Dr Kristy Goodwin on the Success Tax

Let's go. Before we begin, we have a quick favor to ask. If this podcast has been landing for you, please hit subscribe and leave us a rating or review. It helps us grow the show and keep bringing these conversations to more people. Welcome back, Dream Team. Today's guest studies the brain for a living. She's even brought one in today. Last week was pelvises. This week is brains. But she still ended up in a code red ward. Because knowing the science and living it are two completely different

things. Ain't that the truth. Welcome Dr. Christy Goodwin. She is one of Australia's leading neuroperformance scientists, a PhD researcher, keynote speaker to Apple, Deote, EY, and Quantis, and the author of Dear Digital, We Need to Talk. Her mission to help high performers stop paying a success tax when the achievement becomes the cost of health, relationships, and sanity. I love that bit. If you have been switched on all day but rarely powered up or can't sleep because you're too wired and tired, your biology has been trying to tell you something and today Dr. Christie is going to translate all of that for us. Welcome to our podcast.

Thank you for having me. Thank you for joining us. I'm really excited about this conversation because having been in menopause for the last 10 years, I feel like I've lost my brain completely. I need to go to a ward. I'm here to give it back to you. Thanks. I don't want you to go to a code red ward. No, I do not. So, let's start where we always do with a wakeup call.

would trot off to work every day and remind me that him and his colleagues were keeping the Australian economy going. Um, good luck trying to resurrect your speaking career from the kitchen table and simultaneously attempt to homeschool three children. Um, I was only homeschooling two. One was still a toddler. Um, and I'd heard the whispers from my body for years. Slow down. Release the stress valve. But I ignored those whispers. So at the height of the pandemic, um I contracted CO back in the stages when people were still fighting over toilet paper in the supermarket shelves. Not a good time. Not a good time. Um and if I'm honest, I was a fit, vaccinated woman in my early 40s. So I thought it was going to be a blip on the radar. But if I'm really honest, I had

plans of binge watching Netflix in bed and having my husband deliver me chicken soup. Neither of which came true. Um but a girl can dream. But what I didn't expect was that alongside CO I would have repeatable uncontrollable seizures. And one wet Wednesday morning, our great Dane Tommy found me convulsing on the floor next to our bed. Um he alerted my husband. Thankfully my husband woke up and found me convulsing on the floor. He called an ambulance. I was rushed to a code red emergency ward and hooked up to a ventilator. After extensive medical testing, the only reason that the doctors and nurses came up with as to why I was so sick with CO despite having no health issues, I was burnt out. Years

and years of chronic stress and it wasn't just homeschooling three kids, although that certainly can take you over, can't it? Um it it wasn't just trying to resurrect a speaking career in the middle of a pandemic. It was the years of chronic stress that led up to it. And I'd heard those whispers. You know, what do they sound like? Slow down. Release the pressure valve. But I adopted I don't know if you both remember the codal advertisement of the 1980s and I was like many high performers that I I worked with and this is the irony you know I was speaking and coaching high performers around stress and burnout and yet how ironic I was so unaware and this is one of the problems with burnout is that often our adrenals are so fatigued that we're no longer even producing cortisol. So when we

often say to somebody, are you okay? And their response is yes or sometimes fine, they are think they're fine because their body's not even producing cortisol to alert them to the fact that they're stressed. And so I see this with a lot of high performers. It's almost like the frog in the boiling pot. They've become so immune and so unaware that they're in this chronically stressed state that they don't recognize the signs of burnout. And so I lay in that code red ward. Um and it was a sobering moment. um I realized I'd almost paid the ultimate success tax and I work with a lot of high performers who I see hit epic results. You know, they achieve their KPIs. They they reach world records.

From an optics perspective, they are successful, but they have sacrificed their physical health, their mental well-being or the mo most important relationships or sometimes they hit the trifecta and they compromise all three in their relentless pursuit of success. And I laid there and through the hum of the ventilator there was a paper petition curtain separating myself and the female patient next to me. And I distinctly remember that woman next to me laboring for breath. I remember her calling out for her daughters. And I remember her taking the final breath of her life. And I lay there cuz she couldn't have visitors in

a code red ward. And I realized was I going to face the same reality. Was I going back home to my husband, my great Dane Tommy, and my three sons? And then I started to wonder, do my kids know the Netflix password? Does my husband know the lunch order login app password? It's really random the things that go through your head at that moment. But I realized it was such a a sobering moment that I'd almost paid that success tax. And so I laid there in that hospital bed and I made a pledge to myself that if I was lucky enough to recover, I was no longer willing to live and work in ways that were unsustainable. I was going to walk my talk and start living and working in ways that are compatible with I call our brain our human operating system, our hos. And I think so many people are

living and working in ways that are completely incompatible with how we're designed to not only function but to flourish as humans. And so I promised myself that I was never going to exhaust, deplete, um, deprive myself and start living and working in ways that were harmonious with my human operating system. Now, I will admit I'm one of the lucky ones who left that code red ward. That wasn't certainly the case for a lot of other people. So, it's been my mission since then to turn my life around and to talk to people about how you don't have to pay a success tax. Um, how if you work and live the way we're meant to, which is how our HOS is designed, that we can achieve success

and we don't have to make sacrifices along the way. Sorry, I just want to acknowledge you. That is such a powerful moment when you're literally have a curtain between life and death next to you. Um, I do remember being in hospital in a spinal ward in a neck brace. I'd just been operated on, so I couldn't really move. And the guy next to me was being told he'd never walk again. And I couldn't see him cuz both of us couldn't move. And the first words out of his mouth were, "How do I get downstairs and have a siggy?" And I just think of everyone in those

really vulnerable moments like it unlocks something in you that you can't forget and you realize how um precious life is and and that line is thin for all of us and you don't know when it's coming. So obviously you made a very strong promise and we make strong promises to ourselves especially where we're in the in the dark nights of the soul. How did you keep it? Um because it's really easy to go back to what you know and we do revert back to embedded and entrenched habits. You know neural pathways tell us that we revert back to

those entrenched beliefs and patterns and identities. Um for me it was using a wearable device. Now, the irony is I use I coach people around high performance and we use aura rings and whoop bands. And so, I'd worn both of those for many years.

