How High-Performers Break Free from Survival Mode | Nervous System, Identity & Burnout with Christopher Chamberlin

What if the real reason you feel stuck, burned out, or constantly “on” has nothing to do with discipline—and everything to do with the survival patterns running underneath your success?

In this powerful episode of Hustle Rebels, Renae sits down with Christopher Chamberlin, founder of Lionheart Transformative Coaching and creator of the Sovereign Man Experience, to unpack why so many high performers look successful on the outside but feel disconnected, exhausted, and restless on the inside.

Interested in learning about The Sovereign Man Experience? Check it out here - The Sovereign Man Experience

Christopher shares how nervous system dysregulation, subconscious beliefs, and identity patterns can quietly drive burnout, overworking, overthinking, anger, self-sabotage, and the inability to rest—even when life looks “good.”

We dive into what real transformation requires: not just mindset shifts or better strategies, but recalibrating the nervous system, recoding identity, and embodying a new way of living and leading.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• How survival mode can hide beneath external success and why rest can feel unsafe.
• The identity patterns keeping men stuck
• Overthinking, hypervigilance, and self-sabotage explained
• Why vacations and time off don’t fix burnout
• The role of emotional intelligence in leadership
• How beliefs shape results
• Practical steps to reclaim power

About Christopher:

Christopher is the founder of Lionheart Transformative Coaching and creator of the Sovereign Identity Recode Method. He helps high-performing men break free from survival-based patterns by recalibrating the nervous system, transforming identity, and building a more grounded, powerful way to lead and live.

Christopher’s next Sovereign Man Experience takes place May 8–10, 2026. This immersive weekend is designed for men ready to stop performing success and start becoming the man they know they’re capable of being.

Website: ChristopherChamberlin.com

Transcript

Beliefs Create Burnout

Speaker 1 0:00

So, subconscious beliefs, for example, for the longest time when I was operating my real estate practice, I had an underlying belief that money was hard to make. And the thing about the human operating system, it works like this. What we believe leads to specific thoughts that are in alignment or support the belief, whether it's limiting or empowering, right? I work 80 hours a week, whether I need to or not. I'm gonna find 80 hours worth of something to do because I believe that's what it takes to be successful. And the results are at the end of the year, I'm tired, I'm burnt out. Worked 80 hours a week, and I hate my life because it's really hard. Oh, guess what? There's more evidence to support the belief money's hard to make. On the flip side of that, when I adopted a new empowering belief, money flows to me with grace and ease from an infinite number of sources. I worked 20 hours or less a week in my real estate business and I earn over 300,000 a year. That was my new empowering belief. And so almost immediately it led to more empowering questions. What's the easiest transaction I ever had? Oh, well, it was like that million-dollar house that people were just, you know, intelligent, really easy to work with. I mean, it wasn't rocket science, right? But it led to more empowering questions, and it felt a hell of a lot better. And it resulted in an increase in gross commissions of 435% in less than six months, working 70% less. The results feed the new empowering decision, and we repeat the cycle.

Meet Christopher Chamberlin

Speaker 1:51

You just heard from Christopher Chamberlin, the founder of Lionheart Transformative Coaching and the creator of the Sovereign Man Experience. He helps high-performing men break free from survival-based patterns by recalibrating the nervous system, recoding identity, and embodying a more sovereign way of living and leading. Christopher's work blends neuroscience, subconscious transformation, spiritual depth, and practical leadership into a powerful framework for lasting change. His mission is to help men reclaim themselves, restore inner order, and lead with greater clarity, presence, and purpose. And I'm really excited to have this conversation with him and also for him to introduce a retreat that he has coming up as well. So before I divulge too much, let's just get right into it. This is Hustle Rebels, a podcast for people who know how to grind, but are starting to question the cost. I'm Renae, and here we talk about success, burnout, and nervous system regulation without glorifying exhaustion or sacrificing your health, relationships, or your sense of self. And without pretending ambition is the problem. Let's get into it. Christopher works with high-performing individuals, specifically men, who have built success through pressure, discipline, and drive, but are realizing that something still feels off underneath it all. His work focuses on what most people miss: how your nervous system and identity are still wired around survival, even when your life looks successful on the outside. And what we get in today is a different order of transformation. How real change doesn't start with strategy, it starts with recalibrating the system, recoding identity, and actually embodying a new way of living and leading. So, Christopher, I'd love for you to tell us where you're coming from and also share a little bit more about yourself.

