Episode 302: Ambition & Adrenals | Why highly ambitious people burnout - and what we can do about it
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Are you an entrepreneur or a highly ambitious person that seems to be stuck in the “go-go-go” mentality and may benefit from learning when and how to rein it in? If so, this episode is for you. Erin uncovers the common hormone imbalances she sees in highly ambitious people and how our culture fosters an environment for burnout. Erin explains tools to rewire your self-image and identity to ensure you put your body before your business.
In this episode:
The hormone imbalances Erin tends to see with ambition [5:42]
Why hustle culture is anti-body [14:14]
How your identity can impact your hormone health [27:40]
The not-so-obvious stressors of entrepreneurship [24:44]
If you don’t put a limit to your work, your body will [43:09]
How to assess if your work is putting you in a catabolic state [52:47]
Resources mentioned:
Funk’tional Nutrition Academy™
The Funk’tional Nutrition Collective
The Funk’tional Nutrition 1:1 Membership
The Boundaries Course (Available for free within the Funk’tional Nutrition Collective)
Your Hormone Revival™ (Available only within the Funk’tional Nutrition Collective)
Ned Natural Remedies (get 15% off your order with code FUNK)
Organifi supplement powder (save 20% on your order with code FUNK)
Qualia Senolytic (get up to 50% off and an extra 15% off your first purchase with link + code FUNKS)
LMNT Electrolyte Replenishing powder (Use code FUNK get a free sample pack with any purchase!)
Learn more about Hormones & Mindset
Related episodes:
290: Imbalanced Cortisol: 2 Questions to Ask Yourself
278: Magnetism & Aligned Action in Your Business
137: Is Perfectionism Driving Your Hormone Imbalance? Cortisol, DHEA & Adrenal Testing
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Erin Holt [00:00:02]:
I'm Erin Holt, and this is the Funk’tional Nutrition Podcast, where we lean into intuitive, functional medicine. We look at how diet, our environment, our emotions, and our beliefs all affect our physical health. This podcast is your full bodied, well rounded resource. I've got over a decade of clinical experience, and because of that, I've got a major bone to pick with diet, culture, and the conventional healthcare model. They're both failing so many of us. But functional medicine isn't the panacea that it's made out to be either. We've got some work to do, and that's why creating a new model is my life's work. I believe in the ripple effect.
Erin Holt [00:00:39]:
So I founded the Funk’tional Nutrition Academy, a school and mentorship for practitioners who want to do the same. This show is for you if you're looking for new ways of thinking about your health and you're ready to be an active participant in your own healing. Please keep in mind this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. I would love for you to follow the show, rate, review and share because you never know whose life you might change. And of course, keep coming back for more. Hello, my friends. I think today is going to be a good episode. I'm really excited about this one.
Erin Holt [00:01:19]:
This one is like near and dear to my heart because I'm talking about ambition and your adrenals. I talked about this a little bit on Instagram. I was kind of joking that when I see lab tests from my entrepreneurs and highly ambitious women, they don't always look great, the labs don't always look awesome, and I'm like, are we okay? What's going on? And unanimously, you guys all wanted to hear more about this. So I've thought a lot about this. I've kind of brainstormed this.
Erin Holt [00:01:51]:
This is a lot of the stuff that I've kind of had to take myself through, and I'm going to share some of that with you. I love working with entrepreneurs. I kind of joke that my toxic trait is turning every woman I love into an entrepreneur. Maybe that's my love language. I don't know if you follow me on Instagram or listen to the show, I mean, you're here, so I'm assuming you do. Hello. Hi.
Erin Holt [00:02:12]:
I talk a lot about entrepreneurship because I love it so much and I really enjoy leading women who lead themselves. I think that's where the magic with my coaching really seems to happen. And entrepreneurs have a lot of that innate self-leadership built in.
Erin Holt [00:02:32]:
So I do love working with entrepreneurs. I obviously work with many of you in FNA, the Funk’tional Nutrition Academy, my 14-month practitioner training and mentorship. Side note that the cart does open. Enrollment does open April 1. No April fool's joke.
Erin Holt [00:02:51]:
So make sure you get your applications in for the spring cohort. If you want to talk with somebody on my team, you can submit an application and we'll chat with you and answer up all of your questions. So I'm really excited for that to open. But outside of that, I've also attracted a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs into my one to one practice throughout the years, and I love seeing the results. Brain fog gets so much better. Energy levels increase. I remember one woman telling me, I got my brain back. And I love seeing this because high impact people make an even bigger impact when they feel better, when their health is optimized.
Erin Holt [00:03:30]:
So it really, truly does bring me great joy. Now, stay tuned until the end of this episode where I will announce my latest one to one offering. I'm joking that I'm coming out of retirement to open up a few spots on my calendar for some one to one clients.
Erin Holt [00:03:46]:
But anyway, in my experience, working with business owners or even highly ambitious women within a corporate role doesn't always have to be an entrepreneur. A lot struggle with burnout, with exhaustion, with depletion. And there's almost like this expectation that that is the norm that just kind of like comes with the trade. But I don't think it has to be. My old cycle was I would go really hard and then I would crash, and then I would go really hard and then would crash really hard.
Erin Holt [00:04:21]:
I am a high capacity person. I can do a lot. I can manage a lot. I'm a high impact person. So I would do that and I would kind of push myself to the limits. I mean, I would actually push myself beyond my limits, if I'm being honest. And then I would have no choice but to crash. My body would have to just kind of like horizontal itself so I could recover.
Erin Holt [00:04:46]:
And for years I just told myself, well, that's the entrepreneurial cycle, or that's my cycle. But I can tell you that is not my cycle anymore and there isn't this cyclical crash after a big push. I have learned how to refine and harness my energy output. I mean, it's still a work in progress, of course, but I've come really, really far from that old perpetual depletion, exhaustion and burnout state.
Erin Holt [00:05:16]:
So today I'm going to talk through some of the questions I had to ask myself. The stuff I had to tuck into to really understand my own patterns and then change them. So today, I will get into the whats. What I tend to see with ambitious women in terms of health, the whys. Why do we see this burnout picture. This cortisol dysregulation tomfoolery, and then hows. How can we change that?
