Project Joyful

“Tracy doesn’t get stressed.” That’s what her boss told a recruiter, laughing. She was stressed. She had buried it deep down.

In this reflective episode of Project Joyful, Tracy Tutty shares her own story. It starts with a finance turnaround that was a success by every external marker while it quietly wore her out, and it moves through everything she tried to fix the stress she was carrying, to the piece she’d been missing all along. Recorded after a two-day business strategy intensive in the USA, it’s a candid look at how the habit of doing more follows high-achieving women from corporate leadership into everything they build.

Herbs can calm the cascade. Identity decides what sets it off.

Project Joyful is taking an extended break over Christmas and New Year. The last episode for 2026 releases on 29 November, and the podcast returns in February 2027.

•     Why a finance turnaround that worked on paper left Tracy angry, frustrated and worn out

•     How herbal medicine supported her through year end, budget season and Board presentations, and why it wasn’t enough on its own

•     The sentence from a guest speaker that tilted Tracy’s world on its axis

•     The fixer, the responsible one, the one who sorts it out: the identity sitting upstream of the stress response

•     What Tracy saw in her team when she led from a coherent, regulated state, and why regulated doesn’t always mean calm

•     How the corporate habit of doing more slipped quietly into her business

•     What’s changing inside Revitalise, including the Biology of Leadership™, herbal medicine and naturopathic practices

•     Why healed leaders heal teams

•     You’re the one everyone relies on to sort it out, and nobody would guess how much you’re carrying

•     Your results look strong from the outside while you’re running on empty

•     You’ve tried herbs, coaching or courses looking for the answer to your stress

•     You’ve noticed the drive to do more following you from work into your business, your home or your health

•     You’re curious how herbal medicine and neuroscience-informed coaching work together

Tracy’s herbal medicine clinic is open again. For specific, evidence-based support for a health condition, stress overload, women’s health including perimenopause and menopause, or support alongside your GLP-1 journey, message Tracy on LinkedIn or Instagram, or get in touch through her website. Her details are below.

Tracy Tutty is a Medical Herbalist with a BSc in Health Sciences majoring in herbal medicine, a Chartered Accountant who has led corporate finance teams, and a Certified Neuro-Identity Evolution® Practitioner. She is the creator of the Biology of Leadership™ and Revitalise, her one-on-one programme for women in corporate leadership. Based in Wellington, New Zealand, Tracy brings together herbal medicine and neuroscience-informed coaching to help leaders lead well without the cost landing in their bodies.

This episode is sprinkled with breadcrumbs you may be noticing in your own life, or in the life of someone you care about. If someone came to mind as you listened, share it with her.

Website: www.tracytutty.com

Instagram: @tracyctutty

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracytutty

Lemon balm (Melissa officinalis) is often thought of as a gentle calming herb. In this Herbal Ally episode of Project Joyful, Medical Herbalist and Neuro-Identity Coach Tracy Tutty reveals why this garden favourite is so much more.

For high-achieving women carrying a low hum of background agitation, the knotted stomach, the bloating that turns up with deadlines and the mind that runs the to-do list at bedtime, lemon balm offers something most calming remedies can't: calm that leaves your thinking clear.

Drawing on her clinical practice, centuries of traditional use and contemporary research into stress, cognition and the gut-brain axis, Tracy explores how lemon balm soothes the nervous system and the gut together, and why it's so often her calming herb of choice.

