When pressure lands—on a pitch, in a boardroom, on a stage—most of us do one of two things: we either tighten up and try harder, or we freeze and hope the moment passes. Elle Ingalls, performance coach and creator of the Pressure‑Free Method, argues there’s a third way. Calm. Intentional. Deliberate. And repeatable.
In this episode of The Midgame Mindset, Elle walks Rich Bishop through how seemingly small stress triggers cascade into hours (sometimes a full day) of cognitive and physiological impairment. Her thesis is simple and urgent: pressure isn’t just an emotional state. It’s a biochemical event—and learning to interrupt it is the leadership skill no one is teaching.
Why this matters to growth leaders
Entrepreneurs and sales leaders live in the clutch. Deals hinge on five words. Investor meetings hinge on one slide. Hiring hinges on one interview. Elle’s work converts what often looks like temperament into technique. She reframes pressure as a “stress cycle” driven by two hormone floods: catecholamines (adrenaline) and glucocorticoids (cortisol). Left unchecked, these floods take hours to dissipate—up to nine hours in biological males and as much as 24 hours in biological females. That’s not fatigue. That’s impairment.
“Once we’ve released these hormones, we’re now in a state where anything can feel threatening,” Elle warns. “If nine hours, 24 hours is way too long, and once we’ve released these hormones, we’re now in a state where anything can feel threatening.”
Big ideas from the conversation
– Stress as biology, not willpower: Elle insists the familiar advice—”slow down” or “take a vacation”—misses the point. Time off can still leave you under hormonal influence. The active work is preventing the stress-trigger in the first place and learning how to interrupt the stress cycle when it begins.
– The Pressure‑Free Method is tactical: Elle didn’t invent a philosophy; she engineered tools. Her starting point was stagecraft—how conductors and performers manage backstage panic—and then translated that embodied practice into repeatable tech for leaders. “I built this little set of tools to always be calm backstage and always take the stage in a really confident and amazing way,” she says.
– Small physiological shifts change outcomes: Posture, breath, and abdominal relaxation are not metaphors. They’re triggers. Tight abs signal danger to the brain. Relaxed abs and an open chest signal safety. The effect is social: a high‑adrenaline leader repels people; a regulated leader attracts them.
– Leadership regulates rooms: Elle tells a story of a brokerage assistant who walked into a tense office and, by anchoring herself, calmed everyone around her. Leadership is contagious. So is panic.
Powerful examples and quotes
– “Pressure makes diamonds.” Elle’s curt rebuttal: “Diamonds are dead.” That line reframes a familiar motto into a moral: when you treat people like material to be compressed, you ignore the living cost of constant pressure.
– Tom Brady’s nap: Elle uses Brady’s pre‑Super Bowl nap as an example of elite performance that looks ordinary because the athlete preserved homeostasis. “Tom Brady was just doing a regular day…and now he’s here,” she says. The takeaway: mastery is often mundane preparation, not last‑minute hype.
– The runner who regained a scholarship: A high school runner stalled for weeks. After two sessions with Elle, he cut 38 seconds off his PR in one race—and another 18 seconds in the next. He then applied the tools to his ACT and improved his score. The lesson: performance tools generalize across contexts.
– Skin and the hidden cost of chronic pressure: Elle shares a personal transformation: 35 years of cracked eczema on her knuckles cleared in eight weeks after applying the Pressure‑Free practices. “If anybody would have said I can help you with your eczema, I would have laughed,” she admits. This is a visceral reminder that chronic stress shows up everywhere—often where we least expect it.
Practical takeaways you can use today
1) Interrupt your stress cycle early. Heat is the issue—once hormone floods begin, they take hours to leave. Short, intentional interventions matter.
2) Use the bubble technique. Imagine a protected bubble of energy around yourself to stop contagious panic. When it’s time to lead, expand the bubble deliberately—don’t overreach. Step into the moment from a grounded place.
3) Open the chest; relax the abs. These are quick, nonverbal cues that change your internal chemistry and the room’s response. When you’re open, people lean in.
4) Expand your zone. Don’t force yourself out of your comfort zone. Expand it and step. Growth becomes sustainable when the steps are controlled and repeatable.
5) Treat symptoms as data. Frequent urination, digestive pain, jitteriness, or memory blanks before a meeting often signal a triggered stress response—not moral failing. Notice and act.
A final leadership reframing
Elle’s core invitation is less about eliminating pressure and more about choosing what kind of pressure you let shape you. “The only thing that actually reduces stress is not triggering the stress response,” she says. That’s a clear, actionable metric for leaders: reduce triggers, don’t merely chase recovery.
If you lead a growing company, manage teams, or close deals, the Pressure‑Free Method offers a playbook for staying present when it matters most. These aren’t soft skills—you’re rewiring the physiology that makes decisions and relationships possible.
More From Elle Ingalls:
- https://pressure-free.com/
- Pressure-Free Parenting: https://www.amazon.com/Pressure-Free-Parenting-Ten-Second-Solution-High-Achieving/dp/B08KQBYRMK
- The Pressure-Free CEO: https://www.amazon.com/Pressure-Free-CEO-contributes-productive-physically-ebook/dp/B0FDZ2GG35?ref_=ast_author_dp
- Elle on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pressurefreeliving/
Episode 13 Transcript:
Introduction to Stress and Performance
0:00There was an interesting study done in Germany many years ago where they were testing the stress hormones of guys
0:06going into a bar looking to find a date and that um if they had a high amount of
0:14catakolamines especially which is adrenaline nor adrenaline and dopamine
0:20it’s a little cocktail I call it a cocktail once you’ve released that you’re literally repelling people away
0:25from you okay so you’ll hear a lot of coaches try to up your adrenaline but here’s the deal. If you walk into a room
0:32high adrenaline, if your body is tight in the front, people are actually kind of afraid of you and they’re actually
0:39moving. They’ll move away from you. They’re not attracted to you. Welcome to the Midgame Mindset. Join us as we dive
0:46into the pivotal moments that shape today’s top sales and marketing leaders, RevOps innovators, and entrepreneurs.