Speaker 1 4:08

Yes, thank you. Thank you, Renae, for having me. And first of all, want to honor you for this work, for what you're bringing to the world. This is important. And so thank you for uh this work and thank you for this opportunity to be on your podcast. I love the introduction. I'd love to take you on the road with me, and you could just be my MC and introduce me. We just we need a walk-on song, though.

Speaker 4:34

That would be uh Oh, I could write one for you.

Speaker 1 4:36

A great addition. Yeah, yeah. So next time let's do a walk-on song. Yeah, so you know, that's the official version, the reader's digest version, or the real version is I spent many, many years building from stress and and I called it ambition. And eventually it cost me, and that cost caught up. And so now I help men stop paying the price.

Survival Wired Nervous System

Speaker 5:04

Yeah, I love that you reframed it like that because a lot of overachievers, high performers, high achievers, whatever you want to call yourself, right? We guise our performance as, or we guise our stress as performance, right? We just say that we're just doing better at our job when in reality we're burning ourselves out. And you mentioned something, I think, too, that is going to hit with a lot of people that high performers don't necessarily get stuck because they need more strategies or anything, which is generally something we do fall back on. It's just we need another morning routine, or we just need a better strategy to perform better. But usually they're stuck because of their nervous system. Can you break that down for us?

Speaker 1 5:51

Yeah, just double tapping on you're absolutely right. And guess what? It's not our fault because that's what was modeled for us. That's what we were, we were taught, you know, to to perform, to be successful. We had to be disciplined, we had to have the right strategy, the right tactic. We had to be motivated, we had to 10x everything. And they're they're stuck because their nervous system is still organized around survival. And not only that, but their identity as well is still shaped by old patterns of coping and of surviving. Yeah, so it's both a nervous system and an identity.

Identity And Stillness Threat

Speaker 6:34

What does that look like in real life? How does someone know that they're performing their identity out of survival?

Speaker 1 6:41

Yeah, we'll go go right to the identity piece, right? First of all, the body must become a safe place for our future self to live. So when we think about personal development, most personal development has you start with setting goals and with routines and hacks, right? And those are great for providing insight because insight activates insight, is an open door, but it doesn't equal real change. Uh, let me give you a personal example. My childhood was very chaotic, it was very dangerous, literally very dangerous. And so chaos became my my baseline. And as an adult man, 57 years old, that baseline, that identity of operating in chaos all the time, still revisits me occasionally. For example, after the men leave the sovereign man experience, I host five men once a month in my personal home. But after the last man leaves and I'm sitting in a chair by myself, my body, my neurology interprets that being alone in the quiet as abandonment. And there's an attachment to that identity. And the mechanism that was developed to avoid the pain of abandonment, of being alone, was to stay busy. And so sitting still for me, being in my body, being still, there's still remnants of the chaos. And so stillness can equal threat in my body. That's an identity.

Speaker 8:35

Yeah, I feel like that's something that is incredibly difficult for a lot of people that are driven and motivated to understand is rest. And whether they attach it to abandonment or whatever that underlying identity is, I feel like any type of rest is viewed as feeling guilty or they're not doing enough or failure. And I have struggled with that in my own life. I could work a 48-hour shift at work, and then I'm like, oh, I'm just gonna sleep today. And then I'm like, oh, I can't sleep today. I need to be more productive. I need to do something, I need to get something done. But it's like, what the fuck? I just like worked 48 straight hours. Like, how could I not realize that I need rest? You know, like that's bananas that we're trained to think that we need to not allow our bodies that.

Speaker 1 9:26

Right. So we can learn to breathe, to meditate, to regulate stress, but still remain loyal to an old self, an old pattern. So that's what we're talking about when we talk about recoding the identity. Here's a another example that I just recognized on a walk yesterday. We, my wife, Shelley and I, we moved to Georgia from Colorado about three years ago. And if you look at old pictures on my Facebook page, it's I'm in the mountains, I'm four-wheeling in my Jeep, you know, in the Rocky Mountains, I'm camping, I'm fishing. That was my identity. And since we've moved to Georgia, I've been saying things like, Man, I'm like a fish out of water. I stick out like a sore thumb here. Like I don't belong here. I don't have the mountains. And what they call mountains here, I don't call mountains. I think that the tallest mountain is like 6,000 feet. Well, the Sydney of Denver starts at almost 6,000 feet, right? But what I realized on this walk was for the first time in my body, I felt like I belong here. But it was that that story that I identified with the Colorado Rockies, the camping, the four-wheeling, that if I didn't have those activities to identify with, I wasn't me. And I wasn't where I'm supposed to be.

