Has the stress of the past year caused your brain fog to grow increasingly worse? Is brain fog affecting the way you’re able to operate in your business? If so, pay attention! Because today, I am speaking with Tanessa Shears about how to get rid of brain fog so that you can be more successful in your business and in your life.
IE 244: How to Get Rid of Brain Fog for More Productivity, Energy, and Growth in Your Business, with Tanessa Shears
Tanessa is a health consultant who works specifically with entrepreneurs. She has found that as our businesses grow, the first thing we take off of our plates is our own health. Work hours start to bleed into personal hours, we start to maybe give up some sleep to do more work, and our food choices are made more out of convenience than what’s good for us.
When all these factors come together, they create a perfect storm of inflammation. And then you find yourself unable to think clearly and unable to do your best work, even though you’re literally giving it more hours than ever.
How Do You Know if You Have Brain Fog?
I recall a time when I was blogging over at my lifestyle blog that I went to the doctor, convinced I was showing signs of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. I was having trouble remembering things and it scared me.
Spoiler alert, I didn’t have early-onset Alzheimer’s. What I had was a different problem entirely. I had a business that was taking up every brain cell I had to give it and then some. Because I could not seem to shut my brain off, I never had a real rest from thinking about the business.
Don’t expect your doctor to diagnose you with brain fog; it isn’t a disease. It’s actually a group of symptoms like forgetfulness, low energy, fatigue that you wake up with and can’t shake off no matter how much caffeine you drink.
If you’ve ever sat at your computer and felt completely uninspired or like you had to force every thought, you might be dealing with brain fog. You may also feel like you’ve lost your ability to focus.
Our brains are amazing and can do some pretty crazy things but when we are dealing with brain fog, we aren’t operating at full capacity.
What would it feel like to wake up, feel sharp and focused, and be able to get your work done in a fraction of the time it’s currently taking you, simply because you can’t think?
What Causes Brain Fog?
If you think you struggle with brain fog; if you’ve seen yourself in any of the symptoms we’ve talked about, what can you do to get out of it?
You start by identifying what is causing it.
Brain fog is caused by the amount of inflammation inside your body. Inflammation doesn’t just occur on the outside of our body when we sprain our ankle or get a cut. The same things- redness, swelling, discomfort- also happen inside us.
Inflammation occurs in our vascular system, our digestive system, and our brain. And when it affects our brain, it shows up in the prefrontal cortex, that part of your brain responsible for planning and executing.
All the things that make you an entrepreneur are effectively shut down.
Where Is All the Inflammation Coming From?
In order to get rid of brain fog, we have to figure out where the inflammation is coming from.
Tanessa identified three primary ways that entrepreneurs create inflammation inside their bodies
- Lack of quality sleep
- Eating convenience foods rather than food that is helpful for our bodies
- Chronic stress
Even if you don’t feel stressed out, your brain holds onto the stress from mistreating your body through lack of quality sleep, poor dietary choices, and stress.
Biohacking- What Is It and Why Does It Matter?
Simply put, biohacking is making changes to not only your external environment but also your internal environment to create a sense of longevity, well-being, and energy. All of the things we associate with feeling good and living a long, healthy life.
As entrepreneurs, we don’t have time to try to take on 30 new habits to improve our health. We take ideas from here and there and mostly just hope for the best. But is that the way you run your business? I hope not.
In business, we track everything. We split-test. We use metrics to measure our success.
And this is exactly what Tanessa does to help her clients. Using devices like Fitbits and Oura rings, she can track heart rate, sleep metrics, breathing rate, and more. So every time she begins a new health habit, she can track it to see if there are positive results.
I have to strongly recommend you listen to this entire episode if at all possible. Tanessa shared multiple, specific examples of how to biohack not only your own health, especially your sleep, but she even went on to talk about how to help your children sleep better so that you can, too! If you’re the mom of a baby or toddler who still wakes you up every night, this is important information for you.
Escaping the Spiral of Overwhelm
As female entrepreneurs, we can easily find ourselves in the land of overwhelm. From getting the kids to school and activities to helping with homework, to getting dinner on the table and trying to cram in that work time, we often feel out of control with our time.
How do you get out of that awful spiral of feeling like you need to do everything but you’re barely skating by?
Tanessa suggests going through every single thing you tell yourself you should be doing and ask a simple question, “Does this make me money? Which items are actually serving my clients and moving my business forward?”
Once you’ve identified the specific things you need to do, you must set boundaries around those things in two forms-
- Your work hours- setting work hours and honoring them so that you don’t sacrifice your health on the altar of doing all the things you think you should do but that don’t have a good ROI.
- In your mind- Tanessa set firm boundaries for when she is allowed to spend time thinking about her business, and it’s not at the family dinner table.
If you lose the separation between work and your personal life, it all blurs together and you feel like you’re never able to escape work. That can lead to a constant fight or flight syndrome, which leads to more inflammation and more overwhelm.
Again, for you moms of little ones who work in the margins, Tanessa shared some amazing ideas to help you if you don’t have dedicated work hours. Listen in!
12 Ways to Biohack Your Energy Playbook
If your interest in biohacking has been piqued in this episode, Tanessa has something to help you get started.
She has compiled the 12 biohacks that are getting the biggest results for her clients and put them into a playbook for you to use.
She cautions against going in and trying all 12 at once. That will just lead to more overwhelm.
No, instead just choose one to try, and if it works, great! Choose another one to add to it. Track everything and measure your results.
If you’re ready to get rid of brain fog for more productivity in your business, grab Tanessa’s playbook by heading to the link or you can always DM me on Instagram and I will send you the link!
And Tanessa has a podcast where she goes deep into specific biohacks so be sure to check that out as well.
Be sure to let me know if you try any of her biohacks and your results!
Action Steps:
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