24 | "Knowing Shifts Your Power" | Stress as Data, Not Danger

Author Nicole Hope Sylvester joins Khalila to unpack the science and self‑awareness behind stress, overwhelm, and emotional regulation. Nicole’s “jar of marbles” metaphor reveals how the body stores unprocessed emotions and stress signals until we reach a breaking point — and how learning to release those marbles can transform your mental and physical well‑being.

This episode dives into the human operating system, nervous system basics, survival mode, beliefs formed in childhood, and why calm is a skill you can train. Nicole explains how stress is actually data from the body, and how understanding that data helps you respond better, think clearer, and live more authentically.

Perfect for anyone navigating burnout, anxiety, emotional overload, or the desire to rise into a healthier version of themselves.

Connect with Nicole: 

Book on Amazon: Calm Is Power: How to Stop Overthinking, Reduce Stress and Respond Better to Life

Instagram: nhopes10

Connect with Khalila

Instagram:  @wherewerisepod

Email: WhereWeRisePod@gmail.com

Transcript

Nicole Hope Sylvester 0:00

Um, so your jar of marbles is essentially your body's trying to hold on to too much. When it's holding on to too much, it starts to freak out. Okay. And that is the overwhelm. Like you're overwhelmed. Like, so I'm it's a jar of marbles because every time you have an emotion you don't process, or you know, the authentic behavior or an action you need to take, whatever, and comprehensively over life, we don't process them and we stuff them down to get work done and be productive, and they just collect inside here until it's overflowing, which is a your, you know, that overwhelm feeling. And then what do we say when someone goes crazy is they lose their marbles, right? So all of the ground. So the point of the book, just so you have some knowledge about it, is that it just stills it down to what's the fastest way to get rid of these, which is either feeling an emotion in the moment, letting it go, not trying to figure it out, just feel it and let it go, marble out, and down regulating the nervous system, which means what body things do can I do to my own body? So body input to my own body to tell it that it's safe. Because that overwhelm and that overthinking is simply a product of your body's like, we have too many tabs open on the computer and we can't figure out what to focus on. And if we can start closing tabs by feeling by training the body to feel more calm, now you'll have the resources, that back part of the computer to be able to use it to focus on whatever you're doing.

Khalila McCoy 1:31

So now, how did you like, is this something that you had to live through and go through? So then you kind of dived into it more to learn about it, how to help regulate yourself, or is this already an area of study for you?

Nicole Hope Sylvester 1:46

Well, uh actually, so I taught first grade and learned a bunch of human development and psychology and stuff like that. So, and then I taught fitness, so I learned a bunch of anatomy and all of that, and then um I did other work and ultimately had like a full crash. Breakdown's not the right word. It's the word people will probably use right now, but it's my body was just like whoa breaks, and so I got really sick and kind of suicidal, but not. I mean, my kids were really little, got really, really, really depressed, and um my psychologist actually deemed me the Olympian of anxiety. And so what you want? My word is still in the mail, I have not received it yet. And so in an attempt to try to remedy all of those things, I was just seeing a bunch of, you know, because I'm not kind of just as imagined you are, you know, you're not kind of a giver-up or on it, you're just like, this is my plight. Um, but none of the things lasted. And the dilemma is that we have a lot of people outside of us who have information about our bodies that we should have. If we understand that information, now we actually have knowledge to take action when we're not seeing our specialist. And that's the dilemma that I felt like most people are experiencing right now. We have this amazing body that we're in until we die, we know nothing about what's happening inside of it. And if we understand the basics of it, just basics, which is what I refer to as your human operating system. If you understand these kind of four easy basic components and you know what to be looking for in those four things, you can change literally every aspect of your life because it does absolutely break down to on a fuller spectrum, it literally is determining even what you're experiencing in this moment, what your brain is processing versus what it's not processing. So you can, as your body feels calm and you're in an open state of awareness, you can then make better choices, see better opportunities, etc., etc. But most people aren't living that way. And because we're neuroreceptive beings, meaning I can feel your nervous system, you can feel mine, and my body's reading subconsciously, your facial expressions, and prosody of voice, because we live in the soup of everyone else's energy. It is more important now than ever for us to understand how to downregulate the body because our lifestyle also doesn't do it, and our bodies haven't evolved to this lifestyle. They're evolved to self-regulate through movement and nature and community and singing and tribal living and whatever. And the more we found that, the harder it is for our body to stay calm, and then we just keep adding more junk to it and ultimately not paying attention to the body at all due to the fact that we don't understand what's happening and it's uncomfortable. And now I will never say on your show, but we're kind of screwed. I mean, we're not. That's why I wrote this book. I mean, we need to be mass, like raising mass awareness because the capacity to shift this is so simple. We are so basic, and yet we don't know what's going on inside of us. It's right mind-boggling. So I wrote the book.

Khalila McCoy 5:10

Hi, I'm Khalila McCoy, and this is the podcast that's basically self-care. This is where we rise. Hey there. You've been listening to the beginning of my conversation with author Nicole Holp Sylvester, who wrote, Calm is Power: How to Stop Overthinking, Reduce Stress, and Respond Better to Life. On the cover of her book is a clear jar packed tight with brightly colored marbles. A few even are spilling out. What you just heard was Nicole explaining to me what this jar represents. What happens when our body tries to hold on to too much? Every unprocessed emotion, every moment we suppress, how we really feel, every time we push through instead of pausing, it becomes another marble stored inside of us. Eventually, the jar overflows, and that's the overwhelm that so many of us know too well. Nicole's mission is to help us understand those stress signals, respond to them, and release them before they take over. And I love how this conversation connects with the recent themes we've explored here on Where We Rise. Cam Knight taught us about internal resistance and the power of self-talk in episode 18. Coach Tammy Nicole reminded us that self-love shapes how we show up in the world in episode 21. And now Nicole helps us see stress as data, a signal from the body that we shouldn't ignore but learn from so we can function and rise more fully. This is something every one of us, even young people, need and can benefit from understanding. So let's jump back into this conversation and hear what led Nicole to study stress so deeply and what she encourages all of us to pay attention to as we go through our lives.

