How to break out of survival mode

Dude, I'm gonna share the thing with you that like single-handedly broke me out of poverty. And having a neuroscience degree, now I understand why this works this way. Some of us are stuck in survival mode, which is like a chronic state of fight or flight. And if you look at the nervous system, the nervous system is comprised of the brain and the spinal cord, it has two divisions, your central nervous system and your peripheral nervous system. Your central nervous system is everything in case, bone, your brain, spinal cord. Your peripheral nervous system is all the nerves that innervate all the organs and whatnot. Of your peripheral nervous system, you have somatic and autonomic. Somatic is voluntary movement, autonomic is automatic. The autonomic, you have three parts: parasympathetic, sympathetic, and enteric. Your sympathetic nervous system is the thing that's fight or flight. It's the survival mode. And when this part of your nervous system is activated, it's going to increase adrenaline, cortisol, and glucose. For the people who get stuck in the freeze mode of your sympathetic nervous system, the only way to get out of it is you have to shift gears through generating dopamine. Why? Dopamine is the molecule more dopamine is the thing that gets you to take action and anticipates the future. The reason why it's so hard to stick to habits and routines, why you spend down to zero, why you wait until the last minute to get ready, why it feels so impossible to stick to habits and routines is because you're used to the thing that gets you to take action, to be the adrenaline, cortisol, and glucose. Those are very metabolically expensive processes, which is why you keep burning out and crashing and you're like, fuck, I can't maintain this. Dopamine is like, ego mode of the brain. It's the thing that gets you to take action, but it's not very metabolically expensive. It's localized in the brain in small regions. So when you have a hard time taking action, when you're stuck in freeze mode, what tends to be the case is that the action needs to be too big for the state of your nervous system that you're in. You're asking too much of yourself. You're comparing yourself with everybody around you. Oh, but this person picked up the extra shift, this person, you know, will go out on the weekends and do this and that. This person studied that degree and they were able to do X, Y, Z. You can't do it right now. Doesn't mean you can't do it in the future, but right now, where you're at might be this moment, might be this season is that the ask needs to be way smaller. And so that might mean for me, going to the grocery store, used to take me an hour just to decide to go do it, which for me right now, taking an hour to decide something is totally opposite of the life I live. When I had to do is I had to say, I'm putting my shoes on. I'm just opening the door. I'm just stepping outside. I'm just getting the grocery bag. I'm just making the list. I had to make the ask so small and I had to clear everything else off my schedule. And I get that you might be like, just got to have that luxury. You have to find ways to make space. If right now you're stuck in freeze mode, your bank account is going to look bad, your friendships are going to look horrible, your health is going to deteriorate. You know this. So just make the ask smaller and the momentum will carry you so fast, you'll forget you were ever stuck in this state. Dopamine is like ego mode of the brain. It's the thing that gets you to take action, but it's not very metabolically expensive. It's localized in the brain in small regions. So when you have a hard time taking action, when you're stuck in freeze mode, you're asking too much of yourself. You're comparing yourself with everybody around you. Oh, but this person picked up the extra shift, this person, you know, will go out on the weekends and do this and that. This person studied that degree and they were able to do X, Y, Z. You can't do it right now. Doesn't mean you can't do it in the future, but right now, where you're at might be this moment, might be this season is that the ask needs to be way smaller. And so that might mean for me, going to the grocery store, used to take me an hour just to decide to go do it, which for me right now, taking an hour to decide something is totally opposite of the life I live. When I had to do is I had to say, I'm putting my shoes on. I'm just opening the door. I'm just stepping outside. I'm just getting the grocery bag. I'm just making the list. I had to make the ask so small and I had to clear everything else off my schedule. And I get that you might be like, just got to have that luxury. You have to find ways to make space. If right now you're stuck in freeze mode, your bank account is going to look bad, your friendships are going to look horrible, your health is going to deteriorate. You know this. So just make the ask smaller and the momentum will carry you so fast, you'll forget you were ever stuck in this state.