Erin Holt [00:05:42]:
So I'll start with health issues, because this is what grabbed everybody's attention on the Instagram. We absolutely can see hormonal issues with ambition. I do really love to run DUTCH hormone testing on entrepreneurs or high powered, highly ambitious people because there is a tendency to push ourself past our capacity. Like I talked about, we're going to get into that more in a little bit. And the thing is, we don't always realize it. We're just like, oh, this is normal. This is how I'm supposed to feel. And so I like to see the data from a DUTCH test.
Erin Holt [00:06:21]:
More often than not for entrepreneurs, I do tend to see a low or depletion picture, because by the time that I work with them, they've been kind of like cooking for a while. It's usually not their first rodeo. Things have been compounding to the point they're like, okay, I feel bad and I need help. So I'll see imbalanced cortisol patterns, perhaps. Low cortisol awakening response.
Erin Holt [00:06:48]:
When I see that, I'm like, oh, they've been grinding for like a hot minute. Low DHea. That's another indication to me that I'm like, okay, this has been going on for a while, and we have to kind of reestablish some things. Low progesterone is a pretty common one. Low thyroid function. And not like an outright, you have a thyroid disorder, but thyroid hormones are impacted enough to make you feel not so great. They're not optimized. And then, of course, we can see chronic gut issues because of the gut brain connection.
Erin Holt [00:07:21]:
Because of the gut hormone connection, I can see low secretory iga a lot. I think that high stress and high performance even can be synonymous with leaky gut. So that kind of opens the doorway up to unchecked inflammation throughout the whole body. More of that brain fog picture.
Erin Holt [00:07:39]:
And for entrepreneurs, oftentimes, we are the visionary. We have to see the things before we even create them. So our brain power is so important. So when we start to lose that, when we start to have that brain fog, that's when we freak out. I joke that my brain is my money maker. So the second that that starts to feel a little flaky and shaky. I think that that's very incentivizing for high powered, ambitious people to actually seek out help. And I'm certainly not trying to glorify this at all, but I think we can kind of bulldoze our bodies through a lot. But when we start to feel brain foggy, that's when we're like, okay, something needs to change here.
Erin Holt [00:08:28]:
So any constellation of what I just explained is stuff that I tend to see on labs, and all of that can really lead to feeling not great most of the time, which is a direct quote from one of my entrepreneur clients. Yeah, I feel not great most of the time. All right, let's get you feeling good. And by the way, if you want to learn or unpack anything that I just said in terms of low secretory iga, thyroid imbalance, cortisol dysregulation, there are heaps of episodes unpacking all of that. Not really the point of today's show. I don't want to keep you here for 6 hours, but that does exist for you. All that education and those resources do exist here on the Funk’tional Nutrition Podcast. So, anyway, one question that we have to ask, and we have to look at is, is your work putting you in a catabolic breakdown state? Is your work or the way you approach work, perhaps is a better way to phrase this, putting you in a catabolic state?
Erin Holt [00:09:31]:
Is your body breaking itself down? We will revisit this question a little later in this episode because it's an important one. And so that answer can absolutely be revealed to us through lab testing, which is why I do really love to work with entrepreneurs and get that data. But I also like to unpack that a lot deeper than just the labs, because what I've seen over and over again, we can run the labs, we can do some interventions to restore your physical energy, you take that newfound energy, you're like, yes, I'm feeling I’m back, baby. He's back. Like Vince Vaughn in wedding crashers.
Erin Holt [00:10:12]:
And so we take that newfound energy and then we immediately default to our old patterns, and we take that energy and we put it back into other people, or we put it back into work projects, and we just use it to charge ahead. So I always try to teach my clients, listen, you have to harness that energy.
Erin Holt [00:10:35]:
You have to put that energy back into yourself for a while. You have to reinvest that energy back into you. Otherwise, you're going to repeat the same patterns and end up in the same exact place. And if you're a practitioner listening to this, I really want you to take note of this, especially if you run DUTCH testing on your clients. You can make some interventions, you can make some tweaks to start to get somebody to feel really good, but make sure they're not taking that feel really good and running out into the world to repeat the same patterns that brought them to the place of not feeling so good.
Erin Holt [00:11:13]:
Another thing that I can see is that we run the labs, we make some slight lifestyle tweaks. So, okay, like, maybe we're doing some breathwork, maybe we're doing some yoga. And, okay, I'm not going to crossfit every single day. I'm doing some more yoga. I'm taking care of my body, some lifestyle tweaks but the underlying identity hasn't changed. So we recreate the same exact situation.
Erin Holt [00:11:43]:
We're going to talk about identity because it is a big one for us entrepreneurs. I mean, it's a big one for everybody but we're sticking to the entrepreneurs, highly ambitious people right now. So that's why people can leave me and feel great, and then, like, a couple of years later, they're emailing like, hashtag help. I don't know what happened. And like, oh, we didn't reconstruct your identity, which is kind of what needs to happen so we don't perpetuate the same patterns over and over and over. So that's kind of a big deal, and we'll get into that today.
Erin Holt [00:12:15]:
Now, why. So why the health issues? Why the health issues with entrepreneurs? Well, we have the obvious stressors, like hustle culture. So we can see health issues arise from the hustle. I think we're all hip to that game by now, right? Pushing yourself past your capacity will lead to health struggles. Stress negatively impacts your health. You know this, right? If you don't spend some time listening to the past 302 episodes of this podcast, and you will be all caught up, no problem. But it's a big deal.
Erin Holt [00:12:50]:
And I like to talk about overarching patterns that I've seen working with thousands of women because there is a lot of overlap. We can see overwork, we can see over functioning. We can see proving our worth. And this is, of course, not just unique to entrepreneurship, but it definitely can be amped up in this cohort. We take it to, like, the nth degree and in The Boundaries Course, we talk about all of the reasons why this is the case, because it's not just important to identify our behaviors and our patterns, but we also ned to understand the whys and the drivers so that we can change. Because doing this over functioning, overworking, proving our worth through our work, through our ambition, through our success, that is meeting a need within us. So if we don't understand the need, if we don't uncover the need, we're going to continue to get that need met. That's what we do. So if you have not done The Boundaries Course, if you're an entrepreneur, you have not done that, you must.