Nicole Hope Sylvester 7:02

So again, post having my little children who are lovely, and just kind of had this whole breakdown. I actually felt, I mean, the big, you know, everybody wants to hear the what was the pivotal moment? Did you wake up in the gutter or something? Right. And I'm like, no, sorry. And I've heard people's pivotal moments. I spoke at a conference a couple weeks ago. People had these like things, and I was like, yeah, mine's not that exciting. And so I try to make this sound more exciting. But I was driving my daughter home from preschool, and my son was a baby in the back, and she was in preschool. And so, and I fell asleep at a stoplight, which was is not that big of a deal in the scope of what's happened to people, but it was enough. It was a signal, which is all I'm trying to encourage people to understand. It was a signal from my body to me. Like, hey pal, wake up, which is alternatively the irony of that is that I fell asleep. But I mean, I woke up because people were honking behind me because the light had turned green and I wasn't moving and I was sleeping in my car with my kids in it. And it was not because of the use, malpractice of anything. It was simply because my body was like, hey, this is not a sustainable life approach. Right. And what drove me to understand that in a deeper context was simply the fact that it's not that life approach was symbolic of beliefs and a nervous system that was making me behave in a certain way that did that. So we are backwards approached to dealing with our lives. And we keep trying thinking that stress is an external thing happening to us. And I would offer, and my entire goal to have people understand this is that it is stress is these signals from our bodies that are trying to keep us healthy, safe, alive, and protected. And it's data that we have misinterpreted that would actually keep us on our path and make us more authentic and actually more successful and a whole lot happier if we were able to understand it from that lens. So we're instead of going outside in, I want us to go inside out. And you can take that, you know, depending on whoever's listening, we can make it as deep and as spiritual or religious or whatever context you want to place it in. But at the end of the day, we have this basic kind of animal-based nervous system that's giving us really valid data to take action. And we are so hardwired to avoid rejection from other people that then we suppress a lot of truth about ourselves, how we feel, how what we want to truly say, emotions, etc. And that that's that jar, right? That's what we store in the jar until we can't take anymore. And everyone has a midlife crisis and they go, Oh, what's happened? And I'm like, I know. I know exactly what's happened. And here you go, I wrote a book about it because I just tried to make it. I mean, I didn't make any of this stuff up. It's just I read enough information and saw enough specialists, and no one's talking about the interplay of it. Everyone's just like any well, especially Western medicine, we look so specifically at the symptoms and so specifically at one piece of a puzzle, but we are holistic as in whole beings, and there's not a piece of our body that is not talking to the other pieces of the body in any given correct, yeah. So are we listening? And I would offer we are not, because we're busy scrolling and looking at media and trying to think of the next project that's on the list or the next thing that will prove my worth my value or pay the bills or whatever. And it's not about um logic, nor is it about reason, nor I'm not trying to deter anyone and say that these things don't matter. What I am saying is our capacity to meet the needs and demands of life depreciates significantly as our body is overwhelmed by all of it. And if we can heal the body, we can heal our life.

Khalila McCoy 11:16

So what would be those steps? Because I think, like you said earlier, sharing your story, you know, it's not that big traumatic, but I think it's very relatable because I think everybody gets to that point where they're just feeling overwhelmed and they either shut down and it could be falling asleep, it could be just breaking down, crying at work because you're like, I can't take another thing, or you know, I feel the same way. Sometimes it's just because I'm funny, I'm a school teacher as well. So I'm at school all day working. I come home, I have a little son, I have my husband, and sometimes I'm just like, please, just nobody touch me, nobody be around me, just leave me alone, right? So I think we all go through that. But like you said, we just assume, you know, because I'm like, oh, I gotta get up and I gotta do it the next day because you know, these people need me and this is my job, and this is my role as the mom and the wife and things like that. So what are your suggestions? What are your thoughts on, okay, like you said, I have to be able to stop and think about what I need internally, but I also can't not play my role at the same time, right?

Nicole Hope Sylvester 12:19

So how do I balance interesting juxtaposition of problem and solution, right?

Khalila McCoy 12:25

Yeah.

Nicole Hope Sylvester 12:28

And, you know, as a former teacher, teachers, not that there are not other professions like this, but as a teacher and a mother who, well, and men come into this too. So I never want to say that it's gender specific, but we all have kind of predisposed ways of of doing life. So I'll speak to the teacher-mom version. And we are the highest level, like hardwired to be a nurturing and to suppress our own needs and to suppress our own emotions, right? Because we need to be the ones that are showing up for these kids. Men have their own version of it. Everyone's got a lot of marbles. So the what I want people to understand is every time we feel an emotion and we feel sensations in the body, and or tension, and or shallow breath, and or a million different things, all those are are signals to the body, are signals of something that we need to take action. And sometimes the action is just feeling it, because all of those signals are actually creating, generating like an energetic resonance, right? That's how our body talks, our energy and synaptic. And if we don't finish the cycle of energy, which is the feeling of it, then it does get stuck. And there's a massive amount of science that speaks to this, etc. But I want us to think about that's why when I say we're a jar of marbles, I'm not kidding. It is emotion. Emotion is energy in motion because it's a synaptic response, traveling. And if we lock it down and suppress it, we're just the body stores it for later. And it's like, okay, well, all right, you didn't have time to deal with it now. We'll just keep it back here. And then we keep keeping it back here until you open, like, you know, the whole closet that you've not purged, and everything falls on top of you. Yeah, right. And that's when we're having a breakdown or falling asleep at a stoplight or crying or all of those things. And so, yes, you want a solution, and I promise to offer it, but I really want people to understand that this is that's why I call it your human operating system. This is happening. There is no one that is outside of this norm, if you will. We have different combinations, just like our own thumbprints, which are unique to us. So there'll be infinite possibilities of combinations of how it's showing up for us and what what one reaction to one person may be different for another, etc. But ultimately, data is data and a response to the body in a physical sense is information that needs to be heard and action taken. And sometimes the action is just moving through the discomfort of feeling it. So you want one action if one of the first ones is if an emotion comes up, I don't need to sit and go cry for 17 hours. Maybe I do, but that's but I can feel that energy for enough and sit in the discomfort of it for about 90 seconds. And as long as I don't tell a story about why it's happening, because the brain then would add to it, right? If I can just go, I feel sadness in my chest, I'm just gonna feel it. That energy will dissipate.

Khalila McCoy 15:39

Yeah.

Nicole Hope Sylvester 15:40

But if I go, I feel sadness in my chest, I don't want to. Right now, it's just another marble, it's just gonna come back for you later. And and ultimately that collection of stress and those marbles creates very, very real physical problems for the body. Because if you imagine that a body has is a closed system where it can only hold so much, it's like having a bunch of emotions is like having 52 fire alarms going off at the same time. Right. And now your brain's trying to run around. So your mind is like, well, what do I do first? Like, do I get that? Am I gonna get that? What does that mean? What does that mean? What does that mean? And now your brain's overwhelmed and you have no capacity to focus. Yeah. Right. And so this is this is this kind of recurring problem that is happening. So if this, if the body is talking to us and we have anything considered, and you know, there's a layer in between, which is old beliefs that we hold about who we are and what we need to do to be safe and what value and all that kind of stuff. So it was so in when I talk about the house, this would be the best your human operating system. This is the best way to think about it. The foundation, the cement platform that the house is built on is your nervous system. Okay. Okay. So then from there, you get these beliefs and emotions which are interplayed with each other because that's how we established them. We felt an emotion, right? If I was an animal and I was outside and I ate a moth and I felt disgust, it's because my biological piece of me was like, that's poisonous, spit it out immediately. So I'm gonna take that emotional data and go, oh, every time I eat that moth, I feel disgust. I probably shouldn't eat it anymore. Right. So same thing with the body. It's like I'm gonna take that data, put it in, and now I'm gonna create a belief. Every time I hang out with John and he says mean things to me, I feel angry. And so that's now a belief that John's not nice to me. Right. So I mean, it can be so basic. And majority of them are from when we were little, and whatever we were literally in a state of hypnosis almost is how they speak about it, zero to seven. And we just data storage, like coded our brains with data from our parents and friends and whoever we were around, because we're like, oh, we're learning how to be human. These are the rules of humans. Those go in, these are our truths. And now there are truths. So you go, this foundation of nervous system, this set of beliefs, which, unless we've challenged them to get curious if they're true for us still, may just be telling some really cool stories, right? Right. And then we're this person inside this house, so our mind, our conscious mind, which is only 10% about what we're doing in the given moment, is running around in this house trying to stay comfortable, trying to exist, trying to live, trying to be, rearranging, trying to think differently. But meanwhile, every time there's an earthquake and the foundation shakes, it doesn't matter how cool and calm and logical and reasonable and how lovely the house is, because now everything feels disturbed. And every time we get a new belief, that encloses the walls and makes them tighter and it makes it more uncomfortable. And we try to deal within that. So that's why when people are looking for solutions, and same for myself, in that state of anxiety and depression, I'm like, oh, we'll just choose different thoughts. No, the body's like, that's like we're not listening to you anymore. You don't, you don't emote for us, you don't make authentic choices, you we don't trust you. It's like, no, and the body will determine whether it's feels safe or not, and it will determine how much capacity you have to be in control. Like crimes of passion is a very real thing where the nervous system cuts off your prefrontal cortex and you kind of black out. And then all of a sudden, yeah. You wake up and you're all, oh my god, what just happened? It's because your body's like, listen, you you got us into this mess, and I'm gonna get us out of it.

