And professionals, I see you. And what do I mean when I say I see you? It's not that I'm looking at you face to face.What I mean is I see you with your busy schedule, with the burnout, with the stress, the high achievers, the multitaskers, and the people who answer emails even while brushing their teeth and finishing a Zoom call. Does that does that sound familiar? So today, we are going to talk about how to succeed like a high achiever without burning out like a malfunctioning toaster. So why does it matter? It matters because high achievers are always connected, and that can lead to exhaustion. But we are not burning out. We are just overheating. High achievers run on full CPU all day long, and that leads to brain overload, and that leads to burnout. But contrary to what we think, it's not a weakness. And the good news is our brain is upgradable. Our brain, when we are stressed, is like a MacBook running on 1% battery. And not just that.

It's running 24 Chrome tabs, maybe Slack, Zoom, Spotify, and even your inner perfectionist whispering, two more. But no wonder we are smoking, and we are going into burnout phase. So what is burnout? Burnout is a biological stress response, almost like an executive function fatigue. It's your brain stuck in survival mode. Is it a motivation problem? No. It's a chemistry problem. Brain science calls it chronic stress. And the body, it says, please stop. Give me a breather. Next deadline can wait, but we don't listen. Burnout is what happens when the brain's battery saver mode becomes a personality trait. Dopamine wants excitement, but cortisol says, we ride a ton, and this conflict leads to more stress. But now it is like the brain's version of sending a Slack message. Hey. Not sure. Did you see my 47 messages yet? But can we not? Let's do a quick self check. How many times in the last month?

Even when you're exhausted, you have said, I can rest in the next quarter. I'm fine. I need to deliver. I need to meet that deadline. If you answered yes to any of these, then congratulations. You are a gifted high achiever with a brain that's plotting a gentle coup without you even realizing it. And that is the high achiever trap, And that makes us burn out faster in the high achievement mode because high achievers tend to overcommit, get into the perfection loops, and maybe even people pleasing. How many times do we say, I'll rest after this next deadline? But spoiler alert, if you won't, because there'll be another deadline and another deliverable. Because we think we have superpowers, and superpowers also, when mismanaged, can turn on us like a Roomba gone bad going round and round in circles. Our brain is wired for hyperfocus, big goals, impossible standards, and maybe an allergic reaction to rest. And that's not a flaw.

It's just a feature of the high paced life we work in, of working in the high paced environment, a feature we need to update just like all those old systems need to update to the latest AI. Good news is your brain loves thriving. It wants you to win. And what else does your brain love? It loves clarity. It loves calm. It loves creativity. And for that, we need to take a breather. It basically is begging you. Please let me be brilliant but without the exhaustion. So let's give your brain the spa day it deserves. Who doesn't like a spa? Right? Almost feel like going to one. So let's start with a simple brain hack. Even though it's simple and just takes thirty seconds, it interrupts the pattern. It helps us unwind and refocus on what we need to achieve. Believe it or not, this thirty second reset calms your amygdala. These micro pauses boost the executive function. And humor, it's a neurological reset button.

The thirty second reset is the fastest burnout buster. So let's try it for a couple of breaths. Wherever you are, just breathe in for four, hold for four, and breathe out for eight. So let's breathe in, 234. Hold, 234. Breathe out 234-5678. One more. Breathe in 234. Hold. 234. Breathe out. 234-5678. And while you are wondering, why did I make you breathe out longer than the breath in? We will handle that in the q and a. Check-in with yourself how your body feels after the simple reset. It doesn't even take much time, but it activates your vagus nerve. And what is vagus nerve? It's your body's chief wellness officer that sends all the signals all over your body.

So this micro reset before stressful meetings, before a difficult deadline, or whenever your Outlook calendar looks like a Game of Thrones gone wrong can work wonders and help you be more focused and achieve more and be more present. So what's the strategy number two? The brain hack number two. It's healthy dopamine. Dopamine is almost like a motivation currency that makes us interested in what we are doing, that keeps us engaged, and helps us deliver the best version of the project we possibly can. But when burnout hits dopamine, it's like overdrawing from your dopamine bank and getting hit with the overdraft fees in the form of exhaustion, cynicism, and maybe even craving the carbs. So we can restore it with microvents, with novelty, maybe some little movement, music. And if you have time, nature walks. And, yes, a good meme absolutely counts. So we have all heard about how to manage your time effectively. But what's more important, managing your energy.

