EP 123: Emotional Self-Regulation for Leaders - Part 1 Fear and Suffering (Replay)

Summary

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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)

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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.

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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).

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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.”

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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

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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.

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Transcript

[A]

You're listening to the Conscious Entrepreneur and I'm Sarah Lockwood. This is the only podcast completely dedicated to the well being of entrepreneurs. It's where we do the inner work to become the leaders our businesses truly need. A thriving business starts with a thriving you. Let's get into it. We're here today to talk as founders and CEOs and leaders of organizations about emotional self mastery. It's one of the things that as leaders we set the tone in our organizations and we help to impact the trajectory and effectiveness of our teams. And when we aren't able to show up as our best selves, we're doing our businesses a disservice. And today we have two experts that come at the same problem from different places to share with us their expertise. You may recognize Marina and Beck from the Conscious Entrepreneur Summit if you were there this year 2025, but if not, you get to experience them here today. And I'd love if you guys could both just take a moment and introduce your. Who wants to start first?

[B]

It is so wonderful to be here. Thank you Sarah for the opportunity. Always fun to be with Marina. We spend a good bit of time together. I'm Beck Seidal. I'm the founder of Humankind Business Leaders and we are a business advising and leadership coaching practice and we do those two things together. Specifically. I'm a former CEO and I call myself a business geek. I just can't help it. I love business so I love to talk about that part of things. And then I'm a former therapist, so I also love the human condition and applying all the things that there to help leaders know where they're at in any given moment and how they can be better humans and better leaders and then how we put those two things together.

[A]

Beautiful.

[C]

And I'm Marina Suholutsky. I'm the founder of Purpose Built. Similar to Beck, we work with founders, CEOs, business leaders, on consciousness, on how do you grow yourself as a human being so that you can grow your business. And we do that with one on one. And then we also do education for teams.

[A]

Awesome. So we'll put links to both of your businesses in the show notes so people can find you if they're interested in continuing conversation after listening to this podcast. But today I'd like to jump right in and start talking about fear and suffering. So in this three part series, this is the place we're going to begin. And it's really important because when fear shows up for a leader, it's doing things in your body that are limiting your capacity and sort of putting you into these automations that exist in our neuroscience and in our biology, naturally. So I'd love if you could just take a minute, you know, both of you, to speak to that and why being conscientious of fear is not letting you show up as your best self. Yeah.

[C]

And I can start. So it's always nice to kick off a series with suffering. That's always helpful. But at the end of the day, we're humans, right? We are human beings with survival responses. And so we start with fear because it's how we evolve. It's knowing that, you know, when we were still hunters and gatherers, we were running away from predators, from tigers, right?

[A]

From.

[C]

From lions, all of those things where it is built inside of us to protect ourselves. Right. And fear is a protective mechanism. It's a survival response.

[A]

Right. But fear, you know, fear shows up for us now as leaders in places where it's actually doing us a disservice. And so understanding how we can be aware of it, we know we can't stop this fear response, but being able to be aware of it and then make a choice and an intentional choice about how we use that fear and how we react or respond to that fear is maybe the magic of this episode. So I would love, Beck, if you could talk a little bit about, you know, that what would help us to first recognize that this is sort of happening for us.

[B]

Yeah. What Marina said is so key, right. For we all know you can read lots of books. You could. You could immerse yourself in all of the information that's available about neuroscience now. Right. And so many advancements have happened in neuroscience, but it all begins with what Marina was talking about is our many people call it the reptilian brain, the early part of the brain that is still part of our experience. And it's the amygdala. Right. And I point back here because it's down here at the sort of base of our skull. And if we start to understand some of the most simple parts of neuroscience and the biology, really, how our brain works, then we start to see that we're running on autopilot. And the amygdala is the part we talk about first today. And this fear part creates a lot of suffering, right? It's limiting, it's shifting, shutting down. It's looking just for the threats. Right. There's something called negativity bias. Right? So over time, unwittingly, when we allow the amygdala to reduce our experience and it starts to clinch. Right. That's the way we understand an amygdala in the fear state. Then we're only having part of our experience. And then we start having experiences of like, well, why am I doing this and why am I getting my own way and why am I not showing up as my best self? Like, these aren't even my vet. We start acting outside of our values. And that that tends to be because we call it stress. Stress gets us to do those things. But really it's the amygdala that's activated from really early evolution and it's afraid. So, Marina, talk a little bit about not wanting to push that away. Right. I think as soon as we know a thing as entrepreneurs, like, oh, I'm just get rid of that thing. But that's also that magic move that we're all looking for. Where's the hack, right? Is what a lot of people are talking about.

[C]

Yeah. There's such a sort of bias in our society towards black and white thinking, yes or no, right or wrong, good or bad. And fear tends to be labeled as bad. And fear is actually our ally. It's how it keeps us from being hunted, being eaten.

[A]

Right.

