Laura Ellera: 5 Things Anyone Can Do To Optimize Their Mental Wellness
Leading on nicely from this is step number 5 which is breathing. Breathing, and I mean deep, rib cage expanding breathing, is common sense but it’s not always common practice. Our brain needs oxygen. Every cell in our body needs oxygen. And yet we tend to deprive it of its most basic need. When we are stressed, worried, anxious, our body starts to go into threat mode, and this is when we tend to take short sharp breaths. Whilst this gets oxygen into our bodies in the short run, it’s not sustainable and means that our body can stay in fight or flight mode.
As a part of my series about the “5 Things Anyone Can Do To Optimize Their Mental Wellness”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Psychology and Neuroscience Expert, Laura Ellera, an Integrated Success Coach and Certified Therapist — known as ’The Neuroscience Knowledge Sharer’.
Laura Ellera is a woman on a mission, spreading her knowledge around the power of Neuroscience. Having personally embraced it after nearly ending her life, just over 18 months ago, Laura has learnt to take control of her nervous system through understanding the science and practical implications of Neuroscience, and is now driven to teach it, and to help others teach it, as she works to create a ripple effect where more of the population understands how their brain and body works. Having navigated severe anxiety, depression, crippling imposter syndrome, suicidal tendencies and 2 mental breakdowns whilst she learnt how to understand her own body and mind, Laura is determined to spread the word and the science of how our nervous system impacts every aspect of our lives and share Neuroscience knowledge she believes EVERYONE should know through her website lauraellera.com and social media accounts.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?
Gosh, it’s been a long old journey to get here, but I’ll do my best to give you the highlights. I started coaching 11 years ago when, like many, I fell out of love with the corporate world. Over the last 10 years, I have started two businesses, travelled the world, got married, had two kids and experienced exhilarating highs and soul-destroying lows. It’s certainly been a ride.
When my youngest was 10 months old and my eldest 2, my husband left for Afghanistan for 2 years. Two days before he left, I was diagnosed with post-natal depression. Tough doesn’t even cover it. So, to help me “get over it”, as I saw it at the time, I signed up for an Ironman. Whilst it distracted me from the internal turmoil for a while, ultimately when the endorphins wore off after race day, the reality of the darkness inside was still there.
Fast forward through lockdown and a host of many other experiences, and it was the summer of 2021 and my husband had been home for about 6 months. Nobody tells you how hard this transition is going to be. Add to that, financial pressures, the fact that my business wasn’t where I wanted it to be and being let go of a contracting role, which pushed on all my “not good enough” wounds, I found myself one night walking to the weir in Henley with the intention of throwing myself in. I decided that everybody, including my 2 young children, would be better off without me. On the way, I forced myself to sit on a bench by the river and imagine my husband telling the kids that “mummy wasn’t coming home”. Then I imagined the realization they would have when they were older and could comprehend that I had chosen to leave them (although I don’t believe it is really a choice). That was when I knew I couldn’t do it. I had to do something, but it wasn’t this.
It took meeting up with an old friend who hadn’t seen me for years to really solidify how bad it had got and after she had left, I called the doctors. We were on the phone for over 30 minutes, and they were amazing. They wanted to put me on antidepressants and whilst I am 100% not against medication, I didn’t want to mask the pain. I wanted to deal with it. I requested therapy but was told I was ‘too far gone’ for that, so I begged to be given one month. If I was no better after a month, I would take the pills.
So, I set to working out how to calm my nervous system, how to find peace within me and how to find hope for the future again. Something that I had lost. After a month, the doctor signed me off and couldn’t believe the turn around. I don’t say this because I think overcoming depression is as simple as doing a few breathing exercises. But, I do believe we have more power within us than we give ourselves credit for.
I wanted to learn more about the science behind what my soul knew. I have a scientific background (I studied Meteorology at university), so I signed up to do a masters in Neuroscience at Kings College London. At the time, this was for my own benefit but as I talked to my clients and other coaches, I realized that they could benefit with understanding the science behind coaching. So, I created a diploma in Neuroscience for Coaches which is currently in its second round and going forward for ICF accreditation as we speak. It then took on its own momentum and I had people messaging asking if I did anything that wasn’t just for coaches and that’s how the Neuroscience of Wellbeing certificate came about along with a host of other requests for courses on specific subjects.
