BAB 009 Oksana - Oct 1, 2025

[00:00:00] Karina Schneider: Hello everybody and welcome back to the show. Today's episode, we are joined by Oksana Prokhorova, who is someone I personally trust and look to for insight and wisdom around all things change. Not only has she gone through her own share of significant life changes, she's also responsible for designing and delivering large scale change initiatives in environments that are traditional and highly regulated, and where resistance is probably part of their cultures.

[00:00:38] Karina Schneider: Oksana's take on change is very much human centered, respectful, very much aware of what is mentally healthy and sustainable for us. And in this episode, she helps us normalize why change is hard. A lot of it is has to do with just how our brains work, but she also offers really pragmatic ways that we can improve our ability to deal with change

[00:01:04] Karina Schneider: because as we know, change is just something we experience now every day. But if you are listening to this and going through your own personal transformation, post burnout and returning to work. I trust that you will find ways to support your own change process, and I hope you enjoy the show as much as I did.

[00:01:28] Introduction & Welcome

[00:01:28] Karina Schneider: Welcome to the show Oksana, thank you for being here today.

[00:01:32] Oksana Prokhorova: Thank you, Karina pleasure to be here.

[00:01:34] Karina Schneider: You and I met a few years ago through a mentoring community and I think you are a living, breathing model of resilience through your story. And I, I know you were once interviewed and you were asked, you know, what one word would you use to describe your story? And you, you did say resilience and I can totally see that.

[00:01:59] Karina Schneider: So I think you are perfect for this conversation we're about to have today, as we help our listeners navigate change. How they can build their own resilience um, through all the changes that they get exposed to whether they're at work or whether they're struggling privately. Um, and so I just wanted to express appreciation for, for you joining me today.

[00:02:19] Oksana Prokhorova: Thank you so much, Karina, for your kind words. Happy to be here to share some personal examples and learnings.

[00:02:26] Oksana's Background

[00:02:26] Karina Schneider: I'm sure they will. So why don't we start with you just telling us a little bit about yourself and your background and how you came to your advocacy for resilience.

[00:02:37] Oksana Prokhorova: Um. So I'm an immigrant in Switzerland, uh, here since 2013. This is my uh, fourth, uh, country uh, where I uh, work. I have experienced quite some change, um, as you can imagine, expatriation, finding your roots in uh, very new countries, uh, not trivial. uh, I literally um, do change for a living. So, um, my current job is uh, doing transformational changes in the 300 people uh, factory, which is a place with very low change, uh, appetite uh, with very high change resistance. So it's, uh, an extremely interesting playground for me to see how tools, neuroscience based tools they work how I can help. I consider it my mission to help people develop the appetite for change because we are living in a reality where change is inevitable and it's taking, um, it's, please, I did what I'm saying. The change is becoming faster and faster. So I'm happy to have a job which is combining uh, I have to do with what I love to do.

[00:03:32] Why Change Management Matters for Mental Health

[00:03:32] Karina Schneider: And you bring so much wisdom and experience just because of your own personal stories and experiences of living through change. And I, what I appreciate about what you're saying is in the workplace we look at change as sometimes the transformational changes, the big organizational changes, but we sometimes forget people are going through their own personal changes as well, whether they've moved to a new country or maybe they've just, you know, had a child and their family's growing or they're caring maybe for aging parents. So there's all these personal changes that are also coming into the workplace and, you know, if I shift the perspective to the workplace environment, we sometimes don't pay attention to that.

[00:04:19] Karina Schneider: Um, But we know, as you said, that change is becoming normal. It's happening in faster speeds and it does have an impact on mental health and wellbeing. Right. So from your experience, both personally and at work, why is it much more important now more than ever, to pay attention to how we lead and manage change?

[00:04:44] Oksana Prokhorova: Um. Well, there is very sad statistics that says that 70% of the workforce experienced burnout or will experience burnout. Um, Unfortunately, I know personally too many cases when people experience burnout several times. Uh, Without us having the proper tools to ensure our wellbeing, uh, each burnout is becoming much more, much more impactful for the person who suffered it. We cannot anymore continue to work, uh, against the brain of the people. We have to continue working

[00:05:13] Karina Schneider: Yeah.

