Chelsea Pottenger on Health & Wellness

Transcript

Chelsea Pottenger:
Thanks for having me, Brett.

Brett Kelly:
So Chelsea wasn’t given any advance warning of the questions. She said, “What are you going to ask me about today, Brett?” and I said, “Oh, just your story.” So if it’s a bit disjointed, just pull me up and we’ll see how we go. But Chelsea’s spoken, as Paul said, at a number of our conferences and been really helpful for people. So welcome.

Chelsea Pottenger:
Thanks!

Introduction

Brett Kelly:
Now, Chelsea’s book is here, and I’ll just pre-empt this – it’s a great book if you haven’t read it. We’ve got two copies to give away today. The first two decent questions that come up with your name on them after the presentation – we’ll give those books out. There were a couple of questions in the last session that weren’t decent, but they were anonymous, so they at least made us laugh. You’ll see what I mean. So Chelsea, where did you grow up and what led you to the work you’re doing now?

Chelsea Pottenger:
So I grew up in Albury-Wodonga, on the Albury side, very territorial down there on the New South Wales-Victorian border. I had a beautiful upbringing. I came from a very low socioeconomic background – we’ve spoken about this before – and a lot of the community where I lived was made up of Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander people. But one thing I do remember from my childhood is that I was very loved. Both my parents didn’t graduate from school, so my mum was a big driver for me to finish school, but also to go on to university because she wanted a better life for me.

I remember at 16, and I also played a decent level of basketball. I played with a girl you might have heard of, Lauren Jackson. So that was the calibre of players I was always competing against, no pressure. Lauren and I were really good friends and played together in the state basketball teams. I even went on to play college ball in Oklahoma. But I think one of the best books I ever received when I was 16 was The Success Principles by Jack Canfield.

And that was the catalyst for me to think, "I can write a different story. I don’t have to stay in Albury. I can actually do something different with my life." Fast-forward to university, playing at an elite level in college ball, and after my first year in Oklahoma, I fractured my sacrum twice. So at the age of 20, I retired and came back. It was a bit of a pivotal moment for me, because I talk to a lot of my friends who are Olympians about post-Olympic depression. I felt that as an athlete because I thought, “That was my life. I was meant to be playing in the NBA. Now where do I go from here?”

I was lucky though because I’d fallen in love with my boyfriend, who is now my husband, before I went to Oklahoma. I was meant to be there for four years, but the silver lining of this injury was that I could come back and be with Jay. So I came back, went to university, and after that I ended up in a small company called Johnson & Johnson. You might have heard of them. After 10 years there, I was a general manager towards the end of my career, and Jay and I were desperate to have a baby. We’d been trying for seven years.

So when we finally found out we were pregnant, we were ecstatic. But then the most ironic thing happened. And I say ironic, Brett, because I’m usually a very happy and driven person by nature, but nine weeks after giving birth, I ended up in a psychiatric hospital, fighting for my life. I was suffering from terrible suicidal ideation and severe post-natal depression. The safest place for me was lying in that hospital bed.

When life throws you adversity like that, you get to a fork in the road and have to make a choice. Do I go back to my fast-paced life in Rose Bay, Sydney, or do I learn and grow from this gift the universe has given me? At the end of my five-week stay, my amazing psychiatrist said to me, “Chelsea, you have a weird fascination with your own brain. You’re a lovely person, and you’ve walked through the shoes of a very unwell patient. I think you’d make a great psychologist.”

I thought, righty-o. So I left Sydney, moved to a small town called Gerringong – has anyone heard of Gerringong? It’s beautiful down there. That was guidance from my psychiatrist. She asked, “How do you want to feel in the future?” And I said, “I want to feel calm. I want to feel less anxious.” She said, “From now on, your goals shouldn’t be about what you want to have, it’s about how you want to feel.”

So, I made decisions based on that. I moved from Rose Bay to a quieter town. I went back to university to study psychology. Not only would I learn tools for myself, but I could also teach our daughter how to stay calm. I chose my friends based on how they made me feel – did they lift me up, bring good energy? All these decisions became intentional like that.

A few months into my studies in Gerringong, I said to Jay, “Imagine if the corporate world knew what I was learning – this mindfulness stuff. How to actually reduce stress without smashing back Hendrick’s gin every night,” which was my coping strategy back in the day. And he said, “I think this could be a cute hobby.”

Brett Kelly:
Poor Jay.

Chelsea Pottenger:
Haha, yes. So, I started training the Gerringong Rotary Club, started training local hospitals for free – as you do when you’re a startup. I loved it. I’d bump into people around Gerringong. Bob would be at the ocean pools at 85 years old, saying, “Chelsea, I’m doing that gratitude practice in the morning. Geez, I feel good!” I’d say, “Bob, that’s making me feel good!”

Then, as luck would have it, eBay got in touch. A friend said, “eBay’s pretty progressive. They’re interested in what you’re doing. Why not come up to Sydney?” So I hopped on the train – because when you’re a startup, you’ve got zero money – and met the HR director. She said, “I like the sound of this. Come in and do a session, and we’ll pay you.” I was like, “Wait, what? You could pay me for this work? Great!”

So I went up, did the session, and they said, “We loved what you delivered. How about you do another eight sessions?” Then the general manager from eBay moved to Uber and said, “I loved what you did for our culture. Will you move with us to Uber?” And I thought, “I’d love to.” Then I posted on LinkedIn, and Westpac picked me up. Suddenly, this little hobby had all this momentum. Nine years later, we’re doing 10 keynotes a week and have trained 2 million people worldwide. I’m so grateful. This doesn’t feel like work to me, Brett – it’s pure joy.

Key Learnings

Brett Kelly:
What a great story! So Chelsea came to us, did a fantastic session, and we got such great feedback. Can you share with the group today some key things we can all use on a daily basis to improve how we feel about what we’re doing? What I love about this story is how intentional it all was. You had a situation, you said, “Right, I have to change my life.” I think that’s so powerful for the people in the room. What are the key things we can all use?