I have always been passionate about sharing my journey with mental health, as I am willing to feel uncomfortable if it means somebody finds comfort in my words. I now get to do this and so much more every day and I truly love what I do.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
In 2020, I decided to start a podcast on a bit of a whim. I had seen an advert for a free 5-day challenge on Instagram and I signed up but with absolutely zero intention of actually ever doing the course or starting a podcast. But something had other ideas for me!
I loved the 5 days and I believe I was the first to sign up for the training when the cart opened. So, on top of being in lockdown with a 2 and a 3-year-old on my own as my husband was in Afghanistan, I set to organizing the podcast. Wow, it was intense.
I would have to wait until the boys were in bed at night and then I’d create a little den under the duvet in my bedroom and record episodes, having to start again if one of them made a noise over the monitor. I’ve even used my son’s fabric teepee before to hide in for sound quality!
In October 2020, I launched the podcast with a 3-day live summit, bringing 15 incredible entrepreneurs together. It was amazing! And I ended up 9th in the entrepreneur charts and even winning an award for it. I’m planning on relaunching it again this summer, but now both of my boys are in school, I’m hoping it will be a bit easier.
This taught me that there is never a perfect time to start anything, and we are capable of so much when we put our minds to it. I certainly didn’t feel ready to do it. I struggled massively with imposter syndrome constantly asking myself why I thought anybody would listen to it. On paper it shouldn’t have worked. But I wanted it badly enough and if that’s the case, and you don’t wait for perfection to come knocking at your door, you can achieve anything.
You will never regret starting too soon.
Can you share a story with us about the most humorous mistake you made when you were first starting? What lesson or take-away did you learn from that?
I have had many! In my first Instagram live my phone fell over, in another live training, my office was so hot that my laptop refused to work, and I ended up a soggy mess in the kitchen trying to do the training from my mobile. I’ve gone live by accident on my phone before when I hadn’t realized, and there have been many, many more! They all seem to be when I’m live.
But, one happened to me just recently, where I was running a monthly live masterclass in my membership, and I thought it was strange because nobody showed up live. I carried on trying to not have a mini-internal meltdown wondering why nobody was on the live call, but it wasn’t until after the training finished, that I found messages from members who couldn’t get into the live. I’d sent the wrong link out!
Then, to make it even worse, I found out that my microphone hadn’t worked through the whole thing and because nobody could get in to watch it, there had been nobody there to tell me! So, I had to do the whole thing again.
The thing I have learnt from all of these is to just go with the flow and done is better than perfect. I could have stressed out about the phone falling over and deleted the live. I didn’t, I picked it up, made a joke of it and continued. I could have refused to run the online training for a 3rd time on my mobile because I was too hot and flustered and thought everybody was thinking I was an amateur. I didn’t and they appreciated that.
And, I certainly could have thrown my toys out the pram that mistakes are still happening to me even though I’ve been in business for 10 years. I didn’t. It happens to everybody and if you don’t do something because it might not be perfect, you will never start. So, I learnt to just do it. Perfectly imperfect action over perfect inaction every single day.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I’ve had some amazing mentors along the way both from a business perspective and from a therapy and healing perspective, most of which I have met in person and become friends with but some of which I have been blown away by their online courses and they, to this day, don’t know who I am or the full extent of the impact they have had on me.
There is however one person who stands out for me who I met very early on in my coaching career. I started my coaching journey with The Coaching Academy back in 2012 and towards the end of my studies, I paired off for a practical session with one of the girls in the room, Hannah Rowland. We just clicked. It was like we’d known each other forever and we had a very similar take on things.
We became very good friends very quickly and even met with a bunch of other new business owners a few times who we called ‘The Holistic Honeys’. But our lives went in different directions whilst we had kids, etc. A couple of years ago, we finally managed to meet up after sporadic messages over the years and it was literally like there hadn’t been a gap at all.
With 3 kids and 4 businesses between us, we don’t get to meet in person very often, but we do message each other a lot and it’s very common to send or receive a voice message with a kid screaming in the background! She is my biggest champion and cheers for my accomplishments even when I forget to and is there when I’m having a rubbish day and I just want to give it all up.
It’s so important to have somebody who gets your journey and is standing with you in your corner. I have very good friends outside of the online business world but because they’re not in this, they don’t quite get how it really feels from the inside. I am beyond grateful for having somebody who gets this and gets me and is on the same journey as me. I’m not sure I’ve ever told her how grateful I am for her so hopefully this will be a nice surprise!
What advice would you suggest to your colleagues in your industry to thrive and avoid burnout?
Keep your eyes on your lane and avoid watching what everybody else is doing. Comparison is kryptonite to your dreams so stay focused and spend more time creating content than consuming it and you’ll be able to stay true to your message and avoid the exhaustion that distractions lead to.
I would also recommend getting systems in place that make your life easier. If it can be systemized or outsourced, do it. If you focus on what you do best and really hone that skill whilst keeping the joy of what you do in your heart, you will be on the path for success.
What advice would you give to other leaders about how to create a fantastic work culture?
I always think that the best way to lead is by ensuring everybody has a voice and a platform to use it on. Whilst comparing yourself to others is not good for business, believing only your ideas are valid is also a recipe for disaster. If you are uncomfortable at hearing others’ opinions, then you are at risk of staying stuck in one route which might not be the right one.
I also think that your team should always be allowed to grow, even if that means they are growing in a different direction to the company, and you eventually have to let them go their own way. When people are given autonomy over their career path, they really bring their A game.
So, focus on the human behind the job description. What makes them tick? What are their views? How can you help them? Because, if you help people on your way up, they will be there to give you a leg up should you need it. But, hurt people on the way up, and “they’ll kick you flipping hard on the way back down” — (one my dad used to say).
Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s move to the main focus of our interview. Mental health is often looked at in binary terms; those who are healthy and those who have mental illness. The truth, however, is that mental wellness is a huge spectrum. Even those who are “mentally healthy” can still improve their mental wellness. From your experience or research, what are five steps that each of us can take to improve or optimize our mental wellness. Can you please share a story or example for each.
I am so with you on the concept of improving mental wellness, rather than only focusing on preventing and treating mental illness. I think it’s so important for us to take care of our mental health and actually, I call it brain health or even nervous system health, as that is what our mental health is. When we optimize our brain health and learn to regulate the rest of our nervous system, this is when we create optimal mental wellness.
I also find that people seem to have an ‘aha’ moment when you say brain health rather than mental health, as it’s something that they can understand, it’s a real thing rather than mental health which can seem elusive. We exercise to keep our heart and lungs healthy, we eat well to keep our gut healthy, and likewise, there are things that we can do to keep our brain healthy.
I think the key thing for optimal mental wellness is ensuring our body has the energy it needs to thrive. This means reducing stress, which takes a lot of energy from the body and therefore has many negative side effects, and also ensuring we are replenishing the energy we use.
1. Coregulation: My first step would be to find at least one person who you feel completely safe with and spend time with them. Whether that be a family member, a friend, a mentor, and if you’re really stuck, it can even be your pet. A lot of social media talks about self-regulation but the truth of the matter is, we can’t self-regulate without co-regulation. We need other people to help regulate our nervous system, to help soothes us, to help us replenish the energy we take from it.
Everything we do takes energy and if we’re in a particularly stressful situation or living with chronic stress, this takes a lot more energy from us. But the problem is, a lot of the time we don’t replenish that energy. And when we can’t replenish that energy, the brain looks for ways to conserve it and some scientists now believe that this may be when the brain starts to kill off brain cells. Brain cells consume a lot of energy, and I mean about 25% of the energy you take in on a daily basis. So, the quickest way to save energy, is to shut some of these brain cells down. And this is now thought to contribute towards metabolic illnesses including depression, anxiety, and other mental health disorders.
But if you focus on replenishing that energy and taking your body budget out of deficit, then your body can work optimally. And a great way to do this is by being around those that you feel safe with. This may be why people who are lonely die early. They have to regulate their own energy budget by themselves as they have nobody to coregulate with and this can lead to an energy deficit and ultimately, premature death. So, by being around others who we feel safe with, we can replenish our energy and improve our mental wellness.
2. Sleep: Aside from stress, this is one of the biggest factors affecting people’s mental health. 99% of adults need between 7 and 9 hours of sleep a night and kids considerably more. Even a couple of hours sleep lost a night leads to impairment of the brain as well as impacting our eating habits, stress levels (due to the way it affects cortisol) and even impacts things like our ability to maintain a healthy weight. The brain needs you to sleep. When we don’t, it cannot function properly, and this has been shown to be correlated with mental illnesses such as an increase in anxiety, depression, suicidal tendencies, and psychotic episodes.
If there was one thing I could wish for if I was given a magic wand, it would be for 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep a night. I have a 4 and a 6-year-old, so I can’t really remember what that feels like, but I now make it a non-negotiable that I am in bed for 8 hours a night, (even if that still means having to go through to the kid’s rooms in between).
