The Biological Reset That Changes Everything Part 1

Summary: In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, Katie sits down with Matthew Campbell, PhD, clinical psychologist and creator of the Primal Five framework, to explore why so many entrepreneurs feel chronically stressed, exhausted and overwhelmed despite living in the most convenient era in human history.

Matthew explains that modern life has outpaced human evolution, and the five biological foundations our ancestors relied on naturally (sleep, sunlight, movement, connection and intentional consumption) are now things we have to consciously choose. When those foundations erode, no amount of mindset work can fully compensate.

Katie and Matthew also dig into the hidden cost of news consumption and how our brains are wired to overestimate threat when constantly exposed to alarming content.

Key Takeaways

→ Industrialization far outpaces evolution. We have the same bodies our ancestors had, now operating in a radically different world.
→ The five biological foundations (sleep, sunlight, movement, connection and intentional consumption) are not optional extras. They are the foundation everything else is built on.
→ Convenience is a short-term win with a long-term cost. The easier life gets, the less we use our bodies the way they were designed to be used.
→ Everything we consume is fuel, including the news, social media and digital content. What you consume shapes how your nervous system responds to the world.
→ Limiting news exposure is not being uninformed. It is protecting your nervous system. Matthew recommends a maximum of 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the afternoon.
→ Mindset strategies have limits when foundational biological needs are not being met. You cannot think your way out of sleep deprivation or loneliness.

Where to find Matthew

Our Primal 5 Website

Our Primal 5 Instagram

Matthew Campbell's LinkedIn

Resources

• Website
• Free Mini Cogno Mondays
• Learn more about Cognomovement
• Try Cognomovement for yourself!
• Book a call with Katie

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 (00:28)
Welcome back to the Catapult Effect podcast. I am your host, Katie Wrigley. Today I have with me someone who talks very similarly to me as far as ways to be able to integrate nature, among other things, into what you do. Matthew Campbell, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and creator of Our Primal Five, a practical framework that helps people rebuild the five biological foundations that support mental clarity,

emotional stability and sustained performance, sleep, sunlight, movement, connection and intentional consumption. We're going to dig into that last one. John, in over 20 years of clinical experience, he focuses on helping people restore the basic capacities modern life quietly erodes. So growth, resilience and meaningful change become possible again. Welcome to the Catapult Effect podcast, Matthew. I'm so excited to have you here with me today.

Matthew Campbell (01:22)
Thank you. Thank you. I look forward to it.

Katie Wrigley (01:25)
Me too. So the quote that keeps coming to mind as I was prepping for this video or for this episode rather, and I think it'd be a good place to start, is Krishnamurti's quote that it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a supremely sick society. I'm curious what you think about that.

Matthew Campbell (01:44)
Well, I think that that's it. ⁓ I think that that captures, that's a beautiful way of describing the thesis of this workbook. ⁓ And this approach is that we are living in times that the human wasn't made for the human animal, the basic aspects of our functioning that we weren't made for.

Katie Wrigley (01:45)
you

Matthew Campbell (02:10)
And of course that doesn't mean that all of it is bad, ⁓ you know, by any means, but it does mean that we have to be very cautious and intentional about how we treat our bodies in a time where it's so easy ⁓ to go the wrong way.

Katie Wrigley (02:15)
and

I agree 100%. And this is a show that's focused on the entrepreneur in ways that we can help make life easier. And today it is such a prevalent thing that people are feeling stressed, they're feeling exhausted, overwhelmed or stuck. So what are the things that are contributing to that exhaustion, to that ongoing stress? Because if we look at life, it's never been more convenient than it is right now, but yet stress levels are at an all time high.

Matthew Campbell (02:57)
Why I ⁓ that word that you use, I think it's an important one because it's ⁓ I think it's at the crux ⁓ of the challenge for us. you said it. Life's never been easier. And I doubt it. I agree very much. But I would qualify that I would say life's never been easier in the short term. And I think that.

Katie Wrigley (03:11)
Mm-hmm.

⁓ yeah.

Matthew Campbell (03:22)
that is the key, is there are so many things in the short term ⁓ that does make that basic human tendency or desire to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. It is so much easier to do that in this present moment that we live in. Unfortunately, like most things that are short-term motivated, we are going to pay a cost ⁓ for a short-term focus.

And so I think that it is, I think it's important to have understanding as well as encouragement to take actions because I think that it is also true when we say it is more difficult to do these basic things that we really all know are important, but it's more difficult to do that now than it ever was before because of all those conveniences.