Erin Holt [00:13:56]:
It is a must. Like, do not pass go, do not collect $200. Literally, why I created it was for business owners, to prevent burnout. So if you are a business owner who is struggling with burnout, get The Boundaries Course. How is that for alliteration?
Erin Holt [00:14:14]:
All right, so hustle culture, capitalism, generally speaking, puts profits above our well being. And remember a couple of weeks ago. Where science meets the sacred? In that episode where I said, our modern world is anti-body. This is part of what I mean. Profits over the earth, profits over our health. Sacrificing the self is rewarded for the sake of success. We prioritize work above well being.
Erin Holt [00:14:45]:
And in fact, work is really the only addiction that we are awarded and praised for. So when we are working a lot, it doesn't feel like we are doing something wrong. It feels like we are doing something right. When we are on that compulsion, like hamster wheel, more, more, more, more people are like applauding us for it.
Erin Holt [00:15:08]:
So if you are somebody who thrives off external validation, you're going to keep going. It's like the idea, if some is good, more is better. We just keep setting the bar higher and higher and higher and keep pushing ourselves more and more and more.
Erin Holt [00:15:23]:
Now, in our society, in our culture, we place the most value on divine masculine traits. I'm going to trust that you've heard me talk about this before, so I don't have to unpack divine masculine, divine feminine. Their energies, their archetypes. We're not talking about sex or gender, but we place a high emphasis, a high value on the divine masculine traits. Drive, ambition, building, doing, producing, logical, linear, action. This is the standard. This is what we have set as the standard, as the norm.
Erin Holt [00:16:02]:
So anything other than this is considered less than. And so this is why so many of us carry around this very self limiting belief or paradigm that the harder I work, the more success I will have. Success is defined by all of us very differently. So maybe for you, that looks like the harder I work, the more money I make. But here is the deal.
Erin Holt [00:16:28]:
I don't know if anyone's ever told you this. So let me be the first. There is a cap on how hard you can work. If somebody told me that a couple of years ago, I probably would have like, drop kicked them. But it's the truth.
Erin Holt [00:16:41]:
There's a cap on how hard you can work without completely destroying yourself, your health, your body, your mental health, your joy, your spirit. So this is the trap that many entrepreneurs get caught in. And side note, I know I keep saying this, but this is why I love working with entrepreneurs, because I understand the trap. I have so much compassion for it. I really, really get it. So because we prioritize these divine masculine traits, we have also been taught to devalue the divine, sacred feminine archetype traits. So this would be being in the flow, creative flow, feeling, emotion, intuition, inspiration, support, receiving, allowing, being cyclical instead of linear, rest and reflection.
Erin Holt [00:17:39]:
I wish you could see me. You know, I talk with my hands. I'm like moving my body in this fluid way, not even intentionally, but that's the fluidity of the feminine. The masculine is more like structured container, and the feminine is like the water, the liquid that the container is holding.
Erin Holt [00:17:59]:
It is really important for us to embody and embrace these aspects if we want success without the burnout, without the depletion. The magic happens when we can organize the masculine and the feminine traits together.
Erin Holt [00:18:18]:
This is why my philosophy has been body over business, or body before business. And I absolutely stole that verbatim from Kate Northrop, who is a doll and a love, and I love her work, and I appreciate her work and have for a lot of years. But body over business means that I prioritize my body first.
Erin Holt [00:18:42]:
I am not sacrificing my body, my sacred body, for success, for business. And that's the other paradigm or the other set of beliefs that is actually available to us, which is, the more I relax, the more I am opening up to receive. The more I open myself up to receive, the more success I can call in and that might feel radically different than the way you are thinking, believing and behaving right now. So, baby girl, if you want that, you got to join Manifest Your Wealth.
Erin Holt [00:19:23]:
That's everything I'm teaching inside of Manifest Your Wealth. It is a new way, and it's kind of an overlooked part of the quote unquote manifestation process. What we can call in and attract abundance, opportunities, and yes, even money, is directly related to our nervous system's ability to feel safe, our ability to self-regulate our nervous system. So when we are all drive all the time, full speed ahead, that is not really what our nervous system is kind of equipped to do. That's why modern world is anti-body because we are taught to just go, go.
Erin Holt [00:20:08]:
Like I said, the magic happens is when we can allow both divine masculine and divine feminine traits and energies to work within us and I will tell you, this is a very fruitful endeavor. I know we love to focus on the practical and the strategic side of business, but I promise you this, the practical and strategic things I have done and continue to do in my business would not have worked as well as they work without the energetic, spiritual, and mindset work alongside of it. I promise you that that is the truth. And I know people are just like, just tell me what to do. What's the structure? What's the ten step plan to growing my business?
Erin Holt [00:20:53]:
And I can map it out for you, but just understand that a lot of it is going to include the energetic side. So that's really just something to think about for yourself. Are you just charging hard, full speed ahead, without rest, without reciprocity, without receiving, without support? Are you honoring the fact that you are a cyclical being? Or are you just expecting yourself to be robotic with your production and your drive? Everything in nature has rest. Everything in nature has seasons of rest so are you holding yourself to a standard that doesn't actually exist? We have to get honest with ourselves.
Erin Holt [00:21:34]:
I bet you're really good at preaching this to other people. Do you embody it yourself? That's something that we have to work on. Because when we hold ourselves to an impossible standard that we don't even hold other people to, we will always feel like we're falling behind. We will always feel like we can't get ahead. We can't win. We can't even witness our own success. Other people will look at us and be like, success, success.
Erin Holt [00:22:02]:
All they see is wins, and we will only see failure. We will only feel like we're never doing enough. So if this is you, which I know it's a lot of my entrepreneurs, we might need to talk about why.
Erin Holt [00:24:44]:
So that's going to bring me to the not so obvious stressors, because this is obvious. We work really hard. We push ourselves past our capacity. Our bodies are going to suffer that is obvious. The less obvious stuff is what I want to tuck into right now and we have to talk about identity. I already opened this loop, all right?
Erin Holt [00:25:04]:
So let's close it on down by talking about identity, self image, how you perceive yourself, what you believe about yourself, the stories you tell yourself about yourself, your inner narrative.