0:52This is where grit meets growth and the game changes for good. If you find value
0:58in this conversation, be sure to share it with another growth leader who would enjoy it. And now, let’s get to the
1:04show. Welcome to the Midgame Mindset. I’m your host, Rich Bishop, and today’s guest is a performance coach. She’s a
1:11speaker, and she created what’s called the pressure-free method, which we’re going to dive into. And she is the
1:17author of two books around that method. And the latest one, which we will dive into in more detail here, you can see it
1:24just over her shoulder. It’s called the pressure-free CEO, L. In Engles, L, thank you for joining us.
1:30I’m so glad to be here, Rich. It’s great to have you. Now, I just hit a couple of the highlights. I’d love to
1:35hear a little bit more about your background and who you are. I have a kind of crazy background. You
1:40know, a lot of people think, oh, you must have a background in psychology. Um, but my background is really in high
1:46performance. So, um, actually the best way to share is a couple of key things
1:52that happened to me in my life that led me to do what I do now because this is like a second whole life I’m having
1:59right now. Um, that’s perfect. But if I go back in time and I look at myself in high school, so I was one of
2:05those people in high school that did it all. I’m going to be an athlete. I’m going to be a musician. Um, I’ve been
2:11playing violin since I was small. I was, you know, pretty much like the second best violinist in my whole town. Um,
2:18even in sixth grade, like one of those kind of things, you know, I’m not one of those uber kindergarteners that can play
2:24better than I can, but um, you know, I was pretty decent. And, um, and so I I
2:29was in all the clubs, like I just kind of did everything. And so I was the distance captain of our track team. I
2:36wanted to run in college. I also wanted to leave New England. I was born in raised in conquered New Hampshire. Um,
2:42and I wanted to go to a totally different place, just explore the world and and leave New England after like
2:48people being there for 400 years. So, it was kind of a big deal. And um, so I really wanted to run um, in my college
2:55life. And um, senior year I actually fell for a
The Pressure Free Method
3:01marketing ploy. Any of you marketers out there, I fell for something. So I always
3:06ran in Nikes. We didn’t have a lot of choices back then. It was this is the late 70s. Um, I’m running in Nikes and
3:13along comes an advertisement probably in like Glamour magazine for a new running shoe called Etonics and if you went to
3:20your sporting goods store and bought one, you would get a free lip gloss by Bonnie Bell.
3:26So, of course, I run right down to my little sporting goods store and buy these shoes and get my free lip gloss.
3:33Unfortunately, those shoes were not designed for what my feet needed. So, by the time I got to spring track season, I
3:39ran my first race and I’m not one of those collapsers at the end. I fell to the ground. And next morning, my dad
3:46dropped me off at school. I’m walking across the parking lot and I literally fell twice. Like, just collapsed the ground. So, we went to a sports medicine
3:53doctor and he goes, “Oh, you’ve destroyed your patellas. You are running in the wrong shoes. You’ll be off
3:58running for a year.” And you know, when you’re 17 years old, that’s pretty devastating.
4:05So I I spent like I don’t know a few days not going to practice and I couldn’t stand it. So I asked the
4:11coaches if I could apprentice coach and they said sure of course throw a clipboard in my hand and I’m doing all
4:16the grind work, right? But a strange thing started to happen where both the
4:22boys and the girls on the team, these were large teams. Some of the best athletes would be in
4:29this little line to talk to me before their events for me to calm them down.
4:34And because I’ve been performing for so long and like I love performing and I’m
4:39never nervous, like I just kind of knew what to say to them to, you know, whatever it was, high jump, hurdles,
4:46whatever it was. I would just get them in a calmer state so they could perform well. And so I go back in time and
4:52remember that. Fast forward, um, I went to Michigan, couldn’t run, but actually
4:58got recruited to row. So I rode and I made the varsity boat my first year. So
5:04I rode for three years in Michigan. Fabulous board. Um, but I was um
5:10actually the first woman in orchestral conducting the master’s program at Michigan and did an MBA at the same
5:15time, which is insanity. Um, but I did it. Uh, one of my concerts I’m
5:21conducting and there was a clarinet soloist. We get done and we’re in the big hall at Michigan, the Hill Hill
5:27Auditorium. We get done and we’re back in the green room and he goes, “Oh, that was so good. Will you play first violin
5:33on my senior recital?” No, I’m not playing my violin so much right now. So
5:39I but I immediately say yes because you know heightened energy. Let’s just do this thing. And so rehearsals go great.
5:45And usually I played for tons of recitals. There’s just like the props, the um family, maybe a few friends. It’s
5:52usually just a few people in the recital hall, the small hall. I guess this kid
5:58was the most popular kid in the music school because it was standing room only. On the sides people are standing.
6:03And I’m like, “Oh my gosh.” Uh, so we walk out on stage and now if you feel like you have some fear around public
6:10speaking, it’s not that you’re afraid of public speaking. It’s who’s in the room.
6:16And so you could stand in front of one group and be totally fine. But then you walk into another one and you see
6:21someone, maybe it’s your boss, maybe it’s an investor, it’s it’s someone, and
6:26suddenly you’re not doing so well. Well, that’s what happened to me that night. I had never had stage fright in my life.
6:32I’m like 25 6 years old. Never had stage right. I go out and go into a full-blown panic
6:38attack, which is we didn’t have those words back then. I thought I was having a heart attack. And for some of my
6:45clients who have worked with me, they’re like, “Yeah, I thought I was having a heart attack at work, but it was
6:50actually a panic attack.” Wow. And so I took myself to the med
6:55library because I didn’t know what had happened to me. But I’m like, I can’t stand in front of a 70 piece orchestra
7:00and have a meltdown. So I went there and just started researching mind body connection. This
7:06is like before inner game of tennis or any of that. Like I wanted to know what happened to me. And I built this little
7:11set of tools to always be calm backstage and always take the stage in a really
7:16confident and amazing way. So then fast forward to 2010.
