BSB 107
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Speaker: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Bite-Sized Brilliance podcast. I'm your host, Dr. April Darley, and I wanna start off today about the story with the frog in the water. If you're not familiar with this story, here's a brief little version. One day there was a frog in a pan of water, happily swimming along. Then eventually he noticed the temperature of the water started to change.
At first, it was no big deal. Maybe it even felt kind of nice and slowly, slowly, slowly, the temperature of the water kept increasing. Until it became somewhat uncomfortable, but still not a big deal. This frog can handle it. Again, the water kept getting hotter and hotter and hotter until it reached a boiling point.
Now, the moral of this story is that the frog didn't realize the danger because the acclimation was so slow. This is so applicable to stress and human [00:01:00] life because problems don't always look like problems, especially when we acclimate to them slowly. It's only until things hit a breaking point or a crisis point (i.e. the water is boiling) that we even notice how uncomfortable things have become, or the problem really presents itself in a way that you can no longer ignore . Isn't that interesting? Earlier this week I had a client call and say, you know what? I'm not sure if we need to meet this week because everything is going great.
There's just a lot of moving parts and pieces, but it's all really good stuff. Do we still need to meet? And I'm like, yes, absolutely, because. Even good things cause stress to your body. It's a different kind of stress. When things are problematic, we call that distress. There's some sort of problem that is causing us [00:02:00] discomfort or pain in a way that we do not want.
This can manifest as physical pain, emotional pain, mental anguish, anxiety, panic attacks. Stuff that if we had our choice, we would just absolutely do without, but there is stress on the other side of the spectrum and it's a good kind of stress. One of the best examples of this is exercise. Now all of us know that exercise has amazing long-term benefits for both your brain and your body.
But if you think about the physiology of exercise, if you were to lift weights, what you're doing is tearing muscle fiber t hat your body now has to marshal resources to repair, and if you are not giving your body the best building blocks to do that in the form of vitamins, minerals, supplements, good nutrition, healthy whole [00:03:00] foods, it's having to pull from other things and try to get those building blocks from other body systems.
Or repair in the best way that it can, despite you not giving what it needs. T he body is amazing and the brain and the body are really meant to be partners. But what tends to happen is if you are a high achiever, overachiever, Type A personality or whatever label that you want to put on a busy person who does a lot and really enjoys achievement.
If you have that personality type, you do something called mental override . And this is such an innate part of your personality, you don't even realize you're doing it, and there's both a helpful and a harmful way that you employ this mental override . So for the short term, mental override can be very beneficial.
[00:04:00] For example, if you are exercising and it hurts, you do have the ability to go,_ I know it's painful right now, but this is a benefit and we're just gonna do this and recover later._ That can be beneficial. Mental override. You are telling the body, yes, I know you're in pain. You're telling me something.
You're hurting. You're giving me this data, but this is not going to crush you. It's not really a problem, it's just part of the good stress process. Now it becomes harmful w hen you don't listen to the signals that your body is giving you chronically, and a really great example of this, if you are a runner or you're married to a runner, you know a runner.
Runners have the worst a ttitude toward recovery. They love to run. Maybe it's the endorphins that they get, the runner's high. That's a real thing. But I cannot tell you how many patients I had as a doctor who were [00:05:00] runners or chronic exercisers. And yes, we know exercises amazing until you get an injury.
The problem is if you work out a t the old pace with this injury, because you're practicing mental override to ignore your body's limits, to do what you mentally want to do for the sake of achievement. You run the risk of not healing properly or even making this injury worse. And I just can't tell you the number of runners they're like, please don't tell me to stop running. It's my life and I have to tell you to stop running. Because if you wanna heal properly, if you wanna make your body your partner, not your employee or your servant, you really do need to listen to the data that it's giving you. Which is rest for a while.
That doesn't mean forever. Work out some other way that doesn't involve injuring yourself. So that's an example of [00:06:00] how mental override can be used in a harmful way. Now if we bring it back to a situation that my client had, my client was in the midst of achievement, and all of these things were wonderful and good, but because they mentioned that there were a lot of moving parts and pieces that they were having to try to manage, yes, it's good.
The achievement is in the service of a goal, but the body still views this as stress. And I know my client is a high achiever and often practices, mental override and does not listen to their body and drink enough water, eat proper nutrition, get enough sleep because they keep their mind constantly going and they end up crashing.
That's the boiling point. Where you don't listen to the data that you're getting, you don't listen to your partner, which is the body, because your mind is going, I want this. Come on, get on board body, and then you push through instead of getting in a flow state. Now you think you're in a [00:07:00] flow state because you're doing this, this, this, and this.
You're task oriented and you're getting a lot of stuff done, but you're not really in a flow state because you're not incorporating that recovery period. You're not balancing force and flow. You're just forcing things. Mental override can be an amazing talent, a gift, a strength, a trait if used appropriately.
Everything in moderation. Problems do not always look like problems. So I absolutely told my client, come in for the session. Our strategy will be different. We're not going to problem solve in that strategy. What we're going to do is self-regulate and balance in that strategy because when you practice regulation tools and balancing tools every single day, even when things are going great, because I guarantee you one part of your brain is feeling stress, one part of your body is feeling stress.
This becomes a consistent habit so that you don't reach the boiling point. [00:08:00] You get to acclimate safely and still have enough energy left for your achievement without crashing your body. You don't have to reach the boiling point, but your strategy needs to change because problems don't always look like problems, and it is that discernment and awareness that is going to keep you out of a destructive state.
And something that will push you into distress instead of positive stress. If this sounds like you, if you are a high achiever, you know, you practice mental override. You are a busy person who loves achievement. You are balancing a lot of things at once. And sometimes you don't do it well, you end up crashing, you reach your boiling point and you don't acclimate sustainably.
If that sounds like you, then I have a solution for you. I offer a private one-to-one coaching program called *Decode*. In *Decode*, you actually learn how to r eally create a partnership between the brain and the body, and you learn [00:09:00] these different levels of thinking so that we expand your discernment, your awareness, your strategy, and even the way you view yourself every circumstance and life.
It is really thinking up leveled. And if that sounds really great to you, I offer a free consultation or you can just be a fast action taker and sign right up. Either way. Go to aprildarley.com and you'll find all the information there. Okay, my friends, don't be like the frog a nd ignore the danger until it's too late.
Learn to acclimate safely and jump out of that pot of boiling water if you need to. Okay? Don't wreck yourself. Check yourself before you wreck yourself. That is my sage advice for this week. I'm wishing you so much love, success, and achievement, and I'll see you next time. Goodbye.