[C]

The challenge is that we usually bias towards fear equals bad. And so we don't recognize, hey, let it in. What happens when we let it in. So that's the clenched fist, when you just soften it a little bit, that's letting the fear in. Making a conscious effort to say, hey, you're welcome here. Bec and I are both really. We'll talk about this through the series. Really deep into meditation and different practices, different teachers and the ability to allow your experience to be what it is, is how you start to gain awareness that, hey, I'm actually not being chased by a tiger. Even if that's a really scary board meeting or somebody doesn't like me on the job or whatever it translates into to 2025. Right. But just to know that, hey, fear is a response that lives in the amygdala. When the amygdala is activated, our prefrontal cortex, which is our reasoning center, our executive function, both as a CEO and also from a logic based perspective, our executive function gets turned off. We cannot actually reason when we are in a fear response. And so to know, hey, it's all welcome. And when you welcome it and when you go, okay, here is a good place to have fear and here is a place that that's the autopilot, the negativity bias, I see it everywhere. And to be able to start to learn how to differentiate and to sort of dance between those states.

[A]

Could we spend a little bit of time there to talk about, you know, this kind of is this magic skill set that is crucial for the most successful organizations and the most successful leaders is to be able to have that awareness or that conscientiousness of, you know, what's actually happening in your own capacity. Could you talk about how to connect into that awareness piece?

[B]

Yeah, I think the, the autopilot that we're on, we don't know what's going on. Right. And we're unable to really access all of our ability to know what's going on. We know what's going on when we're able to have cognition, which lives not in the amygdala. Right. The amygdala is pulling us away from the ability to know what's going on. So I mean, I spend time with leaders that we are working on them, knowing what's going on at any given moment. And they'll come with an example of something and we'll be talking about something that happened in a work setting, in a product launch meeting, or all variety of business related things. And we'll start to see that they actually didn't know what was going on for them in a meeting. So as we unpack that and we look at it, we're like, oh, that was the moment right there where you constricted, you pulled back, you got afraid, right? And often, right, people don't. I wasn't afraid. But when they start seeing and understanding how the amygdala works, they're like, oh, shoot. Dang it. Yeah, I was afraid. So the oldest part of the brain was running from saber toothed tigers, right? That part of the brain is now running from experiences we had when we were kids, right? And we know it in the entrepreneurial world. We talk about it as imposter syndrome. And all these ways we understand what us entrepreneurs are up against. And most of that are the stories we tell ourselves that happened long ago. We're in the past while we're trying to create things that reshape the future in business. Like, and we're just, Marina and I are both like, we, we're humorous as human beings. Like our human condition. If we'll really get honest and just relax a little, we get up to doing some funny things, right? And so when we can accept that, oh, right, I am recreating in a board meeting at a one on one in my own self confusions that I'm bringing along. So Those are fear based. So the awareness is anything that causes you to shrink back to minimize your perspective. It's fear and fear creates suffering. When we sequence on fear, right. Over and over and we don't have practices that are like oh my goodness, this is fear. This is just fear. Right. And having the humility to say, oh right, I'm in fear right now. Okay, I know that now. And then. Right. The three part series here we'll start talking about once you notice awareness is never enough. It's the beginning. And then how do you sequence differently after you have this awareness of this is fear, this creates suffering. If I keep going down this pathway. Right.

[A]

100% and I would love to talk a little bit about that. Some tools, I mean hacks, I don't know if there are hacks, I wish there were. But at least some exercises or experience shares that you could offer that could help somebody who maybe isn't in the practice of being super self aware develop that skill set. Because that's what it is that I would love to offer our listeners some of those practical tools when they do kind of find themselves in that shutting down tight closed clenched moment or shallow breathing or all the things that may happen for each individual in their, you know, somatically in their body. What are some, what are some ideas that you could offer for that person?

[C]

Do you want to bounce them back and forth?

[A]

Sure, why don't you do that?

[B]

Great.

[C]

Yeah, So a couple very simple ones. One is actually recognizing that you do have shallow breath or that you are actually constricted. We don't that, that's not a gift given in life. We might be walking in really actually tight in our bodies into a meeting and then that's the thing that cascades. So one is do a little body check. Am I able to take a deep breath right now? Oh, I am not because there's anxiety in my chest. That's a moment of awareness. Right. So a body scan is a really nice tool. The other one that's really helpful. What is asking yourself the question, what story am I telling myself right now? So I've done a body scan, I've taken a deep breath and there's something coming at me, you know, at a meeting, let's say at a meeting where I'm, I'm hearing something I don't want to hear and then am I just in an auto response to that thing because I've told myself something about the person, place thing that is going to negatively affect me anytime I'm telling myself a story that I'm going to be negatively affected. This is going to delay the timeline. This is going to make it hard for us to receive funding. Any of those things are just versions of, I'm not going to be okay. It's not going to be okay. So that's another sort of what story am I telling myself right now? And then I would love for Beck to do the clenched fist or if there's something else you want to. Wherever else you want to.

