July's Permission Slip: "You Can't Be in Offense if You're Always in Defense."

What If Slowing Down Is Actually Your Superpower?

Here's to the Power of the Pause!

Taking a few moments to breathe, ground, connect.

July has a unique energy. Nestled right in the middle of the “school’s out, anticipatory feeling of June and the back-to-business, back-to-school, back-to-traffic urgency of August, July offers the intentional exhale. This month is just somehow way more languid—yet still commands the vibrancy of celebratory summer gatherings. 

And if you’re a high-performer who NEVER fully stops? I see you. This month is truly your proverbial permission slip, your hall pass to take it down a notch and really connect with what matters.

Including your health. Especially your health.

Because what I’m finally starting to understand in my 60s—and what I want you to hear because it’s something most high-achievers have trouble connecting with: your body cannot heal, recover, or optimize when it’s stuck in defense mode. And if we’re being honest? Most of us “Type AAAs” have been running in defense mode since January. (Maybe the real truth is we ALWAYS run in defense mode. All good, that’s just who we are. So when we know better, we can do better and focus on scheduling in some time to rejuvenate!)

That’s the heart at what I’m thinking about this month, and the inspiration for this sports-inspired Chris-ism: “You Can’t Be in Offense if You’re Always in Defense.”

In sports, the difference between a good team and a great one isn't just talent—it's recovery. The athletes who show up most powerfully aren't the ones who never stop training. They're the ones who train AND recover with equal intention. When you skip the recovery, you don't show up at your best. You show up depleted—going through the motions, running on fumes, giving less than you're capable of. Even worse? Every ounce of energy goes to just reacting. To protecting. To surviving vs. thriving. Offense requires something defense never has—availability. Space. The capacity, the desire, the energy to move forward. Your body and your nervous system work exactly the same way. And July? July is your invitation to get yourself to offense.

How? I’m so glad you asked!

The Science Behind the Chris-ism

Your autonomic nervous system has two primary modes:

1. The sympathetic nervous system is your fight-or-flight system—your defense. It's brilliant, essential, and life-saving when you need it. Heart rate up, blood pressure up, digestion paused, immune function suppressed, stress hormones flooding your body. In a genuine emergency, this system keeps you alive.

1. The parasympathetic nervous system is your rest-and-digest system—your offense. This is where healing happens. Where cells repair. Where hormones regulate, inflammation resolves, digestion works properly, and your brain consolidates memory and makes creative leaps. This is your opportunity to become your best self.

The problem for most high-performers is not that the sympathetic system activates. The problem is that it never fully turns off.

Chronic stress—the kind that comes not from one emergency but from the accumulated weight of always being "on"—keeps the body in a low-grade, persistent defense state. And in that state, your body simply cannot prioritize the work of recovery, optimization, or long-term health. It's allocating every resource to surviving the perceived threat. A huge roadblock if you want to show up powerfully as your best YOU!

The cruel irony? The harder you push without recovery, the less effective you actually become. The creativity dims. The decisions get cloudier. The energy that once felt limitless starts requiring more and more caffeine, more willpower, more pushing through (and less feeling YOU!)—just to maintain the same output.

It’s not about flogging yourself or telling yourself this is weakness (I can hear my mind saying as I write this, “Come on, Chris—Just push through!”). This is biology. We are human beings, not human doings. Sometimes we just need to allow ourselves to be more and do less. Which then truly allows us to be more and show up powerfully in all facets of this beautiful life.

Your Nervous System Is a Trainable Muscle

Think about reframing any mental chatter or labeling of weakness (fill in your mind’s negative self talk here) to strategically and powerfully focusing on stress resilience and optimizing physiological capacity as something you can optimize through training!

Just like physical fitness, the principle is straightforward: you don't get stronger by working out 24 hours a day. You get stronger by deliberately alternating between effort and recovery. The muscle grows in the rest, not in the work.

Your nervous system follows the same logic. The goal is not to eliminate stress—that's neither realistic nor desirable. Stress, in the right doses, drives growth, sharpens focus, and builds capacity. The goal is to become someone who can move fluidly between activation and recovery—someone whose nervous system is flexible enough to ramp up when the moment demands it and come back down when the moment passes. Whoosh! That’s the sweet sound of resilience.

