Leadership doesn't usually fail because of strategy, skill, or capability. More often, it feels heavy, draining, or costly for reasons that are harder to name, even when everything is working on paper.

In this episode of Project Joyful, Tracy Tutty explores leadership through a biological lens. Not as a performance issue to fix, but as a nervous system pattern that has been learned over time.

You'll hear why leadership can stay switched on long after the workday ends, why rest doesn't always restore, and how the mind and nervous system quietly collaborate to keep leaders alert, responsible, and reliable, sometimes at the expense of ease, creativity, and presence.

This episode isn't about changing how you lead. It's about understanding what has been shaping the experience of leadership in your body, and why awareness alone doesn't automatically change how leadership feels.

There's nothing you need to do as you listen. This is an invitation to recognise what resonates, and to hear language for experiences you may have sensed for a long time, but never quite had words for.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why leadership can feel heavier than it should, even when you're good at it
• How leadership becomes a nervous system pattern, not a personality trait
• The dialogue between the mind and the nervous system around safety and responsibility
• Why rest is necessary, but doesn't automatically recalibrate the system
• Why this work isn't a mindset shift, strategy, or optimisation exercise
• What biological refinement actually means for sustainable leadership

Mentioned in this episode: If you'd like to continue this conversation, Tracy is hosting a free three-day live experience called The Biology of Leadership, exploring the unseen biological factors shaping leadership energy, presence, and capacity over time.

You can learn more and register here: https://www.tracytutty.co.nz/LeadershipBiology

About the host: Tracy Tutty is a Neuro-Identity Coach, Medical Herbalist, Executive Mentor, and Chartered Accountant. Her work sits at the intersection of leadership, biology, and identity, supporting high-calibre women to understand not just how they lead, but what has been shaping how leadership feels over time.

In our final episode of 2025, we close the year with something most leaders rarely give themselves: a spacious, grounded moment to breathe.

This conversation is a gentle exhale. A remembering. A subtle but powerful shift from pushing to presence.

If you have ever found yourself checking work emails on a Saturday, feeling guilty for resting, or believing you will finally relax once every last task is done, this episode is for you.

Together, we explore:

• The quiet tug of war between your mind's end of year urgency and your body's invitation to slow.

• The micro signals your unique nervous system uses to say, I need you.

• What rest actually is, and why not working is not the same as restoration.

• How real rest sharpens your leadership, deepens your presence, and strengthens your emotional authority.

• The role of nervines in smoothing the frazzle and returning you to a steadier baseline.

• Why the intersection of herbal medicine and neuro identity coaching creates sustainable change.

• A guided moment of acknowledgement for everything you carried this year.

This episode is an invitation into coherence, the state from which your most powerful decisions, insights, and leadership naturally arise.

🌿 Your 2025 Closing Ritual

There is nothing you need to prepare. There is nothing you need to do. You simply get to be held, guided, and in conversation with your inner wisdom.

Access your ritual here: tracytutty.co.nz/TwithT

🌿 If you are new here

I am Tracy Tutty, Medical Herbalist, Neuro Identity Coach, Chartered Accountant, and creator of Project Joyful. I help high-achieving women lead with coherence, clarity, and a nervous system that feels like home.

🌿 Links and Mentions

• Your 2025 Closing Ritual: tracytutty.co.nz/TwithT • Learn more about Neuro Identity Coaching: tracytutty.co.nz

🌿 If you loved this episode

Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps more women discover a gentler, more powerful model of leadership.

As we close out this year, today's episode offers a gentler kind of leadership conversation. A spacious one. The kind that invites you to pause and notice the quiet truth that often arrives before you name it.

You have evolved. Yet your leadership identity may not have caught up.

In this episode, we explore the subtle signs that who you have been in leadership is no longer who you are becoming. This shift is not a failure. It is your biology, your subconscious, and your inner intelligence guiding you home.

Inside this episode: • What it feels like when old strategies take more energy than they used to • The micro-moments Tracy's clients describe when their leadership begins to evolve • How your nervous system guides this transition before your mind catches up • Why your team adapts to your old identity and how they recalibrate as you do • What it truly looks like to return to yourself as a leader • How regulation is about rising to the moment and returning to rest • Why remembering who you are matters more than fixing what you are not

This episode is a soft turning point. A moment of recognition. A breath. A remembering as we prepare for our final conversation of the year.

If you feel the pull to close your year with intention, clarity, and a grounded exhale, I invite you into Your 2025 Closing Ritual. It is a guided space to gather what this year has asked of you, honour your evolution, and meet the woman you have become. Learn more at tracytutty.co.nz/TwithT.

Connect With Tracy

Website: www.tracytutty.co.nz Your 2025 Closing Ritual: www.tracytutty.co.nz/TwithT Instagram: @tracyctutty LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tracytutty/

As the year begins its gentle descent, your body starts preparing for completion long before your calendar does. Yet your mind, especially the part of you shaped by professionalism and responsibility, may still be pushing toward the finish line.