Erin Holt [00:25:18]:
We're not always aware of this stuff which is why I say it's less obvious. So ambition defined is a strong desire to do or to achieve something typically requiring determination and hard work, desire and determination to achieve success. So what if we leaned more into the desire part of this equation?
Erin Holt [00:25:42]:
What if we asked ourselves, where does this desire come from? Because if you self identify as an ambitious person, and chances are if you're listening to this episode, you do. So that means that probably hard work, success, determination is something that you've got. But where does that desire come from? What need are we attempting to fill by filling that desire? What need are you attempting to fill by your achievements, through your achievements, through your hard work, through your success?
Erin Holt [00:26:17]:
What need are you attempting to fill? Do you know the answer? Or do you feel like I just threw you into the ocean without a life vest? Whatever we did to receive love and praise and belonging, growing up is probably what we're going to continue to do. I'm not going to get into a whole lesson on the subconscious mind here and how it's programmed, because I feel as though I've done that a lot and I want to respect your time, and this is all available to you in a lot of my courses anyway.
Erin Holt [00:26:52]:
But just understand that our self image gets constructed via the subconscious mind, and that usually gets planted in us anywhere between the ages of zero and seven so really think about that time and if you were ever praised for working really hard or performing well, if you needed to do a lot in order to not feel like a burden or to feel like you had value.
Erin Holt [00:27:21]:
That is probably going to get locked in as a program. And we tend to operate through our programs as though they are truth. And honestly, this ends up being so much of the work that I do with entrepreneurs is looking at labs. Yes, totally. But also doing a lot of the belief work.
Erin Holt [00:27:40]:
If we're trying to get to the root cause of hormone imbalance, we have to swim upstream to all of this. What do you believe about yourself? What do you believe about your value? What do you believe about work? What do you believe about success? What do you believe about the world and your place in it? All of those beliefs are going to create your thoughts, and those thoughts impact your entire body.
Erin Holt [00:28:09]:
So we have the HPA axis. When we're talking about DUTCH tests, we got to talk about this. Hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis. The adrenals are what pump out a lot of our stress hormones. We also have the HPT axis, hypothalamus-pituitary-thyroid. We have the HPG axis. hypothalamus-pituitary-gonadal.
Erin Holt [00:28:31]:
So this is responsible for our stress hormones, our thyroid hormones, our sex hormones. It's all starting at the level of the h, right? The access all starts with the letter H, the hypothalamus, which is in the brain.
Erin Holt [00:28:46]:
So the brain is telling these organs what to do, what to produce. We need to take a top down approach to this stuff so, like I said earlier, a common hormone imbalance is low progesterone. So let's use this as an example.
Erin Holt [00:28:59]:
We make progesterone through ovulation. Unsuccessful ovulation is a very common problem. Why? Well, information from the brain is not getting to the ovaries to encourage ovulation. Why? Well, it can be triggered by any lack of safety signal to the body. So oftentimes we'll talk about lack of food, you're under fueling yourself, or lack of energy, you're over exercising. But this can also be perceived lack of success, financial lack or perceived financial lack. All of those things are lack of safety signal from the brain down to the body. And I say perceived because the subconscious mind doesn't know the difference between what's real and what's imagined. So if you are imagining worst case scenario all the time, your body is actually in that state. If you are perceiving financial lack, if you are perceiving loss, if you are perceiving failure, even though you're looking around and it's pretty successful, but you just aren't able to see that because of your filters, because of your programs, because of your inner narrative. The body doesn't know that.
Erin Holt [00:30:14]:
So the body is going to be in that lack state, that lack of safety state so a really important question to ask yourself is, is struggle a part of my identity? Many of us place a high value on struggle. We derive value from the struggle. So it kind of goes something like this. When I'm working really hard, I'm struggling over here. When I'm working really hard, that means I'm doing something important.
Erin Holt [00:30:47]:
That means I am important. That means I have value. We can derive our own sense of self worth through our struggle. And without the struggle, it feels like something has been taken away. So what happens is that when things start to feel even just a little easy, another problem pops up for you to solve another struggle point, which reinforces the idea that it has to be hard, but it also gives you a problem to solve so you can continue to feel valuable. Tell me if that's not happening in your business. Tell me that the second things feel kind of easy you’re like, oh, okay, I've cracked the code. Something pops up.
Erin Holt [00:31:39]:
Another struggle point pops up. Another obstacle pops up. Another problem to solve pops up. There's a reason for it. It's because ease isn't acceptable to your identity, to your sense of self if your sense of self is predicated on having value for working really, really hard. The subconscious will never outperform its self image.
Erin Holt [00:32:05]:
This is why it doesn't work to just change the external stuff. We also have to shift the identity. We have to shift the self image. If we have subconscious programming and inner narratives, identity constructs around being the hardest worke, around struggle, around sacrifice, around working really hard, then no amount of external resources are going to solve that for us. Once you get into a CEO role, into actual head of company status, you're running a company, you've got a team, you've got different branches, you've got agencies, whatever the advice becomes to delegate, delegate, delegate, delegate everything, which is really good advice. But here's the thing. Many of us delegate. We can hire the best team, we can hire the best agencies, we can hire support in our life.
Erin Holt [00:32:51]:
And the same issues and the same burnout will still present itself because the subconscious will never outperform its own self image. So even though we put all the external things in place, the internal stuff is still mapping out what it needs to see to support your identity, to support your sense of self. I know this is high level stuff but this is important stuff. And I'm curious, is this landing with you?
Erin Holt [00:33:21]:
Are you like, oh, my gosh, I feel so seen. So when we're talking about hormones, because everybody wants to talk about hormones. Everybody wants to talk about hormones. We got to talk about detoxification and estrogen clearance and fragrance and endocrine disrupting chemicals. Right. We got to do that.
Erin Holt [00:33:41]:
But we also have to address all of this. Worries, fears, scarcity, lack, all of that's going to affect your neurotransmitters. It's going to affect your brain chemistry. It’s going to affect your brain's communication down to glands. And yeah, it's going to affect your hormones. So we got to swim upstream, we got to watch your thoughts. We have to question those thoughts and even question your perception of reality, which again, is stuff that we do in Manifest Your Wealth. So if you need that, that is a really, really good starting point for you. For sure. All right, another less obvious stressor for highly ambitious people.
