Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 196: Stress Better, Modupe Akinola

Episode Date: July 17, 2019

We all encounter stress, but what we sometimes overlook is that stress can be useful, it is, after all, built into us by evolution. Our guest this week teaches how to distinguish between good and bad stress and how to make it work for us. Modupe Akinola is Associate Professor of Management at Columbia Business School where she conducts research on how certain environments can induce stress and how this stress can impact performance both positively and negatively. It was her own emotional stressors which led her to explore meditation. Quickly recognizing its benefits, Akinola took the plunge and traveled to India to further her practice. Modupe talks about her meditation journey, embracing emotions, unconscious bias and details her research dealing with police officers and bias and the link between depression and creativity. Plug Zone Website: https://www.modupeakinola.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/modupe-akinola-5300b735 Twitter: @ProfAkinola Ten Percent Happier Resources: The new Stress Better course with Modupe Akinola Web: https://www.tenpercent.com/stress App: https://10percenthappier.app.link/stress-better-sms ***VOICEMAILS*** Have a question for Dan? Leave us a voicemail: 646-883-8326 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. For ABC, to baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey guys, we all stay at the blazing, obvious feel stress at some points in our life. It's an unavoidable part of life. It's actually wired into us as part of the brilliance of evolution.

Stress motivated us to, you know, run away in the face of a saber-toothed tiger, for example. The problem is these days our stress response is often triggered by traffic jams or overloaded inboxes or, you know, a meeting with the boss. So our guest this week is an ace stress researcher whose thesis is that not all stress is bad. In fact, she's going to teach us how in certain circumstances you can actually co-opt stress and use it to your advantage. Her name is Meduppe Akinola and she is the she has a long title here. Sandford C. Bernstein and Co, associate professor of leadership and ethics at Columbia Business School.

That's a long way of saying she's a big deal. She's also one of the stars of a new course that we just dropped on the 10% happier app. It's called Stress Better, the seven day course on how to handle stress. Every day, we organize this one, the way we organize all of our courses. Every day you get a short little video

and it's followed by a short guided meditation and the central idea of this course is is that you can't change the fact that life is stressful sometimes but you can change how you respond to it. If you want to check the course out you can start it for free at 10% .com slash stress. That's T-E-N-P-E-R-C-E C E N T dot com slash stress. Or if you already have the app, you can find it in the courses tab. Also just before one last item of business here in the coming days, we're going to post a bonus meditation from that course on this feed from seven a salassee was another one of the experts we use in the course. So look out for that sometime this week

I really enjoyed talking to Madupe She's got a series of degrees from Harvard She's worked as a consultant for major companies such as HSBC and Staples She's also worked with police departments across the country We talked about thriving under stress the relationship between stress creativity, and the impact diversity has on stress. We started though with her really quite fascinating story of how she became a relatively recent convert to meditation. I love hearing from such a skeptical, high wattage, high achieving person as she describes her kind of interesting twisty journey toward a

pretty deep embrace of meditation. So here we go, here is Medoupé, Akanola. Well, this is fun, I'm glad you came. Thank you for doing this. We too, I'm so excited to be here. I know you started meditating and then not too distant past. Can you tell me that story? How did this come to be?

Yeah, so I guess I would say that I started trying meditating four years ago. Just try to do five minutes of breathing a day. Why? Why did you think that would be good for you? So I have this amazing acupuncturist and I was just trying, I'm in that phase where I was trying to figure out, who do I want wanna be in this next chapter of my life? You know, you hit those 40s and you're kinda like, who am I? What is the world saying I should be?

How can I be happier? 10% happier. All that stuff. And so I went to this amazing acupuncturist, and she was basically like, oh, tell me your life story, whatever, whatever, whatever. And she said one of the things she tries to do is just get people to breathe, take five minutes to breathe.

And as an academic, my mind is racing all the time. I'm paid to think. And the idea of not thinking and just being present and breathing seemed like a nice thing to do and to try. No one can do a little bit. I suspect your mind was racing before you became an academic. This is true. I like to say I inherited your mind was racing before you became an academic. This is true. I like to say I inherited my mind racing.

It came from my parents. I think their minds raced when they came to the states 50 years ago by themselves to start a new life. So, this is, I think it's in my genes. And so now it's kind of like, how do I work on removing some of that and really figuring out what it takes for me to be in a place of peace. So just by way of reference where did your parents come from? So my dads from Nigeria, my mom's from Togo, they grew up in Ghana. They were born and

raised there and then moved to the states in 69. So this is literally the 50th anniversary of them being in the states. Left everything. There were the only ones who came here and their families. To do what? To just have a better life. My dad actually came for college. He started college here. Never finished.

So I'm truly a first generation African-American, first to go to college in my family, my sisters and I. And my mom, she did get a college degree later, maybe 10, 15 years after immigrating to the States. So they left that because it's a land of opportunity. And they had some friends who would come to New York and so they figured, you know, let's do this.

We want a greater life for ourselves, a greater life for our children, that we have in the future, because they hadn't had us yet. And so I think that that in and of itself, coming to some new place just allows you or creates a different type of stress that you're not used to.

And I think that that gets passed down. You see them stressing when you were a little girl? Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, that's not, first of all, three kids in New York City. That stress in and of it. And all three of you went to a ridiculously high achieving school right here on the upper east side of the town. We did.

We did. We went to the Brearley School, K through 12, 13 year club. So your parents must to get a kid into one of these schools is very hard. So your parents must have been push and push and push. So it's amazing because my parents, the way they found out about barely my mom was an educator. So she had a teaching certificate that she got in Ghana. So she's a very into education.