[00:05:14] Oksana Prokhorova: of the people. . So we need to take care of our brains because health, mental health and health in general is impossible without healthy brain. We as humanity are still very relevant at the age of AI because only we can manage the complexity and the blurred lines between machines, people, systems, processes.

[00:05:33] The Neuroscience of Change

[00:05:33] Karina Schneider: There's a lot there with what you said and I think one of the, the things I'm really taking away is we, you said something powerful, which is we have to work with our people's brains in mind and not against the way our brains work. Why do you think in your experience. Uh, people are struggling with dealing with change?

[00:05:49] Karina Schneider: What are the patterns that you're noticing that leads to things like chronic stress, fatigue, and burnout?

[00:05:57] Oksana Prokhorova: So we have several parts in our brain, and there is a part which is called amygdala. It's like in the back of our head. The only job of this uh, part of our brain is scan the environment for threat. When we were living in cave times, uh, this part of the brain was literally uh, responsible for checking if the tiger is coming to eat us. So, you know, there is a part of my brain, which is always look on the lookout for tigers. We evolved. We don't live in caves anymore, but for this part of our brain, for the amygdala, uh, a report which is due a KPI, which is red, uh, a difficult conversation with our boss, uh, our child that is sick, it's all the same tiger. So like a part of my brain is constantly looking for a tiger.

[00:06:36] Oksana Prokhorova: And this is the same part of the brain that says that change is always a threat. So the amazing phenomenon of people staying in the comfort zone. Even if, when it's obvious to everybody else that this is not a comfort zone, this is a pain zone

[00:06:51] Oksana Prokhorova: is my amygdala saying, look, you know, know this pain, it's okay. Outside can be even more tigers. Let's stay with that. So whenever there is a change coming, amygdala says, tiger, tiger, tiger. You know, like, stop, you're in danger. Stop. It's doing a good job, trying to protect us. We need to learn how to manage uh, this uh, stress signal in a way that it helps us without uh, keeping us stuck. This is the reason why we all are, uh, afraid of change. There are literally no people who are not afraid of change. It's normal is an illusion.

[00:07:27] Oksana Prokhorova: So like, um, as I said, you know, like I do change for a living. A lot of people who look at me and say, oh, but you love change for you it's easy. I can tell you it's not easy. It's like I have the same kind of amygdala as everybody else. So um, learning to live with a change, even enjoying it a bit is the same matter of uh, training, like we go to the gym to train our muscles. We can train our amygdala in the same way that change is not always scary. So if I could give a practical tip how to do it, assume we're starting with a baseline uh, where the change tolerance is very low. What I would recommend is uh, start microdosing the change. You know, like with a coffee spoon, not with a bucket. Start microdosing change to your life, for example, change the route you are taking to go to work. Or you go to a specific coffee shop every time, go once in five times into a different one. Or as assume it spring, do a project.

[00:08:22] Oksana Prokhorova: I'm going to find 100 magnolia triz bloom this spring. It is going to make you go outside of your normal roots. Or change your perfume, which is very interesting because this is something which is very powerful for the brain. Micro-dose the change. So it's going to tell your brain, look, we are safe

[00:08:37] Oksana Prokhorova: because like not much is changing something. When you microdose, like you do reps at the gym, your brain brain will start learning. Okay. You know, change is not always scary. There is something which is, which is okay. At the same time, make sure that there are routines that support you. We need to make sure we protect our morning. So morning is a kind of sacred space for your brain. You wake up if you are able to squeeze some repetitive routine, which is good for you. It's a signal for our brain. Look, we are in control of our life.

