Quote: “Flow is the experience we have when we are at our best. When our brain is feeling and functioning at its highest level.” Dr. Jason Jones
As speakers, we give our audience the very best of what we have to offer, but how can we take care of ourselves before, during and after we are on stage? In this episode of The Wealthy Speaker Show, we are happy to welcome Dr. Jason Jones to talk about the neuroscience of how your brain works and what you can do to keep yourself healthy and at peak performance on and off the stage.
Jason is the founder and CEO of LeaderPath, a company dedicated to sharing evidence-based methods for enhancing performance in the workplace. Utilizing the latest in Neuroscience research and gleaning from more than 150 years of motivation and performance theory, Jason teaches leaders how to apply proven principles of leadership to bring out the best in others. He uses an entertaining and high-energy style to present keynote speeches and training workshops to energize and inspire people to lead at a higher level and ignite a culture of sustainable motivation, engagement, and high performance.
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Jane Atkinson: Hey, welcome everyone to the wealthy speaker. Podcast. You know we always have your wellbeing in mind over here. We're thinking about you all all the way around, not just on the platform. So we've brought in Dr. Jason Jones to help us sort through health. Wellness, energy for speakers, welcome Jason to the podcast.
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jjones: Thank you, Jane, welcome, it's great to be here.
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Jane Atkinson: Now, you have also been a part of my world. You've come up through our mastermind, and it's been absolutely fantastic to have a bird's eye view of your speaking business.
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Tell everybody what your speaking business looks like today.
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jjones: certainly, and
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jjones: like many others. It's it's evolved over over time. I I've been a full time Speaker for just now, right at 5 years. So January fifth year time, nobody paying me but my clients type of speaker and as you know. Over the past 5 years it's been a little up and down right with
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jjones: you know, occurrences in our world, and and pandemics and things like that. So it has changed a bit. Right now, my my! My business is made up. About 50 of my revenues is from keynote speaking, and the other 50 is from executive coaching
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Jane Atkinson: and then also doing some leadership type of training and minuscule piece of that is an online course that I have as well.
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And when you do your executive coaching.
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Jane Atkinson: What, specifically, are you kind of promising? What is the topic that you are discussing with these executives?
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jjones: Yeah. So, broadly speaking, it's leadership development. And so the the vast majority of those who I coach are wanting to up level their leadership in one way or another. And so there's a number of different reasonings behind that right? Whether it's interpersonal skill or stress management and prioritization. You know, or sometimes it's just
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jjones: in basic hey? Delegation and accountability with with their people? So so that is, you know, probably the main piece of that. But then I have, some other type of coaching I do that are real specific type of things. Can you help me with a speech that I'm working on?
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jjones: another one might be. I've got one that is,
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jjones: specifically an executive leader for emotional intelligence and really up leveling that. And that person saying, I need help specifically in this area. And then I've got a couple of that are related to high performance
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jjones: and brain optimization and a leader that was in burnout and having major health issues. And their company essentially said, Hey, we will pay for you to get an executive coach to help you work through this. And so we we spend the vast majority of our time working on their well being how they're managing their their calendar, and how they're influencing, but in a way that they're putting themselves first.
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Jane Atkinson: And and they can do this for the long haul, not just for the short term. And I think that's really where we want to go today is to talk about how we, as individuals, not just as speakers or executives. But we're all in a position where sometimes we end up last on the list.
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Jane Atkinson: Sometimes we end up either approaching or deep in the throes of burnout
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Jane Atkinson: and sometimes there's just massive levels of stress, like at the beginning of Covid, when all of my clients and you, you know, kind of lost your calendars to a a pandemic, you know, there's a lot of different things. And so you really focus. And this has been the topic of at least one of your books correct on the brain. Talk a little bit about
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jjones: what some titles of your books are, and which we're gonna drill down on at least the one that is very specific to brain equals performance at a higher level. Absolutely. Yeah. So the first book I wrote was more related to motivation and teams and
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jjones: about 9 years ago, released in 2,014, and it was called 28 days to a motivated team.
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jjones: Okay? And that's good. And so that was really building in a lot of my, my dissertation work and my work in working with teams and team leaders in the corporate world and is an outflow of people saying, Hey, help me learn how to do this! How do I run a team meeting? How do I do? How do I run a an off site for our team. And so that's what kind of built that
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jjones: the framework of that book. I wrote it. A couple of years ago I released my most recent book, which is called Activator, using brain science to deepen or to boost motivation, deepen engagement and supercharge performance.
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jjones: So that that really is kind of the past 10 to 12 years of work that I've done where my my Phd. Work and my corporate work over the years has been the area of you know, organizational behavior, leadership development, those sorts of things. And then III move that into and solve the real impact of neuroscience.
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jjones: And over the past 10 to 15 years, we, there's just been a you know, plethora of new data, new ways to measure the brain. And it's application now to all areas pretty much human life
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jjones: is amazing. But specifically what I study and look at how to to to communicate to people is in the areas of leadership,
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jjones: work behavior. And then also performance optimization. And so that's if you get that book to activate, it's really about, how do we light up the brain for ourselves and for other people? And the work that's out there shows that when our brain is lit up in multiple areas like a Christmas tree, we are at optimal states of performance as well as optimal states of
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jjones: life experience. We feel our best, and we are doing our best, and we're giving our best. Hmm! Not to go down a rabbit hole here. But tiny little side branch.
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I just found out that when you have an I have an aging parent with Alzheimer's
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Jane Atkinson: and her hearing aid, one of her ears isn't working right now, and I've heard that when people with dementia don't wear their hearing aids, their brain isn't lighting up the way it should, and they're not getting kind of like the mental stimulation that they should be from from sound. And so I'm kind of freaking out and trying to get her hearing aid fixed. That's got me thinking about the brain a fair bit.
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Jane Atkinson: Talk a little bit about us day to day. So we're talking about people who run a speaking business. They are leaders in their own life, leaders in their own businesses. Some of them run bigger teams than others. Talk about what some of the performance blockers might be.
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jjones: Yeah.
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jjones: So there's there's a lot of different ways to kind of. Take this and and let me take a step back and and just talk about what what we know from the research to be the most to be the perspective or the approach
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jjones: to be the most science based from both a behavioral and a neuroscience perspective. And that is what is called the theory of flow.
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jjones: Some of you probably heard that, and I know many of your listeners have heard about the concept of flow hypothesize kind of theorized by psychologists. Me Hi, to sense. Me high that one takes a lot of practice graduate school. We what one of our tests was that we got bonus points if we could pronounce that.
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jjones: And
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jjones: friend of Dr. Mitchenski, Hi and was really adamant about that. We knew how to say his name correctly, and the reason why? Because he knew in the future, now fast forward. 20 years, we'd be talking about this more so over the past 20 years or so there's been a great deal of of research, many research studies, all peer review, both from a neuroscience as well. Behavior.
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jjones: science, perspective of the ideal flow. And what flow is is this is the experience we have when we are at our best.
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jjones: Our brain is feeling and functioning at its highest level. Now think about a time when you've had this before. Right? This is the zone between both challenge and then your skill. It is where you are in the zone you're in that flow that you're you're you have this extremely sharp
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jjones: clarity in terms of what you're thinking and how you're working within that. So you could think of this from a sports perspective or activities. When someone's gardening, you lose track of time. You are, do. You are at your best at your peak, and
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jjones: when you do that you usually are performing at your peak as well. And it's easy.
