Why do so many high achievers secretly struggle with anxiety, burnout, and overwhelm? Dr. Elizabeth Stanley, Army veteran, Georgetown professor, and author of Widen the Window, joins Michael Hyatt to explain the hidden science behind stress and resilience. Drawing on her personal story of trauma, her background in the military, and her training in somatic therapy, Elizabeth reveals why talk therapy alone often falls short—and how body-based practices can change everything. This conversation is honest, practical, and deeply hopeful for anyone who feels stuck in patterns of stress.

Memorable Quotes

1. “We're all in it together and we're all experiencing the particular lawful ways that this human mind and body works in this particular poly-crisis world. Of course, people are struggling. It's kind of why it's my passion to help people understand ‘You're not alone in this.’”
2. “We are wired organically to be able to mobilize the energy to manage a crisis or a stressful situation, and then recover. Our ancestors that shared the same wiring that we have did not have 24/7 constant activation and constant demands the way that we do in modern life today.”
3. “The science term there is allostatic load, and the more our stress load grows, the less capacity we have in our mind and body to meet the next challenge, so that it becomes a bit of a vicious cycle, and we know that we're on the edge of our window or outside of our window of tolerance.”
4. “We are built so that we learn the downregulation through the soothing we receive from our parents and other early caregivers. And that presumes that our early caregivers and parents were regulated enough to do that for us.”
5. “If we're redirecting it somewhere that the survival brain perceives as safe, that actually starts conditioning. A process that makes the system move back in the way that we're organically built, which is to go through stress and recover naturally.”
6. “When we don't perceive agency, when we feel powerless or helpless, that actually leads to higher levels of arousal and it really resolidifies the prior conditioning. So being able to access that choice point is really critical in beginning to shift it.”
7. “If our parents had narrowed windows, if they were coping with a lot of stress and trauma, or if they were absent, if they had mental illness or they were incarcerated, they aren't able to help us wire those things. It's one of the ways that narrowed windows get transmitted intergenerationally and why trauma can become intergenerational.”

Key Takeaways

1. You’re Not Broken. Chronic anxiety and overwhelm are signs of dysregulation, not defects. They’re the evidence of what you’ve walked through—but don’t determine what’s ahead.
2. Your Body Knows the Way. Healing starts by listening to the signals of your nervous system. The key is not to minimize our reactions, but to listen and practice strategies that help us return to baseline.
3. Talk Therapy Isn’t Enough. True healing requires engaging the body and nervous system. Trauma-informed, body-based therapy can lead to breakthroughs when just thinking and talking isn’t enough.
4. Agency Is Key. Learning to notice choice points rewires the brain toward safety. The quickest way out of powerlessness is regaining a sense of agency.
5. Resilience Can Be Trained. Simple, repeated practices expand your “window of tolerance.” It takes time and intention, but you can widen your window.

Resources

• Widen the Window by Elizabeth Stanley
• Elizabeth Stanley’s Mindfulness-Based Mind Fitness Training (MMFT)

Watch on Youtube at: https://youtu.be/Z607BPgbxi4

This episode was produced by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound

What if the key to a meaningful life isn’t doing more—but doing less, with intention? In this powerful conversation, Michael and Megan talk with Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks and Meditations for Mortals, about the myths of productivity, the illusion of control, and why accepting our finite nature might be the best thing we can do for our peace, purpose, and productivity.

Memorable Quotes

1. “It's the relaxation of now I can just do the things that matter the most… I can just sort of dive in because I'm no longer trying to make all my actions feel like they are part of some process of eventually getting to total domination of my time and perfect optimization.”
2. “You are being confronted again with this ridiculous thing that it is to be a human—which is to be capable of imagining basically an infinite amount of possibilities and eventualities, but ultimately being a sort of finite material animal and having to choose only some of them.”
3. “Almost everybody who is trying to sort of optimize themselves into absolute control, you know, they're not succeeding. Life is miserable and they're letting people down all over the place.”
4. “There isn't any system or philosophy or approach or sports nutrition drink that is going to enable you to sort of win the battle with human limitation… Now, we figure out how to flourish in absolutely fantastic and wonderfully meaningful and interesting and lucrative ways within those limitations rather than running away from them.”
5. “There's a way of going with the flow that is actually more constructive and productive as well as more peaceful and meaningful.”
6. “I really found that just sort of expecting discomfort from things that matter to me—whether that is a piece of work or an aspect of relationships or parenting—just knowing that it's going to feel uncomfortable sometimes because it's bringing me to my edge and my limitations makes a huge, huge difference.”
7. “A lot of our productivity is the result of anxiety. And I would like to live a productive life for other reasons.”

Key Takeaways

1. Radical Acceptance is Key. Once you stop trying to win the battle with your human limitations, everything changes.
2. Distraction is Avoidance in Disguise. Most often, we’re dodging discomfort—and the way out lies in tolerating discomfort.
3. Optimization is Not Salvation. We think we can problem-solve our lives, but tools and systems will always fall short. They’re meant to augment, not make us infinite.
4. Meaning is Here, Now. The moments that build a life don’t happen when everything is done—but in the doing itself.

Resources

• 4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
• Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
• The Imperfectionist (Newsletter)

Watch on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/571YmI5h_Cs

This episode was produced by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound

What if the key to thriving isn’t managing your circumstances perfectly—but rooting yourself in the connections that matter most? In this heartfelt conversation, Michael and Megan talk with Elizabeth Oldfield, author of Fully Alive, about reclaiming depth, community, and soul-level steadiness in a culture addicted to speed and distraction. Elizabeth draws on ancient wisdom, modern insight, and her own experience living in intentional community to offer a hopeful path forward.

Memorable Quotes

1. “You need to put your roots down deep into love and work out how to find some steadiness.”

2. “When we are honest about our full humanity, we give other people permission to do that, and that's a necessary starting point for actually growing up our souls rather than pretending that we all know what we’re doing and we’re holding it all together.”

3. “Where we put our attention is essentially who we become.”
   “I have this sense that fully aliveness is in connection, deep connection, horizontally and vertically.”

4. “Hurrying and destruction are not how we flourish, and we’re constantly being encouraged to do those things. So we need to provide some counter pressure towards slowness and steadiness and presence.”

Key Takeaways

1. Connection Is the Core of Flourishing. Relationships—messy, costly, inconvenient—are where we become more fully human.
2. Attention Shapes Who You Become. Distraction isn’t just a nuisance; it’s a soul-shaping force. Guard your focus.
3. Structure Time Around Your Values. A “rule of life” puts what matters most in place first, so the rest fits around it.
4. Commitment Fuels Depth. Vulnerability without commitment fizzles; together they form lasting community.
5. Ancient Practices Still Work. Sabbath, liturgy, and shared rhythms anchor us in what endures.

Resources

• Fully Alive by Elizabeth Oldfield
• The Sacred podcast by Elizabeth Oldfield

Watch on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/-anckhHSdHM

This episode was produced by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound