020: Boost Your Discipline by Mastering the Brain-Body Energy Connection
The Story
Struggling with motivation? Discover how your energy system controls discipline, habits & brain power in this eye-opening episode.
What if the reason you’re struggling to stay consistent, make better decisions, work out, eat well, or follow through on your goals has less to do with discipline—and more to do with the state of your brain and body?
In this episode of The Warriors Haven Podcast, Jeshia Sutherland, retired Army Drill Sergeant, entrepreneur, and founder of Warriors Haven, kicks off a new series exploring the powerful connection between energy, the brain, memory, mindset, fitness, nutrition, and behavior.
After exploring hydration and mindset in previous episodes, Jeshia takes a step back to look at the system underneath it all:
Your energy.
Because you can have the best mindset in the world, but when your body and brain are constantly running on empty, everything feels harder.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
- 🧠 Why energy is more than motivation or excitement
- ⚡ How your brain and body work together to influence your daily performance
- 💧 Why hydration matters for brain function, focus, and energy
- 🍎 How nutrition and your daily inputs can influence your mental and physical output
- 🔋 Why low energy can look like brain fog, irritability, forgetfulness, procrastination, and lack of motivation
- 🧠 What working memory is and why it matters when you’re trying to build new habits
- 🔄 Why starting a new habit can feel incredibly difficult before it becomes automatic
- 🏋️ Why consistency isn’t always about trying harder
- 🔥 Why you can’t simply “out-discipline” a system that doesn’t have the resources to support change
- 🚀 How building your energy system first can make fitness, nutrition, business, money, and personal growth feel lighter
- 🎯 Why the real goal isn’t perfection—it’s creating a system that allows you to consistently show up
Jeshia breaks down these concepts in simple, real-life language so you can understand what’s happening beneath the surface when you’re saying:
“I know what I need to do. So why can’t I just do it?”
The answer may change the way you think about discipline, motivation, burnout, habits, and your ability to change.
THE WARRIOR TAKEAWAY
Most people don’t fail because they don’t care. They struggle because their energy system was never built to support the change they’re trying to make.
This episode is the foundation for a new Warriors Haven series diving deeper into working memory vs. long-term memory, habit formation, the nervous system, energy management, fitness, nutrition, and the science behind sustainable behavior change.
If you’ve been feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, inconsistent, stuck in survival mode, or frustrated because you know what to do but can’t seem to follow through, this episode is for you.
🎧 Listen now and start rebuilding from the inside out.
And if something in this episode made you say, “That’s me,” share it with someone who needs to hear it.
🔗 KEEP BUILDING
Visit WarriorsHaven.com to learn more about Warriors Haven and discover resources designed to help you build a stronger body, mindset, and lifestyle.
Remember:
You don’t need to become a completely different person overnight.
You need to build a system that helps the person you’re becoming show up consistently.
Stay strong.
Stay focused.
Stay ready.
— Jeshia Sutherland
Retired Army Drill Sergeant | Founder, Warriors Haven
Host of The Warriors Haven Podcast
Podcast website: https://www.thewarriorshavenpodcast.com
Newsletter: https://open.substack.com/pub/jeshiasutherland
Subscribe: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2630312/subscribe
Welcome to the Warriors Haven Podcast, the place where discipline meets purpose and everyday people become unstoppable. I'm your host, Jaisha Sutherland, a retired Army drill sergeant, single mom, and the founder of the Warriors Haven. Around here, we talk fitness, mindset, and the mission of building a stronger you, mentally, physically, and financially. Because this isn't just about the gym. It's about life, leadership, and living on your terms. So gear up, lock in, and let's step into the haven where warriors are made.
And I am so grateful and thankful for every single one of you joining me on this ride with the Warriors Haven. 20 episodes in, guys, which we've been recording one episode a week, so that's 20 weeks straight. So again, thank you, all of you, for staying with me and riding this wave with me. So grateful, so thankful. And so now with this episode, following two wonderful weeks with special guests on the Warriors Haven, I want to dive into just a small little series with you guys. So I want to take you guys on a little trip in the brain and memory kind of going off of our mindset episode that we had with Zach just last week.