7:23I have three sons. My two older ones are playing high school baseball. And the eldests were sitting around the dining room table. The eldest goes, “Mother,
7:29you should coach our baseball team and those tips you teach us and your violin students. We would be amazing.” I’m
7:35like, and they were a team that if they started to lose, they couldn’t come back. They were not a comeback team,
7:41even though they had great talent. In fact, one of the boys was the son of a major league umpire. Like really
7:46talented team. So I’m like, “You want me in the dugout? That’s crazy.” I look at my youngest
7:53son, Rich, and he goes, “Oh, we want you. We want you, Mom. Like, we want you.” And I had coached them in middle
7:58school track, so they kind of knew my style. So I took my ideas to the coaches. First, the the tough coach who
8:04was actually our ad, you know, he’s got his arms folding, chewing his mouth, he’s spitting the whole time, right? Mr.
8:09Baseball. I take it to him first and and he’s like, “Wow, this has merit. You should work with the boys.” And so then
8:16I went to the head coach. I showed him what I wanted to do and he said, “Oh, I
8:21want you to work with the boys, but will you be my private coach?” He was a financial adviser for Chase at the time
8:27and um he goes, “It’s 2010.” He goes, “You don’t even know the pressure I’m under. I just see the caller ID of a
8:34client and I’m going into a panic attack cuz I can’t get his money for him right now.” So, it’s a really, really tough
8:39time in that industry. And so then my department chair where I taught music for years, she finds out what I’m doing
8:45and literally grabs her checkbook. She goes, “You have no idea what kind of pressure I’m under, right? I need this.”
8:52So I came up, actually my husband came up with that name, pressure-free. Um, and because my my formal name is Pamela.
8:59So Pamela Star Engles psi, pounds per square inch. So he’s like, “You’re going to relieve the pressure, right?”
Personal Stories and Insights
9:05Oh, I love it. So that’s how the name came up to be. Um, and some people don’t like the name
9:11because they say, “Oh, pressure makes diamonds.” You heard that phrase? Of course, all the time. Yeah. Pressure makes diamonds. Here’s the
9:17deal. I had a I was working with two two kids of a set of parents, very high level parents, very pushing their kids.
9:24And and the father said to me, “Pressure makes diamonds. You know, I want my kid to be a diamond.” I go, “Diamonds are
9:30dead.” And your child is a human being, right? Right. I mean, let’s let’s be
9:36honest here. Yeah, you know, we’re creating living breathing human beings and
9:41they probably already put enough pressure on themselves to perform well. So any sort of added pressure, it’s it
9:49can be it can be horrific like what can happen to a person
9:54under that much pressure. And that kind of leads into this book. Like
9:59I just um this book was four and a half years in the making and um I have to
10:06credit my writing coach Brian Morgan in New York. Like I started working with him after I’d done what I thought was
10:12finish the book, right? He took one look and he said, “Oh no, it’s a rewrite. You have so much more to put into this
10:19thing.” Now, it’s not a long book. I mean, you’re reading it. It’s not a long book, but it’s a deep book.
10:24It is. Yeah, it is. So that’s what I wanted to produce. I wanted someone to be able to read it on a plane,
10:31but then say, “Oh, I kind of need to dig into this.” Right. Definitely. Yeah. There is there’s
10:37definitely a lot to it. I would love to start kind of before the book because you were just talking about almost a
10:44snowball effect that was starting now, right? You started with with the baseball team with the boys. Their coach
10:50now wants you to to coach him personally because he’s a financial adviser. You’ve got other people that are under a lot of
10:56pressure. How do you start to I mean, you had techniques that you used, right? But how do you start to kind of form the
11:03pieces that eventually became the pressure-free method as you uh have it today? Wow. You know what? I’ve been on
11:09hundreds of podcasts and you’re the first person to ask me that and I really want to thank you because it’s good. I’m going to have to think for a moment here
11:16like, okay. Um, so yeah, I had these little basic tools, just really maybe
11:21five or six, like not very many. Um, and but then I had a real awakening as I
11:28started working with those baseball players that it wasn’t enough and and also I was doing research online, like
11:34going to to real research studies and really delving into the stress response,
11:40which really is my expertise. Um, I’ve coached psychologists, physicians, and social workers who don’t know what I
11:46know about the stress response. Like, I just went super super deep. And with the boys, what I noticed was, okay, it’s not
11:53enough for me to help them right before they’re they’re they’re about to bat or
11:59about to take the pitcher mound or whatever’s happening next. It’s hours
12:04before because once we trigger those the stress response, there’s two floods of hormones and it takes hours before
12:12they’re dissipated out of our cells and we’re back to homeostasis or normal if we can ever get there.
12:18So, and that’s a piece in my book like I mean here’s the deal. I mean for males
12:23it’s an up to nine hour cycle. So I talk about the stress cycle which I don’t think anybody else in the world talks
12:29about. It’s a cycle of two hormone releases and then trying to get back to normal. So, that can take up to nine
12:36hours for a male, but up to 24 hours for a female. Wow. Now, that’s interesting. Biological
12:42female, by the way, because I worked with two gender fluid clients. This very fascinating. They call themselves gender
12:48fluid, but let’s get real. The stress response in them works whatever
12:53biological gender they are. So, that is really interesting to me.
12:59Yeah. So if 9 hours, 24 hours is way too long. And once we’ve released these hormones, we’re now in a state where
13:05anything can feel threatening. I’ll just give a little example. So one night my eldest son wanted to go out on this date
13:11and he goes, “Can I take your car?” And I go, “No.” Right? Take the crappy van. Like you’re not going to take my car.
13:19My car is a little Prius, by the way. But it was fairly new to me at the time. I was like, “No, you’re not going to
13:24take my car.” And he goes, “Uh um” and he was very dejected. like he went off,
13:30took the van. A few months later, after I had used the method on myself, he
13:35asked me that same question, I tossed him the keys and said, “How had a great have a great night?” I was a completely different person,
13:42same scenario. Very interesting. And so, as I dug into this stress response and what’s going on here, um, I
13:50realized too that these few tools I have were not enough because everyone is so
13:55different in how stress presents in them. and what stresses them. It could be the
14:01most minor thing like being late or having someone not show up on time.
