Unlocking The Hidden Science Behind Stress, Teams, And Performance With Cameron Allen

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Timestamps:
00:00:00 – Cold Start & Intro
00:03:35 – Why Everyone Is (Basically) a Neuroscientist
00:05:05 – The Story That Started Everything (His Brother + Turning Point)
00:10:13 – What Neuroplasticity Actually Means in Real Life
00:13:54 – Why Leaders Get Pressure Completely Wrong
00:16:54 – The Hidden Problem with Goal-Obsessed Teams
00:24:03 – Why Your Nervous System Reacts Before You Think
00:26:03 – How Leaders Accidentally Stress Out Their Teams
00:29:08 – What Cameron Is Really Training (Resilience + State Control)
00:40:30 – Why This Works (And How to Actually Apply It)

Cameron Allen (00:02.00)
If you change a habit over time, that’s long-term potentiation, which is a different type of neuroplasticity. They’re all really important, but they can be engaged if you give the right input. And that’s one of the things that’s really interesting.

We as leaders aren’t intentional about expanding our capacity and dropping in and regulating. Then we are setting up our entire team to be in this excessively stressed state, which then mirrors back to us all of this intensity which ups our intensity and then we filter that back down to our team. So, it becomes kind of like a speaker and a microphone.

Skot Waldron (00:42.00)
When I’m not hosting Unlocked, I’m speaking at events all over the world. I’m helping leaders and I’m helping teams communicate better. I’m helping them build trust faster and actually enjoy working together. I’ve spoken for companies like The Home Depot. I’ve spoken at national architectural firms. I’ve spoken for pharmaceutical company offsites. I’ve spoken at associations, you name it.

With 99% of attendees of all those events, over 1800 people have reviewed me at this point. 99% of them saying they got some value. That’s pretty awesome. Even the caterers have thanked me. And if they are thanking me and they’ve heard a lot of talks and they’re busy doing their jobs, that’s saying something. If you’re an event planner looking for a speaker who’s really easy to work with, trust me, I want to be the last thing you’re worried about on event day. I’m going to take care of you. And who actually delivers value for your audience that they are going to use on Monday morning when they return to the office, then let’s talk.

Hi everybody, it’s going to be a fun one today. If you like brain stuff, yeah, brain stuff. I love brain stuff. The workings behind why we do what we do. If you’re curious about why we do what we do and even more curious about maybe why people don’t speak up in meetings or why people shut down when we try to have hard conversations, then pay attention to this episode because Cameron Allen is going to introduce us to the whys.

Why all those things are actually, what’s going on in our brains and why those things are even happening in the first place. It’s really, really fun to listen to him. He gets into like the neuroscience aspects of what’s happening here and what’s going on here and this term there and that term there. And some of these things you’re going to have, you will have heard some of these words before, but when he puts them together, it seems to make a lot of sense. And that’s even more fun when it all makes sense, right?

Today’s guest, he is Cameron Allen, founder of Neuro Progeny and Sensorium Neuro Wellness. Cameron is pioneering a capacity-based approach to nervous system training. He uses VR biofeedback and HRV monitoring to help people develop greater nervous system range. His philosophy is simple, but powerful. Your nervous system has never made a mistake. It’s just solving problems that may no longer exist. All right, are you all ready? Here we go.

Cameron, what’s up, man? It’s good to see you.

Cameron Allen (03:31.00)
Good to see you too. Thanks so much for having me on today.

Skot Waldron (03:33.00)
Yeah, it’s going to be really good. I’m always intimidated by having people that like do neuroscience stuff because it sounds so nerdy and like super smart. And I’m like, am I like, am I prepared enough to talk to Cameron right now?

Cameron Allen (03:52.00)
You are more than prepared enough. It’s a ,yeah, Neuroscience is one of those things that there’s a lot of really big words and $5 words, but at the bottom line of all of it is it’s something we experience. All of us experience it on a daily basis. And so, when those words get translated into actual practical usable language, it’s like, Oh, right. I did that today. So, you know really nothing to it.

Skot Waldron (04:17.00)
Are you saying we’re all neuroscientists? We just don’t know it?

Cameron Allen (04:22.00)
Absolutely we are. Anybody who’s curious about existence, about consciousness, about why did I do that thing that I did yesterday or today? Why do I keep doing the same thing that I don’t want to do, but I’m doing it anyway? That is a neuroscience question. That is one of those things that we’re all exploring.

Skot Waldron (04:44.00)
I’m telling you, man. I have those conversations every day. My clients are like, why didn’t I do that thing, Skot? Like, how am I going to understand this whole thing? So, man, that’s good. My wife never asked me that question. I would love to answer those questions for her.

So, I mean, dude, you’ve looked at like over 8,000 brain scans. That’s a lot of brain scans, first of all. But this didn’t start out as a business idea. It started with your brother. So, before we get into like the leadership angle and the performance angle and all that stuff I like to talk about, what happened there that made you realize that the way we think about the brain is actually incomplete?

