually producing the same stress responses as, you know, we might have had in COVID, we’ve got the same hormones, the same chemicals going on in our brain, right. But this time now we’re starting to see some different things showing up. And our neuroscientists are showing us that there’s new names being thrown around. Infobesity is a new term. And infobesity means that literally, we’ve got too much information going on in our brain. Digital dementia is another one and what’s happening there, and you know, I’ve run this workshop in a couple of organisations just in very recent times, and everybody put their hand up and said, I’m getting forgetful. I run into somebody that I’ve known for years and I can’t remember their name. Or I go to think of this thing that I needed to do and it’s just not there at my fingertips. I can’t remember and then later on we do but it’s, it’s like our short term memory is becoming a little bit challenged because we’ve, which is a sign of cognitive overload. The latest one that I actually particularly think is really pertinent is called popcorn brain. And popcorn brain is that feeling, and I used to say, I felt like I was walking around in a room full of poker machines where you can hear ding, ding, ding, ding, all these sights, sounds, and things going on and there’s all this stimulation, right? And so they’ve now called it popcorn brain which is like pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. And it’s a sign of a hyper vigilant brain from all of this information going on, and our brain is going ding ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Right. So if we think about what’s actually happening in our biology with this ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, it’s likened to the night watchman back in our tribes in our development days, the night watchman would be there looking out for the safety of the community. And the nightwatchman would be very vigilant to be looking out for any potential threats, right. So they’re very aware, right. And guess what, that’s what we’re doing with our phones these days. We’re always plugged into our phone, we’re always looking for the next thing, the next thing, the next thing, and our brain is triggering the same responses as the nightwatchman would have had, right. But we’re plugged in, and we’re getting this response all the time, which is creating this increased level of stress. You know, a happy healthy brain is 35% more productive than a brain that’s stressed or overwhelmed, you know. The State of the Workplace, Gallup do a great survey every year. In ‘23, they said 50% of managers were stressed. And 18% of managers were feeling angry at work. Right. So that was in 2023. We know that one in five managers is already in fight or flight.
Samantha Riley 6:49
Yeah, right. I would have thought a bit even more than one in five, to be honest.
Naomi Oyston 6:54
Yes. So that was last year. So yeah, 2024 is about to hit shortly. And I’m interested to see what the stress response is moving. But I guess my key point here is that we need to understand the stress response, we need to think about how we work, we need to think about understanding our brain and the functions of a brain, and how we can actually be proactive in getting some strategies to be able to support us to remain healthy, because otherwise we’ve got an avalanche of burnout, and illness, and sickness. And, you know, some pretty, pretty interesting stuff coming down the line, I believe, if we don’t take action now.
Samantha Riley 7:37
Totally. No, I know, you’re very much in the corporate space. You’re seeing this through high performing teams. Obviously, I’m in more of the entrepreneurial space, but I’m seeing exactly the same thing. And I’m seeing this almost trend of people absolutely burning down their businesses right now. Leon and I were talking about this yesterday. And I think that this is a really important conversation to have. Because one we’re saying, All right, well, let’s look at these things. But we’re actually also going to go into how you can or some different things that you can do to make this better, because I think that just by opening up the can of worms and saying all this stuff’s bad is only the beginning of the conversation. It’s now what do we need to do to make it better?
Naomi Oyston 8:26
100%. And I like the Chinese symbol for crisis. So I don’t know if you’ve seen this one. Actually, I love this. I think it’s a beautiful metaphor. The Chinese symbol for crisis is actually made up of two symbols. One is danger. And the other is crucial point opportunity. Right? I got goosebumps. Amazing. Yeah. So I believe that there is like there’s two sides to everything, right? There’s good and bad in everything. But everything starts with awareness and starting to understand the early signs and start to really tune into what is happening because you’re 100%, right, you know, in the workshops that I’ve been doing, pretty much everybody in the rooms from multiple generations have put their hand up to saying that they’re starting to feel these feelings. And things are speeding up, you know, our next generation coming through, have come through on the back of Tik Tok, for example, right? Now, the average time of a Tik Tok video is 26 seconds. And I had a girl in the room with me last week who said that’s too slow for me. Now I’m speeding it up to double speed. Because she doesn’t want to sit and pay attention for 26 seconds anymore, right? We listen to our podcast on double speed to get more and more information, right? So we’re pumping all of this information in all the time and it’s speeding up and speeding up and speeding up. But what’s going to happen, you know, when we’re not nurturing our brain and actually allowing it to get that rest and recharging, getting that hormone balance, that neurochemical balance right in our brain that’s going to allow us to continue to focus and remain well?
