Transcription
Controlling your nervous system will get you everything that you want out of life. I went from being such a nervous and anxious 20-year-old to being calm and in control of any situation, and now I'm a 32-year-old multi-millionaire. So, these are my five rules that will help you take control of your nervous system and help you in any situation.
My first rule for controlling your nervous system is to prepare. I always try to be the most prepared person in any room that I'm in. That means that before I show up to meetings or make a presentation, I review all the points that I need to hit on, I set a clear intention for what I need to communicate and what it is that I want to make happen. This removes most of my nervousness and instead gets me excited for what it is that I'm doing.
I've had the privilege to work around high-erforming team members since the start of my career. And one of my very first mentors was responsible for technology in the company that I was working with. She was a vice president of tech. She had been in the space for 20 years and she was always on it. Every meeting she had an agenda for. Beforehand, she would make sure that she had all of her notes ready and she would do reviews right before getting in with the client. It was so impressive to me to watch the level of preparation that she would do. And because I was around her and she set that expectation, I just naturally started doing that myself.
And what I see is the difference between high performers and people who are average is the high performers take the time. It's just 15 minutes normally to actually prepare for whatever the conversation is. So, if you have a meeting, what research have you done on the person? Have you looked at their social media profiles? Have you read what ChatGBT has to say about them? Have you Googled them? What information can you get access to that will help you drive your intention forward for the meeting? If you are not clear on what you want out of the meeting and you're not prepared for the meeting, of course, you're going to be nervous going into the meeting because you're just showing up as a spectator. If you want to be successful in your career, if you want success in business, you have to know what the outcome is that you're going for and ideally prepare as much in advance for that opportunity as possible so you can lead the conversation to where you want it to go.
In my 20s, I showed up to things and just expected to be told what to do. That's very normal because all of high school, people are telling you what to do. In college, someone's telling you what to do. But when you're a leader, and especially if you expect to be a great leader, you have to be the one who's prepared enough to be able to tell other people what needs to happen. And ideally, inspire them to do those things because nobody wants to be led by somebody who doesn't know where they're going and why they're there.
Next is rule number two. You don't need a six-step routine to calm your nervous system. If you have to go through some long process in order for you to get mentally prepared for you to do something big, you're always going to use that as your crutch. You're going to set yourself up to think that you need that. You don't need anything. That is a lie that somebody has told you that you have to do all of these things in order to be ready. If you practice, if you rehearse, if you are confident in what you do because you work hard every single day, there's no reason that you can't at a moment's notice always be prepared because you know the level of work you put in.
So, when people put these rituals in or these superstitious elements into their preparation routine, it always is a little bit of a red flag for me because why can't they just be ready? If you knew your numbers and if you actually do the work, you already are ready. So needing something else on top of that from my standpoint is just a via. It's a way to say, "Oh, I have to point to this thing over here that's making me successful." No, you're making you successful.
I got sold this very early on in my career that I needed to wake up early in the morning to have a slow morning so that my nervous system could adjust so that I'd be ready for work and ready to be able to have all the meetings and do this hard thing. And I would actually through that process sell myself on why what I was about to do was hard. Well, if you're telling yourself that something is about to be hard, of course you're going to feel like it's hard and then all you're going to talk about is how hard everything is. Do you think anybody wants to be around people who talk about how hard everything is all the time? Of course not. People that are magnetic talk about all of the opportunities and the cool things that they're doing and the different ways that they're attacking problems. They're not complaining and bitching and moaning about how hard things are. But if you have to psych yourself up to do these hard things and that's the only way that you get prepared, of course you're just going to talk about how terrible things are and no one's going to want to spend time with you.
So set yourself up to know that there should always be moments that are high stakes, whether it's a meeting or it's a tense situation and that you won't have time in those moments to have your six-step routine. When you have that mindset, then you don't create this dependency on some sort of routine or ritual. You build the confidence to know that you can absolutely handle yourself and communicate effectively in any moments, but especially the moments that may catch you offguard.
Now, we're on to one of my absolute favorites, the number one thing rule. This is actually one of my favorite Grant Cardone quotes. Everyone messes up, no matter how much they prepare. So, even if I mess up something so important to me, the world isn't going to end. I'm not going to die. No one else is going to die. And the beautiful thing is no one thing blows a deal. If you can remember this and stay grounded in this, you can show up authentically as yourself, make mistakes, have there be problems, but you know that you can overcome them. It's not realistic for you to say one dumb thing and have the relationship blow up after that.
