Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1402: Good Stress Vs. Bad Stress & How to Know the Difference

Episode Date: October 15, 2020

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin break down different kinds of stress and how to become more resilient to the challenges life throws at us. Why all stress is NOT bad. (2:35) How we NEED stress to adapt and grow. (4:50) The different categories of stress. (7:14) Why balance is SO important. (9:18) How good stress can become bad stress. (10:21) Characteristics that describe “good” stress. (13:53) The characteristics of “bad” stress. (21:11) How our thoughts dictate our feelings. (26:42) How to become aware of good versus bad stress and tips to increase your body’s resilient capacity. (28:07) Are you adapting or getting better? (28:45) Your life experiences. (33:12) Have a strong support network. (36:31) Get better sleep. (38:08) Unplug and detach from your home environment. (39:28) Get out in nature. (41:22) Inject calm exercise and movement into your routine. (43:15) Connect with people in real life. (44:17) Learn to let loose. (45:58) Have a regular mindfulness or spiritual practice. (49:38) Related Links/Products Mentioned October Special: MAPS Anabolic and No BS 6-Pack Formula Visit Four Sigmatic for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code “mindpump” at checkout Stress and the Concept of Control - World of Psychology Control Freak or Healthy Sense of Control? Workout Because You Love Yourself Not Because You Hate Yourself – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #1265: How To Develop A Winning Mindset A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose – Book by Eckhart Tolle Smile: A Powerful Tool Adaptogens 101: What They Are + How They Can Help With Your Stress & Fatigue Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salta Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode of Mind Pump, the world's top ranked fitness health entertainment podcast, we talk all about stress. Now, did you know that stress could be bad, but it can also be good? In this episode, we talk about how to tell the difference between good stress and bad stress, and why stress is necessary for health, for growth, for strength, fat loss, and

for basically anything that you want your body to improve upon requires a certain level of stress. Now, this episode is brought to you by our sponsor for sigmatic. Now for sigmatic makes some of the best mushroom-based supplements that are out there. Many of these mushroom-based supplements are adapted genic herbs that can help improve your body's capacity to handle stress. Thus giving you better results with your workouts, helping you sleep better and just feel better. Overall, even help you balance out your hormones.

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and you're not satisfied, you get a full refund so there's no risk at all for trying these out. In order to get both those programs at that price, go to mapsoctober.com. That's M-A-P-S-October.com. Hey, guys, I think we should do a podcast where we talk about stress, but not necessarily. Not in a stressful way. Not in a way that, you know, and the health space does this really well, right? They'll take a topic and they'll go really, really hard in one direction.

And I think sometimes they can misinform people because, and with stress, it's not necessarily that they're trying to misinform people, but I think the consensus is that all stress is bad. Yeah. That stress is. It's a bad, just like inflammation, all inflammation is bad. Get rid of all of it, you know, stress is bad. Yeah, that stress is bad. It's just like inflammation. All inflammation is bad. Get rid of all of it.

Stress is bad. Get rid of all of it. But we know that not to be the case at all. We know that stress is, it plays an important role in the body. We don't grow and adapt without it. You need it. Exercise, for example, is a stress on the body. I mean, when you look at, like on a,

if you were to take somebody and take them through a workout and appropriate workout, a good workout, one that's right for their body, and you were to test inflammatory markers and markers of stress, just based off of those tests alone, you would be, it would be very easy for you to look at it and deduce and this would be bad for you,

that this is not good because stress just from that perspective looks bad, but it's not that simple. Stress does a lot of good things for the body as well. Well, that's why I think we should talk about the good versus the bad, because this can be confusing. I get clients all the time that would ask this question. And for example, if exercise stress is good, then why not more of it, right?

So, you know, there's a fine line between what is good stress and then when does it cross the line. So, no, this is a good conversation. In fact, I was talking to Cassie the other day and she says, this is a common thing that she gets asked on our back end as far as our customer service and people asking like, well, how much should I push? Or what the guys talked about stress the other day?

And how do I know if I'm doing too much of it or not enough of it? So no, I think this is a really good conversation that we've touched on briefly in some of our questions that we've answered, but we haven't gotten in depth all about stress and the good versus the bad. Yeah, and you, so here's a thing that you need, we need stress in order to get our bodies

and our minds to improve and to strengthen. It's literally the first sign or signal that tells your body to change anything at all. And this has to, this is anything, any kind of change. I mean, all change happens or growth happens from being uncomfortable. Otherwise there's no reason to grow or to change. And this is true with stress as well. We literally need it.

Without stress on the body, we would never get stronger. We would never improve our learning ability. We'd never grow as people. We'd never burn body fat, get more stamina. So you absolutely need it. And avoiding all of it is not the answer to having too much bad stress. I mean, avoiding all stress would be what? Laying in bed all day, having no stimulus, having everything taken care of you and you just literally lay there, that is a terrible place to be.

And it can cause lots of problems. I mean, even you think of the whor medic effect and really that's just describing like, in small doses of the body, has to understand what kind of stress this is, whether it's something you're eating or whether it's something you're eating or whether, you know, it's hot or cold and how the body is going to be able to now navigate through that,

and to be able to kind of introduce it in a way where it starts to understand it, how to overcome it, that's all part of the training process that helps you to get better and to benefit from it. Well, our bodies just want to survive. They just want to survive. So if we don't ever stress them at all, then it's going to adapt in the other direction. It's going to do as little as possible to survive and get by. And so if we're not challenging it and stressing it to adapt and grow and strengthen and improve, then it'll adapt the opposite direction.

