In this functional episode, Erin Harrington, Founder of Soul Values, shares how she empowers busy leaders to transform stress into effectiveness and ease through the Purpose Elevated™ approach, rooted in rewiring their stress response for greater effectiveness and ease.
You will discover:
– What uniquely sets successful entrepreneurs apart
– Why shiny object syndrome is such a big deal for founders
– What the “dump zone” is and how you can use it to overcome shiny object syndrome
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome, once again, to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast, where I am joined by yet another high demand coach. It is the one and only Erin Harrington, who helps busy, overwhelmed high achievers find wholeness by aligning their work with their well being, enabling a life of success, ease and fulfillment. Erin’s journey began with balancing life goals amidst significant challenges. Two decades ago, she managed burnout in a demanding startup sales leadership role, and later, when faced with neuromuscular disabilities, she learned that aligning with her values, doing more things that she loved and actively managing her nervous system transformed her life, she regained her mobility, improved her mood and strengthened her relationship. Now helps others do the same. Well, Erin, I’m so excited to have you on the show. I told you as we were just before we hit record here, that I found myself smiling several times just as I was getting ready for the episode. And I want to, I want to jump into a topic with you that that I think is really important, and one we’ve not really explored on the show so far. So founders, in my experience as one, in working with many, many of them at this point, oftentimes it feels like, on a minute by minute basis, we’re struggling with shiny object syndrome, right? And now it can be anything from, you know, new product ideas, social media, posts, or even yesterday’s laundry, right? That’s still in the dryer. It just seems like it can be absolutely anything. Why is this such a big deal for founders? Why is it that we so almost universally struggle with shiny object syndrome?
Erin Harrington
Well, it goes back to most founders and high achievers that I work with. They’re relentlessly interested in high performance and high achievement throughout their entire life, which means they want to succeed at every single thing that they do, and it’s hard for them to sort of turn off the idea of like a loose end or imperfection. And so what I’ve experienced with my own battling with burnout and healing and all of those things, as well as all the clients that I work with, if you manage those shiny objects, you’re directly getting your brain into that relaxation response, which is also known as the executive response. So at a really high level, what I’ll just share with you is that you know all of us have, we have our central nervous system and we have our autonomic nervous system. What you should know at a really high level, if you don’t already, is that in the autonomic nervous system that manages all the automatic sort of processes of life. So that’s breathing, that’s your heart rate, that’s your respiration, oxygenation, your brain function, all sorts of things like this. And so within that automatic system, there’s your sympathetic state, which is known as your fight or flight state, and there’s the parasympathetic state, which is your executive state. That’s where all the magic happens, the executive state and so shiny objects are. You can basically just think of them as major stressors, really at a high level, because they distract you from what you’re doing, right number one. So it’s a major distraction. And you get really excited, right? You get really pumped up with this. You know, you’re in the middle of doing something that has a deadline, say tomorrow or whatever, and then all of a sudden you have this shiny, I object idea. You’re like, I can build X, Y and Z. Or if I only did this with my team, this, these types of results would happen. Or if I put a social post out there right now in this instant and create a 62nd video reel, I’m going to get X, Y and Z results, the risk to basically dropping everything that you’re doing in any given point in time and going over to that shiny object is actually quite devastating for your nervous system, and so what it does is it decreases your ability to make better decisions. It decreases your effectiveness at leadership. It decreases your communication skills, all the things that you need to be successful, and it’s taking away from your focus of what you’re doing on that specific day. Yeah. So what I’ve learned from my work is that, in fact, inside the daily pages of my book right here, there’s a prompt, there’s 10. Prompt that are specifically designed to help you, you know, stay more effective each and every day. And one of the prompts is the dump zone. And my clients love the dump zone, because when they’re sitting there doing their work, and all of a sudden they have these big, flashy ideas they know to just drop it right into that little box, and they’re not going to lose it, because that’s the biggest concern, I think, is for high achievers, is that you have these flashy ideas or these shiny objects, and you don’t want to lose it, but you also don’t want to lose your effectiveness. So, does that?