Cameron Allen (05:29.00)
Yeah, so there’s a little bit more to that story than what you and I have even talked about kind of when we had our intro call and connected before. But the big impetus for me to like really start contemplating, why is neuroscience important? Why is it important for us to understand ourselves in a meaningful way? Why is it important to advance, you know understanding of neuroscience. It really came down to two personal experiences. One was my brother’s story, who he had sustained a series of head injuries, developed depression, attempted suicide a number of times and nothing mainstream, nothing in kind of the traditional psychiatry, counseling, you know, a lot of the mainstream. You know, therapies just didn’t do the trick.

And so eventually my folks were introduced to an individual who was doing neuro therapy. And so which 20 plus years ago was a really kind of novel concept. And at that point, folks didn’t think you could change the brain that once it was set in a particular motion, you can cope with it. You can compensate for it. There wasn’t much you could do about it.

And so parallel to what my brother was going through and what I hadn’t shared with you earlier, and to be honest, I’ve just really I don’t really bring it into podcasts usually, but I think it’s really important here is my journey. Personally, I was failing out of school. I had all kinds of learning difficulties and I was really good at building things. I was really good at projects. I was really good at being able to, you know, finesse my way through school and kind of get by. But just could not pick it up traditional learning. And so, I went out to this program, I was 17 and went out and got things kind of prepped. My brother came out and we both went through this program in parallel.

His journey was about three months in and all of a sudden, the lights came on. A lot of the sensory overwhelm, the emotional reactivity, the sadness, the depression, just the world coming at him too fast lifted and he was able to show up with affection and show up with humor and show up in the relationship. And I finally felt connected to my brother again for the first time in like probably seven or eight years. And then you go forward about a month after that. And I was frustrated. I was like, man, lights came on for him. Like I’m not noticing anything. What’s going on? And then one day, all of a sudden, it clicked and life got easy.

School got easy. I ended up, I was in my sophomore year. I ended up going back to Florida and then finishing up both the rest of my, the sophomore, junior and senior year in essentially an accelerated program that took me a semester and a summer course. And then went on to college and headed towards aeronautical engineering. And then ended up shifting over into neuroscience. Because what I really realized was that these were life-changing tools that were ridiculously expensive back then. It was 30 grand a piece for us to go through the program. And when I went off to my engineering school, I was talking to my biomedical engineer professor, and he was still at the mindset that you cannot change the brain. Once somebody is set in a particular direction, that’s it. You cope with it, you deal with it, but that’s it.

And so, I was bound and determined to show that no, I have experienced something different. My brother experienced something different. Our family was actually able to reconnect and reunite because of this science. So, I ended up shifting over into psychology and then into research and then kind of progressed on from there. So, it’s been really out of this personal experience and seeing how learning neuroscience changes the way that we think about our experience. What’s possible in life and allows us to shift over into growing in a meaningful way throughout our entire life, rather than believing like, nope, this is who I am. I can only optimize a little bit. We can revolutionize ourselves. And through neuroscience, I found a path to that.

Skot Waldron (10:05.00)
Wow, that’s cool. I mean, is this neuroplasticity? Is that kind of the idea behind that?

Cameron Allen (10:13.00)
Yeah, so there’s over 100 different types of neuroplasticity. And so, when we’re really looking at it, we can activate so many different areas of our nervous system and we can, and so anything you learn, I mean, if you pick up a new skill and you learn a new skill, that’s neuroplasticity. If you change a habit over time, that’s long-term potentiation, which is a different type of neuroplasticity. They’re all really important, but they can be engaged if you give the right input. And that’s one of the things that’s really interesting.

We’ve all heard that the concept of whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And there’s a little bit of truth in that. And the truth behind it is really that we need to feel pressure. We need to be pushed just a little bit outside of our comfort zone into what’s called this curve of hormesis where when we get into the center section of this bell curve that that is where we’ve experienced enough stress on our system in order for our system to activate, release some stress chemicals, more epinephrine, adrenaline, cortisol, some of those, along with dopamine that brings curiosity and brings kind of motivation, some oxytocin that brings some trust and some kind of level of connectedness with ourselves and kind of connects our mind and our body. And when we’re in that state, that is the first phase of neuroplasticity.

And we oftentimes feel excitement and a little bit of frustration in that phase. So, if you’re learning a new skill and you’re feeling a little bit of that frustration and you don’t push yourself over to where you’re just pissed off and mad, then you’re in that optimal zone. And then the second side of awakening that neuroplasticity is getting good sleep that night. You have to go through your REM cycle to actually be able to consolidate that into a usable skill and something that’s actually going to shift. So, it takes both kind of going outside your comfort zone, pushing yourself a little bit, and then being able to consolidate your sleep. And that’s really where neuroplasticity happens. And we’re doing it on a daily basis. It’s just how intentional are we with how we’re directing that neuroplasticity? Most of the time, it’s just in reaction to our life rather than saying, “Nah, I really want to direct this. I want to do this thing for myself to intentionally grow in the way I want to engineer my life.”