Rewiring Beliefs And Results

Speaker 10:59

Yeah, we really do change our perspective once we realize that our identities aren't tied to certain things. Even when I left my career as a firefighter, it's hard to remove your identity, is that it's why a lot of people, when they retire from any job or anything, you know, it's funny. I was just a part of this breakfast this morning, this networking breakfast, and they had a short snippet where they wanted us to introduce ourselves. And they said, you can't mention your job or your occupation, and you you can't even mention your hobbies. Like they were just listing all these things to not mention because if you mention those things, that means you are identifying yourself as those things. And it was difficult when you were introducing yourself because you're just like, What do I even mention? You know, so it was it was very difficult. So when you're seeing these patterns, right, in these people that are identifying themselves, what are the types of patterns that you see over and over in high performers that you or these men that you work with that are still wired for survival?

Speaker 1 12:02

Yeah, so they're recognize them in categories, right? And the categories are subconscious beliefs. So what we believe about ourselves, self-image, the way that we view ourselves. If we're standing in front of the mirror, I'm healthy, I'm or I'm weak, or whatever we see our self-image. And then identity patterns that are underneath the behavior. So subconscious beliefs, for example, for the longest time when I was operating my real estate practice, I had an underlying belief that um money was hard to make. And the thing about the human operating system, it works like this. What we believe leads to specific thoughts that are in alignment or support the belief, whether it's limiting or empowering, right? So we have a belief, we have corresponding thoughts, and then those thoughts lead us to feel a certain way. And those feelings lead to taking action or not taking specific action. In my case, my belief was money is hard to make. And I had thoughts like, shit, this is gonna be hard. This is, you know, life is I'm gonna have to grind it out. You know, I'm gonna have to hustle. If it's gonna be, it's it's up to me. I can make this happen. I got to put in the work, I gotta 10x everything. And guess what? That feels pretty overwhelming at times.

Speaker 13:41

So extreme. That feels zero to a thousand all the time.

Speaker 1 13:45

Yeah, that that that feels a little bit overwhelming, right? And like I'm tired, I feel tired before I even get started. Those are the thoughts and the feelings, and then I take the corresponding action. I work 80 hours a week, whether I need to or not. I'm gonna find 80 hours worth of something to do because I believe that's what it takes to be successful as a real estate broker. And then I get the results, and the results are at the end of the year, I'm tired, I'm burnt out, worked 80 hours a week, and I hate my life because it's really hard. Oh, guess what? There's more evidence to support the belief money's hard to make. On the flip side of that, when I adopted a new empowering belief, money flows to me with grace and ease from an infinite number of sources. I work 20 hours or less a week in my real estate business and I earn over 300,000 a year. That was my new empowering belief. And so almost immediately it led to more empowering questions. Like, well, is anybody else doing this? Yeah, Johnny seems to like never work and he's a top producer and earning much higher income. What's the easiest transaction I ever had? Oh, well, it was like that million-dollar house, and the people were just, you know, intelligent, really easy to work with, and the commission check was about 10 times as much. Well, couldn't I just sell more homes like that? I mean, it wasn't rocket science, right? But it led to more empowering questions, and it felt a hell of a lot better. And it resulted in an increase in gross commissions of 435% in less than six months, working 70% less. Oh, also during the pandemic and with no team. And so then the results feed the new empowering decision and we repeat the cycle.

From Regulation To Embodiment

Speaker 15:54

That is uh, I feel like is the point to drive home, especially for this podcast, right? Because it's for people that know how to grind, but are starting to question the cost, because there's definitely ways out there for sustainable success. We cannot keep up this pace of burning ourselves to the ground and expecting to maintain this level of expectations to keep doing this. And yeah, you might be able to make six figures in the year, but you're also sacrificing your well-being, your family and relationships, and really just your mental stability. Because at the end of the day, like you said, you're working 80 hours a week, you're making good money, but you hate your life. So that is something that we have come across, you know, we met through listening through David Bayer's podcast, and he has a lot of those mindset shifts as well. And allowing yourself the realization that money is not hard is one of those huge mindset shifts. What would you say to people that are just hustling themselves to the ground and rolling their eyes and just being like, no, money is hard to make, and I need to hustle my ass. I need to have those three jobs and I need to be making all of this money. What would you say to them with that mindset shift that you made?