[00:09:09] Oksana Prokhorova: Whatever the day throws at us next, we are okay. For me, for example, is a very special kind of coffee. It's a very special taste of coffee, which is reserved only for the mornings. I come to my office with this cup of coffee. I'm having it, my brain knows. Cool. We are safe. A colleague of mine, for example, has a specific exercise routine, which is only three minutes. He doesn't when he's waiting for his coffee machine to warm up and prepare the morning coffee. Three minutes, which are saying to the amygdala, tigers are at bay, we are good. And also exercise is something which is super important for our brain. It's like, you know, it's like investment. These three minutes every morning,

[00:09:49] Change Capacity Patterns

[00:09:49] Oksana Prokhorova: they compound a lot. So I will start with that be able to manage change. Always keep the routines which ground you. Small routine in the morning. Bigger routine on the weekend. For example, if you do two hours of walk in the nature, nature is the best for us to calm down. If you combine movement in nature, perfect. You change, tolerance is going to increase a lot.

[00:10:16] Karina Schneider: I have a follow up to that, but I wanna underline a few things that I'm taking away. One is, I wish we learned this in university. You know, like I wished our educational systems prepare us for. Dealing with stress, what it's like to be in the workplace and how our brains actually function because we, I never learned this.

[00:10:37] Karina Schneider: I had to learn this on my own through experience because it was necessary to understand why I was experiencing what I was experiencing. And I don't know if somebody out there is listening who can change or influence kind of what we learn or how we get prepared for, for the workforce. But I, I wish this was a part of that.

[00:10:55] Karina Schneider: Two, we don't necessarily need to love and be excited about change. Right. I, I think what we're not saying is that we shouldn't be stressed by change. That's not the message. The message is it's absolutely normal to not like change, to get stressed by change. It's a question of knowing how to manage it so that we increase our capacity and, and resilience for change.

[00:11:18] Karina Schneider: And I absolutely love the examples you gave about microdosing change, which is change that's not imposed on us by someone else. It's change we choose to do like trying a different cup of coffee or a different route to work and just see what that feels like and knowing that we remain safe in those contexts.

[00:11:39] Karina Schneider: So I find those really powerful. Then you talked about increasing or change capacity. So aside from the tips you've already shared. What differences do you see between people who have higher change capacity and people who maybe don't have such a high change capacity? I know it's not black and white, but I'm just looking for patterns that you might observe from your experience.

[00:12:03] Oksana Prokhorova: Last week we had an amazing, um event, it was a zero harm week. So as part of the Zero Harm week, I had an opportunity to give wellbeing training to

[00:12:14] Oksana Prokhorova: everybody

[00:12:15] Oksana Prokhorova: And it was exactly neuroscience based, super practical tools. For example, um, the reason for a burnout, I'm sure a lot of us can name many reasons for a burnout. Conflict of failures, constant overwork, sacrificing sleep, you know, uh, working in a state of, uh, permanent uncertainty. This all boils down to a baseline of, uh, my body's fighting cortisol stress hormone all the time. I have no time to metabolize it. So when amygdala found a tiger, Mrs. Tiger, tiger, does to the body produce cortisol so the body produces cortisol because you know, if there is a tiger, your body has to be physically able to stop everything else and run to save your own life. So our body says you need to move. You need to move, you need to stop everything.

[00:13:03] Oksana Prokhorova: You need to run away. If we do nothing, it takes our body six hours to metabolize cortisol. And now let's think, who in our adult life has six hours between stressful events? Like how often do you get an nasty email or somebody said something or something went, went not the way you want. So if we cannot have six hour spaces between cortisol generating events, we go into burnout state. A simple tool, do what the body says you need to do, move. 10 minutes brisk walk if you can in the nature allows your cortisol to be metabolized in two hours. So assume I had a difficult meeting. When I finish this meeting, I can go and walk for 10 minutes in the nature, fast, brisk walk, or if I cannot go anywhere, I go and do up and down the staircase three times. I help my body to mobilize the cortisol in two hours, is still not perfect, but it increases the resistance to potential burnout and stress exponentially. So I can tell you from my personal examples, when I have a very intense day, but I managed to put this 10 minutes here and there, I finished the day I achieved a lot. So like I had a lot of stress, but I managed to metabolize everything. So movement is the best response to stress. So no I don't like sport.

