Shownotes
On Inner Peace, Better Health, hosted by Nazish, this conversation with Debra Bowers explores how emotional regulation shapes every decision you make.
This episode is for leaders, founders, and professionals who feel the pressure to stay composed while navigating uncertainty. You’ll walk away with a clearer understanding of how your thoughts influence your emotions—and how mastering that connection can transform your leadership, communication, and daily life.
About the Guest:
Debra Bowers is a leadership, marketing, and sales culture strategist, founder of Hexagon Media, and host of the Deals with Heels podcast. She helps leaders build growth through clarity, psychology, and human behavior.
Episode Chapter:
00:00 – Introduction to Emotional Regulation in Leadership
03:20 – Early Career Insights and Leadership Disconnect
08:10 – Personal Turning Point: Loss, Change, and Awareness
14:25 – What Emotional Regulation Really Means
20:40 – How Leaders Lose Power Through Emotional Reactivity
26:15 – Practical Tools: Meditation and Self-Dialogue
32:00 – Closing Reflections on Inner State and Decision-Making
Key Takeaways:
- Emotional regulation is not suppression—it’s conscious awareness
- Your thoughts shape your emotional responses and decisions
- Reactivity often comes from unresolved past triggers
- Small daily practices (like 5 minutes of stillness) create long-term clarity
- Self-awareness strengthens leadership, communication, and trust
How to Connect With the Guest:
Website: https://hexagonmedia.net/
Podcast: Deals with Heels (available on all platforms)
LinkedIn: Debra Bowers
Free resource: Human Sales Playbook
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Transcripts
00:00:07 nazish: Every single day, leaders make decisions. Big ones. Small ones. The ones that affect other people's lives and livelihoods. And the most of the time we assume those decisions are being made from a piece of logic and strategy. But what if the quality of every decision we make is actually determined by something much more internal, something happening in the body and the nervous system long before the mind gets involved. And what if the most important leadership skill isn't what you know, but how regulated you are when you show up to lead?
00:00:44 nazish: So welcome to Inner Peace, Better Health, where we explore the deep connection between how we feel inside and how we show up in every area of our lives. I am your host, Nazish, and today I am joined by someone who brings a rare blend of strategic clarity human depth to this conversation about leadership. Deborah Brouwers is a leadership, marketing and sales Cultural strategist, the founder of Hexagon Media and the host of a long running podcast, Deals With heels. She works with business owners, executives and revenue leaders to build growth rooted clarity, psychology, and human behavior without the hype and without the hustle. Deborah, I'm really glad to have you here.
00:01:35 Debra Bowers: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited for our conversation.
00:01:40 nazish: Likewise, before we begin, listeners, some statements reflect personal belief and experiences and are presented as individual views, not medical advice. Listeners should consult qualified professionals for medical conditions.
00:02:01 nazish: So, Deborah, you have spent a long time at the intersection of leadership, psychology, and human behavior. Before we get into ideas, I'd love to know what drew you there personally. Like, was there a moment in your own career where you realized that the inner world of a leader matters just as much as this strategy or this skill set?
00:02:25 Debra Bowers: Thank you. Um, I think, you know, I noticed a disconnect early on in my career that oftentimes, even as a young woman, it felt as though decisions were being made at the top that didn't feel logical sometimes. So I felt the pain of it. I guess to a certain extent, as those leadership decisions trickle down to the employees where I was and I started my career in sales, and then and then went into marketing and understanding how to communicate with somebody on an individual level from a sales perspective was really important. And you know, when you're in corporate world, you go to lots of different classes to teach you different things. They often will have ongoing training, and we did several different ones for the personality tests and personality types and disc and all the different things. And as I went through those classes, I saw things from a different perspective than just getting along with my coworkers. I saw them from the perspective of how that affects marketing and how it affects decision making that people make and how they buy things. And as I grew in my corporate world, jobs, I and you change companies and then you have a whole new set of all of their training that they go through. And I really found that it reinforced what I had already learned. And My experiences led me to want to have a deeper understanding. And I really am a nerd and a lifelong learner. And when I'm interested in something, I want to know everything there is to know about it. And so as I found some success with buying personalities, I wanted to dive deeper. And so that really understanding marketing and how people buy things to make it easier for salespeople and make it easier for us to build demand in marketing and media became a really big focus of me because it helped me do my job better. And I'm that overachiever, perfectionist. I wanted to do everything as best as I could. And so when I saw how that interacted in that way, then it made a really profound impact on how I viewed connecting with other people and the importance of it.