Scott Ritzheimer
This is so good. There’s so many things. One, I love the name the dump zone. That’s awesome. And two, the really cool thing about this is so many of the the kind of concepts we bump into, many of the ones that we explore in this show, they take some time to wrap your mind around, right? They take some time to implement and really do well. What I love about this is just the simplicity of it. Because what if I couldn’t agree more? I think the challenge here is it’s almost like a FOMO thing, right? If I don’t go and pursue this thing, right now, I’m going to lose it forever. I mean, how many times have you or I had this happen where it’s like, we’re in a conversation. Someone’s like, say that again. It’s like, I can’t even say it again, let alone think it again. You know it’s gone. And did we record this? You know what’s going on? And so I love the practicality of just having that, where you can write it down. It’s so important. And it actually brings me to my next question, which is, what is, what’s fear doing in kind of this calculation, right? You kind of mentioned it a little bit. But what role is fear playing in that decision making, and maybe even our broader decision making as founders.
Erin Harrington
Well So again, this goes back to our autonomic nervous system, which is basically gold for life. As far as I’m concerned, I happen to have, let me just explain at a really high level why I’m so interested in this. I have an autonomic nervous system that is very dysfunctional. In fact, I have a pacemaker because my heart, my heart was stopping at several cardiac arrests. But what? Let me, let me give you a story about something that happened a number of years ago about in 2010 I think it was Dr holler, who is one of my autonomic specialists. I’d see her every six months, and when I’d come in for the appointment, she’d say, Erin, how’s your stress level? That was the first question. The second question was, how were your symptoms? Every single time she did this, and I was like, what? Why is she? Does she just like me? Or is, why is she asking me about my stress we had a dialog. She explained how, because my stress response was overreactive, and in general, everybody’s stress response is overreactive. That that was sort of a clue into how overall my well being was, how my health was and stabilized, right? So I started to spend more time with this, both from burnout, working with clients on both burnout and fear, like what’s holding them back, and when I was using the same techniques that I use for retraining your brain, these daily prompts, I found people experience less fear. And here’s or they had a different relationship with fear, and here’s why, when you experience fear, I mean literally, even fear of not showing up, we’re in a meeting on time, or or fear of showing up and then doing kind of a icky job, not being not being effective. I mean, there’s so many fears that we face, especially when you’re a founder, you’re very interested and obviously succeeding, but you’re, you’re, you know, there’s competitors out there, there’s fear of being left out there’s all sorts of things like this. Each of those little fears add up to major fears that affect your autonomic nervous system, which again, means that you’re sort of stuck in that fight or flight response. So if you regulate your nervous system to be more in the parasympathetic state by using some of the tools that I described, then it’s not that fear goes away, you have a different relationship with it. You take over control. It’s sort of a conscious act. Does that make sense?
Scott Ritzheimer
It does. It does it really doesn’t. I love this idea, and I’m trying to be careful and not chase a shiny object at the moment. But the. This idea between parasympathetic and sympathetic. One of the things that they used to kind of measure that in the medical world is heart rate variation, right? And how much your heart rate changes from beat to beat, absolutely fascinated me that that when we’re in a sympathetic state, when we’re reacting to and responding to, and largely letting the external environment drive our response. It we we follow this very consistent pattern, right? But when we’re in this state of this parasympathetic state, the the even down to where your heart is beating, it’s doing it at a different rhythm and and different pace and just kind of moving almost randomly. And when I look at founders who are who are really achieving, well, I find that whether consciously or unconsciously, they have found a way of navigating between those two things. They have that rhythm and structure, but they’ve also found that ability to to kind of paint outside the lines, if you will, to be a little bit random. And one of the again, going back to what I love about the the dump zone, is it allows us to not break that rhythm where it’s appropriate, right, where we’re in, doing what we need to do, but also gives us the opportunity to come back and explore that you know at another time when it’s not going to disrupt the core of what we do. So so many cool things there. And thank you for your openness to share you know what’s going on there. Similarly, I had a bad car accident and got a bruising on my brain stem, and so just the number of things that you can’t do right on a daily basis, whenever something like that happens, it just opened up a whole new world for me. So appreciate you sharing that.