Speaker 1 17:16

Well, I would say there's a formula, there's a process. And it's it goes something like this first, get your biology working for you, not against you. And that includes this real estate up here, right? This is the most important real estate on planet.

Speaker 17:32

Pointing to your head in case you're not watching the the video.

Speaker 1 17:34

Pointing to my my head, the the space between the two ears. Okay. The most important real estate. Many have said 80% or more of success is mindset, right? But that's not all. We can reframe, we could have all the positive psychology in in the world. But if our nervous system is in chronic fight or flight, it's in a sympathetic nervous system function where everything is a threat, then our body, our biology is working against us. Because for one, it shuts off the parts of our brain that give us access to creativity, to all possibility. We essentially have three options fight, run away, or freeze. And then maybe there's a fourth, which is fawn or just roll over and play dead, right? So the first step is to regulate our nervous system to get our biology working for us, not against us, right? And so we have lots of great hacks, breath work, cold plunging, some great tools to get our biology working for us. Then we need to uh recalibrate the nervous system so we don't stop at just feeling better because uh regulation gives us access, but recalibrating the baseline gives us capacity. So now we don't collapse under the pressure, under the strain. And then the next piece is recoding what we, you know, the parts we talked about, the I the identity to rewire the subconscious beliefs of self-image and the identity patterns underneath the behavior. And then finally, it's about repetition, embodiment, so that it actually becomes true in the body. For example, what I shared earlier, sitting still and being alone actually feels safe in my body, right? Going from working 80 hours a week grinding to working just 20 hours a week initially in my body, the stillness, the 60 hours of time that I got back, my body was still going, hey, dude, you're supposed to be hustling. And the temptation was to go find busy work, not productive work, not you know, build the bottom line work, but just staying busy because my body didn't feel safe with the extra time. So that's the third piece is embodiment.

Speaker 20:12

I can't remember exactly what the quote was, but it is something along the lines of we just waste so much time. It's like the biggest enemy of productivity is just busyness. Oftentimes is what we end up doing. And sometimes the most productive thing that we can do is just rest and be alone in stillness. But you talk a lot about identity being shaped by protective patterns. What are some of the most common identities that you see these high performers stuck in?

Speaker 1 20:45

I'm taking a breath because I'm closed to my eyes that I'm imagining sitting with the men at the Sovereign Man experience, and we go through, we do some parts work, and the parts that most men reveal what I would identify with as a hyper magician, an overthinker, think like paralysis of analysis, or a hyper-vigilant warrior, or some combination of those. And our thinker, our analyzer is a powerful part of us, and it's a gift, same, same with our warrior. Our warrior protects and sets healthy boundaries. What I recognize in many men is that there's a shadow aspect of these two parts of us that has become a protective mechanism. So overthinking, overanalyzing, paralysis of analysis, for example, can protect us from perceived failure, because failure can be perceived as a threat. And so it's a a way of not executing. And if we don't execute, we don't get out on the court, if we don't get in the game. There's no risk of getting hurt. Right. So paralysis of analysis, a hyper magician, hyper warrior, hypervigilance can show up as bouts of anger, bits of rage, not able to trust. So impacting close relationships or the ability to be close to anybody. Right. So those are probably the two predominant mechanisms for staying safe, essentially.

Speaker 22:28

I can imagine a lot of those translate into a lot of self-sabotage protective measures as well, right?

Speaker 1 22:36

Yeah. Essentially playing small is a form of self-sabotage, right? You want success, but if we internally not safe with taking risk. And so to protect ourselves, we just stay in analysis mode, constantly analyzing, but never executing. Yeah, that's a form of self-sabotage. If we never feel safe with other people, then our anger, our fits of rage can be a form, a wall to keep people at distance, right? Another way that, and this is also a trait of the magician, is the comic, the comedian. That was me as a protective mechanism to keep people from getting deep in my psyche from really asking deep questions or really engaging in deep, vulnerable conversation, I would keep things light. I would always, and people love to be around me, but couldn't get close, couldn't get vulnerable, just keep it funny all the time.

Speaker 23:42

And then I know that we had kind of bonded over, I know in in a couple of different ways, but the chameleon just shaping ourselves to blend in certain ways or masking certain things, not in a manipulative way, but just so that we could blend in with other people in um different ways that I feel like is definitely a you know both a protective measure and could be self-sabotaging because it does cause you to act in a certain way as well.