Samantha Riley 10:16
Can you just talk a little bit to the hormone balance? Because before we were, before we started recording, we were talking about the different chemicals of stress. You were talking about cortisol, you’re talking about all sorts of things. Can you just speak a little bit to that?
Naomi Oyston 10:34
Absolutely. So our brain, our autonomic nervous system, we basically have two different nervous systems, a sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, and we can only operate on one or the other, but not both, right? So our brain is sensing our emotional state through our heart rhythm. And heart rhythm is actually driven by our breath, and you know, the parts of our neuro system that actually produce that stress response and communicate it from our heart back to our brain, right. So when we’re feeling, our brain wants to feel safe and in control, right, so when we’re safe, and we’re in control, we produce a chemical called serotonin, which is our happy, calm, centred, focused, rational. It’s that stability chemical, it’s also where we produce our immunity and our rest and restore, our wellness, that actually helps to do that cleanse of our cells and things to help us keep us healthy and well, right. So we need that serotonin to build happy, calm, centered, and healthy. Dopamine is the chemical that we produce when we’re excited. So that’s actually a really cool chemical, but dopamine, when it becomes overused can start to create addictive behaviours, you know, so, because …
Samantha Riley 11:57
Yeah because that’s what’s happening with social media, right? We’re creating these people that are addicted to that dopamine response.
Naomi Oyston 12:03
Correct. Correct. And guess what, just like the poker machine, people have been creating poker machines for many, many, many years, with all of these sights, sounds, you know, colour stimulation to stimulate that dopamine in our brain. Our friends at social media, you know, are doing exactly the same, trying to keep us glued to our screens by lots of the stimulus, right. So we produce this dopamine that gets us addicted to the feeling and that’s, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But if it’s overextended, it can become addictive behaviours. Yeah. Right. So that’s dopamine on our, that’s our, that’s what I call our green zone, which is our parasympathetic nervous system. So we need to be living, you know, most of our time in our green zone. So it’s really designed, our nervous system is designed for, you know, that stress response as a sprint, not a marathon, right, so. So we should be going into our sympathetic nervous system, which is our red zone, which is that adrenaline response when we’re under threat. Right?
Samantha Riley 13:14
It’s funny that you mentioned that sorry, I’m gonna jump in with that sprint and that marathon because I want people to think about this. I often talk about doing sprint and then taking a rest. What I find when a lot of clients come to me is they’re not only doing the marathon but they’re doing the marathon at sprint pace. And it’s just like not only is a marathon not sustainable all day, every day but it certainly is not at a sprint pace.
Naomi Oyston 13:38
100%. And so what happens is our sprints are fueled by adrenaline, and our adrenaline is produced by our adrenal gland. Now, our adrenal gland is the size of an almond. Right? So in our brain, yes. So if you can think about, you’ve got this little adrenal gland that’s pumping out adrenaline, every time that we, you know, doing that sprint or getting ready for that threat, right, we’ve got this little gland. And after it’s been doing this day in, day out, we just, we start to get we run out of adrenaline, basically. And that’s when we hit adrenal exhaustion, right? So when we hit adrenal exhaustion, all sorts of things start to happen, which is, you know, which is not pretty and we start to produce a chemical called cortisol. Now cortisol is a precursor to depression, it’s going to, it’s designed to slow us down right? So you know it’s almost like taking us from very high speed broadband back to the old dial up days. So that’s what it’s doing. It’s trying to slow us down right, so everything becomes foggy, becomes overwhelming. We don’t know if we want to sit in the corner and cry or rip somebody’s head off. You know, we find it hard, we have this fog, we have you know, like a deer in the headlights, we’re looking at it and we can’t focus. We know we’ve got to do it, but it just, everything feels too hard, right? And that’s the, that’s the impact of cortisol. Cortisol also, because our brain’s tired, cortisol will look for high energy and it’ll give us cravings around things like carbs, sugars, starches, you know, hot chips, all that sort of stuff, because it wants fuel, you know, our brain is 2% our body weight, but it takes 20% of our energy, right? So when our brain’s starting to get tired, it wants energy and it wants to energy fast. So it’s gonna give you all this sort of cravings for all the stuff that you know you shouldn’t eat. Yet, you’re going to need it almost like an addict needs it, because your brain’s so tight and it’s screaming out for energy, so we produce this cortisol after our adrenaline’s exhausted, and then cortisol slows us all down. And then ultimately, there’s a part of our brain called the hippocampus. And the hippocampus is our memory centre. Now, the memory centre of our brain is very sensitive to stress and particularly cortisol, right. So if we have prolonged periods of cortisol in our brain, our memory centre will start to deteriorate. And the scary part is, this is the first part of our brain that’s impacted by Alzheimer’s, right. So if your hippocampus is damaged through stress and prolonged cortisol, you know, potentially, and I’m certainly not a doctor, I can’t say this with medical advice. But what I’m saying is it would it make sense if our hippocampus was deteriorating from cortisol, that we would be more susceptible to developing Alzheimer’s.
