Episode 029: Nervous System Regulation and Sustainable Performance with Jason Alan Bohrer

Purpose Driven Success with Mo Salami

Episode 029: Nervous System Regulation and Sustainable Performance with Jason Alan Bohrer

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

And I got on my first call with my first coach, and I told him as much. I said, I think I'm going to need a new version of me for where I am going. Not more strategy, not another mastermind, more new software. I mean, I had every productivity app in the store. I had productivity apps to manage my productivity apps. My phone was like this constant string of therapy notifications to keep me on track. And he looked at me. He said, You don't have a productivity problem. You have a capacity problem. And you are right. You don't need another strategy. You need a regulated system. And that was the moment that divided my life into two areas. Before regulation and after regulation.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Welcome to purpose-driven success with Mo Salami, where real journeys, mindset shifts, and strategic insights meet purpose-driven success. I'm your host, Mo Salami. Every week we dive into real conversations with high-achieving founders and leaders, uncovering the mindset, strategies, and takeaways that help you define and achieve success on your own terms. Welcome to another episode of Purpose-Driven Success. We have an amazing guest this week. Jason Bora is a regulation coach, keynote speaker, and author of Resilient, the seven-pillar system for peak performance on demand. His work helps high-performing entrepreneurs, leaders, and professionals access greater clarity, capacity, resilience, and purpose under pressure. Resilient was born from a 12-month personal odyssey where Jason found himself building a business, raising a young family, and trying to create a bigger life from a collapsing internal system. What began as a search for more discipline became a deeper realization. High performers do not usually need more pressure, they need more capacity. Today, Jason teaches a regulation-first approach to performance, and that's rooted in the belief that peak performance doesn't start with discipline, it starts with regulation. Jason Bora, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome.

SPEAKER_03 2:32

Thank you so much. It was a fantastic intro. I'm really happy to be here.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

So, Jason, before you stepped into this work, how did you personally define high performance? External output.

SPEAKER_03 3:11

It was only once I was regulated enough within my own skin that I felt safe enough to approach more. Under pressure, something interesting happens within our system. Your mind begins to reallocate all its resources towards survival. When I got here, you know, I wanted more. I wanted more external output. Because I thought if I can just do more, certainly everything I'm looking for will come to me. But that was the miss. Well, I know that high performers, entrepreneurs, owners, founders, executives, we tend to try to solve internal problems with more external effort.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

If you thought high performance equals external output, what did you think was the reason that people would succeed and fail? If that was your worldview at the time.

SPEAKER_03 4:36

Once I started looking at solving the internal problem first, it divided my life into two eras, before regulation and after regulation. And when I focused inward on regulation, all of a sudden, I'm getting more done on a Monday between eight and nine than I used to in an entire week. And it feels just natural. It feels effortless. My own peak performance became inevitable once I started focusing on regulation first. Going through that 12-month Odyssey, right? Like all the things I'd been conditioned my whole life to believe, it turned out a lot of the opposites were very true for the things I wanted. It was about solving the internal problems first. Again, not a capability problem, a capacity problem. Regulation is what restores that capacity. And so when you look at these folks who are elite performers, you'll note that it looks, seems, and appears very natural.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

At what point did you relate to stress, pressure, overload? What was that point when you thought what if high performance did not equal more?

SPEAKER_03 5:57

It was this little voice that simply said the problem is you. Not your calendar, not the season of life you're in, but you. Your constant bracing, your avoidance loops, your insistence that rest has to be earned. And at that moment, I realized that I was resisting that whole concept to my core, like the cellular level, I was like, no, that can't be true. Because if the problem was me, I couldn't blame the season of life I was in, I couldn't blame the economy, I couldn't blame the fact that Mercury was in retrograde, which honestly was my backup plan. It was me. But that blade had two edges. Because if the problem was me, that's actually really great news because that means the solution is also me. And that's something that I can control. And at that moment I just decided I cannot survive another year like the one I've been surviving. And I got on my first call with my first coach, and I told him as much. I said, I think I'm going to need a new version of me for where I am going. Not more strategy, not another mastermind, more new software. I mean, I had every productivity app in the store. I had productivity apps to manage my productivity apps. My phone was like this constant string of therapy notifications to keep me on track. And he looked at me. He didn't laugh. He said something that changed everything. He said, You don't have a productivity problem. You have a capacity problem. And you are right. You don't need another strategy. You don't need more strategy. You don't need more anything. You need a regulated system. And that was the moment that divided my life into two eras, uh before regulation and after regulation. And that was the start of my 12-month Odyssey.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