Khalila McCoy 19:49

Like, you're not in control anymore.

Nicole Hope Sylvester 19:51

You're gone. We'll talk to you in like five minutes when the work is done because you haven't been doing a good job. That's how it landed us in this mess. And it's true, and that happens in an overwhelm state too, right? When all of a sudden words are coming out of your mouth and you're like, oh my God, like what? That's the not me, right? That's the not me talking, and that's the stress and the child version and the one trying to protect you and all of this. So then lastly, you have this behavior. This is the fourth part of the human operating system. And the way I explain it is imagine yourself living in an ant farm and everyone standing around you watching what you do. And you're watching what you do, and you're like, Well, if I do this, I must be this. And we as a society see behavior as our personality and everything that is us. And it really is it's a it's a downstream symbol of everything upstream. Am I happy? Am I calm? Do I feel authentically me? What do I believe about the world? All of that. And and our behaviors are just demonstrating all of this muck, if you will, or awesome, depending on how it goes, upstream. And so as we start looking back at the foundation, is my body feel calm? What are my beliefs about who I am and who I need to be and whatever, you know, my adaptive beliefs and my newly created beliefs, right? And then I can use my mind to be an expansion and to be an experience. But it's but if my body does not feel safe and it is overwhelmed by the storage of my marbles of life that I've never addressed and that I continue to ignore because we're not taught to look at them, fair, right? It's a societal norm, then you've got essentially a society full of inauthentic autopilot robots who are massively unhappy, who are feeding off each other from neuroreception in a soup of dismay, and everyone's trying to escape it right now. And they're like, Why can't, no matter how much I think, no matter how positive I think. I am no matter what I focus on, I my body just wants to run and hide in a cave. And I'm like, yes. Because your body is like, this is not a sustainable way to live. Right. Hence the book. Because calm, the reason why it's called calm is power, is that as I can retrain my foundation, my nervous system, and that primal survival brain, that I'm okay right now, that there is no bear currently in my location. Right. Then I can chat start getting curious about my beliefs and go, this is a weird belief. I don't believe that if I'm like X that I'm not lovable. Like that's weird. It's just an old thing that I adopted from someone else. Like it's shocking when you start we start looking at our beliefs. It is wild where they come from. Yes. And the coming from part doesn't even it's fun if we like to enjoy the play of that, but it's so much in like it almost it doesn't matter. It's just like that came up, and I get to choose because I'm calm enough to be in choice as opposed to auto pilot reaction. I'm like, does that true for me anymore? Right. That's it. Like I just get to get curious. Is that true for me? Oh, I don't really believe that anymore. Okay, well, now I have to put some effort to create a synaptic path, if you will, to make this new belief the main one. But if we don't start in that curiosity, we don't calm the body, we can't start getting curious because we're always reacting, and then our lives unfold around us, which really is self-fulfilling prophecy. Because we our brains only see from a state of stress, our brains will only see things that validate our old stress beliefs. So that's why two people can sit in the same situation and have fundamentally different reactions based on their beliefs, their old beliefs, their coded beliefs, and how calm their body was in it. And one person will be like, that was amazing, and the other person could be terrified or angry and whatever, and they're both right because our bodies are taking in something like seven, I never get this right, seven million or eleven million, it's in the book for whatever reason, floats away from my head. But our bodies are taking in millions of pieces of data, and we are really only consciously processing 40 pieces of it for zero. So our bodies and brains have to be really efficient at determining what we are looking at and what data we're gonna take in. And so what it does is, well, it's like, well, I feel this emotion, I feel scared, so I'm gonna look for things that validate me about my fear, or I feel happy and I'm excited, so I'm gonna look for things that validate about things that bring me joy. So it's going to filter my experience, which means that if I'm only taking 40 pieces of data in, I'm not seeing a majority of the things that are right in front of me. And I mean not seeing it. It's going right through. And now we have, and so now we're creating our own problems, right? We're it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Khalila McCoy 25:09

So the solution is the body. So a lot of what you're talking about, like there's a high level of self-awareness that you're bringing up, but that person who is just living almost, I've talked to a couple of people on this podcast, and I we I've had the term like survival mode come up multiple times. And I feel like we all have our own kind of version of survival mode. So if you're in that, right, how do you get to the point of this self-awareness that you're talking about? Because you don't even know. Like you said, your brain is only taking in so much stuff. You don't realize that you're, you know, packing in those marbles.