[B]

Let me set this up just a little bit before we do clenched fist. The first is, and Marina was saying this too, it's naming, right? It's accepting, it's acknowledging, but it's saying, oh, this is fear. Right? And then you can hear my tone of voice when I say it, right? It takes time to practice, to actually say it with compassion towards yourself. Right. One of the tricky things about awareness is once we start having it, we'll turn it on ourselves. Oh, I'm in fear again. There it is. Right? I can't believe it. Right? So we have to really work first to say, okay, fear is here, it's happening, and we have to really like. My biggest wish, if listeners take one thing would be, can you just go looking for fear with humility, like it's there. Can you look for it and then can you name it? Oh, right, this is fear, right? So there's a softening that happens as soon as you're able to name. Right. And then the next possibility is, as Marina was pointing to, is, can I shift into some kind of curiosity? Right? Can I ask any question you can ask yourself now? Some questions actually are less informed than others. We're trying to ask a question that takes us from acknowledging fear to like, what else is here? What else is true? Right? I see the fear. I know where it's coming from and what else is true? And that in and of itself, that simple practice can actually start giving you more awareness, different awarenesses that encourage you to practice more. Right? The whole idea is, can you practice enough so you'll keep practicing more?

[A]

So there is this magic moment that we've been talking about, which is the moment of awareness. Awareness. And you've helped us to kind of think of some. Some tools to become more aware. Could you tell us what to do once we do notice that we're being in a fear state? What do we do next? What do we. What are some practical tips for how we can put that to work for us versus against us?

[B]

So it starts with that naming process, right? So fear is a. That's a big state. Right. So just noticing, okay, this is probably fear and having that kind tone with yourself of saying, oh, fear is here. Right. And can you soften? Right. The amygdala grips when it gets in fight, flight and freeze. And the first soften is just to say, oh, naming. And then letting it soften a little with that tone of like, yeah, I'm afraid this is fear. So I think that's the first step.

[A]

Right.

[C]

And I'll just add to that 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. There is modeling in that where you can recognize, yeah, this is fear. It's not stress, it's not annoyance, it's something going differently. It's fear.

[B]

Right.

[C]

And what that does to your own nervous system and then to the temperature in the room, it's really a beautiful thing.

[B]

And conversely, when you're not doing that, the mirror neurons are setting that up anyway. Right. So the choice here is to notice yours and then you can invite others in a room with your team at a one on one. Hey, I'm noticing, I'm tight here. Right. If you have a physical response to it. So bringing people into that inquiry or that awareness is actually a great step.

[A]

So noticing it, naming it, and then it sounds to me like there's a chance this creates an opportunity.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

And that's an opportunity to show up a little bit differently. Right?

[C]

Yeah. You know, Beck talks about active choice a lot. It's a term that I've adopted through knowing each other. So I recognize it. I've taken a moment to calm myself. Okay.

[A]

Yeah, I'm human.

[C]

I have fear. Now I can reference the version of myself because my, again, my, my executive function is back online. I can reference the version of myself that I want to show up as. Right. And that is an active choice. And we always have that active choice when we've taken a moment of pause, when we've recognized the tightness, whatever it might be. We've done a little scan of ourselves, of the room. We can go, okay, now I get to choose differently. Right. So what will I choose?

[B]

I think that's first choice. That first choice is to practice. Right. Being aware. So you can actually. It's the courage to go looking for it. Right. It's once, you know, a thing, will you practice with it as soon as possible? So even right now for listeners, can you think about where do you get stuck in fear? Where do you pull back? Where does your perspective Tighten down. And you know that place, right? It's a certain one on one that you have. It's a certain person in a board meeting when they speak. I mean, we could go on with examples. But if you know that, right, and you're going to go look for it, then if you can soften, if you can be soft enough to say this is fear, then you can have the courage to say, I'm going to go looking for fear so I can befriend that part of my experience. Those are all active choices. They're taking you out of the passive choice that fear gets us in and that's where we lose our capacity, right? So the whole conversation here is uplifting. Our capacity is the amygdala gripping tight is where we're in fear. When it starts to relax, immediately our capacity profile shifts.

[A]

I love the actionable nature of the conversation because what I'm hearing is there are probably cues we can give ourselves to have that awareness, do that body scan, do those deep breaths to recognize when we're in fear and name it and address it and then even anticipate times that we can, we can understand that that may happen for ourselves and be on alert, I guess, to show up differently when we notice those things. So these are very actionable skill sets that when you actually do them, can give you more capacity. Nothing that you're talking about here today is brand new information. The magic trick is actually doing it. So I hope that everyone who's listening today will take the time between the listening to this episode and next week when we have a. The next phase of the conversation is going to be about curiosity. So I absolutely hope you'll show up for that. But let's take this week to practice looking for the fear, being aware of the fear, naming it, being empathetic to ourselves when we feel it, and you know, gifting ourselves with greater capacity to show up as the leader that our business needs us to be. So this is you guys. Thank you so much. What an incredible conversation. What a gift. And I really, really want to thank you for your time today with this conversation and look forward to continuing it more soon. Thanks for listening to the conscious entrepreneur. Every episode here is meant to sharpen how you lead and how you live. If something landed for you, please share it, founder to founder. I'll meet you here next week.