Chelsea Pottenger:
Oh, that’s a great question. Do you mind if I poll the audience just to see what they want to hear about and what’s most relevant for them?

So usually when I do these polls in keynotes, I’m not sure if you’ve heard of the Hippo, where the highest-paid person in the room carries the influence. Have you heard of that? Well, we don’t do it like that. Instead, I’m going to ask you to close your eyes, and I’ll give you three options. You can only vote once, and I’ll deliver a tool based on the results.

Brett Kelly:
Perfect. That sounds great.

Chelsea Pottenger:
Okay, eyes closed. Option one: do you want to know the fastest way to down-regulate your system for stress, based on the latest neuroscience? That’s option one. Option two: do you want a technique to help you get back to sleep if you’re waking up between 1:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m.? (Who’s waking up then? Just a quick show of hands.)

Brett Kelly:
What’s going on there?

Chelsea Pottenger:
It’s common.

Brett Kelly:
What is that?

Chelsea Pottenger:
Don’t worry, you’re not alone!

Chelsea Pottenger:
Option three: do you want to know the best technique I have for raising resilient kids?

Brett Kelly:
It feels like being in a restaurant where they say, "Which dessert would you like?" or "Would you like the tasting plate?" Right? I personally go all three, but I’m curious about the poll. What are we thinking?

Chelsea Pottenger:
Eyes closed, everyone. I’ve got three options for you, and you can only vote once. Here we go. First, the fastest way to reduce stress, neuroscience-backed. Nice. Okay, hands down. Number two, waking up from 1:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. and need a solid technique to get yourself back to sleep. Fantastic. Hands down. Number three, resilience tool for our future generation. Wow, look at that.

Brett Kelly:
That’s interesting.

Chelsea Pottenger:
We’ll go with what the audience requested. For sure, for sure. So, this isn’t just for children, it’s also for us as adults. We can go through some really discombobulating times, and it’s really important we have proper coping strategies to get through them. By far, this is one of the best things I’ve learned for myself. If you have limiting beliefs, it’s also the best thing I’ve learned to teach Clara and future generations. Now, I’ll credit the right person in science, but to start off the story, it was my basketball coach 20 years ago who actually taught me this technique.

I remember turning up to a weekend basketball camp, training hard, and playing hard. Like most sports carnivals, at the end of the weekend, they call your name out. And so Lauren Jackson was there as well – so that was the calibre of the competition. I’m sitting there at the end of the weekend, desperate to make the state team, and my heart is pounding through my chest. If you’ve ever been at a sports carnival, you’ll know that feeling – sitting there, thinking, "Please pick me," because that decision feels like it will decide the rest of your life as a 16-year-old.

So I’m sitting there thinking, "Please pick me." And the answer was no. They didn’t call my name out. I’m crying, devastated, and I call my coach. "Coach, you’re not going to believe it, I didn’t make the team." Do you know what he said to me? He said, "Chels, you’re just not good enough." I said, "Thanks, Coach. That’s a great pep talk."

But then he said something so profound. He said, "You’re just not good enough yet." In psychology, "yes" is a powerful word. It’s a strong word, but what’s even more profound for us is the word yet. What yet does for our future generation, as well as for us as adults, is it takes the full stop off our potential. It says that success still lies ahead. It says that you might not have all the answers right now, but with hard work, you can get there. You’re just not good enough yet.

However, if you come with me and train every morning at the Albury basketball stadium before school at 5:00 a.m. – do you know how cold it gets in Albury?

It’s freezing. "We’ll change your diet, put you on creatine, bulk you up in the gym, and you’ll be lifting five times a week. You might just make that Australian junior team in six months." That was the driving force for me because he was bang on. I wasn’t good enough yet, but with a different approach, I could be. So fast forward six months, I made the Australian junior team, and I was actually the second draft pick. Who was number one?

Brett Kelly:
Lauren Jackson.

Chelsea Pottenger:
Laurs, and I was okay with being her number two. But the reason I tell you this story is because when I was admitted to hospital, to St John of God psychiatric unit on day one, the darkest day of my life, my psychiatrist said to me, "Chelsea, right now I want you to tell me about a time that was hard for you. A time when you didn’t think you’d get through it, but you faced it with motivation, perseverance, and grit, and you came through the other side. Share with me a story like that right now." Do you know where my mind went, everyone? It went back to that basketball experience, 20 years ago.

And she said, "If you can get through that, you can get through this." And now I think about postnatal depression all the time because, so far in my life, there’s been nothing worse than waking up in a psychiatric unit after giving birth to Clara. Life can throw you a pandemic. Life can throw you a lot of things, but you know you’re going to be okay.

The main message here, everyone, is that it’s okay to hit the pavement. It’s okay to have tough times in life. It’s okay to have challenges. It’s okay to have change. In fact, it’s inevitable. It’s a part of the human journey. And if you ever find yourself in a tough spot, like I did, always remember that you will recover. And it’s also in the challenging times that grit lies.

The scientist who really dives into this concept is Dr. Carol Dweck. She’s got a great book out called Mindset.

Chelsea Pottenger:
And it’s also like we can turbocharge that with action as well. Carol Dweck’s book is great, but what we’ve worked out is how to turbocharge it by putting action behind your life lessons. You literally just add on these three words after the power of yet — "however, if I..." And then you put your action items in. For example, "I can’t speak publicly yet." My job, what Brett and I do most days, is everyone’s number one fear in Australia. Public speaking is the number one fear. And the second biggest fear in the country is… death.

They fear public speaking more than dying.

Seinfeld had a great joke about it. He said people would prefer to be in the box, giving the eulogy, because of the fear factor. It’s a real fear, right? So if you had a fear of public speaking, the limiting belief of the child was, "I can’t speak publicly yet." However, if I join Toastmasters, get a speaker's coach, and employ some comedians, practice more regularly, have more fun, what happens? You get there. And the reason why I love that technique is because it’s not just for us as adults, it’s also for our kids. I’ve been drumming that into Clara since she was four. A bit like manners, right? And smiles. You tell your four-year-old these things all the time, and you wonder if it’s sinking in. But a few years later, they repeat it back to you.