Erin Harrington
May I ask what what helped? So surely you had symptoms during that time, but But what helped you feel better and recover? Ultimately, did you take a break? What? What was it?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, so managing overall stress was a really big deal. I had a great set of clinicians who helped me trying to not get into details that aren’t helpful for the conversation. But who helped get me back and did a post concussion protocol that was really helpful, and had a wonderful team around me that was able to help. Sound was a huge issue, and so loud environments were highly problematic. I couldn’t think actually, couldn’t stand up for a while when there was sound, I would fall over. It’s like one of those, you know, those fainting goats is that was me for about a year and a half and and so those, those were things that were really helpful for me, were getting the right balance of of kind of work and stress. Interestingly, you won’t have known this, but just recently, the recorded the previous episode where we talked about recovery and adaptation, and a lot of these, it’s fascinating how they’re all weaving together, but learning to walk right and not just be at 0 or 100 but learning to find that space in between, where, where my parasympathetic nervous system could could do what it needed to do to keep me help healthy and thriving.
Erin Harrington
Wow. I relate to that in so many ways. Thank you for sharing. Yeah, the basic things like learning to walk when or think properly. Yeah. I get that.
Scott Ritzheimer
It’s so complex, and we take it so for granted. And you know, for those who still have the opportunity to take it for granted, that’s a blessing in and of itself, you know, you’d never wish it on anyone. So it’s just fascinating how all of this comes together, how it all plays a role. And there’s a question that I have wondering if we could just kind of put a bow on all of these things and tie it all together. But as a question I like to ask all my guests, and it is this, what would you say is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all. What’s that one thing you wish everybody watching or listening today knew?
Erin Harrington
That stressors are real, but stress and fear and all of those impact on our brain is actually, actually an active choice that we can make, and it’s important choice too, right? Because it affects our relationship with our work, our well being, our wealth, all of our domains. And so what I want people to know is that it’s not as complicated as you think. You don’t Sure. You could spend six months with me doing one on one coaching, but you can also just start using these daily pages and notice the impact. And I can assure you, you will feel an impact. So I think, um. I think that’s the biggest takeaway.
Scott Ritzheimer
Brilliant. So true. It’s so true. So there’s some folks listening. You’ve mentioned the book a couple of times. Tell us what the name of the book is, where we can get a copy of it. And then, for those folks who want to go deeper, who’d like to know more about the work you do, where can they find you?
Erin Harrington
So the book is available on Amazon. It’s called The Whole Life Planner. There’s a hard cover cover version and a soft cover version. It’s a 90 day system. It’s front loaded with worksheets, maybe about 20 or 25 and then there’s 90 daily pages to keep you on track. So you can find that on Amazon. You can also find that on my website at soulvalues.com and you know, the takeaway that I’d like to or the freebie I’d like to leave for your audience is, are my daily pages, and you can just download that system at www.soulvalues.com/dailypages, and you’ll see, you know, some I don’t overwhelm my readers with exceptionally long messages, because I know that is a stressor, and I don’t want to, you know, drive drive people to that. So, yeah, just reach out to [email protected] if you have any specific questions or even feedback on this episode, I’d love to hear it from you.
Scott Ritzheimer
I love it. Check it out. Head on over to soulvalues.com you can get a copy of the daily pages, like she said it. Soul values.com forward slash daily pages. Wonderful website, wonderful resources. Aaron, thanks so much for for putting the website and that resource available, but for also being here on the show today, it was just a privilege having you really appreciate you taking the time to spend with us here today, and for those of you watching and listening, you know your time and attention mean the world to us, I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Erin Harrington
Erin Harrington helps busy, overwhelmed high achievers find wholeness by aligning their work with their well-being, enabling a life of success, ease, and fulfillment. Erin’s journey began with balancing life goals amidst significant challenges. Two decades ago, she managed burnout in a demanding startup sales leadership role. Later, when faced with neuromuscular disabilities, she learned that aligning with her values, doing more things she loved, and actively managing her nervous system transformed her life: she regained mobility, improved her mood, and strengthened relationships.
Want to learn more about Erin Harrington’s work at Soul Values? Check out her website and book at https://soulvalues.com/
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