I find it so fascinating. And I think really diving into the next few weeks with this series, I think is gonna be very educational and informative for all of us. So I hope you all stick around with me, dive into the series with me, and let's really learn about our brain and our bodies and how we can get them to really function together so we can be the best version of ourselves, shall we? Alright, friends, let's dive in. Let's dive into this episode. I really think before we can fix our mindset, we really have to fix our energy.
But Jay, where can I really start turning the dial with my energy? Well, let's dive in. If you've been listening the last couple weeks, we talked about hydration, we talked about mindset, and we've heard some powerful guests' perspectives. Today, I want to try to tie it all together and kind of shift the podcast just a little bit. Up to now, we've talked about pieces of the puzzle: water, mindset, motivation, burnout. But today, let's start talking about the system underneath everything. Because here's the truth: most people never hear.
You can't outmindset a body that's running on empty. You can't think clearly when your brain is underfueled, and you can't build a better future if your energy is constantly crashing. I hope this episode is the foundation for everything moving forward, and you guys follow along. So let's make this very clear and very simple. Energy is not how excited you feel. Energy is how well your body and brain can work together. Let's think of it like your brain is like the boss, and your body is like the workers.
Energy is how messages get passed between them both. If messages are slow or weak, thinking feels hard, decisions feel heavy, small tasks feel overwhelming. That's not laziness, that's low signal strength, just like a phone with one bar of service. So let's talk about water again, but a little deeper. Your brain is mostly water, seventy-seventy-five percent. That means water helps your brain. It helps it by sending messages, staying cool, cleaning out waste, staying alert. When you don't drink enough water, your blood gets thicker, oxygen moves slower, your brain goes into energy saving mode.
Energy saving mode looks like this: brain fog, low patience, forgetfulness, I don't feel like it. Your brain is not being dramatic, it's being smart. It's saying, We don't have enough resources, slow everything down. So when people say, I just don't have motivation anymore, what they often mean is my brain is trying to protect me. Here's where mindset gets misunderstood. When your energy drops, your brain still wants an explanation, so it creates a story. That story usually sounds like I'm lazy, I can't stick to anything, something is wrong with me.
But the truth is, low energy shows up as negative thoughts. Your brain is tired, so it becomes more negative. Your patience drops, your confidence drops, your hope drops. Not because your mindset is broken, but because your fuel tank is empty. This is why positive thinking alone doesn't work. You can't tell a tired brain to be positive. Now, I want to introduce something important we'll talk about over this series. It's called working memory. Jay, what is working memory? Well, working memory is where your brain holds things, it's still learning.
Think of it like carrying groceries in your arms. You can carry a few bags for a short time, but if someone adds more bags or you're tired, or one more bag starts slipping, everything falls. That's working memory. New habits live there, new routines live there, new goals live there, and working memory uses a lot of energy. So when energy is low, new habits feel impossible. Not because you're failing, but because your brain is overloaded. So here's the statement I want to leave you with. Most people don't fail because they don't care.
They fail because their energy system was never built to support the change. This series moving forward is about building energy first, teaching the brain how to store habits, making fitness, nutrition, money, and business feel lighter, not heavier. In the next episode, we're going to dive deeper into working memory versus long-term memory. And I'll show you why beginners struggle, why consistency feels hard before it feels easy, and how to stop living in survival mode. Because once your brain stores a habit, it stops feeling like work.
And that's when everything changes. So, friends, I hope you were able to take away just something small from this episode and understanding how your energy, the nutrients you put in your body, play a vital role in our inputs, the resources we give our bodies to then signal our brain for the outputs that we really want in our life and in our day-to-day. So I hope you stay with me for this series that I'm diving into with our memory, our brain, our nervous system, fitness, nutrition, tying it all together, making it all make sense, so that we can be the best version of ourselves moving into the rest of this year and our future.
So I hope to see you all next week for next week's episode. And until then, all my friends, stay strong, stay focused, stay ready.
Thanks for tuning in to the Warriors Haven podcast, where we turn discipline into freedom and help you build the body, mindset, and lifestyle you deserve. If today's episode fired you up or gave you just that little push you needed, don't stop here. Head on over to the WarriorsHaven.com where you'll find details on how to jumpstart the next version of you. Remember, it's not about being perfect, it's about showing up for yourself every single day. So until next time, stay strong, stay focused, and stay ready.
I'm Jaisha Sutherland, and you're listening to the Warriors Haven podcast.
Podbean