Katie Wrigley (04:20)
It's a little bit of a paradox, right? As we've got food delivery we can get on our phone, like we can order groceries if we want to make it ourselves, we can have it delivered to us, but...

What comes to mind is that analogy with the butterfly, right? And if you help the butterfly break its way out of the cocoon, it's not going to be able to fly because it didn't have that challenge. And in a lot of ways where we may not be the butterfly trying to get out of a cocoon, but when we've made life so convenient, we're actually no longer utilizing our bodies the way that they were meant to do, which is a huge piece that we've seen that's adding to this underlying stress

and this overwhelmed that a lot of people are experiencing these days. What have you noticed with that?

Matthew Campbell (05:07)
Well, when you use that example with the butterfly, what I think of is I think of the nature that exists and that when we intervene in a natural process, we're going to cause problems. And the human, the human animal was made for certain things, certain basic things that we were made for. And again, for our ancestors, these were not things that were choices. They were...

they were necessities. going over the five ⁓ areas of focus that I have.

Our ancestors had to be outside. They didn't have the choice of climate controlled environments. They slept. They slept, you know, largely in the evening. We're diurnal. We, you know, we're not going to be able to see at night. So it's a, it's an effective, efficient way to do it. We stay sleep at night and they didn't have screens to interrupt their sleep or hectic schedules the next day that they, you know, were cramming and things like that. They moved. You better move, you know, to, to survive.

to get what is needed for survival. We're pack animals. So they were connected to one another. The lone wolf doesn't survive. ⁓ And so we're pack animals. And then finally, consumption. There was no choice but to consume what comes from the earth. And there were not all these digital opportunities to suck our minds in that way. So they had no choices. That's what we're made for. That's why our bodies came to be what they are.

The way I've put it before is industrialization far outpaces evolution. So we are sitting with the same bodies at a time that is radically different than when our bodies came to be what they are.

Katie Wrigley (06:59)
And you just said something so key there, Matthew, that industrialization, how overriding. I can't remember the exact way you said it, but I'm like, yes, yes. Because if we look at, I'm trying to remember the stats that I had heard, but I think it's something to the effect that 100 years ago, which our bodies have not evolved all that much in 100 years, we have 100 years ago, we would get one year the input that we get now in one day.

Yeah, and I may be slightly off with that, but the point is it's exponentially more. And what we're consuming, it's not leafy greens and sunlight and movement and calm and peace. We're consuming fake news and scary news and polarizing news. And it's also impacting one of the things that our nervous system has relied on.

to survive. Like you mentioned, like we have to be in a community. Our nervous system and our sense of community, these are the two things.

that have allowed us to survive this long. And as we're having all this polarizing stuff coming our way, our sense of community gets really threatened from that because now the people that we've loved our whole life because they've made a political choice that's different than ours or whatever it may be, the politics seems to be the easiest way to split everybody these days. But now this person that you've loved and relied on for your whole life, now they're no longer safe because of whatever you're consuming. So that consumption is really

making an impact on us and that's why I was looking at the introduction like I really want to go into the consumption piece because we're not just talking about food we're talking about anything that the body the mind is consuming.

Matthew Campbell (08:46)
our fuel, our fuel.

And it's our fuel, whether it's physically or mentally consumed. And I love you mentioning that about the news, because when people have gone through the workbook, I think that one of the things that catches their attention ⁓ relates to the encouragement to really limit news exposure. Because I think we are taught as a societal or cultural more,

is to be an informed public. So I think that it's often counterintuitive for people that we should limit that. But I think it's an absolute necessity. I think it's obviously not only limiting the amount of time, but also recognizing the sources of information, of news that we're receiving because many are going to really try to get after

Katie Wrigley (09:17)
and

Matthew Campbell (09:42)
outrage because that's going to keep us on their whatever their entertainment medium is and it's just going to become just addictive and terrifying and as you said can lead to people missing like what is the main thing is the main thing that you believe what I believe or is the main thing a relationship and it's really gone sideways but absolutely that consumption

Katie Wrigley (10:06)
Right.

Matthew Campbell (10:11)
is profoundly important to mental consumption.

Katie Wrigley (10:15)
I like how you framed it that it's all fuel, whether it's fuel for our physical bodies or fuel for our mind. We are filling ourselves with something and we're going to get results based on what we're consuming. That news piece, that's something that I've recommended with clients as well is maybe just a little less news for a little bit or where you're getting the news from. A lot of people, they don't want to let go of it.

And when I went through my period of disability in 2017-2018, my body hurt so bad that I was so sensitive to things that I would notice if I watched the news and I get all tense and wound up, pain would go up.