Nicole Hope Sylvester 25:50

Yes. Oh, thank you for marbling with me. I appreciate it. So, okay, perfect. So I want to explain survived mode also because there's massive amounts of science that explain that if we know what we're kind of talking about, it's easier for us to apply techniques to use it because we'll know how to address it and see it. So survival mode at its core is the human nervous system designed to live like a zebra, who which is assessing life or death in any given moment. It's using all of its senses, right? The five senses that we have to assess threat. That's the nervous system's job. I'm going to assess threat. I'm also going to assess safety, but right? What is the absence of safety threat? So it's just easier to do it that way. Yeah. So if that's what it's doing and we are animals, then survival mode essentially is for when people are living in that space, it's because their nervous system have decided that it's experienced enough problems and enough threat that it's safer for it to stay in this heightened state of awareness than to rest in between. And so the way I describe it is a zebra's hanging out down by the water with all of its buddies and it's drinking the water right by the river or the lake or the pond. It's like, oh, life is amazing. Because animals process this naturally. We don't because we're forced into different behaviors than our body would naturally do to process it. That's the dilemma. Right? Right. That's true. So when we want to run away, someone's yelling at us, we don't because that's not okay. Your parents are yelling at you or whatever, and you want to run away, and your body's like, that would be a safe thing to do. You have to stand there and do what your parents say, and now your body's like, cool, and that's the marble, right? Mm-hmm. So anyway, so I'm hanging out, I'm a zebra, me and my zebra buddies, we're down by the water, we're having a great time, frolicking, and everything's amazing. And then all of a sudden, a lion comes and everybody flees. So now your body's gone from that nice rest and digest in the nervous system up to what everyone calls fate, this the sympathetic nervous system part, which is your fight, flight, fawn that space. We're all starting to be able to adopt that fight and flight. And I'll make this even more exciting for you. So now you're the zebra running away from the lion and you're running, running, running. So flight. Ah, perfect. And then all of a sudden the lion catches you, and your body's like, oh no. So your nervous system's like, fight it, fight it. So you get this anger that comes up inside of you, an emotion to drive you towards action. So I'm gonna fight this lion because you know, ah, and so I'm still up in that high survival rate of fighting or running, fight or run, fight or run. Or for a lot of women, especially fawning, which means I'm just gonna give up and give in to whatever you're saying. Like, there's this fawn space for the lion, like my next option with the lion. I'm all, hey lion, like you got a really nice mane, like sweet tuck yourself out of the situation. Can I get you some other food? Like, could you meet me the beast? And we'll be friends, and you won't eat me. But it's actually people pleasing, right? That's exactly what that is with the lions. The lion's like, nah. I don't have time for that. And so so, so then the body, so the nervous system goes, okay, we ran from it, we tried to fight it, we tried to appease it. None of this paid off. And so, what's this next space is that place of depression, if you will, because the body's like, all right, well, in a lizard brain or an animal brain, we're gonna play dead. I give up. I like, and and what does the body do in that state? And I know we know this place because it is burnout and overwhelm. Yes, depression in a more clinical space, but for most people in this, think about those moments where you're like, I need everyone to get away and I need to be in a room of silence, and I cannot take anymore. And that is your body going, like, it's actually a shutdown mode where it's A trying to protect energy by not outputting anymore, but it's also disassociating because this lion, I've now can realize sadly, disgustingly, is gonna gobble me up. And instead of having to suffer through it, the nervous system will actually numb pain. It'll disassociate you from the circumstance, kind of when you have that out-of-body experience, right? Right. Out of body, um, it will make you really tired. Because it's like, oh hey, sweetheart, just go to sleep while this is happening. Are you super tired? Like, just go to bed. It'll be okay. Like, just go to sleep. And it also makes you have kind of that apathy where you're like, I don't even care anymore. The thing you cared about the most, like I need to, you know, you need to take out the trash, but suddenly you get to the overwhelming spark and you're like, I don't even care anymore. You literally don't care because your body's like, we can't, we're done. And that apathy was really to be like, well, I don't, you know, alive zebra, dead zebra, uh, whatever, I don't care. Like, I'll just start again another time. So it's this nervous system process. And we go through it. And the goal, though, is let's say now the zebra escaped. Yes. The winning zebra and the zebra escapes. Well, now it has all of this cortisol, adrenaline, norepinephrine like running through it. And so maybe the lion's way away, but it keeps running because it's gonna burn off those chemicals, and it's gonna burn off that fear, right? These marbles, and it's gonna go back to the river because it did all the things it needed to do to finish the cycle to be done. Now it's just back at the river, having a great time. So we are these zebras fighting lions, and there's just this day and age, sadly, one lion after another. And so our body's like, well, I guess we'll just stay in lion fighting mode. And that's the safer place to be. And so it stops trying to get you back down to the river. And that is this jar of marbles that is so full because we don't know how to communicate with our body in a way to teach it that it's okay and that we're not fighting lions all the time. And it's like, oh, we better stay up here. And so the goal is through body input, through visual input, through movement, through nature, through walking, through quiet, through co-regulation, meaning hanging out with other people who are calm. So their nervous system helps your nervous system work, which is like babies to moms, right? That's why we have co-regulation, is so that a baby that's screaming and crying can hang out with a very chill mom and relax. Unfortunately, moms are not chill anymore. I certainly wasn't in my case a whole lot of anxiety now, which is why I wrote the book too, because I'm trying to undo all that awesome I created for them. You're welcome for those super life experiences. But hey, at least you know about it now and you can help them through it. Yes, well, right, exactly. I mean, that's really why. I mean, we are sitting as a family and reading this book because I'm like, you have to understand what's going on in you because I'm giving, I'm literally handing over to you the power and autonomy and choice over your own life, which we don't if we don't know what's going on.

Khalila McCoy 33:03

Yeah, I was gonna ask you if you feel like this is something that we need to be teaching kids right from the start, that really that true understanding and even talking about how we respond when the child is being yelled at or explain like what you did was wrong, and they want that fight or flight. I know there's a lot of talk right now about like what's developmentally appropriate for that response and what we should be expecting of them. So it's like us being educated, right? But then giving kids that true autonomy to be a kid and to be a human who's learning and growing and developing all these things, right? Agreed.

Nicole Hope Sylvester 33:38

Well, and so they know. I mean, the second, like now I was giving this talk in Chicago a couple weeks ago, and I'm literally telling them, and I'm feeling sweats like slide down my palms. And I'm like, listen, I know what's happening. So I can stay present in this and do my talk and be me and enjoy this. Meanwhile, my body's trying to learn a new way of living where it realizes that I'm still safe and giving this talk, right? And and but it's having a very real reaction to it. I mean, I was like super sweating, and I'm like, well, I'm just not okay, great. I know why. Because knowing shifts our power. I'm like, okay, so we're just learning a new way of being, and that's gonna take time because it took me almost 50 years to get to here, and I'm trying to undo some of that wiring. So, so that's to me the power we're giving back adults. I mean, I'm working with like 80-year-olds and high schoolers and children because again, it's the same system, right? It's just a different combination, and knowledge is power, knowing what's going on in us. It's the uncertainty of life that makes life so challenging. But if I go, I'm feeling this emotion and I know why, and I know that I can either wait it out, I can take an action, I can downregulate my body, I can talk to someone about it, and I will get relief from it. That's power. Yes, yeah. And that's what I want everyone to feel because I promise this sounds grandiose, but I'm not kidding. In my vision, it may take centuries, is that if we all understood that power, the power to self-regulate, the power to understand who we are and what we are, and ultimately have self-love because you cannot fail in a scope of experience, right? My whole purpose of life is to experience life, and anything that happens to me is experience, which means I cannot fail. And in that scope, I'm gonna love myself harder. And in loving myself harder, because I know I am reacting this way and I can make choices about it, and I can use this data. We don't have to have expectations of anyone else to behave differently than the way they are, because we will all have self-love and we will all have capacity to support each other. And honestly, I believe, really truthfully, that is world peace, is when we do not need to usurp our power over anyone else or have them act differently because there is a beautiful mix of authentic behavior, and really the only thing that causes problems is when we're in expectation of someone else behaving in a way we need them to behave so we can feel good.

Khalila McCoy 36:12

Right. Right? So, how do you balance that when there are people who are making choices that obviously disrupt our nervous system and disrupt our world? Yes.

Nicole Hope Sylvester 36:24

So we come back to what do I have control over? Me. Mm-hmm. Okay. And again and again. So chapter, I think, 10 in my book is called Calm in the Eye of the Storm. How do I get my nervous system to feel so settled that I it's not that I never am stressed or that I don't get this like reaction because I still need to like be like see a bus coming and run out of the way, I need my body, you know, in a very real end. Yeah, I need to have some anger come up because anger teaches me about my boundaries. I mean, but if I can understand myself in such a different way and keep my body pretty much in a chill spot so that when things come, like I experience it, get the data from it, come back to a chill spot, and then life happens around me, and it's it's the empowerment piece of no matter what's gonna happen to me, I'll be okay. Because I know I can take care of it. I know I can step into it, I know how to take care of myself so that I will be able to manage the circumstance. And it is the most magical feeling because you know you will always be the best version of yourself to the best of your own ability, and and and it just feels good. And to me, feeling good, happiness really, but we'll go with feeling good or peace or whatever, everyone's got a different kind of combo, right? Is a beautiful marker of me on my path. The longer I'm happy throughout my day, the more on my path I am, the more I know my nervous system's regulated, that I'm aware of my thoughts, that I am being my best version of myself, which can look different every day, but I don't beat myself up. And so, for so many of us, that jar of marbles is our own is our own shame and our own guilt and our own concern that we're not doing enough or being enough or whatever. And as we can clear that out, we get a clearer picture of what is us and what is the not us, which we get defined by am I stressed, the rumble strip of life, or am I am I like highway of flow and joy? Which means that I'm being the most authentic version of myself in this moment. And that's phenomenal data, but it always comes back to how I feel. And it is the first thing we negate as a society is feelings. Yeah.