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Jane Atkinson: Yeah. So for speakers. Let's think about that when you get into the flow you get into zone on stage right? And sometimes it's hard to kind of get into that at the very beginning and that comfort. But then, when you get into it, guess what time flies, doesn't it? We've all been in that situation where we look up and we go. Oh, no.
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jjones: I got 5 min left, according to the timer, and I have, you know, 10 min left of of content, and a lot of it has to do with. We kind of got caught up in the flow because we we lost track of things of the time around us. That's the idea of flow. And
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jjones: not only is a a perspective of being able to perform our best, but now we know from the neuroscience and behavioral science that there's a cycle of this. It's how your brain literally works. And and not only do your does your neurochemic chemistry change
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jjones: during the the the cycle, but also your brain weights change during the cycle. And here's the thing. If if we don't watch it, we block ourselves from being able to get into flow, or to be able to stay into flow.
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jjones: And so I can. I can share some of.
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jjones: practically speaking, what those are. Some of it might not, might be not giving yourself enough time. Some of it is higher levels of stress or not sleeping enough. It could be poor brain optimization from a health perspective. It could be lack of clarity of what your topic is or what you're speaking on. It can be mindset
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jjones: distraction. There, there's a lot of those things that are part of that. But I'm happy to kind of share a little bit more about why, this is what that process looks like for people to. I love this. I'm glad that you brought up mindset, because
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Jane Atkinson: if you had any kind of preconceived notion about how tough this audience was going to be. It might take you longer to get into flow, because you think it's
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jjones: gonna be a hard, hard go right? You know, somebody can say something to you 2 min before you go on that could lodge a thought into your brain that could take you off your game, and there you go to bring it back. Yeah, you you're right. You you hit the nail on the head on this, and stress is probably the biggest flow that we have. And so as leaders
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jjones: as speakers, no matter what you're doing in your business, you know, you're getting on a phone call, and you're having that first initial conversation with a potential client. That stress can hit us. And yes, it could be from a poor mindset. It could be, you know, from just you're not
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jjones: managing stress. Well, right? And how you how you determine that you're going to to deal with stress. I've got an example of what you're even saying.
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jjones: Yeah. And so II spoke a couple of years ago to I'm at the point now. And speaking that I don't get very nervous unless it's something different or big. And then I might have that little twinge of nervousness. But I know my my topic well. I've done my my speeches multiple many times right? But it was, for it was a newer speech.
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jjones: but I had it down path, and it was for a a disrupt Hr. Speech in in a city outside of mine in Oklahoma City. And I was realizing right before I went on. I was nervous, more nervous than I ever been in my entire life. And I'm like, why is this? And I get up on stage. And not only was I nervous for that first minute.
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jjones: I kind of stumbled around a little bit, and I got cotton mouth, and I never get Cotton Mouth and I, and on reflection on all that I realized what my stress came from was the fact that this was a different setup, a different format that I'd have ever done before. You have 5 min, and you have 5, and you have, and you have to have a certain amount of slides, and you get like 5.
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jjones: I think it's or maybe 5 or 10 s per slide, and everything is timed out. I was focused on the process, not on the outcome people and the content. That's right. And I and I didn't have confidence confidence in that level. My stress and I didn't perform as well as I wanted to in that?
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Jane Atkinson: Because of that stress. Yeah, I would call that like almost a showcase type situation. But when they command you to have
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Jane Atkinson: a particular number of slides. Okay, so time constraint is one stressor, and you might get a time constraint right before you walk on. Oh, the CEO went over by 15 min. So you need to cut 15 min of your speech that can bring massive stress. And that is why a professional already knows in chunks how long their speech takes.
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Jane Atkinson: and they know, okay, I'm going to take out slides 10 through 15, and that section is now gone. Boom! I'm off to the races, but when they do, when you do, Ted talks
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Jane Atkinson: your time is constrained by, and not even to the degree that you're talking about. But then there's those other kinds of talks, and I don't even know what they're talk what they're called.
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Jane Atkinson: where they say you can only have so many slides, and this is how often they need. You have to basically be so rehearsed. That's that can send some signals to your brain, you know, fighter. And going back to what you said about mindset this is the tool that II use, and I learned from
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jjones: a a mentor along the way many years ago, just doing speaking and and and corporate. But you know, I talked about being nervous
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jjones: and
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jjones: you know, he he, his response to me is, you know you must be focused more on impressing people than you are on influencing people. And from that point forward I'm telling you, my, my nervous is my stress level, going into a a a speech.
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jjones: I felt dramatically and it was a it was a mental shift. Now, before I go in part of my rehearsals. II are part of my my ritual is I? I'm looking at the crowd, and I'm and I'm thinking to myself, who needs to hear this? What do they need to hear? How am I going to change lives out there? How am I gonna better lives? Not just them, but the people they influence
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jjones: on a daily basis changes. My perspective of this is about me, or this is about me, and pressing someone or or being worried that I'm not going to or someone's not gonna like me, or I'm gonna I'm gonna flub up and say something wrong. That's where a nervousness comes from. Now I focused it. The mindset is focusing now on the people and what they can get out of it.
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especially when it's what I would call a getting back on the horse speech. If you have had a
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Jane Atkinson: a bad outing which everybody has had at one time or another, the next time
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Jane Atkinson: when you focus on.
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Jane Atkinson: Oh, I need to be. I need to do so much better. You're focusing inward. And when you say, Okay, let me take the focus off of myself and my performance, and what I did wrong last time, and all of that, when you put the focus outward back to them, and how your content can be meaningful to them. You, said one of your con. One of your questions for yourself is, who needs to hear this?
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Jane Atkinson: Who need? I am here for somebody to get this message today could be your mantra. That would then take you out of your head and out of your ego and onto service. And you know, providing something for somebody in that audience who needs to hear it. And that is so beneficial. Okay, so we've talked about stress
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Jane Atkinson: as being one of the reasons why people can get off their game. You have a couple of others that you've talked about, one of them being distraction.
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jjones: Talk about, what do you mean by distraction being a performance blocker?
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jjones: Yeah. So when you look at the flow cycle, there are 4 kind of core areas for 4 4 phases you go through first phase is the struggle phase.
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jjones: And this, by the way, this is, if you're, you know, playing a a sport. Maybe you're like surfing. Surfing's on my mind because I'm going surfing next week. But there, that that that's where in maybe this is when you go work out. If you're a runner I'm more of a sitter than a runner. But I do go run, and that first minute to 3 min are tough. Your body is saying I'm gonna die here. You need to stop.
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jjones: But the struggle. How about writing? When you write? No one likes to sit down right? The beginning start writing because you gotta get gotta get into. You gotta get your mind around it. And what's happening is you're actually screening cortisol and and adrenaline at that time, because your body is going into that threat mode. That's the struggle. I don't want to do this, and your brain says, Let's leave this, and the next
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jjones: phase is more of this release phase, and then you go into a flow. Then then you hit flow. It's where the the release phase actually is where you go from, Beta. In the struggle beta brain waves to alpha brain waves. You go from cortisol and adrenaline. When you get into the release phase, which is a moment where your body says, I got this, you kind of settle down, you you release.