interspersed throughout the day. When I take them, my stress drops, my sleep is phenomenal. But when I don't take them, the opposite happened. So I just started to listen firstly to the data cuz I'm a scientist. So that was a red flag. But then even more importantly, I tuned in. I listened to for the first time, what does my body need? What is it asking from me? Is it getting up and going to the gym at 5:00 or is it getting that extra hour of sleep? And it sounds so simple, but often I say to people, the basics work if you work the basics. So it was just going back to what simple things I could do. firstly being led by what the data was telling me, but then tuning into what my body was needing and then it was physiologically feeling better.

You know, I wasn't as foggy all the time. I wasn't, you know, the the the rage that had come that I had attributed to pmenopause. Didn't disappear. It didn't it didn't vanish. I'm going to be honest, but it certainly wasn't as pronounced. Um the anxiety that had crept in that I'd never had in my life before started to come when I was really sleepd deprived. So, I just started making all these correlations between the habits in my life. And that's why I really like wearable devices cuz you can start to track some of the incremental often invisible things that we're doing that are either supporting or stifling our well-being and they become very tangible and very concrete. So, it was tracking those and then it was being kind on myself when I got it wrong because I

think so many of us think we're going to instantaneously course correct and we're going to be on this beautiful trajectory and you know it's sunshine and cupcakes from then on and it certainly wasn't the case. Why not? I love sunshine. Sorry. As long as they're gluten-free, rainbows, unicorns, all of the above. I love I love hearing your honesty that you were coaching people to live life a certain way and yet you weren't. And how much courage it is a for a scientist to actually use the words feeling.

Um, how did your life change when you put this feeling modality into your life? What happened to your relationships with your husband and your kids and your loved one and yourself? So, first and foremost was myself because I started to tune in to what I think for years I'd tuned out physiologically, psychologically to what I needed and it was just this unhealthy obsession over chasing success and hitting my targets and moving on to the next thing. Um, that definitely had ripple effects because when I felt great, I was a calmer mom. I was a present partner. Um, and so it had a contagion effect. And so I think for many high performers that the recovery paradox means that the people that often need the rest the most are usually the

least likely to take it. And I had this like tangible visceral experience that when I recovered, when I released the pressure valve, when I didn't operate at, you know, level 11 constantly, that my performance was better, my well-being was better, and that had contagion effects on so many parts of my life. It's funny, we we teach what we need to learn, don't we? And uh it's actually how Tess and I became business partners is because Tess made me do a life audit on my life because here I was traveling around the world doing 65 talks a year on the road 190 days a year talking about living a sustained success and yet I was completely burned out and overriding the whispers and even ignoring the screams and because as a professional athlete I just saw every breakdown as another goal I had to

overcome, another challenge to push through just an prove to myself that I can keep going and keep doing and keep achieving until I had an audit put up on a whiteboard in front of me going well how sustainable is this not really. So what are you willing to do about it? So it's one thing to know is it that life's not being lived sustainably and the way you're going about things the body is whispering and the body's screaming but it's another thing to actually listen and do something about it. That's the biggest challenge and before you end up in a code red which is why I wore red for you today just to make sure to see how healed you are. It's amazing what you did for a nice rest, isn't it?

Like, and can I say this? I I recently shared something on social media and my DMs blew up and then after keynotes it was women getting in the lift after a presentation and it was the very private conversation. It was people coming up at my son's sport and saying, "You shared something and I need to say I see this. I see a lot of and it happens to high performers in general, but this is amplified for high performing women. We have a really pronounced concerning gender well-being gap at the moment with alarmingly num numbers of females who are experiencing higher rates of stress and burnout than our male counterparts.

that if you're not fried to a crisp and depleted and you're not busy, you're not doing a good enough job as a parent. Um, and so I see this playing out. And you know, I often say to people, just because something's common doesn't mean that it's normal. If you are secretly wishing for a bout of gastro or a little I had a client the other day say to me, I was driving to work and I had this secret thought that I was just hoped I had a minor fender bender on my work. I've had that. And so when we're craving because it's almost like this socially acceptable way cuz if you're injured or you're ill, it's okay to rest. You can say no without guilt.

line. But if we see recovery as taking a pit stop and recharging, changing the tires, changing the tires, refueling, swapping drivers, we're more productive. So, can I ask you and we if you look at a week and a just say a normal 9 to5 working person who's got kids or doesn't but has, you know, a big life. Yep. Peak success. They're on all cylinders, lots of responsibility, lots of responsibility. You know, we're picturing ourselves in this moment. And you say to them, if you rest more, you're more productive.

And then 26% 26%. So, good stats. What does that look like for someone during the day versus during the week?

generally say a peak performer, and what we often don't know is that our prefrontal cortex, so the thinking part of the brain, the CEO, unfortunately, it only has a 4 to 6 hour battery life per day. Now, I'm not saying, please don't snip this podcast and say Christie said we should have 4 hour, not forget the 4 day work week, let's have 4h hour work days. But for us to do the mentally taxing, challenging work that we need to do, especially if we're knowledge workers, we've got a four to six hour battery life per day. And so we are designed to work in roughly, I call them digital dashes. So sprint and then recover. And we should ideally have around four of those 90 minute sprints.