•         Why bees love lemon balm, and what its scent shares with the signal honeybees use to guide each other home

•         How background agitation can run for so long it starts to feel normal

•         Why a medical herbalist reads an anxious mind and an unsettled gut as one story, and the role of the vagus nerve

•         The volatile oils and rosmarinic acid behind lemon balm's gut-soothing and calming actions, including its effect on gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)

•         What researchers found when they tested lemon balm on people doing four tasks at once

•         Why so much of what calms us also dulls us, and how lemon balm differs

•         How lemon balm, as a nervous system tonic, supports your body in finding a calmer baseline over time

•         How to grow lemon balm and make a fresh-leaf tea that keeps the volatile oils in your cup

•         Important safety considerations, including thyroid conditions and medications

•         You carry a low hum of agitation that's been there so long it feels like part of you

•         Your stomach knots, bloats or cramps when the week gets busy

•         Your mind starts running the list the moment your head hits the pillow

•         You reach for wine to come down and coffee to get going again

•         You want to understand the science behind traditional herbal medicine

•         You love the idea of a calming herb you can grow at home

Herbs for Health is Tracy's free monthly email series: one email, one herb. Each issue introduces a herb's traditional and medicinal uses with easy gardening tips, shares remedies and recipes including Tracy's preferred way of taking it, links to its Project Joyful Herbal Ally episode, and covers the safety considerations to know. Grab your first issue here: https://tracytutty.com/herbs4health

Tracy Tutty is a Medical Herbalist, Neuro-Identity Coach and Chartered Accountant with a background in corporate leadership. She works with high-achieving women in corporate leadership who are outwardly successful yet internally exhausted by the pressure of overperformance. Through her Biology of Leadership™ lens, Tracy integrates neuro-identity coaching, nervous system science and herbal medicine to help women lead in a way that feels sustainable, embodied and deeply aligned.

If this episode resonated, share it with a friend or colleague who's been carrying the buzz. Leaving a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, or a comment on YouTube, helps more women find Project Joyful.

Website: www.projectjoyful.com

Instagram: @tracyctutty

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracytutty

This episode is for educational purposes only and is not individual medical advice. Please consult your medical herbalist or healthcare professional before taking any herb, especially if you have a health condition, are pregnant or breastfeeding, or take any medications.

You got the leadership role because you were brilliant at the work. Now you're accountable for a team and its results, and nobody has told you what good leadership looks like here.

Tracy Tutty explores the transition from producing the work to leading the people who produce it. She examines why new leaders often fill an undefined role with the technical work they were promoted out of, and what the Biology of Leadership™ reveals about stress, habit and identity in those first weeks.

• Why an empty calendar in a new leadership role can feel unsettling rather than freeing

• The difference between doing technical work and managing the people who do it

• How role ambiguity and stress push the brain toward habit

• How neurotags and myelin make familiar routines the path of least resistance

• Why leading from the leaders you've absorbed can mean leading your team as you'd want to be led

• How the absence of a shared leadership standard creates inconsistency across an organisation

• The difference between leadership style and leadership standard

• What it means for things to happen through you, rather than because of you or by you

• The identity question beneath the transition, when the evidence you've relied on for years stops arriving

• You've recently stepped into leadership and wonder what you're meant to be doing

• You were promoted for your technical brilliance and now lead people doing the work you used to do

• You catch yourself rewriting, checking or redoing your team's work

• You lead from the leaders you've had, keeping what you admired and avoiding what you couldn't stand

• You want to understand the identity and nervous system patterns beneath how you lead

If this episode has you thinking about the leader you've become and the leader you want to be, Revitalise is Tracy's private one-on-one Neuro-Identity Coaching for women in corporate leadership. Together, you explore the identity, patterns and ways of operating beneath how you lead, so you can be more deliberate about what comes with you into your next iteration.

Find out more about Revitalise:

https://tracytutty.com/revitalise

Tracy Tutty is a Neuro-Identity Coach, Medical Herbalist and Chartered Accountant. Drawing on her corporate leadership background, she helps high-achieving women in corporate leadership recalibrate the subconscious identity and nervous system patterns beneath overperformance. Her Biology of Leadership™ work combines Neuro-Identity Coaching, nervous system science and herbal medicine to create leadership that feels sustainable, powerful and deeply aligned.

If this episode brings someone to mind, such as a newly promoted colleague or a leader stepping into their first team, share it with them. Ratings and reviews on Apple Podcasts, and subscribing on YouTube, help more women in leadership discover Project Joyful.