Speaker 1 24:11

Yeah, that's interesting. For me, it absolutely was manipulation, it was how I kept myself safe. That's what I learned at a very young age. I could read the room. I I you know, I I knew when dad walked in the door, I knew what kind of night it was going to be. Like I could sense his energy. And so I knew to manipulate the environment, I could shift into the funny comedian, try to get him to laugh, to lighten up, or I could side with him, even intelligently commiserate. And the paradox here is that it too can be a gift or a curse. It could be our superpower. Our ability to shape shift, to be all things to all people, so as to win a few, is a tremendous power, a tremendous gift. But early on, I wielded that gift in order to get something from people, which was a form of control, a form of safety, right? Once I felt safe in my own body, I could now wield that gift to build rapport, not to get something, but I feel safe in myself, therefore others feel safe with me.

Speaker 25:35

Yeah, it is interesting taking those protective measures and transforming them. It also is interesting, too, because you've mentioned before that you work with helping these men gain their sovereignty and their authority. And a lot of these men are probably in some type of leadership as well, which is them having influence over others. A lot of people that are also listening most likely are in leadership as well, and leading teammates and uh team members and employees, while also disregulated themselves. And so, what does this look like for people that are in leadership? And what would you recommend to them who are having these identity crisis, sort of so to speak, but can also take the weaknesses that they have and turning them into these strengths, kind of like the chameleon that you were talking about, and help their employees?

Emotions As Data

Emotions As Data

Speaker 1 26:26

Yeah, on a leadership perspective, emotional intelligence is currency, right? And so a lot of what we're we're talking about starts with emotional awareness, just even understanding what is the emotion that I'm feeling. You know, there's 33,000 emotions have been catalogued.

Speaker 26:47

Wow.

Speaker 1 26:48

Yeah, there's and there's seven major emotions. And many of the leaders that I work with, when I ask them how they are feeling, and I ask them to name an emotion, they can't name one.

Speaker 26:59

And there's 33,000.

Men And Vulnerability

Speaker 1 27:01

There's 33,000. So there's a tremendous amount of intelligence in emotions. There's signals, and so that's when it becomes emotional intelligence, is when we first become aware, but then we can understand what is it signaling? So now we're not controlled by emotions, we're informed by emotions, and we make better decisions, we relate better, and we are more regulated. We respond rather than react.

Sovereign Man Weekend

Speaker 27:33

What does that look like in your program with the guys that you work with? Because obviously you talk to dudes and it's like, fuck emotions. I want nothing to do with vulnerability, but clearly you need to have emotional intelligence in order to be regulated. And it's important to talk about that, you know? So, how does that look like with you guys?

Speaker 1 27:53

At the sovereign man experience, we don't do talk therapy. Um, not the traditional version of talk therapy. It's called an experience for a reason. It's not a webinar, it's not a seminar, it's not more information. So without giving away the mystery of the sovereign man experience, but it is a it is an experience. And so the arc of the weekend through modalities, through practices, tools, I facilitate the rediscovery of what parasympathetic feels like in the body. So we don't talk about moving from sympathetic fight or flight into parasympathetic rest and digest. I take them in through an experience so that they move from one state into the next state. And then once we have the biology supporting working for them, it's a door that's open, right? It's it gives us access. Now we can go into the next day into Saturday. We can go into some deep, deep process. And I take them through some parts work, and it's a prompting process, very specific questions where they essentially discover themselves the parts of them that they've marginalized. And for men, there's a large part of the feelings have been marginalized, right? But again, once the biology is supporting them, there's an opening and they can rediscover those emotions, uh, feel them maybe for the first time in a long, long time. And it doesn't have to look a specific way, it can look messy, it often does. And we're in a safe container with one another, we're supporting one another. And one of the things I like to encourage them in is to be the bison, not the cow. Are you familiar with that story?

Speaker 30:04

No, what is that?

Speaker 1 30:05

So uh I actually uh chat GBT'd to see if this was a bullshit made up story or if it's like scientifically true and it said it's yeah, no, it's actually scientifically true. But yeah, if you observe a cow and a bison out in the pasture, and there's a storm, an imminent storm looming on the horizon, and they recognize this storm, the cow will turn the opposite way and go away, move away from the storm, start trying to move away from the storm. The bison, on the other hand, turns into the storm and goes into and through the storm. Who do you think spends more time in the storm? The cows. Exactly. The ones trying to outrun the storm are the ones that spend more time in the storm. So the bison goes through the storm and ends up on the other side, unshaken.