That would be an ideal workday for knowledge workers. And then pulsing those 10 minute 2 to 10 minute recovery breaks at least four of those with a longer one during the day. And that is so manageable. It is. And I like how did we make smoochos okay? Like someone goes, "Oh, I'm going to go have a cigarette." And you're like, "Oh, okay." Like, "Yeah, sure." Like, "Oh, if I'm just going to go have a recovery break and have a bit of sunshine." They're like, "What weirdo?" Yeah.

In the ocean or during meditation? Yeah, meditation. Walking or meditation, on the train, on the plane, in the car. After I've meditated, not during. So what you have activated in those states is the default mode network. You've been idle with your thoughts. So we basically turn off that prefrontal cortex. And this is when ideas percolate. This is when we solve complex problems. When I ask audiences this, I've never in all the years of speaking to people had anyone, it's usually the shower or the car um or walking um I've never had

anyone say in my inbox or in Excel spreadsheet. The last meeting. Yes. Back to back. So that that time to be and we we fill our days now with our screens. And so our brains never get that time. I call it mind meandering. You know, we never get to daydream. And that is, you know, if we're getting paid for our intellect and our IP, that downtime is actually making us productive. So I shared this default mode network with a a CEO I was coaching and he said to me, Christie, my EA and my team have access to my calendar. It's going to look very unprofessional if I put in an hour of boredom on a Friday.

Yeah. He said, "So, what I'm going to do," and he was semantics. He blocked it out cuz he understood the benefits of it. And he said, "I'm going to write activation of default mode network time cuz it sounds a lot fancier." Said, "Go for it. Knock yourself out." Now, his default mode network time, you're like, "This lane was either surfing or playing golf." And it had to move around because of his requirements with his role. But he fiercely protected that time. During one of his surf surfing sessions, he came up with an idea that generated his business $20 million in revenue. Now, I can't guarantee that ROI, so it's money back guarantee with that one, but how profound. He never would have had that if he hadn't fiercely blocked out that time. And

because we're now in this world where we're always on, we're rarely focused, and we are never recovered. Getting that idle time is more precious than ever. And we have to, I think, fiercely block it because it's not only essential for our wellbeing. I think you'd attest to that being in the It doesn't have to be in the water. It's whatever lets you just let ideas percolate. Um, we have to fiercely protect that from a well-being perspective, but it's also a performance lever. Yeah. Like cuz we think about how our brains work.

Like you talk about the fact that we're processing 74 GB of information every day. Every day. Per person. So what what impact does it have on their little brains over here? Huge. So I asked a lot of people and a fascinating study just came out saying that for many years we've said that middle-aged women attribute brain fog to permenopause and menopause symptoms and most certainly a symptom. But Gene Hails released a study earlier this year and it found that 16 to 24 year old women are concerned about their memory and their ability to focus. We can't blame

per menopause at that age. And so what I think is happening and there are studies that looking at this. There's a phenomenon called digital dementia. We are becoming more forgetful because we are as you said processing an estimated 74 GB worth of data professionally and personally every day.

and it's not and it can be permenopause and menopause. We definitely know that brain fog is a consistent common denominator with symptoms. different though than memory loss. Memory. Yes. So I think our digital habits are certainly contributing and they are in lots of other ways. I often say to people technologies got its tentacles into every part of our lives professionally and personally in invisible and invasive ways and we often don't even realize how it's impacting us. So I get people sometimes to do an experiment. I don't know if you want to do it.

So I say to people visually inspect the side of your two pinky fingers. So now depending on how good your eyes are, it'll be really close or far away. Okay. So we're putting our pinky fingers together. Run a finger along the side. Any finger. Yep. Along the top side of your pinky side of your pinky finger on your dominant hand. Yeah. Do you notice a callous, an indent, a scolop on my dominant hand? A lot of people do. That is where we hold our mobile phones. And so a lot of people have a divot, some sort of indent. Tessa's worried.

I like I have it on both, I think. And I use this to show this is where we cradle our phones. This is a really concrete example of how tech is impacting us. Another way that it's impacting us and I think we have a stress epidemic. The World Health Organization suggests that the next global epidemic we're facing will be chronic stress. Do they have a vaccine for that? No, not yet. Fiser are working on it. Yeah. It's called rest. Everyone, we're going to introduce you to this new vaccine called rest. R E S T.

Yeah, brilliant. Um, rest 20. But we are working and so because we are designed as humans, so part of our hos is designed for us to look in the distance. You know, our hos was designed to look at the woolly mammoth on the horizon and the sun setting and any strange sounds that we might need to be alerted to. Our hos was never designed for us to spend hours and hours a day doing near work on our phones on our laptops. No. And so when we have a narrow gaze, when our eyes converge on our screens, we hold our

breath. Now this is a problem because as humans, part of our hos, and this is why our brain is so intriguing and clever, our hos is designed so that while we are awake, we should sigh roughly every 5 minutes. And we do it and we don't even recognize. I'm not talking about the melodramatic I'm pissed off with you hand on hip accompanied by the eye roll sigh. But whilst we're awake, we should be sighing roughly every 5 minutes to regulate our oxygen and carbon dioxide levels and bring us back to a stress baseline. Is that cuz you release the breath slowly on the out?