How would we do like a one-line definition of a capacity problem and also regulation? So your coach said you have a capacity problem and the answer is regulation. So what's a one-line definition of both of those? And then if we could step into your 12-month Odyssey, which I know is pretty fascinating as well.

SPEAKER_03 8:32

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So a productivity problem means the system works, but the structure needs improvement. Maybe you need a better calendar, a clearer path, better priorities, better delegation, better systems. A capacity problem is different. A capacity problem means the system itself is overloaded. And this is a common misconception. Most high performers think they're overloaded because they have too much to do. In reality, under pressure, under overwhelm, the part of your brain responsible for all the executive functions goes partially offline. So you may know exactly what to do, but you just don't have the internal bandwidth to do it cleanly. Your system is moving into a survival mode. You lose range, and all of a sudden you're just focused on that saber-toothed tiger you perceive to be running towards you. So you sit down to answer an email, and your chest tightens, you look at your calendar and you feel dread. You know the next step, but everybody or everything in your body is resisting it. That's not productivity, that's capacity. And that danger is that high performers often try to solve these capacity problems with more productivity tools. They solve an internal issue with more external effort. They add another app, another routine, another planner, another strategy. But if your nervous system is already dysregulated, more structure simply feels like more pressure, more opportunities, even where they're good, feels like an additional thing that you have to devote your energy to, and you don't feel safe enough to do it. So capacity has to be restored first. Then those productivity tools can actually serve you. If you want the one line, productivity is about organizing your output.

SPEAKER_02 10:22

Capacity is about restoring the system producing the output. And then how about your 12-month Odyssey?

SPEAKER_03 10:39

That was the season where I realized I could not build a bigger life from a collapsing internal system. And when I look back now, it feels obvious the system was collapsing. I had just performed the trifecta that most folks avoid with good reason. And you were touching on it at the top of this call. I had just left my W-2, I had started a new business, and I had a newborn at home while raising a toddler. I had really stacked almost every major pressure point at once. And I was trying to become the next version of myself while my nervous system was already running a red line. And from the outside, it looked like ambition. I was executing, deals were moving, the calendar was full, the ambition was high. But internally, I was eroding. I was fractured. I kept thinking I needed more discipline, more focus, more strategy, more intensity. But the deeper truth was there was an internal problem that I was avoiding. And I had a capacity problem. And that year became the lived laboratory for resilience. Every pillar came from that journey: regulate, awareness, alignment, action, architecture, amplification, authenticity. It wasn't theory, it was the architecture I had to build in order to become someone who could hold the life I was trying to create to be the person I was aspiring to be, so I could do the things I really came here to do. And that whole manuscript frames the Odyssey. And it was really that stacked, simultaneous season of pressure applied indiscriminately everywhere that led me to where I am. And it's really how this was all born. Resilient was born when I realized I could not build a bigger life from a collapsing system.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

So you just stepped into your seven-part system. So with resilient, yeah. What's the overarching outcome once you've done the seven pillars? What's the overarching outcome? And then let's dive into pillar number one.

