The Pressure Test: Turn the pressure you carry into power | DFS 416

Welcome to Destined for Success. I'm your

host Jennifer Takagi, and my next guest is a friend of mine.

We met on the Influencers Cruise, and I'm so happy to have

Shyrose Gulemani here with me today to talk about pressure.

And her title Is the pressure test turn the pressure you carry

into power? Shay Rose, it is so good to see you. It

is so good to see you, Jennifer, and I'm so

happy to be here with you, having this conversation on

pressure.

I know, and we just met in May on the

Influencers Cruise, and so it's so fun when I actually meet

somebody in person initially, and then in the Zoom box versus

the other way around. But I'll take in person all the time, and

Zoom makes me happy because I get to stay connected. So thanks

for being here today.

Thank you for having me.

Um, I want to know a little bit about how you

got on this path of pressure and stress, because you know I'm

just assuming that the pressure is tied to the stress of it all.

How you got into this, and how you got to know what you know.

Yeah, well, I can honestly say that over three

decades of living through education, entrepreneurship, and

business leadership, I had lived pressure inside out. And so,

when I closed my last cafe a few years back, I wanted to share

and amplify my message that pressure doesn't have to break

you; that pressure can actually build you. And and so my

philosophy with my clients and when and my speaking engagements

is how to help in how to help how to help high performers and

executives and leaders take that pressure that they carry and

transform it into their leadership power.

Oh my gosh, I love that! And when we talk

about leadership, that is, it should always be a hot topic,

right? That should never be a topic that like goes to the back

burner. But the one thing that was a big learning lesson for me

was the difference between a leader and a manager, and a

manager manages tasks, and a leader leads people, and

managing tasks and leading people are very very different.

But that leadership position, whether it's in title or just in

the work that you do, how you show up, is incredibly powerful.

But it does create an immense amount of pressure. So, what

what do we do with that pressure that we carry? I'm like, I'm

lifting my shoulders because I'm like, oh, what do we do with

that?

You're lifting your shoulders because

you know that that's where some of that pressure lives, right?

It's the tension that we feel. But to answer your question more

directly, you know, with the clients I work with, I see this

all the time. On the outside, these incredible executives and

CEOs are very, very polished. They're very capable. They're

they're in control. They're somebody that everyone else goes

to, whether it's their teams, their colleagues, their family.

They're the go-to person, and so they end up carrying a lot of

pressure, a lot of people. They're doing it really well,

but one thing that they're ignoring, and which is what

pressure costs them, is that they forget to recognize when

that pressure is hitting them, and they don't take the the

necessary step to rest, recover, and recalibrate. And when you do

that, you teach your nervous system that we're not always in

threat mode; that we don't always have to fight, flight, or

freeze; that we can actually enjoy what we're doing. That we

are soothed enough that we can lead clearly. We can lead

confidently. But that can't happen when our reactive brain

is taken over. And that's what happens when leaders are under

stress. Their their body floods with cortisol and adrenaline,

and the reactive brain takes over and kicks out the thinking

brain out of the room, and it's only once we self-regulate that

nervous system is that thinking brain able to come back online

and able to then be steady and grounded, so that clear

decisions are made, not reactive decisions.

I love it, and one of the things that used to

trip me up a lot when I was in corporate and government work

was everything felt life or death, and it took many years to

get to the point that. Many of the things I did were not life

or death, and if it came up to life or death, 911 needed to be

called because we were not in the medical profession, and so

you gotta just call 911, and so. But I mean, I felt it a lot, and

I know other good leaders take everything very seriously, and

so then we end up carrying that a lot. So as we're carrying

that, what do we do with it? I love it-the rest, recover, and

recalibrate. But are you going to tell us how we do that?

Sure. Yeah, and you know the reason good

leaders carry a lot is because they care. Yes, they are very

responsible. They are very capable, right? But in that

capability and the load of responsibility that they carry,

they were never meant to be perfect, and that's the undue

pressure that we put on ourselves. That's the narrative

we tell ourselves. We have to be seen as continuously going,

pushing harder, pushing through, but do we? We don't, right? We

we really don't, and our bodies are made up to to take stress.