Yes. So a sigh is simply two inhalations through our nose and a longer exhalation through our mouth. We should be doing that every 5 minutes while we're awake. But when our eyes are looking at a small surface area, it triggers off the stress response because we're designed to dilate our gaze and we hold our breath. They have studied something, I don't know if either of you experienced this, called email apnea. What? When we go into our inboxes, we hold our breath. We dump a whole lot of cortisol. And you've all got hopefully they're not in the room cuz this gets awkward, but we've got that

one team member, that one colleague, and just the center is enough. my answer. But when she does, she gets email at meia for sure. No. So what I do is if I see an email that triggers me or an inbox that triggers me, I just close the lid and I walk away and I go and make a cup of tea and I process how I'm feeling and how I want to respond as opposed to holding my breath and then becoming a keyboard warrior. That's just my u regulation, my ability to regulate myself in that situation.

Otherwise, I get super reactive and then hold my breath and then perhaps say something that I regret saying, I'm better off just walking away, taking a breath, and processing it and coming back. I've noticed, and I looked at the research of this as well, that just being in such close proximity to people all the time was draining me. So, when you're on backto-back Zooms Oh, yeah. or like we do a lot of workshops that are virtual. It's not that normal to have someone that you don't know that close to your faith.

Yes. It's also not natural. Stanford University have done some great research in this space. And so you're not imagining it. People still in 2026 say, "I still find Teams and Zoom meetings stressful and exhausting." And exactly what you're saying. You would never be in close proximity. If you've only got one person on the other screen and you've got a giant monitor, they got a super sized head. It's also natural to see ourselves in a social dynamic. So if we were on a team's meeting, it would be like us here today. And the researchers call it impression management. And so we start to notice, you know, my eyebrows do need plucking.

I am going bald like my kids have pointed out. I tilt my head a funny way. And we look at ourselves. We also know on virtual meetings if there's more, and I'm sure you've had this happen in your presentations, if there's more than a 1.2 two second lag between when you say something that you hope is funny and if they've got their cameras on the audience laughs. Anything more than 1.2 seconds and you don't get a response, we misconstrue that as social disapproval. Now, if you've got dodgy internet connection, if you've got hundreds of people on a virtual meeting, 1.2 second lag happens all of the time. And so, our

brains are working overtime on these virtual meetings. Um, and if you think I'm exaggerating this, plastic surgeons throughout the world have reported what they are colloally calling the zoom boom. Increasing requests in facial cosmetic procedures because people are noticing, you know, I've got fored brows. I've got resting face. I've got, you know, a weird thing happening on my face. The zoom boom zoom boom impression management. Isn't that so interesting? M so I want to step change for a second here and I want to know why does it take people

code red wards to change their lives why did it take you a code red ward to change your life I think as you said before it's one thing to know something intellectually it's another thing to have lived experience and to literally be on death doorstep and I this is why I do the work I do now because I don't want people to wait till you're in a code red ward to wait till there's a relationship breakdown to wait mental health. No, I I people need it. Well, we were asked by La Stone like raise your hand if you thought that having a day or two in hospital was a good way to take a break. Yeah. Like if you just need to go to hospital to give yourself a holiday and we both went, "Yeah, there's been a time in our lives where we have wanted

that." And I think about when I'd pushed myself too hard and the body was screaming at me. I had blood in my stools. I was incredibly stressed. I wasn't sleeping. struggling to remember anything. I was didn't have resting face. I just was a There was so many things that were going wrong and yet just push on, push on, push on. Why do we Why do we believe that it has to be a Well, we talk about feather brick truck. Why does it have to be a truck before we stop? Well, look. Yeah.

Yeah. Is that part of our paleoithic brains that are cuz we're antiquated, right? We're iPhone 1.0. We don't get upgraded. Is there something in the brain that is doing that to protect us? Like how how is it working as a neuroysicist? Help us understand this. That is a great question. So I often say this is 100 200,000 years old hardware that we're running, right? And we're trying to run 2026 software on it. And we wonder why we're crashing all the time, you know, why are people so stressed and exhausted and burnt out?

And that is that incompatibility. You know, we cannot outperform how this was designed. And so I think to answer, and I've never been asked that question before, we have that that preffrontal cortex, that thinking part of the brain, um it hopefully when it's online is helping us make good decisions. But what we know is that when we're chronically stressed, and I want to point out, I one thing I'm really fiercely passionate about is that stress gets a bad rap, and it shouldn't.

Aaliyah Crumb's work says that the way that we cognitively view stress determines its physiological and psychological impact on us. Okay. So that's what I have heard. If I tell myself stress is really bad, it's harmful, I need to avoid at all costs, it's going to screw me over, it has a detrimental impact. If we say in short bursts and if I can resolve the stress cycle, pulses of stress will actually catalyze because we get tunnel vision. Our heart rate accelerates. And a groundbreaking study that was published just last year with surgeons tells us that if it's called the clutch effect. If a surgeon encounters a stressful incident in the first five minutes of a procedure, the patient has far better

clinical outcomes than if the surgeon didn't encounter a minor we're not wanting them to go into cardiac arrest or anything major, but a a minor stressful situation. Why? Because we mount the right physiological and psychological response to manage that stress. And so it optimizes our performance. Yeah. So the surgeon's more switched on. They've got a pump of cortisol that helps them become more focused. I and I understand that like it is the story around stress. Yes. And what I hear from the people that we coach is they've learned that stress is really good for them. They perform well

under stress. Like I need a deadline yet they don't know when to stop. And this is the trick and this is what I had to learn the hard way. And I find a lot of high performers have to learn the hard way. It's the code red red moment. It's the blood in your stool. It's the relationship crumbling. Um because the I call it the the capability curse. When you're a really capable person, you can keep going. You've got the Energizer battery that finds extra surge capacity to keep pushing past. And so I think um for a lot of high performers, we become accustomed to a really high stress threshold. and and more groundbreaking

research, a study was done, I think it was 2025 or 2024, that shows that the part of the brain that's the willpower center of the brain, it's the part of the brain that says, "I can do hard things." I would love to have scanned this part of your brain, me, it's called your anterior mid-sulate cortex and your antia protruding. So, this is the part of your brain that says, "I can do hard things. I will choose challenge over comfort. I will intentionally choose it. And what we know is that this part of the brain, believe it or not, is physically larger in athletes, smaller in obese people.