Your body will only ever be a strong fit and resilient as it needs to be. It's never going to be more than that. You're only ever as strong as you need to be. Any more than that is a complete waste of energy and resources. And what tells your body how strong you need to be are these stressful signals? Non-stressful signals tell your body it strong you need to be are these stressful signals.

Non-stressful signals tell your body it's fine. That signal tells your body there's no need to change at all. The big problem, because of course there are lots of issues with stress these days. Studies show that the wrong kind of stress or too much stress can do everything from shorten your lifespan to increasing your risk of cancer, contributing to chronic disease, obesity, psychological and psychiatric issues. We know this. We've seen lots and lots of studies on this.

This is why we're doing this episode. But I think it's important that we kind of break down the categories of stress, right? So you have acute stress, which is, you know, happens now, tends to be short, it goes away also very quickly. And then you have these kind of low level chronic types of stress. And if you think about the types of stress that really bother you, like if you were to make a list

of the stressful things in your life that negatively impact your life, they're probably all gonna be under that chronic stress category. It's probably going to be stuff like, oh, my relationship with my spouse or my job or I'm stressed out about finances or the future or I have this illness that's been with me for, you know, 10 years or this pain that's been with me for just one goalie. That's all chronic stress and that's the kind of stress that wears you down.

The acute types of stress, which exercise, if dinner appropriately is more like that, right? Like you go to the gym where you work out for that hour, it's acute stress, and then you stop and rest. That stress signal is gone. Now your body's in the process of adapting, but those chronic levels of stress never give your body the ability or the time to strengthen

because it's under it all the time. Yeah, and I think this sneaks up on people and they don't even realize how much they're carrying with them throughout the day because they've never really done an inventory of items that they experience throughout the day and what really is stressing them out and what things they could either remove or replace with something in their lifestyle that won't keep this

chronic stress that they carry. That leads to problematic issues. This is how white balance is so important. Balance means something different from person to person, but balance allows your body to be able to handle more and more stress. And there are strategies to do this, okay. This is very simple. Number one, a fit, healthy body, a body that's fed well, a body that is trained well appropriately, I should say, with the right amount of exercise, and that gets good sleep, can just handle

more stress. So, you know, and I've said this often times on the podcast, you want to put forward your best version of yourself. The one that is most likely going to be able to handle difficult things that come up, that's going to be able to handle life. And the fit, healthy version of you is part of that.

If you're fit and healthy, and this, and this again, this is backed by tons and tons of studies, but it's also quite obvious. If you're healthy, vibrant, fit, and you have stressful things happen, you're gonna handle it better than if you're not fit, that if you're not vibrant and you're not healthy. Well, this also reminds me of what we talk all the time about,

doing as little as possible to elicit the most amount of change, right? So if you're doing some stress at all, so it would only be considered a stress if you're moving outside of your comfort zone. So my goal is to do, I'm so glad you said that. Yeah, I want to stress my body,

but I want to do it just enough to, it's considered a stress, and I get the response from my body to adapt, change, grow, and prove. But I don't want to over stress it so much that it has an adverse effect to it. And so, you know, when you kind of glazed over the acute stress versus the chronic stress,

it almost sounded like acute stress is always good. And there's a bad side to even acute stress, which would be considered exercise too. So I think it's important that we touch on that. And when we're talking about good and there's a bad side to even acute stress, which would be considered exercise too. So, I think it's important that we touch on that and when we're talking about good and bad is even the good stress can become bad stress when actually not done appropriately. No, and you said something really important that the stress is something outside of what your body's used to or what your body would perceive as normal. So if you're, and we use exercise again as an. So if you're and we use exercise again as

an example, if you're a fit person that works out all the time, a three mile hike may not be perceived as stressed at all. In fact, it may actually be perceived by to your body as stress relieving. Now, if you took somebody who never exercised, who's obese, and you had them do a few mile hike, that could become too much of a stress. Their body's capability and capacity to handle is just, it's overcome and now it becomes a bad stress on that person. So, it's a very, very good point that you made because there's a huge individual variance.

The good news is, you can change your individuality. You can increase your body's capacity to handle these things by controlling controllables, exercise, diet, sleep, or the obvious ones that pop up that you can manipulate to improve your body's capacity. And then here's the other thing about stress. It accumulates, all of it accumulates. So think of it this way. Imagine you have a bucket.

And in that bucket, that bucket represents your capacity to handle stress, okay? All stresses, exercise, lack of sleep, bad diet, a breakup with somebody you care about. I loved one that's sick, lose your job, your traffic, anything at all that could be that your body's perceiving a stress, you fill that bucket up every single time.

It doesn't matter what it is. If that bucket is full, the next thing you put in there could be any stress. It could be something you think is good stress. You'll overflow and cause problems. Now your body's under that chronic stress kind of state. Starts to shut down. Starts to shut down. Stress hormones are elevated for too long, your body starts to break down active tissue

in an attempt to slow your metabolism down so that you have lower caloric requirements, because remember your body's thinking of survival. It's increasing your appetite, you're craving hyperpalatable food to increase your fat storage. That's a nice insurance policy. Your anabolic hormones go down because your body's like, we don't have, to increase your fat storage. That's a nice insurance policy. Your

anabolic hormones go down because your body's like we don't have, we're not in a position to procreate, if you're a woman, your period can stop or you can start to become irregular. And with a man, sperm count goes down to testosterone levels go down. And this is what happens when that bucket, your capacity for stress, is overcome. And the goal is to be able to increase the size of that bucket and there's many, many different ways to do this. So let's talk about good stress. And for the average listener, let's try and list characteristics that describe good stress.

So they have a better understanding of what I'm doing to my body is good or bad for me. Well, first off, it tends to be good stress. So they have a better understanding of what I'm doing to my body is good or bad for me. Well, first off, it tends to be short lived. Now, the type of stress that's placed on you in your body can make it short lived, but there's another part of this, which is how you perceive it. The way you perceive a stress can also make something

that might be normally short lived, all of a sudden become a chronic type of stress. So, for example, a workout could typically be considered short-lived type of stress. Your workout for 30 minutes or so. Well, it's in the same feeling of excitement and anxiety. They're like very much of the same type of response as just a matter of like, how you're looking at it. Physiologically, it's the same, right?

Excitement or anxiety in the body look the same if we were to hook up measurements to you and take your blood and look at hormones. Kind of, they look the same, but it's a totally different mindset. The exercise examples another good one. If you worked out and it traumatized you for some reason, you're not used to the type of workout or whatever, now it becomes something that is no longer short lived.

Now you're thinking about that workout with that bootcamp trainer, you know, hammered you so hard and you never want to go back. So they tend to be short lived, they tend to be intermittent because short lived stress done too frequently, now becomes chronic stress. Right, and this is back to Adam's point

with the programming and this is why it's so important. Even if it seems that exercises the answer to you know, propel you forward. If you're doing too much and too much volume and too intense, it could definitely have the Adversity. It's funny that we we struggle with this when programming or when we're talking about fitness because it's the way we approach almost every other aspect of learning or getting better at in life. Like you just would never throw the whole kitchen sink at yourself trying to study or learn something, right? And you know, so I'll use the analogy all the time about learning a language.

Like, you would never sit down and try and learn another language in, you know, one hour intense intensely or every day for, every day for one hour intensely. Like how you, how you learn or teach the body in almost any aspect is different, but yet when we go to working out, everybody always thinks the more is better. Yeah, you mean the comparison of like doing,

you know, seven hours on one day versus one hour every day? Right. Yeah, type of deal. You'll learn a lot better that way. Absolutely. So spreading it out, make it intermittent, and short lived, those tend to be characteristics of good stress.

Here's a big one. Good stress, a lot of it has to do with your perception and it becomes meaningful. I know people who've gone through some very terrible things in their life and whether it be, they fought cancer and they survived or they lost somebody or they went through a divorce. Something very challenging, but when they come out of it, they reframe it

as a growth period. Wow, I became a different person. This was very meaningful for me. It was very challenging, but it was also very meaningful. You know, it's funny, when I first met my wife, Jessica, she would call some type, she liked to do these adventure-type trips that she would call type two fun.

So in other words, when you're on the trip itself, it's difficult. It's challenging. These hikes that she would put me on were waiting through water and were climbing the side of a mountain. And I'm like, this isn't fun. She goes, it's type two fun because afterwards, you look back on it and you think create memories of it. How great it was.

And she's totally right. It was meaningful. That type of straight now, you know, if it was. And she's totally right. It was meaningful. That type of straight now, you know, if it was traumatic for me and afterwards, I thought about it and I'm like, I never want to go anywhere again. That changes the type of stress and makes it a bad one. But making good stress tends to be meaningful to you when you think back on it. I feel like intentional falls in this category too. Like you intended to do that. Like you go into a trip like that with it. The intention to just reacting. Right. You're not just reacting or it's not just happening to you

where I feel like when you look at bad stress, bad stress is something normally people are not trying to happen. Like you're not intentionally going to happen. You're so right. It's psychologist talk about the sense of control is what it really what it is. So here's a good example, right? Let's say you're at home and you're hot water, heat or broke, you're now forced to take freezing cold showers. Now compare that to one day you read an article on taking cold showers. And a healthy for it is for you and you decide

you're gonna take cold showers. Same exact experience. You're wake up in the morning freezing cold shower One of them you feel forced the other one you feel a sense of control Which one is more likely to be a good stress? Right and which one is likely to be a bad stress So it's that that feeling you can control is a big one and that's why I think things like diet nutrition and sleep Those are such good way good stresses. Well, big part of it is,

I am choosing to do this one. I think the cool part with that too is that you can reframe that as well. Like, if you're in a situation where your water is off, but you know, you want to look at the outcome of it is totally... Maybe there are some benefits to this, you know, maybe like something great is going to happen as a result of this and like it's totally different experience. Well, it comes to mind right away, think of it with a three day fast.

Imagine fasting when you know you have food waiting for you versus fasting because you're fasting in the forest. Total different, total different stress right there, right? You imagine that like food ran out for the next three days? That feels way different than the 32 out of the fast that I did before. Good stress also tends to leave you better off

than you were before. I mean, when you are experiencing bad stress, you tend to think the opposite, right? This is making things worse. This is making me worse off than the way I was before. Whereas good stress, you tend to think of it and look back as, oh wow, this is making me better. I'm feeling a lot better.

I'm a better person as a result. And with that, it's motivating, right? It motivates you to do more of it. Again, it's back to that intent. Like I'm intentionally doing this because every time I do it, I become a better person. Very similar to the story you gave with climbing the hill and waiting through the water.

It's like, you may suck while you're going through but you feel so accomplished afterwards and so that can be very motivating. It's funny too that, you know, it reminds me of studies that I've read on Buddhist monks, and these are like expert at meditation, right? So they're really, really good at centering themselves and perceiving the world differently than the average person. They were doing tests on these Buddhist monks where they were inflicting pain on them,

controlled pain, like shocks and stuff like that. And then they were having the monks rate the level of pain on a scale of think one to five. And consistently, the monks perceived the pain to be far less painful than the average person. And a big piece of that had to do with just their mindset. Totally had to do with their mindset and how they, how they chose to perceive it or how

they train themselves to perceive it. And the stem of that is like control. It's like you, you know, some things that you may not think you have control over to then figure out how to be in the right mindset to then gain some sort of control. It provides that feeling that, you know, I can make me, I can make it through this. Yeah. My body has it has a way, has a, you know, I can make it through this. My body has a way, it's built in that I can figure this out. Well, just talking like this makes me think too, man, what are things like meditation or prayer or whatever term you want to call it,

just being completely present and being aware of what's going on, stress-wise in your life and the ability to reframe it how powerful that can be as far as you could time. Now it might not be super high level stress, but it's there and it tends to be there in the background. And you know a piece of that, if we go a little deeper into that, a lot of it just has to do with your own thoughts. This is why mindfulness practices, which include prayer or meditation, can be so effective because let's say you have, let's say work is, tops, tops, to chatter.

Yeah, imagine work, work is stressful for you, right? You know, most people work eight hours, five days a week, that means that there's a lot of hours that they're not at work. Yet that stress carries with them when they're not at work because they're living in their own mind. Oh, and think about all the things

that we get ourselves caught into. So I've got my cable bill, I've got my cell phone bill, I've got my house bill, I've got all these crazy bills. And then I choose to live beyond my means. And I am constantly living paycheck to paycheck or on credit. And so I'm stressed out. Yet I have an abundance of things that people just 50 years ago did not have. But yet I'm chronically stressed out to make enough work

and money to pay all these things, to have all these things. When in reality, I'm far better off without half of those things than people just 50 years ago. And so that's another one of those things that you've caused this chronic stress to yourself that isn't really, really, there. Absolutely. Another characteristic of bad stress is you use the view it as negative, right?

So I'll use the example of exercise again. And this is just really, it's kind of along the theme of what we're talking about. If you are forced to get up at a bed and work out, let's say you're in a boot camp of some sort, you're a troubled team, so your parents send you off to some crazy military school and they force you to ask to get up and do these crazy workouts and whatever. Your perception of those workouts is pretty negative.

That's probably going to be a bad stress on you. But I choose to wake up every morning and work out really hard. And it's not negative at all, it's actually very positive for me. So your perception of your stress is being negative can tell you that it's a bad stress. Well, another example of that, and you talk about this a lot on this show, is, you know, working out because you hate yourself. Right. You know, going in there and allowing that ends up being a really chronic stress when

you go in and you're constantly hammering the weights, not feeding yourself reasons. Yeah, for the wrong reasons. When it comes from that place, even though you're doing exercise, a lot of times it can have an adverse effect. Oh, I, some of the, some of the people that I've worked with, clients that have hired me that have had some of the worst stress issues were the ones that worked out the most. They were fanatical about it, but not in a good way. Like Adam's talking about, they were, they had really bad body image issues. They were more afraid of what, what, what, how they would look

at they stopped working out rather than looking forward to the work out itself and the positive that it provides for them. Oftentimes their bodies reflected this type of chronic stress. Their bodies held on to body fat. These are the clients that would come to me. I'm working out six days a week now. I'm leading this many calories. I don't know why I can't drop the last 15 pounds.

I don't know why I don't look lean or why whatever. And it's like, okay, we got a lot of things we need to work with. And one of them is, let's take this thing that you've made negative, exercise, and let's see if we can turn it into something that is positive, because that is very much a characteristic of the bad type of stress, that negativity that surrounds it. It also, it demotivates you. It kind of paralyzes you.

It's like, imagine having to speak in front of your class. And rather than that being a good stress, we're like, oh my God, I'm gonna get up. I'm gonna speak in front of this class. And I get to showcase myself and this is challenging. I'm gonna grow for this. Rather than that, it's a bad story. I can't do this.

I can't speak in front of people. Oh my God, I'm so afraid, and you become paralyzed. Yes. Literally freezing. This is one of those things. I mean, to that example specifically was something I had to really work my way through is you have one bad experience.

