#36 Optimizing Neurotransmitters and Your Emotional Bandwidth for Better Decision Making with Ryan Munsey

Ryan Munsey (0:00)

95% of our decisions are made based on how we feel in any given moment. You know, we have the limbic system, and then we have the higher, the more evolved prefrontal cortex. You know, the limbic system is what I kind of equate to being the ego-driven knee-jerk reaction teenager.

When HRV is down, when we spend too much time in that sympathetic state, our decision-making processes are compromised, and our emotional bandwidth shrinks. That's the big one. If I can't be me, unless I take a GABA supplement all the time, then I've got to audit my lifestyle. I've got to look at what I'm doing. I've got to make changes to how I'm interacting with the world.

Siim Land (0:44)

Body, mind, empowerment.

SPEAKER_3 (0:46)

Get stronger, faster, smarter, quicker, friendlier, more helpful, more driven.

Siim Land (0:52)

Everything the body needs.

SPEAKER_3 (0:54)

Control your mind.

Siim Land (0:57)

Welcome to the Body, Mind Empowerment Podcast. I'm your host Siim Land. And today our guest is Ryan Munsey. And he's a podcaster and author, a speaker and a high performance coach.

Ryan, I want to welcome you to the show. And I'm so glad that you could make it here.

Ryan Munsey (1:12)

I'm so glad we could do this too. Thanks for having me, Siim.

Siim Land (1:15)

So correct me if I'm wrong, but you actually had your birthday yesterday. Am I right?

Ryan Munsey (1:21)

You are correct.

Siim Land (1:23)

Congratulations, happy birthday.

Ryan Munsey (1:25)

Thank you, sir. I appreciate that.

Siim Land (1:28)

I hope you're not having some sort of a hangover or something.

Ryan Munsey (1:32)

No, no hangover at all. Actually, I don't drink, so you don't have to worry about that. But I'm really fortunate we had a great celebration. My wife is an amazing person and she hooked us up with tickets to see, my favorite singer, Bruce Springsteen, who happens to be performing on Broadway in New York City right now. So we got to see probably the most amazing performance that he's ever done on Tuesday night. And we actually flew home yesterday. So if I have any negative health or performance things going on today, it would be because I spent the entire day yesterday on an airplane.

Siim Land (2:16)

Well, that kind of wipes you out completely, you know. It does.

Ryan Munsey (2:20)

It does. They had a they actually had a blizzard big storm in New York, and we were stuck on the runway for about three hours yesterday trying to get out of there.

So yeah, but it was it was worth every minute for that experience.

Siim Land (2:33)

So awesome. We also had like some sort of a small blizzard in here, Estonia as well. You thought it was going to melt off and spring as well as knocking on the door. But guess not.

Winter is still here.

Ryan Munsey (2:43)

Winter is here. We had a little tease of it for about a week, week and a half, and then right back to winter.

Siim Land (2:49)

Awesome, but can you give maybe a short overview for the people about who you are and where you are in your life right now?

Ryan Munsey (2:59)

Yeah, so, I mean, like you said, yesterday was my birthday, I just turned 34

It's, you know, I've spent a lot of time this week reflecting, so I'm really blessed, really fortunate to have the life that I have and to be able to have done a lot of the things that I've done and to have the future ahead that, you know, I have tried to create and along with, you know, the people who have been in my life and helped me get to this point.

I grew up playing sports my entire life.

I played my sports were basketball and soccer. I was not good enough to play in college. When I got there, I stopped playing sports and had to fill that kind of competitive void with something. And for me, that became the weight room. I fell in love with lifting weights. My best friend from high school was actually a year behind me at college, and he was on the track team. We were at a really big school here in the US, Clemson University, and some of the guys on the track team there ended up playing in the NFL. A few of them were sprinters in the Olympics. First hand, I got to experience how to train, how to run. That's where I really learned the biomechanics of performance and performance training. And then the more I learned about nutrition, the way we eat, the more I became obsessed and fascinated by that. I ended up changing my major and majored in food science and human nutrition. This was a really big time of discovery for me, and that's where I fell in love with this idea that we can change the way we eat, change the way we train to look differently, perform differently, feel differently, have better health. I was still the only male in my family on my father's side who was not diabetic. So that was a big thing for me to try to figure out everything that was involved with carbohydrate metabolism and blood sugar and insulin and how that impacted weight management. And of course, got into bodybuilding and that led me to modeling so there's the whole aesthetic and body fat body composition side of that. So after college, I had the opportunity to move to New York City. I was a fitness model for a little less than a year. That wasn't the life that I thought it was going to be. I was hoping that it would lead to this platform from which I could educate people and help people learn all of the things that we were not being taught in regards to how to properly feed and fuel ourselves.