Sari Swears Podcast: Your Survival Instinct Is Driving the Bus

If you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you probably know me as Coach K. While Sari is taking a well-deserved sabbatical, I'll be stepping in each week to share some of the mindset work I do with trial attorneys every day.

If we haven't met yet, I'm Kevin de la Motte, mindset coach here at H2H. This week's episode is about something I see constantly with attorneys: Overwhelm.

Not the kind that comes from having too much on your calendar. The kind that seems to follow you everywhere, even when you finally cross things off your list.

Here's the surprising part: Most overwhelm isn't created by your workload.

It's created by your brain's survival instinct.

In this episode, I walk through:

Why your brain defaults to overwhelm
How slowing down actually gives you more control
A simple breathing practice to calm your nervous system
Why reminding yourself, "I have choice here," changes everything
The journaling questions I use every day to stay grounded
The goal isn't to eliminate discomfort. It's to stop letting discomfort make your decisions for you.

If you've been feeling like you're constantly pushing through, I think this episode will give you a different way to approach it.

See you next week,
Coach K

Resources:

Listen to the Two Windows Visualization and download the Four Square Breathing Exercise worksheet that I referenced throughout the episode.

If you'd like to dive deeper, I also highly recommend the two books that inspired much of this conversation:

Your Survival Instinct Is Killing You by Marc Schoen
Don't Believe Everything You Think by Joseph Nguyen

"The goal isn't to eliminate discomfort. It's to stop letting discomfort make your decisions. When you slow down, calm your nervous system, and choose thoughts that serve you instead of reacting from fear, you become a better trial lawyer—and a better human being."
Coach k

Transcription

Kevin de la Motte:

Hey there, Kevin de la Motte here. And I'm back for another episode on Sari Swears. I'll be here for the rest of July, and I've got a lot of great episodes for you. Today, we're going to be talking about how, well, you're in a perpetual state of overwhelm and what's causing it. Yes, I know that you have your moments and I know some are worse than others, but most of my clients and trial attorneys that I talk to have this perpetual state of overwhelm that comes over them on a regular basis, and it's tough. It makes the job really hard. The job's already hard, but it makes it that much harder. And today, I want to talk to you about what causes it and then how you can sidestep and improve the way that you approach things so that you won't be in a constant state of overwhelm. And I'll give you some resources and some tools to keep that from happening.

The two books I used on this particular episode, one was Your Survival Instinct Is Killing You, by Marc Schoen, which is a great book that really provides all the brain science behind overwhelm. And one of these things that... Well, basically discomfort. That's something that we as a culture and a society have become less and less tolerant of. So the book is really a fascinating book.

And then the other book that's more of a big picture of you, but a great way of looking at how our brains function is a book called, Don't Believe Everything You Think by Joseph Nguyen. And it's a nice, practical approach to answering the questions of, okay, why is my brain this way? And I thought I couldn't choose my thoughts. How do I even do anything about that? Really, really great resource for that. So I'll be using these two as a resource for this particular podcast.

Because really what's happening here is this is a self-imposed problem. Now I know you're going to probably ask, "What do you mean self-imposed? How am I putting this on myself?"

Well, it's something that's actually unconscious mostly. It comes from an instinct that has been evolving, or not really evolving, has stayed the same over millions and millions of years that's become ingrained, and it's the survival instinct. It's so that we can stay alive. And it is an instinct, and that's the thing that makes a distinction from actually just thought and using our prefrontal cortex. This is coming from our amygdala, which is the oldest part of our brain. And it has become so dumb, which lack of better way to put it, over the years, that it is so sensitive to any level of discomfort, that it will fire off the alarms for survival at the smallest sight or feeling of discomfort. I know this might sound crazy, but it is the truth and there's tons of brain science and research that will back this.

And we are in this society that we have these instant dopamine hits and so many things that are constantly just coming at us with technology that we can get anything we want instantly. We can press the button and get whatever we want online or food or anything we want to see. It's so instantaneous. So when we're put in situations where we have to actually be with discomfort, that part of our brain, that oldest part, can't handle it. It says, "No," literally telling you, you need to survive, this is not safe. And I know it sounds crazy, but it's the truth. So some of the ways that you can actually start building a tolerance for discomfort? Well, I'm going to get to that.