SPEAKER_03 13:04

Resilience is the ability to recover in return, to simply keep going. The person you are cannot continue to leak energy into performance, into falsehoods, into mistruths. So we start building the unshakable foundation of authenticity. That is pillar seven, where you are deeply seated and grounded in the truth of who you are. Because at that point, everything you do is simply a natural expression of you. You aren't leaking energy. These things are natural, it feels effortless. From that point, you can become someone who is truly resilient because you know and understand the things you are, how you respond, the way you do things, your true design, the biology of who you are. Once you have that infrastructure of authenticity and the resilience that is built on top of that, that bedrock, then peak performance on demand becomes inevitable. But I mean there are seven pillars. And the first pillar is regulation. And that's because regulation is the hinge. You can't begin to approach the other pillars awareness, alignment, action, architecture, amplification, authenticity until you feel safe enough in your own skin to approach those things. And that's why peak performance more, more output, the thing you came here thinking you needed begins with regulation. Because it's only once you've restored that capacity that you can begin to feel that safety, restore clarity that builds on capacity. Now the person you want to be, and the things you want to do, now you feel safe enough to approach it.

SPEAKER_00 15:36

Is that a good summary?

SPEAKER_03 15:37

Yeah, that's a great summary. Because your nervous system is your operating system. And that was a very powerful conversation I had with my uh coach during the moment I realized I couldn't live like this anymore. I need a new operating system. And a lot of high performers are trying to access elite performance on an operating system that hasn't yet been updated. Your nervous system being your operating system, it governs a lot of very important functions. It governs perception, emotion, attention, recovery. And if that's compromised, you expect it to run at full speed, but it doesn't. That's where we get a lot of the the should, the could, the would in our life. There's all this stuff I I know I should do, I would like to do, but I just don't feel like doing it anymore. I know exactly what I want to do, but I don't know how. Chronic pressure, it distorts you. Under pressure, when you're in a dysregulated state, your perception narrows, time horizons shortened, options shrink. You start scanning for threat instead of possibility. And this is all biological. Under overwhelm, under pressure, we're scanning for threats and we're isolating threats, but we're not looking for opportunity. And that becomes a self-serving biological cycle because we keep reiterating to our system that we are not safe. And that continues to feed what we see and we believe. Again, your nervous system governs perception, attention, and recovery. The key is to regulate your system to feel safe again. And at that point, you stop searching for threat and you begin to see options.

SPEAKER_00 18:27

You say that performance was state dependent. And if so, what does that mean in real world terms?

SPEAKER_03 18:35

So performance is state dependent. So when you're operating from a dysregulated state, everything feels urgent, simple things feel heavy, uh, your patience is razor thin, your body is looking for an excuse to get upset, you're looking for something to react to. And that's because you're slipping into a survival state. But when you regulate your nervous system again, when you release and direct the pressure, when you show yourself that you are safe to move from exactly where you are and exactly as you are, now you are expanding your peripheral vision. You are expanding your range, and you begin to see that there are so many options available to you that previously were not. At that point, these things become natural. The things you want to look at and approach and do, it starts to feel engaging and obvious in contrast to heavy, like another thing that you have to keep track of, another threat that you are going to have to address once one is able to regulate themselves internally through their nervous system, does it actually help them to realize that Pareto principle, here are the 80% of things to take off my table.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

Does the regulated nervous system give an external vision and clarity because you're just getting rid of what's not?

SPEAKER_03 20:11

Absolutely. Safety restores clarity, clarity restores capacity, and safety begins with regulation. Regulation is the ability to biologically reset your system in a way that you flush out this undue pressure, you point and acutely give purpose to the pressure that remains, and then you're able to engage once again. It's a very simple throughput line uh safety restores clarity and clarity restores capacity. These things that you thought, meaning everything, were so important, you're able to see clearly again. And that's why you know we start with pillar one in regulation. And pillar two is awareness, because once your body is safe to operate again, once you understand that your body is safe to operate again, once you feel that you are safe to operate from where you are, exactly as you are, that's where awareness begins. And that's when you start to see things very differently. Again, your nervous system controls perception. And so by regulating your nervous system, resetting your nervous system, putting your nervous system in a regulated state, you're able to see clearly again. And that's where you start with awareness. Your performance ceiling will never rise higher than your recovery floor. And this is important for us to understand when we are looking at the mechanics of performance, because that's another misconception we have. We think this is surely mindset that some of this stuff is downright mystical. It's mechanical. And so by understanding the framework that I call the rhythm of performance, where we begin to approach everything as a waveform, that allows us to see things differently. It changes our perception. Because when you understand when the wave compresses, The system narrows. Quite simply, when we stop recovering, that's when we see the wave begin to compress. That compression is perceptual narrowing. And that perceptual narrowing is what we experience as overwhelm. That's the sensation we call it. And it's quite simply this. If you expect to perform at this level, in your recovery, your regulation needs to take you deeper. By adding depth, you create height.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