14:07You’re not late but the other person’s late or like all these little tiny things. We become so timesensitive
14:12today. Mhm. It could be the tone of voice of your partner. It could be a memory from 20 30 years
14:20ago. Like it doesn’t really matter what it is. If we can identify that these are things
14:27that you inter that you need to interrupt and not release these floods of hormones,
14:32that’s the key. So yeah. So I think I answered your question. You did. You did. So you you worked
14:39through and you started to kind of piece together some of the things from your own experience being a highle musician
14:45and conductor as well as uh on the rowing team at Michigan, which is no small feat either, right? Like that’s
14:51very high level high pressure. um you know what comes to mind as you talk
14:57about that is um sports for me and I know some people overdo the sports analogy so apologies ahead of time to
Scientific Insights on Stress
15:03some people um but you know there’s this concept of oh this guy is a big game
15:10quarterback or this person is clutch Caitlyn Clark can you know hit the shot in the clutch while maybe some other
15:17people can’t you know that when the pressure is on they’re going to cave and I think that’s a good example because
15:23it’s the most visible of where pressure can get to somebody and cause them to
15:30change their behavior or to change the way that they perform when normally they wouldn’t. And that’s right,
15:36you know, with our New England connection, there were stories of Tom Brady before the first Super Bowl that
15:42that he won with the Patriots that he had taken a nap in the locker room two hours before the game, right? So,
15:49biggest game of this guy’s life and he’s sitting there taking a nap and of course you see they drove down and won right at
15:56the end like it was a preseason game like it was nothing. Right. So, yeah, there’s something to that. Tell me more
16:02about that. Next year’s growth targets aren’t going to build themselves and guesswork isn’t
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16:28That’s salesplansuccess.com. Yeah, I I it’s fascinating that um
16:36we I think when the pressure comes in and we put that pressure on us and we are the ones that decide what happens
16:43there by the way um if we might not do a normal day
16:50like we’re hyped maybe even the whole week before some big game some big ter
16:56for example. So we’re not in the present like we’re not just doing our day. It
17:02came clear to me when I had my debut conducting debut at Michigan. So there were um three of us I think three of us
17:08backstage and then the doctoral student there were three new students every year. So this was our debut. So we’re backstage in the green room and two of
17:16the guys had not eaten all day, right? They were so nervous about that night.
17:22It’s a huge night. Um, and I’m like, “Oh crap, I just ate a huge bowl of venison
17:28chili. I didn’t even I didn’t even think about
17:34I didn’t have a different day. Like, I just went to class. One of them didn’t go to class at all. Like, he stayed home
17:41in his apartment. So, so Tom Brady was just doing a regular day and needed a nap. So, he
17:48took a nap. Like, he was just doing a regular day. And now he’s here. And you
17:53can and in the game he’s moment to moment to moment like there’s no you know something bad happens he doesn’t
18:01stay there he’s here now and and I have specific tools to help people do that because
18:08they’ll people will perform well and sports is a really great analogy because you can see the outcome. They’ll do
18:14great in practice and then they’ll just crap out in the games um especially in
18:19the clutch moments. Um, one of the stories I can share is about a runner.
18:24Um, I had one of the top runners in Michigan high schooler. He um, his times
18:31had not gotten faster for like a few weeks and he was about to give up running when he thought he was going to
18:37get a college scholarship. Like he was one of the top runners in the state, but now he’s flatlined. His folks came to
18:43me, his mom literally in tears and goes, “I uh, I don’t know what to do. He’s going to quit, but I heard you’re doing
18:49this thing. would you meet with him? So, we had our first session together and um
18:55I just really listened to people to try and like the very first things I might share with them like what’s going to
19:01click. Well, apparently what I said to this kid clicked like no other because he um he took 38 seconds off a PR he
19:09hadn’t run in weeks at the next race. Whoa. Now, that could be a actually we know it’s not a fluke cuz he was
19:15probably seated fifth or sixth and he won considerably ahead of all the other runners.
19:22Fast forward, I do the second session with him. He takes another 18 seconds off the new PR. Then he decides, “Oh,
19:29I’m going to take the ACT again because I can use these same techniques to stay present in the moment, have full faculty
19:37here.” He got two points higher on the ACT, so he landed a fabulous college scholarship.
19:42So, it’s interesting. I often say like with my goalies, pitchers, we lose games
19:48in millimeters, right? Like your your glove is just like
19:55so close. But that’s the same thing in life with a sales deal, with a negotiation, with something that you’re
20:02striving for. It’s like right in the clutch moment, we lose it in millimeters. Like it doesn’t quite
20:09happen. there was just something a little off. And if that off was our tone of voice, like a lot of tools that I
20:15share are to help us actually attract business. And not just settle our nervous system
20:22and help us, you know, regulate ourselves, but you can end up being powerful enough to walk in a room and be
20:28regulating everybody else. And I I like I have a broker’s
20:34assistant. So, brokerage assistant like she’s she’s like the front front person
20:39that you come in, right? Works in a small office. She’s very um very kind,
20:46very gentle, right? Just in her nature. Mhm. She got on a session with me. She goes,
20:52″Am I powerful enough to change a whole room?” I go, “Uh, tell me your story.” She
20:59walked into the office and everyone, it was a huge mess discussion, right? the you could feel the tension in the room,
Application in Sports and Business
21:06right? She walked in, she said nothing, but she walked in in the frame that I
21:11teach and she took her desk, took her seat, and she just like emanated this
21:16calm out into the room and the whole place changed within seconds. And I’m like, so you tell me if you’re
21:23powerful enough. Like, we have a lot of power that we don’t even know how to use. And as a conductor, I was learning
21:29how to use all of that, which is a fascinating profession. I mean, you’re
21:34not only in charge of this orchestra, but you’re in charge of what happens in the entire hall. The whole the energy,
21:41the whole auditorium really is pinned on you. No matter how anything else is
21:46going on, it will and you’re responsible for it. So, so it’s on you. No pressure.
21:52Because then it’s ticket sales and it’s donations. Like, it’s like the whole thing, right? Exactly. So it’s like being a CE you’re
21:58not the CEO. There’s a CEO working with you, but but you are kind of the CEO of the event of the
22:06experience, you know. So I think a lot of our audience,
22:11especially entrepreneurs and sales leaders, they’ve they’ve been in those rooms and in those networking events
22:17that you can just tell that there are certain people that have a gravity around them or a calming effect, right?