But first things first, let's talk a little bit about discomfort and how it's motivating you. When your amygdala or your limbic system, which amygdala is part of that, fires and you just react and that's what motivates your responses, well, that's the wrong motivation. That's the motivation of discomfort. And you building in being able to be with discomfort more, but mainly slowing down. And trial attorneys as a culture is a push through kind of culture. It's a don't slow down and celebrate. It's harder to hit a moving target.

And I've heard that from many clients, which if you're of that mindset, you're constantly moving and you're a lot like this freight train. Well, if you don't slow down enough to actually let some wiser thoughts come in, well, you're just going to be reactive, and you're going to go with that first instinct. And the first instinct most times is wrong because it comes from a feeling not a thought. We want to be able to slow down so that we can start bringing in those thoughts that are wiser so we can be motivated from a wiser place rather than being motivated by fear, overwhelm, scarcity. These are not good mindset motivators.

So let's talk about actually how you can get those wiser thoughts and get to that motivation, slowing down. There's a reason why we talk about breathing practices and how mindset practices of just mindfulness work and breathing have become so popular in pop culture over the years. I mean, when we have this damn near epidemic of not being able to be with discomfort, well, what needs to come after that, what's antithetical to that, is doing something about it, and being mindful and slowing down and breathing. These are the things that are antithetical to the I can't be with discomfort reaction.

So, building in practices of breathing, building in practices of slowing down and checking in with your body, that might sound kind of woo-woo, but if you can slow down just long enough to see how you're feeling... Oh, that was interesting. I just moved my shoulder and it popped. Just that action, I took a breath and I moved my shoulder and it popped. You can even bring in things like four square breathing, which is breathing... It's also called box breathing. All that four square breathing is, is you breathe in, and you hold it for four seconds, breathe out all the way, let all the air go out of your lungs and hold that for four seconds and do it four times.

But while you're doing it, it's an opportunity for an awareness practice and do like what I just did. "What's going on with my body right now? Wiggle your toes, roll your head and your neck, feel what's going on there. Give yourself a minute just to do that. That's all it takes and it brings you back to this place of being, being present rather than just reacting to everything.

The first thing to think of is don't just react. Don't just push through. Start telling yourself, "No, I need to slow down. I'm slowing down. I slow down more. Throughout my day, I slow down and I breathe."

This is part of the practice, starting to bring this into your awareness. When you start doing this, not only do you check in and see how your body's doing, but you can also start tracking your thoughts. Awareness is the first part of learning and it's the first part of this practice that I'm going to tell you. Because if you're aware of what thoughts are coming through your head, that's honestly the best you can do on some of these really fucked up thoughts that drive the bus. Because those thoughts are thoughts that are going to come up and they're usually, I like to call them, the hype man of the amygdala. They're the thoughts that come up and really reinforce that feeling. The hype man in hip hop is, you got your guy that's up on the stage and he's rapping and then you got the other guy that's going, "Oh, man," and really hyping up the guy.

Well, that's what these thoughts are coming from the amygdala. It's a feeling first, but then after that, you get this thought that comes in. You may feel compressed and small, and then you think to yourself, "God damn it, I suck." Or, "I am small. I'm not big enough for this. I'm not Nick Rowley. I'm not Randi McGuinn. These are these big figures. I'm just this small figure." These kinds of thoughts and all kinds of other ones that come in that are limiting beliefs. If you give yourself the chance to slow down and start tracking these thoughts, you can pick and choose the ones that you want.

In a little bit, I'll give you an exercise that you can do and it's actually all... It'll be in the show notes that you can... It's a breathing exercise that you can be able to access. Now, one of the key elements here that happens when you are not breathing well and when you are not letting awareness come in and slowing down is you're removing choice from the equation. And when you remove choice from the equation, you're not autonomous. And that in itself makes us feel pretty fucking icky. Autonomy is something we need as humans. It's freedom. It means that we can do something that we want to do. As humans, we want to be able to choose things. I talk about the saboteur. The saboteur is that thing that's on you, that emotional backpack that's part of these limiting beliefs and that tells you that you're lesser than. It's your inner critic.