00:05:17 nazish: Thank you so much for sharing that with us. It was such a beautiful journey that you shared with us, and it says a lot about you. It says a lot about what all you have done, and it says a lot about everything that we that that sets the tone for this conversation. You know, Deborah, I want to ask you that, you know, let's start with something that I get misunderstand a lot, especially in business context, emotional regulation, because when most people hear that phrase, they might picture someone meditating or journaling, like not a CEO in a boardroom or a sales leader on a quarterly call. So in the world you work in, what does emotional regulation actually mean and why does it belong at a leadership table?
00:06:04 Debra Bowers: You know, the first thing I didn't really learn my own emotional regulation on a deep level until I started my life over. In my fifties, I was faced with a significant amount of grief, loss of a marriage. My children had all left the nest, and then my mother died, and I was triggered by everything that happened around me. Everything made me upset. Um, if I said something online, posted something and it generated conflict, I would delete the whole post. I had no emotional regulation at all. Everything upset me and I guess I had some because I had been meditating for quite some time at that point. And so you accidentally get emotional regulation when you meditate because it it helps you calm your inner nervous system and, but getting it for real, getting it to a point where I don't want to feel this way. I don't want to feel out of control. I want to feel like I can logically think through a decision and not be controlled and influenced by how I feel about what's happening around me. And because it makes you feel really out of control. Once I got that, then it was like, oh, now I can see how all of it comes together with the buying personalities and emotional regulation and connecting with others and how important it is to be able to be neutral. Right. A lot of people think emotional regulation is just shoving the the emotions down or setting them aside so that you can make a decision. And it's really not. It's about being able to stay true to myself without allowing external influences to affect me emotionally. And what really grasped me was listening to a lecture from Sadhguru. He it impacted me about three years ago. I listened to this and I said, that's how I want to be. And I'd been practicing some, but I hadn't gotten to this level yet. And what he said was, you know, we only have control over one thing. And that's our thoughts and our thoughts control our emotions. Everything else can be we can be forced into doing something physically. We can be held captive. We can do all kinds of things. Other people influence us. But when we control our thoughts now, we also control our emotions, right? Because those are all generated from our thoughts. And he said, when you allow yourself to be affected emotionally from what somebody else says. Then you've given your only power away. You handed it to another person who didn't ask for it and doesn't want it. You just felt emotional about something. So you gave that power away to them. And that had such a big impact on me when I thought about it. It's no matter what kind of chaos is happening around me in business or in personal, but in the professional world, no matter what's happening in my business, whether it's revenue loss, whether it's a competitor attacking me, whether it's customers with problems, whatever it is, I can't let them let them have control over my emotions. I have to remain neutral and myself so that I can process it without giving that power away. And in some gurus he goes, I'm not letting giving anyone the power to freak me. Right? And so that's what it feels like when you allow yourself to be overrun with emotions, when you're trying to make a rational decision, that's good for your company, that's good for your employees, and it's good for you personally and your customers. So that had a really big effect on me and how I was going to move forward and make decisions. And now if you look at the way leaders lead and lots of things can affect that, right? Sometimes if you're a leader of a big corporation, you're not making a decision. You don't feel inclusive in making that decision. And you might it might be contrary to what your ethical values are. For example, you may be forced to lay people off and let people go. And that violates your personal ethic of taking care of people and giving people opportunity to succeed. You don't have control over that decision. So now there's this friction and disconnect and you feel emotional about it. And if you let that take control now, you're making poor decisions in how you communicate that message and to the team that remains and for yourself. Right. You have decisions you are in control of. So now you're upset about about the friction and the conflict, and you're making decisions from a point where your subconscious is in control and you're not consciously thinking things through clearly. And when that happens, leaders fail and their teams fail because of it.