Samantha Riley 16:58
Wow, I have had adrenal fatigue, I had it after the ending of my first marriage, and it lasted years. And I can tell you, it is the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through. I remember literally being in a boardroom and falling asleep and waking up and everyone was gone. And someone coming and going you okay? Like that’s how exhausting it is. It is. So it’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced. And it took years, literally years to get back where I wouldn’t think Oh, my goodness, I’m being so lazy, I’d go to the gym, I’d go to the gym on a Sunday morning, and I was on the sofa for the whole day, I just couldn’t even get up. There’s nothing that, like I’ve never experienced anything like it. And I do not want to experience that again.
So let’s talk about what we can do. Some things or some techniques. I mean, the first thing I think when I listened to you, and this is why I really love human design — it’s really understanding the way that you’re designed to be so that you can find your joy in your particular way, living your life in alignment the way that you want to live. Because I think that some of what we’re talking about here is just living life in a way or in other people’s rules or by other people’s rules rather than understanding what’s right for us. But I’d love to hear your take on that.
Naomi Oyston 18:27
Yeah, absolutely, Sam and I very much agree with. Gosh, I feel like Sam we could sit and talk about this topic all day long. There’s so much this is such a big topic, but it is ultimately about claiming the life that we know we need to live. And so you, you know, my backstory, I was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer in 2018. And at that point, you know, I started to face my own mortality. And I started to think, well, I could die. Right? And, you know, I had a 14 year old daughter at the time and, you know, it freaked me out and I and I really got a big wake up call about how do I want to live, you know. When you think you might die, you decide how you want to live, right. And I believe that we make changes by chance, choice, or crisis. For me it was a crisis, when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, which by the way, I believe was potentially impacted by stress, you know, in getting my breast cancer, but I see that now as a gift because it’s taught me how I want to live and to be more intentional and more focused on creating the healthy behaviours that will really, you know, manage that stress responses and help me to live live well. So I think this crisis is on its way to hit most people or more people, and we need to be more intentional to your point, before we get to that crisis point where it does take so long to recover from that burnout, and you know, that adrenal fatigue, because it’s nasty when it hits, but we tend to not recognise the early signs and keep pushing, because we think we’re super women or …
Samantha Riley 20:19
Oh, I thought I was superwoman. Exactly. I’m different than everyone else.
Naomi Oyston 20:23
Yeah, I’ve got this, I’m strong. And, you know, that was our sort of ethos, you know, in those years was, you know, I’m strong, I can do this, right. But I guess for me, my tips is, number one, understand when you’re starting to experience signs of stress, right. So we need to understand when we’re having that stress response in our body, and some typical ones are going to be, you know, particularly now with the digital overload is trouble focusing, I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed, I’m starting to get that tightness in our shoulders, feeling a little bit up and down with our moods, you know. Do we want to rip someone’s head off or sit in the corner and cry, you know, starting to catch a few more bugs, colds, you know, our health might be starting to, we might get a few more aches and pains and things like that, you know, some headaches, you know, trouble focusing all that sort of stuff. Those are the early signs, right. Now, that’s the first part. The second part is understanding how our brain works, understand our nervous system, and understand the chemicals that are going through our brains when we’re in that stress, or the green or the red zone, which is the the red zone’s the sympathetic nervous system, the fight or flight and all that sort of stuff. And the other one is at rest and restore. So when we’re feeling like that, how do we actually get out of it, and start to get back into our green zone? So some simple things that I believe are our superpowers. Number one is happiness, right? So and the reason happiness is so important is, happiness produces serotonin. Serotonin is a happy, calm, centred, wellness chemical, and it’s going to be our antidote for cortisol. Right? So when we focus on things that make us happy, we’re actually keeping ourselves healthy. Yet, we’ve often been taught to push our own happiness to the side, while we’re in this peak performance, get stuff done, right? Happiness, looking after our own happiness is not selfish, it’s actually an investment in continuing to be your best. So number one tip is understand the top three to five things that make you happy, and go and goddamn do it. Right?
