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The Hard Way With Joe De Sena

What Smart People Miss Under Pressure: Chitra Nawbatt on EQ, Pivots, and Unwritten Rules

The Hard Way With Joe De Sena

Spartan Races

Self-improvement, Health & Fitness, Education

4.8874 Ratings

🗓️ 30 December 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Being smart won't save you when pressure shows up. Why intelligence fails without discipline, ownership, and the ability to read what isn't written?
CodeBreaker Mindset author, former investment banker, journalist, and venture partner Chitra Nawbatt talks with Joe De Sena about making decisions under stress, voluntary versus forced pivots, and why comfort keeps capable people stuck. The focus is on simple rules, earned judgment, and building discipline that holds when conditions get hard.
 
Things You'll Learn:
  • How to recognize unwritten rules before they cost you momentum
  • How to make decisions under pressure instead of freezing or defaulting to comfort
  • How to build discipline that allows you to pivot before life forces it
Tools & Frameworks Covered:
  • CodeBreaker Mindset: A discipline for reading unwritten rules before they break you
  • Voluntary vs. Forced Pivots: A rule for moving early instead of waiting for failure to decide for you
  • Pattern Recognition Under Pressure: A method for making cleaner decisions when stress and noise increase
 
If this episode moved you, don't just listen. Do something about it. Sign up. Show up. Do the work. Spartan.com. No more excuses.
 
Chitra Nawbatt is a multidisciplinary executive known for building businesses, guiding leaders through high-stakes decisions, and developing the CodeBreaker Mindset framework. Her career spans investing, media creation, and interviewing top leaders on growth, innovation, and resilience. She represents the themes of strategic pressure, personal reinvention, and disciplined mindset transformation.
 
Connect to Chitra Nawbatt:
 

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

The path of least resistance, the status quo is stay inside. It's comfortable.

0:04.0

Status quo is not your friend. Eliminate the ceilings. I'm not saying it's easy,

0:10.4

but you're a force in nature. Don't let the external folks stop your force in nature.

0:16.2

And nobody can put a ceiling on your life unless you allow them.

0:19.6

Spartans, listen up.

0:21.6

We need to sleep better.

0:22.6

How do you sleep better?

0:23.6

Never thought about it before.

0:24.6

And so I met Jack.

0:25.6

I met Ascentia.

0:26.6

I had attention to the mattress to sleep on because it's loaded with chemicals.

0:31.6

Recovery, cooling, and pressure relief.

0:33.6

All in one mattress.

0:35.6

Up to 60% more deep and REM sleep. Less inflammation,

0:40.3

faster bounce back. No toxins, no EMFs, no BS.

0:45.3

My buddy Jack, over at Ascentia, he's kind enough to give us a code for the Spartan community.

0:50.3

That's DECA, that's tough mother of all of us. Use Spartan 25, get a discount, prioritize your sleep

0:55.5

so you can sleep faster, you can do more burpees, you can train more, you can get healthy.

1:00.2

When you sleep well, you live well. Joe DeSenter here, CEO founder of Spartan host or Hardway

1:05.5

podcast, got a buddy of mine, Chitra Nabat. She's from Canada, and she is tough as nail. She's a codebreaker. The CIA

1:14.0

has tried to get their hands on her. I just wrote a book. What's the name of the book?

1:18.6

The cutbreaker mindset, Joe. And thank you for having me. And hello to your global audience.

...

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