Master Your Stress to Master Your Life with Andrew O'Brien

Summary
In this episode of the Catapult Effect Podcast, host Katie Wrigley speaks with Andrew O'Brien, founder of The Mind Blowing Coach, about chronic stress and burnout. Andrew shares his personal journey with these issues, discussing how his experiences shaped his coaching practice. The conversation delves into the biological aspects of stress, the importance of understanding the nervous system, and practical strategies for managing stress, including the O'Brien 10. The episode emphasizes the significance of gratitude, emotional expression, and connection in overcoming stress and enhancing mental health.

Takeaways

• Chronic stress and burnout often stem from personal experiences.
• The O'Brien 10 provides practical strategies for stress management.
• Gratitude can significantly impact mental health and well-being.
• Fun and laughter can help reduce stress hormones.
• Nutrition and hydration play a critical role in brain health.
• Rest and sleep are necessary for optimal brain function.

Resources

Website
LinkedIn
Instagram
Facebook

Credit: Tom Giovingo, Intro & Outro, Random Voice Guy, Professional ‘Cat‘ Herder

Mixed & Managed: JohnRavenscraft.com

Disclaimer: Katie is not a medical professional and she is not qualified to diagnose any conditions. The advice and information she gives is based on her own experience and research. It does not take the place of medical advice. Always consult a medical professional first before you try anything new.

Transcript

Katie Wrigley (00:00.605)
Welcome back to the Catapult Effect Podcast. I am your host, Katie Wrigley, and I have another awesome guest with me today, Andrew O 'Brien. He is the founder of The Mind Blowing Coach, a business with a sole mission of boldly and authentically partnering with individuals and organizations in sustainably transcending whatever chronic stress or burnout is plaguing them so that they can live the life with more meaning, purpose, energy, health, and joy. Ugh, that is something I can so get behind.

He works with his clients in one -to -one and group settings, whether that be through coaching services, presentations, or workshops. With 25 years of relevant experience, Andrew also holds an MBA in HR management, a BA in communication. It is credentialed as a professional certified coach through the International Coaching Federation, National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach, and Society for Human Resource Management.

Senior certified professional. Wow, you have a lot of skills. Welcome to the Codiple Effect podcast. I am so excited to have you joining me today, Andrew. I love everything you stand for.

Andrew O'Brien (01:03.64)
Well, thank you so much, Katie, for having me. it's an honor to be here with you and your audience as well as for us for SportDriven.

Katie Wrigley (01:10.909)
Thank you. So would you be willing to share a little bit about your story, Andrew, and how you started to focus on chronic stress and burnout?

Andrew O'Brien (01:21.336)
100%. So as coaches, the word is generally like when a coach specializes in something, that means that coach has experienced a lot of that same thing in their life. And so I got into chronic stress and burnout as specialties because I've experienced a whole lot of that myself. And just to kind of like take it back for a minute.

Katie Wrigley (01:35.561)
Mm

Andrew O'Brien (01:49.374)
One of the main things that impacted me growing up, I didn't know it at the time, of course, but one of the main things that impacted me growing up was growing up very different in a town slash suburb that really, I felt like I didn't fit in. Maybe like physically I look like I fit in, but everything inside, I was not fitting in. And what that fitting in is,

you know, is and continues to be like a gay man and coming to terms with the fact that I was gay growing up in that kind of environment. And what I was seeing in the news and the media had a profound effect on me. And again, I didn't quite know what was happening in real time, but what I was seeing, like the scenes and the visuals that I was seeing in the media with other gay boys getting like...

bullied and beat up and sometimes even killed. What my brain was doing in the moment was telling me, all right, to protect Andrew O 'Brien, I'm going to have to figure out how to fit in because clearly that lifestyle is not something that fits in. so it was, I think that that's where everything started because outside of that, like I had a great home.

Katie Wrigley (02:50.462)
Yeah.

Andrew O'Brien (03:16.458)
I am not complaining about like the childhood I had. was a loving childhood, loving home, very privileged upbringing. Right. So that, that to me is like the piece that was just, just completely not like everything else. And so I, my brain told me like, all right, fit in, how am going to fit in? And so how I fit in was there was really like two ways to fit in in the high school that I went to. One, one was athletic stuff. And back then I really wasn't

like that kind of shape. And then the other way was like the nerd route and excelling academically. And that's the path that I chose because that's what I felt like I could excel most at. And so the more I did that, the more I studied, the more I got those A's, the more I got those accolades and it kind of was that positive reinforcement. Okay, great, I'm fitting in. I'm getting these like the 3 .9 GPA. I'm getting into this great college. And that even kind of

Katie Wrigley (04:09.192)
Hmm.

Andrew O'Brien (04:15.328)
went into my professional career as well. And just always like putting so much pressure on myself to get those straight A's and to get like that best job, that best school, whatever the best thing it was, like I wanted it because I thought that would protect me and I would fit in and I would get those accolades at positive reinforcement. But little did I know that that wasn't sustainable, that's not really a sustainable practice.

And that led to me, on top of the pressure that I was putting on myself, so I get the perfect thing, which in my mind, there's no such thing as perfection. On top of the self pressure that I was putting on, was living a life that like, living a lie. And I wasn't my authentic true self. And those two things...

Katie Wrigley (05:04.574)
Yeah.

Andrew O'Brien (05:12.062)
led to me experiencing many, many different periods of chronic stress and burnout. And along with that, the different physical stress symptoms, the different emotional stress symptoms that come along with that, everything from painful things like hemorrhoids to be totally open.

Katie Wrigley (05:33.243)
This is a great place to be totally vulnerable and open. Audience is real. We talk about poop. We can talk about hemorrhoids. Please continue.

Andrew O'Brien (05:40.086)
Yeah. And so that's one of the painful things that I've experienced. To non -painful, but really, really annoying symptoms, I don't know if you've ever had that incessant eyelid twitch.

Katie Wrigley (05:54.348)
yeah. Only when I'm tired. But yeah, it looks like, I feel like I'm winking at people sometimes.