Khalila McCoy 38:47

And I like how you don't um take out like those negative feelings, right? We have to process that, we have to think through that. And I also like that it's a constant day by day. So it's not like, oh, I do this one time and I'm happy for the rest of the month. Like it's a constant process that you're going through and that you have to acknowledge throughout, you know, moment by moment, pretty much, depending on what your situation is.

Nicole Hope Sylvester 39:15

Yes. And that's the interesting thing. And I kind of liken it to brushing your teeth. Well, so there's an evolutionary concept. Again, our bodies are like zebras, and zebras would already have or tribes. We'll go into hunter-gatherers, which is a better way. If we were hunters and gatherers, we would live outside in nature, down regulation. We would walk 20,000 steps a day approximately, down regulation. We would have tribal gatherings where we had community, down regulation. We'd probably sing or gesture or move. We would have transverse movements, meaning my body moves in different ways. We would reach and all the things that that helped the body process the hormones and the chemicals and just the holding and storage of these emotions. We would have elders that would have given us some level of guidance and rites of passage and all this kind of evolutionary baked-in stuff. So our bodies weren't going to be as messed up because they were that's how our physical body was designed to live. But we've taken that and transplanted that and put it in this where we are stationary, where we are told not to move all day in classrooms. And again, I know that spot, right? Right. We are told if you're mad in class, don't say a bad thing, don't do this. If you're mad at work, don't say a bad thing. And we sit and we and I love technology, I love it so much. And at the same time, we are immobilized by our literal immobilization because we are stagnant beings or static beings that are not doing the things that our body would naturally need to downregulate. So what do you do? Because this is our truth, and that's okay, is that we have to do it intentionally. And that means I intentionally go for walks and I intentionally get into nature and I intentionally notice my breath and I intentionally stretch and move my fascia and I intentionally do, I mean, my book at the end, like a first grade teacher would do. I put all the tools at the back in a resource box. You don't have to go looking for them. They're in a toolbox, and you just open it up and go which see which one. And I actually have an app hopefully coming out in the next month or two that will help in give personalized like support in it. Not in a therapy space, but like, oh, I'm feeling like this, and this is where I am. And it will take all of my tools, and there'll be an AI component that will actually guide you through a down regulation or help you in the morning or remind you to do something. Cause I'm like, we might as well use technology to our advantage. But my point is we don't like, we don't wait till we have cavities to start brushing our teeth. No. No, like, no way, because we know that's on the horizon. And our parents, or as a parent, right, we're just like in there. I don't have to take you to dizzy. I feel all your cavities because it's expensive, but da-da-da-da. And it's bad, you know, it's not great for you health-wise, but I'm more concerned about having to pay for the cavities, frankly. True, definitely. I don't want to go back to the dentist after the cleaning because you have tack cavities. We got time on our like time and money, man. And so, so we brush our teeth. And my goal is to start having people recognize that we implement these tools without having to have some outside stress come in and be like, now's the time. And we just go, well, I'm assuming there will be a time if I don't do things between now and then. Right. Then I'm doing little things every day. I create new habits that are real basic that I just do. And now if I'm constantly emptying out my jar before I'm waiting for new stuff to get in, now I have this huge space where if a bunch of stuff comes in all at once, I had space for it. Yes, right. And now, and that's it. I feel an emotion. I'm sure you've been you're driving in the car and things are fine, and all of a sudden out of the blue, you're all whoa! Like, you know, it doesn't even have to take another person, rage or sadness, or grief. And if we just take that moment while we're driving, be like, oh, I feel that. Take a couple breaths, let the body do what it needs to do. Like, I'm gonna feel that. Ugh, it's uncomfortable. Ugh, I hate it so much. Uh uh, uh eventually it goes away. And now that's one less marble, and now you have space for something else to come in if it needs to. Right. So it's an active process. It's just a slight shift. It's not taking, you'll appreciate this. It's not taking our paper and changing it from folding it like a hamburger to folding it like a hot dog, right? It's not that. It's like taking the hamburger fold and then adjusting the fold over like a half inch and folding it again and going, This is kind of our new way of dealing with it. And we're just gonna embody it and we're gonna share it with our children so that they can start feeling it because the data that I read about children's stress and teenage stress and just actually general overall happiness reports about. Children, the decline is so rapid. So rapid. Because they feel our stress. They live in our house with our nervous system. They read it, have no way to know what it is or why. They react to it. We say don't. Now it's stuffed in there too. And now we're just bunch all lugging these bags of marbles around. Yes. Yeah, you're right. And it's fine. It's all as we just, this is where this knowledge is power. This is happening because all of this data about our psychology and our internal frameworks and all of that were kind of held by other people that we used to resource out. And I'm like, we live in the day and age where knowledge is accessible to all of us through podcasts and Instagram and Facebook and YouTube. And there's a little bit too much noise sometimes, fair. So I'm like, how do we distill it down? Hence the book Calm is Power. So I'm like, I tried to take all this data and go, what's the most important couple facts that you need to know so you can make the fastest shift for yourself? And we can all just love life and like appreciate each other and utopia.

Khalila McCoy 45:12

Yeah. Now you talked about like with those shifts, those four different parts. So I have the nervous system, your beliefs, your mind, and your behavior. And I know you talked about the nervous system kind of being that foundation, but all of that kind of has to shift to get to that place where you're you have your last marbles. What do you find through either your research or just working with people? Is one of those layers harder for people to really look at and evaluate? Or is it just kind of more of a fluid change and process?

