Your Nervous System is Sabotaging Your Author Career

In today’s Author Revolution Podcast, we’re exploring a hidden barrier that’s holding many indie authors back from success: nervous system dysregulation. 

Your nervous system plays a crucial role in your creativity, productivity, and even your ability to manifest success. When it’s out of alignment, you may feel burnt out, stuck, or even blocked in your writing journey. In this episode, we break down why this happens and share five actionable tips to help reset your nervous system for optimal creative flow.

If you’re ready to break free from the cycle of stress and unlock your full creative potential, tune in to learn how a balanced nervous system can be the key to your thriving author career.

The Author Revolution Podcast is evolving! Starting January 1st, join me on the Manifest Differently Podcast—a space for neurodivergent thinkers to embrace manifestation in ways that align with how we’re wired. If you’re ready to manifest on your terms, visit ManifestDifferently.com or tune in to Episode 1 at manifestdifferently.com/1.

Are you an author at a crossroads, feeling stuck & unfulfilled in your author career? Do you know deep down it's time for a change, but you’re unsure of the next step?

The High Vibe Author is the only transformational membership designed specifically for authors like you—those who are ready to break free from limitations & step into the abundant life they deserve. Click here to learn more.

Chapters

• 1:01 Harness the Power of Alignment
• 14:35 Nurturing Your Body and Mind
• 21:05 Building Community Through Social Media

Transcript

Carissa Andrews: 1:01

Welcome to the Author Revolution podcast, where change is not just embraced, it's celebrated. I'm Carissa Andrews, international bestselling author, indie author coach and your navigator through the ever-evolving landscape of authorship. Are you ready to harness the power of your mind and the latest innovations in technology for your writing journey? If you're passionate about manifesting your dreams and pioneering new writing frontiers, then you're in the perfect place. Here we merge the mystical woo of writing with the exciting advancements of the modern world. We dive into the realms of mindset, manifestation and the transformative magic that occurs when you believe in the impossible. We also venture into the world of futuristic technologies and strategies, preparing you for the next chapter in your author career. Every week, we explore new ways to revolutionize your writing and publishing experience, from AI to breakthrough thinking. This podcast is your gateway to a world where creativity meets innovation. Whether you're penning your first novel or expanding your literary empire, whether you're a devotee of the pen or a digital storyteller, this podcast is where your author revolution gains momentum. So join me in this journey to continue growth and transformation. It's time to redefine what it means to be an author in today's dynamic world. This is the Author Revolution Podcast, and your author revolution starts now. Hey there, revolutionary authors, welcome to the Author Revolution Podcast.

Carissa Andrews: 2:37

Today's episode is going to be a deep one. We're talking about something that many of us don't even realize is affecting our careers, but it's absolutely critical to understand if we want to see the results that we're striving for as an author and I kind of alluded to it last week. But are you ready for this? Your nervous system is sabotaging your author career. Yep, you heard me right. If you've been feeling burnt out, stuck or like you're constantly spinning your wheels but not moving forward, there's a good chance that your nervous system is actually out of alignment. And if it's dysregulated, it's not just affecting your creativity or motivation. It's preventing you from manifesting the success you deserve, because your manifestations are actually misfiring. So stick with me today as we dig into what nervous system dysregulation really is, how it's holding you back from achieving your author goals and, most importantly, how you can get back into alignment to finally start seeing the progress and success you've been dreaming about. And at the end, I've got five powerful tips to help you realign and reclaim your creative flow.

Carissa Andrews: 3:45

So let's start with the basics about your nervous system. So your nervous system is responsible for regulating how you respond to stress, creativity and productivity. It's made up of two main parts the sympathetic nervous system, which is your fight or flight response, and the parasympathetic nervous system, which is your rest and digest state. Ideally, these two systems work in harmony, allowing you to respond to challenges while giving you space to relax and recover. But here's where things get a little tricky.

Carissa Andrews: 4:13

When we're constantly pushing ourselves, especially in high-stress environments like the indie author world, where we're trying to write, publish and market, and do all of it faster, we end up living in a state of chronic stress. Our sympathetic nervous system, then, is firing on all cylinders, and our parasympathetic nervous system, the one that helps us relax and recharge, gets sidelined. Over time. This really leads to what's called nervous system dysregulation. Instead of shifting naturally between periods of high focus and rest, we get stuck in overdrive. Our bodies and our minds are constantly in the state of high alert, and that's when burnout hits. Now, it's different for everybody, but the chronic stress doesn't just affect how we feel physically. It impacts everything, including our creativity, our decision making and our ability to stay in the flow.