Andrew O'Brien (06:00.402)
my God, nuts. like, had literally had that for a year straight at one point. And it was just like, again, not painful, completely frustrating. by that point I had more awareness of like what was happening. I'm like, what am I doing? Like, please, life can't be just this. so, and then of course the emotional stress symptoms. Like I was never clinically depressed. I was never diagnosed with depression.

Katie Wrigley (06:05.933)
my gosh.

Andrew O'Brien (06:30.158)
so I don't take that. I don't take that lightly, but I was feeling down for sure. Very long period of time. And, there came a point several years back that I was just like, life, life just can't be this. Life has to be more than this. I need to experience joy. How do I get back to joy? How do I get back to that little kid who was, who had like laughter and, and not to say that I didn't have laughter like throughout, like a lot of my life, I should certainly did.

But it was, I wanted a life without this chronic stress. I wanted a life without this burnout. I wanted a life without these symptoms. And so that's really like what got me into this work and into this lane.

Katie Wrigley (07:10.227)
Wow.

Thank you so much for being so vulnerable and opening up the show with sharing that your part of the story, know, and I hope I'm not going to be tapping into anything we're about to discuss as we dive more into chronic stress and burnout what it is and how we experience it. you said some really powerful things in there that and this is something that I think resonates with so many people, like within my own cognitive movement family, like we talk about and.

with smile and with love is that we're all a crew of misfits. We all felt like we never fit in anywhere until we all found each other. like, my gosh, like I finally found my tribe. And the stress of feeling like you don't fit in. know, Brene Brown does a great job about talking about the difference between belonging and fitting in. But so much of us as kids, we just want to fit in. We don't care if we belong or not. We just want people to like us. We want to be seen. We want to be heard.

And when you're pushing down a huge part of your identity, your nervous system is spending so much energy to keep that down. So you've already got this stress pattern of I have to hide this in myself. I have to hide this of myself. And you're looking at things like I'm eating chills as I'm saying that you're looking at things like a lot of times our fear is like, if I do this, I'm going to die. But you're getting evidence that you actually could be killed because of the hate crimes out there.

your nervous system is giving you an accurate, I'm not safe to do this. Like, and luckily that's not as true now, but unfortunately there is still so much hate in the world. And I love that you came out with that vulnerability because you don't hear that many people talking about the stress of denying a part of ourselves and whether it's our sexual orientation or whether it's something else about us, it is exhausting to the nervous system to do that. And then you get this higher achiever mode.

Katie Wrigley (09:06.949)
on top of that. So now you've got multiple stress patterns that are going. So thank you again just for sharing that. I just want to kind of highlight what I was hearing there like, wow, I have so much respect for you immediately. Just like for you to have gone through everything you did to be able to show up and hold space the way you do now. So what exactly is chronic stress and burnout? How do we know when we're experiencing it?

Andrew O'Brien (09:35.112)
Yeah, thank you for that question. And thank you for just sharing what you just shared and what you were picking up there. Yeah, like just getting rid of the masks I've learned. It's it's truly like one of the ways in which we can live without chronic stress and burnout. And we can get there later if we get there. But yeah, so what is chronic stress? What is burnout? It is when that nervous system. So the nervous system has two

two sides to it. And you got the sympathetic nervous system, you got the parasympathetic nervous system. And when that stress system is engaged, that is the sympathetic nervous system in action. And so the way that chronic stress is defined is when that system is activated for long periods of time, that is chronic stress.

Now, what does long periods of time mean? That could be anything from like, truly like consecutive hours to consecutive days, consecutive weeks, consecutive months.

Katie Wrigley (10:42.899)
It can be hours, wow, okay.

Andrew O'Brien (10:45.752)
Yeah. And then when you get to, and so what's the difference between chronic stress and burnout? Burnout is when you get to a state where...

Andrew O'Brien (11:02.69)
where things just feel as though they are.

Andrew O'Brien (11:09.548)
just completely out of control.

You are tapped out, you're a negative energy. Your bucket is negative. Whereas chronic stress, you still have stuff to give. You still have some energy left in the to give out. But it's when you kind of like make that transition into that burnout phase when you just feel like you're on negative. You're running on empty or negative. And quite often the symptoms that folks experience are...

Katie Wrigley (11:13.757)
Like everything is too much.

Andrew O'Brien (11:43.262)
are no different than when you're in chronic stress versus burnout. But what's happening, why I love focusing on the nervous system so much and the brain in particular so much is because so much of this, all of it is biological, right? Our nervous systems, we're all essentially walking nervous systems at the end of the day. we...

Katie Wrigley (12:05.511)
Mm -hmm. Yep.

Andrew O'Brien (12:10.308)
And the brain is in control of that nervous system. so when we're not optimizing that brain health, are more likely to experience this chronic stress, this burnout. We are bombarded with information. We are bombarded with stimuli in this day and age. And our brains have not yet evolved to keep up with that demand. And so...

Katie Wrigley (12:36.04)
Mm -hmm.

Andrew O'Brien (12:39.114)
What do our brains do? Our brains are constantly trying to kind of make things efficient and automatic and create these beliefs just to kind of like process everything that's coming our way and contributing to our reactions that fight or flight, freeze, response, contributing to all of that, doing the best that it knows how to do.

And so whenever I talk about this chronic stress and burnout, if you or your listeners are experiencing this currently, I'm always throwing out that self -compassion piece, that invite to bring in that self -compassion piece, because everything that's happening is biological. Our brains are doing the best that they know how to do. And if we are not applying the science to master that stress, more than likely we are going to experience that chronic stress and burnout.

Katie Wrigley (13:34.536)
Yep.

Andrew O'Brien (13:35.173)
And we are not taught this stuff, or at least I wasn't taught this stuff growing up in the education system. And it's like, we need to start incorporating this into the systems because the more that we know about this stuff, the more that we can manage our own selves and our own nervous systems and what I call mastering that stress.