Erin Holt [00:34:25]:
Entrepreneurship, sometimes our drive, it might not be I'm trying to fulfill this need inside of me. It might be that I genuinely want to help people. And I've got tools, I've got ideas that can help people. And usually it's a combination of both. Usually it's like we got to look at our identity and we also have to look at our desire to help people. But a stressor that's not really talked about with entrepreneurship is the courage that it takes to be an entrepreneur.
Erin Holt [00:35:00]:
All right, so let me riff on this a little bit. What I've observed is that there are problem pointer outers, and then there are problem solvers. Problem pointer outers are the people who have a tendency to complain, who look around the world and see all of the problems. This is problematic. This is problematic. This is problematic. This is the issue with the world.
Erin Holt [00:35:25]:
You're not doing it right, complainers. I'm going to complain about all the issues that I see. I'm going to make life harder for everybody by complaining and reinforcing all of the issues that I see. And then we have problem solvers. These are the innovators. These are the people who recognize there are problems, but then they take the next step to say, how can I figure out a solution to these problems?
Erin Holt [00:35:53]:
How can I innovate? What vision can I map out for me to solve this problem? These tend to be the entrepreneurs, and we might not get it right all of the time, but we are willing to try. We are willing to fail in order to attempt to solve this problem.
Erin Holt [00:36:16]:
The world has no shortage of people who just want to complain. Most people won't be courageous enough to actually put themselves out there to try to affect real change, to be willing to fail in order to try to change things for the good. Entrepreneurs are putting their neck out there on the line. We're putting ourselves out there for people to criticize us all the time, for people to tell us we're doing it wrong. You're not doing it right.
Erin Holt [00:36:49]:
This can be really, really stressful, and I want to. If you are an entrepreneur, a business owner, a visionary, a creator in any capacity, I want to acknowledge that because I don't think it's acknowledged enough.
Erin Holt [00:37:02]:
Your courageousness is a big, big deal. It is infinitely easier to sit on the sidelines and critique than it is to create. Infinitely easier. That's where most of the seats are. That's where most people are. It's the whole arena versus spectator. People love a good spectator seat.
Erin Holt [00:37:26]:
It is way easier to sit back and complain that somebody else isn't doing right than to try to get in the arena and try it your damn self. And I just want to call your attention to the fact that, yeah, this can be stressful, and people don't always understand. They don't always understand the amount of courage and tenacity it takes to really just go for it. I have somebody near and dear to me started a company this year, started a business, and she had somebody close to her say, I'm just so miserable in my job, but I don't have the luxury to do what you did.
Erin Holt [00:38:04]:
And we had to laugh because it's not luxury, baby girl. That's courage. That's courage. The ability to quit your day job and go build something, not knowing it's going to work, but saying, there's a problem here. I got to solve it. That is courage. That is courage.
Erin Holt [00:38:21]:
So, again, I want to acknowledge this, because it requires so much courage to be an entrepreneur. And while I wouldn't say that courage in and of itself is stress, I also wouldn't say that it's not the neurochemistry of courage. It is an arousal state. Or I guess, more accurately, I could say it's a byproduct of an arousal state, because there is no courage without fear.
Erin Holt [00:38:48]:
Courage is feeling the fear and doing it anyway. I remember listening to an old episode. It was an interview with Neurohacker, who's one of our sponsors. Love you. Love them. And it was Andrew Huberman back in 2017. Before he was, like, a bona fide megastar, but they were talking about the neurochemistry of courage, and he was explaining that there's different pathways that a fear response can take in the brain. One pathway is the amygdala. It's like straight fear.
Erin Holt [00:39:17]:
It's a heightened state of arousal. It's like, ring the alarm bells. This is a problem. Get out, get out, get out. Another pathway projects to the prefrontal cortex which is our cognitive processing. It's our ability to slow down and be like, okay, logic, reason and that pathway led to a reduction in the fear response and increased courage.
Erin Holt [00:39:41]:
Where we were able to assess, we we’re in such a heightened arousal state. That we're able to assess, okay, I can take on this risk. I'm willing to take on this risk. So not going into a heightened state of arousal every single time we are in fear response, or there's something that tripwires fear in us so much that we lose our cognition, we lose our ability to think critically. But really, courage is like feeling that fear, because, again, courage only arises out of fear. Feeling that fear, but maintaining clear cognition and deciding, I have the capacity to respond to this potential threat, that's really what courage is. That's what's happening in the brain.
Erin Holt [00:40:29]:
And so this is why I talk so much about nervous system support in entrepreneurship. I talk about stretching our capacity. And when I say that, I don't mean our capacity to do more, necessarily. It's more so stretching our capacity to hold more sensation in your nervous system, to hold more sensation in your body.
Erin Holt [00:40:53]:
When a threat pops up, a potential threat, a fear. Like, oh, my God, I have to get on Instagram Stories, and I feel like I'm going to vomit. Like one of those type of threats. When that pops up, we are able to say, okay, I'm going to hold this sensation. I'm not going to immediately default to the amygdala. I got to get out of here stress response. I'm going to think critically, and I'm going to choose courage. And honestly, this is how I retrained my brain and my nervous system so I can continue to show up and do the courageous thing, even when it feels scary and hard.
Erin Holt [00:41:31]:
Sometimes I think people look at me and I know this because people have said this in like, oh, you're so confident. You're so confident to do all of this. But this is how I had to grow this. I had to practice at this. I had to stretch my courage. I had to be courageous. It's not that I don't feel fear. Do you know how scary it is to put yourself out there and to have people criticize you? That's very scary. It's very hard. But you believe in your mission so much that you're willing to build the courage.
Erin Holt [00:42:04]:
You're willing to override the fear. And so I just want to say hats off to those of you who are doing it, because it's a big deal. But it can certainly, while we're stretching our capacity, and we're always stretching our capacity, if we're growing, it can definitely cause a lot of feelings of stress. And so if you already have a lot of stress, if you're already pushing your body past its capacity, if you're already in that hustle and grind culture.