Meaning the good news is that we can train this part of the brain. We can train our capacity to do hard things. And so this is why we've seen trends in cold water exposure, ice baths, deliberate heat exposure, vigorous physical activity. They are all things that help us to build what I call our stress tolerance. Now, that is a skill and that's usually something that a lot of high performers have built into their DNA. That's that capability curse. They keep going. But the trick is imagine this is perfect that this is your cortisol cup. And so your cortisol cup, remember, is designed to be filled up and then we are designed to empty it out. We're designed for pulses of stress and then closing that out.

And what period of time is considered a pulse of stress? It's hard. It's hard to give you a number on that because we all have different tolerances for stress. Yeah. But what I see consistently, and I imagine this happens for many of your listeners, is that many of us today are filling our cortisol cup and we're never emptying it out. We're never downregulating. We're not taking the the piccolo breaks. We're not closing our eyes for 30 seconds. We're not getting into nature. We're not going and having a chat with our friends. We know when we chat, we make oxytocin, which is the actual antidote to cortisol just by

being in close proximity to someone. And so what I see with a lot of high performers, the red flag I often say first, um, if somebody is dancing around the precipice of burnout, I'm very careful how I say that one, is that often some telltale signs, insomnia, so difficulties falling or staying asleep. Um, emotional blunting. So rather than saying how are you, and they're like blah, like you're neither good nor bad cuz that's that cortisol fine. We're fine. Do you know I heard someone say the other day, do you know what fine means? Yes, we do. Insecure needy and emotional. Feelings inside not expressed. Oh, that's probably a little bit more PG.

Love that one. Not our style. Ours is up, insecure, needy, and emotional. But feelings inside, not expressed. Love that one. Yours is the more corporate version. I heard another one the N was neurotic. Yeah. Neurotic. Yeah. Yeah, that works. Neurotic both. But either way, if someone says they're fine, we all know they're not. We know they're not. Yeah, they're somewhere on that spectrum. Or their feelings expressed.

My two least favorite. No, there's three um kind of flippant remarks that I just despise. Number one, it is what it is. Number two, it's all good. And number three, I'm fine. If I hear those, I banish on all of it. But anyway, can I add a fourth? Yes. Busy. Busy. Oh, My husband got me to reframe busy as um wonderful. So, life is full of wonder. Beautiful. And Mel Rob Mel Doyle reframed busy as having a full dance card. Yeah. Yeah, I love that.

Love that. So, our high performers, uh, they're not fine. Just so we've clarified that, they're somewhere on that too. Billy's not inside

And what I think it is is a cortisol cup that's too full. So, if we've spent our day triaging stressful emails, we go to backtoback virtual meetings, we're on the family WhatsApp group that are firing off about a family incident, then we scroll our social media and we see all the distressing news stories, our cortisol cup is full if we haven't intentionally downregulated it. And so, naturally, between 2 and 4:00 a.m., our cortisol should begin its increase because that's what will help us to wake up. But if you've gone to bed with an overflowing cortisol cup and you've done nothing to downregulate, you know, you haven't gone for the walk, you haven't written your to-do list before bed, your

cortisol cup is full. So that 2 to 4 a.m. uptake in cortisol means your cortisol cup's overflowing. And that's why we wake lay there willing ourselves to go back to sleep but unable to do so. It's also the liver Ella. It is detoxification. Detoxification. Absolutely. Yeah.

Neither do we. And that's why we do this podcast because I think we're constantly looking like how do we grow? How do we change? Like we're improve what tools can we learn? So yeah. Yeah. So, in an ideal day, um, I get up early on. So, I get people to identify their chronotype. So, your chronoype dictates when you're naturally most focused and alert and when you need to fall asleep. I tell it, we're all morning people. We are. I heard the other day you can change yours.

You can't. So, it's based So, your chronotype will shift in your lifespan, but you can't manipulate it cuz it's based on your PR3 gene. And so, it's part of your HOS. So, you can't really you can't go from being a night owl to an early bird by willing yourself to get up at 5:00 a.m. because you can do it over time. Well, the only reason I'm asking this is because my husband, who was a rockstar, was a night owl by by profession, by vocation, his job. Yeah. And then he married a surfer who who gets up when he's coming home and now he gets up with the sun. Yeah. So, it does it will shift. So, a lot of people's shift throughout their lifespan. You just can't put in place. I can't stand the word hacks, but you can't put in place hacks to manipulate it yourself.