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jjones: and literally your brain. You can see it in brain scan, scans, nitric oxide is released and it clears out the stress hormone, cortisol and adrenaline. Then your brain goes into theta waves and then it releases dopamine. It releases serotonin, a nandomine. Actually, when you get into flow, you're releasing a nandomine which is
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jjones: a a hormone that actually focuses on the area of your brain. That's sensitive. It acts like a Thc.
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jjones: so it it it's that it's kind of like a a a, a, a stress reliever. But at the same time I feel good effect on your brain. And then you finally, after moving through all that, you get into this recovery stage, and I wanna talk a little bit more about that, because that's one of the most important pieces of this. Let's go back to the struggle. Here's what happens is your struggle is where your brain says.
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do something else besides what's difficult right here
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jjones: because this is threatening to me right? So when the struggle phase for a lot of speakers is right before we go on, and our brain saying is being distracted by other things. What are people doing? What? What are people gonna say when I get up on stage? What does my mic sound like, and our brain is attuned to these things both consciously and subconsciously.
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jjones: And so what we want to do is understand that in that struggle phase there's lots of distraction. And we're thinking about, how do we bus through that strat distraction to get to where we want to go? And so when I'm I'm thinking from a a
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jjones: performance perspective, any type of performance, speech, or even when you're writing my mindset is to embrace that struggle.
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jjones: but to but to blast through it to break through it. Understand, there's going to be all these things around me that are going to distract me and trying to keep me from the flow flow stage. So here's what I'm thinking is what's most important to me when I step up on stage.
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jjones: what do I focus on during this struggle, which is typically the first
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jjones: from right when you step on to probably about 2 to 3 min into, will you get your flow? Right? Yeah. So one of them is breathing
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jjones: that don't breathe well, so slow down. Your adrenaline is high, your cord is all high. We have to slow down by the way we think we're we're slowing down, but it doesn't look like we're slowing down to the audience
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jjones: because our brain is in high gear in the struggle phase, and and how important is it that you're getting oxygen to the brain before you go on, anyway? I mean, that's what's feeding your mental clarity, is it not so? Part of your mantra or part of your pre gig ritual? Let's call it
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Jane Atkinson: could be long, slow breaths, quiet space. Some people listen to music.
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Jane Atkinson: Some people are saying their mantra over and over again. What are a couple of other things that you might do to get into that preparation phase so that you can kind of blast through struggle in early in the early moments of your speech. Yeah. So II think, number one most important thing, I believe, is doing some type of breathing method.
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jjones: And so you're saturating your brain with oxygen is one of the best things you can do. Also it keeps you. It keeps you focused in on what that breathing is, and not thinking about the audience or thinking about what might happen. Or so II highly looking at things like box breathing navy seals and green berets as well as Olympic Olympic athletes. You can find things on Youtube on that related to
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jjones: how to box, breathe. The other thing is, is mindset focus. So what are you saying to yourself in terms of getting in tune with your mindset. And then I like to say, you know, there are 3 core elements of most speeches.
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jjones: have one word for each of those. And you're focused on those 3 words. This gets you kind of focused in on what? Know you're going, what your outcomes are, where, where. And even if you know that, and you could just say that in your sleep, keep saying it, focus on that, because that's gonna keep your brain focused on where you're going. So yes, you're exactly right. Part of this is breathing. But when you get out on stage, what you want to do to breakthrough, is it? Is
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jjones: you're thinking about that first connection. And for me, that's what I do. It is breathing well and and then
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jjones: breaking through to the connection. In fact, one of the things I say from a mindset standpoint is nothing great is done without a struggle, first with with without a a bit of of that push back first. And stepping on that stage is that first push back. So what do I tell myself? I'm gonna embrace this.
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jjones: and my goal is to make a connection with the audience. So one of the things I do is I like to go out, breathe well, relax, slow down, walk out to the front of the stage
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jjones: very closely like, and then I begin. I move into what my initial opening is and what I'm looking for for me is, I'm looking for eyes and smiles and connection that helps me now. It might be different for someone else.
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Jane Atkinson: Yes, everybody has to have their own ritual their own first few minutes out on the stage. So do you have a graphic of the struggle, release, flow, recovery piece.
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Jane Atkinson: Can we put a copy of that in the show notes. I would love to have something that's a little better than mine, and I love geeking out on all the different elements of chemistry that are going on in your brain. I mean, it's really quite
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Jane Atkinson: when you study the brain. Are you not just blown away by how
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Jane Atkinson: does it produce all this stuff? I mean, it's really quite phenomenal what our brain is capable of, and all of the things that can bring it either joy, or fear, or pain, or whatever it might be. It's so interesting to me to really study that it it is, and this is one of the reasons why I have a passion for it.
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jjones: You know such such a big part of what II talked about part of my life, and it is, it's the it's the most. Everyone has the most amazing, the most valuable most intricate and complex and powerful item in the universe. And that's our brain. And so and here's the thing when you're thinking about, do you? Wanna be your best? You wanna perform your best. You wanna live your best life.
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jjones: Then you gotta optimize your brain right? And so many people. I show this up on one of couple of my slides is an F formula, one car which is worth millions of dollars is fine tune in every piece of that, and they're not gonna put a bad part on that car, nor to give it bad fuel. Right? That's how our brain is. And I show the next
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jjones: the next slide. And it's an old jalopy car, and I'm like, unfortunately, many of us are treat our brains like this. And so as speakers, as performers, as people who wanna give our best to people, we have to, we have to optimize ourselves. And there and there's lots of ways to do that. But it starts at.
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jjones: how do we fuel ourselves? How do we treat? What are some of the hygiene basic hygiene thing? A lot of like I work with executives all the time that they're not doing. And they're they're they're
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jjones: shortening their impact over time and longevity. And at the same time they're also not performing at the level and having the impact they possibly can. Yeah, okay, so let's talk about the busy life that a speaker may have, and how easy it might be, especially if you're doing a ton of traveling to get completely out of balance. The fuel that you're putting into your machine
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Jane Atkinson: is no longer as good because you're traveling. So you have to really be intentional about that and make some good choices maybe ahead of time. Sleep is something that you know. I don't know about you, but the first night in a hotel. I don't sleep well the second night I do, and I have this little aura ring. I don't know if you have an aura ring or you have an aura ring. Also, I'm gonna put a link in the show notes to the aura ring
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a each morning. I kind of look at. Well, what is my readiness score? And so it gives you a score out of 100. And if I'm like 80 or above, I think, okay, I'm not having to pull it out of the weeds here today. But if I'm if I'm speaking that day
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Jane Atkinson: and I haven't slept well, and I'm rating like a 60 or a 70. I know that I am going to have to summons strength from somewhere else because I didn't get it from sleep, from recharging. I'm like on average, an over 8 HA night's sleep, or I know a lot of people will gasp, especially people with young children. What you know. You're so lucky. This is very, very intentional. We go to bed early.
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jjones: and that's what it takes for me to get my 8. So talk about your ring.
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jjones: Yeah. And so the III agree, I really look at deep sleep on mine, because it it will. Deep sleep is the real recovery. Sleep. What do you get on average? Tell me, Jason, what do you get on average for? Yeah, I own average. Get about 50 min to an hour. If I'm over an hour, I'm really happy. But what I'm trying to do is I continue to try to hack myself to get more than an hour of deep sleep. How do you do that?