And Clara used to always come up to me and say, "Mum, I can’t skip," or "Mum, I can’t climb the tree," or "Mum, I can’t ride my bike with gears." And I used to always say to her, "Not yet, sweetheart. Not yet. But if you do these few things, you’ll get there." And now she comes up to me at the age of nine and says things like, "Mum, I can’t surf yet. However..."

Brett Kelly:
"If you get me a coach."

Chelsea Pottenger:
"If you pay for my lessons."

Brett Kelly:
"You buy me a great surfboard, a pink one, I’ll be there."

Chelsea Pottenger:
That’s right. It’s just like this negotiation.

But it brings so much hope to my heart, Brett, because I now know that this child of ours has a growth mindset. Clara will hit the pavement when she has to in this life. I’m not clearing the path for her. Why? Because if she needs to fall over and skin her knees, well, that’s part of the process. This whole "trophies for everyone" thing has really messed up an entire generation when it comes to developing grit. It really has. So they have to fall over. They have to have challenges—it’s part of the human journey.

However, what we can do as adults is teach them the tools to persevere.

Brett Kelly:
Yeah. And the lessons for children are always the lessons for all of us.

That’s so interesting. We learn so much through our kids. They teach us as much as we teach them, which is very interesting. I love that. So who wants to hear number one? I’m just curious—what was number one?

Breathing Techniques

Chelsea Pottenger:
Well, it’s down-regulating the system really quickly when you're stressed.

It’s also a really quick tool. Everything I do is about minimum input for maximum gain for my brain. We’re all time-compressed humans in this room. That’s why I meditate every day for 10 minutes. I don’t do it for 40, I do it for 10, because when I see research that says you only need 10 minutes to get the maximum benefit, after that, the results kind of taper off. So I’m not doing it for 40 minutes, I’m doing it for 10. I’m doing cold water therapy, just 30 seconds of cold shower—I’m not sitting in an ice bath for seven minutes.

Brett Kelly:
Yeah. Who has time to do that?

Chelsea Pottenger:
Exactly. We do not have time for that.

We’ve got stuff to do. We need to get things done. And so this technique is great for that. It was published in the Cells Report in 2018. It’s called the physiological sigh. I’ll just get you to do it with me now so it’s cemented in your memory centre in the hippocampus. It goes like this: a long inhale in, then a short sharp inhale, and then a loud, audible exhale out. Just like that.

Now, the reason why you need to do it like that— and I did it this morning as I was arriving, because I had three coffees before I got here, which kind of tips me over a bit—so I did it because I felt a bit anxious, to be honest. I thought, "I need to down-regulate, pronto."

Brett Kelly:
And that was my fault. The last few days, I’ve been getting messages from Chelsea saying, "What are you going to ask me?" And I was like, "I don’t know, I haven’t thought about that yet, but I’ll come back to you."

Chelsea Pottenger:
But this technique is really, really helpful. So, long inhale in, then a short sharp inhale, and a loud exhale out. What’s happening is your brain and body are just magnificent. The long inhale pulls carbon dioxide out of the lungs, and the second, shorter, sharper inhale pulls out the last remaining carbon dioxide. Then the loud sigh stimulates your sine neurons in your brain stem, telling your phrenic and vagus nerve, "Hey, it’s time to calm down, instantaneously." It’s the fastest way we know how to down-regulate your system.

Three cycles of that will do it. If you’re a runner and get a stitch, this is a great way to get rid of it. If you had a partner, you’d probably do this when you sleep—about once every hour. I’m not sure if… Does anyone sleep with a partner? Who’s got a partner in here who sleeps with a human being?

Brett Kelly:
My dog sighs like that as well. My little sausage dog comes in, gets in there, and does that big breath. She knows the science.

Chelsea Pottenger:
She knows the science, and they’re down-regulating all night. And we do too. So if you’re single, or if you don’t sleep in the same room as your partner, that’s kind of what it looks like. But if you do sleep with someone, and you let them fall asleep before you tonight, and you watch them for a bit while they're sleeping (not too long or too close, it does get a bit creepy if they wake up and you’re there), you’ll notice it, right? I think that’s a really beautiful thing. I think these things that are emerging in the science are super cool because, again, I need evidence behind me to make behavioural changes. Otherwise, to be honest, I’m just not going to do it. So that’s...

Brett Kelly:
It’s a great idea. I know a lot of people get into situations where they feel very overwhelmed, particularly when it’s a challenging situation. We certainly had a lot of clients under huge pressure during COVID. A lot of directors felt it because their clients were under pressure. But this idea of knowing how to breathe... If you’ve played a lot of sport, you tend to know a little more about breathing than others. I’ve learned, especially as I’ve gotten older, from the kids. So is this something people can go to the bathroom to do? Can they just get out of a room and use it to try and chill out?

Chelsea Pottenger:
It’s literally getting your carbon dioxide dumping out, so you’re balancing oxygen and carbon dioxide. That sigh stimulates the sine neurons in your brainstem. The phrenic and vagus nerves respond and calm you down straight away. So a lot of lawyers or doctors we train will do it before they walk into the courtroom, before they start operating. A lot of athletes do it before they run out onto the pitch. It’s just a great one to have that only takes a couple of seconds. I feel like, if that’s the only one you remember, it’s brilliant. Obviously, be mindful where you do it, though. If you’re in a client meeting and you just stand up and start doing that, your prospective business will definitely know something’s going on for you. But it’s honestly a wonderful technique.

Brett Kelly:
And don’t do it to your mother. Sometimes my kids do it to my wife, and they get told not to sigh. Apparently, there’s some science now that says sighing is good...

Chelsea Pottenger:
But that’s going to kill me.

Brett Kelly:
In real trouble. Alright, so that’s excellent. The first one. If we haven’t written it down yet, "Not yet" is great. The second phrase is?

Chelsea Pottenger:
"However, if I..."

Brett Kelly:
"However, if I..." Second technique—breathe.

Chelsea Pottenger:
The physiological sigh.