You can make some subtle adjustments to move it slightly, but it's very hard to go from one sort of chronoype to another. Um, his chronoype must actually be a morning person, but in fact actual fact he was just being a night owl as a result of his vocation. That is happening with a lot of our teenagers because of their screen habits. So, a lot of teenagers say, "I'm a I'm a night owl." And some of them are. We know as they go through puberty there are changes in their circadian rhythms, but a lot of them are bumping back their circadian rhythm because they're on their screens before they go to sleep. And we now know it's not the blue light effect. So some again groundbreaking research is for years we were told that it was and a pioneering study by a team of researchers last year

tells us that blue light actually has a minuscule effect on our sleep. What we think is happening is it's the hyperarousal effect. Yeah. I was wondering whether it's like a um dumping dopamine all day. Yes. Yes. So it it's that so it's overstimulating our brains right before we go to sleep when we should be, you know, decompressing and downregulating, but it's also it's the crowding out effect. You know, we're on our screens when we should be asleep. I don't know about you, but I'm guilty of engaging in revenge bedtime procrastination sometimes. You know, that one episode of Netflix that becomes two that becomes three. So we're we're Yes.

overstimulating your brain and then crowding out the time that we once had for sleep. Blue light, research actually tells us from our screens has a very minuscule, not statistically significant impact on our sleep. But we still shouldn't have our phones anywhere near our beds. No, I have a um salt lamp in our room as well light which is just like you walk in and it's this sanctuary. Um that last night I go to bed at 7:30, sometimes 8:00. Um Benji goes down at 6:30.

And I said to Chris last night, "Is this bad?" Like, am I this bad? It's dark, it's cold. Why not be snuggling in bed? Prototype. Yes, we're both early people. We wake up at about 5:00 a.m. if not earlier. Um, I think one of the biggest um I guess whoever made the human brain and the human operating system has got some explaining to do when they made children not sleep. Yes.

Like that to me sounds like like that's just pure torture. And so I I really feel for parents who have non-sleeping babies. Like we have a fundamentally different view of parenthood when you have a sleeping baby versus a non-sleeping baby. Yeah. It's just it's brutal. So I just need to know. So bedtime at 7:30 is not bad. No. Not if your chronotype is shifted. If you're getting something, you really needed validation. I did cuz I thought, "Oh my god, am I wasting my life going to bed at 7:30?" No, it's not broken. up. Yes.

And all you're going to do is stay up and watch TV. You're better off going to bed and reading and having a sanctuary. Definitely not. Now, I want to go back to that dopamine that you talked about. So, one of the habits I encourage people to do if you can is to make the first 15 minutes of the morning when you wake up phone free because if we wake up and scroll, we get a hit of cortisol cuz we see the angry emails, we see that our sports team lost overnight, we look at the weather, um, and god forbid we look at the news. Yes. and we get a huge hit in c cortisol, that stress hormone. But the other thing that I think is really fascinating that a lot of high performers struggle with because they do

this out of habit is that when we get that spike, so initially when we're scrolling or tapping and we see something funny or interesting or a bite-sized bit of news that is fascinating, we get a hit of dopamine. But then once we've had that hit of dopamine, our dopamine drops below our baseline level. So after that morning surge, that dopamine hit, we are below our baseline level. So everything after that feels hard and heavy. This is why it's like walking through mud when we're trying to tick off those first few things of the day because we've depleted our dopamine. So if we can, I'm not saying don't use your phone at all in the morning, but the first 15 minutes.

The other thing is that you're coming out of being asleep and that's a beautiful right brain state. That's often when ideas percolate and germinate, too. So if you can keep those first 15 minutes, you stop getting into that beta, that busy brain state. Yeah, we try and tell people an hour. So your 15 minutes a lot. Well, we'll go with 30. Yeah, we'll go with 30. And it's interesting. I ask people to notice what breakfast they make when you are not on your phone. And whether Yeah. Because you're more inclined to put more effort into what you eat. perhaps putting on like doing some more laundry or cleaning the house or spending more time with the kids

because you haven't already had your much needed dopamine hit as soon as you wake up. My aura ring's telling me to stretch my legs. Oh, good. Oh, we should get you to look at our aura data. Could we after this? I love that. Keep going. Okay, so we're waking up. Um, if we can avoid caffeine, and I'm talking here about coffee in the first 90 minutes of the day. 90 minutes. Yes. I'm going to say 60 to 90. I'm going to be generous. I don't drink anyway. Okay, that's fine for you. Now, don't look at me. I can't do this one. You don't like this one?

I hate this one. It's calling me out to do something I really don't want to do. So, let me tell you why. Do you hit an energy slump between 2 and 4 p.m. a lot of the time? Like, are you a bit foggy, tired, concentration lapses? I feel like I am just in general anyway cuz when you talked about the 4 hours block of brain power that just gave me so much um freedom reassurance cuz I really like I think it's part of being injured and so many things like I I I felt like that was something wrong

with me that I only have a certain amount of brain power. Um but I can play along. Yeah, I get um brain fog at about 2:00. We are both useless after 2:00 in the afternoon. We have people that try and book workshops at 4:00. We're like, "This is not going to be worth your money." So true. We'll give you your money back. Yes. Yeah. I hear you. So, what I say is that if you hit a slump between 2 to 4 p.m., this might be why. Because, have you heard that if we wake up and have a

coffee, that caffeine blocks something in our brain called adenosine. So, when we wake up, we've got a small amount of adenosine left over, denisonin molecules. Now adenisonin is a molecule that should build up in our brain throughout the day. We should have a lot at night because that's what makes us sleepy and yawny. But in when we wake up there's a residual amount that's left over and we want to burn that off. We want to get rid of it so we feel awake. But caffeine blocks our brains adenisonin receptors so that we feel like we're okay and that's why caffeine gives us that artificial hit that we're okay and we're alert. But what happens is that adenison is living there and often it comes back to bite us between 2 and 4 p.m. because we haven't burnt it

off. And so that's when a lot of people hit that energy slump and that's when they reach for a lot of sugar or another caffeine and we know caffeine's got a halfife of around 6 hours. So that impairs sleep. So it can become a vicious cycle. What about these people that say, "Oh, caffeine doesn't impact my sleep." Uh I say if you wear a wearable device, have a look. Um because is the quality of sleep. Yeah. One of the first things that coaching clients say to me when I get them if they've never worn a wearable device before, they're absolutely flabbergasted at two things. One is how even one glass of alcohol disrupts significantly disrupts their sleep and the second one is the impact of caffeine that they thought they were immune to.