You judge all the rest of the ones based off of the worst one. And to be able to get that negative self-talk out of that conversation in your own head is work that you have to put in to then repeat that same type of event and have a totally different outcome. And so it was very much dependent on the mindset to be able to kind of get through that and find your way back to making it into a positive.

Right. Bad stress just leaves you worse off than you were before. It doesn't, it's not a signal for your body to improve and strengthen. It becomes a signal to cause your body to hunker down, try to survive, to hide within itself. And so, and the reason why I think we're defining them this way is because there's such a wide variety and variances to what could be good and what could be bad for some people.

You know, in some cases, the same exact stress for the same for two different people, one person, it could be the right kind, it could be very good and the other person, it could be very bad. Now, some things to consider around this, we talked a lot about mindset. This is a huge one. It really is. Chronic stress tends to be, if I could really kind of characterize it, it tends to be about our thoughts, about negative thoughts. It's usually not something that's happening to you all the time. You know what I'm saying? It's not like you're sitting in front of the chronic stress and it's in your face all day long.

I could see that happening in some rare occasions, you're in prison or you live with someone that's really, really terrible, in which case you should separate yourself. But usually it's just this, oh, you know, you're stressing about things, you're thinking about things that in that moment really aren't affecting you.

Mindset, working on mindset, it has a tremendous potential to increase your capacity to handle stress. Spiritual practices are huge with this. And it doesn't, you don't have to, you know, it doesn't have to be this metaphysical belief, although religious beliefs are very effective at doing this. It could literally just be meditation in practicing being present, mindfulness.

A great book to read about this is a new earth by Eckhart Tolly. He talks a lot about being present and mindfulness and finding the peace and mindfulness. And you'll find when you do that, it gives you body a break and your mind a break from the chronic looping stress thoughts that you may be having.

What are some of the things that people can look out for so they can get an idea of like, okay, because here, where I find this conversation challenging is that when that fine line is of, you know, a good stress crosses over and then becomes bad stress. And how do we become aware of when that moment happens? How do I know that I'm definitely giving my body good stress and then at what point does it go over to bad stress and what are some of the signs that my body will tell me or I should look out for to indicate that

this has now become a physical stress or is this mental stress that I'm carrying too? Are you adapting and getting better? I think a good one. So, if exercise, for example, what's the line, the difference between it being good and bad stress? One easy tell-tale way is, I mean, they're improving or I'm not improving or even going backwards.

So, like, if I'm getting stronger and I'm working out and I'm improving my fitness, it's probably in the category of the right kind of stress. Well, I think that works for the mental side too, even what Justin's alluding to. So, you know, a lot of times people, you know, they have failures and they dwell on the failure itself and you don't think about how you've improved as a person.

That's now a new lesson, right? So how you look at a failure is the difference between it being successful or not, right? So if you have a failure or something didn't work out and you just beat yourself up about how you failed and it did work out versus, oh wow, now I know that that's not the way for this. And so I'm a better person now because of that. So how you frame even that matters and how you come out. And so you can improve even on our failures and the mental stresses that you have too. Like, okay, I'm going through something really shiny.

Let's use something, for example, that we've all probably experienced, a death in the family. Like that's always stressful, right? That's nobody likes to lose somebody. But if you learn to look ahead of it, right? And learn to look at the positive things that have happened because of it, maybe it brought your family together.

Maybe you learned about taking your life, taking things in your life more seriously because you don't know how long you'll have it. If you learn to reframe that this awful situation that we can all agree nobody likes, turned you into a better person, then it's a positive thing. If you feel sorry for yourself and you get stuck in the loop, it can become a negative stress. You got to give it meaning. Yeah, because it's, when bad things happen and there's no meaning behind it, it can become a negative stress. You gotta give it meaning. Yeah, because it's, you know, when bad things happen and there's no meaning behind it, it's just a bad thing. When bad things happen and there's meaning behind it, that means that there's some positive,

now that you've attached. As weird as that sound, it's totally true and it's proven. Life, go ahead. Yeah, well, I was just gonna bring it back to like that whole, the, you know, the mental and then the physical. I just see that in the demeanor, you know, in the posture. That's something that, if there was something that was a failure, you're really beating yourself up about it.

Like a lot of times you're gonna carry that in your body in the way that you interact with people, the way you sit, the way you stand. And it's something that if you, if you can catch yourself in that and really see yourself and your posture and how you're presenting yourself and then start altering it, maybe that's, maybe sometimes it's adjusting your body that's going to bring you back into a good mental state or vice versa. Well, I think that actually has a lot to do with why people do feel so good after exercise.

I think if you are like someone who's been down and that's a common advice, right, like go work out, go, I think there's the mental aspect of improving yourself, if there's also that low level stress, but then there's also the physical part of that of doing some seated rows and doing these exercises that hold you upright, right? Send all this blood and fluid into these muscles, you get all pumped up, your chest is up high, you stand upright. So there's that physical side of exercise that can help that point too, Joe.

It tells your body, you're actually sending, because your brain perceives outside signals as well and reads them. And so let's say you're feeling down or whatever, and you get up and you kind of make yourself move and exercise. Now your body, your brain is receiving these signals. Oh, we're moving.