Speaker 31:00

Interesting. Yeah, that's an interesting perspective. I've never heard that story. Thank you for sharing that.

First Responder Burnout

Speaker 1 31:05

Yeah, and on a personal note, um, you know, my my brother's death became a fault line in my life. And and over time I lived with this haunting question. And the question was, what if Michael had the tools to regulate the storm inside of him? And and that question drives everything that I do. That's why I I work and I do the work that I do with the men that I work with. Because we all have we're all experiencing storms, some to some degree or another. And do we have the tools and the support to be the bison to turn and go through the storms and stand on the other side unshaken? And the capacity for the storms that will continue to come in our life to stand up and not collapse under those storms. That's really the focus of my work. It's like we're not we're not broken. We've just forgotten. So we all have everything that we need to support us to be the bison.

Speaker 32:35

That's a really powerful statement. And it's really interesting because we tend to put everyone else first too before us. And the thing I went to this morning, it's interesting that this is all coming up as well, because the speaker that had spoken, his name was Joe Smarrow, but he had talked about how we, as first responders, it was first responder driven, we are our own worst enemies. And most towns, we talk about how for public safety, public service, the motto is usually, you know, the community first, right? But the studies have shown that saying the community first is not working because putting the community first, putting anyone first right now is causing everyone to just like saying putting everyone else first before me is always going to put me last, which means I'm always going to, it's really a drive of burnout, right? It's self-abandonment. And that's the driving force of a lot of police officer suicides, firefighters who paramedics, all these suicides that are at a alarming rates because no one is putting themselves first to deal with their mental health issues that are at alarming rates as well, because they don't want to feel the feelings, right? And so he had talked about this perspective of teaching first responders to be uh a better person first, and then it's community next. So it's such an interesting thing because I feel like what you're doing would be so incredibly helpful for people like first responders, especially the male aspect of it, of like law enforcement, paramedics, firefighters, because there isn't an environment really for them to be able to have that vulnerability because we have to pretend to have that facade, be that chameleon that goes in and is with people on their worst of their worst days. We don't have the luxury of being able to sleep and have our own beds all the time, being able to work out all the time and have the best bodies, but also not being able to have that community aspect with our own families and everything. And we have to be that strong stoic people. Having a community like that that you're just describing for the weekend, where you can just feel safe enough to feel vulnerable and express yourself is a very rare experience to be able to have. So um it's intriguing for it. I think it's something that's definitely needed in the male world for sure.

Speaker 1 35:07

Wow. Yeah, you hit on two big points there. One, the self-abandonment piece. I love this poem by O'Raya Mountain Dreamer. It's called The Invitation. Are you familiar with it?

Speaker 35:20

Um, I'm not sure.

Repetition Builds Regulation

Speaker 1 35:21

Okay. Uh, there's a line in there that says, I want to know if you will disappoint another so as not to sacrifice your own soul. Oh wow. Okay, that's the self-abandonment piece. And so we are sovereign beings. Sovereignty means that we have supreme authority, agency over our beliefs, our thoughts, our feelings, and our action and/or inaction. So that's step number one for overcoming this self-abandonment issue. The second thing you brought up, first responders, my goodness. Talk about hypervigilance, hyper threat mode. You have to be in survival mode. And you spend days, weeks, months, years immersed in survival. And here's the thing your body trusts repetition more than revelation, right? So hearing you can regulate your nervous system, talking about regulating your nervous system, even practicing some breath work or some tools occasionally to regulate your nervous system, it's not going to override what your nervous system trusts, which is stay hyper-vigilant or we die. Right. That's why retreats don't work. You need repetition. You need repetition. So we we start with uh a weekend immersive. I create a safe container, and then uh the real work starts afterwards at least a 90-day integration piece because we got to build the repetition, we got to establish a safe place in your body for the new identity to live, to be.

Speaker 37:19

Yeah, I feel like you make a great point because people think that they can just have a vacation time and it's gonna fix everything. But in reality, sometimes that can just expose the stress even more. I make a joke on another podcast or so where you just finally get that vacation time with your family and your kid drops the ice cream that you just spent $8 on, and the vacation in it causes you to just go off the handle because you're still not addressing the issue. The time off isn't what fixes the burnout. You know, you have to address the nervous system, you have to address everything that you've been burying, which could be for the last decade, if not more. And you're going to always revert back to what your nervous system is comfortable with, which even if that is something that's negative.