Carissa Andrews: 5:05

Now here's where things get even more interesting, at least to me, if you're someone who's into manifestation and I know a lot of you are. You've probably heard the idea that like attracts, like right. In other words, the energy you put into the world is the energy that you get back. But when your nervous system is dysregulated, that whole process gets thrown off. When you're stuck in a constant state of stress or burnout, your body is in survival mode, and when you're in survival mode, it's almost impossible to align with the high vibe energy that manifestation requires. You might be setting intentions or working on visualizations, but your nervous system is in chaos. So you're likely attracting just more of that chaos, right? More stress, more struggle, more of that feeling of being stuck. So here's one of the things that I really need you to know.

Carissa Andrews: 5:55

When I was working this summer, I didn't realize I was in complete burnout and things were going wonky everywhere, and the more I was looking at what I wanted to do or what I wanted to be, or how I wanted to show up or how I wanted money to be, the worse it got. It was like everything that I was trying to get into, everything I was trying to create, was falling apart. Now there's a certain level in this place where, when you are manifesting something, when you're calling something new in, the old has to fall apart. The old ways have to fall apart. Your old mindsets, your old belief systems, they have to fall apart. But there's also a level of like you're calling something in and it's going oh, you want less, here you go and you're going what? No, no.

Carissa Andrews: 6:46

So if you've been putting in the work, if you've been taking the action and setting the goals, like I definitely was but you're still not seeing the results that you want in your author career, nervous system dysregulation might be the missing link. And here's the kicker you can't just hustle your way through it. The more you push without addressing the underlying issues, the more you'll stay stuck. So here we go, don't worry, there's good news. Right, you can reset your nervous system, and when you do, you'll notice a massive difference in how you feel and how you create. I know I certainly have. So let's dive into the five tips that will help you get back into alignment and reclaim your creative flow.

Carissa Andrews: 7:22

Number one prioritize rest and recovery. So this is obviously number one for a lot of reasons, but first and foremost, you need to give yourself permission to rest, and I don't just mean a quick break between writing sessions either. I'm talking about real restorative rest, the kind that lets your parasympathetic nervous system kick back in and take over, so this might mean scheduling days off right, getting very clear boundaries around your work, or even taking short breaks from writing altogether. That was definitely something that happened for me, like I had to take a time away from everything just to do what I needed to do. I could not continue in the path that I was going, and so what I did was started going in deeper.

Carissa Andrews: 8:08

I spent more time in meditation trying to figure out, which that's not the right term either. Trying to do anything. Is you trying to force something right? So I was. Just I probably was forcing it in the beginning. Come to think of it, I was probably trying to pull in and trying to make myself understand, but what ended up happening was the more time I gave myself to just meditate, to be in flow, to allow myself to, you know, get through a meditation and do whatever. I started getting new glimpses of things that I could try, and one of the biggest ones that actually came from that is doing heart coherence, and I'll probably do a podcast episode on heart coherence on its own, but I've done a masterclass on this. So definitely, if you're interested, check out the master class membership, because it's got that master class in it.

Carissa Andrews: 8:56

It's so important that we get our heart back into coherence. The heart is really the source of how we get into nervous system regulation, how we get back in on a daily basis and remind our nervous system it's okay, you're safe, you're cool, right, there's a whole bunch of stuff that goes on there, but I just want you to understand that nervous system regulation can stem from your breath and heart coherence, and I learned that through just giving myself some more time. So, speaking of that, number two is actually grounding yourself with mindfulness or meditation and, like I just said, I spent more time in that place. I spent more time like literally my whole morning was what it was looking like during the summer. I was spending from about nine o'clock in the morning till about noon was my meditation and workout time, and the meditation part was actually the longest right. So the workout was, I don't know, 25 to 35 minutes. It was not that long, but the rest of that time was meditation and just getting into that mindfulness zone, and what happens is like mindfulness and meditation.