Nicole Hope Sylvester 45:47

I think looking at beliefs is the trickiest one, mostly because the way we're built, um, they're the hardest to find. What do you mean by that? So nervous system is pretty obvious. I get these signals, and if I would just listen to my body, my body would pretty much tell me if I get good at it, right? My body will tell me exactly what it needs right now. I need to jump up and down, I need to go for a walk, I need to move, I need to shake, I need to hug myself, I need to breathe, whatever, right? And then there's a million ways you can downregulate. So that's just practice, like a ritual. You wake up in the morning and do five things, and that's five less marbles, right? That's the way I see it. Right. The nervous system is pretty much like there's a more tangible way to manage it. The beliefs are difficult because we live so autopilotly, because again, it's an efficient way for our body and mind to work. If I had to think about right now, I'm lifting up my hand and I'm gonna fold my fingers and I'm gonna point my finger so I can point at it, right? I'm not doing that because no one has the brain capacity for that. So we have to start. That's where mass, that's gonna be the second book, really, mass amounts of curiosity come in to just start wondering why. Why? I mean, I don't have to get too specific about my hand, but why did I think that? And I just have to start going, why? Uh, because why do I tell my child to do anything? Frankly, right? The words that just come out, don't do that, people don't do that. And I'm like, well, who are the people? Why don't I? Right. Like, because it's totally something about what's come out of my mouth for sure. I'm sure. And I'm sure my grandmother had words that I right. So if I don't start wondering and just just getting curious, because it's not a it's not a challenge, it's not a negative or positive. There's no, it's not on a spectrum of of emotions or whatever from a neutral space. If I can just kind of go, why would I say that to him and or my daughter or whatever? Like, and do I believe that? That's my point, right? Is it still a belief for me? Because if it is, cool, I'm gonna run with it and Lord knows I'll dig in. And I will research it and I will share that data, and I'm allowed to have that belief because we are all allowed to have our own beliefs and just see how it all pans out. You know what I mean? Um, but so much more often than not, it is not mine. And I don't have to go figure it out. I don't have to go, oh, well, I remember my grandma said this and now it's in my body. I'm just like, whoa, I don't believe that anymore. And now I just have to be a little more aware why I say what I say, which is why the calm piece is important. Because again, when I'm in a heightened sense, there's a lot more autopilot, and we're just coming out, and that survival of just whatever I need to do to get through this is what's happening, that reaction rather than response. And as I'm calmer, I can be like, okay, well, whoops, my bad. That is not actually what I believe. This is what I believe. Or can we have a discussion about what do you believe, right, when it comes to children and all of that? Because we're getting back into that usurption of power, and my beliefs don't have to be my kids' beliefs. And isn't that a tricky little nugget? So that can be tough. Right. And I am really getting into if I try to make your beliefs, if I make you believe mine, now you're in therapy 30 years from now because you started making a lot of decisions based on something that wasn't yours, and that's not authentic. And now your body's rejecting it. So isn't that a fascinating space? So most of my language with my kids, and it has been for the I've been doing this research and whatever for about like 10 years, is that we are almost always in discussion. Because I want their opinion of it and I want my opinion of it, and I want us to come to a cumulative decision, even if it's to disagree. But at least we've done the research in our in our through discussion or through real research to figure out what is truth for us, what does make the most sense, as opposed to again, like, oh my god, my grandmother, bless her heart, was always just like, well, they will say this. And I'm like, I don't know who they are. Maybe I don't agree with what they think. Like maybe they believe these things, and I believe these things. So what they think is not important to me. But if we don't dive into that curiosity, and the other way to really notice it is through our emotions. When we have a big, bold emotional uptick and in the negative space, in positive, yay! But in the negative space, that's phenomenal data. And that is all emotion is supposed to be giving to us is data, is that something's happening, and it's our job real quickly to get really curious about why. Is it attached to an old belief? How is this how is this emotion? The best way to do it, how is this emotion serving me right now? Is it is it encouraging me to have a boundary to protect myself, right? Is it encouraging me to take action for my highest good, out of survival, out of necessity, or because it's someone else's thing that they think, you know what I mean? So an emotion will give us a quick data point to be like, if I can pause for two seconds and just get curious about why it came up, it's definitely gonna give me some piece of information. And I get to decide as an empowered person, I get choice. Is this still true for me? And I'm gonna dig in, is it not? And I'm gonna try to start by retraining myself because we are just a major we're just most of what we do, that autopilot is just habit. Beliefs are just decisions we've or thoughts we've practiced. We are neuroplastic, which means we can change who we are and what we believe in any given moment if we're willing to put the effort in. And that's a real big deal because the biggest thing I found from me falling asleep with that stoplight is that I was living a life full of beliefs that were not mine. And they were driving me towards behaviors, coming down to that end piece, and thoughts, which would be that mindset area, conscious thoughts, that had nothing to do with what I really believed. But I'd created an entire life, albeit a good one, that had nothing to do with what I really believed in or what was authentic to me and what I wanted to be doing in this. I mean, I loved teaching, so it wasn't completely off base, but it right, but it was driving me towards places that were not aligned for me. And my body was like, hey, wake up. And again, by falling asleep.

Khalila McCoy 52:39

No, I think that's a perfect analogy. I like that. It's perfect how it goes together. I do have a question for you though, as far as like kind of aligning yourself and finding that calm space. I take it back kind of almost to when you were talking about like with your children, right? The discussions that you have, their beliefs might not be yours, but there's certain things, like you said, do you will dig in, like thinking about safety and things like that. When you're in that state where almost like that authority figure, right? Like I have to do this even though I don't agree with it. How do you then help people not to be stressed or not to let that overwhelm them? And I don't obviously don't mean something immoral, right? But just something like, I'm not necessarily in line with this, but this is a figure authority. I have to do this step, or I have to do that.

Nicole Hope Sylvester 53:27

So if someone is telling me what to do and I don't agree with it, is that what you're saying? Yeah.

Khalila McCoy 53:31

Kind of like like a child. I was thinking more of like the child situation because like, you know, they're your child, and if it's safety, like right, you have to follow these directions, even though you might want to go across the street and play with your friend, but that's not what you're doing. Like that's a very simple idea. I'm even more in an adult situation, maybe at a job or something like that, is not aligning with you, and then you're just trying to not feel overwhelmed and to still keep everything, you know, peaceful for yourself.

Nicole Hope Sylvester 53:57

Yes, great question. Okay, so I'm gonna hit it from two angles. As a parent, if I'm trying to get my kid to do a thing and I also want them to be authentically them, then I always, always, always, despite the rolled eyes and size, have a discussion about it because I need them to understand the whys. Like my own child who sleeps really late and whatever, and I'm like, I and I get hung up in that space too. And but when it comes down to physical health and well-being, meaning I drink water, I move my body for lymphatic drainage and nervous system regulation, I get sunlight, all these kinds, I eat food, right? The basics of life, then I just constantly am trying to give them information and data because uh informing our children about even why we feel the way we feel. Information for our children is empowerment, but it's when we go because I said so. That is like it's just driving our children in directions that they don't want to go eventually, and it will come back and bite us every single time. There is no such thing as I said so. There's if we have logical reasons, and it's our responsibility, I see it at least, to be explaining to them why, because that gives them information. They're more likely to get on board or pull that. They may be too lit up right then to be able to deal with it, right? Too angry or too whatever. But I promise, because of their age, that data is stuck in there and later on they'll be able to access it and go, wait, why did she okay? Maybe I need to be in like awareness of it. So, as a parent telling a child what to do that may seem counter to what they want to do, our job is to inform them with them with the most diluted but important pieces of data so that they are becoming humans with information. From a person who is received who is in a position of which they are unhappy and are being kind of forced to, then I would offer the first thing is always downregulate, downregulate, self-care, self-care, self-care. And then start figuring out where you have capacity and choice, where you have options. Because if you just bolt right from it and then go somewhere else, you're essentially taking whatever creation beliefs and emotions that you had in that situation, you're gonna end up in the same relationship, the same job, the same something, because our external world is very much a mirror of our internal state and our internal beliefs, which is why we picked it to begin with, because it proved a thing or it whatever, right? So if we are uncomfortable in a job or in a relationship, our first step, and I know people say it, but and they told it to me forever, but I'm like, you didn't tell me why, so it didn't stick. Our first step is to go in and see how much of the situation we can get, how many beliefs we can pull out of it, what we're learning, right? Emotions we can pull out of it to heal and let go of, and also to tap into those beliefs of why we landed there to begin with. How much we can heal of ourselves and how much we can calm our nervous system, get no matter the circumstance, which is stuff we can do at home through body movement, and again, the million of tools in the book and online, it's I'm not the only resource for nerve system regulation. Right? Can I get my body to call quiet enough that I can tap into my beliefs and figure out how I got here? Yeah. Because if I can, I can A, sometimes see it from a different lens and it will remedy itself. Because so much of our problem is that self-fulfilling prophecy. And if I am a person that fails, if I have a belief because someone told me when I was three years old or six years old that I'm a failure, I coded that into me as truth because then I would always push harder and try more and do more to prove that I, or I would be a perfectionist. I would never fail because I don't want to be a failure, and that would keep me safe. Because if people didn't think I was a failure, I'd stay in the zebra herd and I wouldn't get picked off by the lion. That's as basic as we are. We're so basic. We are that basic. So we are that basic until we start recognizing how basic we are, and then we have way more power and we're much bigger, you know, very can big time controllers of life, if we understand it. But if that so if I see myself as a failure, I'm gonna go into a job, my behaviors, the way I show up at work, my actions will almost guaranteed always land in failure because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. And even if someone is telling me right here that I am doing a phenomenal job, they tell me, and this happened to me and when I was a teacher, that my principal sat down and gave me literally 99 things that I did right. And because of their job, and also because I am not perfect and nobody is, she gave me one thing that I did wrong, and it was infinitesimal. You didn't make eye contact at one point or whatever. And that's the rage that surged inside of me because at that moment in time I was perfect, I had to be perfect. That was how I stayed safe and loved and valued and had money and whatever, right? That's how I stayed alive was through perfection. So I could only see, and even in the moment, I could kind of go, I'm like, well, she said a lot of good things. No, and so I will never fail on that again. And so now that's self-fluid. Now I'm unhappy at work, but who caused that? Me, you, yeah. But if I don't start getting curious about my own reactions and my own beliefs, then it will happen and it won't matter what school I'm at or it won't matter because I will only take in the data that validates beliefs about myself that I hold as survival beliefs to stay alive. Isn't that fascinating? And we are powerful creators of our own problems and also our own solutions.