Katie Wrigley (13:52.167)
Yes, yes, absolutely. And I love what you said there, you know, and I work with the nervous system a lot too. And what I've learned and the hope I want to just put out there before we go into specifically what people can do is when you learn how to tap into and tweak your nervous system, your world is yours. Because once you know how to access it, you can create anything that you want.

Andrew O'Brien (14:14.966)
Mm.

Katie Wrigley (14:21.523)
But our nervous system, and much to your point, and I keep hearing more people talking about this, and I love the way the conversation's going, because we aren't taught what to do when the shit hits the fan. And the first time something bad happens to us, depending on our parents' coping skills, emotional maturity, that's what we're gonna learn. And you're only gonna get good advice if your parents are already good at doing that. And most of them...

Andrew O'Brien (14:32.652)
Mm -hmm.

Katie Wrigley (14:49.359)
And at least in my parents' generation, they're really good at not talking about things. So that wasn't something that, know, they're very resilient. They're wonderful people. But we don't learn that growing up. We don't learn it in school. And hey, by the way, when someone challenges you, this is what you want to do. Like, you don't learn that. And so I've realized, like, our nervous system is kind of like a new puppy. And it's perfect as it is.

And you're going to want to train it so that it behaves the way you want it to behave. So it's not wet where it should wet. It's not making noise when it shouldn't make noise. It's reacting when it's supposed to react. And it's leaving you alone when it's supposed to chill out. And it's like, we have no problem training a puppy, but no one thinks about training the nerve. Well, how am I not happy? because your nervous system doesn't care if you're happy. You have to figure out how to cultivate that for yourself. Your nervous system knows stress. And that was one of the reasons. So I was a

That was what kept me going for decades in corporate. And so I'm still very mindfully coming out of that. And that was one of the reasons I wanted to bring you on is my, oof, this is not only gonna help me, but this is gonna resonate with my audience because so many people have that same thing where they're hiding a part of themselves from shame, fear, whatever it may be. They're high achievers, their bodies are hurting.

Andrew O'Brien (16:06.837)
Mm -hmm.

Katie Wrigley (16:10.277)
or maybe they're a first responder, maybe they're hurting and they're a first responder, but they're high performing people. Those are the people that are watching my show and that tends to come with a lot of stress. And so what are some things that people can do, Andrew, to start to come out of that pattern and start to get the nervous system back down again?

Andrew O'Brien (16:31.032)
Yeah. So, so I've compiled what actually one of my clients coined the O 'Brien 10. And I can't take credit for the O 'Brien 10 because the O 'Brien 10 is it's just a culmination of all the signs that I've picked up throughout my journey. And that's the other thing. It's just like, I felt like I had to do this piecemeal. And so I put together all of the signs into this O 'Brien 10. And I can certainly go through

the 10, but I wanna be mindful of folks' time here. And so I will say that half of the O 'Brien 10, they're generally gonna be like back to basics reminders of things for us. The other half might be some things that we might not be thinking about. So how would you like me to move forward with highlighting some or either all of this stuff?

Katie Wrigley (17:25.577)
So we've got, we're only at about 17 and a half minutes. So we've got time. You can go into as much or as little as you'd want to share about your O 'Brien 10. And I want to pause before you go into that. And again, like I utilize the heroic app and the CEO, Brian Johnson, one of the things he's great at is pulling together that information and putting it into one place. And so even if you can't, they weren't all your original ideas, you putting them together the way you did, you get to call it the O 'Brien 10. Just saying. That's just my perspective.

Andrew O'Brien (17:45.976)
Hmm.

Andrew O'Brien (17:55.16)
Just saying, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, so I'll kick it off and we'll cover them all. And so the first half of them, these might be just like back to basics and refreshers, reminders. Disclaimer that I want to share about these 10 things, that there's no order of importance. So it's all about optimizing all of them. And again, I want to underscore.

Katie Wrigley (18:19.239)
Mm

Andrew O'Brien (18:22.264)
to the high achievers out there. There's no state of perfection for each of these 10. It's just truly optimizing these 10 so that we're optimizing that brain health. And there's a note that I wanna make here, like truly when we are in chronic stress mode, when we are burned out, different brain parts actually change size. And so that amygdala, you talked about like that fear response, which is controlled by that amygdala, the amygdala actually expands in size.

Katie Wrigley (18:28.296)
Yes.

Katie Wrigley (18:48.915)
Mmm.

Andrew O'Brien (18:49.528)
when we are chronically stressed, when we are burned out, which is no wonder why we're like, my God, we feel like everything's happening. And at that same time, there's two other brain parts that are shrinking down in size. Prefrontal cortex, which is connected to logic, rationale, positive emotions are stored there. The hippocampus, similar with the positive emotions. Those actually shrink down in size. And so these 10 will help to reshape these brain parts so that

Katie Wrigley (19:03.838)
Mm.

Andrew O'Brien (19:19.192)
It's all about that brain health optimization to kind of take this control back and master that stress. the first category I want to highlight is breathing, oxygen. Our brains actually use approximately 20 % of our total body's oxygen supply, which is pretty significant. Even mild deprivation can lead to us feeling foggy or tired or

just not with it. And over time, if we're breathing shallowly, we're depriving the brain of that oxygen that it's craving. And I don't know about you, but I'm shallow breathing right now. It's still a work in progress for me too. But I do make it a point to check in with myself periodically throughout the day just to make sure that I'm getting those deep breaths in there.

Katie Wrigley (19:53.213)
Mm

Katie Wrigley (19:58.365)
Yeah.

Katie Wrigley (20:09.735)
I just checked in and went to belly breath as you said that I'm like, me too. All right, let's get back into the belly. Thank you for that awareness.

Andrew O'Brien (20:16.244)
Yeah, yeah, So that's number one. Number two, hydration. Hydration, and we're talking about like simple water. There you go. Look at that thermos. Straight up water. We're not talking about any like water mixed with anything. Maybe with some natural fruit we can mix it with. But I'm talking about straight up water, not carbonated, not mixed with any sort of like sugary stuff. How much are we drinking water throughout the day?