It is now believed that one of the reasons for the increase in depression in teenagers may be due to the fact that they are spending more time behind screens and less time in bed, which is negatively impacting their mental health.
So, ensuring you get around 8 hours of quality sleep a night or as close as possible to this, will help you optimize your mental wellness.
3. Stories: My next step is to start looking into the stories you are telling yourself on a daily basis and the beliefs you have about yourself, those around you and life in general. Our brain is a predicting machine. It doesn’t have the time or capacity to react to everything as it is happening in real time so it likens what is happening now to what it has experienced in the past and uses best estimates to decide what will happen next and therefore what it should do next. What this means for us in the real world, is that we get more today of what we did yesterday. So, what you do today, your habits, your thoughts, your beliefs, your actions, are the most likely thing to occur again tomorrow.
Therefore, if today you are focusing on all the negative qualities about yourself, picking apart all the things your partner does wrong, spending your time watching the news and taking in the horrors of what is happening for hours on end, this is how your brain will program itself. It will actually change its structure and will be primed to look for the danger in everything. So, you will get more of this going forwards and eventually, you will begin to believe that you are a bad person, and the world is a bad place.
We also know that what you believe has a massive impact on your reality. Even to the point of an experiment that found that elderly people who believed they were unwell and going to die, actually did die earlier than those who believed they were fit and well regardless of their actual health. So, we have to be very aware of what we think.
So, becoming aware of our thoughts, our beliefs, the stories we tell ourselves, the actions we take, the people we hang around with, all of these things impact our brain and therefore our mental wellness. Once we are aware of where we are at now, we can start to put small changes in place to consciously create more today of what we want tomorrow. This could be as simple as putting on a motivational YouTube video rather than the news, keeping a gratitude score card, getting out in nature for a walk. Changing will require effort at first, it will take energy, but it’s an investment in your future self.
4. Nature: Even if you live in the center of a city, there is always a way to find even a small patch of green, whether that be in a public park, your garden, or your office parking lot. Nature really does soothe our soul and when we are in nature, we tend to breathe deeper (getting more oxygen to the brain which it needs to function properly) and we also release more serotonin when we spend time in the great outdoors, which makes us feel good.
We have to remember, that we have been humans for around 300,000 years (since homo sapiens emerged) and have spent approximately 299,800 of them in nature. Our bodies were built for nature. Our eyes and ears were built to look and listen to it. And there’s some evidence that suggests that the repetitive, smooth, curved patterns of nature are soothing to our nervous system as opposed to the sharp, jagged edges of manmade buildings that a lot of people spend their time in and around now.
Studies have found that if you live in a city, you are 20% more likely to suffer from anxiety and 40% more likely to suffer from mood disorders than people who live in rural settings and whilst it’s still not understood if this is a cause or an effect, the health benefits of nature have been documented in detail. So, to maintain mental wellness, ensure you spend time in nature. Even if that’s just on weekends. And extra points if you can exercise in nature too as this gives you an added boost of endorphins along with other feel-good neurotransmitters.
5. Breathe: Leading on nicely from this is step number 5 which is breathing. Breathing, and I mean deep, rib cage expanding breathing, is common sense but it’s not always common practice. Our brain needs oxygen. Every cell in our body needs oxygen. And yet we tend to deprive it of its most basic need. When we are stressed, worried, anxious, our body starts to go into threat mode, and this is when we tend to take short sharp breaths. Whilst this gets oxygen into our bodies in the short run, it’s not sustainable and means that our body can stay in fight or flight mode.
Breathing is the most direct route to our nervous system and when we breathe out, our heart rate actually slows which means that our body starts to relax and step out of threat mode, which allows blood to be diverted back to our gut and brain and allows our immune system to work properly along with a host of other functions in our body which keeps our brain healthy.
So, place your hands around your rib cage and breathe in so that your rib cage expands out all the way around your body and then taking a long, slow out breath, imagining you are breathing out through a straw. This can really help to calm your nervous system and step back into that rest and digest mode as one of the best ways to improve mental wellness is by reducing stress and keeping your body in safe mode.
How about teens and pre teens. Are there any specific new ideas you would suggest for teens and pre teens to optimize their mental wellness?
The biggest advice I would give teens, is to give themselves enough time away from social media to discover who they really are for themselves. Teens are bombarded daily with unattainable images, they are made to feel less than others and this is having such a negative effect on their mental health. It’s hard enough trying to work out who you are at that age without having everybody else showing you who you “should” want to be.
