Why Your Success is Taxing Your Nervous System

Richard Zwicky: Hi everyone, it's Richard Zwicky with High on Healthy, the show where we know there's no one path to healthy, so we explore them all. If you haven't done so yet, please subscribe via your favorite podcast listening device. Modern consumer culture promises freedom, success, and self-exression. And yet burnout, anxiety, and emotional exhaustion offset those and suggest that something deeper may be happening beneath the surface for most people. And today we're going to speak with our guest Oscar Trellis, who is a systemic coach and founder of Breathing Flame, which talks about how consumerism shapes our nervous system identity and definitions of success. Welcome aboard the show, Oscar.

Oscar Trelles: Thank you for having me Great question.

Richard Zwicky: So Oscar you spent a couple of decades in high pressure industries before shifting towards burnout recovery and coaching. What caused that to happen? What did your own experience with burnout teach you? And what do you look as your warning signs you wish you'd seen so much earlier? And what industry was it in?

Oscar Trelles: I mean I experienced severe burnout myself and that's where I realized I wouldn't wish that and it actually happened before COVID I had a very successful business. I had an office in London. I was in Singapore when COVID hit. So I had started a market research company. I came from advertising and so what I loved about working in advertising was figuring out what consumers wanted to hear from brands etc. But always the research part was only 10% of that. So switching to market research full-time allowed me to do what I love to do the most all of the time. So that's why in a sense it was a lot of fun to be on a plane every couple of weeks visiting a new client anywhere. Right. So again we started in New York but very quickly started getting referrals from agencies in London and once we were in London we started getting referrals for agencies in Singapore. I was in Singapore when COVID hit. I actually left the island when they had the first four or five confirmed cases. So, I went back straight to New York for lockdown. H and that's when I realized that my identity had been tied to all these external signs of success like the constant business travel being always busy being successfully in all the material parts. But when all of that was removed and all the noise that was numbing me make it clear that my relationships with my ex-wife, my kids were not in a really good place. I wasn't healthy physically. I was overweight. Even though I had done some stuff to kind of get better it was more about this collapse of my identity and it was just like a mirror fell in front of me and I just didn't like what I was looking at the moment.

Richard Zwicky: And that's not an atypical situation where our cultural definition of success which is we work hard, we're valued based on what we've acquired, not and what people think of us. You can never get enough when you're in that rat race for or conveyor belt as I look at it in terms of it and just you keep running and running and you never get anywhere. But what signals were your nervous system sending you that said, "Hey, hold on Take a look or was it because CO forced you to stop that you actually saw it?

Oscar Trelles: In my experience and I see this with a lot of the high functional individuals that I work with right now. Burnout doesn't happen overnight. It's kind of a slow roasting. It's like I think we've all familiar with the frogs being cooked very slow. It's kind of like that. But it's never a dramatic event. It's just that people that are very successful and to your point have been trained to ignore their health because material success or the company success is more important than our health as individuals. We just become very good at ignoring those early signs and our functioning even though internally we are in a disregulated state.

Richard Zwicky: Many critiques of consumerism focus on materialism and debt, right? You rack up items and often at the same time you're racking up debt. But you look at your work frames the issue as neurological and psychological. How does consumer culture actually train the nervous system over time?

00:05:00

Oscar Trelles: I mean it starts at a very early age right we are all taught about wealth only in terms of money and to make money you need to do a job that maybe you don't like but it's okay because if you work very hard then you get two weeks of vacation to go spend it in a Caribbean island and then come back to the same thing. So we are in this constant loop of accumulating the means so that we can escape the life that maybe we don't really like. And this is because this structure of success has been installed on us almost involuntarily. It starts when we are so we are part of a system that we didn't design or had a choice on. So the trick is figuring out at what point you decide what is your personal individual metrics for success and usually it's not about just the money. It's about most of us just want to be happy. So it's about figuring out what is it that you need to be happy. Obviously money is what we as a society have agreed to use as an exchange to get goods, So the problem is when we turn that into the ultimate goal regardless of what our real needs are to your point people just stuck debt because they think that having the bag or the car or the house is what makes them happy and we continue to postpone our happiness for retirement for when I have the perfect house or the perfect car whereas we actually very capable to decide what that our current Life is making us happy or not. Sorry,

Richard Zwicky: And it's a system built around abundance and that anything is obtainable. You just work harder, earn more and you can get it which becomes part of the psychological issue where that your self-worth is tied to that productivity and visibility which you mentioned about people earning two weeks holiday which sounds horrible to anybody outside of the US because people are used to a lot more holiday. It's a different balance. Yeah,

Oscar Trelles: That's my former New Yorker coming out to play. I enjoy a lot more free time now here that I live in Malaga, but that was part of the process, I couldn't fix myself in the environment that had caused all my issues.