Samantha Riley 22:37
Yeah, absolutely. Every single week.
Naomi Oyston 22:39
That’s right. And, you know, every one of us is going to have different things that make us happy. But yeah, you know, we all should know, what are the things that actually make me feel, you know, joy and feel happy? And whether that’s a catch up for a coffee with a friend or, you know, ice cream on a Friday or whatever, I don’t know, whatever it is. Espresso, martinis on a Friday afternoon …
Samantha Riley 23:06
What are you talking about …
Naomi Oyston 23:10
Any of those things that actually make us happy, right? So number one is pursue happiness, right? Number two, is looking after your health, right. So get enough sleep. Sleep is a really important one. Because remembering that our brain takes 20% of our energy. We need to be in a healthy state for our brain to function, right? So the things that, you know, if you knew that your brain was taking 20% of the energy and the energy is created through your health, your well being, your sleep, your activity and nutrition, you know, to have that quality 20%, you’d want to look after yourself physically. So, you know, and whatever that looks like for you, you know, exercise, nutrition are the basic ones, you know, not too much processed foods, you know, any, you know, don’t smoke, you know, all you know, movement, strength building whatever health looks like. But number two is look after yourself, particularly your sleep. And, you know, one of the things that happens with this cognitive overload is we have trouble sleeping, which then impacts, which then puts another load on our nervous system. So getting your sleep sorted is really important, because if we’re not sleeping, we actually are coming, starting our day feeling almost intoxicated.
Samantha Riley 24:35
Yes. Yes. That is what it feels like. Right?
Naomi Oyston 24:38
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then we’re putting that extra load on our brain, right. So sleep helps us to be, you know, in healthy, health. So, first one is happiness. Second one is health. The third one is habits, and habits are important because most of our habits are subconscious. 95% of what we do today is the same as what we did yesterday. Right? So all that you did before, so we tend to do the same things, right? So what I’m saying here is get some positive habits and get them embedded as part of who you are and what you do. Right. So when my daughter was growing up, and I was working full time, we had Friday ice cream night, right, so we would always go to the ice cream shop and buy an ice cream on a Friday night when she was a little, right. And that was just something small, but it was Friday night’s ice cream night, you know, and Sunday was fun day, you know, we always do something, fun day for Sunday, you know, date nights, you know, regular catch ups, things like that. So as we start to build these things in and they just become who we are and what we do, and we don’t have to think about it, but it’s just these little things that build up over time, rather than thinking about big, fancy, you know, amazing trips to Disneyland once every two years, you know, it’s ice cream on a Friday, or whatever the things are that help me to build those regular habits that produce that, that nice, that nice response. So getting the things, the top three to five things that are going to help us to be healthy and productive and happy, get those in habits and and focus on embedding those is number three. And the last one is high performance. So high performance is all about working smarter, not harder, right. Because once our brain starts to get foggy and overwhelmed, everything feels too hard. We have to find ways to be more effective. And often that’s going to come from hiring a coach like yourself, Sam, or somebody that can cut through the fog, and help you to be able to find the principles, the strategies, the systems, the processes, or the the ways to, you know, it doesn’t have to be that hard. Find somebody that can help you to adopt the right processes that are going to help you to achieve more with less. Right.
Samantha Riley 26:59
So yeah, I call that outsourcing your decision fatigue. Let someone else tell you, Hey, this is just the next step. And that’s all you got to do. Oh, yeah, it’s just that, okay. It’s just taking away all that mental load, that noise. Yeah.
Naomi Oyston 27:18
100% 100%. So I think that’s a really important piece of it, of managing that overwhelm is by having somebody by your side that can actually help you to cut through the noise and actually just, you know, go from A to Zed in three steps, as opposed to 26. Yeah. So those are probably the four areas. But the simple thing, you know that I guess my last tip, which I think is probably the most powerful, and the most beautiful tip of all, is focus on our breathing, right. So our brain senses our stress state via our breath, right, so in our heart rhythm, so we can just two minutes of really big, deep breathing, can actually, you know. I like to put one hand on my heart and one hand on my belly and just have two minutes of really beautiful, big, deep breaths. And that is enough, just two minutes to just start to regulate our nervous system again. Anytime that we’re starting to feel a little bit overwhelmed and to start to calm down and to get back into the green zone so that we can start producing the chemicals. So it’s understanding when we start to go into the red, but then bringing ourselves down in two minutes. It’s free. You can sit at your desk.