So, boundaries around social media and what they are filling their mind with is essential. Getting your children to ask questions such as, are the people I am following inspirational to me? Do they have similar values to me? Are they stretching me and making me learn or making me feel bad about myself?
Also, getting your teenager used to asking themselves the question, ‘am I using my time wisely on social media?’ or are they scrolling looking for a hit of dopamine that is never satisfactory enough so they will keep scrolling, endlessly searching for more. Giving them the awareness and control to make this decision will have long term better results but obviously parents may need to step in when this isn’t working.
If we can give some of the control back to our children, within reason, it gives them life skills that they can build upon and they are likely to make better decisions than when they are forced into something by a parent. This will help to build stronger, more trusting relationships with parents, and this is key to mental wellness.
Also, having your teens or pre-teens (and the parents) understanding that children’s brains are not fully developed until they are in their mid 20’s. This can help us to shift expectations of us wanting our children to make decisions like an adult would when they may not actually be capable of this. This can take some unnecessary pressure off the child from the parent and give them space to express themselves and explore who they are becoming more freely when they are not constrained by expectation.
And finally, being aware of the impact our diet has on our brain, which as I say, is still developing at this age. Whilst sugar and fast foods may seem appealing and there’s a reason why we are drawn to them, they negatively impact our gut health and our brain functioning which can lead to a reduction in overall brain health which in turn, can affect our mental wellness. The brain needs certain foods to thrive and especially so as it is developing. So, all the things we know we “should” eat such as fruits, vegetables, whole grain, all of the good stuff really does help to develop a healthy mind.
There are so many more ideas I could give!
Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story?
I am an avid reader, well actually listener. I love to listen to Audible whilst on dog walks, cleaning the house or on long drives. If I try to sit down and read or listen to a story, I find my mind wandering but when I listen as I am doing something, especially walking, it really seems to sink in.
On my own journey, one that really soothed my soul and helped me to understand myself and why I am the way I am better was ‘How to do the work’ by Nicole Le Pera and I’m actually just working my way through her new one, ‘How to meet yourself’. I listened to this book a lot in the car when I was driving on my own and I was literally shouting out “yes!”, “that’s me”, “oh my gosh, I thought it was just me!”. There were some serious aha’s in that for me. It really helped me to understand how my past had shaped me and that I wasn’t broken, I was just human. It also helped to explain my dark night of the soul, the cocoon phase of healing where I had basically locked myself away from society and all the steps that followed which I had done naturally at the time, but then to have them explained after was a real light bulb moment.
From a neuroscience perspective, ‘How emotions are made’ by one of my favorite neuroscientists Lisa Feldman-Barrett just blew my mind. Anybody who works with me, will own at least one copy of this book by the time they have finished as I go on about it so much. Her and her team have done some incredible work into the field of emotions and how they are constructed and what that means for us in relation to illnesses, in society and even in the court room. It’s a fascinating read and I can highly recommend.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
I live for the day where I can walk into a room and talk about mental illness and people react as if I’m talking about a broken leg. With concern and understanding and zero judgement. I think we are heading in the right direction, but I will know we are there when I share a post talking openly about it and I don’t get a single message saying I am brave, because it will be the norm and you will no longer need to be brave to talk about it.
I think a step that helps with this is discussing optimizing brain health as it doesn’t have the decades of stigma attached to it like mental health does.
I also think that when we look at mental wellness as being an essential part of us actually living our life rather than surviving it in the hope that we get to retirement age with enough money and health left to be able to actually do the things we’ve spent our whole life wanting to do, then we will see a shift in the beliefs around mental health.
I champion wholistic wealth which means wealth in all areas of our life including mental wellness as I believe that this is when we find success that has meaning, this is when we are truly living, this is when we are alive. This is what I want for everybody. To live fully whilst we still have the chance to.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?
“If you learn from everything, you can do anything”
I have always had the belief that everything is doable, not all at the same time, but that if you put your mind to something, there is literally nothing that you cannot achieve. This got me through school, university, starting 2 businesses and looking after 2 young kids for 2 years mainly by myself!
But the main thing in being able to do anything, is that you have to take setbacks as lessons not failure. I genuinely believe that the only thing that can be classified a failure is if you didn’t try. I am trying to show my children this by example because boy there have been many times that I have “failed” at things, but as long as you get up one more time than you fall down, then you are winning. It’s still a work in progress and I am a recovering perfectionist but whenever I feel perfectionism raising its head, I remind myself of this quote.
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Instagram: @iamlauraellera
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Thank you for these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!