I will say the CDC does not have any sort of guidance, standard guidance across adults or people in general. I, you know, I think there's a good reason for that. We are all in different parts of the country, different temperatures. We're doing different types of physical activity, sweating at different rates. And so I don't think they can ever come up with standard guidance from that perspective. However, I did connect with two different nutritionists.

Katie Wrigley (21:06.483)
and

Andrew O'Brien (21:15.0)
throughout my research and both of them who do not know each other, they have the same guidance for their own patients. And their guidance is, if you can maintain a pale yellow urine color throughout the day, you are likely well hydrated.

Katie Wrigley (21:32.945)
Nice, that's easy to follow versus like, I actually thought you were gonna go with somewhere different. You just made it so simple. thought you're, because what the guideline I've heard is whatever you weigh in pounds, you wanna drink half of that in ounces. But if you don't move very much that day, you're not gonna have pale yellow pee, you're gonna have clear pee. And I totally over hydrate some days, just FYI. I'm like, oops, come on, thank you for that.

Andrew O'Brien (21:45.814)
Yeah, no.

Andrew O'Brien (21:53.432)
Yeah. Yeah. And my hydration is like one of these 10 is I didn't mention this before, but our brains are like 80 % water, which is

Katie Wrigley (22:06.063)
Body too. Yeah. Hydration. It's so important for brain health because that's going to be what shrinks the most, right? When we get dehydrated because it needs so much water, takes it from there first.

Andrew O'Brien (22:07.926)
Yeah.

Andrew O'Brien (22:19.224)
Yep. So number three, and this is all about nutrition. And I'm not going to give a lecture on like the exact diet that we need to be following because like even nutritionists, this is such a complex category. We could do 10 ,000 million dollars on this alone. There's a lot of confusion out there, understandably so, because there's a lot of disagreements happening. But what I do like to share here is some guidance from the CDC that nutritionists can get behind. Before I get there, I do want to make

Katie Wrigley (22:32.403)
Thanks.

Katie Wrigley (22:40.293)
yeah.

Andrew O'Brien (22:48.952)
another fun fact here, which every time I drop this fact, it's mind blowing to me. And that is approximately 95 % of our serotonin production. Serotonin is one of our feel good hormones for those who are not aware. That actually occurs in the gut.

Katie Wrigley (23:11.053)
I learned that I blew my mind too. Yeah. And they're finding that actually that's the cure for depression is getting the gut biome set. Yeah.

Andrew O'Brien (23:13.516)
Yes.

Andrew O'Brien (23:18.976)
Right? Yes. And so the gut and the brain very intimately connected by that vagus nerve. It's like constantly like going like that, communicating. so yeah, right. And if we're not fueling our guts with nutritious foods, that serotonin production does not have that opportunity. And what does the gut craves? Here's where the CDC recommendations come in. We want to be optimizing the vegetables, the fruits, the lean proteins, the whole grains.

Katie Wrigley (23:24.107)
yeah.

Katie Wrigley (23:28.563)
So glad you brought that up.

Katie Wrigley (23:37.022)
Mm

Andrew O'Brien (23:48.108)
that fiber piece, really, really, really key for us. The healthy fats, those omega -3s, those are the things that we want to be optimizing, that we want to be consuming most of. Well, we want to be avoiding slash limiting. And I don't like saying this because I have a sweet tooth. It's those added sugars. And then alcohol, the CDC throws in there as well as something to limit or avoid. And so...

That's the recommendations from the CDC, all about nutrition. Yeah, so that's number three. Number four is sleep. One of the main things that occurs during the parts of our deep cycle, in our sleep cycle, which it happens a few times in the night if we're getting consistent sleep, is the glymphatic system. The glymphatic system kicks in.

Katie Wrigley (24:37.054)
Mm

Andrew O'Brien (24:45.228)
primarily during that period of when we are in our deep sleep cycles. And what is that doing? That is actually flushing out all of the dead neurotransmitters that have accumulated in our brains throughout the day. And so if we are not clearing that out, if we don't have, if the glymphatic system does not have that opportunity, it's going to build up. And if it doesn't have that opportunity, if we're not getting that good sleep, it's no wonder why we wake up groggy, hitting that snooze button.

Katie Wrigley (24:56.84)
Mm

Andrew O'Brien (25:14.978)
like multiple times, feeling low energy. And over time, that's gonna make a big negative impact in our stress levels. And so recommendations, if this is a struggle area for you, what is your sleep hygiene like? Is your environment cool, dark, quiet? Are you looking at these on your way to sleep, that scrolling? Even if you have that technology there, that...

Katie Wrigley (25:22.659)
Absolutely.

Andrew O'Brien (25:44.816)
to reduce that blue light. That blue light technology is still getting through and that technology is trained, not trained, it's like built and designed to keep our brains stimulated and awake. And so it's truly all about finding that sleep hygiene routine that works for you. If you are a snorer, I always say don't ignore that snorer because there could be a quick fix there that could help you to get a lot more sound regular sleep.

Katie Wrigley (25:53.703)
Yep, same as the sunlight.

Andrew O'Brien (26:13.802)
Adults should be getting at least seven hours of sleep each day as per the CDC. Some might need more, but at least seven hours across people. And if you have a racing mind, maybe you want to consider like data dumping, whether it's on like a piece of paper or emailing yourself something for the next day at work to, if you want to get something out of your brain.

Katie Wrigley (26:40.679)
Yeah. if I can just add something to the monkey mind around sleep real quick is so for people, if you notice, like if you go to bed on your right side, you're actually activating the left hemisphere, your brain, which is your stress and analytical center. I literally can't fall asleep on my right because as soon as I'm on my right, my brain's like, you have all these things to do. Where if I go on my left, which is now activating my right hemisphere, my brain, my emotional side, I'm like, I'm so comfy and cozy and and I'm out in seconds. But it is.

Andrew O'Brien (26:44.169)
Absolutely.