We we handle stress well. It's called the allostatic

load-that's when stressful moments happen-and our our

allostatic load takes that and and deals with it and shows us

solutions, and we perform and we move on. But our allostatic load

was never ever meant to just continue putting on and building

and building and caring more and more and more. At some point,

that pause, that recovery, that rest, that recalibration is

absolutely necessary, or we come crashing down, or what you know

leaders like to call and feeling burnout. Well, that burnout

didn't just come like that. That burnout was signaled through our

thinking brain many times because pressure starts in our

body first. It takes residence here, and when you you know when

we started this podcast, you moved your shoulders, and that's

one of the places you feel the tension. You get a headache. You

become irritable. You are short on your responses, your patience

is thin. Those are all signs that you are under pressure

points, and if we don't step back, take a pause, name it. So

pause, name, and choose a better next step. We're not going to be

able to be our best resource self, and if we cannot come to

that state of calm and groundfulness and mindfulness,

then our teams are going to feel a very panic state. Calm is

contagious, but so is panic, right? And so choose calm. And

so, what I would tell leaders when you are feeling like

everything is a 911 call, you know, for the work that you're

doing, take a breath, pause, feel the feel the floor beneath

your feet. Think about the moment. Get yourself grounded.

Let your nervous system know that you're not in threat mode.

That everything is okay. This is not a danger. And once you do

that, the clarity comes back on. Your thinking brain starts to

work again, and then you're making some good decisions.

I love this. Such a fun topic. I remember I

had a boss that was very reactive. He wasn't mean by any

stretch of the imagination, but he was very reactive and very

loud. And our chief counsel, legal counsel, was very reactive

and very loud, and I shared the wall with him. My cubicle was

right next to his wall, and they would get in these big

conversations. And they both loved to get louder and louder

and louder. They weren't mad. They weren't upset. That was

just their way of communicating, and I found I would have to just

get up and walk away because their communication style had a

very negative effect on me. And when he left, the next

supervisor that came in was very quiet, very calm, never raised

his voice, and it was like, wow! Like I'm, I'm feeling the

difference in the energy in the air. So it was a very

interesting learning lesson for me for what all people really

feel around them. And when you say calm is contagious, but so

is panic. When I would hear those conversations, it would

get me riled up, whether I had anything to be riled up about or

not.

Yeah, no, it is being creating a state for

yourself and the team around you is so important because they

feed off that energy, like you called it. They know when when

you're calm and grounded, you build trust, right? You build

confidence. They look to you as the leader you are, and they

know that things are going to be okay no matter what challenges

are presented. You've got this, but when you act in a state of

panic, then they're unsure. They have self doubt. They have trust

issues with you and your ability to lead them, and that's where

things start falling apart.

My mom was going in to have surgery one

time, and her younger brother said, "You know, he's a good

doctor, but he's got quite a big old ego, and my mom goes, "I

don't want someone coming at me with a scalpel saying, 'I think

I can, I think I can.' And so that I just thought of that as

you were saying that that we want somebody cool, calm,

collected, and you know, let me lead you out of this. Like, let

me be the one to to show you the path and the way. So, so

important, and so many people are super easily triggered. I

guess I'll use that word triggered. So they go to that

panic mode, just like as a default. It is

because, like with any skill, this is this

comes and is built with practice, right? That resilience

that you show with every pressure point that you

experience, that resilience grows. What you pay attention to

grows. So when you pay attention to calm, to collective, to

confidence, to steadiness, that will grow, and and over over

time, you will find that resilience is how pressure

becomes your power. Without it, it's really hard for power to

for pressure to transform into power. It's the key thing is

resilience, and that resilience builds over time, and you need

to practice it, and you need to believe it. Right, a lot of

leaders think it's their fault that they're not good enough,

that they're not doing their job enough, they're not capable

enough. So they push harder, they do more, they produce, you

know, more results, but all that's doing is just adding onto

their allostatic load, and at some point it's going to come

crashing down, because resilience is not endurance,

right? If you keep doing that, then the endurance is is all is

the is the delay that happens before the crash comes, and so

you need to make sure that you are priming yourself for the

best result by knowing and being aware of what's happening to

you, because the mind and body work together, and when you're

not aware and you don't pay attention to it and you don't

listen to the signal, you know, and you don't walk away or take

some time away. There's this one thing that I tell my clients

that I've got to know really well over the years is that they

all need to do self love shots, and they need to do it three

times a day at the minimum. Right? What are these self love

shots? They could be something as simple as a two-minute pause,

going to the bathroom and then just taking a detour and just

taking a breath, or taking a five minutes and going outside

in the fresh air, picking up the call, picking up the phone and

calling a loved one. Right, eating chocolate, whatever it is

that is going to make your heart smile, and when your heart is

smiling, guess what? Your nervous system is happy. It's

regulated. It doesn't feel in threat, and the more you do

that, and the more that becomes a practice of your daily

routines, then when pressure hits, you're okay. It's not a

fight and flight mode or freeze, right? You're able to manage it.