In today's episode, we explore the subtle yet powerful tension between your biology and your identity at this time of year.

You will learn four micro-shifts that help your nervous system, your thinking, and your leadership land in the same place. These are simple, practical and deeply supportive for ambitious women who want to end the year with coherence rather than exhaustion.

Inside this episode, Tracy shares:

• Why your nervous system slows down before your schedule does • How end-of-year decision fatigue shows up even for the most capable women • Four powerful micro-shifts that support clarity, presence and leadership • The role of breath in restoring your split-second decisiveness • How herbs and simple nightly cues deepen completion states • Why your internal state shapes the emotional tone of your team • How to finish the year with a sense of satisfaction rather than depletion

If your body is asking for softness or your mind is craving clearer space to transition into 2026 you are invited to join Your 2025 Closing Experience.

This guided experience blends herbal nervous system support, physiology-informed grounding practices, and neuro-identity reflection to help your system complete the year in a way that feels steady and true.

Join Your 2025 Closing Experience here: https://www.tracytutty.co.nz/TwithT

Connect with Tracy

Website: www.tracytutty.co.nz Instagram: @tracyctutty LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracytutty/

In this Herbal Ally episode, Medical Herbalist, Tracy Tutty, explores one of her favourite seasonal herbs, Milk Thistle (Silybum marianum).

As we enter the season of more, with more celebration, more travel, and more richness, our bodies work quietly behind the scenes to keep us in balance. In this episode, Tracy shares how Milk Thistle supports your liver's incredible capacity to regenerate, process, and protect, helping you stay energised and radiant throughout the festive season.

You'll learn: • The fascinating story behind Milk Thistle's name and its resemblance to Scotland's national emblem • How traditional use evolved into modern clinical understanding of silymarin and why these compounds are your liver's best friends • The science of liver regeneration and why the liver is the only solid organ that returns to 100 percent of normal after injury • The difference between helpful inflammation and the chronic, energy-draining kind, and how Milk Thistle helps regulate the body's response • Safe, effective ways to use Milk Thistle as a tincture, tablet, or tea this holiday season

Tracy blends her medical herbalist insight with practical wisdom for busy, high-performing women who want to enjoy the season without the crash that sometimes follows.

Stay tuned to the end for an invitation to Your 2025 Closing Ritual, a reflective practice designed to help you metabolise the year that's been and prepare your body and brilliance for what's next.

💫 Key Takeaway

Working with your body is an act of self-leadership, and Milk Thistle is a gentle, intelligent way to support that partnership as life gets full.

🎧 Listen to this episode if you:

• Want to enjoy the holiday season without fatigue or overwhelm • Love evidence-based herbal wisdom explained clearly and calmly • Are curious about liver health, hormonal balance, and natural restoration • Value leadership that begins with self-care

📲 Join the 2025 Closing Ritual

As the year comes to a close, join Tracy for Your 2025 Closing Ritual. It's a guided reflection designed to help you metabolise the year that's been and set your body and brilliance in sync for the one ahead. Get $200 off for a limited time with the code coherence.

When calm feels out of reach, it's not a lack of willpower. It's biology. In this episode, Tracy Tutty explores why high-achieving women often equate movement with safety, and how to teach your nervous system that stillness can be safe too. Discover what happens when calm becomes your most valuable currency and how to invest in it without slowing down your success.

Stillness sounds simple, but for many leaders it feels risky. In this episode, Tracy Tutty reveals the hidden economy beneath busyness; how dopamine, oxytocin, and inherited survival wiring keep us trading calm for control.

You'll learn: • Why your body confuses stillness with danger, and how to change that • The subconscious exchange rate between calm, control, and credibility • How to work with your nervous system to restore coherence and clarity • Why calm isn't a luxury; it's capital that compounds • Simple physiological cues to rebuild trust with your body and your brilliance

Whether you're leading a team, a business, or a family, this episode is your gentle reminder that calm was never out of reach. It was simply waiting for you to remember where it lives.

If this conversation resonated, follow Project Joyful, leave a quick review, and share it with a friend who leads with heart and high standards. It helps this calm corner of the internet reach the people who need it most.

Connect with Tracy Tutty • Website: projectjoyful.com

• Instagram: @tracyctutty

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

So, how are you, really?

In this episode of Project Joyful, Tracy Tutty explores what happens when your brilliance outpaces your biology. We look at the subtle ways high-performing women say "I'm fine" while their nervous system is quietly braced for impact, and why rest can feel more like risk than relief.

You'll hear how control masquerades as calm, how adrenaline disguises itself as productivity, and how to begin showing your body that ease isn't earned, it's remembered.

Tracy shares the hidden cost of performing composure, the science behind "I'm surviving" disguised as "I'm fine", and practical ways to restore coherence between your mind, body, and leadership.

If you've ever wondered why slowing down feels unsafe, or why peace only appears once everything is done, this conversation will change how you understand power, rest, and presence.