Skot Waldron (12:41.00)
That’s so cool. And sucks for those who don’t get really good sleep. Yeah?

Cameron Allen (12:45.00)
That’s right. And it’s a Catch-22 with that because the more that we actually are intentional in front load and we learn how to drop into that state of regulating our nervous system, that we then can get better sleep. And it is kind of a both and. So, I would say that with all the people that I work with that are dealing with sleep issues, that very rarely is it a genetic condition or a metabolic condition where they cannot move past that. There’s a lot that can be done about that piece of it.

Skot Waldron (13:20.00)
Interesting, whole new podcast, man, for that one. So, let’s take this into the leadership realm a little bit. I want to talk about, I want to focus a little bit on teams under pressure. When you’re talking about these things, you say leaders, they get it wrong about, about why people break under pressure. And I’m fascinated by this. What do they think is happening and what is actually happening?

Cameron Allen (13:54.00)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, when I’ve worked with teams and when I’ve worked with leaders that are really, you know, they drive and they strive and they push forward, that oftentimes what’s happening is that they are pushing so hard towards a goal. And a goal is really this pass/fail experience. And if we’re just moving towards one particular goal that’s right in front of us that we’re not actually seeing the opportunity. We’re not able to access a lot of curiosity. We’re not able to access a lot of the creativity. We’re not able to connect with one another on a team. If the goal is the primary end piece, then all of a sudden, the relationship component within a team ends up falling to the wayside. And we get these micro competitions.

Everybody shifts over into more of this norepinephrine adrenaline state where it’s saying, okay, here is the one thing that matters. I am going to get dopamine when we as a team or I accomplish this thing. But the problem is that if we don’t get the dopamine that we’re expecting, so if I say I’m going to complete this task, this is what I’m responsible for to push towards this end goal, then if I’m not able to actually synthesize and get that dopamine, it turns into a stress chemical.

And so even if I want to support my team, even if I want to push my entire team forward, that’s great. But the problem is that I’m constantly in a threat state that if I don’t accomplish this thing, then I am actually going to end up kind of going to the sphere state. And our amygdala actually believes that something’s trying to kill us if we’re not getting that dopamine. So, we’re setting up our entire team to be operating from a place of scarcity, a place of avoidance, a place of self-protection rather than looking at opportunity and really being able to connect all together and use curiosity, creativity, and committed action within the team in order for everybody to grow and for the outcome, honestly, to be far more profound than just setting that core goal and saying, this is it. This is where we have to go.

And then of course, there’s a whole lot of how leaders actually implement that, how we incentivize or disincentivize our teams to be able to reach that. But in at the core, that’s oftentimes the primary challenge is that we all go into the survival states of trying to accomplish this pass/fail rather than coming together for a common goal to build towards a value and holding intention rather than a goal.

Skot Waldron (16:43.00)
So, what’s the message that should be sent then? So, because we operate under goals. We operate, and that’s not going to go away. I heard somebody on the podcast the other day, and she had the whole approach of like, goals are stupid. They’re not working for us. What we should really do is think about, you know, betas. Like she ran a lot of like beta projects. She’s like, hey, you want to set a big goal? Whatever, right?

Like, let’s set a little micro goal for six weeks and just see how we do, right? Like, it was always about that more than it was like setting this big pass/fail goal at the end. I mean, you can talk about that, but I’m curious about how if we’re operating under a goal-like minded culture, those aren’t going away. What’s the message then instead of we’re going to pass or fail this goal?

Cameron Allen (17:37.00)
So, in a lot of software development, it’s fail fast. And it’s about when we are doing something and we’re constantly testing a hypothesis, rather than looking at the end goal, how can we actually fail meaningfully along the way? And to be able to take failure as something that evokes neuroplasticity and allows us to learn in a really good way at each step versus being able to say, okay, nothing matters between here and there. If that end goal isn’t met, it is a massive failure.

But instead, priming teams and saying, hey, no, let’s fail. Let’s do this together. Let’s actually get into a place where we’re going to come up with some absurd ideas, test them against whether or not we can actually accomplish them, fact check them, and fail at them, and get used to failure being something that is not attached to our identity. It’s not attached to in our survival; it’s not attached to our monetary gain because that is very closely linked in our brain with survival. Instead, it is how do we actually reward learning fast and failing fast and failing meaningfully?

And so, taking from that the systems that are really important from, okay, what did we learn from that? What did work? What didn’t work? Okay, how does that, how are we able to use that skill now towards this end value and really shifting the idea that the end whole piece, what’s the purpose of a goal? Why do we even move towards goals? That there’s an underlying value in that of saying, okay, we are going to try to increase the monetary value of this company. We are trying to increase a, open up a market. We are trying to do X, Y, or Z.