22:23Like you can you can sense this. Yeah. With with certain individuals and certain people, it just radiates, right?
22:31Yeah. It’s true. It’s true. And we all flex. I mean, I can go into a room and
22:37be real quiet like almost a wallflower, you know, and then other other places be like I remember
22:42once I got called, it was it was no longer my staff. I was an executive of a symphony for a while. And the the future
22:48executive called me once and said, “We need to get this holiday party started and I think you’re the only one that can do it. Will you please get down here?”
22:55like it wasn’t my staff anymore, right? But they knew you could do it.
23:00Yeah. You could do it. Yeah. And within moments of coming into the room, it was like now everybody’s chattering and everybody’s like having
23:06fun. It’s like kind of funny. You know, one of the areas that I would love to dig into. So, I have been
23:12through some experiences in my teenage years that were really hard, really had
23:17me thinking. I think I’ve worked some of the components that you’ve talked about in the book. I’ve kind of figured that
23:23they work for me to keep myself calm. Right. So, that’s something that I’ve been studying and kind of working on
23:29myself. Your books and your method have definitely put a lot of color and reasoning behind it for me, which has
23:35been awesome. It’s been lighting off a light bulb. But, I do tend to be the calming force in the storms when I’m
23:42there. And and as somebody that’s in that position, it can be really hard to
23:50maintain that calm when everybody else around you has the energy of chaos and
23:55stress and right like how do you not get caught up in that but then number one
24:02keep yourself in the right place but then number two start to emanate that energy to bring the rest of the room
24:07down. Yeah. Um I I have a phrase that I I should coin it and trademark it, but
24:13it’s misery doesn’t just love company, it demands it. So if you’re in the in a room and people
24:20it is chaos and people are like everybody’s in this
24:26and the tension is just like crazy and you’re the calm in the storm. Um, this
24:33is going to sound a little crazy, but I think it’s so important to protect yourself first
24:40because someone needs to stay reasonable. And you might not be liked for that, by the way,
24:46because people think you should be just like them and just as upset about this thing and just in this thing. And this
24:52is family as well as business, right? You can see it in both places, right? Because you’re the calm person. They’re
24:58like, “Aren’t you upset? Don’t you want to fight?” Like it’s like I’m not going
25:03there. Like so it’s almost like first you. Okay. Be the rock.
25:09Just be the rock. Now how do we do that? I have a little kind of interesting tool, but I call it the bubble.
25:17And it’s like you have a a bubble around your energy. Now your energy can go and go and go. Okay. But at first, if you
25:24need to protect yourself, I imagine this bubble and inside the bubble, my energy is what I want it to be. Nothing can
25:31affect it. No smell, not not sounds, not anything. Like I’m protecting myself in
25:37the bubble. Within that bubble, you get to now like really open up. When I say
25:44open up, it’s from your shoulders down through your ribs. Like open wide. We
25:49all hold a little tension in there. And we all are taught we need to be thin, but not thin here, right? I even have
25:57really large men that I say, “No, open up.” up. I have a a guy, he’s just really big. He’s like 6’4, you know,
26:04rangy big guy. And I’m like, open up here. And what it does is it opens up your heart space,
26:10which can feel a little vulnerable because we’ve all had a little heartache and pain. And so we protect here a ton.
26:17We’ll have tension in our packs. So when you can go wide and open, you instantly
26:23create a different experience in the room. Now you can drop your bubble like you’re strong enough in yourself. You
26:30can drop the bubble and now you can kind of let that energy go out
26:35and you’re literally well I’ll I’ll use this conducting analogy. So one of the things I would do is I’m backstage
26:43orchestra goes out warms up concert master goes out tunes. I’m still backstage with the stage hands. Like I
26:49can’t go out yet. I’m the last one. I hate that hurry up and wait deal by the way. you know, you go to the plane, you
26:55go to the airport, hurry up and wait, now your plane’s delayed, right? So, that hurry up and late is a huge stressor for most people. So, I’m back
Conclusion and Key Takeaways
27:01there. So, I would be like doing that bubble thing cuz people are nervous backstage, right?
27:07Including the stage hands. Everything has to be perfect, right? So, I’d be in my bubble, then I release the bubble.
27:13And then, you know, when they say get out of your comfort zone, what happens truly when we get out of our comfort
27:19zone? We’re nervous. We trigger the stress response. It’s usually not a good thing, right?
27:24So, I’m not a believer in that. I believe you expand your zone. You stay in the zone. You expand your zone and
27:32step. So, like if you’re going out on stage or going into a meeting, a meeting where
27:37you want something real to happen, like imagine your zone expanding and you step and you stay where you want to be. So,
27:46when I would go out on stage, I would expand that. First, it’s covering the orchestra, then it’s covering all the
27:51way hall, all the way out the doors and all the way back through the end of the hall. So, by the time I take my bow,
27:57like I’ve expanded me just as huge and big as I could be because I want that
28:05room to feel a certain way. And so, it’s uh does this make sense? I
28:11mean, it’s kind of woowoo. People might think, “Oh, she’s so woo woo.” But it’s No, it it absolutely makes sense. And it
28:18it’s one of those where it’s like what I’m hearing is you’ve got to protect yourself and take care of yourself
28:24first. So that bubble provides that mental kind of view of just imagining that bubble and like okay this is this
28:31is me. This is what I can control. I’m going to control that first. I’m going to pull the shoulders back. Yeah.