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jjones: Well, I'm still working on. Figure out what is the best for me. So certainly trying to block out the blue light, I think, is, is helping me at night having a relaxation kind of ritual before I go to bed. Having things very dark in my room.
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Jane Atkinson: and you type in noise, sometimes on kids and animals and things like that which is my primary reading
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source. There's a nighttime setting, and inside the books that I read. There's like a Cpa tone to try to get that blue light
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Jane Atkinson: feeling going. And I'm trying to do all these things. But I'm really lucky if I get an hour. I probably average about 30, 30 to 40 min deep sleep. Okay? So I get 8 h. But deep is the important part. So that's really interesting all of the the suggestions that you're making and winding down from your devices. Anyway, I know I would do better. But this is how I read is on. My
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Jane Atkinson: is on my ipad. So it's hard for me to be device free.
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jjones: One of the things, too. I would add to that as well is. And this is, I think this is kind of what started you and I, having this conversation related to this was someone had posted a question related to fatigue after
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jjones: given presentation. And one of the things that I think is hygiene oriented and optimization oriented for our brain and for our performance is is recovery preparation, obviously, but also recovery as well. And that's that's part of the flow. Cycle is at the end. After we flow, we've got to have some time. How do we co recover as people? How do we recover the brain now?
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jjones: Deep sleep is one of those things right. But one of those things, too, I believe, is having understanding what energy, where your energy domains are and where they come from.
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jjones: And there are 4 yeah, distinct energy domains that's pretty much acceptable, accepted worldwide across cultures, even across religions and across millenia. And that's the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual
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jjones: domains of our of our lives, of our being
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jjones: and and this is this is nothing new that I'm sharing. But I like to think of this in terms of how do I recover? Active recovery is very important for being able to get your immune system
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jjones: back if it's had any type of damage related to stress and hormone changes it also helps you to rest better. It helps you to essentially be able to get your brain waves in a better place, more back into equilibrium. And and I think, from a perspective. And so one of my answers that IW. Gave to that
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jjones: a person was that, remember that when we are speaking on stage we're giving of all 4 of those domains.
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jjones: you know, if I'm sitting here and I'm writing a book I'm from, I'm mainly giving of my mental energy, maybe a bit of some emotional energy to with it. Right? But when we're on stage we are giving physical, we are standing, we are moving into our mind. We're also giving emotional.
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jjones: I mean, we are giving of ourselves. And how is this connection with other people? And then, finally, I believe there's a spiritual element of this. If you're doing it right. I think successful people who are doing this. There's gotta be that spiritual element which it's not that it's not
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jjones: a religion per se. It is what is outside of you.
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jjones: This is, what are you giving back? And what are you? How are you serving? And what is that side of you that actually grows is that paradox of giving that also fills you up right? And and you're on purpose when you're speaking right. Some people are very much on purpose, and they're doing good work in the world. Yeah, I was the one who asked the question
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Jane Atkinson: when I gave a presentation recently, only 90 min.
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At the end of it
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Jane Atkinson: people will come up and talk to me, and I was really tapped out. I didn't have a lot of good
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Jane Atkinson: quality advice for them, or good quality, even conversation for them, because I was spent. And so I said to other people online, Do you ever feel completely wiped after a presentation, and I couldn't believe even the people who have been in the business for 30 years said, Oh, yeah, we give it all up, and then you're done.
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Jane Atkinson: And so a lot of people had some recovery things that they did. They're very clear. Okay, I'm gonna go back to my hotel room, and I'm gonna do this for X number of minutes
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in order to recover and wind down and get myself back. But I think it's really interesting that there are people out there who can go, and then.
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Jane Atkinson: you know, sure I'll come to your dinner afterwards. Sure, I'll come. Do this afterwards. That's not me. I don't have anything left in the tank after even a short 90 min presentation. I have nothing left, and and I recognize now that
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jjones: I just need to, you know. Say that to people so that they don't expect too much from me afterwards. Some differences between people in terms of you know, physical stamina, mental stamina, emotional, those sorts of things. I I'm the same way.
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jjones: And I've I will always been that way. II politely decline most things afterwards, unless it's something that is really important, or that the client really wants me to be at but what II try to remember that I'm giving of all 4 of those areas. And because I'm giving out of all 4 of those areas. By the way, these 4 areas. Th, these things are ancient, right? These are back, almost every religious. When you look at
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jjones: you, look at your Koran, you look at the Bible, Old Testament. Even in Eastern religions, you you'll see that these 4 kind of core things are important. There's something there with this, and when it comes to the recovery place
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jjones: our bodies after that is saying I need to rejuvenate. I need to get back into equilibrium. Why? So that I can do this again. And so you know whether it's at the end of a long, tough day for an executive, or if it's great presentation by a speaker.
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jjones: honor yourself by allowing yourself to have that recovery. Because, Jane, what's happened here from a neuro neuroscience perspective is that you have spent a great deal of time with your brain in these these data waves your brain is excreting all these different chemicals, dopamine, serotonin, and and also adrenaline as well in there. And and
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jjones: when you, when you shift out of that, your brain then goes to delta and guess what? Guess what
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jjones: chemicals are now being greeted to you. Serotonin and oxytocin.
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jjones: and those are the 2 that are relaxants.
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jjones: Those are the 2 that yeah, and your brain goes into delta mode. And guess what delta brain wave is best, for
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jjones: that's for sleep and relaxation. So here's what II believe in myself, and that is when I leave it all out on the stage. I'm giving from all 4 of those main, those domains right? And that actually quips me to better move into this recovery stage and allows me to even sleep better. I I've I've left it all out on the field. And now my body's saying, let's recover this so you can do it again.
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Jane Atkinson: That's so good, you know. Looking at the time here, and we could talk about this all day long. Dr. Jason Jones, I am so thrilled that you came on to share some ideas or speakers on how to keep their energy at the peak performance levels. Tell everybody if they wanna connect with you. Where do you? What's your primary source of connection that you prefer on social media? etc.?
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jjones: Yeah, thank you, Jane. So directly to my website is Dr. jasonjones.com also Instagram. Probably the second best is Dr. Jones.
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jjones: and and then and then there's there's Linkedin as well, and that's Dr. Jason Jones. One cause I must have been someone else who I got the regular. Okay, we're gonna get some graphics from you. And we're going to put some links to books and things like that into the show notes. Be sure to check those afterwards.
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Jane Atkinson: Thank you all for listening, and I hope that you will let us know if you have some comments or ideas that you would like to share with us. Also reach out. If there's anything in there in your speaking business that we can help you with.
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Just reach out Jane at Speaker, launcher.com, and we will direct you in the right direction. Thank you, Jason, for being here with us today, and with that we'll say, see you soon, wealthy speakers, bye, for now everyone.
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Jane Atkinson: Hey, welcome everyone to the wealthy speaker. Podcast. You know we always have your wellbeing in mind over here. We're thinking about you all all the way around, not just on the platform. So we've brought in Dr. Jason Jones to help us sort through health. Wellness, energy for speakers, welcome Jason to the podcast.
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jjones: Thank you, Jane, welcome, it's great to be here.