But you know that your response to alcohol, for example, I feel is different when you're stressed versus when you're not stressed. Yes. because I tend to stay away from alcohol and I wear I now wear an aura ring and I noticed that when we were away for Tessa's 40th birthday, we're up at Port Stevens at Banisters. Shout out Banisters, our second home. And we drank our fair share of margaritas throughout that trip. It was World Margarita Day as well. Yes, it was. And my sleep I was scoring in the mid '9s. Yeah.

So, we wanted her to go back there. I have a theory on this and let me tell you what it is and not substantiated by research yet. What I think is happening because I hear this consistently with my clients particularly female clients and I will caveat to say most of my clients are female so this could skew the data but what I overwhelmingly see is that when women are connecting when we're in social collaboration with other people our brains release oxytocin as I said before oxytocin is the antidote to cortisol. So yes, alcohol can make us

more stressed, but we're almost buffering that because we're laughing, we're joking, we we're getting that Yeah. having fun. We're getting that social cohesion that almost nullifies that stress. So that oxytocin is almost buffering the cortisol that you would have got from the alcohol. That's a Christy. So a ladies lunch is good for the soul, I think. Just not too much Chardonnay. Just a lunch, not a dinner. Yeah. No, I'll be asleep at dinner. I'll decline the invite. Yeah. Likewise. Yeah. Especially it's winter. She goes to bed at 7:30.

Tess is really fun. I'm sure it really is. It's funny when you focus on um where you say I don't have the data yet, but that is data. Like it really like do we need it? And can I tell you we do have not the alcohol connections data, but what we do have data is that and this is why I often say today we are more connected but disconnected than we've ever been. You know, we've got loneliness is at epid epidemic level and women regulate stress by what we call tend befriend. Fancy term for we we regulate and calm down when we chat, when we go for a walk, when our friend touches us,

you know, hand on the the Yeah, we always touch each other. Yeah, that's great. Above the board there. Just say to people, when do you argue with your spouse the most? And people often say at night. And one of the reasons is at night. our prefrontal cortex, that thinking part of the brain, turns off and the amydala turns on. So I say when your partner's picking a fight, touch them, hit them with oxytocin and say to them, "Honey, my prefrontal cortex is off. My amigdula is firing." And they'll be so impressed with your fancy vocabulary that they'll leave you alone. off.

I don't know what the you're talking about, but you're really me. Too many words. Yeah, too many words. a mandala. That's what I was like when I was studying for um the practitioner of positive psychology and well-being. I'd just come to Chris with all of these stats and figures and he's like, "Can you just feel what you're like to be around right now?" And I was like, "Good point. I'm a bitch." Okay, so we're waking up. We've delayed our coffee. Um not going to happen, by the way. I do have a glass of water before. Um not using a phone. 15 to 30 minutes of waking up.

Yep. Then I I get people to try and work with their chronotypes. So, can you try? And the reason is we know that once we're distracted, let's say we're doing some data analysis, we're writing our report and our email pings or our phone vibrates or chatty Kathy or talkative Tom come up to us in the office at the most inopportune time and distract us. Lquacious Laura, I like that one. I like that. However, we're distracted, research tells us it takes the average adult 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back into a deep focused state. It's called the

resumption lag. Now, if we think about our typical day, our attention is diverted all of the time. And so, I say today, the super skill, the number one,

Challenge me on that one. So, turn off all your social media notifications. Number two, bundle or batch your notifications on Teams, on Slack, on all your social media platforms. You can now choose what time or times of the day all of your notifications come to you rather than them dribbling in and distracting you throughout the day. So, bundling them. And the third one with rule with notifications is to create VIP lists. So, when you activate focus mode or do not disturb mode, everybody gets blocked apart from the people on your do not disturb list. Maybe it's your partner, maybe it's your aging parents, maybe it's your kids' daycare or school, maybe it's your mother-in-law, maybe it's not.

Um, maybe it's a client and you're working on a time-sensitive project. So, creating those rules because our brain, regardless of what we think, was designed to monotask, not multitask, and we're spending our days being constantly distracting. And that is exhausting us and stressing us. Regardless of whether you're male or female, you've heard it from the neuro physicist, scientist, scientist, you cannot multitask. There's no such thing as multitasking. We only have one piece of attention. And it's like having a torch. And when you change your attention, you don't actually shine another torch

on another direction. You just take that torch light and show it in a different direction. There's no such thing as multitasking. It's continuous partial attention. Partial attention. So Dr. Christine. Yes, we have heard you get uncomfortable when I call you doctor. I do. Why? It's funny you say that. Um I feel like Christie. I sometimes I I I don't I do you know what I was before we recorded today I was talking to Tom and I was saying how I left academic life because I became a frustrated academic.

I never fit into academic. I used to turn up to university in stilettos and leather pants and my husband used to say, "You sure you work at a university?" But bigger than that was I never felt like I belonged because I was so passionate. I felt like a frustrated academic. Um the reason I became a speaker and I accidentally became a speaker is because I could see great research being done in universities but it was published in peer-reviewed journals that sat on shelves and were never re read by anyone and it was shared in peer-reviewed conferences. And so I don't identify as an academic. So it's funny you picked up on that. Yeah. No, you squirmed. I did, didn't I?