Brett Kelly:
Long breath, short breath, big sigh. Okay.

Now, there are a lot of people who don’t sleep. The reason I’m interested is that my wife, she’s a bit of a "till-four" person. You know how, when you’re sleeping, and then you know someone else isn’t sleeping? It’s very disturbing. So I’m curious, who are these people who don’t sleep? I’ve got my own theories, but what’s going on? It seems more common than I realised.

I’ve always gotten up really early. I go to bed, get up early. For whatever reason, no matter how much stress is going on, I can sleep. But I exercise hard early in the morning, which, for me, is how I disperse whatever people call stress—by moving—and then I’m pretty calm. But by the time I go to sleep, I only go to sleep because I’m actually tired. So I just fall asleep. I do feel for these non-sleepers, although I don’t understand them from personal experience. But I’ve been genuinely intrigued.

Then, as I’ve asked Bec and others, a lot of people aren’t sleeping. Now, the research on the importance of sleep, I’ve known about from playing sport. In terms of recovery, sleep is just the number one health driver. The environment, darkness, coldness, la la la... Got my own theories about that. I like to wake up in the sun. What’s going on with all this, because it seems there’s a huge amount of it?

Easy hacks to get deep REM sleep

Chelsea Pottenger:
Absolutely. I feel like there’s a lot of stimulation going on for people. There are a couple of really easy hacks to get deep REM sleep, I think. And a lot of people are functioning insomniacs. What I mean by that is they usually get enough sleep, but it's just not the quality sleep we need. Seven to nine hours is where the World Health Organisation recommends.

Seven to nine hours, unless you have the genetic expression where you can sleep for just five or six hours. Statistically, though, people who can do that are like 0.00001%. We’re more likely to get hit by lightning in Australia than have that gene expression. And you’ll know if you’ve got it, because, as a teenager, you’d sleep for five or six hours and still be fine. But most of us need about seven to nine.

Brett Kelly:
And it’s not a badge of honour to need 10 hours of sleep, or only need five, right? I’ve got friends who are like, "I just need 10 or 12 hours." And I’m like, "Cool man, go for it."

Chelsea Pottenger:
Exactly. We’re all unique, and I think that’s a beautiful thing. We’ve all got our own unique "cloaks," and what works for one person might not work for someone else. But also, you're working with your genetics too. So I think a couple of quick wins can help. But if you have insomnia or functioning insomnia, and by that I mean disrupted sleep for longer than two weeks, there’s a really great place in Australia called the Wilcox Sleep Clinic. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of them, but I’ve used them personally when I had insomnia. They helped me get back on track in about two weeks. A lot of people with insomnia feel like they’re just stuck in that cycle.

Brett Kelly:
What is insomnia? Is it interrupted sleep for more than five minutes? An hour?

Chelsea Pottenger:
Yeah, that’s right. It’s not just being woken up by a child or the new puppy, but getting into poor sleep patterns. You’ve made associations with your bedroom that make it hard to sleep. Wilcox is a great resource here in Australia if you need extra testing.

And a few, well, three things are major culprits that can interrupt deep REM sleep. The reason we’re so focused on deep REM is because you need about 90 minutes of it to wake up fully refreshed, restored, with energy and mojo. If you miss out on it, even if you sleep for seven hours, you might wake up feeling like, "I don’t want to see my personal trainer. I think I’ve got low iron. I need 5,000 coffees to get to work." That’s the soundtrack.

So, the three things that throw it off— I might do a quick poll to see which one you want to know about. Number one: screens. Number two: coffee. Number three: alcohol. Oh, and don’t worry, I’m not going to say, "Get rid of all of those!" I’ll just share the research and then you can make your own choices. So, what do you want to know about the most?

Chelsea Pottenger:
Screens it is.

Brett Kelly:
A lot of chat about this, so I’d love to know the science, because there are a thousand opinions.

Chelsea Pottenger:
So many opinions. We look into a lot of different people’s work as well. And please let me know if you hear different things out there.

So what we see is that if you’re on your screens half an hour before bed, say, if you’re an early bird—early to bed, early to rise—who’s that vibe? That chronological clock? So your screen deadline time should be around 9 to 9:30, that’s the recommendation. That’s not your bedtime, it’s just when you need to turn your screens off. Night owls are a little bit different. They like to go to bed a bit later, and their energy comes alive in the afternoon and evening, especially in their prefrontal cortex. Where are the night owls? Ah, sometimes party animals in the room. Fantastic. 10:30 to 11 is usually the screen deadline time for night owls.

Now, the reason we say that is because you’ve got this beautiful thing in your brain called your pineal gland, and it starts producing something that starts with "M" that you can get in 10-milligram tablets in the USA.

Brett Kelly:
What is that?

Chelsea Pottenger:
Melatonin.

So, melatonin starts getting produced in your brain, particularly when you’re at those times according to your chronotype.

However, if you’re on screens after those times, that blue, red, yellow light—even if you wear blue light-blocking lenses like I do—it’ll still come through, plus the stimulation from the content itself, and it’ll hit the pineal gland and tell it to stop producing melatonin.

That’s why it’s so important, because you need that hormone to help you drift into deep REM sleep and keep you paralysed in that state. And so many people miss out on it because they’re on screens.

Now, being on screens right before bed, you’ll still fall asleep, won’t we? We fall asleep in front of the telly. We fall asleep with the phone on our chest, we put the phone down, and we’re asleep. Sometimes, our latency scores, which means how fast it takes us to fall asleep, are like three minutes. However, if you track yourself with a Whoop or an Oura Ring device...

Brett Kelly:
I’m reading this science. I bought a Whoop, I’m wearing it. It comes up on your phone, you can prove where your deep REM sleep occurs. And over two weeks, we were like, "Hang on, that’s really clear." It was really helpful.

Chelsea Pottenger:
It’s pretty remarkable.

Yeah, it’s just such a win in terms of—you can do your own trial on yourself. Wear a Whoop or an Oura Ring and try it out, because your body won’t lie. Try yourself out doing a half-hour routine without any screens and just do things that are relaxing for the brain, like reading a book or talking to your partner. Imagine that.