Words Shape Reality

Speaker 1 38:06

Wow. Think about that, Renee, for a minute. The lack of capacity. You know, my nervous system no longer has the capacity to be calm when my grandson drops the $8 ice cream cone that I just bought him. I fly off the handle. Like that's a lack of capacity, right? Yeah. So it is possible to have the capacity to operate as a first responder, for example. Well, let's look at the Navy SEALs as an example. They are highly trained in in, they have a capacity, the ability to turn their fight or flight on or off. And one example is observed a on a documentary, a Navy SEAL who literally was in live fire situation, literally bullets flying over his head, and he had been awake for 48 hours. He had to get some sleep, but the shooting was not letting up. And so his buddy next to him takes a round of guarding, and he trusts this man in the foxhole next to him enough. And he's trained his nervous system to the point that he could get 15 minutes of deep restful REM sleep with all of this chaos going on. So it is possible to develop capacity, you know, to not be controlled by our nervous system, but to be the one in charge of our nervous system. But it takes practice, it takes repetition.

Speaker 39:48

Yeah, that's wild. And it comes down to the fact that it's a mindset issue, right? That is something that I work alongside with people that I work with and my clients is that the words that we say are to ourselves is so incredibly important. And something that you had touched on earlier is just you saying, you know, money is hard to make, just the saying of like, oh, I'll never change, or it's just the way I am. Saying those things over and over to your nervous system is the repetition that it feels comfortable in. And people roll their eyes at affirmations and stuff of that nature. But there is so much science behind morning gratitudes, even the seven-minute gratitudes. I do that with some of the people I work with because it does activate your reticular activating system, because it puts it into your brain that these are the things I'm looking for, and these are the things that is going to re-institute new repetitions, you know. So you're right. And that is a phenomenal story with the Navy SEAL, but it's a reminder that we have so much more power that we allow ourselves to believe. It's just the mindset of reminding ourselves wow, I do have the ability, I do have the capacity to retrain my nervous system, to retrain my body, no matter what that looks like.

Speaker 1 41:10

Absolutely. You know, and circling back to the emotion piece, we have an emotional guidance system, right? So there's signals. And not only signals in the theoretical sense, but we live in a vibrational reality. Words have a vibrational frequency. And if you're listening, just try this out one morning by yourself. Make a list of the ugliest, meanest, dirtiest words that are in your vocabulary. Write those down in the left column. And then in the right column, write down the most beautiful, loving, creative words that you can think of. And then say the left column out loud and then take a breath. Notice what it felt like, and then read the right column out loud. Take a breath and notice what it feels like. I guarantee you two distinct feelings that that's vibrational. You feel it. So you're absolutely right. On many levels, words mean things. Words are vibrational, and nothing has meaning except the meaning we give it, and we make matter on so many levels.

Speaker 42:20

It's so true, and we forget that too. We allow our emotions to take over in so many ways, but we have a lot more control than we actually allow ourselves to believe. When you're talking about the word sovereignty that you mentioned earlier, it sounds great in theory and everything, but what does that look like in someone's day-to-day life?

Speaker 1 42:41

Well, the simple version is everybody's having their own experience. In other words, the meaning that they're giving to a particular experience is based on the memories that they have, the meaning that they create around those memories, what it influences in their body, in their biology, their chemistry, how they experience the experience, right? It's based on what David Bayer would call the five primary drivers. We talked about it earlier. What do they believe? How do they think? How do they feel? It's going to determine their action andor inaction. And then they're going to get a result and it will just support the original belief. Everybody is having their own version of that. So you, me, everybody else is 110% sovereign. Whether we want to take that responsibility or not, at least we have the opportunity to have supreme authority and agency over our beliefs, our thoughts, our feelings, action andor inaction. That's what I mean by sovereignty.

Speaker 43:53

And it really does give you the power back over your life. But for someone that is listening right now and realizing, Like shit, I want that power in my life, and I'm realizing I'm still operating in this survival mode that Christopher has been talking about, and that's probably why I'm so burned the fuck out. What's the first thing that you would recommend for them to actually start doing in a tangible way?