Website:

https://www.projectjoyful.com

Instagram: @tracyctutty

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracytutty

When leadership demands more of you, the instinct is often to seek another framework, course or model for communicating, delegating or influencing. But what if you already know enough?

In this episode of Project Joyful, Tracy Tutty explores why your leadership skills don't always show up when you need them. Through a one-day leadership course, a notebook of good intentions and a Thursday morning when you knew what to do but did what you'd always done, Tracy explains how sustained pressure affects access to what you know.

She explores why learning can become a success strategy high-achieving women outgrow, and why capacity fluctuates with the season of life you're in.

• Why your leadership course notes are still sitting on your desk.
• What happens to the prefrontal cortex under pressure, drawing on research by Yale neuroscientist Professor Amy Arnsten.
• Why answers can arrive at the traffic lights on your drive home instead of when you need them.
• How learning becomes part of your identity, and why “I need to get better at this” sends you looking for another course.
• Why capacity is seasonal and biological, and what happens when your identity assumes it never changes.
• Why adding more during a depleted season uses the capacity you're already lacking.
• What it means to lead with your biology in the picture.

• You've completed leadership training but still answer questions for your team.
• You know what good leadership looks like, but struggle to access those skills on busy days.
• You keep telling yourself you need to get better.
• Your capacity has felt lower for months, so you've tried learning more.
• You're a high-achieving woman in corporate leadership who wants sustainable leadership.

The Biology of Sustainable Leadership is a short guide exploring why leadership can feel heavier than your capability suggests, what's happening in your brain and body, and three mismatches between modern leadership and human biology: pace, availability and carrying responsibility alone.

There's nothing to implement, just a clearer view of what your capacity has been carrying.

Download the guide:

https://tracytutty.com/leadership

Tracy Tutty is a Neuro-Identity Coach, Medical Herbalist and Chartered Accountant working with high-achieving women in corporate leadership.

Drawing on her corporate experience, she combines Neuro-Identity Coaching, nervous system science and herbal medicine through her Biology of Leadership™ philosophy. She helps women recalibrate the subconscious identity and nervous system patterns beneath overperformance so leadership feels sustainable, powerful and aligned.

If this episode reminded you of your own Thursday morning, share it with a colleague who also has course notes sitting on her desk. Rating or reviewing Project Joyful on Apple Podcasts, or subscribing on YouTube, helps more women in leadership discover the show.

Website:

https://www.projectjoyful.com

Instagram: @tracyctutty

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracytutty

The strategy that made you exceptional can be the hardest to let go of. You spot the gap before anyone else, have the answer before the question is finished, and your team comes to you first. It built your reputation. But as your role grows, that strategy can drain your energy, undermine your team's judgement, and keep you in detail that no longer belongs to you.

Tracy Tutty, Neuro-Identity Coach, Medical Herbalist and Chartered Accountant, explores what happens when successful leaders outgrow the strategies behind their success. Drawing on neuroscience, neurotags, dopamine, habit formation and Lisa Feldman Barrett's work on the brain's body budget, Tracy explains why your brain treats familiarity as safety, making proven strategies difficult to relinquish.

• Why a leadership strategy can stop serving your role while still working

• How neurotags form and repetition allows expertise to kick in before a question is finished

• How dopamine links spotting gaps with competence, trust and safety

• Why habits persist even when their costs outweigh the rewards

• How Lisa Feldman Barrett's body budget explains why the brain favours familiarity

• How your team learns to wait for your answers, and what changes when they solve problems independently

• A simple pause to try when someone asks, "Quick one, how would you handle this?"

• Who you are as a leader when you stop closing every gap

• You have the answer before your team finishes asking the question

• You catch yourself thinking, "Why can't they just do their job?"