Richard Zwicky: It is. And it's part of the problem, right?

Oscar Trelles: So even though like I said it was a very tough moment for me eventually I had to realize that I needed to leave New York leave my family behind so that I could realign myself internally

Richard Zwicky: And that recognition of having to realign yourself internally is something which a lot of people never realize they need to do that they recognize they're out of sorts but because of the framework of their lives they're in that rat race. They're in that cycle. They're just moving forward and doing what they have to do to put food on the table and keep moving forward. They don't recognize that they've got this lowgrade stress response building up over time. So it's hard for them to recognize how does this, but they still are looking to compare themselves against others because they're trying to figure out their place. How does that alter our baseline understanding of safety and adequacy? What?

Oscar Trelles: I said it's a slow process right you don't really burn out overnight it's just that your air forces start becoming less and less effective your attention or the quality of your decisions becomes lower and lower and lower and unfortunately most cases something has to break for me during co for that to be visible, right? But it doesn't have to be, right? So, what I try to work on when people start having those signs and they come for help is to first of all align and what is it that they actually want to accomplish and whether that's just about money other things, it's never too late or too early actually to start building a life that you don't have to escape from. But there's always an event that triggers that recognition hopefully and that's the word that I'm trying to do now is it doesn't come to a whole breakdown like it was for me. But yes those early signs of recognition that our efforts our attention are degrading little by little and

00:10:00

Oscar Trelles: That something has to change for us to become more effective as professional as leaders or entrepreneurs. A lot of people say that

Richard Zwicky: And it was interesting what you just said about misaligned and is burnout less about overwork itself and more about a misalignment of effort disconnected from values. Mhm.

Oscar Trelles: If I work for something that I'm passionate about it doesn't feel like work and again it can be to a certain degree right but especially since I work with a lot of solopreneurs that cannot really delegate a lot of that responsibility becomes about building boundaries and building a system that supports their goals rather than having goals that are driving the system. We have that a little bit of reverse Because you go to LinkedIn or you go to any social media and everybody's collecting millions if not billions of dollars in investment. And not every company has to be a unicorn, right? So you build your professional life around your personal life, not the other way around. And again, I know that this is probably a little bit easier said than done, but that's the real trick, there's no shortcuts, right? It's about deciding what is really important for you. Because how good is money if you don't have the time to enjoy it? How good is money if your relationships, the closest people to you are not there when you have an opportunity to spend it or invest it in something fun or something you want to share with them. So health relationships your time are in way more valuable than just the money that you can make. Again money is important for entrepreneurs and professionals that is an important part of the equation but it's not the only thing. So it's about giving it space but realizing that there are more important things than just the pursuit of monetary value.

Richard Zwicky: And monetary is one aspect of things that people chase. And humans, you go back thousands of years, have always competed for resources, competed for things that they consider to be rare and special. Is modern consumerism really any different, or is it simply a louder, more seen version of these ancient social dynamics but because of things like, social media and where it's instant, people push each other too far, too fast.

Oscar Trelles: That's definitely part of the equation social media just puts us in a situation where we are constantly comparing ourselves to others. And I mean I wouldn't say that our desires are necessarily artificial but this need to compete to your point right for resources becomes even more like a higher frequency to put it that way especially when we have such little attention for the real world around us we are just consumed by what seeing social media and most people on social media share the best moments not the behind the curtains right so most people don't realize that right and I remember this clearly before COVID when I was traveling all over all people saw was he's in London now he's in Paris they didn't see the behind the scenes of the grueling work that it was to build that business right so that's a cautionary tale with social media just stop comparing ourselves too

Richard Zwicky: And that's a big thing is to stop comparing ourselves too much because ambition isn't unhealthy and the ambition and drive to succeed is not unhealthy. The challenges it become when it becomes out of balance because ambition drives innovation and progress. And h how do we help people distinguish between the healthy striving for success and the healthy striving to get ahead and grow and develop and do more? Yeah, you may acquire things as you go but it could be healthy from the psychologically corrosive side, which takes us down.