Erin Holt [00:42:38]:
If you're already overworking, this can be sort of the proverbial straw. This can make everything come tumbling down, which is why we have to caretake our bodies. We have to caretake our stress response. We have to caretake our nervous system. We have to really support ourselves. So we stretch our capacity for that courage piece that really is required in entrepreneurship.
Erin Holt [00:43:02]:
All right, so hopefully that riff landed. And made some sense.
Erin Holt [00:43:09]:
Speaking of capacity, let's talk about capacity, because entrepreneurs tend to be high capacity people, meaning we can do a lot. We can handle a lot. It's like, I think of the Jay.-Z quote, difficult takes a day, impossible takes a week. That's the kind of attitude that inspires me. It doesn't overwhelm me. It genuinely jacks me up. I'm like, yeah, all right. I love that. When I was doing a values exercise with one of my coaches.
Erin Holt [00:43:39]:
You just kind of have to dump the bucket. Like, what do you love about the work that you do? What do you love about owning your own company? What are your true values? Because your value is going to be very different than somebody else's and what kept coming up is that part of what I love about my job is that no one can cap me.
Erin Holt [00:43:56]:
No one can put a ceiling on what I can create, what I can grow, or what I can earn. There's always an outlet for my inspiration. There's nobody there to tell me no. There's nobody there to cap me. There's nobody there to put a limit on me. There are no limits. I want to do a lot. I want to live a big life. So for me, that is, like, fun and exciting, and for a lot of entrepreneurs, that is fun and exciting. But the trick, the potential rub here is that without limits, that means it's really up to us to put limits on ourselves. And we're not really good at that. I don't even like saying those words. Like, the idea of having to put a limit on myself, I'm like, it feels bad in my body.
Erin Holt [00:44:38]:
But the thing is, if we don't find a way to do this, our bodies will. And so that's the burnout depletion state that a lot of entrepreneurs end up with. And because there is this high capacity tendency, there's also a tendency to not really understand when we've reached our threshold. So these are direct quotes from clients of mine that have been entrepreneurs.
Erin Holt [00:45:06]:
I don't really get outwardly stressed. If I'm not debilitated by it, I will do it. I have the capacity to keep going. I can sustain what I'm doing. So it's like that. There's this theme of being able to withstand a lot of stress, having a high tolerance, having a high capacity for stress.
Erin Holt [00:45:28]:
There's almost like this perseverance identity, and with this, we don't really perceive stress as much, so there's more of a tendency to overdo. And it's not even necessarily like we're intentionally bypassing our body or going dark on our symptoms. It's just like this attitude well, if I can, I should. I can do this so why wouldn't I do this? And side note, this is where labs actually really can be so helpful, because the data doesn't lie, and so it gives us a way to hold ourselves accountable. I do like to run a dutch test on myself about once a year and I actually usually do it during the times where I'm feeling more maxed out because I'm like, how is my body holding up to this high level of production right now, but with entrepreneurship in running your own company, like I said, if no one's putting limits on you, you are responsible for that. You need to know when to rein it in. We have to kind of build out our own internal discernment tools to know when it is time to rein it in and also when to let her rip, for sure. Because the creative process can be very fulfilling. It can be very energizing. It can fill us back up. And nobody can really tell you what's right for you but you. Right now, I'm in between two major launches. I launched the collective, the Funk’tional Nutrition Collective, and then we're going to open the cart for the Funk’tional Nutrition Academy. So two big launches.
Erin Holt [00:47:09]:
And right in between, I was like, you know what, I'm going to create a brand new program and launch that, too. Manifest Your Wealth. Here it comes world. Which is insane on paper, but it feels so good to me to create it. This is medicine that is coming through me, and it needs to come out now. This is almost like a channeled flow. And who am I to disrupt that channeled flow?
Erin Holt [00:47:37]:
So the ability to harness the energy of our creative downloads and kind of to discern when do they come out, when do they flow through me? When do I let her rip versus when do I rein myself in? That is really big work for the entrepreneur.
Erin Holt [00:47:54]:
It's really important work. Some of this we do get into Energetics of Expansion, by the way, which is a course for entrepreneurs and kind of how to harness that creative flow. And I talk about divine inspiration and divine downloads and all of that. So that's a really big, important course for entrepreneurs. If you haven't purchased it yet, I would definitely consider it, because that creation is a really big part of our entrepreneurship in a lot of cases.
[51:10] We tend to ask ourselves, what value does our work bring others? What value does the work that we create bring others? We also need to ask ourselves this question, what value does our work bring us? That's the one we're not so great at asking ourselves. I'm obsessed with this Paulo Coelho quote. He's the author of the Alchemist, and he was interviewed by Oprah years ago, and he said this. I was listening to this in the car, and I had to pull over the car so I could write this quote down because I felt it so deeply in my body.
Erin Holt [00:51:50]:
I'm enthusiastic about my work. It's something that gives me life as an entrepreneur.
It is imperative that you get here. That's why you started this, baby girl. That's why you started this. You didn't start a business to do shit you hate. You didn't start a business to be miserable. You need to bring yourself to the point where you are so enthusiastic about your work. It feels like it's something that gives you life. That's how many of us feel, our entrepreneurs, that's how many of us feel.
Erin Holt [00:52:22]:
When your work can be a vehicle for creativity, then what you do for a living makes you feel alive. It is the best feeling in the world and if we're talking aliveness is the best feeling in the world, it really is aliveness. And I consider aliveness kind of like the opposite of depletion, which is how we started this conversation. Entrepreneurs are coming to me depleted.
Erin Holt [00:52:47]:
We are feeling maxed out, strung out, burnt out, exhausted. We have to find a way to feel alive again. So, remember when I asked you, is your work putting you in a catabolic breakdown state? If the answer is yes, we've got some more follow up cues. Is it because you're overworked? Or is it because your work is not fulfilling you? Is it because you're doing things that you don't want to be doing? When you think of your work, do you feel lit up or do you feel depleted? Do some aspects of your work light you up? And other aspects deplete you? That's really good intel. That's really good information.
Erin Holt [00:53:30]:
You have to know what your drivers are. Do you understand your drivers? Do you understand your whys? Do you understand what you're working toward? Do you have a big vision for yourself? All really important questions.