Because if you have low energy, if you are tired, if you are exhausted, it's very difficult to do a good job or get motivated to do a good job. Time management is so outdated like that old desktop computer we threw in the trash. Energy management is the new power skill which helps us not just meet the deadlines and exceed expectations, but it helps us be healthy and enjoy everything we do in our lives, whether it's work, whether it's vacation, whether it's family time. Our brain, as research has proven, works in ninety minute focus cycles. So it's very important to take a break every ninety minutes. Work with your biology, not against it because peak state is so much better than just the hustle and helps you deliver even more and get stressed much less. And strategy number four, the micro recovery moments.

Because as busy professionals, we don't have a week, a day, or even half a day, or a few hours to take off to recover or to unwind. So these micro recovery moments helps us to recover immediately in between different meetings, in beef between different deadlines. Who doesn't love a vacation? Right? But to avoid burnout, we don't need a very long vacation. We just need the micro vacations. And do you know how long it needs to be? It can be as simple as thirty to hundred and twenty seconds. That is half a minute to two minutes. So it's possible to take these micro recovery moments at work or wherever you are in between meetings or deliverables. So let's stand, stretch, and sunbeam or one deep physiological sigh. Doesn't it feel good? These little resets, they prevent the big crashes, which can land us in trouble later.

I still remember when I had a lot of deadlines to meet at one of the, positions I was in the corporate, and I had to deliver one project in the morning, one in the evening to different key stakeholders. And I was getting so tired and so exhausted because I was sleeping four hours and working till midnight every day before I realized that even though I'm putting so many hours, my output is hasn't increased considerably. And that's when I decided to take the micro breaks, some breathing techniques, maybe just a nature walk. And that worked wonders. Not only was I able to finish in less amount of time, but I was able to get that eight I hours of sleep I so desperately need it. So these micro recovery moments might sound simple, like breathing, unplugging from your MacBook, your phone, or whatever you have, and reset. And you are thinking, is it even possible that I take a break from my phone? But it's important to do so. So what is the thriving blueprint?

Now that we have discussed some strategies and brain hacks, and, we have discussed why it leads to burn out too much, always on being on the go, always trying to deliver or exceed or meet deadlines and do our best job. It's very simple because peak performance does not need to equal pain. It does not need to equal exhaustion because sustainable success is always greater than the hustle culture we have gotten so used to. The brain thrives in cycles, in novelty, in some rest in between. It performs better when can you guess? Yes. It performs better when we feel better. And the Thriving Blueprint, it's not a mood. It's a strategy. A strategy to achieve our goals. A strategy which helps us achieve whatever we have net set our mind to. And so let's regulate, energize, and celebrate every small win.

And when we do this constantly, you become unstoppable. And the good news is it's minus the burnout baggage. And these are some of the micro habits for the busy professionals and very, very simple, like sixty second grounding, two minutes brain declutter to remove all the extra things which have taken space and living rent free, and five minute nonnegotiable recovery. It can be something like if you want to do a meditation or do a walk or even a power nap becomes really helpful. And one minute building habits that are conducive to our success and one minute getting grateful for any small wins we have had that day. And why does humor help? We have talked about it before. Because laughter lowers the cortisol level in our brain, and humor boosts learning and creativity. And it's free, legal, and socially acceptable. Laughing is not just for fun. It reduces the amygdala's activation and boosts the serotonin.

In layman's terms, humor literally makes your brain stop freaking out and focus on the task at hand. So, yes, that funny coworker actually is saving lives. And for more on humor and laughter yoga, happiness factors YouTube has a whole video on it. So I would like to end this session with a seven day challenge. And don't think that I'm giving you another thing to do in your already busy list. It's just pick some small thing. That's it. Not five new habits, not a personality overhaul, just one thriving behavior for seven days Because let the small be powerful. It can be as simple as setting a daily daily intention, three things you are grateful for, or even a brief meditation, or anything else you like. We would love to hear how it goes for you with the seven day challenge. So your brain is brilliant. It's capable of extraordinary things.

Treat it like a partner because no one likes to be treated like a machine, not even the brain. And if you treat it like a loving partner, it will take you further than hustle alone ever could. So thrive with joy, intelligence, zero burnout, and let me know if you have any questions. Email us to get the handout for this session, neuroscience of thriving. And if stress burn calories, wouldn't we all be supermodels? And we are everywhere. You have social media. So thank you, and connect with us to thrive with joy, intelligence, zero burnout, and would love to know if you would like the handout for the neuroscience of thriving, zero burnout strategies for success. Any questions? Oh, I'm loving all the comments here. Yeah. So Kendra has a question. Why breathing out longer than breathing in?