Brett Kelly:
Yeah. So, no coffee. I was trying to do no coffee after two.

Chelsea Pottenger:
Great. No coffee after two.

Brett Kelly:
I was trying to make sure that I was off my screens by eight. Not that I felt the screens were a challenge, I just didn’t want the telly on. And then, because I’m an early bird and Bec’s a night owl. I’m like, you night owl away, I’ll be going to sleep.

I’m not at my best if I don’t sleep well. The health impact of bad sleep on everyone is enormous. So you’ve really got to get sleep right. We were trying to work out, one of my sons has interrupted sleep, and then I’m like, "Honey, this is what it says, and we’re trying to help him." Or just, "Tom’s fine." So, as you start working with your kids to try and help them regulate their sleep better, we were like, "Oh, that’s very interesting."

I think it’s a big issue, and I wasn’t aware how many people struggle to sleep.

Chelsea Pottenger:
So many. And it is a bit of a taboo, people talking about not sleeping in the same room as your partner. I haven’t slept in the same room as my husband, Jay. Let’s call him Jay because that’s his name. So Jay’s like six foot five, my husband, and I’m 5’11, and that’s a lot of human being in a king-size bed. He snores a bit, and I fidget. We’ve been married for 17 years, so I’m like, "Mate, I’ve seen your face a lot, get to that other bedroom." We love each other a lot. We’re very intimate throughout the week. However, we just don’t sleep in the same room... Even when we book hotels, we book separate rooms. It’s such a thing for us. And I know that sounds like, "Oh my gosh," but we hold hands when we walk down the street, we cuddle, we have a really healthy sex life. It’s just that we sleep in separate rooms, and guess what? We get a good eight hours and we talk to each other really nicely the next day, and I’ve had a chance to miss his face.

So it works for us. I’m not saying that’s going to work for everyone in here, but I think it’s just about normalising these conversations. One of the big things that I found out is that I did the myDNA Life test. I’m not sure if anyone’s heard of the myDNA testing.

So, I did that. It’s a cheek swab. It’s an over-the-counter product here in Australia. They have a different one for other countries as well. We’re kind of used to cheek swabs these days, thanks to COVID. It sends the results down to geneticists in Melbourne, and it unlocks DNA data about how your body responds to different things. If you do these kinds of tests, I think it costs about $130. You just want to make sure you tick the box that says, "Do not store my DNA data."

We don’t want that stored anywhere. However, it’s really interesting because it gives data about your genetic coding. For example, the sleep-fragmented gene. Now I have that. So what that means is if I get woken up by the puppy dog or my daughter Clara, A) I can’t get back to sleep, and B) if that keeps happening for a few days, my mental health will start to suffer. My husband, on his testing, shows he doesn’t have that gene. And I know this—Jay can have fragmented sleep, and his mental health stays completely level and fine, even though he’s tired. He’ll say, "I’m so level with my mood," and I remind him of that every single night before we go to bed: "Babe, you get up for the dog. I’ve got the weird gene. Off you go."

So it’s just really interesting—your body even has things like, do you metabolise caffeine? Does your liver have the enzyme to metabolise caffeine quickly? If it does, you can do what Brett does and have coffee up until 2 PM and then cut it or switch to decaf because it’ll impact your deep REM sleep. If you don’t have that gene expression, you kind of need to cut coffee by midday, otherwise, it’ll impact your sleep.

But these are all cool things available out there. It’s not saying you must do this, but it’s nice to know what tools are out there. And again, this is your vessel. We only get one body. If we don’t take care of it, we’ve got nowhere else to live.

Brett Kelly:
And if you're trying to live in a house with other people, but particularly, our son’s 19, our second’s 16, our daughter’s 12, they’re not babies anymore, and they’re also trying to live in the same house. So understanding who likes to stay up late, who likes to go to bed, and what they like to do is really, really important. So the Life DNA test is really great. The WHOOP is really great. The Oura Ring is really great. And by using that as a parent, my kids have seen it and gone, "Oh, how does that work?" Instead of me just telling them, I’m like, "Well, that told me this about myself, and now, by observation, I can see you’re like this."

Maybe you want to think about that, which is really interesting.

Chelsea Pottenger:
There’s so many things out there to enhance us. I think it’s a really changing landscape. Back when I was in corporate, it was like our CEO would be celebrated for turning up at 6:00 AM after getting off an international flight at 2 AM, almost as this badge of machismo. He’d party every night. Now, I think the landscape’s completely shifted. It’s almost like the top CEOs and leaders now are corporate athletes, and they’re like, "We want the 1%. How do you make this cognition the edge? Yes, we can have fun on the weekend, but Monday to Friday, it’s game time and we are really dialing things in."

So things like the TOTO Wellness Partner, which has electrodes in the toilet bowl that’ll pick up early detection of prostate cancer through your cells in your urine for men. It’ll also analyse your microbiome data and send a message to the app on your phone saying, "Excuse me, do you know you’re eating too many sugars? May we suggest for the next 30 days you start eating these kinds of foods to starve out those bad bacteria populations because you’ve got an imbalance in your gut microbiome." How wild is that?

Brett Kelly:
It’s amazing science. It’s incredible.

Chelsea Pottenger:
When it comes to sleep… Well, we spoke about coffee, we spoke about screens.

Brett Kelly:
Alcohol. Well, does everyone know what the data on alcohol is?

Chelsea Pottenger:
Alcohol is an interesting one. It’s terrible for sleep.

Brett Kelly:
Yeah. So is it a lunchtime activity? I’m hearing Andrew Huberman saying, "No alcohol ever is good for you at all." Which I look at… I was in Scotland recently, it was so cold. I’m trying to think if I was with Kenny and it was so cold, and the guy pulled over the Land Rover, pulled a whiskey out of the back, and said, "You’ve got to have one of these." And I was like, "See, that was just made for right now." And it was incredible. And I was like, "No one can convince me that’s a bad idea." Slept like a baby that night. It was lunchtime. So what is the data on this?

