Managing nerves, anxiety, and burnout | Jonny Miller (Nervous System Mastery)

**Jonny Miller** (0:00)
I have this idea that I call the feather-brick-dump truck phenomenon.
And basically what that means is when we are showing early signs of burnout, our body will give us feedback, usually in subtle ways in the beginning. So the feather might be waking up in the morning and feeling a little bit tired, a little bit maybe a little bit exhausted. The brick, maybe you ignore that or you don't notice it, and then three or four weeks later, you have like a fight with someone or an argument, or you just feel frustrated and terrible and you lose your cool. And then maybe the dump truck is a month later or even a year later, there's like a full-blown health crisis or you develop type 2 diabetes, or there's a whole range of things or maybe you get fired. Like ideally, you want to notice when it's the feather and then make adjustments or shift then and not have to wait until you experience the full-blown pain of the dump truck, which unfortunately is what happens to a lot of people, especially when they experience burnout for the first time.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (1:02)
Today, my guest is Jonny Miller. Jonny teaches courses and does one-on-one coaching with tech professionals, helping them with something he calls Nervous System Mastery, which is essentially a set of tools and techniques for cultivating calm, upgrading your resilience and increasing your aliveness. If you can get better at dealing with stressful situations, avoiding burnout, and being more confident in meetings and big presentations, it becomes a superpower and a huge advantage in both business and in life. I actually read a post by Jonny about a year ago, and it totally changed the way that I think about nervousness and stress, and I still apply many of his lessons today. In our conversation, we dive deep into Jonny's key insights. We talk about why the best way to stay calm in stressful situations is to focus on the state of your body and not your mind. How to create calm and confidence by changing the state of your body through breath.
Jonny shares a bunch of very specific breathing exercises for creating calm and also for creating energy that we actually try out on the podcast. We also get into a bunch of advice for how to tell if you're seeing early signs of burnout, how to release emotional debt that you may be feeling. Also why feeling the feels gives you a competitive advantage in business. Also a practice called APE, which reminds you to focus on your awareness, your posture, and your emotions that have started practicing ever since our chat. And so much more. If you enjoy this chat, definitely check out Jonny's full course at nsmastery.com/lenny. If you use that URL, you actually get $250 off the course. With that, I bring you Jonny Miller after a short word from our sponsors.
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Jonny, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.