[00:14:25] Oksana Prokhorova: I, I hate sport as many people. But the baseline is our brain needs three very important things. So sleep is foundational. If you don't sleep, cannot do much. As sad as it is. So I understand that for people who are like me, working parents, it's not easy.

[00:14:44] Oksana Prokhorova: There are ways to make it better, but sleep is foundational. Movement is foundational, and good nutrition is foundation. So Omega-3 that comes from the fish, or if you are not able to eat fish for some reasons, from alge. Is perfect. So these are the three things which are super important for our brain. We do that, we move one amygdala found the tiger. It's going to help exponentially.

[00:15:09] The Stress Cycle

[00:15:09] Karina Schneider: This is so interesting because I've been, um, through the work I've been doing, supporting clients who've gone through burnout. Um. The understanding of the stress cycle is really crucial, and I think this is what you're referring to, which is when we experience a stressful event and with using the analogy of a tiger, we activate our stress responses so the cortisol comes out and we have to address

[00:15:33] Karina Schneider: that stressful situation. And to your point, we move from one stressful event to another, maybe in different intensities, right? But we're constantly exposed to deadlines, to notifications, to demands from people to obligations and expectations we have for ourselves, right? So we're in this heightened mode of having to fight or address or resolve things.

[00:15:57] Karina Schneider: And what I've learned, you know, I wish I learned much earlier was we really need that time to calm down. Using your words to metabolize, the cortisol through doing something else. And this period of rest and recovery is so important and people often assume I can postpone that for the weekend, or my next holiday is coming up in three weeks, and I'll, I'll rest and recover then.

[00:16:23] Karina Schneider: But what I'm hearing from you is, no, we have to do that within the day, probably multiple times within the day. Right. And that takes a certain level of discipline, I would think, at least from my side, if I am thinking about myself, right? I have to actively plan for those on an already full calendar. Right?

[00:16:45] Karina Schneider: And that can already create resistance, you know, thinking about oh, there's this one more thing I need to do. So how would you encourage people to understand the value of taking those extra 10 minutes between meetings, between appointments, or even if it's not between meetings, just actively take that, that time in the middle of a busy day to take a walk.

[00:17:12] Oksana Prokhorova: Imagine you have a Ferrari in your garage. Like nice, cute, red Ferrari, you know, super powerful,

[00:17:19] Karina Schneider: That's a dream. Yes.

[00:17:20] Oksana Prokhorova: beautiful machine, super powerful. Would it bother you that you need to take your Ferrari to the garage to take care of it? She's so

[00:17:29] Karina Schneider: No

[00:17:29] Oksana Prokhorova: She's so powerful. No, you expect from yourself a Ferrari level of performance.

[00:17:35] Oksana Prokhorova: You juggling priorities at work, at home, friends, parents, hobbies, everything. If you expect Ferrari level of performance from yourself. Why do you deny this Ferrari maintenance? It's not

[00:17:48] Karina Schneider: true.

[00:17:48] Oksana Prokhorova: luxury that you need to deserve. It's, it's given expect Ferrari level of performance. You need to give Ferrari level of maintenance. This is, uh, the metaphor that I like a lot. And, uh, again, try the level of, uh, 10 minutes walk between stressful events is changing your perception of the day. Let's microdose a walk between stressful events. Let's all experience the difference it brings in a day. The brain runs a budget for our body. There will be always days when you cannot inject all this amazing tools everywhere. Nothing can be perfect. Just let's be conscious that there is a finite resource uh, of performance that our Ferrari can have between the maintenance stores.

[00:18:30] Oksana Prokhorova: We need to give it to ourselves because is not a luxury infrastructure.

