How to Double Your Energy and Focus with Tanessa Shears

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0:37welcome to the jasmine star show y 'all i have to tell you that you know if you've been around the block with us for a minute we've done well over 300 episodes and i could safely say about 98 of all guests we've ever had on the show are people i know personally so i usually start the podcast with like a story or how I experienced them. And I have to say, every so often, there floats on by a purple blue unicorn that has like spits Skittles from her mouth. And I got an email in my inbox and it was a podcast pitch. Now, hold on, prepare your heart, prepare your heart. We get podcast pitches at minimum eight to 10 times a day.

1:13So the vast majority, 99.8 % of the time we say no. And then I came across this wilds woman pitch and I thought to myself, This is something that's so important. I have believed it's important. It has radically transformed my life. And here she is as a specialist who not just specializes in this topic, but specializes in this topic for entrepreneurs. She is a consultant that specializes in helping high-achieving entrepreneurs completely overhaul, wait for it, their health. But not because she wants you to be healthy. She wants you to facilitate your health. Why? What is the main benefit? Well, you're gonna have breakthroughs in your personal and professional lives.

1:48So here's the thing. If you want a CliffsNotes version, This is what her IG bio says. I help six and face. I'm just gonna keep on rolling with it because I got nervous bringing you on with a formal bio. I help six and seven figure entrepreneurs double their energy and focus so they can make more money in their businesses. Y 'all, if that is not the biggest benefit driven bio I've ever read on the gram, I am very happy and welcome to the woman who actually wrote it. Tanesha Shears, welcome to the Jasmine Star Show. Hey, Jasmine. Thank you. What an intro. I have to say that takes the cake for the best intro.

2:24I think I've heard. Well, I've done my homework and I've dug in and we never say we never want to say never. We hardly say yes. But when we say yes, we really dive in because our listeners time is the most important thing that they have. And so if they're investing it, I want to start off with the benefit. The benefit is this woman will help you make more money and have personal and professional breakthroughs. awesome. But how she does it, I was really fascinated. And I'm excited for this conversation because I want to dive right in and I want to ask them pretty basic questions that we can then build off of.

2:55And then I want us to have like a real homegirl to homegirl conversation about practical ways that entrepreneurs can start feeling better. So are you all in? I'm all in. I was like, that was the buildup. That was the buildup. I'm like, are we crossing this threshold? Okay. So for many years I struggled with brain fog. I was like, I had my ideas and they just seem to be surrounded by this gray cloud. Now, could you define for us what a brain fog is and how it might be showing up in ways that we don't expect? And so the reason I'm starting with this question is because you do have a lot of solutions and ways to change, but I first want to identify something that I experienced.

3:35And then once I identified it, I wish I had somebody speak to it a little bit earlier. So that's why I want to start with defining what brain fog is. Yeah. So brain fog is interesting. It's not one of those things that you can like walk into the doctors and they're like, that's brain fog because it's more so like a collection of symptoms. It's, I like to describe it best as like, if you were thinking through sand, like imagine yourself on the beach running in sand, like you can do it, but it's not as effective. It's slow. It's kind of like clunky. I like to think of that's how thinking feels with brain fog.

4:03And on top of that, it comes up with a whole bunch of other things. Like if you're sitting down to write content, for example, and you're just can't come up with anything good. And you're just like, I have nothing to say right now. You're forgetting things. You go to write an email and you're like, who am I writing this email to? What is going on here? And you just feel fatigued. Like you wake up feeling a little tired and you hit that dreaded like two, 3 p.m. slump. And you're just like, I have nothing. And then you finally wrap up your work for the day. You get into the evening and all you have the energy for is Netflix.

4:31Not that there's anything bad with Netflix, but I wanna have the energy to choose that if I want, but also do the other things in my life that make it so fulfilling. So brain fog is really this overarching sense of just like my brain doesn't feel right. I'm confused, low energy, fatigue, and it's not working the way I need it to, to have the life I want. Brain fog also showed up for me in that I get like how you had said, it was like seeing through sand. And for me, it was like, I could see the ideas and I could see the ventures I wanted to do. And they had a form, but I couldn't actually drill down on the root of it to bring them to life in a way that was satiating and exciting.