You know, we're flexing muscles, we're being active. I guess we don't need to feel so down. It's like, have you guys read the studies where the people will hold the pencil in their teeth? I was just gonna bring that up about, like, because it emulates smiling, right? Of course, you do smile. So the more you practice that, actually, it try not to be happy after doing that.

Try this experiment. I do this with my kids. I was talking to my kids about how our outside demeanor can tell our inside how it should feel. Just like our inside can tell us how our outside should look and feel. So if you're sad on the inside, oftentimes you'll display, you know, a frown or a sad look, but I told my kids, you know you can kind of trick your body in saying the signal in the reverse and so that we were going back and forth. I tell you what. I said, I want you guys right now for the next 15 seconds to pretend laugh and I guarantee you'll start laughing. And sure enough, they did. They did the fake laugh and before they knew it, they started laughing for real. And I don't know if that's, you know, a viable scientific experiment, but it did prove my point to the kids. Here's one, your life experience. This is something that I think you should consider

in terms of your capacity to handle stress. So I'll tell a story. It's a good example. So our power went out not that long ago. We're here in California and notoriously our energy here is terribly managed and we'll have these rolling blackouts, right? Well, they'll black out certain neighborhoods or whatever. Because it's our fault. Yeah.

Now, I hate this. I cannot stand when this happens. If it's going, when it goes out, I'm like, oh my god, I'm so pissed off. We got to worry about the food and the fridge and our phones charge. And I'm like, oh my god, I'm so pissed off. We gotta worry about the food in the fridge and our phones charge and I'm like, I don't know what to do. And now when the lights power goes out,

Jessica is like, this is fun. Let's light some candles, let's get some blankets. It's gonna be like, we're camping, we're having a great time. And so I remember I had this conversation with her, I'm like, why do you get excited when the power goes out? I get so pissed off and anxious and you get all excited and she goes, well, she goes, I grew up very poor and oftentimes our power was shut off. And my life experiences makes the power going out, not that big of a deal to me. For her, she's used to it. Wasn't that big of a deal and she made the best of it. For me, my power never went out, growing up, and so when it goes out, I'm like, I'm freaking out.

Also makes me think of view Adam. Very few things will rattle Adam and stress him out. And he always harps it back to the way he grew up. And he's like, if I could grow, I handled so much stuff growing up that, stuff thrown at me now is not that big of a deal. Consider that for yourself. So your life experience may make some things

more stressful for you than other things. Physical labor is a good example. I could throw the most difficult, strenuous physical labor at someone like my dad. I could throw all kinds of stuff at him. And although he gets physically tired, doesn't really stress him out because the guy's been, he grew up a poor Sicilian

and then as an immigrant came here as a kid and your physical labor, he grew up doing it nine years old. So to him, it's not that big of a big. He doesn't navigate through the whole thing. Yeah, for me, it's like my hands are hurting and I'm getting blisters and it's a totally different stress, you know?

This is, I mean, you've already alluded to the spiritual practice again, but I think of it too. Like, you know, this is because it just happened not that long ago, Katrina and I are driving in the car. And this is why I mean, you've already alluded to the spiritual practice again, but I think of it too like, you know, this because it just happened not that long ago. Katrina and I are driving in the car and this is why I think it helps right because you believe that there's a greater purpose, right? So those that have some sort of spiritual belief they believe there's a greater purpose in their life and I was we were heading off somewhere and you know, we got stuck in traffic. So we're gonna be late. And instantly the reaction to me is to be frustrated or pissed off, and Katrina always does this to me,

because it's not the first time this has happened our relationship and every time it wakes me up, right? And she's like, oh, I'm so glad we're running late. Like, I'm so glad we're stuck in this traffic or what if that, and I'm like, I look at her like sideways all the time. We probably were gonna get hit in an accident or something, if we were on time.

You know, it's a great way to look at it. No, it always makes me chuckle and smile and laugh and think, but it's like, I mean, who knows, right? And if you just had, and that just that switch of taking something that feels so stressed out, we're gonna be late. Oh my God, is it really gonna be the end of the world? Actually, the end of the world might have happened if I was on time.

I might have got hit by a semi if we were on time crossing the other path. So being able to reframe that makes such a big difference in how you perceive that stress. You know, you're actually bringing us to the next point. Studies show that your support network, I mean, you talked about Katrina. She's obviously strong support for you. Having a good support network can dramatically increase your capacity to handle challenging and stressful situations.

Just having people you can talk with, people you feel supported by, you know, it's funny, if I'm going to do something that I'm worried about or stressed out about, maybe it's a big podcast or interview or maybe I'm doing, you know, at the moment I'm writing a book and I'll be stressed out about hearing my wife say the following I got your back no matter what Immediately reduces my stress and fear around what I'm doing Dramatically automatically feel more powerful just from hearing those those words So your support network makes a huge huge difference and if you don't have good relationships around you That maybe something that you might want to consider fostering,

because it does make you far more resilient. Yeah, one of the worst things, and this is something again, to kind of bring it back to what I've been kind of working on, is just not internalizing all these things and running it through your own mind and trying to play it all out. It's really like discussing it and being open and it exposes things.