[00:18:35] Returning After Burnout

[00:18:35] Karina Schneider: it's a good reminder that we deserve that kind of care too, right? Like this is not, this type of care is not reserved for the luxury items that we own or the things that are outside of us that we care about, but we're just as important and just as valuable. And it's making me reflect on, um, individuals who

[00:18:55] Karina Schneider: are having to take time off from work because of mental health challenges, and then they're finding their way back into work. And I think the level of change that they're experiencing is also more intense in a way because they've had to leave their work environment, they're coming back. So not only are they dealing with change in themselves of how they want to engage with the work environment this time around, or how do they

[00:19:23] Karina Schneider: test out and um, and assert new boundaries, for example. So they're going through all this personal change in an environment that's also changing. Perhaps they go back to their workplace and their jobs have changed or something in the team has changed and so on and so forth. What advice would you give to returning individuals after they've gone through burnout and have had to take time off to feel comfortable to practice some of the skills you've just described so that they can reengage back in a healthier way?

[00:19:57] Oksana Prokhorova: I realized that it's easier said than done. Acknowledge that you are to some extent, um, learning to walk. You are not starting from where you stopped. You are starting as a, a high extent, different person. It's not only your environment changed, you changed. So, um, after you had the burnout, uh, the neurology of you changed, your amygdala is going to see tiger, uh, even when the rabbit that is passing by. This is normal. You are going to be overloaded with everything which is, um, coming your way at work and in personal life. And this is where, um, it would be great that organizations have actually a program of re onboarding back for people who come back from a burnout because they're not the same people for us for a certain time. Um. Our brain is fantastic because of the phenomenon of neuroplasticity. How it recovers, how it learns new things, how it retrains back, even at advanced stage, uh, it takes longer, obviously, you know, if you want to learn a new language or a new skill, a five years old child is going to take uh, considerably less time than somebody at 18, but

[00:21:10] Oksana Prokhorova: our

[00:21:11] Oksana Prokhorova: brain come back. yourself the grace of understanding that you're learning and you're not the same person, and learning is okay. For the employers, please, give space to people. We cannot expect the same level of performance from somebody who's coming back for a mental health leave. It's not a limitation. It's not a restriction, it's a temporary situation. Let's work with a brain of our people, not against it.

[00:21:38] Karina Schneider: It's so interesting because um, I often find managers who, with the best of intentions, right? They care about their returning employees, but they just don't know what to do. Or they're afraid about doing the wrong thing or saying the wrong thing. And then they often defer to policies which are usually not holistic enough to, um, help them navigate, you know, returning employees, right?

[00:22:03] Karina Schneider: So I sometimes find this investment really in, in organizations to, um, take the time to talk about how our brains work and what stress does to our brains, and how that affects our interactions and so on and so forth. Just normalizes the experience in a way and makes it easier for both the returning and employee and their managers to have a conversation to see how do we make it work this time around, right?

[00:22:28] Karina Schneider: And how do, how do we make this effort of pacing back in and taking their time um, to come in rather than assuming, okay, you're back. You know, your doctor says you're fine, so let's just resume from where we left off, which is absolutely not the, the right way to do it um, and, and so I appreciate that as you're leading change and transformational changes in your organization, you also have at the back of your mind the understanding of how brains work.

[00:22:53] Karina Schneider: I can imagine you embed a lot of that in how you implement the change, right? How do we get organizations to move from leading change from a project management perspective? So I've often seen organizations like, okay, I have a project plan, I have a communication plan, and it's targeting everyone.

[00:23:14] Karina Schneider: So everyone receives the same messages, everyone sees the same slides, to something that helps every individual. Decide for themselves how they wanna deal with change, how do we help organizations make that shift?

[00:23:28] Manager Responsibilities

[00:23:28] Oksana Prokhorova: Um, it's a very difficult question, um, because the answer is, uh, evidence.