Katie Wrigley (27:10.683)
It is ridiculous the difference. So just to note, if you are falling asleep on your right side, try to go to your back or try your left side if you can, but just don't have the left side of your head up because that's activating it and that's the busier side of the mind. So I just wanted to add in there to that. Like, and I, I, I do that data dump because my, I'll think, I'll remember this in the morning and then I'll know I won't. And so I'll just like,

Andrew O'Brien (27:11.949)
Love that.

Katie Wrigley (27:39.313)
get my phone on, like I won't even open, I'll open my eyes long enough to unlock the phone, do a voice memo, what I need to get rid of, put it back down again, then I'll fall right to sleep.

Andrew O'Brien (27:50.39)
Yeah, yeah, data dump. Power messed up.

Katie Wrigley (27:52.935)
Yep, you gotta, you gotta. Yes, please continue. So sleep is four.

Andrew O'Brien (27:58.744)
Leap is four. Number five is rest, which is totally different from sleep. And so the latest research here, it's fascinating. It shows that the human brain fatigues after about 90 minutes of focused activity. And it could be more than that. It could be less than that, depending on how intense the action or the act, the task is.

Katie Wrigley (28:02.533)
It is.

Andrew O'Brien (28:26.008)
But generally speaking, every 90 minutes, our brain needs a break. And what's different from the brain than the muscles in our bodies? Like if we're running a mile, for example, or do anything physical activity related, our muscles are sending signals to the brain. Take a chill. You need to rest. I'm tired. The brain gets those signals, but the brain doesn't give itself those same signals. So generally what happens when we're focused on something for a long time, it's kind of like, my God, we hit that point of exhaustion by the time we realize it.

And so recommendations here. And I also want to just make a note that every 90 minutes, I understand that there are a handful in several professions out there where you literally can't take a break after 90 minutes because you, know, someone's life could be at risk, right? And so I'm not suggesting that you take a break every 90 minutes. Whenever it is feasible to you, however, I do recommend taking a few minutes.

to when that task is done. And if it's not life threatening, Like look to build in more of these routine few minute breaks throughout the day. And ideally you're gonna be thinking about something completely different. Maybe you're going out for a quick walk. Maybe you're thinking about someone that makes you smile. Maybe it's that you're taking out your phone and looking at some pictures that make you happy. Maybe it's a song that you listen to for a few minutes to kind of just get your brain like completely distracted.

with something uplifting, something positive. That's the whole point. And that could be a nice little strategy to support people through that fatigue in the day. Number six, seven, sex, is all about, I mentioned physical activity, physical activity, right? When we're human, we're born to move and we're meant to move. And even if folks have medical restrictions,

Katie Wrigley (29:56.873)
Love it.

Katie Wrigley (30:10.232)
Yes.

Andrew O'Brien (30:22.552)
there's something I promise you that we could be doing to move our bodies. right? And so when we are moving our bodies, what we're doing is increasing the blood flow, we're increasing the oxygen to our brains. It also impacts and optimizes the learning capabilities. And so from the CDC perspective, once again, what their recommendation is for healthy adults, and I encourage you to look, if you don't fall within the healthy adult population, which is 18 to 65,

Katie Wrigley (30:26.547)
say that all the time.

Andrew O'Brien (30:49.816)
Take a look at their website to see what the recommendations are for you. But for that population, we want to be doing moderate activity for at least 150 minutes across the week to kind of get the heart pumping, get the heart moving. That could be split up no matter how you want to split it up. And two days of muscle resistance training built into that. If you're doing more of the vigorous activity, the CDC recommends at least 75 minutes across the week.

Katie Wrigley (31:04.499)
Mm

Andrew O'Brien (31:19.928)
as opposed to 150. So that's the, and then I'm like, this is where, where things can become individualized and personalized. Like how you apply these things into your life is where things become personalized because like, what do you like to do? what, and maybe you don't know what, what movement you'd like to do. I encourage you to, to, to, you know, think about maybe when you were a kid, what kinds of things like brought you joy? Like when you were moving around and it's

Katie Wrigley (31:20.157)
Nice.

Andrew O'Brien (31:49.656)
Start there. But there's so many different forms. Gardening is considered movement. Like anything to get our bodies moving is movement. And so I encourage you and invite you to think about what brings you joy from that perspective and just get to it. And if you're already doing it, keep doing it. Amazing. Next.

Katie Wrigley (32:08.381)
Love it. Yeah. And gardening uses, I love it. And gardening uses some muscles, depends on what you're doing. But I mean, pretty much if I do a long day to my garden, my hamstrings are feeling it the next day. Because a lot of times I'm like, kind of crouched over using my hamstrings, so I'm not hurting my back. And so I'm using my legs a lot. it, and you have the extra benefit of being out in the sunlight, which is going to help with, I don't, I think it's serotonin. I don't remember which happy chemical it gives you, but.

You got the benefit of sunlight and nature too. And if you're in a place where you can be barefoot, you're also grounding with mother earth. So you got your movement, your sunlight. All the good things. Please continue. This is great. Really helpful.

Andrew O'Brien (32:47.01)
Yeah, yeah, it's all, it's all about that, Yeah. And then the next category is all about gratitude, appreciation, thankfulness, establishing a consistent practice. And again, we're not talking hours out of the day, folks. We're talking about a few minutes a day. That's all it really takes. And when we are able to do that, those brain parts that I mentioned to you earlier today, like the science, it's like...

Katie Wrigley (32:59.569)
Yes.

Andrew O'Brien (33:15.094)
And this gratitude has a direct impact. These brain parts into shrinking back down that amygdala and re -expanding the prefrontal cortex and that hippocampus. It's a beautiful, these MRIs that you see in the research, like, it's incredible. And we have so much power. We have so much power. have so much, I can't say that enough. Who, like who or what do you want to be grateful for? All right, here's some ideas. If people are coming to mind, amazing. Keep that, keep that people lens going.

Katie Wrigley (33:17.747)
Yep.