Erin Holt [00:53:47]:
It's always good to know why we're doing something and what we're wanting out of something. You cannot get what you want if you don't know what you want. You can't get what you want if you don't know what you want.
Erin Holt [00:54:02]:
A lot of us are working really hard to get to an endpoint that is not clearly defined. So define it. Define it for yourself. So you know when you have arrived. And I know for an entrepreneur, thinking about an endpoint can feel like someone is putting a limit on you. At least that's how I feel. Whenever my husband brings this stuff up to me, I'm like, don't you dare limit me. But the endpoint can turn into a checkpoint. It doesn't mean you have to stop when you get there, but you do have to acknowledge it, do have to celebrate it.
Erin Holt [00:54:40]:
A lot of us are not so great at that. We're like, onto the next, and then the next, and then the next. And for many of us, that is because of our conditioning, that is because of our patterns, that is because of our programs, that's because of our self identity. So we have to look at that, too. We also have to allow for a more cyclical nature of doing business. That is the feminine energy. Honestly, I told you at the start of this that I was able to move out of my push crash way of doing business. Push hard, then crash. Push hard, then crash, crash.
Erin Holt [00:55:10]:
This is how. The more I lean into the feminine qualities, because I have a lot of that masculine drive. I'm sure you are not shocked to hear that. Push. Ambition. But the more I take and I embrace the feminine qualities. Intuitive, gut check, reflection, internal reflection, nervous system support, body support, checking in with my body, energetics.
Erin Holt [00:55:34]:
The more my business gets to grow in a way that feels really good to me. There's a reason why all of my courses on business and entrepreneurship have some type of energetics or manifestation in the title.
Erin Holt [00:55:45]:
Because I can only teach what I know, and this is what I know. My strategies always work. My strategies always work. That is because they have the energy and the belief behind it. I believe that they work, so they do.
Erin Holt [00:56:06]:
It's really that simple. As I say in Manifest Your Wealth, it's not easy, but it is simple. It's not easy to change our entire belief system, to change our entire identity, but it is simple. There are some simple steps, but everybody's looking for the wrong steps. They're looking for the get successful quick.
Erin Holt [00:56:21]:
Like the ten steps, the exact strategy. How do I build the exact right program? Do I use a GI map? What do I do? Tell me exactly what to do. How do I create this? And that is less important than the belief and the energy you put behind it. You have to believe it will work. And then it works. So it doesn't matter what the strategy is, doesn't matter what the exact steps are. What matters is the energy you put behind it. Whatever strategy you believe will work will work. That's energy, babe. That is the embodiment of the divine feminine.
Erin Holt [00:56:58]:
The second half of this past year I got really more focused on some of the masculine traits. So we really hyper focused on metrics. We really focused on systems, and I couldn't figure out why I was miserable. And finally I discovered that I had essentially blown out my creative fire.
Erin Holt [00:57:20]:
I lost my north star, and I became really, really depleted. There was an imbalance of the divine feminine and the divine masculine. There was too much of the container, too much metrics, too much systems that my heart and my soul felt like it couldn't thrive.
Erin Holt [00:57:37]:
There wasn't enough space for me to do what I wanted to do, for me to be me. Whenever things start to feel hard, constrictive, stressful, whenever you start to feel like you're snuffed out in your own business, it is a really good opportunity to move more into the energetics. Ambition. Without that, it does lead to burnout.
Erin Holt [00:57:59]:
We must be so integrous with our energy and integrity, meaning we don't betray ourselves, but also the definition of integrity as it relates to structure. We're building something that won't fall apart. So, where is your energy going? Is a really great question to ask yourself every single day. You have to be aware of this because it's your job to direct it. So if I ask you, where is your energy right now?
Erin Holt [00:58:27]:
And you're like, I don't know, then we start there. You got to call your energy back to you so you can direct it where it needs to go. If your energy is on a walkabout, if your energies disperse in all sorts of different things, that's when things can get really imbalanced. And that imbalance in your business, in your entrepreneurship, that's what can eventually lead to burnout.
Erin Holt [00:58:48]:
You lose your north star, you lose your internal compass. So, one way to be integrous with your energy is to make the conscious choice every single day to invest your life force back into your health, back into your wellbeing, back into your energy. Keeping your energy field pristine has to be priority numero uno. And when you do this, other people will benefit from it, too. And so this is how we build businesses with integrity.
Erin Holt [00:59:16]:
Meaning, again, we don't compromise ourselves. We don't betray our own morals and values, but also integrity as it relates to the infrastructure of the business, which is building it in such a way that things don't fall apart. It's strong, it is stable. You're building your business in a way that you don't fall apart. Sustainable growth. We're not here for the one hit wonders. There's a lot of people preaching about this stuff online that have been able to do it once. Those aren't the people that I'm learning from.
Erin Holt [00:59:46]:
Show me that you can repeat this system time and time again. Show me that you've built something sustainable. Show me that you've built something that can last. And now I want to learn from you. Over the past 13 years, I've built a wildly successful business using some structure and strategy, because that stuff is important but also a lot of spirit, a lot of soul, energy work, cocreating with the divine inspiration, intuition. That stuff also matters. Don't snuff that stuff out either. I am proof that there's another way to do business, one that is heart centered, regenerative, and in alignment with our own true needs and desires. One where we don't have to sacrifice parts of ourselves in order to fit in or do it the way everybody else is doing it. Where success doesn't come at the expense of our integrity. Where the more we uplift our own calling, the more we get to help other people. Everybody wins in this scenario. And I believe that this is the new way of doing business. I believe that this has to be the new way of doing business.
Erin Holt [01:00:46]:
So now what I'm going to move into is an energy exchange. I'm going to offer you different ways to work with me, how to embrace more of my work, how to learn more from me. This episode of the podcast and all 300 plus episodes are available to you for free. I try to pack in a lot of value to these podcasts and I know and I understand that people receive medicine from the show and I'm so happy to provide that and keep it free to consumer. It's been six and a half years.
Erin Holt [01:01:15]:
And I want to keep on keeping on. There are other offerings that you can get for free through my company, the digestive guide. We've got a labs masterclass for practitioners. We've got an ebook for practitioners, lots of free goodies. Anything beyond that requires an energy exchange. Because reciprocity is extraordinarily important in business. Without reciprocity, we dry up, we burn out.