Well, when you react and you don't slow down, you let your survival instinct kick in, and then choice is not a part of the equation. So then, you are actually eliminating choice, and that's going to make you feel even shittier than the survival instinct taking over, and it's going to keep you in this spiral. So you being able to even tell yourself, "I can choose here."

I was talking to a client just today about this and they were saying that one of the biggest things that they started doing because they don't just practice law and they're a trial attorney. They're a trial attorney that is a defense, a criminal defense trial attorney. And they're dealing with people's freedoms being taken away. And there's so many different parts of that kind of trial attorneying where you don't have a lot of choice. You don't have choice who the judge is going to be. You don't have choice on so many different levels. So it comes down to you actually implanting the thought of, "I have choice here," so that you don't feel so not autonomous. You don't feel so small.

And this particular client talked to me about how every time they get into, honestly, most situations in their job where they're interacting with the courts or with opposing counsel or even their client, is they tell themselves on a regular basis that, "I can choose here. I have choice here." And just the act of that is giving you choice and bringing choice into your awareness. And it is huge here because what it's going to do is it's going to bypass that feeling that's going to drag you down or make you react, and it's going to give you a chance to start bringing in those other wiser thoughts and they'll make you be more present as well.

And once you start slowing down and letting these other thoughts come in, the non-limiting belief thoughts, opening things up for these wiser thoughts, you start bringing in this... It's a concept in this book, Your Survival Instinct is Killing You. The concept is this duality of the mind, duality of the brain. And really what it boils down to is being able to be with two opposing thoughts and feelings at the same time. How many times has this happened where you're in court and you get objected to or something happens with the judge or whatever goes sideways, and it's a time where you got to pivot? And you're dealing with this extreme discomfort, this feeling that's coming over you and these thoughts that are coming over you that are racing through your head that are not going to help you in this situation. To be able to actually bring in that other thought, to slow down enough to where you can have this duality where both thoughts can exist and then you can choose the one that you want, this is the power. This is the power you get.

We talk about the CTFAR model in our work where C is circumstance which is neutral, T is the thought, F is the feeling that comes from that thought, A is the actions you take from that feeling, and then R is the result. Well, you get into this space where you're in that T line, that thought line where you can choose. It's this pivotal moment. And the duality of those two feelings and thoughts that are opposed and being able to pick that one that serves you, that's the power, and that's what this is all about. These practices that I'm telling and teaching are the practices that are going to start bringing that capability of being with discomfort and being able to have a moment of this duality of these two thoughts and feelings that are opposing and choosing the on that's going to serve you best. This is hugely powerful and you're up against this on a regular basis as a trial attorney.

I mean, shit, even an email from opposing counsel, that one can send you through the roof. That can up fuck up your whole day. You can immediately react to that and then be like, "What the fuck did I just do?" And be in this whole spinning thing all day long where all you had to do was just slow down, take a breath and then, "What are the thoughts that serve me here? Yeah, we got all this other crazy shit going on, but what do I really want to do here?"

It might just be slowing down, stopping and not answering that email right away, maybe even deciding that I'm going to answer the email tomorrow. Shit, maybe I won't even answer it. Maybe it's not even worth answering, but if you don't give yourself that time to slow down, well, you won't have that choice.

Sari de la Motte:

If you're a longtime listener, you've probably heard me say, "Practice makes progress," and what better way to practice than with a fellow group of trial attorneys in person and with me. Our two-day Command the Courtroom Masterclass sessions put the H2H method into action. And I'm there every step of the way with live coaching and feedback and finish mama fierceness. And don't just take my word for it. Here's what PI Attorney, Sean, had to say about our two day masterclass.

Sean:

My biggest takeaway is that I now have a new approach as to how I'm going to enter the courtroom. It's a new energy, a new spirit, and it really gets me excited because that's actually the more fun part of what we do. And I'm looking forward to taking advantage of everything that I learned here.

Sari de la Motte:

Now, seats are limited. These are small group, high impact courtroom sessions, not an auditorium full of bored attorneys and dull lectures. If you want to change the way you go to trial and turn your practice into progress, visit SariSwears.com/masterclass to register for a 2026 class today. That's SariSwears.com/masterclass.