And so, if we’re able to fail towards a value that we’re building, then it makes a lot more sense. And then along the way, for many of us, the end goal rarely is where we actually end up getting. We oftentimes have to pivot. And so, if we’re learning how to fail and collect data along the way, then we can pivot into a lot of different areas that are really meaningful and useful. And that actually sets up our brain to be able to stay in more of this open, balanced state and have more capacity. Because if we are focused just on an end goal, we are so myopic and tunnel visioned on that, that our nervous system spikes and goes into a stress state, a sympathetic nervous system state, every time we don’t, every time we fail or we don’t move towards that goal. And when that happens, we actually lose 20% to 40% of our functional intelligence.

Our IQ is still the same. But how much of it we can actually use comes way down. So, that’s where I think it becomes a challenge that the goals can stay there. That’s great. But it’s very much a matter of like, I’m going to move towards this thing, but I’m not actually attached to the outcome. I am attached to the process of continuing to gain insight and to gain understanding and to collect knowledge along the way towards this one kind of spotlighted kind of hallmark of where we’re headed.

Skot Waldron (20:58.00)
That’s cool. I mean, I’m just going to make the claim out there that a lot of us are operating under a lot of stress a lot of the time. Whether it’s at home or at work, just in life in general, whether it’s political outcomes or pandemics or whatever, right? Like, we’re around all of this all the time. And you often talk about, I love this phrase, or I made this note that said, “The nervous system runs us before the brain even gets a vote.” Right?

Cameron Allen (21:36.00)
Yes, absolutely.

Skot Waldron (21:38.00)
What does that mean in real life?

Cameron Allen (21:40.00)
Yeah. So, there’s a couple pieces to that that are really interesting. So one, if you just look at in general in life right now, we’ve got, you know, all kinds of stuff running in the background. Like you said, we’ve got the political stuff, we’ve got, you know potential impending war, we’ve got all of these other factors of economic stressors of whatever that’s all kind of running in the background. And so, what all of those things are doing is every time a new input comes in, whether it’s that you’re focusing on something and your kid runs in the room screaming, that increases our stress level. If we are at work and now there’s this new deadline or we’ve got a new boss, now all of a sudden, the uncertainty of our environment goes up.

The moment that uncertainty goes up, our brain has to come up with a story to tell itself because our brain does not like uncertainty. So, we end up creating all of these micro stories that are explaining why we’re experiencing what we’re experiencing. When that happens, now we have to hold on to all of this extra information in an area called the working memory. And the working memory is kind of like the RAM in your computer. It can only hold so much before then you get the spinning wheel of death and everything just kind of freezes up and you don’t have access to the processing power.

So, for each of us, as we’re experiencing more stress, our stress level adapts and continues to adapt and continues to adapt until we get to the point where we’re at the upper end of our threshold. And most of us, when we’re at the upper end of our threshold, actually believe that’s when we’re sharpest, that that’s what allows us to stay focused, it allows us to stay sharp, it allows us to stay analytical, allows us to stay ahead of things. And in fact, when we’ve done heart rate variability studies in high performing individuals like moms, attorneys and physicians that all of them have a lot of high heart rate variability, a lot of resilience in their nervous system when they’re at a stress level. But as soon as you drop them into a parasympathetic state and they’re more relaxed, now all of a sudden, we really aren’t very resilient. Almost anything can throw us out of that.

So, what I mean by that quote is that when we walk into a room, our nervous system is entering before us. It’s scanning the horizon, scanning the environment. And then it’s really the nervous system of our body where we keep a lot of our stress. That is sending signals to our brain. And then our brain just makes decisions with the information it’s handed. So, if your body is sending primarily cortisol and norepinephrine and adrenaline signals to your brain. Now your brain is only processing threat detection. It’s only processing for, okay, I need to analyze this. I need to solve this problem. I need to do this thing.

And our relational brain, our ability to connect or to regulate and drop in goes offline. And so, we’re not able to actually see things in a comprehensive way, see the full picture, and then respond to just kind of the menu of life that’s right in front of us. So, it really limits down our choices. And life really should be all about freedom of choice and to be able to actually have the internal capacity to know, okay, my nervous system has this. I can turn my brain on to analyze when I need to, but overall, I just get to look and observe the options that are in front of me and respond to those things.

But for many of us, we don’t have that capacity when we’re getting into that place where we’re bought into the narrative that we have to perform, we have to meet this goal, we have to hit that deadline, we have to have this career advancement. All of those attachments reduce our overall functional intelligence and the capacity bandwidth, the window of tolerance that we have left over.

Skot Waldron (25:40.00)
There’s probably a lot of leaders out there saying, “I know a bunch of people on our team that are operating with not a lot of functional intelligence right now.” A lot of people accusing their leaders of not operating under so with functional intelligence, you know?