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Jane Atkinson: Now, you have also been a part of my world. You've come up through our mastermind, and it's been absolutely fantastic to have a bird's eye view of your speaking business.
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Tell everybody what your speaking business looks like today.
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jjones: certainly, and
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jjones: like many others. It's it's evolved over over time. I I've been a full time Speaker for just now, right at 5 years. So January fifth year time, nobody paying me but my clients type of speaker and as you know. Over the past 5 years it's been a little up and down right with
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jjones: you know, occurrences in our world, and and pandemics and things like that. So it has changed a bit. Right now, my my! My business is made up. About 50 of my revenues is from keynote speaking, and the other 50 is from executive coaching
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Jane Atkinson: and then also doing some leadership type of training and minuscule piece of that is an online course that I have as well.
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And when you do your executive coaching.
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Jane Atkinson: What, specifically, are you kind of promising? What is the topic that you are discussing with these executives?
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jjones: Yeah. So, broadly speaking, it's leadership development. And so the the vast majority of those who I coach are wanting to up level their leadership in one way or another. And so there's a number of different reasonings behind that right? Whether it's interpersonal skill or stress management and prioritization. You know, or sometimes it's just
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jjones: in basic hey? Delegation and accountability with with their people? So so that is, you know, probably the main piece of that. But then I have, some other type of coaching I do that are real specific type of things. Can you help me with a speech that I'm working on?
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jjones: another one might be. I've got one that is,
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jjones: specifically an executive leader for emotional intelligence and really up leveling that. And that person saying, I need help specifically in this area. And then I've got a couple of that are related to high performance
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jjones: and brain optimization and a leader that was in burnout and having major health issues. And their company essentially said, Hey, we will pay for you to get an executive coach to help you work through this. And so we we spend the vast majority of our time working on their well being how they're managing their their calendar, and how they're influencing, but in a way that they're putting themselves first.
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Jane Atkinson: And and they can do this for the long haul, not just for the short term. And I think that's really where we want to go today is to talk about how we, as individuals, not just as speakers or executives. But we're all in a position where sometimes we end up last on the list.
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Jane Atkinson: Sometimes we end up either approaching or deep in the throes of burnout
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Jane Atkinson: and sometimes there's just massive levels of stress, like at the beginning of Covid, when all of my clients and you, you know, kind of lost your calendars to a a pandemic, you know, there's a lot of different things. And so you really focus. And this has been the topic of at least one of your books correct on the brain. Talk a little bit about
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jjones: what some titles of your books are, and which we're gonna drill down on at least the one that is very specific to brain equals performance at a higher level. Absolutely. Yeah. So the first book I wrote was more related to motivation and teams and
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jjones: about 9 years ago, released in 2,014, and it was called 28 days to a motivated team.
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jjones: Okay? And that's good. And so that was really building in a lot of my, my dissertation work and my work in working with teams and team leaders in the corporate world and is an outflow of people saying, Hey, help me learn how to do this! How do I run a team meeting? How do I do? How do I run a an off site for our team. And so that's what kind of built that
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jjones: the framework of that book. I wrote it. A couple of years ago I released my most recent book, which is called Activator, using brain science to deepen or to boost motivation, deepen engagement and supercharge performance.
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jjones: So that that really is kind of the past 10 to 12 years of work that I've done where my my Phd. Work and my corporate work over the years has been the area of you know, organizational behavior, leadership development, those sorts of things. And then III move that into and solve the real impact of neuroscience.
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jjones: And over the past 10 to 15 years, we, there's just been a you know, plethora of new data, new ways to measure the brain. And it's application now to all areas pretty much human life
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jjones: is amazing. But specifically what I study and look at how to to to communicate to people is in the areas of leadership,
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jjones: work behavior. And then also performance optimization. And so that's if you get that book to activate, it's really about, how do we light up the brain for ourselves and for other people? And the work that's out there shows that when our brain is lit up in multiple areas like a Christmas tree, we are at optimal states of performance as well as optimal states of
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jjones: life experience. We feel our best, and we are doing our best, and we're giving our best. Hmm! Not to go down a rabbit hole here. But tiny little side branch.
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I just found out that when you have an I have an aging parent with Alzheimer's
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Jane Atkinson: and her hearing aid, one of her ears isn't working right now, and I've heard that when people with dementia don't wear their hearing aids, their brain isn't lighting up the way it should, and they're not getting kind of like the mental stimulation that they should be from from sound. And so I'm kind of freaking out and trying to get her hearing aid fixed. That's got me thinking about the brain a fair bit.
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Jane Atkinson: Talk a little bit about us day to day. So we're talking about people who run a speaking business. They are leaders in their own life, leaders in their own businesses. Some of them run bigger teams than others. Talk about what some of the performance blockers might be.
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jjones: Yeah.
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jjones: So there's there's a lot of different ways to kind of. Take this and and let me take a step back and and just talk about what what we know from the research to be the most to be the perspective or the approach
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jjones: to be the most science based from both a behavioral and a neuroscience perspective. And that is what is called the theory of flow.
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jjones: Some of you probably heard that, and I know many of your listeners have heard about the concept of flow hypothesize kind of theorized by psychologists. Me Hi, to sense. Me high that one takes a lot of practice graduate school. We what one of our tests was that we got bonus points if we could pronounce that.
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jjones: And
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jjones: friend of Dr. Mitchenski, Hi and was really adamant about that. We knew how to say his name correctly, and the reason why? Because he knew in the future, now fast forward. 20 years, we'd be talking about this more so over the past 20 years or so there's been a great deal of of research, many research studies, all peer review, both from a neuroscience as well. Behavior.
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jjones: science, perspective of the ideal flow. And what flow is is this is the experience we have when we are at our best.
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jjones: Our brain is feeling and functioning at its highest level. Now think about a time when you've had this before. Right? This is the zone between both challenge and then your skill. It is where you are in the zone you're in that flow that you're you're you have this extremely sharp
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jjones: clarity in terms of what you're thinking and how you're working within that. So you could think of this from a sports perspective or activities. When someone's gardening, you lose track of time. You are, do. You are at your best at your peak, and
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jjones: when you do that you usually are performing at your peak as well. And it's easy.
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Jane Atkinson: Yeah. So for speakers. Let's think about that when you get into the flow you get into zone on stage right? And sometimes it's hard to kind of get into that at the very beginning and that comfort. But then, when you get into it, guess what time flies, doesn't it? We've all been in that situation where we look up and we go. Oh, no.
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jjones: I got 5 min left, according to the timer, and I have, you know, 10 min left of of content, and a lot of it has to do with. We kind of got caught up in the flow because we we lost track of things of the time around us. That's the idea of flow. And
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jjones: not only is a a perspective of being able to perform our best, but now we know from the neuroscience and behavioral science that there's a cycle of this. It's how your brain literally works. And and not only do your does your neurochemic chemistry change
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jjones: during the the the cycle, but also your brain weights change during the cycle. And here's the thing. If if we don't watch it, we block ourselves from being able to get into flow, or to be able to stay into flow.
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jjones: And so I can. I can share some of.