Carissa Andrews: 9:59

They're really just two of the most effective tools when it comes to calming your nervous system and bringing your body out of that fight or flight mode, particularly if you can combine it with heart coherence. If you're someone who spends a lot of time in your mind and if you're doing a lot of visualizations or guided meditations or hypnosis, sometimes that can actually trigger like less of a heart coherence because you are, you know, visualizing things. You're trying to put yourself in that state. It's almost that trying that butts you up against the problem again. So if you're finding that you're spending too much time trying like forcing, efforting, trying to get yourself into that place, even spending more time literally just focusing on your breath, deep breaths in, deep breaths out that's going to help you a lot more than any meditation really well. But even five or 10 minutes a day of quiet reflection can really help you regulate your stress response and bring your energy back into balance, because that's just really it's so important, right? You can also incorporate simple breathing exercises. So, like I was saying before, breath work is really important with heart coherence. I personally like breathing in for five and out for five, letting it be very much like a wave, going in and out and focusing on my heart center, focusing on like the particles of the universe of love, like the love particles going through my heart and back out through my heart, and when I start feeling my heart center warm, that I know I'm on the right track. Right, and when you fit that into your daily routine, all of this stuff together can trigger your parasympathetic nervous system to calm back down and it helps you, honestly, stay a lot more present.

Carissa Andrews: 11:43

Okay so, number three I want you to set realistic, aligned goals. So we've been talking about this a lot this past couple of weeks, because we've been talking about this a lot this past couple of weeks, because we've been talking about, you know, creating your own six week success writing sprint. We've been talking about the reasons why the indie author industry is setting you up for failure. All of this comes together right, because we're trying to create an author career in alignment with who we are and there's a certain degree of where we're trying to. You know, we're trying to push ourselves to be in a place of growth, but we also need to be realistic about who we are and what feels good and trust that we can be guided into that right place, right.

Carissa Andrews: 12:25

One of the reasons our nervous system gets so dysregulated is that we're constantly chasing unrealistic or misaligned goals. Listen to that again. We're chasing unrealistic or misaligned goals and I know that has definitely been the case for me because I'm a high achiever. I love doing a lot of things. I love proving people wrong when they say, oh, you can't do that, and I'm like, watch me. I love proving people wrong when they say, oh, you can't do that and I'm like, watch me. But the thing is that is not coming from a place when I do it that way of true alignment or like who I really want to be, at least not anymore. It might have been when I was a little bit younger, but now that I'm, you know, on the other side of my mid 40s, the last thing I want to do is be constantly on the go and I want to have that reflection time. I want to have that downtime. I want to be in that state of flow and alignment.

Carissa Andrews: 13:15

So if you're pushing yourself to write tons of books every single year and it doesn't fit your lifestyle or your creative process, that's going to cause stress. It's going to cause stress in your mind and it's going to be put into your body and unless that stress can be relieved through, like somatic exercises, through breath work, through heart coherence. It's going to stay there and it's going to continue to cause problems with your nervous system. So instead, I want you to take a step back and reassess your goals. Are they realistic? Do you feel aligned with your current energy levels? Do you feel aligned with the way that you're doing this thing? Is it still lighting you up the way that it was before? I know I've had to do that too. This year was definitely one of those. Is this still in alignment for me? Do I still want to do this thing this way? And because of that I was able to be more creative and shake up the way that I show up, and so it's done a lot of realignment for myself and I really feel more in flow than I did, definitely this summer. Oh, my gosh right. So adjusting your expectations and allowing space for ease into your goals can reduce stress, and it just makes the writing process feel so much more enjoyable, not like something that you have to white knuckle your way through.

Carissa Andrews: 14:35

Okay, so number four move your body. So this is why I was doing exercises in the morning. I was doing my workouts first thing in the morning, because I know how much energy gets stuck in the body and if we don't move it, it just stays there. So physical movement it's a powerful way to release the stress, especially when you're doing things that are more caring to your body, like yoga or a walk in nature or dancing, things like that. It can help release that built up tension in your body. And when we're sitting at our desk writing all day, funnily enough our bodies actually get tense. So it's not just like they're getting tense because we're stressed out although we could be, that could be an added tension but the tension is feeding from our mental state and into our mental state. So it's this like I don't know cycle that just keeps going around and around and it's not going to help you to reset your body and to get back into your natural state. So movement isn't just about physical health. It's about letting go of the mental clutter too, and I've taught this a lot from the very beginning, like even in like right frame of mind, my book.