Chelsea Pottenger:
So it’s such a personal choice. Huberman, Matt Walker—kind of the gurus in this space—will say zero alcohol, just from a cognition perspective, sleep, it just impacts so many things. I love having a glass of Shiraz on a Friday night, or I love having a really nice glass of champagne. I’m like, quality over quantity and a particular number. And this is just based on our own research that we do. So Monday to Friday, I don’t drink because I need to be on my game. Friday, I’ll definitely have a drink, Friday night, and I’ll stop at two. And this all comes back to deep REM again. So if you have two drinks followed by a water chaser, not too close to bed, your brain still seems to be okay. You still seem to clock that deep REM enough. This would be something—it’d be interesting to check your WHOOP or your Oura and see where your limit is.

For some people, it could be one drink, particularly if you’re going through perimenopause, menopause, or if your testosterone levels might be dropping, things like that as we’re getting older. So test your body and see where your limit is. The average is about two drinks, followed by a water chaser. Now, if you go over that, your brain will respond differently. It gets knocked out for the first part of the night, which is sometimes what we want. We’re like, "Yes, knock me out tonight, sedate me." A lot of people use alcohol as a crutch to unwind from the day and get them off to sleep.

And what we see is that if you’re tracking with a WHOOP or an Oura Ring, you’ll probably have zero deep REM for that first part of the night. Then you get a thing called rebound insomnia, which is when you wake up to go to the bathroom. So your body will wake you up, you’ll go to the bathroom, you’ve metabolised half of your alcohol by then through the liver, and then you come back to bed and you toss and turn and have a lot of dreams. And again, if you’re tracking yourself on a WHOOP or an Oura, you’ll see zero deep REM.

Burnout

Brett Kelly:
I think that’s about right. So that’s the second issue in terms of the three biggest issues people are having—what to teach your kids about sleep, how to de-stress. Now, in all the other research you’re doing and what you’re speaking on at the moment, what’s the biggest topic that you’re seeing?

Chelsea Pottenger:
Burnout, stress, communication. That’s one of our big ones we’re doing now because of AI. We want to keep our human edge. Storytelling, injecting humour, how to connect with a human being, how to empathetically listen. These are skills that we’re missing, particularly as I’m seeing some of our future leaders coming through. So that’s a huge one that people keep asking me for. So stress, resilience, sleep, communication. They’re the big ticket items.

Brett Kelly:
So what’s the burnout thing? I’m hearing a lot about burnout.

So talk about this. I have this theory that most people never really have a holiday. And even if they have a holiday, they don’t really have a holiday. Some people do well not doing that and never burn out, to be fair. But there is this epidemic of burnout.

Chelsea Pottenger:
We push so hard and we take on more and more work, and then we don’t prioritise ourselves. So there’s a big thing coming up around lack. We lack focus on ourselves. We put everyone else above us. We lack boundaries. We find it really difficult to say no, and we lack awareness. Burnout is kind of cumulative. It sneaks up on you, and your body will always keep score. There’s a good book out there with that title. The twitchy eye, the tired but wired feeling, the waking up at 1 a.m. and not being able to get back to sleep, the irritable gut – they’re all signals and clues that, hey, you’re starting to burn out.

You’re not listening to your body. And then, all of a sudden, you get laid out on the floor.

Brett Kelly:
So it’s presented as flame-out. The way I always think about it is that people present it as a flame-out, like one day somebody just burns out. And I’m always like, "That’s weird. How does that happen? That makes no sense to me." Whereas what I’ve observed, having been advising owners of businesses for 30 years, is that it’s more of a cumulative process.

Chelsea Pottenger:
It’s that whole thing—if you don’t take care of your wellness every day, you’ll get forced to take care of your illness.

There’s been a lot of great things that you’ve empowered me with, but one of the best things is these regular breaks. And so, every six weeks I take a break. We do 300 keynotes a year, I only work 40 weeks a year, and every six weeks I take a break. And that could just be a weekend or a long weekend. It doesn’t have to be expensive, and it could just be going camping. And so what happens here on that six-week break is pretty magical, because when you told me you did that, I went and had a look at the science behind it. And people are like—

Brett Kelly:
And I had no science. I just thought, “Who can... It’s impossible to train for the Olympic 100m for 25 years.”

Chelsea Pottenger:
Yeah, that's right. And so what happens is you get this thing called anticipatory joy in the two weeks before you get the break. You speak to anyone going on a holiday. How do they sound?

They're excited. And how annoying is it for us when we don't have a break coming up? Super annoying. So what they're experiencing there is anticipatory joy. It's almost the thought of having a holiday that makes them more excited than going on the holiday. Yeah, the coffee tastes nicer. The sky is bluer. The air is sweeter.

If you take a break every six weeks, it could just be on the weekend. Yeah. What happens is you get anticipatory joy, you get the serotonin release that floods through the system, then you take the break. And then you come back from the break, so you kind of recharge yourself, but then when you get back, you go hard, you sprint. This is what we did. We sprint for six weeks where you work so hard when we're at work. But don't worry because in six weeks’ time, I’ve got another break scheduled in. And so that philosophy has given me the best longevity for my job. It gives me joy, it makes me creative because when I actually take those breaks, I go off-grid. I actually don’t take my phone. I take my dumb phone that doesn’t have any access to social media. I take an old-school camera. And so then when I'm on the break... I just took my daughter to Tuscany, that's not off-the-grid camping, I know, that seems really outrageous.

But it was epic. And I was with her the whole time, mindfully. And so then the people, because you're not doing this at the same time, being on the phone, right, with the people that you're on the break with. So they get a real mindful version. And I think the most amazing thing is that when you switch off from the outside world, something incredible happens to you, you switch on, on the inside, and you actually become more creative. My most innovative ideas happen when I’m off-grid.

Brett Kelly:
Now some people think, "Okay, but then you’re not working." But it is my view that your brain is always working.

And a lot of really creative ideas come from being in different places, seeing different things, and they add enormous value to your business ultimately.