Andrew O'Brien (33:45.725)
People who you love bring you joy. Send them that silent gratitude during this practice. Animals in your life, right? Maybe you feel gratitude for animals in your life. Maybe it's for the material things in your life, which by the way is totally an okay thing to be grateful for. The running water that we have access to, the refrigerators that we have to keep our food, electricity, the technology that we have to be able to do these things to share this information with you all.

Katie Wrigley (34:03.507)
Yeah.

Katie Wrigley (34:07.561)
Electricity. Yeah.

Andrew O'Brien (34:14.636)
the beds that we get to wake up in as I look over to my phone.

Katie Wrigley (34:16.999)
Yeah, and expanding on that, even the power company that essentially gives you a loan every month and then you pay your bill. Like, thanks to all the people that are keeping the lights on. Thanks to all the people who are loaning me money so that I have all these things running in my house and you're trusting me to pay my bills. Yeah, gratitude's one of my favorites.

Andrew O'Brien (34:26.283)
Yeah.

Andrew O'Brien (34:36.502)
Yeah, yeah. And maybe it's also the organs in our body, the lungs that are breathing the air that we get to breathe, the taste buds that we have, the sight, the hearing, like the senses. So the clothes that we're wearing, like not everyone has access to these things folks. I literally just got back from a trip to parts of the world where they didn't have anything. And it's just, we have so much, so much here.

Katie Wrigley (34:44.339)
Good one.

Katie Wrigley (34:51.239)
You're bringing.

Katie Wrigley (35:03.741)
We do. We really do.

Andrew O'Brien (35:05.932)
And like to incorporate that into a gratitude practice can be very meaningful. And then lastly, what about yourself? What about your unique gift that you have to this world? What about your strengths, your skills that allow you to shine? How might you incorporate that into your gratitude practice? There's so many things that you can do with this. And there's so many different guided meditations out there. Meditation is a turnoff word for you. Don't call it a meditation.

Katie Wrigley (35:21.863)
Yeah.

Andrew O'Brien (35:34.412)
But there's so many people that guide these things. it literally, five minutes. There's an app called Insight Timer, totally free. Tons and tons and tons of male voices, female voices. And you can narrow it down to, want five minutes, and they'll populate. Here's one for you, and they'll guide you through the process. Just some ideas for the gratitude category. Next category is, and this could be a tough one for folks.

Katie Wrigley (35:47.377)
Nice.

Katie Wrigley (35:57.725)
Thank you. Love that.

Andrew O'Brien (36:04.716)
This is all about expression. And this goes back to, I think, what we were talking about earlier today and hiding a certain part of you. Expression, what do I mean by that? Emotional expression. Again, we're not taught this stuff growing up and we don't know how to manage our emotions. And so there's a whole body of science out there called the mind -body syndrome. And I encourage you to look into this because it's...

Katie Wrigley (36:20.041)
.

Andrew O'Brien (36:34.082)
completely fascinating where, generally speaking, we're bottling stuff up.

Katie Wrigley (36:41.211)
yeah.

We do.

Andrew O'Brien (36:43.589)
mostly those negative emotions like the the anger, the shame, the guilt. We bottle that stuff up because again, we're not taught how to release this stuff and we're not in fact, we're taught the other way, suck it up and move on. Where we're, you know, like we're human and we are emotional, we literally have neuropeptides flowing throughout our bodies. It's biological. There's never going to be a moment where we don't feel something but when we do bottle things up,

Katie Wrigley (36:55.633)
Mm -hmm.

Andrew O'Brien (37:10.242)
These emotions only have so far to go and over time they will blow over, they will boil over and they will translate into physical and emotional stress symptoms. Some of them ones that I've mentioned earlier today, there's skin rashes, some cancers, GI issues. Yes, more and more increasingly physicians are getting behind the science. John Sarno was the initial physician that kind of like kicked everything off and he got a lot of slack.

Katie Wrigley (37:37.096)
Nice.

Andrew O'Brien (37:39.209)
in his career, but like more and more physicians are seeing the truth behind what's happening. so that emotional, the goal that I have for this emotional expression piece, it's like, we need to be creating a highway, an emotional highway without traffic.

Katie Wrigley (37:54.447)
I like that.

Andrew O'Brien (37:55.222)
Because we're always going to be feeling something, right? There's always going to be a situation that triggers us. No matter how much we optimize our nervous systems, there's always going to be something that makes us feel something. And the goal is really to acknowledge what's happening, to honor it as a part of the human experience. It may not be a fun emotion, don't get me wrong there, but to honor the fact that this is a human emotion. And then in real time, it's possible to release it in a healthy way.

Katie Wrigley (38:04.85)
Mm.

Andrew O'Brien (38:24.768)
And I acknowledge that sometimes we're not able to release it immediately. But in real time, it's possible. Find out what that healthy way is for you and some suggestions, recommendations that I have in working with the clients I've worked with. Journaling is a big one. Talking to people that you confide in. It doesn't have to be in a professional setting, although it could be. Maybe you do want to work with a therapist.

And sometimes it's going into nature and I have some clients who literally talk to trees or the sun just to kind of like get things off of their, out of their systems, out of their bodies. Maybe you like to dance, maybe you like to sing, maybe you like to song write, maybe you like to write poetry. There's so many different ways that we can paint to get these expressions and these emotions out of our systems in really healthy ways. When I say unhealthy, I'm talking about like the drinking.

Katie Wrigley (39:15.187)
Thank

Andrew O'Brien (39:20.79)
the smoking, the drugging, which I'm not judging because it's in the short term that feels really good. And there's chemicals happening, that dopamine fix, right? That's a real thing. But long -term we know that these choices, not healthy for us. And so that's why I say I make that distinction between unhealthy and healthy ways to release these emotions. So that's that category. The next category we're getting there is all about connection.

Katie Wrigley (39:42.567)
Yeah.

Katie Wrigley (39:52.051)
Yes.

Andrew O'Brien (39:52.588)
This has not six, three prongs. I talk about three prongs here. The first prong is all about connecting with people. We are born to connect with people, even introverts out there. Yes, we need our alone time to recharge, but we are social creatures at the end of the day and we do need to establish that healthy, trusting connections with certain people. So I don't spend a lot of time on that because I like to spend more time on the other two prongs.