Carissa Andrews: 15:42

I talked about why movement is so important and it's just, it's a way to be able to release that, that tension, that energy, to get out the, the stuff that is stored in the body and it just helps you to feel more in alignment because your body is here to move, like, literally, we are 3D people. We're 3D humans living a 3D experience, and if we're not going to use our 3D you know, physical body to move in it, we're going to cause problems and decay to our body, and we don't want that because we need it. We need it to live, to support ourselves, to do the things we want to do, and it just feels better to move. Endorphins get released. All the good stuff, right, okay.

Carissa Andrews: 16:23

So number five a supportive writing environment. So I really want you to surround yourself with supportive people who understand you specifically and also the ups and downs of the writing journey, because I think it's really crucial that we have a crew of people around us that are in that flow, that understand the trials and tribulations, and this is one of the reasons why I created the First Draft Fellowship inside of the Revolutionary Authors membership. You might have remembered that from a couple of weeks ago, I created this membership, but then also the like the group to be able to help us. It's a space to connect with others who are working on their projects, doing writing sprints and supporting each other, especially when things get tough. But I've also built it into my high vibe author membership too, where every single one of my memberships has like an element of community built into it so that we can lean on people who are of like mind. So in high vibe, those are the people who are, you know, trying to learn manifestation, abundance mindset, let go of poverty mindset, all the things. And with the revolutionary authors it's all about, you know, strategy. How do we get these things done? What's the best way to make this thing happen? Not all of those people are into manifestation, and I totally get that, and so there's elements of like the community in both. And when you have a community that has your back, it's so much easier to stay grounded and motivated, even during the challenging times. And that's part of the reason why I created these memberships, because I want to be there to support people.

Carissa Andrews: 17:59

I've said this before and I'll say it again. I'll just keep, you know, hammering the nail down. I am a number one relator and I get the most joy out of seeing people feel good, like I. I grew up with a brother with a brain tumor. I understand, you know how important it is that someone shows up and cares, and I have an aunt who has down syndrome, I have an uncle who has schizophrenia there's a lot of things that have been like. I've been personally surrounded by that. It makes me understand just how everyone not just those guys, right how everyone needs someone to understand them. And because I had those people in my life and it was it was up to me to be able to not completely up to me, but it was something that I enjoyed. I was probably always a number one relator when I look back, but I enjoyed taking that moment. I enjoyed being able to be there with them and for them and share time with them. And so, for me, I like to do that even with my students. I like to know what their challenges are, I like to know that they're doing better. I like to know that they're growing. I like to know that what I've taught them is helping, and I like to know that I can count on them as well as friends, right, because this is like a beautiful community where we give and take together. It's so wonderful.

Carissa Andrews: 19:24

So if you've been feeling stuck or burnt out or like manifestation just isn't working the way that it should, I want you to take a look at that nervous system. Yeah, is it in alignment, or are you in that constant state of stress and overdrive? By prioritizing your rest, your mindfulness, setting realistic goals, getting some movement in and surrounding yourself with the community, you can reset your system and start to see the progress that you've been really working so hard for Now. Before I go, I just want to say, too, that, like literally right now, colin and I are on our way home, and so I've recorded this podcast episode in advance because we're going to be at AuthorNation. And now for you guys, for you listening right now, that means AuthorNation has already happened, but for me, when I'm recording this in October, authornation has not yet happened. It's like this weird time loopy, jumpy thing. But next week, when you hear the next new episode of the Author Revolution podcast, I'm going to be sharing the experience of Author Nation what it was like at that inaugural event, how my presentation went, all the things. So I'll be dishing on all of that stuff. So I hope that you are looking forward to that as much as I am.

Carissa Andrews: 20:32

Okay, guys, so if this episode resonated with you and you want to explore these concepts deeper, I'd love for you to check out my High Vibe Author Membership. It's a space where we dive into mindset, energy, alignment and building the author career of your dreams, all while staying in balance. And if you want to get today's transcript or the link to the resources I just mentioned, like High Vibe Author Membership or Revolutionary Authors Membership, just head over to authorrevolutionorg. Forward slash 262. And you'll be able to find it all right there.

Carissa Andrews: 21:05

Having you here is such a joy for me and I wish I could see your faces. I wish I could talk to you when you hear this podcast episode. I wish we had more of a discussion going on about it. Feel free to reach out on any of the social medias. I'm hanging out more and more on Instagram, specifically, and TikTok, so feel free to come by, leave me your comments so that I can make sure that I am sharing in the awesomeness with you. Thank you so much for tuning in today, guys. Until next time, keep writing, keep creating, go forth and start your author revolution. Thank you.