"Quiet the mind, and the soul will speak.

Still the body, and the strength will return."

— Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati

That flexibility—the ability to move between states—is what elite performers in every field are actually training when they talk about recovery protocols, mindfulness practices, and sleep optimization. It's measurable, too: heart rate variability (HRV) is the metric the highest-performing athletes and executives—and mere high-performing mortals who live life to the fullest like us—use to track nervous system flexibility. A high HRV generally means your body can better adapt. A chronically low HRV generally means you're stuck in defense. HRV is highly personal but that’s a guideline. Mine is not the highest to be sure, but I’ve improved it over the years! Not perfect and we all go through ebbs and flows, but it’s important to look at trends and do your best to feel your best.

The good news? The body is amazing and you, too, can move the needle. Starting today. Starting with five minutes.

My Morning Practice—A Grounding System That Works for Me

I want to share that I don't just coach this stuff. I live it. As part of my approach to building resiliency and taking it down a notch, I’ve developed a system that I use to kick off my day (after I help the dogs kick off theirs lol). And I do this every single morning.

My practice isn't elaborate. It doesn't require an hour on a meditation cushion or a perfectly quiet house (which I’ve tried and is not for me nor possible in my house). What it requires is intention and a little creativity—and the understanding that I am investing a few minutes (10-15) daily in  training my nervous system the same way I train my body.

If it’s helpful to inspire what could support you, here's what my practice looks like:

I start with simply going outside on my patio with bare feet touching the coral stone, putting my left hand on my heart and my right hand on my belly and breathing… connecting with the breath, the earth, and grounding through focusing on visualizing the minerals in the earth and my bones drinking them in (to support bone strength)… Then I integrate a beautiful gratitude practice—a specific, felt sense of thankfulness for something real. Starting with my health and my family, and going all the way through to my friends, communities, clients, sending love and healing light to all those who need it, and ending with a full gratitude for the beautiful day. The next phase of my practice is all about movement to honor how my body shows up for me every day. I do a series of push-ups, air squats, jumps, yoga poses like crows, planks, and more. Just a few minutes of physical activation to ignite my heart rate and wake up my body in a more active way, allowing my sympathetic system to do exactly what it's designed to do. What I'm doing, neurologically, is pairing activation with appreciation. I am teaching my nervous system that being alert and being safe are not mutually exclusive.

And then I seal my practice with a beautiful mantra inspired by Louise Hay: “All is well. Everything is happening for my highest and best good. Out of this situation, this experience, this day, only good will come. I am safe.” I express final gratitude for this beautiful day and call on those parts of me that I need to support me with what I wish to accomplish that day, and then I do a quick “legs up the lounge chair” pose while I’m logging my activity in my Oura app. Feet elevated, spine long, face toward the sky. A few delicious seconds (or minutes if I so choose!) of deliberate, delicious-feeling legs-up-the-wall kind of stillness. My body has learned to recognize that while this is squarely on my “to do” list, it’s a way to say, “…we are safe… we can recover now..”

The transitions—from breathing/grounding/gratitude to activation to deliberate rest—is the training. Every morning, I am building the capacity to move between states. Every morning, I am choosing offense.

"We must step back, breathe deeply, and allow the whole self—muscles, mind, and spirit—to soften. Only in softness can the body

rebuild what the busy world tore down."

— Sumi Loundon Kim

That micro moment of softening at the end of my practice is not passive. It is the most active, intentional thing I do all day.

Your Resilience Toolkit — Six Levers Worth Pulling

You don't need to adopt my exact practice. What you need is a set of tools that consistently signal safety to YOUR nervous system—and the commitment to use them before you're depleted, not after.

These are the six tools that I come back to, personally and professionally, that work magic on managing the “Stress Monster”:

1. Breathwork. The fastest, most accessible tool you have. Your breath—what I like to call your body’s free stress reduction system!—is the only autonomic function you can consciously control. Controlling it is a direct line to your parasympathetic system. There are many options including box breathing (4 counts in, 4 hold, 4 out, 4 hold), the physiological sigh (double inhale through the nose, long exhale through the mouth), or simple 4-7-8 breathing. Test and learn which resonates with you; they all work. In less than a minute you can connect to calm while a sea of stress is swirling around. Even three conscious breaths before a difficult conversation changes your nervous system's response to it. During deep breathing, your body's stress response has a very hard time maintaining its tight grip—it's one of the fastest physiological pattern interrupts available to you.