Khalila McCoy 1:00:09

As you're thinking through that, like you sound very reflective. Do you journal? Do you just have that conversation, like you said, in the car when you're driving?

Nicole Hope Sylvester 1:00:18

Oh, me and myself, we are besties. We do a lot of chit chat, a ton of ch-chat. Uh, I journal, and there's actually a couple of journal things. I don't, I'm not good at like waking up and I'm gonna journal every day, nor do I know that journaling too much depends on the kind of journaling. Because there's some journaling I used to do when I was younger and in that depressive state. And then I would go back and read it. It was just going, it was just reinforcing all of the sadness that I already blew up. That's true, right? So you can journal that out, which is helpful, getting rid of marbles, but then never look at it again. Like literally go burn it. The ritual of burning that actually will help your body release it. It seems kind of benign, but it's actually very powerful because you're like, I'm letting go of this. And everybody's like, look, we burned it, and literally letting go of it. So I do journal, and there's a prompt in there that you can go through with yourself that I do, especially in procrastination. And I just go, why? And it's kind of my higher version, like more aware self questioning this kind of survival self. Um, so I call it the wiser self because I know better. I'm like, I know something's up, and I'm like, why won't you do it? And oh my God, want to have a phenomenal discussion with yourself. Oh, I'll do it. Like when I was even having trouble writing this book, and I think I talk about in it, and I'm like, well, why won't you do it? I don't want to. I'm like, well, I'm pretty sure you do because you decided to do this for yourself. I'm like, discussion, and wow, am I a snarky little thing? You know, like it's boring, it's the worst, why would we do this? And I'm like, wow, this is fascinating because I am a person that has choice and autonomy and all these things, and I'm not forcing myself to do this book. No one told me to, you know, whatever. And when you shake it all down, where does it land? If I do this and it's not well received, I've failed. And if I'm failure, then I'm not loved. And if I'm not loved, then I get booted out from the zebras and I picked off the line and we're dead again. So it's almost always about life or death. Right. It looks like it's this other stuff. Yeah. Well, because we're basic. Right. And magical simultaneously.

Khalila McCoy 1:02:28

Yeah. I like that.

Nicole Hope Sylvester 1:02:31

Sternaline. Yeah, sternaline helps. Just getting curious, I can sit with myself in the car and kind of have an internal debate. It takes practice because we're not taught to really be self-reflectant. We're taught to try to manipulate our external world to fix our problems. And guess what? It never works because it's an internal world. Yeah.

Khalila McCoy 1:02:53

Now, are you do you also like coach or do you go around and talk to people? Like, is do you just have that information in the book or do you work with people as well, helping them through this process?

Nicole Hope Sylvester 1:03:05

So I do personal coaching. I'm shifting, I still take some clients and I'm working actually a lot more with teens because I'm like, how do we get rid of this for the future? Yeah. Right. Uh I and my you mentioned it earlier. My five-year goal is to start creating some like a program that is that can infiltrate, if you will, education at a low, like in elementary school, et cetera. But that's easy on the teachers because I also recognize how hard you like. I mean, I know you just do this, do this, do this, do this. So my goal is trying to figure out how's this thing where teachers aren't held accountable to doing it's more like a plug and play, right? Even hence the app, because we are tracking towards needing more support because we're expected to be accomplishing so much as individuals, as teachers, at any profession, parents, et cetera. So that's why that app is supposed to not only create the ease of access to this information, but also community where people can feel like this is a really interesting space of like-minded people trying to just feel better, right? Just enjoy life a little more, see things a little differently. Um, and yes, I I speak at organizations. I'm developing a program right now as a small workshop, but also as a greater program called Find Your Flow, because a flow state is really when all of those pieces, that house is in order and you're in alignment. And it doesn't take too much to get you. I mean, some depending on how long you've been trying to do it, 30 seconds even. And there's a nice, it's a nice little acronym acronym that can get you through it. And it seems to be the fastest way for people to, it's in the book too, to get back to a center point because that's the goal. So how do I come back to authentic me without reaction and me and me and me and still my bot until my body is more trained to be me and calm than to be in reactive and trying to to like you know control my external world. So, yes, I've been doing speaking things. I've been on a lot of podcasts this year because my job is to stand on a mountaintop and be like, other people have figured it out, but I'm going to jump in on this party and take their data and like scream at the like at the top of my lungs, we can all be enjoying life exponentially more. We're just in a bad habit right now.

Khalila McCoy 1:05:38

Oh good. I'm glad you're on that mountaintop yelling out and helping people. I think like you said, we need that.

Nicole Hope Sylvester 1:05:46

Like the heretic up there, I'm like, it's crazy how much I'm like so compelled to be doing this work. My logic is that people are like a comment and we're all just happy because we've all figured out how to love ourselves so much and be authentic that we can appreciate each other. And it is in like the creation of calm nervous systems who can support each other and just love life and experience it through that lens of like my only job here on this planet is to be me and to experience what it is to be human. Like that's really the goal of all of this. And we're just really way off track. That's fine. It's great data, great learning, beautifully dynamic moment to be alive on this planet and to witness the capacity for all of us to change and pick new directions and have access to the learning and information to be able to make those choices and hopefully to be feel empowered enough and supported enough to like and courageous enough to kind of jump in and do that just like you doing your podcast.