[00:23:32] Karina Schneider: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:34] Oksana Prokhorova: Show evidence that the project led, uh, with the neuroscience in mind, uh, is, uh, giving results that stick. The biggest difference in uh, large scale transformation is that there is statistics. More than 70% of change management initiatives never stick. There is an announcement we're going to do this change. Everybody's like, oh my lord. No, no. This change again, you know. Some months later the project is maybe completed, uh, rather just abandoned. The change never sticks. So I'm sure, uh, most of us have seen it not once in our career because uh, whenever there is a change announced, uh, amygdalas of all the group, they fire like, okay, tiger. Change is uncomfortable. The prerequisite to any kind of, um, profitable activity is that our amygdala, which is the part of the brain that is scanning for tigers is not active. There is a, another part of the brain, which is called cortex. It's in the front, uh, of our forehead basically, this is the part which was developed later, evolutionary, which is responsible for everything that a manager expects from the team. Creativity, planning, strategy, performance, long-term thinking. The trick being when amygdala is seeing the tiger, it says, stop everything. It literally switches off the cortex. So if we work in an environment when people are scared and change is scary, they literally work with half of their head switched off. So if we want any project to happen, if we want any change to stick, we need to be sure that we create the environment of psychological safety. When people are psychologically safe, amygdala is calm. Okay, no tiger detected. I can relax. I'm not uh, here fighting for survival. So the unfortunately famous expression, another day, another dollar, is a perfect example of somebody who is living in a situation of threat response all the time. Like, I'm here to survive the day I am counting my X hours, which are in my contract, just to get the money for this day, I'm not able to think further. This is classical amygdala response. Create an environment of psychological safety, you might have to accept 10% delay on the timeline. It's better to finish with 10% delay than not finish or do something

[00:25:56] Oksana Prokhorova: invest a huge amount of resources for a change that doesn't stick.

[00:25:59] Karina Schneider: The

[00:26:00] Recognizing Burnout Signs

[00:26:00] Karina Schneider: human cost that comes with all of that, right? So imagine what employees have had to face through all of maybe a poorly managed change process that doesn't stick, and at the same time, you've already had high human cost that's maybe largely invisible until you start to see people disengage, feel unwell, leave the organization.

[00:26:22] Karina Schneider: That's the only time the cost becomes visible. But in that time, we've accumulated all this stress responses and the loss of our brain functioning, as you said, right? Our inability to make, you know, strategic decisions or an inability to reflect or to notice, um, or to make trade off decisions or to be strategic.

[00:26:43] Karina Schneider: All of that disappears in the meantime, of course, not completely, but it's diminished. Which is also cost to the organization. And it's fascinating to hear you because that's exactly the cycle I see in individuals in burnout, which is they just, they're just showing up, they're doing what they need to do for the day.

[00:27:01] Karina Schneider: They go home, they're exhausted. But instead of the exhaustion leading to just now, I need to take the time off, they keep going back. They're in this loop of showing up but they're not productive. They're not making good choices anymore. They're, you know, moving away from things that bring them joy because they're constantly fighting something right in front of them, until their body shuts down.

[00:27:26] Karina Schneider: And people wonder when colleagues or their managers respond with, I never saw that coming or this was such a surprise. Or, you know, this absence was so abrupt we couldn't plan for it. And then I'm asking really? Um, I get it. I'm not judging it. Right.

[00:27:42] Karina Schneider: But it's, we, we don't notice the cycle we're in until we shut down. What are ways that managers can pay more attention to these signs of stress and fatigue?

[00:27:55] Oksana Prokhorova: Um, As a manager, um, my best advice would be learn how the brain works. Notice signs of uh, irritability. If somebody on your team gets a bit more irritable than usual. If somebody is, um, less social than usual, these are the classical signs. Also, when a person is uh, nearing a burnout, it's about the dopamine mechanism. So dopamine is a kind of fuel for our Ferrari uh, uh, a neurotransmitter, which is, um, apart from other things, defining our motivation. So the problem with, uh, high achievers that um, when you achieve something, when you do something difficult, you achieve it, get um, boost of dopamine. But the same dopamine is something which is not allowing you to stop on time. So when people are approaching a burnout, they start seeking for dopamine and much more than usual.