I guess you're instructing to really be aware of what your fight and flight response is doing, what your rest and relaxation is doing, and to sort of play it like an instrument, depending on your needs for that moment, is that a fair point?

SPEAKER_03 22:49

It is a fair point. And I love the whole thought. I mean, obviously, a bit of a background in music here. I love the idea of playing it like an instrument because your body is a very fine tuned one and it's meant to perform at its best, but we have to understand how to care for it. What we aspire to do is to make certain that we can operate within the pressure and ensure that the pressure is not controlling us. But another powerful aspect of it is beginning to learn and understand what those signals are, right? Where in your day does your own performance begin to break down? Because once you can start to isolate that, then you can start to understand where implementing these practices is a more proactive move to make your day just more available to you, to make yourself more available to the life that is already calling you. What's a system to regulate your nervous system over time? And we go deep in this on pillar one. It's about implementing the right regulation stacks into your routine that ensure you are consistently allowing yourself to be available to the life that is already calling you. In the book, I go deep in this with our clients, it's where we start to see a lot of really meaningful change happen. And that is ensuring that at least I prefer twice a week. I do my own regulation of stacks often. But at the very baseline, once a week, you are devoting the right time to regulate across a physical, mental, emotional, and energetic level. And that is different for most people. And that is part of the work we do is understanding what you go to to ensure that all four quadrants are met in a way that leaves your body regulated and available to you. For instance, I use contrast therapy, I use meditation, I use soma breath, and then uh 15 minutes of aimless play of some variety. I'd love to play guitar. We just uh got a new piano in the house. And so that is, you know, my four stack. And I do it often. I love the kind of bulletproof and sensation I feel each time I do it. I love how available I feel. I love how engaged and effortless my life looks anytime I do that. And that's what I found with the clients I work with. And so that's why, as part of pillar one, it's about building the infrastructure of regulation practices that fit in your life. Where am I gonna find the time to do that? How it that's just a lot of people write it off. I was there too. Because when I first was approached with the idea of like, hey, find 60 minutes once a week to do this, I said, never gonna happen. I don't have time. I barely have time to make lunch, I don't have time to, you know, do a lot of things. But I found the more I made time to regulate and invest in my regulation practice, the more time I had available to me.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

Reminds me of language learning. Whereas I speak a bunch of languages, and one thing that I always say when people ask is figure out what you do already, that you love to do, and then input some aspect of language learning into what you do already. So, for example, you love to search for things on YouTube, how-to videos, so to speak. Yeah, okay, great. If that's something you do, make sure there's subtitles there or switch to language if you're advanced. At that token, how would someone put regulation practice into what they do? What are the what are some of their examples of how they would do that?