00:11:48 nazish: You have explained everything so beautifully for all our listeners because you answered so much without, you know, making it so difficult for us to understand. And that blind spot is so real and so costly. Like a leader can have the best strategy in the world. But what if they're showing up reactive, contracted, or operating from an unexamined emotional state? It really ripples through everything. And the way you mentioned that when you when you shared your personal story about yourself, that was so beautiful. Thank you so much. It gives a lot of motivation to a lot of listeners here tonight.
00:12:31 Debra Bowers: I hope so, because emotion, being able to maintain neutral in a highly charged situation and conversation is critical to you handling it well and coming out of it unscathed.
00:12:48 nazish: Absolutely. You know, I think leaders are often rewarded for decisiveness, for confidence, for projecting certainty even when they don't have it. But it sounds like what you are describing requires something quite different, a kind of internal honesty, self-awareness that doesn't always feel comfortable, but it feels something that you should do. And because that awareness is going to take you a long way. So how do you help leaders build that capacity without making them feel like that authority is being undermined? Because one thing that leaders love is authority.
00:13:25 Debra Bowers: Mhm. Well, yes, they worked really hard to get to that authority.
00:13:30 nazish: Absolutely. They should have it.
00:13:32 Debra Bowers: And, you know, a lot of leaders these days don't believe that their that their corporation, the company they work for is making good strategic decisions. Only about twenty five percent in a study by Harvard and by McKinney and LinkedIn All said, about twenty five percent think that the strategic decisions being made by their company are sound. So it kind of starts with that where you see that there's a problem. But to really get emotional regulation within yourself, that's a whole nother thing. Because when you get triggered emotionally, your subconscious takes control. You're not choosing to be emotional. It's just happening. And when that happens, you're in fight or flight. You don't realize that you are. So take understanding. When I feel that way and being able to check myself, okay, I'm losing. I'm really emotional about this. My inner dialogue steps in and says, okay, what's happening? Are you feeling this way because of what's happening? Or are you feeling this way because you're triggered by something else that happened in your life years ago? Often those emotional triggers and that lack of emotional regulation is something that has been with us for a long, long time where when we did express ourself or show emotion, we were told not to. And in America, let's face it, especially, men don't show emotions. Be a man, be strong. Reject emotions all the way. And when you do that, you can't contain that indefinitely. That bag fills up that you're carrying around with all of that unexpressed emotion, and it'll eventually bust open. And it typically does it at a very big friction point where you're having to handle something. And now that bags full and there's no more room to set it aside. So for me, starting when I have someone that I'm that I'm coaching or doing consulting or even just a marketing client and they're struggling with making those decisions. It's always about, for me, taking a step back, disconnecting from everything. And I'm not talking about for days. Let's start easy five minutes a day, no screens, no videos, no music, nothing. No input at all. And when you first do that, your mind just races. And lots of people will say, I can't meditate because I can't clear my mind. Well, a human with a clear mind is in a coma. You can't clear it completely. That doesn't that's not realistic. But the reason your mind's racing when you finally stop everything and you're sitting in the quiet is because all of those things have been waiting to be heard. They couldn't be heard because you kept filling with input and ingesting more information. And that's true. Or now than ever with social media and video and all of the content that we ingest continually, all day long and, and all night long for many people. So shutting all of that off gives your own internal thoughts and processes room to finally be heard. So when I first started meditating, I would listen to this guru, I think his name was Sri. And he would say, and if the thoughts come, let them come. I take that a little bit further and say, when they come, let them come because they're going to come. You haven't slowed down enough to even understand what your internal dialogue is. You haven't listened to it. So start slow five minutes a day and none of that will be cleared in five minutes. You won't have big epiphany in five minutes. But if you do that every single day. After about a week to ten days, you'll realize you've been sitting fifteen minutes because now you're actually thinking about some of those things that pop into your mind. Now your real thoughts and emotions can come forward, and you can start to have more control over them and not be so reactive. For me, a big part of emotional regulation is meditation. When I'm off my daily practice, it affects me and I, I recognize it immediately. Oh, wow. I'm like snapped at that person for no reason at all. Right. Because in a leader or even in your daily life, a lack of emotional regulation comes out as irritability. Snapping at somebody, reacting in a way that you would not normally react, um, uh, honking at people on the highway being really wound up and upset