It makes you vulnerable. And so a lot of times that's a deterrent for people to relieve themselves of all these internal problems and things. They think they're facing by themselves, but if you can make it so you're not facing it by yourself and you have somebody, you can fight in and you can tell them things. It's definitely, that's a big weight that you're relieving. Now, let's talk a little bit more

about ways you can increase your ability to handle stress. The first one that comes to mind for me, this is an easy one. That's why it's the first one that comes to mind is to get better sleep, get good and better sleep. Now, I'll give you an example. If I start to feel like I'm under the weather, I can almost always

not get sick simply by going home and Making sure I get really really good, you know, eight to nine hours of sleep that night lack of sleep dramatically reduces your ability to handle stress. I could see this in my kids My goodness if my kids have bad sleep My daughter will freak out the next day over stuff. That's not that big of a deal. My goodness, if my kids have bad sleep, my daughter will freak out. The next day over stuff that's not that big of a deal. My son is irritable. I'll feel the same way. This is just a very easy black and white thing for yourself. If you just

prioritize sleep, if you have a sleep routine, so an hour before bed, you turn off your lights or you wear blue light blocking glasses, you make sure you go to bed at the same time every night, wake up at the same time every morning, give yourself eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, have a nice cool bedroom that's blacked out. Just doing that very simple black and white thing will make a big difference in terms of how your body can handle it. I feel like part of the reason why that is so important

is not just the sleep and the recovery piece but it's just, and it's your next point, which is just being detached and doing something that's calming. Obviously, when you sleep, you're extremely calm. But I just think that it highlights the importance of that today. Like, I love Katrina and I are really good about this

where we get away from the house, because at home, even if we're off, right? It's not a work day. Having your own business, one of the greatest things about it is that you have the luxury of kind of doing it at your pace whenever you want. One of the drawbacks of it,

sometimes it's hard to shut it off. It's always on your mind. It's always on your mind. And so one of the things that I have to do is just remove myself from the normal work environment or places that I would work at, which is home a lot of times. So, you know, us taking off, that's where we go to the beach all the time.

Like, when I go there, like, the phone gets put away, we're in the moment, like, that what that does for any sort of stress, whether it's good, bad, chronic in my life is unreal. What a difference. I get this full recharge every single time that I do that. And some people just don't put this in their life as a, they don't, they don't think they have the time for it. And so they neglect doing it.

What they don't realize is that if they would learn to integrate that into their lifestyle, it would supercharged all the other times that they're on. Oh, dude, studies are clear on this. That when people have extra money to spend, they get way more out of experiences than they do out of things. So in other words, rather than buying extra clothes, designer shoes, new electronics,

saving that money and then going on a vacation or a trip, like Adam's talking about, way more valuable, and then going on a vacation or a trip, like Adam's talking about, way more valuable. It's way more valuable. Those distractions or designer clothes or whatever, they don't really improve your body's ability or your mind's ability to handle stress, but getting away for a little bit

makes a huge difference. Yeah, I know this one's not on the list at all, but I really feel that people are just attached from nature in general And and we're always trying to recreate that with white noise and noises and you know a little tiny little gardens in their house And all this stuff and it's just this like little artificial version of what's already beautiful and it's out there And of course sometimes it's not accessible for everybody so so I get that. But like if you're just out there, you know, taking it all in, you're getting sun, you're in fresh air, a lot of times for me, that's why I feel small when I'm, you know, around big, huge trees.

There's something to that, but it's definitely a calming stressor. Was it Jim Quick that we did the interview with that kind of discussed as I can't remember who we were doing an interview with, but when they talked about, and I think this is such an important conversation into your point, Justin, today is, we don't think about the red light, the honking horn, the notifications going off your phone, the fucking person screaming at the Trump supporter

across the street, you get the no-mass person freaking out, like you get all the no mass person freaking out, like you get all this, all that counts of stress. Yep. And so if your entire day is filled with a bunch of short moments like that, even though it didn't, you don't feel it on your body, it's you're getting stress or fire that you in. Yeah, you're taking all that in,

and I think we just have more of that today than we've ever had. I'm sure we're not like stressing the way our great grandparents did, right? Were they going to be able to eat or a whore or some crazy shit like that? But what we've replaced that with instead of the big scare, the line jumps out of the bush and almost kills a scare back in the, you know, 1900s, right? Now instead we have this fucking constant hitting us all day long. Yeah, it's unplugging.

Umplugging, this is going in nature. I think part of the reason why it's so good for you and calming is because you tend to unplug when you're out in nature. There's exercise that I consider to be stresses on the body that push your body to adapt. And then there are movements and ways of moving that I consider to be calming.

By the way, injecting calming exercise or movement into your routine doesn't necessarily mean it won't help you build muscle or burn body fat, because I know there's some people listening like I don't want to waste time doing that, I have goals. Actually, if you use them to help balance your body out, they will actually help you build muscle and burn body fat.

These things are mobility. Mobility exercise oftentimes is calming, if you do it in a way that is calming. Yoga, static stretching, easy walks or hikes can be very calming. You're not out there necessarily getting a workout. In fact, you shouldn't be getting a workout if you're doing it for the calming reasons.