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jjones: practically speaking, what those are. Some of it might not, might be not giving yourself enough time. Some of it is higher levels of stress or not sleeping enough. It could be poor brain optimization from a health perspective. It could be lack of clarity of what your topic is or what you're speaking on. It can be mindset
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jjones: distraction. There, there's a lot of those things that are part of that. But I'm happy to kind of share a little bit more about why, this is what that process looks like for people to. I love this. I'm glad that you brought up mindset, because
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Jane Atkinson: if you had any kind of preconceived notion about how tough this audience was going to be. It might take you longer to get into flow, because you think it's
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jjones: gonna be a hard, hard go right? You know, somebody can say something to you 2 min before you go on that could lodge a thought into your brain that could take you off your game, and there you go to bring it back. Yeah, you you're right. You you hit the nail on the head on this, and stress is probably the biggest flow that we have. And so as leaders
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jjones: as speakers, no matter what you're doing in your business, you know, you're getting on a phone call, and you're having that first initial conversation with a potential client. That stress can hit us. And yes, it could be from a poor mindset. It could be, you know, from just you're not
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jjones: managing stress. Well, right? And how you how you determine that you're going to to deal with stress. I've got an example of what you're even saying.
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jjones: Yeah. And so II spoke a couple of years ago to I'm at the point now. And speaking that I don't get very nervous unless it's something different or big. And then I might have that little twinge of nervousness. But I know my my topic well. I've done my my speeches multiple many times right? But it was, for it was a newer speech.
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jjones: but I had it down path, and it was for a a disrupt Hr. Speech in in a city outside of mine in Oklahoma City. And I was realizing right before I went on. I was nervous, more nervous than I ever been in my entire life. And I'm like, why is this? And I get up on stage. And not only was I nervous for that first minute.
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jjones: I kind of stumbled around a little bit, and I got cotton mouth, and I never get Cotton Mouth and I, and on reflection on all that I realized what my stress came from was the fact that this was a different setup, a different format that I'd have ever done before. You have 5 min, and you have 5, and you have, and you have to have a certain amount of slides, and you get like 5.
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jjones: I think it's or maybe 5 or 10 s per slide, and everything is timed out. I was focused on the process, not on the outcome people and the content. That's right. And I and I didn't have confidence confidence in that level. My stress and I didn't perform as well as I wanted to in that?
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Jane Atkinson: Because of that stress. Yeah, I would call that like almost a showcase type situation. But when they command you to have
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Jane Atkinson: a particular number of slides. Okay, so time constraint is one stressor, and you might get a time constraint right before you walk on. Oh, the CEO went over by 15 min. So you need to cut 15 min of your speech that can bring massive stress. And that is why a professional already knows in chunks how long their speech takes.
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Jane Atkinson: and they know, okay, I'm going to take out slides 10 through 15, and that section is now gone. Boom! I'm off to the races, but when they do, when you do, Ted talks
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Jane Atkinson: your time is constrained by, and not even to the degree that you're talking about. But then there's those other kinds of talks, and I don't even know what they're talk what they're called.
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Jane Atkinson: where they say you can only have so many slides, and this is how often they need. You have to basically be so rehearsed. That's that can send some signals to your brain, you know, fighter. And going back to what you said about mindset this is the tool that II use, and I learned from
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jjones: a a mentor along the way many years ago, just doing speaking and and and corporate. But you know, I talked about being nervous
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jjones: and
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jjones: you know, he he, his response to me is, you know you must be focused more on impressing people than you are on influencing people. And from that point forward I'm telling you, my, my nervous is my stress level, going into a a a speech.
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jjones: I felt dramatically and it was a it was a mental shift. Now, before I go in part of my rehearsals. II are part of my my ritual is I? I'm looking at the crowd, and I'm and I'm thinking to myself, who needs to hear this? What do they need to hear? How am I going to change lives out there? How am I gonna better lives? Not just them, but the people they influence
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jjones: on a daily basis changes. My perspective of this is about me, or this is about me, and pressing someone or or being worried that I'm not going to or someone's not gonna like me, or I'm gonna I'm gonna flub up and say something wrong. That's where a nervousness comes from. Now I focused it. The mindset is focusing now on the people and what they can get out of it.
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especially when it's what I would call a getting back on the horse speech. If you have had a
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Jane Atkinson: a bad outing which everybody has had at one time or another, the next time
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Jane Atkinson: when you focus on.
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Jane Atkinson: Oh, I need to be. I need to do so much better. You're focusing inward. And when you say, Okay, let me take the focus off of myself and my performance, and what I did wrong last time, and all of that, when you put the focus outward back to them, and how your content can be meaningful to them. You, said one of your con. One of your questions for yourself is, who needs to hear this?
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Jane Atkinson: Who need? I am here for somebody to get this message today could be your mantra. That would then take you out of your head and out of your ego and onto service. And you know, providing something for somebody in that audience who needs to hear it. And that is so beneficial. Okay, so we've talked about stress
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Jane Atkinson: as being one of the reasons why people can get off their game. You have a couple of others that you've talked about, one of them being distraction.
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jjones: Talk about, what do you mean by distraction being a performance blocker?
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jjones: Yeah. So when you look at the flow cycle, there are 4 kind of core areas for 4 4 phases you go through first phase is the struggle phase.
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jjones: And this, by the way, this is, if you're, you know, playing a a sport. Maybe you're like surfing. Surfing's on my mind because I'm going surfing next week. But there, that that that's where in maybe this is when you go work out. If you're a runner I'm more of a sitter than a runner. But I do go run, and that first minute to 3 min are tough. Your body is saying I'm gonna die here. You need to stop.
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jjones: But the struggle. How about writing? When you write? No one likes to sit down right? The beginning start writing because you gotta get gotta get into. You gotta get your mind around it. And what's happening is you're actually screening cortisol and and adrenaline at that time, because your body is going into that threat mode. That's the struggle. I don't want to do this, and your brain says, Let's leave this, and the next
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jjones: phase is more of this release phase, and then you go into a flow. Then then you hit flow. It's where the the release phase actually is where you go from, Beta. In the struggle beta brain waves to alpha brain waves. You go from cortisol and adrenaline. When you get into the release phase, which is a moment where your body says, I got this, you kind of settle down, you you release.
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jjones: and literally your brain. You can see it in brain scan, scans, nitric oxide is released and it clears out the stress hormone, cortisol and adrenaline. Then your brain goes into theta waves and then it releases dopamine. It releases serotonin, a nandomine. Actually, when you get into flow, you're releasing a nandomine which is
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jjones: a a hormone that actually focuses on the area of your brain. That's sensitive. It acts like a Thc.
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jjones: so it it it's that it's kind of like a a a, a, a stress reliever. But at the same time I feel good effect on your brain. And then you finally, after moving through all that, you get into this recovery stage, and I wanna talk a little bit more about that, because that's one of the most important pieces of this. Let's go back to the struggle. Here's what happens is your struggle is where your brain says.
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do something else besides what's difficult right here
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jjones: because this is threatening to me right? So when the struggle phase for a lot of speakers is right before we go on, and our brain saying is being distracted by other things. What are people doing? What? What are people gonna say when I get up on stage? What does my mic sound like, and our brain is attuned to these things both consciously and subconsciously.
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jjones: And so what we want to do is understand that in that struggle phase there's lots of distraction. And we're thinking about, how do we bus through that strat distraction to get to where we want to go? And so when I'm I'm thinking from a a
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jjones: performance perspective, any type of performance, speech, or even when you're writing my mindset is to embrace that struggle.