Samantha Riley 28:34
Yeah, exactly.
Naomi Oyston 28:37
You know, it’s pretty simple to do. Yeah, so that’s my top tip. Yeah.
Samantha Riley 28:43
I love those. There’s a couple of things. So I’d never heard of, actually, no, I’ve heard the phrase popcorn brain, but I didn’t know what it was until we spoke today. That, you know, Leon laughs at me. I can’t remember the name of the movie, but there’s a whole heap of animals in it. Someone’s going to message me on social media and let me know what it is. But there’s like a little animal winner and he’s always like, squirrel. And he’s like, he always changes the way he is. Leon’s always like, that’s like me, he’s like, Sam Squirrel. And I’m like, off to the next thing. Like, that’s definitely me. And I’d noticed, you know, obviously, because he’s told me, but I noticed that more so lately, it had changed. So there’s a couple of things that we’ve done. A, I pick up my phone way, way less. So simple things like we always go and have breakfast out on Saturday mornings. And after the gym on Tuesdays. When he’s ordering, I don’t pick up my phone. I just sit at the table and just like, look around, which is something that we don’t often do anymore, right? And it’s just like having that time to just stop. So it just that simple thing has helped a lot. And the second thing is that Sundays now, every Sunday we have like an open fire. We have our fire pit in the backyard. So, right after lunch on Sunday, we always go outside, we don’t take our phones with us, we just talk, the sun goes down, the fire goes on, you know, our nervous systems calm down because it’s dark. It’s just the fire, we go to bed early, and it has helped us so much feel much better going into the week. So just simple things like that can be so helpful, right?
Naomi Oyston 30:25
Beautiful. And what I loved hearing you say about your breakfast is we always go out on, was it Saturdays and Tuesdays?
Samantha Riley
Saturdays and Tuesdays. Yeah, yeah.
Naomi Oyston
And so that’s really cool. Because you’ve got these routes, you’ve prioritised your habits and your routines, to do the things that you know are going to fill your cup. And, Andy and I did our first fire the other day on full moon. And it was just so delightful sitting there. sitting there watching those flames. And we bought a little fire pit at Bunnings for I don’t know, 70 bucks or something, you know, like it’s not expensive, you know these little things. And but this, I suppose what we’re saying here is it’s often the simple things that are going to ground us and help us to get that stability, to get out of our head and just be conscious of, you know, in the workshop I did last week, we were talking about who watches TV and is on their phone while they’re watching TV. Right? So, and pretty much everybody put their hand up, right? Because they’re watching a show, but they’re still you know, playing a game or messaging somebody or scrolling through social, you know, so it’s to put the phones away and to just be present is something that doesn’t always come easy now, but it’s something that’s really, really important.
Samantha Riley 31:46
Absolutely. Naomi, I know you’ve got a free resource that’s going to help people to implement some of these things. Can you just share a little bit about what that is and where they can find that?
Naomi Oyston 31:56
Yeah, sure. So it’s basically just a short, short and sharp guide in terms of what’s really going on in our brain. And you know, how we can start to take control with some fairly simple tips that are, you know, as we said, it’s not about spending a million bucks. It’s not about anything that’s that difficult, it’s back to the basics. But what are some really basic, really easy to implement tips that support our cognitive health, our happiness, our health, our habits, and you know, that high performance side of things as well, which is all going to basically be an investment in in getting us back in that green zone to deal with, I think, what’s on its way ahead for all of us. And that’s on my website, my website is shineexecutive.com.au. And the forward slash gift is the link to be able to download that one.
Samantha Riley 32:59
Perfect. And we’ll put the link to this in the show notes, wherever you’re listening that link will be down below. So you can go and grab a copy of that.
Naomi, thanks for coming and chatting about this conversation. It went like I said, when I saw that Facebook post, I was like, we have to have this conversation. So thanks so much for coming and talking about it. It’s so important for entrepreneurs. We’re all high achievers. That’s why we do what we do. But this is about maintaining that high performance and not just coming in bursts. So thank you so much.
Naomi Oyston 33:30
Oh, my absolute pleasure. And I love everything that you do, Sam, I’m a big fan. I’m a fan.
Samantha Riley 33:39
Thanks. I’ll speak to you soon. All right, thanks. Thanks, Sam.
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