[00:28:50] Oksana Prokhorova: For example, I have a colleague who is doing extreme sports every weekend. So for him, it's normal to do something that can kill him every weekend. This is his baseline. But if somebody who is not doing this suddenly starts going for extreme sports booking more and more trips, you know, like searching for intense, um, intense experience. It's a sign of a burnout coming up so a manager can spot it. However, um, I'm a firm proponent of, um, there is only a certain part in burnout prevention that can be done by the organization. The organization, the manager, is not responsible for us taking the 10 minutes walk. Is responsible for us limiting the caffeine and sugar and intake. I'm a coffee junkie. I love sugar, but they're not our friends. So like it's not organization or the manager who is responsible for us trying to get our eight hours of sleep. There is a huge part that we should do for ourselves. So notice the signs yourselves. Did I start looking for dopamine much more than usual? When did I sleep last time? How many cups of coffee did I have today? Did I have sugar today? Much more than is needed and acceptable. these kinds of things, uh, let's all learn a bit how our brain works. The difference is, uh, we are going to be friends or enemies with our brain. The result, is very different.

[00:30:14] Personal Responsibility Discussion

[00:30:14] Karina Schneider: I'm glad you mentioned our personal responsibility here because, um, I've encountered individuals who, in a way delegate almost their wellbeing to their workplace. So they really say, well, either they blame their. Workplaces for what they're going through, or they say, well, my, my workplaces are not doing enough to, you know, support our health and wellbeing, which I mean, could be true.

[00:30:38] Karina Schneider: At the same time, we also have our personal responsibility to take care of ourselves. And I feel for the managers, I think it didn't help over the last couple of years where the narrative indicates, or the stats would indicate that a manager has so much influence on a, on an individual's wellbeing.

[00:30:55] Karina Schneider: I don't think it really helps because while it is true, it takes away a bit the personal responsibility. And I think to your point, we have to be aware about our patterns. We need to be aware about our stress triggers. We need to be aware about and implement our strategies to recover from that, um, and to shake it off and move it, you know, um, um, move and sleep and eat well.

[00:31:18] Karina Schneider: And I think that's just an important takeaway for our listeners to really look at themselves too, while also acknowledging if their workplaces are not doing their part of the, the deal. It always takes two, in my opinion, for, for this to work really well. Any other thoughts or tips you might have strategies we can do to build our change capacity that you could share?

[00:31:42] Oksana Prokhorova: My favorite strategy, it's not about change capacity, but it's about not damaging your brain.

[00:31:47] Oksana Prokhorova: This is the technique that profoundly changed my life. How you drink your coffee. So I used to work for a while, coffee company where coffee was not only very good, but it was abundant and everywhere and obviously, you know, like somebody with a cup of coffee was the, the brand. I used to end up having 20 cups of coffee a day and so on

[00:32:07] Oksana Prokhorova: and I thought it was normal. For like coffee lovers like me, the unfortunate reality is that the budget of coffee will have per day that that doesn't damage your brain. It's two cups of caffeinated coffee only. Thanks civilization will have decaffeinated options now. So the thing that changed my life was delaying my caffeine intake in the morning. When we wake up, uh, our body is full of cortisol, but also adenosine, which is a substance that makes us feel groggy. It's like this feeling like, my Lord I'm so sleepy I need a coffee. Is there is adenosine in the body? If we take caffeine, we stop metabolization of adenosine, which means if I just open my eyes and I see the coffee machine and I run and, and take a cup of coffee, I lock adenosine in my body, which means when the coffee stops working in a couple of hours, I feel as bad as I just got out of bed. I need to sleep more, which gives you another cup of coffee, another cup of coffee, another cup of coffee until you end up your day with eight cups of coffee. You have shaking hands and everything. You name it. Give yourself time in the morning to metabolize adenosine. So the best absolute best is two hours from the moment you woke up. I managed 90 minutes normally, so like I have my first cup of caffeinated coffee when I'm already at work. Like this even a working parent who doesn't sleep much can survive the day with two cups of coffee. My personal advice, talk to your doctor if you want to use it,

[00:33:36] Oksana Prokhorova: I take creatin instead of this very, very morning cup of coffee. 10 grams of creatin for sleep deprived brains is something that helps you a lot. So with 10 grams of creatine, I save myself two extra cups of coffee a day. So like this, your day looks absolutely different. This would be my first amazing practice.