Erin Holt [01:01:45]:
So the energy exchange is where you exchange something of value, money, in order to receive something of value. My offerings. And I do believe that my offerings provide a lot of value. I see my offerings as sacred containers. The amount of thought, care, dedication and intention I put into my containers, I put into my offerings, I put into my work. It's a big deal.
Erin Holt [01:02:09]:
So in order to step inside one of those sacred spaces, you have to invest yourself. That's the exchange. You have to decide. You have to choose. You have to declare, you have to show up. Some of the magic does live behind a paywall. And this is a way for me to prevent feeling like I'm constantly being consumed, like I'm a commodity that is here to be consumed or constantly being siphoned from. But it's also very empowering for you to make this choice, to make the investment, to make the declaration, to show up for yourself. We'll have people reach out to us, say, like, hey, I want my family member to work for you. Great. They have to reach out. They have to be the one to take the step.
Erin Holt [01:02:55]:
So I'm going to offer you some ways to work through some of these containers. I'll start with the entrepreneur specific stuff. FNA. If you're a practitioner and you want to learn more about functional medicine modalities, but intuitive functional medicine modalities, like the way that I do it, the way that we blend all of the worlds together, that is a 14 month practitioner training and mentorship. We also bake in all of the business training. So everything I'm going to talk about. from a business side, you get all of that in FNA. So it is really like four different programs in one. It's deep continuing education, really robust continuing education. We don't skimp on that. Obviously, if you've listened to the podcast, you know that about me. I love a deep dive. I want you to really understand things completely in such a way that you can explain it to your clients or your patients, because that's where people are really struggling, is that they've got doctors or practitioners running a bunch of labs, but can't really articulate what the data means and how it aligns with them and how to organize that information into actual treatment strategies that help people get better. So ultimately, we're all here because we want to help people. We want to reduce the suffering in the world. So we teach you how to do that.
Erin Holt [01:04:10]:
You've got mentorship, so there's group calls, there's one on one mentoring call. So you receive a lot of support working through your own client cases. There's the business modules. Like I said, I do some business mentorship with you within the program because that's an area where people need a lot of help. It's also an area that I'm very passionate about, so it comes through me. And then, of course, we have the community. So that is FNA. The enrollment opens April 1, so get your booty in the door.
Erin Holt [01:04:38]:
I know a lot of people have been waiting and waiting and waiting to join. Stop waiting. That would be my advice to you. Everybody that graduates is like, just do it. Just do it. Just go for it. Just do it. There's a reason that they say that. Then we've got Manifest Your Wealth, which is a new program for money mindset and manifestation. This is all about tapping into the ease of receptivity.
Erin Holt [01:04:58]:
So we're talking about these divine feminine traits. We get more into that. We rewrite the outdated money stories. We look at our identity with money. We change that. We shift it. We rearrange that. You get to help more people with your work. You get to allow more abundance into your life.
Erin Holt [01:05:14]:
I want to show you what's possible for you. We do that and Manifest Your Wealth. There is now a payment plan available for that. So just a heads up on that.
Erin Holt [01:05:23]:
Then we've got The Boundaries Course, which is an awesome program. I've already talked about that. We have Energetics of Being Seen. So this is all about visibility and our blocks to visibility. I talked about being courageous as an entrepreneur. Sometimes we've got a lot of block to that courage, a lot of blocks to that courage, and we have to overcome those blocks. And then Energetics of Expansion, which is just a banger of a course. I wish there was more ways that I could convince people, like, do this course. It will change you. It will change you.
Erin Holt [01:05:56]:
People buy this course, and they go through it over and over and over again. I take my own medicine. I go through this course a lot. And when you purchase Energetics of Expansion, you also receive The Boundaries Course and Energetics of Being Seen for free. Now, there's also another course that I'm creating for FNA that I might open to the public. TBD on that. So just stay tuned. Make sure you're subscribed to my newsletters.
Erin Holt [01:06:19]:
We'll always mention all that kind of stuff there. And now health specific. So that's more entrepreneur specific. Health specific. Been talking a lot about hormones and the nervous system. Your Hormone Revival is a program that will help you kind of learn all of the tools to deeply support your body. That is available through the Funk’tional Nutrition Collective, which is only $149 a month. So really reasonable investment, and you get access to Your Hormone Revival plus a lot of other programs.
Erin Holt [01:06:49]:
If you want to work one on one with us, you can work one on one with Rachel, our Lead Practitioner, for $850 a month. You meet with her once a month. She's phenomenal with functional medicine care and has a really good track record of helping people feel really good. And then, as I teased out, I do have a new offer to work with me and it will be a one on one container. I'm going to open up two spots for folks and so I'm going to tell you about it. If you're interested, email us support@thefunktionalnutritionist.com and we can talk through whether or not it's a good option for you.
Erin Holt [01:07:24]:
But as I stated, I really enjoy leading women who lead themselves. That is where the magic of my coaching happens. And because entrepreneurs have a lot of that innate self leadership built in, I envision this being a health offering for entrepreneurs. So if you are a business owner, if you are highly ambitious, if you are picking up what I was putting down today and you want me to guide you through that, that is what I have crafted this offering for. So we will meet twice a month. So, a little different than how I've done things in the past. It's a little bit more of an intimate container. We'll meet twice a month and one session will be more of the labs based, functional medicine based.
Erin Holt [01:08:15]:
We'll tuck into your health and then we also reserve a session every month for more of the subconscious work, talking through the whys, getting deeper than the labs. Why do you have these patterns in place and how can we deconstruct them? We'll do subconscious reprogramming and some brain rewiring and some energy work in those sessions to really optimize your health, to feel really good, to break some of those patterns so that you can really help the world with your mission, with your work. The investment will be $2,000 a month, and I am really curious to see who's interested in this because I'm excited about this one. It's been a long time since I've worked one on one with folks, and it just feels right. It feels like the time. So those are all of the different ways that you can work with myself and my team right now, and I would love to see you in one of our sacred containers.
Erin Holt [01:09:16]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Funk’tional Nutrition Podcast. If you got something from today's show, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and keep coming back for more. Take care of you.