28:36Now I’m going to re-enter and I’m going to protect what I’ve developed. There’s
28:42there’s definitely something to that projecting yourself out and having that kind of confidence and it I’d love to
28:50dig more into the science separately. I really am curious about this myself as to you know obviously when you ball up
28:58and you do this right you’re protecting yourself physically. That’s right. And many times you’re not really
29:04physically in harm. It’s more mentally you’re you’re protecting yourself from the mental harm or the the voice inside
29:11your head that’s saying you can’t do this and what does failure look like? So, I’m going to ball up and protect
29:17myself. Yeah. Doing this really creates that the opposite. It almost helps fight some of
29:24those things. Exactly. Yeah. Let’s get into the neuroscience on that because because
29:29some of the tools I first created, I had no idea they actually had neuroscience behind them. And then as I dug into more
29:35research, I’m like, “Oh my god, this is like so perfect.” So, one of them is that um this tension in the front of the
29:41body, especially our abs, we do not have ribs. So, when we start to feel anything
29:49um even just the slightest bit of, oh crap, this is not going to go well or whatever, we’ll tighten our ab muscles
29:56because we’re trying to protect our most precious organs. So, when you can really relax your ab muscles, plus what have we
30:03got trainers telling us all day, suck in your gut, be tight in your abs, totally. No other animal does that.
30:11Look at look at especially like an older dog. Like, do you see their abs tight? No. Like their bellies like the only
30:17time it’s tight is when they’re afraid. So, we’re sitting on our butts. We’re
30:23coiled up like this. We’re tight down here. And the the moment those abs tighten, it sends a signal to the brain.
30:28You know, you’ll hear there’s a lot of neural activity in the gut. It’s telling the brain, “Be afraid, look out, be
30:36aware.” Well, that kind of signaling outward
30:41is not going to land the deal. Mhm. There was an interesting study done in Germany many years ago where they were
30:49testing the stress hormones of guys going into a bar looking to find a date.
30:54Okay. and that um if they had a high amount of
31:00catakolamines especially which is adrenaline a noradrenaline and dopamine
31:06it’s a little cocktail I call it a cocktail once you’ve released that you’re literally repelling people away
31:12from you okay so you’ll hear a lot of coaches try to up your adrenaline
31:17we can think of a few who are kind of famous right but here’s the deal if you walk into a
31:23room high adren adrenaline. If your body is tight in the front, people are
31:28actually kind of afraid of you and they’re actually moving. They’ll move away from you. They’re not attracted to
31:34you. Mhm. But if you’re open and your abs are soft
31:39now, your throat is going to be soft. I mean, this is a 63y old throat.
31:46That’s crazy. Unbelievable. I would not have said that. That’s crazy, right? Like this. And and
31:52it didn’t look like this when I was 47 before pressure free. I always think of my life as before pressure free after
31:58pressure free. It’s totally different different person. Like my skin has never
32:04been like this in my whole life. That’s crazy. And your skin is your largest organ. So
32:10it’s like reflecting are you getting the nutrients out? We don’t get our nutrients out if we’ve triggered the
32:16stress response. So, if you’re hyper adrenalized, your all of your body systems are
32:21affected. It’s pretty interesting. That’s why Tom Brady’s just taking a nap.
32:27Like, yeah, no big deal. When he’s on the field, does he look adrenalized? Well, not at all. Yeah. I mean, there are times where he’s
32:33trying to get his team going. But, yeah, I mean, you’re you’re right. For the most part, he’s when he’s in that situation and it’s time to perform, he’s
32:40dead pan, calm, ready to go. And, you know, Kobe Bryant said something once. just a little quote
32:46where he said, “If if I’m anxious, everybody’s anxious.” Mhm. So, when you’re the leader, you know, if
32:52you’re an entrepreneur and you know, entrepreneurs, there’s been a lot of interesting studies about entrepreneurs and stress and and I have it in my book
33:01like ret, you know, the young entrepreneurs that we’ve lost because of
33:06too much pressure. It’s very sad. I I sometimes sit there and wonder, Rich, like what would our world be like if
33:12they were still here? What would our world be like if Steve Jobs was still here? I mean, he’s one of the people I
33:18feature in my book. He thought he was totally fine when he had the first
33:24surgery on his cancer. His physicians told him he had a long life ahead of
33:29him. What’s interesting about his cancer is he had pancreatic cancer, but not the normal pancreatic cancer. It was along
33:37the um these these cells and these ducts that are are very affected by stress
33:44hormones. Which is pretty interesting. Very interesting. Yes.
33:50So I mean I went deep on that one. Yeah. I didn’t just read his book which is right behind me. I was like, “Okay, what
33:57kind of cancer do you really have?” And how are I always look up how are catakolamines and glucocorticoids, those
34:04are the two different floods. You’ll hear a lot about cortisol today, but no one’s talking about adrenaline.
34:10And adrenaline is the thing that kicks off everything. If you don’t release a flood of um the catakolamines, which is
34:16the adrenaline flood, the gluccocorticoids, the cortisol doesn’t go out. M in fact you need cortisol to fix your
34:23fix your brain cells and your extremities from that first flood of hormones. So
34:29you don’t want to just reduce cortisol. That’s a complete myth. And I can’t believe that physicians are talking about it. But I’ve coached physicians
34:36who don’t go deeply on what the stress response even is. Yeah. So it fascinates me like all the
34:42language on health coaches and business coaches. I don’t want to get on a soap box, but it’s like are you kidding me?
34:50Some people, some of my clients do weed to try and sleep at night to try to reduce the cortisol is what they’ve been
34:55told, right? But you can’t get a deep delta wave sleep if you’ve taken marijuana. So, so that’s a complete
35:03fallacy. There’s a lot of things that are not, you know, based on what I’ve
35:08brought together, um, not really true. The other one is the big one I think for
35:14entrepreneurs because pretty much every entrepreneur has someone in the family or the physician say you need to slow
35:19down. You need to take time off like you’re working way too hard, right? That’s a total myth.
35:25You could take time off and be more stressed, right? Who needs a vacation from the
35:31vacation even all the time? Yeah. You’re coming back to a flood in your inbox.
35:36And so, so it’s a total myth because that’s not how the stress response works. I have one CEO client that hates
35:44flying because he’s not driving the plane. Hates being in an Uber because he’s not driving the Uber.
35:50He wants control all the time, right? Yeah. And so he’s triggered by these things. He’ll I coached him years ago and yet
35:57I’ll still get a text, hey, I’m about to fly. Remind me. Right. You know, because
36:03it’s like so so that’s a myth. The only thing that actually reduces stress is
36:10not triggering the stress response. It’s pretty simple. So, my method is
36:15super easy. Like, you’re reading it in the book. It’s very easy, but we’re complex, which is why I actually have
36:21over 50 ways to interrupt that stress response. I need to really listen to you
36:28and assess. and I share all of them, but then I kind of dig in on the ones that I think, oh, based on what you just shared
36:34with me, I think these three might really help in this situation. Again, it’s situational.