You see it coming, and you're like, ah, I need to just pause.

I need to clear myself. And if you don't mind, I'd love to

share a story because this really happened when I was in a

cab in my cafe a few years back, and my crepe master didn't show

up, and I could see outside the window that there were customers

in line. We were about to open, and my staff was looking at me

for the answer. Right, and. I'm looping in my head. Is what do I

do now? What do I do now? What do I do now? But I knew that it

was going to be okay, even though I didn't know what was

going to be done. But I knew it was going to be okay. So I went

upstairs to my office and I grounded myself. I made a

decision in that moment that no matter whatever happened next, I

was going to be the calmest person in that cafe. I came

downstairs. I was steady. I put on an apron. I went behind the

counter, and I started making crepes for the first time in my

life. And what that did was it showed my cust my it showed my

team that I I had it under control that they could trust me

in my decision. They were calm because I stayed calm, and the

customer stayed happy because they got the crates they came

for. So, you know, sometimes with pressure, it doesn't wait

for certainty; it waits for action.

And when you take that action, it becomes the confidence that

you need to put it to go forward with it, and so I tell leaders:

don't let pressure define you; let it refine you, because when

you are aware of that pressure and you know how to navigate

within it, you're going to make good decisions. You're going to

be able to lead through it, and it's not going to break you.

It's going to build you.

I I find this such a fascinating conversation,

and I'm curious if you have any strategies for that person, I'm

sitting here. I'm trying to think of of how to how to phrase

this. That person who basically thrives in the chaos and the

panic, because you and I both know that's doing nothing but

creating havoc with their team, and a lot of times the customers

as well. I just last week heard of a an incident where the owner

kind of lost their mind a little bit and got very verbal, and the

customer turned to the person working with her and said, "If

this this is what it's going to be here, I'm not coming back.

Like I don't I don't want to be in this. But people who are in

that constant state of I'm going to call it agitation? Like, is

there any way to share in such a way that they will get it that

they're like causing the problems?

Yeah, you know, Jennifer, I wish there was

a simple recipe for this, right? You have pressure. This is what

you do. That would be amazing. But what what I found is

awareness is your first step. So one of the things I've created

is the pressure test, and I'm going to be gifting this to your

audience. But it's a it's an assessment with 25 questions

that identifies the pressure points because quite often we

are unaware of the areas where pressure is there. We are so

committed to what we do because we love it, because we care, we

hold so much responsibility because that's what we've always

done, that we forget that that there's a cost to that at some

point, and everyone's pressure points are different, right?

Some break easily, and some thrive and survive, right? And

what I think the key is for us to be aware of that, and once

that awareness is there, we are so more capable of of being able

to navigate that pressure, so that it serves us rather than

breaks us. And so, to your to your example, that person was

sounding like they're at their breaking point, right? And if

truth be told, if you were to coach them or have a

conversation with them, you would probably find that

pressure over time is already leaked into their health, their

relationships, and their performance. Because when I was

talking about pause, name, and choose, that strategy is not

just for now, but when we are continuously doing this, when we

are continuously being aware of our pressure and regulating our

nervous system so that it is thriving, it is happy, it is not

in threat mode. Then guess what? Our leadership power, our

performance, our relationships-all of that

becomes sustainable, because without being able to navigate

pressure, none of it is sustainable. It's going to come

to an end, you know. And so that's that's the magic. Create

awareness. Be know know and understand how our bodies and

our minds. Work together.

Oh my gosh, this has been so helpful. So it

will be in the show notes. But those of you who like want to

work ahead, it's www.pressurepoint.coach forward

slash assessment to get that assessment. Again, the link will

be in the show notes. But Shy Rose has been so awesome to see

you again, even if it's in a box and not in person. Do you have

any final words for our audience?

I think if there's one thing that I hear a

lot from high performers is that sometimes it's their fault and

it's not. Pressure is going to happen. It's inevitable. It's

part of our life, but what we don't have to do is is have it

take a take over, right? If we are aware of it, we can manage

it. We can carry it better, so that the weight we have doesn't

have to break us. It can make us stronger, and so that's my only

is know that you are stronger than the weight you're

carrying.

Oh my gosh, this has been so good! Thank you

so much for being here today.

You are so welcome. Thank you, Jennifer.

I'm Jennifer Takagi with Destin for Success,

and I look forward to connecting with you soon.