Katie Wrigley (40:08.893)
Thank you.

Andrew O'Brien (40:22.584)
which I think go unnoticed. The first one being connection to your environment, your physical surroundings, your work environment, your home environment, your city, your town, your state, your country. Like how connected do you feel to all of that? And if you don't feel connected to it, what might you be able to do to change that? Even if it's a slight adjustment, adjustment in your home or in the workspace.

a little bit can go a long way. Feeling connected, that you're able to recharge, that you're able to feel safe in your physical environment, really, really, really important for us and our brains and that nervous system. And then that third prong, getting back to what we talked about before, is connecting to yourself.

What are your values? What's important to you? What is your personality type? And I'm not just talking about any personality type. I'm talking about the Myers -Briggs personality type. Those 16 personalities, there's a legitimate amount of science behind these personality types. And Dr. Nardi is the one that's leading up the charge right now. And he's doing a lot of fascinating MRI work with these different

Katie Wrigley (41:24.04)
Yep.

Katie Wrigley (41:29.527)
yeah.

Andrew O'Brien (41:38.904)
personality types. at the end of the day, 40 to 60 % of our personality we're born with. And by born with, like we're hardwired. Yes, we can learn new things and develop new skills and evolve and adapt. Absolutely. But at the end of the day, we have preferences on the way that we like to do things. And so sometimes checking in with those preferences to kind of get yourself out of a stress mode, back to that best mode. And then getting back to those values and what's important to you.

Katie Wrigley (42:03.049)
Thank you.

Andrew O'Brien (42:08.032)
Are you making decisions in alignment with those values? Are you taking actions that are in alignment with those or are you not? As you know, we said it earlier today, when you're not, that's gonna totally create a disconnect and be very stressful for you.

Katie Wrigley (42:14.184)
Right.

Katie Wrigley (42:18.963)
going to come to us.

Katie Wrigley (42:23.481)
yeah. Big time. Yes, you want to get clear on those and if you aren't clear what your values are, take some time and get clear on them. matters? Like, integrity is my highest value. I know this and everything I do, I try to do. Like I told you, like we're going a little over on this episode and that's okay because I said I'm doing my best to keep it to 20, 30 minutes but if it's useful information, I don't want to stop that.

Andrew O'Brien (42:35.849)
Mm

Katie Wrigley (42:51.045)
And so I feel that I'm still in integrity because I'm doing my best and I try to do shorter episodes impossible, but everything you're talking about is helpful and it's so much helpful than just a bulleted list. Like you're giving context around it, why it matters and some real world scenarios in there. And so I just wanted to chime in there and like, and I've heard from other coaches that have like started with values and just finding out what your values are and like, my gosh, I didn't realize how much that mattered to me.

Andrew O'Brien (42:51.099)
Mm.

Katie Wrigley (43:20.381)
Like that alone can start to even without any of the other stuff, just being clear on who you are and what matters to you. That can take so much off of your plate. Please continue, Andrew. This is really great.

Andrew O'Brien (43:32.29)
Yeah, absolutely. And then there's one more category before I get there. As first response, and I, part of my work, I work in a hospital system. So I'm working with healthcare workers day in and day out. And we're always like, how do you fuel your bucket? How do you fill your bucket so that you can continue that, that patient care? And as first responders, maybe some of you are also healthcare workers. Maybe some of you are not, but like, my question is like, how do you fill your bucket so you can actually

Katie Wrigley (43:49.117)
Yeah. Yep.

Andrew O'Brien (44:02.136)
respond to other people in the amazing way that you do. And these are the 10 ways in which I recommend that you start to do that. And that 10th category is, and I like to say this for the last one, it's have fun. It's laughing. It's when we laugh, when we have fun, we're also changing the chemistry within our, with our bodies where we're decreasing the amount of cortisol in our systems, which is that stress hormone. We're increasing

Katie Wrigley (44:03.038)
Yeah.

Andrew O'Brien (44:31.588)
that the feel -good hormones, right? And it's like maybe someone listening right now or watching right now, they're on the burnout bus. And maybe they're questioning, how the hell can I have fun right now? I have been there and I get it. If someone told me to have fun during my last stage of burnout, I would have been like,

Katie Wrigley (44:52.104)
Yeah.

Andrew O'Brien (45:00.682)
just rolling my eyes and walking the other way because it's just not possible. I'm telling you, it is possible and

maybe a strategy is to go back, is to tap in to that inner kid, your younger version of yourself. What things did you do for fun back then? And if that's a struggle for you, maybe you tune into like a sitcom, maybe you tune into like a standup show, maybe you go to a standup show. Right? just, my God.

Katie Wrigley (45:25.075)
Yeah.

Katie Wrigley (45:36.467)
hand up. Love it. It's so fun. It's a great way to relax. Yeah.

Andrew O'Brien (45:42.456)
I still go back to Joan Rivers all the time. She was like one of my faves. But yeah, it's just like I empathize. I deeply empathize for folks who are on that burnout bus right now. And I promise you, when you begin to optimize these 10, including that fun, including that humor, you don't feel like laughing, but maybe just start exposing yourself. Maybe just have it on in the background. And maybe one moment you're going to be like, my God, that was hilarious.

Katie Wrigley (45:44.797)
Haha

Katie Wrigley (45:54.6)
Yeah.

Andrew O'Brien (46:09.816)
And then you'll see that it is possible to laugh. And yeah, and so those are the 10 in a nutshell, Katie.

Katie Wrigley (46:14.6)
Yeah.

Katie Wrigley (46:20.179)
Thank you. No, I'm so glad that you shared those with us and thank you for that. You know, was, one of the things that I had resistance to until the data was undeniable was like my nervous system used to tell me I couldn't rest. Like, no, you can't rest, can't rest, you gotta go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. And I think it was about a year ago, I forced myself to rest more and my productivity went through the roof and I'm like, man.