Kevin de la Motte:

And this also brings me to success mindset. I probably talked about this before. Sari's talked about it and how in the culture, the trial attorney field, how learning from your mistakes is the most important, and pushing through, moving on, not celebrating about the things that you win, just get to the next thing. But the main thing is focusing on what you did wrong, and that's going to be the big component of learning, and that's just not the truth. Focusing on your successes, looking at, "Okay, this thing didn't go well, but what did go well, because I want to do that next time?"

And really focusing on those things and building off of that, that's an abundant mindset. That's a success mindset. Where this other mindset where you're just reacting and you're not choosing those wiser thoughts, it is a scarcity mindset. It's something that is not going to bring you abundance. If anything, it's going to take from you. And one of the huge byproducts from doing these breathing exercises, slowing down, choosing your thoughts, writing at the end of the day what your day went like and processing that, which I'll talk about that a little more in a little bit, these are things that are going to improve your life. They're going to calm your nervous system. They're going to lower your stress. They're going to make a huge difference in your physiology, your mentality. These are things that are hugely important that we forget about.

I talked a little bit earlier about breathing exercises. I talked about the box breathing, which is the four square breathing where you breathe in and hold for four seconds, and breathe out and hold for four seconds. And one of the other things to keep in mind too is this is a video podcast. You can see this better, but let me see if I can describe it. When you're breathing in, you want your stomach to expand like a big balloon. The better breathing you're doing when you breathe in, the more expansive your stomach is. It really stretches out. And then once you breathe out, you're releasing all of that air, and all that air is coming out of your lungs and your stomach lowers. So as you breathe in, your stomach rises and as you breathe out, your stomach lowers. So that's something to pay attention to when you're doing an exercise like this.

But once you've done that and you've gotten yourself in this relaxed state, you've lowered... Your nervous system is at a homeostasis level and you're calm, well, that's when you can start doing visualizations. And I have a particular visualization that's very helpful for tracking your thoughts. It's called, two windows, I call it. And really what the gist of it is, is you're visualizing you're sitting in a room and that two windows are open and your thoughts are passing through. And you let the thoughts just come in and pass through. You get curious about what they are and stop them for a little bit. "What is that thought? Hm." And then just let it pass through.

And this is what creates this awareness practice so that when you are in a situation where your thoughts are crazy, you can take a breath and you can go, "Okay, wait a minute, what's that thought? I'll just let that pass." And once again, this is hugely powerful. You're choosing to let that crazy ass thought that was going to drive you up the wall and do some weird ass shit, you're letting it pass.

And then this comes to that concept of duality where you're able to also when you start doing this for a while, you'll give room for other thoughts to come in, or maybe more thoughts will start coming in that are of this wiser place, this more abundant place, this place that accesses creativity and more space in your life and in your thinking. When you do this practice on a regular basis, it's awareness. So think of it this way. If you're not paying attention to it, fuck it. It doesn't really even exist, does it? This reminds me of the reticular activating system of the brain.

And that's connected to manifestation, but one of the simple things that is an example of it is that if you buy a car and you have this, let's say it's a red Mercedes, and before you bought this car, you never noticed any of these red Mercedes around. Like, "Huh, I never noticed red Mercedes, but I really want one." So you get the red Mercedes.

And then because it's in your awareness, because you have this car, you start seeing all these red Mercedes around. Well, same thing goes for your thoughts. If you're aware of the thoughts that are coming through, then that reticular activating system will be like, "Okay, that's a thought. I don't really want that thought. I want these thoughts instead." And you know what? You'll start being more aware of those wiser thoughts and you'll be canceling out, sidestepping that shit that's not helping you.

So awareness is key here. And one of the big parts of this that really reinforces this awareness and learning is being able to journal. And if you do this every day, what it does is you can process out, let's say, the bad shit, and capture the good shit. So one of the practices that Sari does that I think is hugely helpful and I do it at times, but she does this every morning, which it's the practice of brain drain. And it comes from the book, The Artist's Way, which is Julia Cameron. The book was written several decades ago. But the concept is for someone that has writer's block, is that you do this in the morning first thing, it's like a mental bowel movement. You just write out all the shit. "Oh my God, I got to change my curtains. They look disgusting. I got to go grocery shopping today. Oh, my foot hurts. Oh, that fucking guy yesterday was a total asshole."

Whatever it is, you drain all that shit out first thing. You take 20 minutes in the morning and write freehand, and then you start your day. And it's that mental bowel movement that gets that shit out of there so that you can make room for some good stuff, some other thoughts.

