EP 3603 Why can’t we overthink the best?
The Strong Life Project Podcast
Most people don’t overthink everything. They overthink the worst. One comment from your partner, one email from your boss, one slow week in business, and your brain writes a disaster movie. You rehearse rejection, failure, conflict, embarrassment. Then you call it being realistic. In EP 3603, Why can’t we overthink the best?, Shaun O’Gorman flips that pattern on its head. If your mind can run 50 scenarios where it all goes wrong, it can run 50 scenarios where you handle it, adapt, and win. Same brain. Same imagination. Different direction. This episode breaks down why your nervous system...
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EP 3602 What is Vagal authority?
The Strong Life Project Podcast
In EP 3602 of The Strong Life Project, Shaun O’Gorman breaks down the concept of vagal authority and why some people can walk into pressure, conflict, or chaos and instantly change the energy in the room. This is not charisma, status, or volume. It is nervous system regulation, the capacity to stay grounded and connected while your body wants to spike into fight, flight, or shut down. Shaun explains what the vagus nerve does in plain language and why calm is not a personality trait, it is a trained physiological skill. The vagus nerve is a major two way communication pathway between brain...
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EP 3601 What is your programming?
The Strong Life Project Podcast
In EP 3601 What is your programming? we pull the curtain back on the invisible code that runs your life. Most people think they are making conscious decisions, but they are mostly executing old patterns that were installed through childhood, culture, trauma, peer influence, relationships, and the job they do. That programming shows up in the same places again and again: the way you react under pressure, the stories you tell yourself, the standards you tolerate, the relationships you repeat, and the excuses you keep protecting. This episode breaks down how your programming forms and how it...
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EP 3600 Do you suffer from productivity dysmorphia?
The Strong Life Project Podcast
In this episode, Shaun O’Gorman breaks down a modern trap that’s quietly crushing good people: productivity dysmorphia. It’s the distorted belief that you’re never doing enough, even when you’re performing, progressing, and carrying serious responsibility. You look at your week, your body of work, your family load, and your leadership demands and still feel behind. Not because you are behind, but because your internal scoreboard is broken. Shaun unpacks how this mindset forms through comparison culture, endless metrics, and the addictive pull of “just one more task.” You’ll...
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EP 3599 What is your highest ROI behaviour change?
The Strong Life Project Podcast
In EP 3599, What is your highest ROI behaviour change, Shaun O’Gorman cuts through the noise and asks a ruthless question: if you could only change one behaviour that would create the biggest improvement across your life, what would it be? This episode is about leverage. Not motivation. Not a new routine you do for three days. Leverage means one behaviour that multiplies results across your health, relationships, leadership, mood, energy, confidence, and performance. Shaun breaks down how most people chase low value changes because they feel productive, while avoiding the uncomfortable high...
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EP 3598 Stop running away from what you don’t want
The Strong Life Project Podcast
Most people don’t fail because they can’t do the work. They fail because they keep running from the thing they most need to face. In this episode, I break down why avoidance looks like comfort, but it quietly destroys your confidence, your relationships, and your results. If you keep distracting yourself, blaming timing, waiting to feel ready, or hoping the pressure will disappear, you’re training your brain to believe you’re not capable. Avoidance isn’t neutral. It’s a vote for the version of you that stays stuck. And the longer you do it, the heavier it gets. What you won’t...
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EP 3597 Be behaviour based not results based
The Strong Life Project Podcast
In this episode, I challenge the trap most people live in: judging your life by outcomes you can’t fully control. Results are noisy. They’re influenced by timing, other people, the economy, the algorithm, injury, weather, luck and variables you’ll never master. When you build your self worth, motivation, and discipline on results, you become emotionally fragile. You win and feel fine. You lose and spiral. That’s not high performance, that’s gambling with your identity. Instead, we go behaviour-based. Behaviours are controllables. They’re the daily standards you can execute no...
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EP 3596 Haters are just unfulfilled
The Strong Life Project Podcast
In EP 3596 Haters are just unfulfilled, Shaun O’Gorman breaks down a blunt truth most people avoid: the loudest critics are rarely your real problem, your reaction to them is. This episode unpacks why “haters” so often show up when you start improving, building, or leading, and why their negativity usually says more about their own frustration than it does about your choices. Shaun explores the psychology behind projection, insecurity, and status threats, and how people who feel stuck will sometimes try to drag others back down to feel better about their own lack of action. You will hear...
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EP 3595 Why is fear so paralysing
The Strong Life Project Podcast
Fear isn’t just an emotion. It’s a biological alarm system designed to keep you alive. In this episode, I break down why fear can feel so paralysing, even when the threat isn’t real, immediate, or rational. When your nervous system reads danger, it prioritises survival over logic. That’s why you can know what to do and still feel stuck, avoidant, reactive, or frozen. We unpack the three common fear responses most people cycle through without realising: fight, flight, and freeze. Freeze is the one that looks like procrastination, overthinking, perfectionism, scrolling, shutting down,...
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EP 3594 Don’t get to the top of the ladder and realise it’s against the wrong wall
The Strong Life Project Podcast
Most people think the goal is to climb faster. Work harder. Get more done. Win more. But here’s the brutal truth: you can spend years doing everything “right” and still end up miserable if you’re climbing the wrong ladder. In this episode, I break down why high achievers often feel flat, restless, or secretly resentful even when life looks successful from the outside. It is not because you are ungrateful. It is because your direction is wrong. You have been optimising effort instead of alignment. We unpack the warning signs that you are chasing someone else’s definition of success:...
info_outlineIn EP 3602 of The Strong Life Project, Shaun O’Gorman breaks down the concept of vagal authority and why some people can walk into pressure, conflict, or chaos and instantly change the energy in the room. This is not charisma, status, or volume. It is nervous system regulation, the capacity to stay grounded and connected while your body wants to spike into fight, flight, or shut down.
Shaun explains what the vagus nerve does in plain language and why calm is not a personality trait, it is a trained physiological skill. The vagus nerve is a major two way communication pathway between brain and body that influences heart rate, breathing, digestion, and recovery. When it is working well, it helps you downshift after stress, think clearly under load, and stay open to connection. Higher cardiac vagal activity and high frequency HRV are often linked with better self regulation and executive control. When it is not, you might look fine on the outside but live wired, reactive, impatient, numb, or exhausted.
You will learn how vagal authority shows up in leadership, parenting, relationships, and high performance. The person with the most regulated nervous system often has the most influence, because people can feel safety or threat through tone, facial expression, pace, posture, and presence long before they hear your words.
This episode also challenges the trendy, oversimplified vagus hacks floating around online. Shaun focuses on what actually builds capacity over time: consistent sleep and training, breath control, down regulation routines, emotional honesty, boundaries, and choosing behaviour over excuses.
If you have been stuck in high alert, snapping at people you love, or feeling flat and disconnected, this is your reset. Listen in, identify your patterns, and start building the kind of authority that makes people trust you without you having to demand it. At the end, Shaun gives a drill you can use in 60 seconds to rehearse regulation.