5:07And so it always felt like this elusive, just out of my grasp. And I kind of felt like I was just moving a lot slower. Now, whenever we start with these conversations about, well, as entrepreneurs, we're going to clear that brain fog, I think it's super helpful to know like what's on the other side. Like what are we selling into? Because for so long, that was my norm. The story I told myself was, oh, it's just a little bit harder for me to see things clearly without me giving myself the permission to say, no, no, no, this thing exists and it's brain fog. You wrote an Instagram post because your girl is a creeper that what life looks for you on the other side, like how you and your husband were able to have a conversation and what does life look like before?

5:43And what does it look like after? Because if you sell us on the after everything that we start working through, through a lot of my questions and frameworks are going to help us be like, Oh, I'm closer to that very thing. Yeah. So I think that brain fog, when we have it, it's one of those things that like, we look at, you know, your colleagues, fellow entrepreneurs, your family, and everyone kind of feels foggy and tired. And like you said, like, is this normal? Like you never really think to question it. And it doesn't become how clear of an impact it's having on your life until you break out of it.

6:10And you're like, oh my gosh, I used to think that was normal. And I often find that with my clients is like, they'll get to the point where they're like, I feel really good and everything's going fine. But then they'll have a night where they'll like stay up a little late or they'll, you know, a little funky. And all of a sudden they're like, I used to feel like that all the time. Like I had no idea. And I truly feel like most entrepreneurs are operating at what I feel is like 65 to 70 % of what they're capable of. But when you really clear out those things that are slowing your brain down, we get you revving up at 90%.

6:40You're just like, wow, it doesn't take me three hours to write my social media posts for the week. That's what happens when my brain is slow. So when I was able to move through that and start having a brain that was thinking clear. And not only did I move faster through the day, which means I don't have to spend so much time doing the same stuff, but that time that I have in the evening with my husband, I can use it for things. And we are really big into the fire movement. We actually hit financial independence last year and retired him from his job. And that was one of those things that without having the energy to pursue other things outside of my business and my family, we never would have had that opportunity.

7:15So it's just, your brain is capable of so much more. And I just love people to begin questioning of what they're experiencing, if that is what they're truly capable of. And if they want to explore more. Okay. So side note, what's the fire? What did you say? Yeah. Fire F I R E stands for financial independence, retire early. Wow. Wow. Wow. Yes. I want that lifestyle girl. I want to be like the Phoenix. I want to rise up from the ashes. Let's go. Okay. So explain a little bit more. Yeah. So basically what it means is the way we have invested a lot of the income from my business over the years has created such a cushion and a return yearly that all of our living expenses are completely covered by what's kicked off from our investment portfolio.

7:55So all the money that I make in my business is for fun. So I brought my husband home, which lets me play a little bit more because now the girls are home. I've got two little girls. They're 11 months old and three. He's home. He's running a videography business. I'm doing my thing. I work with people I love because I get the choice. Like it's such freedom that I didn't see as a by-product of like taking care of me first. Okay. See how I say, like, we have conversations. I was like, I like fire. Like that's going to be written on a post-it note. And I want to start really looking heavily at our investment portfolio as well, because I want to create for fun.

8:28Like, let's go. Okay. So thank you for clarifying that. And now I want to get a little bit practical because people are saying, well, I might be, I too might be experiencing brain fog. Now I have done a lot of things. I am. Now, here's the thing. I don't think that one or all of these things alleviated brain fog. I'm just saying what has definitely made an impact on my life. And that's not a recommendation, nor is it a judgment. I'll talk here, but I'm going to go back and why I was really struck with what Tana said saying, because inadvertently, I started noticing that this one thing had a domino effect on everything else, but I don't drink alcohol very much.

9:06I don't do recreational drugs. I don't smoke. I work out six days a week. I am gluten-free. Like I'm vegetarian. There's a lot of stuff that I started changing and cutting away. I don't have a television in my room and I don't have devices in my room. But here was the thing that I noticed was the domino was, could I do one thing that I felt like I was in control of? And that became the force of change. And I noticed that when I changed my sleep, everything happened thereafter. And when I started reading and doing a lot more research on you. I was like, how do we get practical? Now I want to talk about why sleep is important to feeling better.