• You end the day without the energy for another decision

• You've stepped into a bigger role but still manage the details of your previous one

• You want your team to develop their judgement without compromising standards

Revitalise is Tracy's private one-on-one Neuro-Identity Coaching for women in corporate leadership. Together, you explore the subconscious identity and nervous system patterns shaping how you lead, honouring the strategies that got you here while recalibrating those you've outgrown.

Find out more about Revitalise:

https://tracytutty.com/revitalise

Tracy Tutty is a Neuro-Identity Coach, Medical Herbalist and Chartered Accountant who works with high-achieving women in corporate leadership. Through her Biology of Leadership™ philosophy, she combines Neuro-Identity Coaching, nervous system science and herbal medicine to help women lead sustainably and in alignment with themselves. She hosts Project Joyful, the podcast for Health Centred Leaders.

If this episode reminded you of your own experience, share it with a woman in leadership who will recognise herself. Rate and review Project Joyful on Apple Podcasts or subscribe on YouTube to help more leaders discover the podcast.

Website:

www.projectjoyful.com

Instagram: @tracyctutty

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracytutty

Leadership can look completely composed from the outside and still feel like two separate jobs running on the inside, the actual leading, and the ongoing work of managing how it's landing. In this episode of Project Joyful, Tracy Tutty explains why so many highly capable leaders still monitor their tone, their pacing, and the room's reaction in real time, even when they know their material inside and out, and what's actually happening in the brain in the half second before a hard question gets answered.

•      Why leading a room and managing how you're leading it can feel like two separate jobs running at once, even when you're fully prepared

•      The three brain networks competing for control in the seconds before you answer a hard question, and why the room reads your nervous system more than your words

•      What internal coherence actually means, and why it isn't the same as confidence or calm

•      Why executive presence can't fully exist alongside constant self-monitoring

•      The real difference between being highly capable at leadership and having leadership feel natural

•      You're trusted with the room, and you still leave meetings replaying how you sounded more than what got decided

•      You've asked “does that make sense?” and known, underneath it, you were really checking whether you explained yourself well enough

•      A question you technically knew the answer to has ever thrown you, even for a second nobody else noticed

•      You want the biology behind why more preparation never quite closes the gap

•      You're ready to lead from internal coherence instead of constant self-management

Tracy Tutty is a Medical Herbalist, Neuro-Identity Coach, and Chartered Accountant who brings more than two decades in corporate finance leadership into a practice built at the intersection of nervous system science, subconscious identity work, and herbal medicine. She works with high-achieving women in corporate leadership who are outwardly successful yet privately exhausted by the pressure of overperformance, helping them recalibrate the patterns beneath achievement so leadership can feel sustainable rather than constantly managed. Tracy hosts Project Joyful and works with private clients through her coaching programme, Revitalise.

If this episode named something you've experienced in your own leadership, send it to a colleague or friend who might recognise herself in it too. Screenshot a line that landed and tag Tracy on Instagram @tracyctutty, she reads every one.

Website: www.projectjoyful.com

Instagram: @tracyctutty

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tracytutty

If the moment in this episode where the answer didn't come as fast as you needed it to felt familiar, join Tracy for a free live executive briefing on 15 October at 9.30am NZDT. We'll look at why more preparation doesn't close the gap when the real pattern is subconscious and physiological rather than a knowledge problem. Registration: tracytutty.com/preparationisnttheproblem

You know you're good at this. Nobody in the room is questioning it. So why, in the half second before you speak, does some part of you still check? In this episode of Project Joyful, Tracy Tutty looks at what happens when competence and confidence stop matching up, and why proving it again was never going to be the thing that finally let you trust it.

IN THIS EPISODE

Tracy unpacks the gap between what the evidence says about you and what you actually feel standing in the room. She walks through why competence and confidence run on two different systems, why more preparation, more proof, or another qualification was never going to close that gap, and what's actually happening in the nervous system when the internal experience doesn't catch up to a proven track record. She also looks at the different identity patterns that can sit underneath this experience, and why the reframe isn't about becoming more capable, it's about recalibrating a system that was never reading your competence in the first place.