36:39Yeah. So, um, but yeah, if someone says you need to slow down or take time off,
36:45not true. It’s not true. It’s not true. And we get it all the time.
36:51So, I think that’s interesting. Yeah. I would love to dig into that a little bit more. And I think
36:57specifically you highlight a couple of stories in the book which are fantastic.
37:03I would love to hear maybe one or two examples of CEOs that we’ve lost along
37:08the way and you’re absolutely right about entrepreneurs especially especially the of the companies that are growing very very quickly. The pressure
37:16gets to them in one way shape or form. Either they see it in their health or they end up taking shortcuts to keep
37:22that growth going and they get caught and in trouble for some of the shortcuts that they take. Right. Um,
37:27but importantly I think for our audiences, how do we then look at those
37:32examples and then recognize within ourselves number one that it’s happening and
37:38number two that we probably need to do something about it because I think awareness is probably the most important
37:45aspect to kicking this whole thing off, right? Are your gotom market teams built for scale or are they stuck in chaos? At
37:51Midame Consulting, we turn high growth challenges into operational wins. From
37:57sales strategy to CRM to process optimization, we help you get it right
38:02so that your organization can grow as your topline grows. Let’s transform
38:07today’s change into tomorrow’s success. Visit midgame consulting.com. That’s midgame consulting.com.
38:15It is. Yeah. Um, and I speak about myself first. So, I was in denial. I
38:20here I am coaching these baseball guys. I’ve got the coach. I’ve got my head of the department. Like I’m coaching
38:26people. And then all these other people find out I’m coaching them. And it wasn’t until like about I don’t know a
38:31month or two in and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I think I need to use this on myself.”
38:37And so I was in denial that I needed it because I was pretty cocky. I’m just
38:42going to say that, right? Um I think I’m a pretty calm professional. I look back
38:49now and I I was not like if I’m really honest with myself. So I think it’s kind
38:54of like that deep honesty with your own self. Like we can be super calm on the
39:00exterior but let’s lift up the hood. Mhm. First question is are you taking any medications?
39:06Either mental ones or physical ones like any medications. Do you have pain in places that you’re
39:13even kind of denying? like maybe you have ulcer but you don’t want to even admit it right so is any process of your body not
39:22working very well from eyesight to digestion like any sort of process I was
39:29talking to a really high level speaker once and he goes oh I don’t have any stress like I’m totally fine and so I
39:35asked him this one question I go before you take the stage do you have to pee he’s like oh yeah
39:42oh yeah and I go oh That’s interesting because you probably peed at least like an hour before or half hour even half
39:49hour, right? So, so you’ve triggered the stress response and you didn’t even know it.
39:55You didn’t know it. So, frequent urination like what’s the thing? So, for
40:00me, when I looked at myself, it was my hands. So, I had eczema covering the knuckles of this hand for 35 years. I
40:07want to show the hand up close for those on video. There’s nothing. I had never touched the skin here for 35
40:12years. It was cracked and open and bleeding. I kid you not. It was so bad that one of my little six-year-old
40:18students asked if I had leprosy. Oh my god. That’s how bad it was. Wow. So, when I performed, I put little
40:24band-aids the color of my skin because it was so embarrassing. So, every time I was embarrassed by it,
40:30I triggered the stress response, too. Didn’t even know it, right? I thought I would have that disease my whole life. In eight weeks of
40:37using my method, that’s how my hand turned out. There’s nothing 63y old fingers.
40:45They they look like a 20 or 30 year old’s fingers. Well, I actually got carded because
40:51because during co I had a mask on and I had a hat on. It was winter. It’s like holiday time. I was buying some wine and
40:58they were you the cashier was looking at my hands to decide who to card and so
41:04she thought my hand was super young and she just laughed when she saw my license, right? cuz she couldn’t see my
41:10face really, right? It was too funny. So, for me, my skin, but also there were all
41:15these other little things. And I’m going to share this because um maybe someone you know has dense
41:22fibrous breast tissue. So, I had dense fibrous breast tissue my whole adult life. My mother died of breast cancer.
41:27The first time she got it, she was my age. Um in eight weeks, mine completely changed. And I’ve had other clients for
41:34whom that has happened. Wow. Okay. Cuz in my head it was not
41:40if I might, you know, it was when I would. Mhm. Right. And so this the little pressure
41:48of that in my head constantly, you know. So take a look at yourself. Is that old
41:54Saturday night? Just take a look at yourself and and get real honest with yourself about looking at what’s going
42:01on here. And especially the things that you think could never change. Like if anybody would have said, “Oh, I can help
42:07you with your eczema.” I would have laughed. I’ve had this 35 years. There’s I’ve tried everything like you don’t have it,
42:13right? Yep. So, so I try to open up people to, you know, whatever you have ADD, ADHD, PTSD,
42:22OCD, like any sort of mental diagnosis, typically if you look at the stress
42:28response symptoms exactly match. Wow. That’s
42:33right. It’s not ADHD. It’s that a child has triggered the stress response and now their leg is jiggling and now the
42:40pen is clicking and they just want to move because they have all that adrenaline coursing through their veins.
42:47Fascinating. And it probably happened because hurry up Bobby, we’re going to be late. Boom.
42:53That’s all it takes. And now the whole nine hours for that little boy,
42:59he’s under the influence of hormones or 24 if it’s a girl, which is 24 if it’s a girl.
43:0524 hours. So now look at ch you can look at children and you can see that they’re
43:11under the influence of these drugs we release inside our bodies. But so are we.
43:16Yeah. And when those two things come together, it’s fireworks, you know. And there’s so much misunderstandings like our eyesight and
43:24our hearing changes. You know, you tell your partner or a child or somebody you say, “Oh, don’t forget to take the garbage out and they don’t take it out.”