9:41And if anybody else is listening, how it could be a domino effect as well. Yeah. First of all, Jasmine, you're speaking my love language with all those. I'm telling you, we're literally soul sisters. I saw this pitch and I was like, there's more of us out there. Yes. Right. For real. Yeah. So, you know, what was interesting? So I've been in the fitness industry. I started as a personal trainer in 2008, opened my business in 2014. And at the beginning, you know, I was like, yeah, exercise is where it's at. But then, you know, over the years, you're like, wait, it's exercise and food. No, wait. And you keep developing this.

10:08But for real, when I started diving into sleep and incorporating that, not only into my personal practice, but with my clients, like, wow, did it make a difference? Because what I don't think we realize is sleep is not a pillar of health. It's the foundation on which everything else is built. Pause. Ooh. Sleep is not a pillar of health. It is the foundation of health. I kind of wanted to like say that again so that we understand that we're not messing around. This is not like an introduction of a cool idea or an added pillar to build a bigger skyscraper. There is no skyscraper without the foundation.

10:44I too, I believe that. So I wanted to pause there. I'm sorry, carry on. Yeah. Well, the reason I love to say that is I want you to think about this. You went to sleep late. Maybe you had a rough sleep up a couple times in the night. It wasn't that great of a sleep. You wake up, right? You're in a crappy mood. And so what's the first thing you do? It's likely what you skip your workout, right? Or you put it off or you put half effort into it. And so already that's gone kind of sideways. You go through your day and because you likely jeopardize some of the quality of sleep, you're in a bit of an irritable mood.

11:12So you're probably not going to be as engaging, creating content the way you want. You're not magnetic. You're not serving your customers and your clients the way you want because you're not showing up feeling in the place you want to be in. And then on top of that, because your sleep was fragmented, your insulin is 20 to 40 % less effective. And that insulin's job is to keep our blood sugar stable. Blood sugar stable means less brain fog. So on top of that, your hormones are a mess. You're craving foods. You want to eat more. So think about this. If you're focusing on, I just want to eat better.

11:43I just want to exercise, but your sleep's a mess. you're literally fighting an uphill battle. Everything else is harder from how you show up to your mood, to the way your brain works, to if you do your exercise, to how effective your food is metabolized. So it's like, we're fixing all of these things, but it's not really the thing that can set everything else in motion. So I like to like wind it back and ask, all right, what are we missing on the foundation of why all these things feel so hard? So a lot changed for me reading a very simple article and the whole article was hinged on one thing is that there's different types of sleep.

12:17There is richer sleep and more dense sleep and sleep that occurs before midnight is different than sleep that happens after. And so what I was realizing was I was going to sleep at 1130 and I was cheating myself out of this really dense, beautiful sleep. Anytime between like eight and midnight, like that's the richest sleep. And I was cutting myself short from that. And so as people are listening, I understand the temptation that we as entrepreneurs and overachievers and really driven people, we wanna add more pillars and that's great, but the foundation is what we need and it could be. So the thing that I've heard a lot from entrepreneurs as I kind of been diving into like my health journey is, oh, but I can't, like I just, my body just doesn't do that.

12:59And I'm thinking, well, it doesn't do that because I too felt the same way. I was like, there's just no way I'm falling asleep before 1130 or midnight. And it just became a pattern. The minute I decided that I was going to not have a TV and not have devices and I wasn't gonna have a lot of bright lights in the room the minute I was able to like retrain like a circadian rhythm. Now, if we haven't sold a lot of people right now or they're like, they say that feels really heavy. What are some like, there's a listener who's listening and they say, you know what? I know that I have a little brain fog.

13:27To what extent? I don't know if I'm running at 60 % or 75%, but they want to tweak it, but it feels very heavy. What are like two actionable things that they can do right now? So how does one, number one, address the sleep issue? Have you given tips on like how to encourage people to go to sleep earlier? And is there anything else within that spectrum that you might say after this podcast, today's the day, let's start making some big changes. Yeah. I think one of the biggest ones we have to address is light. Like you hit on something really important. You said circadian rhythm. So if you're listening and you're like, what's the circadian rhythm, your body follows.