without a reason to feel that way. So daily meditation practice. The coolest thing about that is you don't have to think about any of those things that upset you. It's not a time for you to think about any of it. You just sit and take back control by just sitting quietly. And over time, you notice I'm not snapping at people that I did not react to that the way I normally would. Then I took it another step further. And I have an internal dialogue. And if you struggle with having that internal dialogue, some people can do it. I recommend, especially if you're being critical of yourself, right? Part of that emotional regulation is, is within yourself and how you talk to yourself. And it also. So if you're being specifically hard on yourself, which was something that I struggled with and, and often do today as well, I'll lean into the, oh, you should have done that yesterday. Oh, you shouldn't have talked to them this way. So if I'm starting to be really critical of myself, I have this photograph of myself from the first grade. I think I'm about six years old, maybe in this picture. And I remember it's my school photo and I remember that dress. And so if I'm going to be hard on myself, I'm going to say it to her because that's incredibly difficult to do. Looking at your younger self and tell her she's awful for procrastinating or that you shouldn't have done it that way. But also, when you're healing yourself and you're saying, gosh, I shouldn't have snapped at them, what caused me to do that? If you talk to that photo now, you can have a real conversation with yourself without judgment, because you're not going to judge that sweet version of yourself. She doesn't deserve that. And guess what? Neither do you. So for me, that's very helpful. I have that internal dialogue of somebody. Maybe someone said something. It might be a friend of mine that posted something or said something, and I have this weird feeling of anxiety. Or maybe I'm irritated at them. And I, I actually say, you know, you know, you're not irritated at that person. You love that person. What they're doing is fine. It doesn't have anything to do with you or your day to day life. So why do you feel this way? I rarely know the answer when I ask it, but asking it makes my body and my conscious mind take control and go, you know what? You're right. And then I feel better about it. I talk myself out of it in a way. And that's what works for me. Other people are good at journaling when they feel that way. They write all of that out, and you can kind of get an essence of how you're feeling. But what it really is, is letting your conscious mind take back control. Because when you're emotionally triggered, your, your subconscious is in control. You're making all kinds of decisions without thinking about it. You're ranting at people, you're irritated at people, and that's not you in control. That's not you deciding to be that way. No one decides, you know what I mean? So for me, that's what works. And I think finding what it is for you will be helpful.
00:22:21 nazish: And you know, this happens to most of us. I there is something going on with us. And then we snap at people and then we feel guilty about it that, oh my God, why did that do that? This is so true. This is something that that just feels home right now. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. So Deborah, before we wrap, I want to ask you for my listeners who want to explore your work, connect with you or find the and find the deals with Hughes podcast, where is the best place for them to go?
00:22:55 Debra Bowers: Um, the deals with heals podcast is available on all platforms. So wherever you're listening to this one, we are there. Uh, you can find it on all of those and on YouTube. Uh, the best way to learn about, um, more about my services is at hexagon media dot net or on LinkedIn. And I have a free resource for people that want to take it a little bit, step further and learn a better way of connecting with people and selling or building their business. And it's called the Human Cells playbook. And it really is a guide to teach you how to connect with other people and sell without feeling salesy. And, uh, it's got lots of little, uh, exercises in you to help you relax. And I think most people would find that valuable, even if they're not selling or an entrepreneur.
00:23:52 nazish: Absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. I will make sure to include all these details in the show notes so that a lot of people can listen to our podcast and your podcast because you talk amazingly and is so beautiful to have you here. Debra, thank you so much. And you know, if there is one thing that I am gonna take from this conversation that the quality of your decision is inseparable from the quality of your inner state and learning to regulate yourself, to know what's driving you before you act isn't just a soft skill, it is the skill. It is the one that makes every other skill works better.
00:24:32 Debra Bowers: That is a fact, my friend. Everything that you said, that is a fact. It is the truth that it is changes your life. If you can control that one thing, you will do everything else better.
00:24:46 nazish: Deborah, thank you so much for bringing both the rigor and the humanity to this conversation that I think so many leaders need to have them with themselves and to everyone listening. If today's conversation gave you a moment of honest recognition, I hope you will stay with it because that recognition is the beginning of something. I am Nazish and this has been inner peace, better health. And until next time. Lead from that inside out. It changes everything for you.