And that's a question I get most of the time because what happens is with all the stress, with all the the deadlines and all the things we have to handle, the oxygen inside the system gets less. So when we breathe in and put in all the oxygen in and we try to get out all that stress out, all that carbon dioxide and other bad things out. That's the reason we breathe out longer so that we have more empty space to get more oxygen in. So Anastasia has a question about how to handle the information noise from different chats that don't allow to yeah. So, yeah, we are getting, like, a noise from all different sites, right, with all the pop ups, all the videos, reels, everything. So I would, say that when you are focusing on some particular project, maybe just put the phone on silent like I have done when I'm presenting right now. Right?

Otherwise, I would get distracted. And time yourself. Like, you if you time yourself, okay. I'll only spend fifteen minutes on social media morning and evening or any other platform you use. Or if you watch reels, don't go from one reel to another till it's midnight. Make sure you have a timer on, and, also make your schedule and set the top three priorities, and that helps a lot on keeping the focus alive. And when you think you are getting distracted, just do this breathing technique we did, and you will be able to focus again. Okay. And everything is urgent. Yes. See, everything is urgent. Suppose I have 100 things which are urgent and important in my list. Right?

But so I write all of them down on a piece of paper. I still write with hand because that helps me make it, more relevant in my brain. So I would say and then pick, like, what is urgent and important right now? What is urgent and important that can be done later? What is urgent and important which you can delegate to someone else, and what is just nice to do but not really important. For example, like, I had this presentation today. So for me, till yesterday, the most urgent and important thing was to finish this presentation, and I was getting lots of calls for being podcast guest on my podcast, or I was getting lots of calls for other things people want me to do for them and some other meetings I need to set.

But I kept my focus on the presentation for today, and I told all of them that I will get back to me the to them later today or maybe tomorrow for the people I need to get back. And for the others, I just told them to pick a time on my calendar. And, of course, I didn't go to the social media and other things, so that helped me achieve the goal of presenting today and finishing my presentation on time before before the session started. So make sure you prioritize what is urgent and important right now, and what is urgent and important maybe a few hours or a few days later, and that helps a lot. Oh, and also, her question is in case of the working chats and emails. See, usually, I, on on an average, get around 500 emails every day. So but I don't look at all the 500 emails because, otherwise, my whole day will be spending just doing that. Right?

So I go through the subject line and I scan them, then I pick the ones I nearly need to read. And that's, how it works for me. Because whenever you are in a nice position or executive level position, you'll have lots of employees. They want your to your feedback, or you might have some people just trying to sell you stuff, or some might be just spam. So filtering these helps me, like, just with the subject line, helps me decide which ones I need to really answer now, which one I can answer later, and which one is just I don't need to just even open that email. Just delete it from my system. And I always have time set up for checking my emails, like, the morning for two hours and maybe in the evening for, half an hour or one hour.

And in between, I I do whatever I need to deliver. So I if I keep that timing, that makes it much more manageable for me. And at the end of the night, I always make my schedule for tomorrow so that I know exactly what's urgent and important I need to handle. And so I don't get just into some burning out fires and putting out fires, which are burning and not do any work. But some days, it does happen that way because that fire is so urgent. I need to put it out immediately before I can get to work. I hope that answered your question, Anastasia. And if you have more questions regarding time management, I have a whole one actually, two hour session I did for one of the companies on time management, and I have that video on my YouTube channel, Happiness Factors as well.

But that's a very long session in details of how to really achieve your goals and how to handle these thousands of things you need to deliver at one time how to make the priorities. And also, sometimes making the time stamps like, Alan Elon Musk does. Right? He does for five, fifteen minutes, but I do it for two hours. Like, from morning from this to this time, I'm going to check my emails. From this to this time, I work on this project. From this to this time, I'm going to have lunch or take a brief walk. Or from this to this time so I have my whole schedule, like, time block set so that I even get, like, some unwinding times as well. Like, for my lunch like, during my lunch, I try to at least do a five minute walk if I don't have more time. Any other question?

Did I miss anyone's questions? And if you guys need the handout for this, which will help you create amazing habits to achieve your goals and not get burnt out, just email it to me. Email, and I will send it to you. Or connect on any of my social media and ask me, and I will I'm going to send it to you.