13:59Thank you. Yes. Yes. Yeah. I know. Isn't it fun? Just kind of when you dive into this stuff, it just feels like language you use all the time. Right. So I, so your circadian rhythm is basically how your body follows a 24 hour clock. Your heart rate goes up and down at certain times of the day, your hormones, your temperature, all of that. And so if you are able to get this rhythm optimized, then your whole body just starts working a lot better. So it's interesting what you said is like, I used to think I can't go to sleep before 1130. And I've had clients that'll say that, but I often look at the hour or two before bed.

14:33And I ask like, how are you cuing your circadian rhythm? Because one of the most potent sources of information for our brain is light. Now I want you to think about this. You go outside in the middle of the day and it is so bright out blue, white spectrum light. That's telling your brain it's the middle of the day. Be alert, be focused. This is where your energy comes in. And in the evening, if you think back to the, before we had all this indoor electricity, right? What happened? The sun goes down, it gets low in the sky, it gets dim, it gets red, orange, and pink. that light intensity height and color tells our brain sleep is coming we get to produce some melatonin you need to start winding down but all of a sudden we have electricity and to make it worse we stare into our devices now a lot of people hear about blue light and they just think oh blue light is bad well it's the timing of that blue light so when you are feeding your brain that blue white spectrum of light right before bed you are telling your brain it's the middle of the day and you should be alert.

15:29So essentially what happens is you go to sleep and you might, even if you fall asleep, your sleep is not gonna be of high quality. You might get less of that REM sleep, the dream sleep at the end of the night. That's so good for us as entrepreneurs. I call that sleep entrepreneurial gold at the end of the night. But essentially your sleep isn't what you need it to be. You may have trouble falling asleep, wake ups during the night. So it's like one of those things where if you're having trouble actually falling asleep, you wanna look at like, well, what information am I giving my brain in those hour or two before bed?

15:57Okay, so I'm going to repeat back one of two actionable things that they can do based on what you said is to monitor the amount of light that you are intaking before bed. I don't know. Tell me how to get better. I try to not have any devices after 9 p.m. And the lights that we have on in the house are only like bedside stands and like accent lights perhaps in the bathroom just to kind of make it a little bit darker. How is that as a start? And then once you co-sign or amend, what would be the second tip to help somebody start falling asleep a little sooner? Yeah, I love what you said. You got the whole dimming thing and the lower thing.

16:38You know what I love to do? I replaced one of my bedside lamps with an orange incandescent bulb because that really hits the coloring. So I have the other one for the morning when I want it nice and bright, but then I have that orange incandescent bulb for the evening and it makes such a difference. So it has the same effect as, you know, those like blue light blocking glasses that are red. I have those as well, but I either will wear those or throw on the orange bedside table lamp, especially in that half hour or four. It's kind of like that further queuing. Have you ever heard of the red glasses?

17:09No, no. Oh, they're awesome. Okay. So imagine wearing a pair of sunglasses, but instead of like sunglass lenses, the lenses are red. And what it does is it filters all light coming through so that the light is orange and red spectrum. It literally is amazing for sleep. I've had my poor husband, I've fallen asleep mid conversation with the poor guy. Like we're leaning up against the headboard and I'm like drifting off. Like it is such a wonderful thing for like that cozy falling asleep feeling that it does. You wearing the red glasses. Oh yes. With my earplugs in the sound machine on like the whole deal.

17:43That's amazing. That's amazing. I love this real talk. I love this real talk because what we're doing is we're indexing and we're having real conversations about things that truly matter to us and having those conversations with our partners. So managing the light before we go to bed, in addition to devices and perhaps wearing red tinted glasses, that could be another helpful thing. Is there anything else that somebody is just like, Hey, it's, I could dim all the lights and I'm not falling asleep before 1130. Anything else that pops up as like an actual thing that it could start? Yeah. I see this one all the time.