43:31It’s not that they didn’t hear you. They’re not being disrespectful. It’s well actually it’s that they
43:36couldn’t process the information and launch the memory in their hippocampus. H
43:42that’s huge. Have you ever like started to talk to someone and you have these statistics in your head and all of a
43:47sudden, oh, they’re not there. or you’re at a networking event and you meet Jack and 5 seconds later you can’t remember
43:52Jack’s name even though it’s one syllable like what is wrong with us there’s nothing wrong with us only we triggered
43:58that stress response before we got to the meeting we got to the event so our hippocampus
44:04is down we can’t lodge a memory nor can we retrieve very well in the when we’re
44:11under the influence of these hormones so think about that I I think of it as the kind of deadening of the brain
44:18And we’re losing the brain trust of all of us, including Steve Jobs. I think
44:26about people, I think, what would Steve Jobs be able to do if he wasn’t under
44:31the influence of these hormones? He’s so interesting because he he says he’s a Zen Buddhist, right? But yet, he was so
44:38angry and mean all the time. So much so that his best friends were like, “Why was he why are you so mean?”
44:45That’s what the question was. Yeah. Like, why are you so mean? And he said, that’s just the way I am.
44:51Right. Yeah. So, one of the things people would say to me is like, well, this is just the way I am. I had one client who said, I’m
44:57just an Italian Jew. This is just the way I am. Right. Right. Like, we have our our heritage that that I’m an East
45:04Coast girl. Get it done tomorrow. Get it done yesterday.
45:10You know, so we have these things that we think are our personality. You take a personality test, it confirms it. But
45:16you took the personality test under the influence of the hormones.
45:21My youngest son did his um psychology degree at Columbia. He was number two in his class. I don’t say that to brag as a
45:27mom or anything. It’s because he’s been using this method since he was 10. So he has an amazing way of being able
45:34to use his brain. He took one of those personality tests and um when he got
45:40done, it was like his my son’s whole company took it. He came over for dinner that night and he said, “You know, I was
45:46pressure free when I took the test.” I could have answered that question. I could have answered it any way I wanted
45:53really because I’m like all of that. But if I had been under the influence of these hormones, I would have answered it
46:00very specifically because that’s how I would have been feeling. And I would have thought that’s who I am. So a lot
46:06of times people who work with me, we get done and they’re like, “Thank you for helping me find my real self.” like I
46:13didn’t even know who that was. That’s incredible. And it’s not just adults who will say that, but kids will
46:19tell me that. It’s like you help me find my real self. That’s to me that’s like so incredibly
46:27powerful. And I think about it for myself, too. It’s really um what the
46:33hormones do to your brain and how you think and how you process and how your body processes everything. Like you’ll
46:39think, “Oh, I’m gonna have colitis my whole life or I’m gonna have, you know, I just have an upset stomach all the
46:44time.” You know, when those kids will like they’ll wake up and they’ll say, “Oh, my stomach hurts. I can’t go to school.”
46:50Um, and you take them to the physician, they say, “Oh, it’s psychosmatic. There’s nothing wrong.” I’m here to say,
46:55″No, there is something wrong.” They’re continually triggering the stress response. And so, their digestive system
47:01hurts. It hurts. If we have pain, that’s a signal.
47:07And you know, we were trying to create like tough kids or be tough. Go, but let’s let’s see if they could be
47:13amazingly tough if they didn’t hurt, right?
47:19Yeah. Absolutely. If the stress response wasn’t triggered. Yeah. If your stomach is hurting all
47:24day, how can you even concentrate at school? Exactly. And that’s just going to create that snowball and it’s just going to
47:30continue because it’s going to affect the way that you act, which then will affect your reaction to it. And
47:36yeah, I mean, if you have an enlarged prostate, how can you even think about the meeting coming up, right? You’re like, “Holy crap, what’s
47:42happening to me?” You know, I’m losing it. Like, all the things we think are and and every single one of these
47:49things can link back to the stress hormones. Every single disease, every single disease, it’s like so to
47:56me, I just geek out on it like I probably should have been a scientist, right? Well, according to my high school
48:01guidance counselor, I was supposed to be an aerospace engineer and go to MIT or or something, right?
48:08Well, I think you like, no, I want to go into sports and music. He thought I was crazy.
48:13It worked out well. That’s for sure. It’s so perfect. Yeah, it really is. And the sports and music are such a great entry point to
48:20working with the pre the stress response and being pressure free. I love what
48:26you’ve developed here. The book The Pressure-Free CEO is a fantastic book giving some really good examples of um
48:34where the stress responses have essentially taken uh well-known CEOs
48:39down um with their health, but also you do a great job in there of giving some
48:45practical advice for things that we can take day-to-day uh in what we’re doing. Yeah. because it it it truly is
48:52lifechanging in a couple of the ways that you talked about here and then some.
48:57So, El, thank you so much for joining us today. This was awesome. I could geek out on this for like the next three or
49:04four hours, so we’ll have to do this again sometime. Um, but if if our viewers want to uh connect with you or
49:11learn more about you, how do they do that? You can just go to my website. If you go to press-free.com
49:17or my name lingles, but people forget how to spell it. So, press-free.com will
49:22take you right to lingles.com and um you can tour around in there and just see what I have. I work with
49:29individuals of course and then I coach small teams and I talk to large audiences too. So, um whatever seems to
49:37be appropriate and we can just hop on a call and talk. You’ll have a very pressurefree talk with me by the way.
49:43Absolutely. Yeah. And we’ll uh we’ll include the link in the show notes to your website as well as to the books
49:49which are both on Amazon. Right. Pressure freeing. Amazon. Yep. Pressure free parenting and the
49:54pressure free CEO. Excellent. So yeah, now I’m working on my next one. So I can’t wait for that. We’ll have to
50:00talk again then. All right. Thanks, L. Thank you so much for joining us. It was great to chat. Thanks for
50:06joining us on the Midgame Mindset. If today’s episode sparked a new idea or helped shift your perspective, share it
50:12with someone who’s ready to grow. Subscribe, leave a review, and keep playing the game. With the right
50:17mindset, the best moves are still ahead. Until next time, keep changing the game.
