The Conscious Entrepreneur — EP 123: Emotional Self-Regulation for Leaders, Part 1: Fear and Suffering (Replay)

Release Date: January 12, 2026
Host: Sarah Lockwood
Guests: Beck Seidal (Founder, Humankind Business Leaders), Marina Suholutsky (Founder, Purpose Built)

Episode Overview

This episode launches a three-part series on Emotional Self-Regulation for Leaders, focusing on how fear and suffering impact founders, CEOs, and team leaders. Host Sarah Lockwood is joined by leadership coaches Beck Seidal and Marina Suholutsky, who explore the neuroscience of fear, its somatic manifestations, and practical tools for building self-awareness. The discussion moves beyond the theory and provides actionable strategies to recognize, acknowledge, and transform fear into leadership capacity and presence.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Start with Fear and Suffering?

• Survival to Self-Sabotage: Fear evolved as a survival response, but now limits leaders in high-stakes situations (03:25).
  • Marina: “Fear is a protective mechanism. It’s a survival response ... it is built inside of us to protect ourselves.” (03:24)
• Fear’s Impact on Leadership: Unconscious fear responses can “put [leaders] into automations” that lower effectiveness and capacity (02:20).

2. The Neuroscience of Fear

• The Amygdala’s Role: The “reptilian brain” or amygdala triggers automatic fear responses, even when no real threat exists (04:20).
  • Beck: “It all begins with ... the amygdala … this fear part creates a lot of suffering ... it’s limiting, it’s shifting, shutting down. It’s looking just for the threats.” (04:20)
• Negativity Bias: The brain’s wiring causes leaders to disproportionately focus on threats, magnifying stress and reducing perspective (05:00).

3. Why Suppressing Fear Doesn’t Work

• Social Bias Against Fear: The habit of labeling fear as "bad" keeps leaders from leveraging its useful signals (06:21).
  • Marina: “Fear tends to be labeled as bad. And fear is actually our ally ... The challenge is we usually bias towards fear equals bad.” (06:43)
• Letting Fear In: Softening towards fear, instead of denying it, re-engages the prefrontal cortex (08:00).

4. Cultivating Awareness: The Foundation Skill

• Recognizing Fear’s Physical Signs: Leaders often don’t notice when tightness, shallow breathing, or constriction means fear is present (12:35).
  • Marina: "One is actually recognizing that you do have shallow breath or that you are actually constricted. ... So one is do a little body check. Am I able to take a deep breath right now?" (13:00)
• Awareness as the Magic Moment: The hosts stress that “awareness is never enough” but is the essential starting point for self-mastery (11:40, 15:58).
  • Beck: “Once you notice, awareness is never enough. It’s the beginning. And then how do you sequence differently after that awareness?” (11:46)

5. Practical Tools for Leaders

• Body Scan: Pause in a meeting and notice your breath, chest, and body. Is there tightness or restriction? (13:02)
• Check Your Story: Ask, “What story am I telling myself right now?” to unearth the fears behind reactions (13:52).
  • Marina: “Anytime I’m telling myself a story that I’m going to be negatively affected ... are just versions of, ‘I’m not going to be okay.’” (14:01)
• Name the Fear: Practice simply stating, “This is fear,” with a kind and curious tone—cultivating compassion for yourself (14:06, 16:26).
  • Beck: “Can you just go looking for fear with humility ... and then can you name it? Oh, right, this is fear ... a softening happens as soon as you’re able to name.” (14:06)
• Curiosity Shift: Once you name the fear, ask, “What else is true?” to open new perspectives beyond the threat (15:00).

6. Modeling Self-Regulation as a Leader

• Owning Your Experience: Leaders who name and own their fear set a calm, respectful tone for teams (17:00).
  • Marina: “The level of respect that a team has for a leader who can own and name their own fear ... It softens the entire temperature of the room.” (17:00)
• Mirror Neurons: If a leader doesn’t address their fear, the whole team feels it unconsciously (17:32).

7. Active Choice and Capacity

• From Passive to Active: The shift from letting fear run you (passive) to making conscious choices (active) is the essence of leadership growth (18:13).
  • Marina: “When we’ve recognized the tightness … we can go, ‘Okay, now I get to choose differently.’” (18:25)
• Actionable Moments: Recognize anticipatory cues (“I always get tight before this meeting”), prepare, and reset in real time (20:13).
• Practice Over Perfection: The tools aren’t new—the power is in consistently applying them during stress, not in their novelty (20:45).

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Fear as Ally:
  • Marina (06:43): “Fear is actually our ally. … The challenge is that we usually bias towards fear equals bad.”
• On Neuroscience:
  • Beck (04:20): “We start to see we’re running on autopilot. … The amygdala is the part we talk about first today, and this fear part creates a lot of suffering.”
• Letting Fear In:
  • Marina (08:00): "The ability to allow your experience to be what it is, is how you start to gain awareness that...I'm actually not being chased by a tiger, even if that's a really scary board meeting."
• Compassion in Awareness:
  • Beck (14:06): “It takes time to practice, to actually say [‘this is fear’] with compassion towards yourself.”
• On Modeling Vulnerability:
  • Marina (17:00): “The level of respect that a team has for a leader who can own and name their own fear...softens the entire temperature of the room.”
• Taking Action:
  • Sarah (20:13): “These are very actionable skill sets that, when you actually do them, can give you more capacity. Nothing you’re talking about here today is brand new information. The magic trick is actually doing it.”

Important Timestamps

• 02:59: Introduction to fear and its evolutionary roots
• 04:20: How the amygdala and negativity bias work in leaders
• 06:21: Societal bias and why fear isn’t bad
• 08:00: How accepting fear re-engages the reasoning brain
• 11:46: Why awareness alone isn’t enough
• 13:00: Practical tool #1: Body scan for recognizing fear
• 13:52: Practical tool #2: "What story am I telling myself?"
• 14:06: Practical tool #3: Naming fear with compassion
• 15:00: Practical tool #4: Shifting to curiosity, asking “What else is true?”
• 16:26: The softening effect of naming and owning fear
• 17:00: Impact of vulnerability on team respect and culture
• 18:13: The concept of active choice: moving from reaction to intention
• 20:13: Building anticipatory awareness and practical application

Summary for Listeners

This episode provides an engaging, practical framework for recognizing and regulating fear as an entrepreneur or leader. Sarah, Beck, and Marina break down why fear persists, how it hijacks your mind and body, and—most importantly—how to gain awareness and transform fear into capacity and calm leadership. By sharing exercises like body scans, self-inquiry, and compassionate naming, they invite listeners to begin experimenting with these tools before next week’s episode, which will delve into curiosity as the next step in emotional self-mastery.

Action for This Week:
Practice noticing and naming fear in the moment. Be gentle. Ask yourself, “What story am I telling myself?” and allow the experience. Tune in for the next episode to continue building your toolkit for emotional self-regulation.