Khalila McCoy 1:06:52

Do you feel like with the research that you're looking for to kind of back up and you talked about like the science is it newer information? Is that why do you if you feel like most people haven't heard about it and aren't understanding it's an interesting space because I don't I'm being very intentional about this.

Nicole Hope Sylvester 1:07:13

I don't go into like conspiracy and I'm I'm not being naive to it. I'm just I choose to go just to look at the bigger picture of all things. So that's where I'm gonna start with this. And I would offer that so much of what I am explaining is stuff that like like Eastern medicine has known for centuries for very long centuries right long like very very very very long time. I would offer that there have been moments and there's actually quite a quite a bit of data where we have also known it even in a western culture concept. And I would also offer that in the scope of ease mass healing money like I mean just a huge array of reasons. It doesn't serve everybody for all of us to know things. On the flip side we've never had access to knowledge like this the way we do know and historically like if I if you go back 1500s people are more educated. So it was just like of course you're not gonna know and we've just kind of held these old timey versions of living and we've just kind of run with it but and who cares about the reason frankly it doesn't really matter. But now there's my logic is in this moment there's just really no excuse for us not to be knowledgeable because we have access to this and we have to have a little bit more curiosity and a little less I'm a victim mentality. And I've and I don't even blame that because guess that's also this old time you know it's old timey stuff that we just keep instead of getting curious and trying to stitch it we just kind of keep passing it along which is why I like the idea of helping children in education and teenagers and college students because maybe what if we can how how effective can we be in shifting this because it is harder as we get older to shift those neuropathways that have been grooved in and rutted. It takes a lot of desire or a heart attack or you know what I mean something something big to go you have to do it differently and if we don't get then it's just kind of like and or everyone's talking about the struggle is real and life just sucks or this is the way living is if we all hold that as our truth as a society then there is no reason for anybody to try to shift aside from people like me who are like eh having more fun like I just want to play there must be we must be missing something yeah right and so as we kind of shift that and now and you start utilizing this massive amount of technology which is massive amounts of information and use it to our advantage and use it in different ways and just have a different energy about it just one of like compassion and kindness and growth and frankly love for ourselves and for others and for the human experience as that energy shifts I think a lot of things will move with that. And the beauty of the muck that so much of people are feeling right now is that instead of having a heart attack it's like the drive to push more people into going to getting curious enough to go how like what's up like what is up and and start to talk more about it and have podcasts and bring more data and be a part of the movement for change which is really just curiosity. It's just expansion or transformation or growth or evolution or enlightenment or you know self-actualization which is it's all the same verbiage. It's like can we just get a little bit more out of this life without feeling like we need to be pummeled by it and we can. And so that's so it has existed and there are different systems for by which it has not come out and now we have this beautiful opportunity to be a part of something beautiful and change like humanity like literally uplift the vibration of humanity one nervous system at a time right and we will feel that as a ripple effect and it will grow and it is it's to me it's an inevitable destination in this moment because so many people want something different. And so the more we, you, me, other people are offering this value and this information it it has to happen. So that's why I try not to get too hung up in the muck and really try to focus on what action I can take to make myself feel better. Because if I feel better it is the way the nervous system works. And if you feel better you're more likely to try to hold that and figure out how to feel better. And if you feel better your kids feel better and if they feel better their friends feel better. And if we all do it has to go that direction and it's magical and like it gives me goosebumps thinking about what we have capacity over as a holistic community as opposed to individual suffering.

Khalila McCoy 1:12:36

I like that you said that too it's not like you by yourself as a community we help each other to grow. It's not you don't have to do this alone. So I like that idea as well. Usually at the end of my time with the guests I ask them what do you want our listeners to take away to help them rise but I feel like you just kind of really jumped into that and shared so many things that we can kind of take away and do. So I want to encourage people to find your book and to read it definitely where can they find your book?

Nicole Hope Sylvester 1:13:12

It's on Amazon because that's fast and easy and eventually hopefully in bookstores but wow it's I was like I'm gonna write a book and then I thought oh what there's some other steps I was unaware of like weird more learning happening. So right now Amazon at least it's fast and easy and most people get it aside from you apparently in that in a quick in a quick turnover moment.

Khalila McCoy 1:13:37

Watch it be on my steps as soon as this we're done recording.

Nicole Hope Sylvester 1:13:41

Well I have a general logic that everything else happens in the right place at the right time if we're looking for it to be that and so if you had read it ahead time maybe it would have shifted our whole dynamic and so everything worked out perfectly for us. And and I do want to drive home when and if people get the book it is not a book to sit down and go, I'm gonna dig into this or feel stressed out by the obligation of trying to learn about myself because that to me is counterintuitive to the goal. This is designed for us to look and it says inside of it, look at the chapters and go, what costs me right now what do I need to know? Because in those full marble jars we only have capacity to learn so much and I will I will honestly say if we tune into our heart literally or the body in a different way or the gut to try to decide what part of the book I should kind of start with where I just blindly kind of open it, I can almost guarantee you it will be a piece of information that will be of value in that moment to whoever's reading it. And then you piecemeal it together. It's designed to be like a car manual. When I bought you know when I got my forerunner I didn't sit down I'm like I'm gonna study this so that every time this thing comes up right I'm gonna know already and whatever and no one wants to do that nor would you retain that information. So in in the it's more important to get what you need in the moment and to apply that and practice that in the moment and maybe for a week or two or whatever. And then now that's one less thing you're trying to integrate and now you can have space to learn one more thing. Aside from using the down regulation tools because that toolbox at the back will give you more space inside to be able to learn more or to use some of the other knowledge. So um if we all listen to ourselves a little bit more, I promise we would always be getting the information that we need to have. So that's my invitation is not to feel like another self-help book that I've got to like document and highlight and whatever. It's more can I get into it and learn a thing right now that I can apply to myself right now. So get curious apply it and then see where you go next. Yeah.

Khalila McCoy 1:15:52

Well Nicole thank you so much for sharing today I love your vision and everything that you've talked about and your personality are so fun and that zebra analogy is going to be in my head for forever. Like I just thought that was so clever just like that is my life like but I'm going back to the watering hole and just running away from the lions and we gotta get out of it we gotta get away from the zeb from the lions man yes and go back to the watering hole and just enjoy life with the other zebras around me so yeah I really enjoyed talking to you. Me too it was such a pleasure thank you so much for spending this time with me today. I hope Nicole's perspective on stress, overwhelming feelings and those marbles we carry helped you see your own experience a little differently. The way she breaks down the human operating system, the nervous system, our beliefs, our emotions and the behaviors that follow is such a powerful reminder that calm isn't something we stumble into. It's something we actually train our bodies to return to. And if you're someone who's been moving through life on autopilot, pushing through, suppressing how you feel or ignoring the signals your body has been trying to send, I hope this conversation gives you permission to pause, to listen, to release a few marbles of your own. I encourage you to grab a copy of Nicole's book on Amazon and dig a little deeper into this work. I'll link it in the show notes, but as she reminded us today, there's so much research out there about how the body stress and our nervous system actually works. Don't let a lack of knowledge keep you from living your best life or becoming the version of yourself you've been fighting for if this episode resonated with you share it with someone who might need it and even read the book with a buddy. I know I'll be doing some reflecting and learning along with you. And as you move through the rest of your day I hope you take a moment to listen a little louder to yourself, to the people you love and to the things that connect us in ways we sometimes forget to notice. I'll meet you back here next time. See you bye