SPEAKER_03 26:55

Yeah, no, I love that question. I love the language learning. It's about how do you can make it part of the life that you're already living, right? And I think you know, that aimless play one for me was man, that was one of the hardest questions I've ever been asked. So, you know, that for me is the emotional component of the four, right? Physical, mental, emotional, and energetic. For emotional, I it's just one of the big things that we teach within pillar one is that regulation begins where expectation ends. Expectations, they will rob your system of the ability to fully regulate because you're bracing for an outcome, good or bad, either way. And so when I came to this idea of aimless play, it was interesting. My first coach, he came to me and he said, I want you to invest in some aimless play. And I said, What is that? He said, It's something you do that is not attached to an outcome. I said, There is nothing in my life that I'm not doing for an outcome. And so for me, one of those avenues has always been music. If I've ever wanted to connect to source, the you know, the essence of all creation, you I just sit down with a musical instrument and it just flows through me. It speaks to me. And I thought, okay, I'm gonna start there. And so for me, that was it. I had to isolate things that I was already in love with that allowed me to return to this whole concept of aimless play. And that was one of those instances where I built something that was already part of my life into something that was now building the life that I wanted. I gave myself permission to do that. That's a big part of how we build your regulation stack. We find the things that are already a part of your life and we make it work with you, not against you. I mean, that's all part of the course of what we're doing here is we're finding ways to make you feel safe in the life that's already calling you. And that's that's a big part of it. What is it that you're already doing? What is it you're already leaning towards? What is it you're interested to explore? Let's start there. And it goes a long way.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

We mentioned before doing hundreds of tasks to paraphrase. How do high performers unintentionally train dysregulation into their life? How do they tend to do that?

SPEAKER_03 29:27

How do they train dysregulation into their life? And I like that. I think it's by living someone else's design. We see things all the time that tell us what we should be doing, what we could be doing, what we're not doing. And I think we oftentimes allow that to feed this misconception that we need to solve internal problems with external effort. It in and of itself, again, going back to the physical component of this, it creates its own sort of dopamine addiction because you do these things and it feels like progress, it feels like it's taking you where you want to go, but in reality, it it is prompting more overwhelm. And I talk about this often. The idea that not all rest is recovery. I mean, scrolling is not recovery, numbing is not recovery. These things, and one of the ways you can start to evaluate this is does it leave you feeling distracted or more available as the practical tool for what you're doing? And that's something that you can also apply. And this is something I work with my clients on: is where are you applying that same misconception in the things that you believe are linked to productivity, to getting you closer to this idea of where you want to go instead of being right here? Are these things that you're doing making you feel more available, or are they making you feel more distracted? Because your body always knows, your body will always tell you the truth. And the more we learn to regulate, to feel safe within our body, the more we can learn to trust that biological response that our body is already giving us. So as you go down the road of more and the hundred things you think you have to do, start to ask yourself is this making me feel more available or more distracted? Because I know on any given day, on any given list I have, especially before I came to this system, I would go through the list and I would be done with a fair amount of it. I mean, does the list ever really end? And I would feel like I haven't even moved the needle. I mean, like, I've been working all day, I'm exhausted, I'm depleted, but I feel distracted.

SPEAKER_02 32:12

Yeah. Is there another layer, Jason?

SPEAKER_00 32:15

Because I'm wondering if you have a list and then at the tail end of the list, you're wondering, do I feel more available? Is there another layer of do I feel like I've been productive here? Do I feel like I've gotten my three main things done for the day? There you go. So productivity hacks. Is there that layer as well to consider for the high performer?

SPEAKER_03 32:39

Well, it's the causal chain. The hidden cause that most are not aware of is you are overwhelmed because of your avoidance. And your avoidance is the product of dysregulation. You avoid the things you know will make you feel better that need to be done because you don't feel safe enough to approach them. And the more you avoid these things, the more overwhelmed you feel. Because you know on that list you've got in front of you, yeah, you did a hundred things, but you probably didn't do the two, maybe even one thing that you really needed to handle because you were in a dysregulated state and you didn't feel safe enough to approach it. That's the causal chain that I lived, that I see consistently is overwhelm driven by avoidance, driven by dysregulation.

SPEAKER_02 33:35

Overwhelm, avoidance, dysregulation.