So I was talking to Chelsea and I said, "Look, when we had kids, the school holidays are kind of, they’re in the calendar. There’s not much you can do about them." And a very good mentor of mine had said he knew that kids, virtually all they remember are holidays.

And so he said, "Look." He travelled three out of four weeks as a very high-profile consultant, and he said, "Look, I would just over-invest in holidays." So when they were on holidays, he would spend a fortune, not that you need to, but to take them to places that would be memorable. He had plenty of money and took them to Africa, he took them to India, and these kids now are in their mid-thirties. And he said, "Look, they don’t remember how hard I worked. They remember the times we spent together."

And he felt terrible about not being there every night. Great wife who really raised the kids. But that was a bit of a hack. So there’s a balance between the extreme version of what he had. I just took out of it this holiday idea. Now with technology, you can work. So in a crisis, we're not ever very far away. You can get on a plane and go somewhere.

So that, from my point of view, I never felt anxious that you couldn’t just get on a plane and come home if there was a drama or go back up the road. And certainly when we didn’t have any real financial resources to invest in that, I was just like, great, you can go kayaking, costs 10 bucks, you can buy a piece of fish, costs five bucks, and off you go. So to me that was like, in terms of how you can play for a long time, the real game which is interesting. So do you think the burnout is happening because people don’t have holidays or they don’t have a daily routine?

Chelsea Pottenger:
All of the above. I think we have the intentions of doing exercise throughout the day, or do a 10-minute pause, have a meditation break, or eat cleaner.

And then what happens is we clock on at, I don’t know, 9:00 AM, and the world starts, and all of a sudden we get swept up in the business of the day, and then we get home at 8:00 PM, and we haven’t made time for it and that routine.

Then all of a sudden we reach for the wine, maybe not the cleaner meal, and then we have a disrupted sleep. And so the next day we crave the bacon and egg roll, we have the 5,000... And down we go. It’s just this perpetual cycle. And so it’s just having this wedge into the, "You know what? Today’s the day that I kind of start making the changes." And I’ve got this pretty cool slide that I now put up in my presentations called the discipline equation. And it’s all around the age that you are, the days that you’ve lived, and the days that you have left. And 85 is the life expectancy here in Australia for women, 81 for men. And so I’ve lived more days than what I have left.

And so I think about that all the time, and it’s not out... That slide isn’t to scare people, or that sort of metaphor. What it’s there to do is to say this, "If you’re not happy with the current state of play of where your life is, how you’re feeling every day, waking up full of energy, are you really enjoying this ride? Then guess what? We get the accountability and ownership to change that."

Brett Kelly:
What’s the change hack for the people in the room, and how should they take that to their business?

Chelsea Pottenger:
What’s the intrinsic motivator? You’ve got to find out what that hook is for you. For your health and well-being, like if you're not the best version of yourself, bringing your best version of you to work, you cannot be the best version for your team. That’s just how it is. If you're role-modeling behaviour and say, "Hey, you know what, we really care about your mental health and well-being here," and you start peppering them at 2:00 AM in the morning with emails, there’s a complete dissonance there.

And you have to find that intrinsic thing. For me, and I think I’ll credit my psychiatrist for this because she said to me, there’s something that massively unlocks this motivation, was that, "Chelsea, if you don’t take care of yourself every day, if you don’t go to the gym, if you don’t eat cleaner, if you don’t meditate, if you actually don’t put in these six-week breaks, if you don’t take your medication every morning, who does that impact?"

I said, "Well, I would get sick, and it would directly impact me, and I’d need to take four weeks off the company." And she’s like, "Well, that kind of sucks for you, but who else would that impact?" And I said, "It would directly impact my daughter, Clara, and my husband, Jay." And she said, "Is that fair to Clara? Does your nine-year-old deserve a burnt-out, stressed-out, anxious mum? Does she deserve that from you?" And I said, "No." And so she said, "Every day from now on in, you do it for her." And so whenever I’m booking in a massage, I think, "Clara, this is for you."

Put your oxygen mask on first

Brett Kelly:
That’s good. I like that. I do like that. And it does make me laugh, and it leads me to, literally what I was thinking as you were speaking, is that, so you're on an aeroplane, and they say, "In the event of an emergency, put your oxygen mask on first, and then help others." Now, I won’t tell you who I have this discussion with, but you can probably work it out. And I have always said that if you don’t look after your health, you’re useless to other people. But as business owners, you do well by helping other people, but you can’t help people to such an extent that you destroy your own health. So how do people frame... I love that. I know people laugh, but it is true that if you don’t find a way to prioritise your own well-being, the impacts are going to be severe.

So how do you unpack that? Is it just if I don’t put my oxygen on, you’re all going to die. So I’m putting the oxygen on.

Chelsea Pottenger:
I love that though. It’s a bit like the psychological victor versus the psychological victim. At the end of the day, right, we can have this great conversation up here, or you could listen to a great podcast, or read an inspiring book, or... I mean, that’s just the scaffolding, right? At the end of the day, it comes down to the individual.

And you have to want to own that stuff and have accountability. I think there’s a big accountability lack in our society at the moment. Maybe a lot of people point their fingers out, and then there’s four fingers they forget that are pointing back at them.

And you see this in your work, maybe with some of your colleagues, or the people that you’re managing, and they’re quick to blame out. And so I think it’s that whole thing. We’ve got to start owning more of our stuff. And again, why is it important for you? It’s the health span, right? I don’t really care about living to 105. I’d rather live to 90 and have great energy and just kind of dance off the planet. I don’t want to end up with Alzheimer’s and dementia at 70. I don’t want that. And so it’s up to the individual to kind of unlock that motivation for you. What is it for you to unlock it? There’s 10 other ways in research to make you stay accountable and intrinsically motivated. But I think it all comes down to that one. Like what do you do? How do you do it? Keep yourself motivated every day?

Brett Kelly:
I just care about people. If you don’t put your oxygen on, then you’re useless to other people. So that’s Bec and I. She’s like, "You’d put your oxygen on." "You’re damn right, I would." But that’s it. Otherwise, you can’t be useful. So I like to be useful.