You go out and you just take a stroll or do some stretching on your own in a dark room and you'll notice that that helps balance out some of those other, you know, higher, those stresses on the body that can start to accumulate. And the next one, here's a good one, connect with people. Now, you know, this one, I know it sounds obvious, but I'm gonna be a little bit more specific, connect with people in real life. I think we, because electronics and technology has made it easy for us to contact people and to hear from people that we consider that connecting,

and I guess that can be better than nothing, but it still doesn't compare. It really doesn't. Yeah, and two, those conversations a lot of times, like you could be totally reading the conversation a different way than was intended in their delivery. And there's always, you know, that part of it where you're trying to kind of think for the person,

instead of just being in front of the person, and you get it, like you're getting all the body language, you're getting all the eye contact, you're getting their inflection. All these things, there's a lot more to communicating with somebody than just the words that are being spoken. Well, it falls in line too with the unplugging and disconnecting from everything. I mean, there's a part, when I'm sitting down and, you know, Sal and I are up at the Tahoe

House and we're having a deep conversation about whatever. We're completely detached from all those other distractions. Where if you and I were texting on our phone, I could be, we're still receiving an onslaught of other things at the same time, which by the way, we're all very guilty of doing when we communicate with other people via text or via Facebook or Instagram is multitasking.

And so something that is technically supposed to be really positive because you're connecting, could actually be negative because you're also being distracted or taking on other stresses at the same time. Totally. Now another thing you can do is learn to let loose a little bit. And this one's a little bit more, I think, important for the super fitness fanatics or the type A,

type A, well dogmatic exercises. Yeah, all I do is work, or all I do is work out, and I eat perfect all the time. Letting loose has, can have tremendous health benefits. Like, look, if you're, if you have a really bad relationship with food in the sense that you have to eat perfect all the time, Everything has to fit your macros, everything. Sometimes just eating for pleasure, boy, can that be a positive experience? Like, okay, this isn't fit my macros,

this is too high calorie, but I'm sitting with friends and I'm enjoying a slice of pizza. Well, it's just really, it's just not punishing yourself all the time. You know, again, that's just gonna reinforce when you're actually are working out that you're working out with the wrong intentions. Like I'm still somewhat punishing myself and I'm not allowing myself any of this pleasure

and this stuff over there without any flexibility, it just becomes tyranny. Right. This is where appropriate use of alcohol or even cannabis can come into play. Of course, both those things can be abused and can start to be used to distract you from things in real life. But occasionally, I'll tell you what, sitting with a group of friends, especially if you're a hardworking individual

and you're always on point and everything's good and now we're sitting around each other and we're enjoying a glass of wine and just relaxing and talking or having a glass of wine with your spouse and watching a good movie, that kind of letting loose can help balance out that stress seesaw to where maybe it's too high

on the chronic and too much stress aspect. Now I'm kind of letting a little bit stay up. I feel like the reason for that is because it helps you disconnect a bit, right? I mean, that's one of the things that... It disinhibits you. Right, so that's one of the things that I loved about cannabis and that's why I think I became somebody who used it as I got older, right? I mean, that's one of the things that... It disinhibits you. Right. So that's one of the things that I loved about cannabis, and that's why I think I became somebody who used it as I got older more than I did when I was younger. And that

is, you know, to me, it's, I'm not a big alcohol drinker, right? So to me, that's like my glass of wine occasionally where it's like, I got a lot of stuff going on in my head. I know that my body needs to decompress, needs to shut down for a little bit, needs to put all that stuff to the side and just relax. One of the easiest ways that I can get me into that state is by doing that. And so I think learning how to use it as a tool like that and then not abusing and letting it control

and dictate your life is how you manage that from becoming and also it's stressful. Now there are herbs and compounds you can take that are known as adaptogenic. This in the category of adaptogenic supplements or herbs or plans. The reason why they're called adaptogenic is they've been observed in studies to literally improve and increase the body's capacity to handle stress. In other words, you know, it creates a bigger bucket.

Yeah, exactly. Let's say you take somebody and you have them trained for two hours and we look at their cortisol and their stress response and all that stuff, then you have them take an adaptogenic mushroom, for example, like cordiceps. Cordiceps is a good example. And you'll notice that the stress response is lower,

like their capacity has increased. Now these, like all supplements, they will not replace, you know, having a good mindset and getting good sleep and a good diet. But when you add them to those types of things, they do have an impact. They do improve your body, you know,

Rishi, for example, Rishi Mushroom can do this as well. It just increases your body's capacity to handle stress. I noticed for me personally, when I supplement regularly with some of these compounds, I can work out harder and get better results. My body can handle more exercises as a good example. And then of course, we mentioned the spiritual practices. You know, this one's funny because I'll mention this one and sometimes I'll get DMs and people like, well, I don't believe in whatever. This takes many, many different forms, but the studies are clear on this.

People who have a regular practice of some sort, whether it's mindfulness or spiritual practice or religious practice, they just handle stressful events much better. And I think it has to do with, and this is what all the articles I've read and studies I've read, point to is that it attaches meaning to things and it gives a sense of

Purpose to difficult things. I think that makes the biggest difference of all. For sure. Look, Mind Pump is recorded on videos as well as audio. Come check us out on YouTube. You can also find all of us on Instagram. You can find Doug the producer at Mind Pump Doug. Justin at Mind Pump Justin, me at Mind Pump Salon Adam at Mind Pump Adam. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at Mind Pump Media dot com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballad, maps for performance and maps aesthetic.

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