Cameron Allen (25:53.00)
Absolutely. It’s funny with that. It is a problem. It’s funny because it really is. The leader’s nervous system sets the tone for the rest of the organization. And most of us that are in that leadership role, research shows, we are the least self-aware group of the entire organization. And so, if we are the least self-aware in the organization and we are operating at this place that works really well for our nervous system to function because we’re used to staying in that stress state. And quite literally, if we drop into a relaxed state, our brain, it’s like going on vacation for a lot of leaders. You go on vacation and the first day or two of being on vacation, you’re sitting there and you’re thinking about everything of what got dropped and somewhere in the middle of the vacation, you can kind of settle in for maybe like a half a day.

And then it’s like, all right, let’s ramp up and let’s get ready to get back out of this and go into everyday life. And as soon as our nervous system drops into a relaxed state, our entire world is to look for problems and solve problems and move on to the next thing as soon as we’ve solved that problem. So, if our nervous system subconsciously is at that place of constantly jumping to the next thing and creating the next problem, our entire team is feeling the wake of that and their nervous systems because of what’s called the mirror neurons in their brain and a number of other areas, but the mirror neurons especially, this is picking up on nonverbal social cues, body language, and it’s saying, okay, this person’s in this state and it automatically actually causes our brain and our nervous system to fire the same way as the person who’s ahead of us.

So, if we as leaders aren’t intentional about expanding our capacity and dropping in and regulating. Then we are setting up our entire team to be in this excessively stressed state, which then mirrors back to us all of this intensity which ups our intensity and then we filter that back down to our team. So, it becomes kind of like a speaker and a microphone that gets too close to each other. And then things really start squealing. So, it’s an important piece, I think, for a lot of us as leaders to step into and say, wait a minute, authentically where am I? And get past the idea of what we think we’re doing, because we think that’s a highly adaptive state for us, but it’s just a state we’re comfortable in, because that’s what we’ve cultivated and we’re drawing everybody else into it.

So, if you want a functional team, maybe reconsider some things.

Skot Waldron (28:33.00)
That’s cool. I mean, you’ve done so much work in this space and actual product, and the actual service is, you know, what you’ve been doing is like training the nervous system and helping other people overcome anxieties and overcome some of the things that they’ve been doing, these stressors and capacity issues or whatever. But you’ve built this into VR.

Let’s strip the tech away. I want to know what you’re, what are you actually training, right? When we do that. So, you can go from there.

Cameron Allen (29:08.00)
Awesome. So, when we’re looking at the tech that we’ve created, essentially, it gives the nervous system a chance to see itself in real time. And why is that important? Well, the brain can’t observe itself and not change. It has to change. And so, what we’re actually training when we’re looking at heart rate variability and then other measurements within heart rate variability, one is this ratio that’s the LF/HF ratio that looks at kind of the balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. There’s a little bit more to it than that.

But the bottom line is it’s essentially training the ability to increase resilience. And so, resilience is essentially the ability to recover whenever a stressful situation occurs. So, whenever a nervous system spikes, how quickly can we come back to a baseline? And an example of this is you might get into an argument with your spouse. One example was a business leader I was working with who really functional at work. But then as soon as he comes home, the stress of the kids being loud and being all over him, he really wants to show up with his kiddos in a good way. And every day he’s talking about, I’m going to go home. I’m going to play with the kids. We’re going to have a good night.

And then as soon as he’s in the situation, he’s just white knuckling. And all of a sudden, he gets to a place where one of the kids does something, he gets reactive. And then his wife ends up jumping in and then his nervous system spikes into the shame cycle of like, like man, I did it again. I did it again. I knew this was going to happen. I was going to stay away from it. And he couldn’t recover from that.

It would take a day and then the next day he’d talk himself up, I’m going home again tonight, I’m going to do this. And then it would happen again. And he got to the point where he was just like, they don’t need me around. I am better off being at the office just providing for them because I am not able to show up in those relationships. And it became part of his identity.

After doing some of the heart rate variability training where he was consistently seeing those patterns come up and then fall back down, come up, fall back down, the brain observing itself, all of a sudden gave him some space. And one day he came to me, and he said, “Hey, I got home last night. My kiddo was really trying to push my buttons because he’s used to me getting reactive. And I was able to just sit there and just observe it and I asked him what he was actually needing right then. I was able to go give him a hug, show up with him. And the rest of the night, there were no arguments, there was no yelling, there was no overactivation, and I didn’t end up flying off the handle and I didn’t have the shame cycle.”

And then, so that’s one example. And then the other thing we’re training in the game is really your reliability. How frequently can you intentionally shift states? So, for a lot of us, being able to, you know, and we might hit that golden moment where it’s like, it’s pretty easy to drop into a state of being present, going into a flow state. But the conditions have to be pretty right for us to go into that flow state and actually get a lot of really good focus work done.