THIS EPISODE IS FOR YOU IF

You've reread something you already knew was right before you sent it. You've been handed more responsibility because of your track record, and your first response was to brace for what could go wrong. You've delivered something at the standard you always deliver at, and immediately started listing what you'd change. You've quietly wondered why proving yourself again and again has never been enough to make the doubt sit down.

ABOUT TRACY TUTTY

Tracy Tutty is a Medical Herbalist and Neuro-Identity Coach working at the intersection of nervous system science, subconscious identity, and leadership. Drawing on her own background as a Chartered Accountant in corporate leadership, Tracy helps high-achieving women recalibrate the subconscious and physiological patterns beneath overperformance, so success no longer requires chronic self-protection. She's the host of Project Joyful, exploring the Biology of Leadership at the intersection of herbal medicine and neuroscience-informed coaching.

YOU'RE INVITED

Tracy is opening up this exact territory in a live executive briefing on 15 October, When Preparation Isn't the Problem. It's a look at why the most prepared, most proven people in the room can still be the ones quietly running this pattern, and what actually starts to shift it. It's free, it's live, and if you can't make it, the recording comes to you. Details and registration: tracytutty.com/preparationisnttheproblem

SHARE THIS EPISODE

If this episode named something you've been carrying quietly, chances are someone in your world is carrying it too. Send it to her.

CONNECT WITH TRACY

Website: www.projectjoyful.com

Instagram: @tracyctutty

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracytutty

The laptop is closed. Nobody's messaged you. And still, some part of you hasn't actually stopped monitoring. Tracy Tutty explores standby, the physiological state hiding underneath rest that doesn't restore you, and why closing your laptop was never the same as your body receiving permission to stop.

•          The difference between stopping the activity of work and relinquishing your availability for it

•          Standby as a physiological state: how neuroception and the hypothalamus-amygdala threat response keep you scanning long after you've logged off

•          Why a quick check "just to see" resets your nervous system’s path to actual rest

•          Ventral vagal: the settled state your body needs to reach before real restoration and active recovery can happen

•          The hidden cost of operating from proving energy, and why achievement never gets to count as finished

•          What it actually takes for your body to receive the signal that it's safe to stop

•          You close the laptop and still can't stop thinking about the meeting, the email, the thing you sent hours ago

•          You check your phone on holiday "just quickly," even though everyone already knows you’re away

•          You're tired by Friday even in weeks where nothing especially hard happened

•          You've mistaken being reachable for being valuable, and can't quite remember when that started

•          You want to understand the biology beneath your leadership patterns

Tracy Tutty is a Neuro-Identity Coach, medical herbalist, and Chartered Accountant working at the intersection of nervous system science, subconscious identity, and leadership. Drawing on more than two decades in corporate leadership, Tracy helps high-achieving women in leadership recalibrate the subconscious and physiological patterns beneath overperformance, creating leadership that is sustainable, embodied, and no longer dependent on chronic self-protection. She is the host of Project Joyful, the podcast for Health Centred Leaders, and works with clients through her private coaching experience, Revitalise.

If this episode named something you've been living inside without a word for it, share it with a leader who needs to hear it too.

Website: www.projectjoyful.com

Instagram: @tracyctutty

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracytutty

When Preparation Isn't the Problem, a live executive briefing on 15 October 2026, 9.30am NZT. Why the most prepared person in the room can still be quietly monitoring everything as it happens, the opportunity cost of that, and what becomes possible once you're no longer managing yourself through the moment. Free and live, recording available if you can't attend.

Register: tracytutty.com/preparationisnttheproblem

Being left off an email you think you should have seen can trigger a surprisingly physical reaction: a tightened jaw, a rush of heat, a reply that comes out sharper than intended. In this episode of Project Joyful, Tracy Tutty unpacks why an empty cc field can land as a direct hit on your sense of safety at work, and what your nervous system is actually doing in that moment, long before you've consciously decided how you feel about it.