Yeah. And it's interesting like because we work with a lot of people about belonging and I I was going to wear you are worthy and perhaps I should have today because I feel like maybe that's the message for you today. Like listening to your wisdom, your truth, it's really hard to make research interesting. Oh, do you know a client accidentally a couple of years ago, they were reading my intro for before for a keynote and they made a a little slip. It was the best slip and I actually put it on my details now. They called me a pademic and I went that is the best term and cuz he'd heard me speak previously and he was speaking off the cuff and he said Christie is

practical and she's an academic and because I was that frustrated academic I didn't want I see myself as a conduit between research and science but make it practical. Make it digestible, make it helpful. Otherwise, research. I'm sorry if there's academics listening. It doesn't mean anything if we don't give it to people. If we don't translate it, if we don't make it realistic. Thank you for picking up. Well, what a gift you are to us. This has to be one of my favorite conversations we've had on this podcast. I'm going to listen to it time and time again. I need to I need to capture all those stats. They're fascinating. I think we're going to bring you back to do our night perfect night routine

and to talk about how we raise the next wave of generations and how we help screeners. Yeah. Um so we if you would be so kind, we'd love to have you back. But of all of the tips and tools Dr. Christie who is worthy of that title.

Um, he was remarkable. He was phenomenal and still is. Um, he finished his treatment and 3 weeks later my EA who had managed my business for 8 years passed away unexpectedly. She'd laid down to have a nap. Um, she had a brain aneurysm and simply never woke up. And so it has been the accumulation of these three. My friend calls significant moments in our lives temporal landmarks. So the code red ward temporal landmark. Um but I've survived Lane's red t-shirt today. So I feel like I learned the lessons and I'm in a good place from that. My husband's diagnosis was a

reminder of our most important human currencies. Time, energy, and attention. And then Karen's tragic unexpected passing was just a reminder. I often say in my keynotes, we get 4,000 Sundays in our lifetime. Have you both read Oliver Burkeman's 4,000 weeks book? No. I'm gonna give it to you. I'm gonna give it to you. Um, he talks about if we're lucky, and I would say good health is a privilege. It's not a promise.

And if we're lucky, the average human gets 4,000 Sundays in their entire lifetime. Wow. That's why it's my favorite day. Sunday puts things in perspective. How many of us are making the most of them? Or how many of us are living I often say we're living as powered down low res versions of ourselves. And so I don't know how we ended on such a sober moment. Well, no, I think it's beautiful. So to that point, there were potent reminders um consistently that that our time is just so finite and we have to live and work the way we're meant to as humans.

So beautiful. That sounds like that was the awakening of the code red ward is to live every day. And I feel the emotion in you now to embrace your Sundays. I do. And um I'm a big believer of no chore Sundays um for that reason because yeah, life is so important to live and be present with those that you love cuz you never know what's around the corner. Donna, it's a cure you enjoy. Yeah. Are there such things? I I had a chore on Sunday that I had to kind of clear out my veggie garden. Oh, okay. So I enjoy that. Sounds like it's a hobby.

Well, it was part of gardening in the leadup to it. It felt like a chore cuz the basil had grown out of control. The mint was dying. The spinach had been attacked by some sort of caterpillar bug. And I really wanted to plant some rocket. Yes. You want your love to do this? You love gardening. And gardening is the weeding and the hard. Yeah. So, where can the world work with you? I know about a thousand people I'm going to pass on to work with you. Um that how do people get more Dr. Christie? So, even though I'm saying tame your tech habits, um I do share information online. And so my digital home is at drch christristygorbin.com and I try and

share practical um bits of information on Instagram and LinkedIn as well. Brilliant Pademic. It's been such an insightful and enjoyable conversation. We're excited to bring you back. Thank you. Yeah, I think you're part of our family now. Yes. Yeah. You're part of our dream team. You can probably take that home. I might need to reprint them.

Good luck drinking from it is all I can say. That'll be a collector's item soon. All right, Dream Team, if this podcast has resonated with you, which I'm sure it has, please pick one thing, not all of them, that you can do to help you live more harmonious with your human operating system. Dr. Christie, what a privilege it's had to be here. Dream Team, take care. Do your one thing, and we will see you next week. And in between that point, you can always connect with us at awakeacademy.com.au you if you want if you want more of us.

If you want more of us and we'll we'll see you next week. Toodles. Have you been listening to this episode and thought mic drop? Maybe I'm ready to get coached or have some therapy, but you don't want to go all the way down and get a therapist. Welcome to the Awake Collective where we do monthly coaching to help people feel accountable, supported, and they keep on doing the work that you hear in this podcast. It is life transformative, right LB? It's a community of support and like-minded people who are willing to keep investing in themselves because what we do is we help people help themselves. If you've enjoyed what you've heard today, then the Awake

Collective is for you. So, come and join us at awakeacademy.com.au and join us for monthly coaching, a community that supports you, and tools that you can use in your life to thrive. Let's go. See you there. Before we close, we just want to gently remind you that Awake Academy is not a licensed mental health service and this podcast is not a substitute for personalized mental health advice, assessment, diagnosis, or treatment. What we share here is general in nature and is designed to offer reflection, insight, and practical tools for everyday life. Therapy can be life-changing, and we deeply encourage you to speak to your GP about your mental health and well-being options.

Let this one ride. You know what I mean?