So, the LF/HF ratio is really training the right reliability for you to intentionally shift into that state and then shift over into being relational and then shift over into you know, being in just kind of a social setting and then shifting back into the focus work again. And so, a lot of the context switching that we have to do as leaders and we’re constantly bouncing from task to task, that is burning up a ton of our acetylcholine in our brain, and it spikes our norepinephrine. So, we only have about 2 hours and 20 minutes’ worth of context switching where we are actually really effective unless we actually expand our capacity, and then that number can go up. So, in the game, it’s all about that building resilience and building the reliability to state shift simultaneously.

Skot Waldron (33:25.00)
That’s impressive. I mean, I’m sure a lot of people are like, okay, so VR. Like why do I have to do this on VR? Like, what’s the advantage? What have you found in your research and your product development that’s helped with that?

Cameron Allen (33:38.00)
Yeah, so this came from 20 years of research now. And I originally, when I first designed this product, it was going to be pulling in brainwaves, EEG brainwaves. It was going to pull in Galvanic Skin Response and looking at the microsweat on your skin, looking at respiration, bringing in the heart rate variability, tracking eyes and pupil dilation, all of these different things. And when I put them all together and mathematically started actually looking at which measurement is picking up on the majority of the information. And could we actually guess at what’s happening in other areas of the brain, the different measurements of how our heart is actually responding. So, the differences between each heartbeat is a strong predictor of a lot of different things.

So, as I began to build out this tool, the… my mind just went into like three different places as I was just as I was thinking about that. But as I began to kind of build out this tool and really be able to hone in the key pieces that really started making sense is training heart rate variability is great. And there’s a bunch of different ways of doing it. You can look at your smartwatch and see what your heart rate variability is. But that’s only taking about 15 seconds every hour and then averaging it all together. So, it’s not real time feedback for your brain. It gives you a trend of like, I drank last night and my heart rate variability went down today, or I slept poorly and my heart rate variability went down. So, it gives kind of macro kind of insight into lifestyle.

But then when we start looking at being able to really track it, a lot of the other heart rate variability tools out there were just training a breath state and just training you to drop into that resilience. They’re not training multiple states simultaneously. So, in virtual reality, two big things are happening.

One, you can train both of those different measurements simultaneously, because there’s a lot more fidelity to the scene. You’re seeing it in 3D rather than just a flat screen. The other side to that is that because your eyes and your ears are in virtual reality and experiencing a whole another world, but your body is not picking up on sensory information, it actually activates the sensory motor neurons which is the battery charger of the brain and what’s needed to help integrate our experience. And then it’s also activating the hypothalamus, which is constantly scanning the brain and the body. So, it’s increasing the pathways of communication between the brain and the body.

Why that’s important is that when the brain and the body are in a constant feedback loop, we’re releasing oxytocin and oxytocin allows us to go into a place of connection, openness, and really primes that neuroplasticity. And so, between the sensory motor function, the neuroplasticity and the heart rate variability, all of those come together to actually be able to increase some of the brain’s shift by what we’ve seen is over 300% over traditional heart rate variability applications.

Skot Waldron (36:52.00)
That’s cool. I like that a lot too. I know I’m saying that’s cool a lot because it’s super cool, man. I heard that on this stuff a lot. So, it’s good to know that extra information, the extra boosts of what is needed and what’s going on behind the scenes. In fact, that almost leads me into my next section here. And I want us to know, like keep this almost like lightning round-ish if you can. I want to hit on these and we’re running a little bit tight on time, but I want to hit on these because I think it would be really cool to hear your take on this versus some other people, right?

So, I’m going to throw a couple like leadership complaints at you. And I want you to tell me what’s really going on in the background. Like what’s going on underneath here? Okay. So, if you can, I’d like to hear what you say when I came up with a few myself, I want to hear what you say. This one happens a lot. I hear about this oftentimes and with some leaders and that deal with “sensitive people” or whatever. Right. And I’ve had people that dealt with this when they were trying to deal with hard conversation with their mother or with their father who get really quiet and shut down.

So, the leadership complaint is every time we try to have a conversation with this person, they shut down in tough conversations.

Cameron Allen (38:15.00)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, what that comes down to is kind of the default of what’s happening in the nervous system. You’ve got the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system state. If somebody’s going into a stress state, they’re going to default to whatever their internal narrative is. And if there’s too much activation, they go into shutdown. If they’re, and so depending on their cortisol levels as well, they’re going to either, if they’ve got a lot of cortisol, they might get defensive and argue back. If they are going into depleted cortisol, they might freeze. They’ve got a little bit of cortisol; they might just go complacent and just kind of tell you what you want to hear and then walk away.