Speaker 1 44:18

Breathe to start with. Breathe. Decide. So when I was in the military, they taught us a framework. Maybe you've heard of it. Maybe first responders have used it. It's called ODA loop, OODA looping. So it's an acronym. OODA stands for observe, orient, decide, then act. So practically, if you're not getting the results that you want, that you desire, then observe the five primary drivers because that's the formula, right? Beliefs plus thoughts plus feelings plus action equal your results. If you don't like your results, make an observation, orient yourself. So which piece of the formula is dysregulated? And then make a decision. Decide. For me, for example, we talked about in the beginning, it was that it was a decision. So beliefs are just decisions. That's the decide piece. So I decided at some point in my life money was hard to make. Not because I invented this belief. I just borrowed it and I decided to believe it. So I decided the opposite. I oriented, okay, this is not working because it's given me these thoughts, these feelings, these actions, and I'm getting this burnt out result. So I make a new decision. Money really isn't hard to make. Money's easy to make. Now I'm having thoughts of all the easy, easier ways to make money. It feels so much better. And I'm it's taking less work, taking less action. I'm getting this huge result, oota looping. And you just keep looping on that. That's practically how you take back your power and your sovereignty.

Who The Experience Is For

Speaker 46:08

I like that. OODA looping. I feel like it sounds familiar. Yeah. So I probably have come across it and I like that. I want to loop, loop back to the sovereign man experience that you have built and designed to help these men. Who is it for? And is it for everyone, or what kind of work are they ready to do? Just kind of describe that if someone would be interested in that.

Speaker 1 46:33

Yeah, it's for men who are at least aware that they're working really hard and maybe even getting some really good results. They've made the money, they've bought the homes, the cars, the vacations. Looks really good on the outside, but inside they feel it. They maybe can't name it exactly, but they feel something's missing. Something is incongruent inside of them. It's definitely not for a man who is looking for another rah-rah. Let's beat the shit out of each other and call it masculinity. No, it's not one of those. And I guarantee you, your warrior will be challenged. Okay. It's not all pats on the back and kumbaya either. We work with the whole man. And we use a framework that I borrowed called the Four Gateways. And we work with the parts that are responsible for our vision, our values, the part of us that's responsible for feeling and connecting, the part of us that is responsible for getting shit done, the mission and protecting, and the part of us that is the critical thinker, the analyzer, right? We work with all those parts. So a man who is willing to do the work on himself. And it's certainly not for somebody who's in crisis and needs triage. Yeah, I think that probably sums it up.

Speaker 48:09

Well, do you have anything left that you want to add to this conversation that has been really powerful in and of itself?

Speaker 1 48:16

Just a recap. The arc of the weekend is based on my sovereign identity recode method, and it's three phases. First, it's recalibrate, which is regulating the nervous system so the body stops running in survival mode, because you can't recode a system that's in constant defense mode. The second piece is the recoding the identity. So rewiring subconscious beliefs, self-image, identity patterns underneath the behavior. And then the last part is the embodiment. The last day Sunday, we typically spend out in nature and it's the integration piece. So integrating the new identity into real life until it becomes the default, not what's performed.

Speaker 49:00

That's awesome. Sounds like a very transformative weekend for sure.

Where To Find Christopher

Speaker 1 49:05

It's certainly an opening and an activation. It's not the end of the work, but it is a very powerful transformational weekend.

Speaker 49:13

It's awesome. Well, Christopher, this has been a honestly a very powerful conversation. I feel like we covered a ton over this last hour, especially for people who are realizing that more effort just isn't the answer. And if someone is listening and this hit honestly, like just in their chest and hit home for them, where can they find you and learn more about your work, especially what you had just mentioned in the Soberman experience?

Speaker 1 49:37

Yeah, everything lives on my website, ChristopherChamberlin.com. Chamberlin spelled C-H A-M-B-E-R-L-I-N. So ChristopherCamberlin.com. Everything lives there. So I would say jump over there first.

Speaker 49:54

Great. I will have everything in the show notes as well. So it'll make everything easy for those of you listening to get in contact with Christopher as well. And if you got anything out of this episode, definitely share it with someone who's been caring more than they would like to admit. And then obviously, if they want to get in contact with Christopher for everything that he does to work alongside with men, make sure you're subscribed to the Hustle Rebels so you don't miss any upcoming conversations like this. And if you want to support the show and keep it independent, there are ways to do that in the show notes as well. So I appreciate you guys all being here, and we will see you guys next week. Thank you, Christopher.