[00:33:57] Oksana Prokhorova: Second amazing practice. There is huge, uh, scientific evidence that meditations are good. It's extremely old practice, but now neuroscience is there to give evidence why it's good. It's extremely good to calm down your baseline level of stress that your amygdala scanner, you know, the Tiger scanner is much less sensitive with meditation. There are people who hate structured meditations. Unfortunately, I am one of these people. So like for people who hate meditations, take any object, like take your coffee cup, any object and just focus your attention on this object for 30 seconds. Focus on your breathing. So you focus on your breathing for 30 seconds. It's already is a meditation. Enjoy. It's really, really, really changing. So these are two of my personal, uh, best practices.

[00:34:48] Karina Schneider: Thank you for sharing. I'm really gonna try both because I, it makes it sound so much easier than what our brains sometimes make it feel like. And I, I also sometimes think that the narrative out there around all these self-care practices can make it feel inaccessible and feel like, oh, this is too big.

[00:35:06] Karina Schneider: Or like, I have to do meditation only this way, or, you know, do it only that way. And that's not true, right? Like there are, there are very simple changes we can make to the timing of our first cup of coffee to how we define meditation for ourselves, which is really just being more present with what's in front of us and focusing on one thing for 30 seconds.

[00:35:26] Karina Schneider: And those are really, really powerful, um, Oksana and not a lot of people will be very lucky to have people like you in their corners to learn all of these things. I'm lucky that I can easily reach out to you and say, Oksana, explain this to me. What are ways that people can learn about how our brain works?

[00:35:43] Karina Schneider: Everything you've talked about today, I know has required time and effort on your part to learn, right? But how do we make this accessible to people? How can they learn more about this?

[00:35:53] Oksana Prokhorova: This is an amazing question. It indeed took me a lot and I, I arrived to learning neuroscience for purely personal needs. I got COVID, and it impacted my cognitive capacity so profoundly that I thought okay, I work with my head for a living. I need to do something with that.

[00:36:10] Oksana Prokhorova: Hit me up on LinkedIn. I write about neuroscience, like practical neuroscience very often. Um, I don't have much more advice so far, unfortunately, so I hope one day we have some kind of curriculum program, how we can uh, explain to people what to do. I'm going to make it available also for free um, the mental health training. There will be training that, uh, uh, I made for my colleagues last week. Again, hit me up on LinkedIn. You, you will find it in, in a while. Um,

[00:36:38] Karina Schneider: Actually, I was going to say that um, I really recommend um, our listeners to visit your LinkedIn profile. Your posts are such good reads, Oksana, you have a way of talking about day-to-day experiences that people go through, particularly as they're dealing with change.

[00:36:55] Karina Schneider: In a way that makes us understand better and create more empathy for experiences like that. Plus you, add in the expertise you now have with how our brain works and you explain why these things happen or why we react a certain way or what might we be missing as we're going through, um, you know, daily challenges at work.

[00:37:14] Karina Schneider: And so I recommend our listeners to visit your profile to, to really look through your posts and we're gonna then stay tuned for some extra um, resources that um, you might be willing to share. Um, to, to all of us. Um, and I, With that Oksana, I just wanna say thank you for everything you've shared today.

[00:37:18] Karina Schneider: I genuinely learned so much. I know I'm taking away a couple of things that I will do differently um, because you make it sound just more manageable and, and I appreciate that and I'm sure our listeners um, have gained a lot from this as well.

[00:37:32] Oksana Prokhorova: Thank you so much, Karina I, I absolutely enjoyed it.