And so, the antidote to that is really create cognitive dissonance. So, they’re without going too much into it, being able to get the individual to contemplate what they are experiencing. So, saying like, “hey, noticing that there are some things that are coming up. Are you interested in having a conversation about that? If we could identify the root cause, you know, how motivated are you to actually wanting to change and learn from this?” And then for them to be able to say, “well, I am motivated. I’m at a 9 out of 10.” Great. All right. So why didn’t you just say a zero? Why not just be not motivated about it? And that cognitive dissonance that where they are now, the prediction was that they were going to have to prove themselves. And now it’s like, no, like let’s take the pressure off of it. Why not go with the zero? That actually opens up for contemplation and relationship and opens that platform for neuroplasticity.

Skot Waldron (39:55.00)
That’s cool. Okay. I get to say that’s cool. Cause it’s super is. All right. Another, this is what I hear from teams a lot. This is what I deal with a lot. It’s a pretty general issue but when I talk to people on like sales calls or whatever, they’ll just say, “Hey man, we’re having just a lot of communication issues.” And I say, that’s a pretty broad term, right? It’s pretty, pretty generic for everything. But how would you identify communication issues? What do you think is going on if they’re having communication issues? Maybe people aren’t speaking up. Let’s talk about that one. Maybe people aren’t speaking up.

Cameron Allen (40:30.00)
So, you know, when it comes down to it, everybody is having a different type of conversation. But if you don’t define what kind of conversation you’re having to start with, then you’re going to end up having ineffective communication. And then you’re going to have either, you know, manipulative communication, passive aggressive communication, or some other types of communication come up.

So, one of the big things is defining like, “hey, what kind of conversation are we having in this meeting? Is this a brainstorming meeting? Is this a magic carpet ride? Is this a planning meeting? Are we trying to problem solve or do you just need to be heard?” And so, once you actually define what kind of conversation you’re having, then there is a lot more space that if somebody just doesn’t show up in the conversation, it’s a lot clearer of saying like, “Hey, I noticed that you’re on the backside of this conversation. What is your experience right now? And what kind of conversation would you like to be having around all of this?” And inviting them in to really like understanding what the purpose is without a feeling like there’s a lot of weight, there’s not a lot of shame, and it takes a couple seconds, but then it completely changes the entire dynamic of the entire meeting.

Skot Waldron (41:45.00)
Okay, with both of these, what I hear you saying is, well, what I hear you kind of alluding to is that we as leaders should prevent or avoid going in full bore and just dumping, right? Just saying, “hey, there’s a problem, blah, blah, blah, blah,” right? Or “hey, this is what we’re going to do, damn, blah, blah, blah, blah,” you know, instead of understanding the other side and what they need and how they like to be communicated with.

Now, let’s go from the leader’s side. What’s happening in their brain? Because most leaders give me eye rolls when we talk about that stuff. They’re like, I don’t have time for that. Like, I’ve got so much going on. I don’t really have time to sit down for 30 minutes with every person on my team and understand like how I need to deliver this hard news to them today. You know, just got to say go.

Cameron Allen (42:37.00)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, on the leader side, the bottom line is the nervous system that allostatic load set point is so high, and they have all of this information in their minds that their employees and their team does not have. So, when they go in and they are asking these questions, all they’re doing is trying to get bits of information that’s actually filling in the gaps of what they need for them to feel in control and for their nervous system to calm down.

So, it really comes down to the question of, do you want to be right or do you actually want to be heard? And so, do you want to go in and be able to just blow off all of your stress and be able to feel like you’re in control? So, you have this great meeting telling everybody exactly what they need to do for the company to do really well, which lasts, it gives you dopamine for, you know, probably 15 minutes, maybe 20 minutes while you’re still like, talking yourself up, believing that it’s going to turn into something. And then the pattern’s the same, where people didn’t pick up on the cues that they needed to. They only half delivered on what you told them to do. But if you actually address them and connect with them and invest that extra amount of time, now there’s so much less follow-up and that those tasks can actually be handled.

So, you’re essentially borrowing against the bank by going in and going hard and wanting to be heard, and it’s all about your own nervous system. You are just trying to get away from the stress you’re feeling. You’re not actually trying to get something accomplished in a meaningful way.

Skot Waldron (44:15.00)
Yeah, I use the term self-preservation a lot. It’s a lot of self-preservation.

Cameron Allen (44:24.00)
It is a tons of self-preservation. There’s some simple tricks where you can still experience that self-preservation. You can move. And so, there’s this whole concept and I won’t take a ton of time on this, but this whole concept of like, you can either try and move away from what’s uncomfortable and through dopamine seeking behaviors. Like in this case, I don’t want to feel the stress. I need these answers. I need these solutions. So, I’m going to talk to my team make it happen. I feel really good about myself, and I feel good that I communicated this thing.