Oscar Trelles: You can do well while doing good. That's definitely one of the things that I share with people that I work with. And again, it goes back to aligning your work with your purpose and finding what real success looks to money is always going to be about part of the equation because even if you build a conscious business or even in a nonprofit right there's still a monetary exchange that need to happen for that entity to continue existing right it's just

00:15:00

Oscar Trelles: How the world works but what is it that you're pursuing right are you optimizing for the maximum amount of money maximum amount of revenue or the maximum amount of impact right And it goes back to that h what is it at the core that would make you feel successful personally? What would fulfill your purpose in life? Rather than just pursuing numbers in the bank.

Richard Zwicky: And you know that corrosive side, it affects your family, it accepts it affects your friends, it affects your co-workers. You can create toxicity around you without realizing you're doing it. What steps do you see organizations taking to help mitigate those risks?

Oscar Trelles: That's a good one. I mean that's something I'm still doing research on. For example I'm coming back from a week of doing a version an addition of the research. Sorry I stumbled there.

Richard Zwicky: I'll ask it again if I could only remember the question. Okay. Hold on. Yeah. Yeah.

Oscar Trelles: You were asking about organizations and what they're doing

Richard Zwicky: No, no, I was just being silly. Oscar when you think about that and look at you step back and take the big picture and the organizations want to succeed. They want to drive and have staff be productive but how do they identify the toxicity and how do they identify where it becomes corrosive versus where it's productive and what steps can the organization take to help their team not go over the edge.

Oscar Trelles: That's a great question because I actually been exploring this on the B2B side of the business, I talked to a lot of leaders and sea level people at a few conferences last year and it's clear to me that all of them have tried some sort of wellness health practice like breath work or cold exposure which are things that I actually teach a lot of the people that come to me the problem is how those practices meet real life right so I just came back from a week of an immersive program that I run called the reverse aging challenge and in that program we teach a lot of these things but we put a lot of emphasis on the entry protocol on how these practices will actually meet real life once people leave the retreat because that's actually when the real work starts right how are they going to apply all these things that they learn the same doesn't occur with organizations there's a lot of perk based policies in terms of giving people free subscriptions for mental health apps or free hours of coaching, things like that. But there's nothing as far as I can tell in most organizations related to how the organization will actually support those practices once people return to work. And that's actually something that we are putting a lot of research on right now what would the entry protocol be for organizations and that works both at the individual level at the team level and at the leadership level

Richard Zwicky: And that's I mean I know from my own side having built an analytics platform to do a lot of the measurement around it. And it's key to understanding where the problem is, what it really is and how to resolve it because communications is the greatest source of stress in any organization and that stress builds into the burnout that we're chatting about. So if you can address it, we can help alleviate it. But actually trying to address it. You talk around it and basically we're talking about you and it's funny you mentioned when you were comment on social media in social media and to the world at large we wear a mask. We're performing someone. We need to help shift people back to being someone which that authenticity in public is something a lot of people hide. What do you think is the driver that's going to make that change? Because it's critical to people's happiness. Right.

Oscar Trelles: In a lot of the work that I do with individuals I see the transformation happen almost in front of me especially when you are a week for a whole week somewhere else. So sometimes it is necessary to put some distance from your work life to actually experience what regulation feels And regulation in the terms of your nervous system is what brings you a little bit back into your identity to being comfortable with your own self. So any kind of practices that will help you bring you back to baseline should be welcome.

00:20:00

Oscar Trelles: Because once you feel in your body what a regulated nervous system feels like then you start letting go of all these mask of all these things that you don't really need. I found a lot of solas in breath work like that's one of the things that I teach the most because it's the easiest way and the fastest way to achieve a regulated nervous system. And it percolates in all the other practices that I teach because you cannot go into a cold plunge for example without taking command of your breath and in that day when we're doing that the ice bat might be the challenge but tomorrow it could be having an argument with somebody at work or losing a client or somebody cutting you off in the highway right so to agency returning being able to choose how to act in front of a challenge versus just reacting visually is a sign that you are in a regulated state and that usually opens the door for being comfortable in your own skin and it's

Richard Zwicky: And that breath work is something when people learn it they can do it anywhere any time. Some people think they have to and it's free. Yes. And some people think that these processes are ongoing and they're going to be engaging forever. But there are a lot of tools and not just breath work, but others that really are daily practices we can all learn and use to our benefit and the benefit of those around us. Because we're not just helping heal ourselves, we're actually not inflicting pain on those around us when we go that down these paths, which often is overlooked. People look at in terms of I'm also improving the lives of those around me. Mhm.