So, but that’s just a very short hack. It wasn’t a book. I just was like, well... And I’ve never thought you want to live to 105. I had a brother die in a car accident at 45 when I was 29.

And I just said, "Okay, so time is limited. Death is certain. You don’t know that you have more than 45 years. So why act as if you’ve got 145?"

I love the book Atomic Habits. I didn’t realise, and you mentioned Jack Canfield’s book. Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen wrote the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. And if you haven’t read the first book in that, it’s an amazing book. I love that you mentioned it because when I wrote my first book, I got their How to Write a Book series. It was 24 cassette tapes and a workbook from America, right, back in 1997, in ancient history. And they’re amazing people, but they had this mindset idea of you’re ultimately responsible for your mindset.

But I never saw that as a stress. I just thought, I guess, I hung around people that thought like that. And that’s been really helpful.

So in the business, turning up in the right way, and it’s a challenge for all of us because everyone’s got incoming now from 4,000 sources. It used to be phone, then it was email. Now it’s text, WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter, et cetera. And so I’ve become much more conscious of it, mainly because I look at the kids.

So trying to work out why you know what you know, makes you think, "Well, how come kids don’t know that?" So the accountability piece, I’m really interested in Atomic Habits. If anyone hasn’t read it, it says start with tiny habits. Don’t try and change the world. I thought the best distinction in that book is that you’re not your goals, you’re your habits.

I had read this saying that, "Ideas: actions, actions: habits, habits: your destiny," which has stuck with me forever. I guess to wrap up... And look, we could chat with Chelsea all day, and I’d encourage you to grab her on the way out and build a relationship, because I never fail to learn something every time we have a chat.

But where’s the Atomic Habits piece sit in this? I always think about the first thing to get you moving. Is it start with sleep? Is it start with screens, alcohol, coffee before sleep? Good day starts the day before?

Chelsea Pottenger:
I would say if you bookend your day. So what I mean by that is you just half an hour before you go to bed, just don’t check your screens. Make sure you just... sleep is like the elixir of life. If you can nail that as a corporate athlete, you set the next day up for success. Now the sleep, the bookend, what I mean by that is half an hour before you go to bed, first eight minutes when you first wake up.

So first eight minutes, what I’m going to really encourage you to think about is instead of looking at your phone, because as you can imagine, right, there’s a lot of pain in our world. We take that content in streams through the eyeballs, hits the amygdala’s massive amount of cortisol. Adrenal comes up from the adrenal glands, but it’s the synaptic connections that fire within the first few minutes. And so if you’re looking at a murder on the newsfeed, first up, or a work email that’s causing you stress, your synaptic connections are firing, in the wrong kind of way, for stress and anxiety and worry and paranoia and fear.

Instead, what I’m going to encourage you to try as a little challenge is for the next few days, let’s say five-day challenge, phone goes down. Well, number one, if your alarm clock sounds like this beep-beep. If that’s your alarm sound, I really encourage you to change that one. You’re ripping yourself out of delta, straight up into beta brain wave of high stress. You actually skip theta brain wave that really beautiful neuroplastic element. And so, one, change it to nature sounds, a musical track, you can wake up with a prayer, anything but the beep-beep sound. They’ve even got an applause app, now. On the phone, you can wake up with a clap, give yourself a clap, "Waking up, well done."

Five for five challenge. So number two is, phone goes down on bedside table. It’s a very easy tip, but that’s where the discipline lies. Like that whole thing, discipline needs motivation, right? Okay, so now we’re empowered to know that this is bad for us, first up in the morning. Phone will go down. That’s step number two.

Step number three of this five for five challenge is up here inside your mind. I’m just going to ask you to think about three things that you’re grateful for while you’re pulling back the bed, getting up. Gratitude research, rocks. It’s not about being positive Pollyanna your whole life. Toxic positivity is a thing out there, that we see on social media.

It’s everywhere. It’s important to feel all emotions of this life.

Brett Kelly:
It’s an epidemic of... It makes me not want to be positive. It’s making me sick.

Chelsea Pottenger:
So it’s so important though, as a part of the brain, that it algorithms the right kind of way. Plus it’s a really cool way that we know how to release serotonin to your brain. Could be the smallest of things, right? Turn on a faucet here in Australia, guess what? You get clean drinking water. That’s pretty amazing to me. You have orbs inside your skull that will start to sense light when you wake up. They’re called your eyeballs, and therefore you can see the world with them. That’s pretty magnificent. And what you start to notice is that the more you start to do this, it directs the brain in that kind of way.

And then tip forward is Dr. Daniel Amen’s work. And he always says about if you wake up in the morning within the first few minutes and say something like, "Today’s going to be a good day," something that’s kind of like that in nature, where empathy resides in the brain gets stimulated, and we definitely need more empathy in this world. And so it’s really, again, it’s just algorithming your brain to look for reasons for it to be so.

And then the last step of the five for five is just do it for five days. Try that technique out for five days, and see if you notice the difference in the world. The reason why I know that you can all do it in here is because I’m married to a sceptic banker. Do you know what they are? They are people who challenge you all the time on science. And I’ll say, "Darling, look at this research." And he’d be like, "No, babe. I’ve got to look at the market. I don’t have time for that." And then I’d go, "Okay, Jay," three months later down the track, "have a look at this brain scan. This person’s brain, changing in real time. How cool is this?"

Right? And he’d be like, "No darling, I don’t have time for that." And then I said to Jay, "You know what N=1. You’re the best subject matter. Just try it out." And so he did it. He did it for five days, and his whole lens changed of the entire world. Four years ago, I recruited Jay out of the bank. He’s now the general manager at my company, at EQ Minds. And he said to me earlier this year, "Well, it’s been the only time I’ve been happy to sleep my way to the top." I’m like, "Well, thank you darling." That’s a joke, by the way.

Brett Kelly:
We’re out of time. I’m so excited that you were able to make the time, Chelsea. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Chelsea Pottenger:
I’m so grateful. Thank you, Brett. Thank you everyone.

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