If you really think about this, you can find countless examples where you mess something up in life. You missed the presentation. You didn't show up on time. something that you had to do you forgot about. When I think about this in my life, I remember the moment when I completely blew a presentation. I was rocking and rolling 5 minutes in. It was a high stakes presentation. I didn't sleep much the night before. I was preparing, but I was ready and I was feeling pretty confident. And then I get up there. I'm 5 minutes in. I look back at the presentation screen to point out something. And when I turned back to the audience, it was a room of 45 people all around this U-shaped conference table. And I returned to look at them and instantly became nervous. And I proceeded to give my hour-ong presentation in the next 5 minutes. So it was supposed to be an hour and I ended up giving it in all of 10. And I was so nervous. It went so poorly. And I sat up in the front of the room while my boss gave the presentation from the back of the room and I was mortified.
Well, no one thing blows the deal. I didn't lose my job after that. I didn't stop my career after that. I didn't die after that experience. Was it painful? Was it uncomfortable? Sure. Did it actually introvert me from not speaking publicly for many, many months? Yes. So if you know that, you can just keep going after what you are trying to accomplish and realize that it's never going to be one thing. Now, if you have a life of hundreds of things where you continue to mess up, you continue to have problems, you aren't consistent, you let people down, of course you're never going to be successful. But you don't have to put so much pressure on yourself to where you are just freaking out, you're panicking, you're anxious all the time because you think that you're going to say one thing that's just going to send everything sideways. It never works like that.
So, in those moments where you're feeling heightened anxiousness, just remember, no one thing blows a deal. Be prepared. Do your homework. Make sure that you are fully ready. But give yourself the grace. Give yourself the peace to know that there is nothing that can happen in this moment that can totally blow the deal forever. And you're not going to be a colossal failure because of one mistake. You can always rebound from a mistake.
The next rule is to be still. Whenever there is craziness happening around you that makes you feel nervous and anxious and terrified of what might happen, remember that your default position can always be to be still. When I was 23 years old, I was in this meeting where there was a vendor negotiation going on and it was a highstakes meeting. I was there because I was the vendor liaison. I had made the introduction to this relationship and so I wanted things to go well. I thought this was going to be great for my employer. it was going to be great for the vendor. And my employer just cracked this guy. He went ruthlessly after getting the price down, saying that the product wasn't differentiated, saying it wasn't as great as the vendor thought it was. And I was instantly anxious.
And what I learned in that moment is it's very natural when you're uncomfortable to fidget. And instantly, you will just start fidgeting. It might be you'll start playing with your fingers. You could tuck your hair behind your ear. Maybe you just move and you just shift around in your chair. But how you feel internally when things are uncomfortable is visibly obvious to the people around you. So when you are uncomfortable, the only thing that you can't actually control is what you do with your body. You don't have to speak. You don't have to move. You don't have to fidget. You can just sit there comfortably and let the situation play out. If you don't know what to say, guess what? You don't have to say anything. If you don't know what to do, you don't have to do anything. And ideally, you can just sit there comfortably while something uncomfortable is happening. And that shows that you're actually in control. You just being there has a level of presence that allows your nervous system to move through the situation without all of the additional theatrics.
Finally, the last rule is that it's just not that serious. Yes, certain things are very important and it does matter if you're able to complete the job that you're supposed to complete or fulfill on the promise that you made. But how can you inject humor? How can you inject that people are humans in high pressure intense situations? I am the queen of just being myself, making a joke, having some sort of brevity added into the situation because if you don't do that, business just feels hard and people like and respond well to somebody who doesn't take everything so seriously. I'm not somebody who just jokes around and isn't serious all the time. I'm very serious, but that doesn't mean that I take everything so seriously.
Little things that I do is put my personality into the meetings that I have. So, I don't just start meetings at the very beginning and start drilling into all of the points. I love starting meetings with a win. Why? Because hearing my team members talk about personal wins that they're having or professional wins that they're having make the meeting go better. Why? Because yes, the meeting and the metric and the KPI, those are all serious things, but it doesn't have to feel serious all the time. Other silly things that I do, I decorate our office for the holidays. I actually have some spiders hanging out behind me. Why? Because we're in a meeting, sure, but it's Halloween season and I love the holidays and it doesn't have to feel so tense all the time.
So, how can you inject different parts of your personality into the way that you choose to be successful? The more you do this, the less anxious you'll be because you have nothing to be anxious about. You're in control of how you want things to go. And when you have that level of control, you feel less nervous and people around you feel less nervous, which means that they're going to trust you more and they're going to want to do more business with you.
Speaking of starting meetings with wins, if you want the exact agenda that I use every single day for our company's daily all team meeting, go to my Instagram @ Natalie Dawson, send me a DM saying agenda and I will send it right over. Just remember that even if you mess something up, you just have to not take it so seriously and try again. Don't quit. Just keep trying. Keep going after it. And not taking things as seriously is the secret to having everything work out eventually and feeling calm each step of the way. If you like this video, subscribe to my channel for new videos every week. and check out my next video.