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jjones: but to but to blast through it to break through it. Understand, there's going to be all these things around me that are going to distract me and trying to keep me from the flow flow stage. So here's what I'm thinking is what's most important to me when I step up on stage.
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jjones: what do I focus on during this struggle, which is typically the first
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jjones: from right when you step on to probably about 2 to 3 min into, will you get your flow? Right? Yeah. So one of them is breathing
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jjones: that don't breathe well, so slow down. Your adrenaline is high, your cord is all high. We have to slow down by the way we think we're we're slowing down, but it doesn't look like we're slowing down to the audience
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jjones: because our brain is in high gear in the struggle phase, and and how important is it that you're getting oxygen to the brain before you go on, anyway? I mean, that's what's feeding your mental clarity, is it not so? Part of your mantra or part of your pre gig ritual? Let's call it
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Jane Atkinson: could be long, slow breaths, quiet space. Some people listen to music.
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Jane Atkinson: Some people are saying their mantra over and over again. What are a couple of other things that you might do to get into that preparation phase so that you can kind of blast through struggle in early in the early moments of your speech. Yeah. So II think, number one most important thing, I believe, is doing some type of breathing method.
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jjones: And so you're saturating your brain with oxygen is one of the best things you can do. Also it keeps you. It keeps you focused in on what that breathing is, and not thinking about the audience or thinking about what might happen. Or so II highly looking at things like box breathing navy seals and green berets as well as Olympic Olympic athletes. You can find things on Youtube on that related to
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jjones: how to box, breathe. The other thing is, is mindset focus. So what are you saying to yourself in terms of getting in tune with your mindset. And then I like to say, you know, there are 3 core elements of most speeches.
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jjones: have one word for each of those. And you're focused on those 3 words. This gets you kind of focused in on what? Know you're going, what your outcomes are, where, where. And even if you know that, and you could just say that in your sleep, keep saying it, focus on that, because that's gonna keep your brain focused on where you're going. So yes, you're exactly right. Part of this is breathing. But when you get out on stage, what you want to do to breakthrough, is it? Is
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jjones: you're thinking about that first connection. And for me, that's what I do. It is breathing well and and then
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jjones: breaking through to the connection. In fact, one of the things I say from a mindset standpoint is nothing great is done without a struggle, first with with without a a bit of of that push back first. And stepping on that stage is that first push back. So what do I tell myself? I'm gonna embrace this.
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jjones: and my goal is to make a connection with the audience. So one of the things I do is I like to go out, breathe well, relax, slow down, walk out to the front of the stage
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jjones: very closely like, and then I begin. I move into what my initial opening is and what I'm looking for for me is, I'm looking for eyes and smiles and connection that helps me now. It might be different for someone else.
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Jane Atkinson: Yes, everybody has to have their own ritual their own first few minutes out on the stage. So do you have a graphic of the struggle, release, flow, recovery piece.
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Jane Atkinson: Can we put a copy of that in the show notes. I would love to have something that's a little better than mine, and I love geeking out on all the different elements of chemistry that are going on in your brain. I mean, it's really quite
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Jane Atkinson: when you study the brain. Are you not just blown away by how
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Jane Atkinson: does it produce all this stuff? I mean, it's really quite phenomenal what our brain is capable of, and all of the things that can bring it either joy, or fear, or pain, or whatever it might be. It's so interesting to me to really study that it it is, and this is one of the reasons why I have a passion for it.
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jjones: You know such such a big part of what II talked about part of my life, and it is, it's the it's the most. Everyone has the most amazing, the most valuable most intricate and complex and powerful item in the universe. And that's our brain. And so and here's the thing when you're thinking about, do you? Wanna be your best? You wanna perform your best. You wanna live your best life.
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jjones: Then you gotta optimize your brain right? And so many people. I show this up on one of couple of my slides is an F formula, one car which is worth millions of dollars is fine tune in every piece of that, and they're not gonna put a bad part on that car, nor to give it bad fuel. Right? That's how our brain is. And I show the next
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jjones: the next slide. And it's an old jalopy car, and I'm like, unfortunately, many of us are treat our brains like this. And so as speakers, as performers, as people who wanna give our best to people, we have to, we have to optimize ourselves. And there and there's lots of ways to do that. But it starts at.
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jjones: how do we fuel ourselves? How do we treat? What are some of the hygiene basic hygiene thing? A lot of like I work with executives all the time that they're not doing. And they're they're they're
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jjones: shortening their impact over time and longevity. And at the same time they're also not performing at the level and having the impact they possibly can. Yeah, okay, so let's talk about the busy life that a speaker may have, and how easy it might be, especially if you're doing a ton of traveling to get completely out of balance. The fuel that you're putting into your machine
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Jane Atkinson: is no longer as good because you're traveling. So you have to really be intentional about that and make some good choices maybe ahead of time. Sleep is something that you know. I don't know about you, but the first night in a hotel. I don't sleep well the second night I do, and I have this little aura ring. I don't know if you have an aura ring or you have an aura ring. Also, I'm gonna put a link in the show notes to the aura ring
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a each morning. I kind of look at. Well, what is my readiness score? And so it gives you a score out of 100. And if I'm like 80 or above, I think, okay, I'm not having to pull it out of the weeds here today. But if I'm if I'm speaking that day
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Jane Atkinson: and I haven't slept well, and I'm rating like a 60 or a 70. I know that I am going to have to summons strength from somewhere else because I didn't get it from sleep, from recharging. I'm like on average, an over 8 HA night's sleep, or I know a lot of people will gasp, especially people with young children. What you know. You're so lucky. This is very, very intentional. We go to bed early.
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jjones: and that's what it takes for me to get my 8. So talk about your ring.
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jjones: Yeah. And so the III agree, I really look at deep sleep on mine, because it it will. Deep sleep is the real recovery. Sleep. What do you get on average? Tell me, Jason, what do you get on average for? Yeah, I own average. Get about 50 min to an hour. If I'm over an hour, I'm really happy. But what I'm trying to do is I continue to try to hack myself to get more than an hour of deep sleep. How do you do that?
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jjones: Well, I'm still working on. Figure out what is the best for me. So certainly trying to block out the blue light, I think, is, is helping me at night having a relaxation kind of ritual before I go to bed. Having things very dark in my room.
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Jane Atkinson: and you type in noise, sometimes on kids and animals and things like that which is my primary reading
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source. There's a nighttime setting, and inside the books that I read. There's like a Cpa tone to try to get that blue light
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Jane Atkinson: feeling going. And I'm trying to do all these things. But I'm really lucky if I get an hour. I probably average about 30, 30 to 40 min deep sleep. Okay? So I get 8 h. But deep is the important part. So that's really interesting all of the the suggestions that you're making and winding down from your devices. Anyway, I know I would do better. But this is how I read is on. My
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Jane Atkinson: is on my ipad. So it's hard for me to be device free.
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jjones: One of the things, too. I would add to that as well is. And this is, I think this is kind of what started you and I, having this conversation related to this was someone had posted a question related to fatigue after
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jjones: given presentation. And one of the things that I think is hygiene oriented and optimization oriented for our brain and for our performance is is recovery preparation, obviously, but also recovery as well. And that's that's part of the flow. Cycle is at the end. After we flow, we've got to have some time. How do we co recover as people? How do we recover the brain now?