SPEAKER_00 33:38

Your book resilient, yeah, the seven pillar system for peak performance on demand. Yeah, probably the one thing, you know, what's that one thing to get done? And then possibly eat that frog, you know, getting that one thing. These are leaning into productivity hacks again, and it's so great because I'm thinking of the overachiever, the peak performer, the that results-driven person that gets results, yeah, but they're not regulated. So I really want to drive this point home one more time. You're speaking to that person, imagine uh an octopus with all these different things going on, there's so many hands around them, and and metaphorically, and all these tasks and deadlines, and all these things they're probably not delegating. That would be what does and then think of the opposite. What does a regulated nervous system look like for someone who's ambitious, they're a high performer, they're getting the results, and their nervous system is regulated. What does that nirvana look like?

SPEAKER_03 34:53

You have a deeply seated understanding and access to your purpose. You see, purpose requires access to truth, but overwhelm, driven by avoidance, driven by dysregulation, that narrows perception. When you're overwhelmed, your system is not asking, What am I here to do? It's asking, How do I survive the next demand? How do I react to, not respond to, the next threat? And that's a completely different operating state than the kind of nirvana that you were speaking to that I experience often, that my clients experience consistently. In overwhelm, your world gets smaller, you become reactive, you start making decisions from pressure, from fear, from guilt and shame and urgency. And over time that creates a disconnection, not because you don't have a purpose, but because you can't hear it through the noise of survival. And it's very important to understand, even more impactful to feel that you're not broken, you're simply overloaded. And that's why regulation is the hinge, it's the doorway to all you aspire to do and be. When the system regulates, perception widens again. You see options, you can tell the truth, you can approach the truth, you can feel what's aligned and and what isn't, and you can separate what is urgent, all those things that you've got on your list, uh from what is actually important. But purpose doesn't usually arrive as a lightning bolt, but very often it returns softly when the system finally feels safe enough to be honest. Purpose is very hard to hear when your system is in survival, but there is that other path, the other side of what I call the divide. Every high performer reaches the divide. On one side, you've got avoidance, overwhelm, burnout, survival, collapse, and on the other side of that divide is the path that you know is there, but no one's taught you to walk until now. That feels natural, that feels organic, that feels inevitable, that it feels authentic, and it's powerful, and it's a way to walk with an energy that you don't have to fight for anymore because it is simply a byproduct of who you are. That's the kind of elite performance that you're looking for, and it's far more accessible to you than a lot of us really imagined it was. And that's the hinge. That starts with regulation. Peak performance does not start with more discipline, it starts with regulation.

SPEAKER_00 38:36

And if someone's listening to this and they're thinking, I get it, I get it, but I'd love to get more fluent in the language of regulation and they want to work with you. How do we find out more about you?

SPEAKER_03 38:51

Absolutely. Jason Allenborber.com, alternatively, and much easier to spell. Seven pillarsystem.com. You said something interesting earlier about performance hacks, and I think that's something that I went through so many performance hacks. And when it came time to translate this system, I didn't want to build another performance hack. I wanted to build a pillar-based system. This thing is repeatable, it's executable, it's approachable. If this is speaking to the season of life that you're in, if you're going through overwhelm, sevenpillarsystem.com. There's a few ways for us to continue the conversation. There's, of course, the book. There is the one-on-one coaching that I offer entrepreneurs, high performers, uh, owners, founders, executives. And then there are the workshops that I give for teams to access the version of themselves they know is already there, and really make that a part of their lived experience, more so than just this thought of, you know, what you could be. So sevenpillarsystem.com. All the ways that we can work together and continue this conversation, all the ways that you can continue to introduce yourself to the concepts of nervous system regulation are there for you.

SPEAKER_00 40:15

It's outstanding. Jason, thank you so much for your shares today, your wisdom. Thank you so much for that, and uh have an amazing uh rest of today. You as well. Thank you so much for having me. Awesome ciao. Thank you for listening to Purpose Driven Success with Most Allow Me. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review. It's one of the best ways to help others discover the show. You can find links and resources and show notes at our website. And if today's episode inspired you, check out one of our other insight-filled, value-packed episodes. Next week we'll have another amazing guest, so stay tuned for even more real stories and actionable insights. Work on your mindset, work on your skill set, and always move in the direction of the result you want before you see the result you want. And until next time, do the best you can consistently. Ciao!