• Why an empty cc field can trigger a full nervous system response
• The difference between what an email says and the meaning your brain assigns to it
• How the Reticular Activating System filters what you notice, and why it isn't neutral
• A simple check for whether you're in a constricted or expanded state, and what to do with it
• Why the habits that got you promoted can quietly work against you once you're leading a team
• What it's actually costing you, energetically, to keep re-running a moment that's already over

• You've felt your jaw tighten after being forwarded an email you weren't originally on
• You're leading a team now, but still feel like you need to personally know everything happening around you
• You've reread a reply four times before sending it, just to check the tone
• You want the neuroscience behind your reactions explained without the jargon or the shame

The same nervous system pattern behind this episode doesn't only show up when information is missing. It also shows up when you're the most prepared person in the room and still find yourself second-guessing anyway. On 15 October 2026 at 9.30am NZT, Tracy is running a free live executive briefing, When Preparation Isn't the Problem, for women in leadership who are done managing themselves through every high-stakes moment.

Register:

tracytutty.com/preparationisnttheproblem

Tracy Tutty is a Neuro-Identity Coach, medical herbalist, and leadership thought leader working at the intersection of nervous system science, subconscious identity, and sustainable leadership. Drawing on her background as a Chartered Accountant in corporate leadership, Tracy helps high-achieving women recalibrate the subconscious and physiological patterns behind overperformance, so leadership feels powerful without costing them their health, relationships, or sense of self. She hosts Project Joyful, the podcast for Health Centred Leaders.

If this one named something you've felt at your desk, share it with a leader who needs to hear it. From this episode:

“That's not oversensitivity. That's an intelligent adaptation, built off actual evidence. The evidence is just old.”

Website:
www.projectjoyful.com

Instagram:
@tracyctutty

LinkedIn:
linkedin.com/in/tracytutty

Two hours after a boardroom decision is made and the room has moved on, the mind is still replaying six seconds of it. In this episode of Project Joyful, Tracy Tutty explores why a meeting can end and keep running anyway, why overthinking isn't actually the mechanism at work, and what it takes for an experience to physiologically register as over rather than just intellectually resolved.

Tracy walks through what's really happening when a conversation replays long after it's finished: the fast, pre-conscious activation that runs before a stressful moment is even consciously registered, why losing a room's attention trips the same alarm as an actual threat, and the difference between correcting a moment in real time and completing it physiologically. The conversation moves through neuroception, the nervous system's background scan for safety, the reconsolidation window that opens every time a memory is replayed, and why repeating the same six seconds can entrench a pattern rather than resolve it. Tracy also shares two concrete, in-the-body ways to signal completion without leaving the room, and why more preparation was never going to be the fix.

This one is for the leader who delivers exactly what the room needed and still finds herself replaying the moment hours later, at the stove, in the shower, anywhere except where the meeting actually happened. It's for anyone who has assumed that overthinking a conversation is a character trait rather than a nervous system waiting on information it hasn't received yet, and for anyone ready to understand the difference between knowing something is fine and a body that has actually registered it.

Tracy Tutty is a Neuro-Identity Coach, Medical Herbalist, and leadership thought leader working at the intersection of subconscious transformation, nervous system coherence, and biology-informed leadership evolution. Drawing on her own background in corporate leadership as a Chartered Accountant, Tracy supports intelligent, high-performing women who have built success through precision, responsibility, and overperformance, helping them lead from a place that no longer costs them their health, identity, or sense of safety.

Send this one to a colleague who's still replaying her own six seconds after everyone else has moved on.

Website: www.projectjoyful.com

Instagram: @tracyctutty

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracytutty

Join Tracy for When Preparation Isn't the Problem, a closer look at what's really running underneath the moments that go well and still don't feel finished: tracytutty.com/preparationisnttheproblem