18:15I'm looking at what are we eating and in what proximity to bedtime. So good. Yeah. Dive here. Yeah. So we don't really think about food's effect on sleep. Like we are so, I want to say that we're brainwashed only think as food in terms of like health and fitness, but we never think of food and sleep. So I want you to think about this. Your brain's job when you go to sleep is to restore, refresh and rejuvenate for the next day. In order for that to happen, you need to allow your heart rate to drop and to get into full recovery in the early part of the night. Now, if you are eating within, I like to honestly say two to three hours for bed for most people, think about what has to happen.

18:57Your blood pressure needs to go up. Your heart rate needs to go up. Your body needs to divert its energy to digestion. Now, if we really want to get nerdy, like I monitor a lot of my body stats with a ring that I'm wearing right now, it's called an aura ring. And I wake up in the morning and I check what my resting heart rate did during the night. I know this is nerdy, but if you eat too close to bed, you will actually see your resting heart rate go up after you go to sleep and then drop later in the night. And if your resting heart rate is taking longer to come down when you sleep, that's a bunch of time you don't get to spend getting prepped for the next day.

19:29So I'm really looking at, okay, can I start moving that back? And a lot of my clients are like, I eat an hour before bed. So I always like to say like, let's not do anything crazy here. Can we get it back to 90 minutes? And then after that, and that feels comfortable, can we pull it back even more? And that's kind of where I like to start with the food conversation. Oh, that is so good. And we started noticing, I don't think my husband and I were eating. We've never been late eaters. We came from families who ate dinner early, but it was after having our daughter where we started realizing that she was eating dinner at 530.

19:58So it didn't make sense for her to eat at 530 and for us to eat at like 645, how we used to. And I had seen the biggest difference in how I was falling asleep when I started eating dinner at 530. A lot of my friends will make fun of me if I'm like, okay, we made dinner reservations at six. and they're like, why? Like, are you a grandma? And I'm like, call me a grandma. I'm happy to be a golden girl because I'm sleeping. I am like feeling better about myself. I don't wake up feeling as like full or heavy. And so in that regard, I love this. So two actionable steps that you can do today that doesn't require a big shift in behavior.

20:33You could dim some lights and not be looking at devices before you go to bed or elongated. If you're looking at a device immediately before you go to bed, why not try like putting your device away 15 minutes, then maybe 25, 35. And then looking at what time you're eating dinner to ensure that your heart rate isn't spiking while you're sleeping because you're losing the thing that is the most valuable. So I know that you talk to people and you help like high earning business professionals who are driven achieve breakthroughs professionally. What do you see stopping people? Like now that we give this advice, I want to be like, yo, oh, watch out for this because this is coming.

21:10Like what kind of pitfalls do you see often and then how do we overcome it? Two big ones. Number one is that there is this belief we have that if I take more time out to sleep, I'm less productive. Meaning like there are many entrepreneurs that I work with that I find after the kids go to sleep later at night, they'll just check back in. They'll just answer a bunch of emails, write some social media posts. This is my time to work on my business, right? And they'll end up, you know, maybe getting five or six hours sleep and being like, it's okay because I'm more productive. But I truly love to invite you to take a shift that what if that's actually just taking from tomorrow's productivity?

21:48And because your brain wasn't restored, maybe what would have taken you five hours tomorrow and now it takes you eight. Are you really gaining that back? And on top of that, now you just feel lousy. Oh, so good. Wait, let's pause. So the minute we start making these changes, dimming the lights, indexing on our sleep, changing the way we eat, what comes up is not the reality, It's the emotion of guilt or waste. And then what Tanesha is saying, right. So you're going to sleep an hour more. And if you don't, it will take you three X that to do something else in the middle of the day. So it's still like a net loss.

22:20So if we know that that's coming, we can now be prepared not to go through the negative emotion of guilt. And then what's the second thing? The second thing that comes up is the, but if I go to bed earlier, that's my knee time. so right because especially for parents it's like the chaos just ended I just want to scroll Instagram for an hour and a half or watch Netflix I want to zone out I need to recharge and that's my time if you take that away from me when am I going to ever have time and I here's the question I love to ask okay so let's talk about that time after your kids go to bed what is it that you really want to get out of it and it's never a thing it's a feeling right we do everything for the feeling.