And then you’re back into that feeling out of control a few seconds later because dopamine only lasts in the system for about 90 seconds at a time. And every time you rethink about that scenario, you’re re-triggering that dopamine. But unless you actually shift over to moving towards something that’s valuable and saying, “hey, I want authentic communication and I want effective outcomes.” Now I can actually communicate in a different way that allows me to build connection with my team, which builds loyalty, decreases burnout, decreases gossip, decreases all of these other toxic traits inside the corporation.

Secondarily, while still getting away from the discomfort of feeling out of control and the outcome is these values driven, everybody succeeds. And so, it’s really this mindset shift around what do you actually want?

Skot Waldron (45:49.00)
Hmm, that’s good. Yeah, how do you want to be perceived to talk about your leadership brand a lot and how people are going to talk about you and if you can just think for just a second about how I want to be perceived and how do I want to be talked about at the barbecue this weekend? That can do a lot of good, right?

Cameron Allen (46:08.00)
Yes indeed.

Skot Waldron (46:11.00)
Thanks, man, for being on. This is so good. So good. As you’ve heard me say many times, because it is man. Like this is so, this is the stuff that I will hope people hear and enjoy it as much as I do because I love that we can just, you know, talk about how to fix stuff, but we won’t know how to fix stuff unless we learn what’s not working in the first place. And I think that that’s what we really need to get to.

Cameron Allen (46:40.00)
Yeah, if you’re not observing it and measuring it, it’s not going to change. So, bringing awareness is huge.

Skot Waldron (46:46.00)
Yeah, man. What do you want people to do? How can people get in touch with you? If they want some information for you, they want to hear you speak, they want to hear what kind of content you have, how they can get some services that you provide. What do you want people to do?

Cameron Allen (47:03.00)
Yeah, so the two easiest ways to kind of get in touch are through the website. And so that’s neuroprogeny.com or the other website is sensoriumneuro.com. And if you have any questions, if anything’s coming up and curious about anything, happy to just have a conversation and then certainly willing to explore the virtual reality biofeedback programs we’ve got going on or speaking opportunities or any of those other pieces.

My goal is to help and to serve and to positively impact 50 million people over the next 10 years. So, if there’s any way I can support, I want to do it.

Skot Waldron (47:47.00)
That’s, I mean, you should push higher. That’s not very many people.

Cameron Allen (47:51.00)
I know, it really is a slack-ass goal.

Skot Waldron (47:58.00)
I want to make the point too, that people don’t have to come to your specific location to do the VR treatments. They can do them at wherever they are, right? Home or office. Wherever, right?

Cameron Allen (48:13.00)
We’ve had folks in other countries using it and it’s cool because you can do it as a group of, you know your teams can do it. You can do it. I’ve done it with just individual leaders. They brought it into teams. We’ve done it with couples. We’ve done it with a lot of different folks. So, it’s something that we can kind of meet you with where you’re at and support.

Skot Waldron (48:38.00)
Right on, man. Right on. Well, thanks for learning about the brain so you can tell us about the brain. We need people like you. Thanks, man. Keep doing the good work.

Cameron Allen (48:46.00)
Thank you, I appreciate you and thank you for everything you’re doing.

Skot Waldron (48:52.00)
I hope that episode gave you a little bit of insight. So, you’ve got some aha moments maybe with some of the people on your team or whatnot. And you know, this whole spectrum thing he was talking about as far as when we dip in at that perfect spot of frustration and excitement. How can we get people there? Because I think we push too far. We get into the frustration zone. And then people just shut down. If we don’t go far enough, they just stay in the excitement zone but never get pushed beyond that, and so they just kind of, you know, exist in that space, but we need people to be pushed a little bit.

We all need to be pushed a little bit. I call this a healthy calibration of high support. Yes, I’m here for you, but also high challenge. Yes, I’m holding you accountable. I’m pushing you out of that comfort zone. All of that is healthy. And I liked his viewpoint on this like fast failure, meaningful failure. I think it’s really cool. Cause I think we’ve heard, you know, fail fast. We’ve heard that before. But fail fast, I don’t think carries the weight. I think that’s just like scary. You know, I think when we talk about it, it’s really about how do we fail meaningfully? Yes, let’s get out of quantity failure and get on quality failure.

Okay, that’s a good one. Let’s remove quantity failure, move into quality failure, and I think that that will help us all. And one little other tidbit that I took away from this, dopamine only lasts in your system for 90 seconds? Oh, my goodness, no wonder we’re all addicted to our phones and constant dopamine hits. And why videos longer than 90 seconds seem to trail off at that point. So, interesting little tidbit there. And how can we use that to our advantage? I don’t know. Why don’t you find out?

If you want to find out more information about me or check out the show notes where there’s going to be more information and links to the things referenced in this episode, visit skotwaldron.com. And lastly, I’m asking for a little bit of love, just a little bit. So please take a moment, follow, rate the show. The algorithm is like that; it helps me get the word out. I really appreciate it.

Thank you. And until next time, stay Unlocked.