I don't even know what to do with this. Like I was, I was hoping to prove the science wrong, which honestly is why I do something. I'm like, I want to prove the science wrong. It's never wrong. And I wind up benefiting from it, but I'll have resistance to it. That's just my default, you know, and then, and then maybe it's going to change one day, but I, my story included repressing a trauma for 40 years. I'm really good at denial and shoving things down. And I also know what happens to the body and how destructive it is to the body when you do that.

So I love everything you're saying here because it helps to get all that stuff out of the body and the body is storing it that anger that you didn't deal with from last week. It's hanging out probably in your liver doing some damage in there. You want to acknowledge it and get it out and with anger to a lot of times anger is the secondary emotion. It's not the primary it's pain. It's embarrassment humiliation. It's frustration. It's some other emotion under there and anger is just the one that has more energy. And so

Andrew O'Brien (47:26.85)
Hmm.

Andrew O'Brien (47:43.693)
Mm.

Katie Wrigley (47:45.155)
look at that for yourself as well. This has been amazing, Andrew. Where can people find you? We'll make sure this is all in the show notes, but where can they find you? Yeah, I'll just stop.

Andrew O'Brien (47:57.495)
Yeah. Yeah. So they could, they could find me on my website, which is www .themindblowingcoach .com. In there, you can actually download these 10. It's a one -pager PDF that highlight the 10 and the high level signs connected to each as a way to support people in making their individualized plans moving forward. It's called Stress Relief Tips under the free resources.

Katie Wrigley (48:20.889)
awesome.

Katie Wrigley (48:27.411)
Thank you.

Andrew O'Brien (48:27.58)
And I'm also on the socials if folks want to follow me there. I'm always dropping some, I'm calling them stress relief snippets. And so I dropped those in Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn.

Katie Wrigley (48:37.497)
Thanks.

Katie Wrigley (48:42.161)
Very cool. We'll make sure all of your social handles are in the notes as well. And I want to make sure you and I are connecting as well so that I can benefit from your little anti -stress snippets out there. There is a, my gosh, I interviewed him a while ago. There's a psychiatrist on LinkedIn who I absolutely love. He puts out these, these visuals that are just, they just hit home like to really like give you like, wow, that's what's going beneath the surface. Like what's happening when you're feeling anxious, what's happening here.

Andrew O'Brien (49:03.522)
Mm -hmm.

Katie Wrigley (49:11.997)
You know, and that gratitude thing you were talking about, I wanna go back to that for a moment because that's one of the most powerful ways you can shift your perception and really feeling that gratitude. So I wanted to just kind of share a little nugget before we close and just see if you have any action items. Just this week, like I've had gratitude practice since I was disabled six years ago.

And it just hit me this week, despite the fact that I've had that, I've still spent so much time. There's two areas of my life that I haven't gotten exactly where I want. That's it. There's two areas of my life that aren't exactly where I want them yet. And I have spent countless hours, years, let's be honest, years, stressing over these things. And like it was last night, I'm like, Katie, what the hell are you doing?

Like look around, look at everything. And I paused and I really looked and I got tears in my eyes. I'm like, my gosh, I have so much. I have parents that are 20 minutes away from me who are still alive, who just went through COVID and they're gonna be okay. I have an amazing group of supportive friends. I have an amazing team who supports me and believes in me. I have my whole Cognitive Movement family.

And these are things that I've helped cultivate in my life. These are things I've worked towards. I'm healthy. I don't have pain anymore. I did that for myself. So there's that gratitude for me. And I have so much gratitude for all of the people who are loving me, supporting me, because that whole takes a village. That's real for everything, for kids, for pets, for us. We are hardwired to be connected to people. And we don't have that. Or when trauma is telling you people aren't safe,

you're missing out on a part of life and you want to be able to start to hook into that gratitude that's going to help you see where you're safe as well and I don't know what the outcome of this is going to be but I imagine from what I understand about gratitude those two areas of my life I'm not really going to be focused on the fact I don't have them and they're probably going to come in line really soon because I'm focusing on everything I have instead of those two little areas they yeah they matter

Andrew O'Brien (50:59.543)
Hmm.

Andrew O'Brien (51:19.608)
Hmm.

Katie Wrigley (51:27.027)
But I have all these other amazing things going on. And all of you have the same. If you just pause, and I want you to look around your house and look at everything you have. Like, I've got a whiteboard. I can erase stuff and write stuff on there. Like, how cool is that? Like, I can choose what to do and what not to do. I can see my beautiful niece and nephew and a calendar behind my computer and their dog. There's a hilarious picture of the dog just chilling with his chops on the boat with a life jacket on, like.

Andrew O'Brien (51:29.602)
Yeah.

Katie Wrigley (51:55.837)
happier than a pig and poo. I've got a great family and it's huge. So don't underestimate any of these points that Andrew's given. They're big and they will change.

Andrew O'Brien (52:07.576)
And I'm so glad you spent some time just now on the piece because we are on the heels of World Gratitude Day and that was on Saturday last weekend. so, I invite everyone listening just to spend at least a few minutes of that intentional gratitude right now. it's to Katie's point.

Katie Wrigley (52:18.454)
how did I miss that?

Andrew O'Brien (52:35.064)
It could be like, it could be your fingertip. The fact that you literally have a fingertip with a fingernail. It could be super, super, super simple. And a little bit goes a long way. 100, 100, 100%.

Katie Wrigley (52:48.509)
Yep, love that. That is a great note to end on. So thank you so much for your time today, Andrew. It's been great to get to know you and to hear about the wisdom that you're sharing. Thank you so much.

Andrew O'Brien (52:59.476)
You are welcome so much, Katie. Thank you for having me today.

Katie Wrigley (53:02.693)
And thank you listeners. I know you have a lot of choices out there of what you can listen to on the internet. And I am honored that you chose to spend time today with us. I hope you're going to come back again next week for another awesome episode. And until then, please be well.

That was great. It went long. I may actually chunk it into two parts and that part where we're like, I don't know.