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jjones: Deep sleep is one of those things right. But one of those things, too, I believe, is having understanding what energy, where your energy domains are and where they come from.
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jjones: And there are 4 yeah, distinct energy domains that's pretty much acceptable, accepted worldwide across cultures, even across religions and across millenia. And that's the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual
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jjones: domains of our of our lives, of our being
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jjones: and and this is this is nothing new that I'm sharing. But I like to think of this in terms of how do I recover? Active recovery is very important for being able to get your immune system
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jjones: back if it's had any type of damage related to stress and hormone changes it also helps you to rest better. It helps you to essentially be able to get your brain waves in a better place, more back into equilibrium. And and I think, from a perspective. And so one of my answers that IW. Gave to that
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jjones: a person was that, remember that when we are speaking on stage we're giving of all 4 of those domains.
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jjones: you know, if I'm sitting here and I'm writing a book I'm from, I'm mainly giving of my mental energy, maybe a bit of some emotional energy to with it. Right? But when we're on stage we are giving physical, we are standing, we are moving into our mind. We're also giving emotional.
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jjones: I mean, we are giving of ourselves. And how is this connection with other people? And then, finally, I believe there's a spiritual element of this. If you're doing it right. I think successful people who are doing this. There's gotta be that spiritual element which it's not that it's not
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jjones: a religion per se. It is what is outside of you.
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jjones: This is, what are you giving back? And what are you? How are you serving? And what is that side of you that actually grows is that paradox of giving that also fills you up right? And and you're on purpose when you're speaking right. Some people are very much on purpose, and they're doing good work in the world. Yeah, I was the one who asked the question
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Jane Atkinson: when I gave a presentation recently, only 90 min.
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At the end of it
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Jane Atkinson: people will come up and talk to me, and I was really tapped out. I didn't have a lot of good
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Jane Atkinson: quality advice for them, or good quality, even conversation for them, because I was spent. And so I said to other people online, Do you ever feel completely wiped after a presentation, and I couldn't believe even the people who have been in the business for 30 years said, Oh, yeah, we give it all up, and then you're done.
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Jane Atkinson: And so a lot of people had some recovery things that they did. They're very clear. Okay, I'm gonna go back to my hotel room, and I'm gonna do this for X number of minutes
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in order to recover and wind down and get myself back. But I think it's really interesting that there are people out there who can go, and then.
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Jane Atkinson: you know, sure I'll come to your dinner afterwards. Sure, I'll come. Do this afterwards. That's not me. I don't have anything left in the tank after even a short 90 min presentation. I have nothing left, and and I recognize now that
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jjones: I just need to, you know. Say that to people so that they don't expect too much from me afterwards. Some differences between people in terms of you know, physical stamina, mental stamina, emotional, those sorts of things. I I'm the same way.
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jjones: And I've I will always been that way. II politely decline most things afterwards, unless it's something that is really important, or that the client really wants me to be at but what II try to remember that I'm giving of all 4 of those areas. And because I'm giving out of all 4 of those areas. By the way, these 4 areas. Th, these things are ancient, right? These are back, almost every religious. When you look at
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jjones: you, look at your Koran, you look at the Bible, Old Testament. Even in Eastern religions, you you'll see that these 4 kind of core things are important. There's something there with this, and when it comes to the recovery place
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jjones: our bodies after that is saying I need to rejuvenate. I need to get back into equilibrium. Why? So that I can do this again. And so you know whether it's at the end of a long, tough day for an executive, or if it's great presentation by a speaker.
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jjones: honor yourself by allowing yourself to have that recovery. Because, Jane, what's happened here from a neuro neuroscience perspective is that you have spent a great deal of time with your brain in these these data waves your brain is excreting all these different chemicals, dopamine, serotonin, and and also adrenaline as well in there. And and
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jjones: when you, when you shift out of that, your brain then goes to delta and guess what? Guess what
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jjones: chemicals are now being greeted to you. Serotonin and oxytocin.
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jjones: and those are the 2 that are relaxants.
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jjones: Those are the 2 that yeah, and your brain goes into delta mode. And guess what delta brain wave is best, for
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jjones: that's for sleep and relaxation. So here's what II believe in myself, and that is when I leave it all out on the stage. I'm giving from all 4 of those main, those domains right? And that actually quips me to better move into this recovery stage and allows me to even sleep better. I I've I've left it all out on the field. And now my body's saying, let's recover this so you can do it again.
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Jane Atkinson: That's so good, you know. Looking at the time here, and we could talk about this all day long. Dr. Jason Jones, I am so thrilled that you came on to share some ideas or speakers on how to keep their energy at the peak performance levels. Tell everybody if they wanna connect with you. Where do you? What's your primary source of connection that you prefer on social media? etc.?
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jjones: Yeah, thank you, Jane. So directly to my website is Dr. jasonjones.com also Instagram. Probably the second best is Dr. Jones.
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jjones: and and then and then there's there's Linkedin as well, and that's Dr. Jason Jones. One cause I must have been someone else who I got the regular. Okay, we're gonna get some graphics from you. And we're going to put some links to books and things like that into the show notes. Be sure to check those afterwards.
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Jane Atkinson: Thank you all for listening, and I hope that you will let us know if you have some comments or ideas that you would like to share with us. Also reach out. If there's anything in there in your speaking business that we can help you with.
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Just reach out Jane at Speaker, launcher.com, and we will direct you in the right direction. Thank you, Jason, for being here with us today, and with that we'll say, see you soon, wealthy speakers, bye, for now everyone.
Highlights you won’t want to miss:
- The evolution of Jason’s business. [1:00]
- Let’s light up the brain. [5:00]
- Mindset and stress. [12:30]
- Distraction and struggle. [19:00]
- Breaking through to connection. [23:30]
- Keeping balance on the road. [28:30]
- Your energy domains. [32:00]
- Giving it all on stage. [35:00]
Jason equips leaders to energize, engage, and activate the best in themselves and their people. He is an Organizational Psychologist, keynote speaker, two-time best-selling author, and executive coach. His work has been featured by Inc. Magazine, CBS, ABC, FOX, and PBS. His client list includes some of the world’s most recognized brands, including IBM, American Airlines, Porsche, Boeing, AT&T, Dallas Cowboys, McKesson, Seagate Technology, and Ericsson, to name just a few. He is the author of the two books, “Activator: Using Brain Science to Boost Motivation, Deepen Engagement, and Supercharge Performance” and “28 Days to a Motivated Team.” On a personal note, Jason enjoys working on cars with his sons and cooking with his daughter. He and his family reside in Dallas, Texas.
If you find yourself feeling the effects of leaving it all on the stage and could use some great ideas to stay balanced and healthy on the road, you simply can’t afford to miss this episode!
I hope you’ll listen and learn.
Links:
Jason’s website
Jason’s book, Activator US Canada
Box Breathing
Flow Cycle Graphic
Aura Ring
Jason’s Instagram handle
Jane’s Instagram handle
Jason’s LinkedIn profile
Jane’s LinkedIn profile
The Wealthy Speaker School
Jane’s Private Coaching Options