In this episode you'll discover: • Why your body can look calm while still running on stress chemistry. • The biological link between control and safety. • How over-performance narrows creativity, empathy, and vision. • Practical micro-shifts to retrain your nervous system for sustainable ease. • What leadership looks like when calm becomes your new baseline.

Listen now to decode the illusion of ease and remember what true calm feels like.

Links & Mentions For coaching and upcoming masterclasses, visit tracytutty.co.nz

You don't need a sabbatical - you need a nervous system that trusts your success.

If you've ever felt the quiet edge beneath achievement - the sleepless nights, the inbox brace, the holiday cold that hits the moment you finally stop - this episode is your invitation to recalibrate.

Tracy Tutty unpacks what's really behind high-functioning fatigue and why control feels safe… but isn't the same as being regulated. You'll discover how biology and identity intertwine, why retreats don't create lasting change, and what happens when your nervous system begins to believe that ease is safe.

This conversation isn't about burnout recovery. It's about evolution - from self-regulation to collective regulation. Tracy reveals how coherence in your body becomes safety in your team, and how leading from regulation transforms performance into presence.

By the end, you'll understand: • Why you get sick at the start of your holiday - and what your body's really doing. • How your nervous system learns to equate control with survival. • What "coherence" looks and feels like in real-world leadership. • How servant leadership begins in the body - not the boardroom. • And why your next level of success doesn't require you to push harder - only to breathe deeper.

You get to experience leadership that feels like coherence: sharp, grounded, unshakeably alive.

💎 Work with Tracy

Revitalise - Tracy's private 1:1 Neuro-Identity programme - is now open for enrolment. It's where subconscious re-patterning meets physiological calibration, so your power no longer costs your peace. Apply via the link in the show notes or visit https://www.tracytutty.co.nz/ApplyNow

🔗 Connect with Tracy

Instagram | @tracytutty LinkedIn | https://nz.linkedin.com/in/tracytutty Website | tracytutty.co.nz

In this episode of Project Joyful, Tracy Tutty explores herbal approaches to stimulating GLP-1 - a key metabolic hormone widely known through medications like Ozempic. But there's more to this story than injectables. Tracy explains what GLP-1 does in your body, how it's linked to metabolic syndrome, and how bitter herbs like ginger, chen pi, feverfew, wormwood, and gentian can naturally support GLP-1 activity.

Medical Herbalist, Tracy Tutty, shares the traditional and scientific insights behind these herbs, explains the mechanisms of action (in plain English), and unpacks how your genetic makeup may affect your sensitivity to bitter compounds. This episode offers a refreshing, holistic view of how to support your metabolism, digestion, and appetite without sidestepping science or subscribing to one-size-fits-all solutions.

You'll learn:

• What GLP-1 is and why it matters beyond weight loss

• How metabolic syndrome develops - and its links to menopause and male aging

• What bitter herbs are, how they've been used traditionally, and why they're still relevant

• How compounds in herbs like chen pi and gentian stimulate GLP-1 and support digestion

• Why genetic differences impact how you respond to bitter herbs

• How to work with herbs like ginger, feverfew, and wormwood safely and effectively

Tracy also shares her favourite way to make a fresh ginger tea, the truth about how bitter your herbs really are (with a bitterness index table!), and an invitation to join her free Herbs for Health series.

Resources & Links:

• Sign up for Herbs for Health monthly email series: https://www.tracytutty.co.nz/Herbs4Health

• Learn more about Tracy and her coaching work: https://www.tracytutty.co.nz/WorkWithTracy

Subscribe & Review: If you're enjoying Project Joyful, please follow, rate, and review the podcast. It helps more high-performing women discover how to reconnect with their vitality and lead from a place of deep alignment.

You're brilliant at staying calm under pressure. But what happens when your body doesn't feel calm - even when everything on the outside looks fine?

In this episode, Tracy dives into the neuroscience behind the thought-emotion loop and explores why leading from the neck up is no longer enough. You'll discover how your body feeds your brain critical information, and how ignoring that intelligence quietly drains your energy, clarity, and leadership presence.

We'll unpack the hidden cost of disembodiment, challenge the myth of work/life balance, and show why emotions aren't a liability - they're strategic insight. Tracy also shares how Neuro-Identity Coaching helps high-performing women leaders shift from override to resonance.

What You'll Learn:

• The neuroscience behind how your body communicates with your brain (and why it matters for leadership)

• How subtle signs of fatigue and numbness may be rooted in disconnection, not overwork

• Why your presence is more powerful than your words

• How your nervous system becomes your most trusted leadership technology

• A new definition of success that includes your joy, your clarity, and your body

Resources Mentioned: - Book a call with Tracy: https://www.tracytutty.co.nz/Clarity

If you enjoyed this episode: Please rate and review on Apple Podcasts. It helps more women leaders discover Project Joyful.

Connect with Tracy Tutty: - Website: https://www.tracytutty.co.nz/

• Instagram: @tracyctutty

• LinkedIn: https://nz.linkedin.com/in/tracytutty