Oscar Trelles: I mean I'm a systemic coach. So I look at u people's life as a whole, right? So a lot of the mistakes that entrepreneurs make, including myself at some point in the past was to think that my personal life is separate from my business life. That's a fallacy, right? Because if I am not aligned, if I am not center, I'm not grounded, then that will percolate into every single aspect of my life. And even then there's a hierarchy, right? Because I don't know about your upbringing, but coming from having been born and raised in Peru at an early age, h we are told that, family is the most important thing. And then when you have kids, you have to basically put yourself last. And if you don't, you're a bad person, So I think there's a similar version of that kind of education everywhere. But to your point, we don't realize that It's important that we take care of ourselves because if we don't, we cannot be the best parent and the best boss that we can be. It's like when you go on a plane and they tell you to put on your mask before you help somebody else. I love that analogy.

Richard Zwicky: It's one which a lot of people don't even stop to think about but when you do it's quite powerful. So what happens creatively to people when they take this time to manifest themselves and set aside the pressure for a brief period? What do what do they notice? I'm sorry. And what is the most immediate change and the people around them will notice that it's working?

Oscar Trelles: I mean we spend a lot of energy covering all these negative thoughts that We all have them. We all have different kinds of blocks. They can be related to our childhood. They can be related to past experiences with other people. They can be also related to our relationship with money. But we all have things to deal with unconsciously and they take energy. The moment you can point at what is it that is causing that block or holding you back that energy gets released and becomes available for other things like again to your point being creative or just noticing that you have actually time to nobody a lot of excuses that I get is I don't have time for that.

00:25:00

Oscar Trelles: Everybody has time for five minutes of breath work or five minutes of meditation or just turning the water to sort of warm in the shower. So it's not really a problem of a matter of time. It's a matter of u awareness.

Richard Zwicky: And we all go through moments of stress during the day and some are normal and just part of how we get through how the day evolves and a trigger of awareness that there's something that's a miss around us. It's sensory. It's in the environment. And others are inside of us. What are some practical ways that people can help identify for themselves which of these signals to pay attention to and deal with in the moment which they can just look at and go, I don't need to deal with this. It doesn't really matter.

Oscar Trelles: That's a great question actually because stress is part of life, And our body is actually designed to handle it in small doses. The problem is that we live in a world that has us cognitively overclocked but physiologically under challenge, right? So we kind of switch the way our ancestors lived. They were physically challenged but mentally not that I mean they were but not at the same rate as we are right. Our mind has to do so much and not so much. So there is something I call the observer mode and it has to do exactly with identifying when something is as important as it should be or not. Right? So this is actually in neuroscience or modern psychology called metacognition which is the ability to see yourself from the point of view of a third person and look at a situation right for whether it will be important or relevant five minutes from now an hour from now a week from now and in most cases it isn't right we tend to run in front of a circle ful situation because we don't have any other resources, but when you stop to think about, going back to the being cut off in the highway, And how you react to that, just having that ability to look at the situation and give its proper hierarchy in the larger scheme of things is extremely helpful.

Richard Zwicky: It is. And we are running low on time today but people who want to learn more about the breathing flame and how to reach out to you and learn more, how can they go about that? Yeah.

Oscar Trelles: I mean you can go to the website breatheenflame.com. We are also on social media and you can learn more about the programs that we run either for one-on-one coaching for entrepreneurs or our retreats that we're doing now with the reverse engineer.

Richard Zwicky: And you can learn a lot about yourself going through these processes. But the fact that we can also learn about resetting our values and beliefs in a different way is key to success because it's all part of a Oscar thanks for joining us so much today on High on Healthy was a interesting discussion.

Oscar Trelles: Thank you. It was a pleasure to speak with you.

Richard Zwicky: It was great going through it all and thanks everybody for listening. I'm Richard Zwicky with High on Healthy and we'll be back again with you soon.