But the one that I do on a regular basis is at the end of my day, I journal. I do it every day. And I write down the three questions that I always ask myself, which is, "What did I learn? What am I celebrating, and what am I grateful for?"

And when I write these things down, there's other thoughts that come up, too, and I'll write it down. It's not like I have to stick to these three questions, but these three questions are really good prompts and you do that every day. Write out a couple pages, two, three pages in a journal, notepad, whatever it is you choose. And what it does is it's making the things so that you want to learn, you want to celebrate, that you're grateful for. It's a ritual. And it's getting out the shit that you don't want in there. It's really, really important to be doing something like this on a regular basis. Journaling and writing out, the actual brain science behind writing out on paper, is powerful. So this practice combined with this breathing practice, this practice of slowing down and choosing your thoughts and then writing out the thoughts that serve you at the end of the day in journaling.

Another piece to add to this, the third piece is affirmation. It's two things, affirmation and intention. So at the start of my day, I have, I call it a spiritual practice, and I go and I walk the dog. I get out in nature. But one of the things I do is I go to the water's edge that's by our house, and I set my intention for the day. And it can look just like whatever my day is going to be. Say we have a training for the day and I say things like, "Today I will be present and curious and playful," and those kinds of words to set my intention of how I want to be for the day. And at the same time, I fold in affirmation throughout my day. So I say, "I'm intentional. I am curious. I am playful."

When you say these things, it's acknowledging the fact that you set this intention and it's reminding you of that's your intention, that's how you want to show up, that's how you want to be. So you do this throughout the day, you're adding it with affirmation. Start with just setting intention and that's a huge thing. If you say out loud what you want your day to look like and how you want to be, this is another brain science thing that's very powerful, the affirmation makes it so in the way that it's a reminder, and it's awareness that I am an intentional person, I'm curious, or whatever the affirmation is for the day.

So a recap here. The main problem here is that as trial attorneys, you're just pushing through and you're not slowing down. Slowing down, to be aware of what your thoughts are, what's going on with your body, where you are at will give the opportunity, give you the opportunity to become aware of other thoughts, thoughts that serve you, choose different thoughts instead of just reacting and coming from this old part of your brain, the amygdala, the limbic system that has been there for millions and millions of years and hasn't really evolved. It's that caveman brain that's going to make you just react in survival mode.

But you do have a choice. You can choose to slow down and choose your thoughts differently, and slow down to calm your nervous system. Because a lot of times, sometimes, you will just have that feeling, and there won't be a lot of thought associated with it. But if you slow down, you give yourself the choice of, "I am going to calm my nervous system." That in itself can make all the difference, and it'll keep you from being motivated by fear, anger, these things that aren't good fuel.

And the benefits of it? Well, you're calming your nervous system. Like I said, it lowers stress, it makes your mind clearer, your decision making better. These results here are physiological and mental that make a more fulfilling life. And better law practice, better human being. And when you really start getting into the mastery of this is that you start being able to do this concept of duality, this duality of the mind that I brought up that comes from, Your Survival Instinct is Killing You by Marc Schoen, that book, is being able to be with two conflicting, competing feelings and thoughts at the same time and slowing down enough to choose the one that serves you.

And the other book that's a great book that really helps you realize that you just, Don't Believe Everything You Think, and that's the title of the book. Because, don't. If you can ask yourself the question, "How can I tell if a goal is created out of inspiration or desperation?" That's one of the questions in the book. That's a big question. You know how you can tell? Well, if you slow down enough to be able to ask yourself the right questions and to breathe, you'll be able to find out if you were going to act out of desperation, or you can choose to act out of inspiration.

Thanks for listening, and I'll be back in another week to do something else fucking cool. Another concept, another mindset topic that we can dive into. Look forward to talking to you then.

Sari de la Motte:

Thank you for listening to the very end of this episode, A+. I'm going to ask you to subscribe to the podcast whether you're one of the weirdos that like to watch it on YouTube or you just listen, make sure you hit that subscribe button. It helps the podcast grow and let other people find me you all. But don't stop there. Be sure to leave me a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. We want this podcast to reach as many ears and eyes as possible. Thanks again for listening, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye everybody.