2. Meditation and Mindfulness. It's not about an hour on a cushion (though it can be—you do you!). Five minutes of deliberate stillness—eyes closed, phone down, attention on your breath—is enough to begin shifting your baseline. The practice is simply returning your attention to your breath when your mind wanders. That's the rep. That's what you're training.

3. Journaling. Your nervous system carries what your mind hasn't processed. Writing externalizes and releases that load—getting it out of the body and onto the page. This is why even ten minutes of unstructured journaling measurably reduces cortisol. You don't need a prompt (though feel free to use one if you wish!). You just need to let it out—whatever it is. Don’t judge, just write and release. Journaling is something I tend to have to really talk myself into doing for some reason, but every time I do I feel so much better! Someone very wise in my life told me once, “if you have the question, you have the answer”. For me, journaling is a particularly effective tool when I’m sorting through a decision. It’s pretty amazing.

Part of my morning routine—daily!

4. Gratitude Practice. Gratitude neurologically interrupts the threat-detection bias your brain defaults to under chronic stress. Well, just defaults to no matter what honestly, but it seems way worse when the “Stress Monster” is lurking! A brain actively looking for what's good cannot simultaneously be scanning for danger at the same level. Even three specific things, written or spoken aloud, begins to shift the pattern.

5. The Right Movement at the Right Time. Movement is medicine—sometimes we just have to move the energy around to transform it from a stressful energy to a more positive, productive energy. This can happen in less than a minute! Shaking, dancing, just moving. But the prescription does matter. High-intensity training when you're already depleted adds to your stress load, and may not serve you at that moment. When your nervous system needs recovery, the most powerful movement choices are yoga, walking, swimming, or gentle strength work. And dancing is magical. Save the HIIT for when you're rested and fueled. Any. Movement. Counts.℠—the question is what your body actually needs right now.

6. Nature. You can keep it brief but real: even just a few minutes outdoors measurably reduces cortisol. Something about natural light, open space, and fresh air sends a primal safety signal to the nervous system that no indoor environment can fully replicate. For me, that's my backyard on Key Biscayne—the beautiful pool oasis, the landscaping, the fresh-albeit-sometimes-sauna-like air. Sometimes between client sessions I'll go out and just grab a few minutes of peaceful processing by the pool, enjoying a piece of refreshing fruit or my morning tea. For you, it might be a park, a garden, or simply stepping outside with your coffee. Do it daily. It counts.

Enjoying a delicious cup of tea, poolside, between meetings.

What Offense Actually Looks Like

Getting yourself to offense doesn't mean being aggressive, relentless, or invincible. It means being available—to your best thinking, your deepest creativity, your most generous leadership, your fullest presence.

When you are genuinely in offense mode—when your nervous system is flexible, your recovery is real, and your body feels safe—everything changes. You make better decisions. You lead with more clarity. You are more patient with the people you love. You have energy left at the end of the day. You wake up ready instead of already behind. You feel good!

That is not a luxury. That is the goal.

And the path there is not more discipline, more optimization, or more pushing through. It is the deliberate, daily practice of intentional recovery. It is the morning that ends legs up the lounge chair. It is the breath before the meeting. It is the walk that isn't a workout, the meal you actually taste, the evening you protect because you've learned—finally—that rest is not the opposite of performance. Rest is the source that ignites performance!

You cannot score from defense. Get yourself to offense. While life happens and it may not be possible every single day—it is about being as consistent as possible with one of the most powerful investments you will ever make in your health, your leadership, and your life.

What’s one small change—either taking something stressful away or actively engaging a powerful tool to build your resiliency muscle—you can make to your daily repertoire to support building resilience for YOU? 

Think Big. Start Small. Feel Better.℠

Here's to Your Healthiest Happiest YOU! ☀️

Chris

NBC-HWC | FMCHC | Founder, BrandCraftYOU

Ready to feel YOUR best? Work with me!