So I'm like, okay, the news is literally hurting me. Like maybe I don't need so much of this. And I get knocked for it. Like people like, you don't watch the news? Like, no, I do not watch the news. I will go look up things I want to learn about that I'm hearing about. Like there's enough people talking on social media. I know what's going on in the world. I can go find some source that isn't as polarizing.

that isn't trying to piss me off, that isn't trying to get a reaction from me that is going through the facts of the situation, and then I can be informed that way.

Matthew Campbell (11:34)
Right. And the other part of it, again, in terms of the framework that I'm coming at it from is if we think about it in terms of our ancestors, what exposure did they have to news? Well, they likely knew what was going on in their own village. They likely knew what was going on in surrounding villages, but they did not know what was going on on the other side of the earth.

Katie Wrigley (12:03)
Yep.

Matthew Campbell (12:04)
And

while I think a reasonable argument could be made that our world has broadened greatly, ⁓ that our community is much broader than it was previously, we still have this aspect within the human where we are not made for constant inundation with news. And it increases our perception of threat significantly because it's what we're exposed to. So for example,

I have someone come in who's terrified of being harmed by an intruder. They watch the news. What does the news talk about? Crime. They do not talk about the millions of people who went home and had a meal and slept and then got up and got after it. That's not newsworthy. So we're inundated with the terrifying.

And the more we're inundated with that, the psychology of that is, is that it increases our perception of how likely these things are. And so we really need to be cautious, intentional, and limit our amount of time, even with good news sources.

Katie Wrigley (13:04)
and

That's a really good point is, and that is something that's really easy to overlook. And in my skydiving days, every time there's a skydiving accident, it gets reported. And so people think it's a much more dangerous sport. Plus, you know, you're having an intentional 14,000 foot fall, which has inherent, it's very controlled. Like the way one of my skydiving friends put it is it's a dangerous sport that's been made safe through technology, but there's still an X factor. You're still.

Matthew Campbell (13:23)
Right? Right?

Katie Wrigley (13:42)
jumping out of an airplane. And that airplane, by the way, is not brand new. But people think that they are going to be less safe skydiving than they are driving in a car. And when you get to the drop zone, people are like, hey, congratulations. The most dangerous part of the skydive is already behind you. You got here alive. And people are like, what? But if we reported on every single car accident that there was, no one would ever drive. Ever.

Matthew Campbell (14:07)
Absolutely, absolutely.

And that is the key. It's again that we are going to assess the likelihood of things on what we're exposed to.

Katie Wrigley (14:21)
Mm-hmm.

Matthew Campbell (14:21)
And it's not going to be ⁓ a broad sample and us thinking, well, this many people had this effect. It's going to be what we're exposed to and how emotionally charged that is. And so we just need to take care of ourself ⁓ in that regard, just take care of the human.

My suggestion is at most 15 minutes early in the day, 15 minutes around afternoon, and then we're done with the news.

Katie Wrigley (14:52)
I like that 15 in the morning, 15 in the afternoon, call it a day. That's a great boundary there. ⁓ So I want to dive a little bit deeper into the foundational habits again in a moment. But I want to ask you first, like a lot of times we hear people really focused on the mindset, but what makes mindset strategies fail or not as effective if people don't have these foundational habits in place?

Matthew Campbell (15:20)
Absolutely, and I love the mindset approaches. ⁓ I was trained in cognitive behavioral therapy and the offshoots of it, are really cool too.

thoughts and these kind of things are really, really compelling to me. But in my work, I kept on finding, I've done this work for over 20 years, and I kept finding repetitively the same pattern of these very basic aspects of human functioning that we are really struggling with. And they create

or they lead to our capacity.

And we're often depleted and in these different areas. so we're depleted. It affects us in terms of how well we can think, how clearly we can think, how well we can focus, how well we can regulate emotions, agitation, irritation. All of these things are very common with sleep deprivation, with hunger, with the excessive consumption of sugar and the crashes that it creates. And of course, it's really

to think our way out of loneliness. ⁓ It's difficult to think out of some of these things that are just fundamental needs that aren't being met.

Katie Wrigley (16:38)
Mm.

I love that we can't think our way out of fundamental needs that are not being met. This is a great place to conclude today's episode and I hope you're gonna join me later this week. Come back, I'm gonna be continuing to talk to you, Matthew Campbell, about his primal five. We're gonna dive into those five foundational habits that you wanna make sure that you've got in place and how you can start to utilize those into your life. So thank you for joining us today and please be well.

until next time.