My dad was too, because he came to the States for education. When they got here, they met this amazing woman, auntie Sandra, who's like a godmother to us, a friend. She had a daughter, Su-Yen, and they loved Su-Yen. They were like, this is the most articulate, brilliant person. Where she go to school? Well, Su-Yen went to the Brili school. So my parents were like, our kids are going to go to Brili.

And that was it. They figured out what Brili was, learn more about Brili from Auntie Sandra, and we got in and the rest of the history. And my mom ended up teaching there for 30 years. Oh, your mom taught there. She taught there. They ended up seeing or she'd come and and take us to school and would do things like teach kids about African traditions and stuff like that. And the head of the lower school saw her and how talented she was in teaching and offered her a job and she started working

there. So, it's really an amazing story of two people with vision and with hopes and dreams and coming here and living the American dream. But with that comes stress. And with that comes, and your original question was, how were your parents' stressor, did you watch them or see the stress that they experienced growing up? Yeah, absolutely. Just trying to make ends meet.

It's not easy being African-American or African in this new, in this, in the US, accents, insults, things like that. So that was stressful. And then also financially making ends meet. So we saw it regularly, regularly. And you kind of take a lot of that on, and you don't even realize it. So my mind has been racing, I guess, all my life, and learning how to slow it down and be present and figure out what I want and what I need and what I'm about,

especially when there are lots of pressures that then come from trying to live the American dream, trying to pass that on to the next generation. It's a lot of pressure and so peeling that off has been something that I've been more focused on lately, which is why I went to the acupuncturist and she was like, try to breathe five minutes a day. And the funny thing is, guess what the first thing I did was, I put in my calendar on my iPhone, breathe, like it. I put a five minute breathe in there, exactly, a calendar invitation to myself to breathe.

And every day I kind of look at it and I'd be like, yeah, I should be doing that. Did you give you any instructions of beyond just breathe? So you just, yeah, no. Just sit close your eyes and try to breathe for five minutes. And that those five minutes felt like an eternity. An eternity, which is so crazy because you're like, you sit on the subway for 30 minutes to get wherever you want

to get most split times, but five minutes of breathing seems like an attorney. It felt like an attorney. So I was like, this is nice, this is cute. Maybe one day I'll do that again and whatever, try it every now and then. And more and more I'd try it. But then was like, this is just not for me.

This breathing thing is not for me. I'll work out, I'll exercise. That makes me present and, you know, alive and all that. But the breathing, no, not interested. And then what got me to doing a bit more? I started then doing more self work and realizing that part of what I needed to learn to be better at is feel my emotions. Well, if memory serves, I was looking at some life is short and it's full of a lot of interesting questions. What does happiness really mean?

How do I get the most out of my time here on Earth? And what really is the best cereal? These are the questions I seek to resolve on my weekly podcast, Life is Short with Just and Long. If you're looking for the answer to deep philosophical questions like what is the meaning of life? These are the questions I seek to resolve on my weekly podcast, Life is Short, with Justin Long. If you're looking for the answer to deep philosophical questions, like, what is the meaning of life? I can't really help you.

But I do believe that we really enrich our experience here by learning from others. And that's why in each episode, I like to talk with actors, musicians, artists, scientists, and many more types of people about how they get the most out of life. We explore how they felt during the highs and sometimes more importantly, the lows of their careers. We discuss how they've been able to stay happy during some of the harder times. But if I'm being honest, it's mostly just fun chats between friends about the important stuff. Like, if you had a sandwich named after you, what would be on it?

Follow Life is short wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen to ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondering App. No, you had a chat with my, one of my chief advisor Samuel John's. Yes, I did. He's one of our producers on the show. And he said something that you had gone on, of course, some sort of, what's it called? Yes. Hoffman Institute.

Yes. I've been hearing about the Hoffman Institute. What is that? The Hoffman Institute is basically a place where type A achievers go to figure out all the baggage that they picked up along the way from their parents and families that they want to better understand in an effort to figure out what's healthy and what's unhealthy of those patterns that you've picked up. So the Hoffman Institute teaches you what you learn from your mom, what you learn from your dad, from just watching them, from observing, from being their children, and which of these habits are

healthy and have gotten you where you are, but which of these habits are not healthy anymore and you can go even further in who you wanna be in your life by dropping some of those. What's a good example for me? I like to focus on me being a middle child and pattern or a habit that I saw was that, you know, my younger sister needed a lot of attention because she was six years younger. My older sister was the rebel, so sister needed a lot of attention because she was six years younger.

My older sister was the rebels, so she needed a lot of attention. And so they both took up a lot of emotional space. And so that meant that I didn't ever really want to show my emotions. Like they're showing theirs. I want to be present for everybody and feel your emotions and feel your emotions. But if you ask me what mine or I'd be like,

I don't know what emotions, no, I don't feel emotions and just live. So part of the breathing, when I first went to the acupuncture, she said, well, how are you feeling? And I do usually say tired. She's like, that's not really emotion. Like what is, that's a physical sensation, but you know, happy, sad, joyful, playful, annoyed, whatever.

And I'm like, I don't really know. But you must have had some emotions because there was something driving you to the acupuncturist. You said you made an oblique reference to being in your forward ease or something, but something was going, there was something churning in your life. Yes. Well, one of the key things that was churning in my life was not knowing whether or not I wanted to have children. I Didn't know if I wanted to have children and I felt like

Just confused about that. What do I want? What does the world want? What does my family want? You know, what does my partner like what who am I and what do I want and how do I want to live this life and? For somebody who wasn't maybe in super in touch with her feelings It would be confusing because you knew the intellectual arguments Exactly and when you look around everyone else has them so why wouldn't you feelings are babies? babies And I guess you everyone else has feelings too, which I'm good at detecting everyone else's feelings, but my own was not.

I've had the same problem. I actually did a specific workup at a compassion lab at the University of Berkeley. And what they found was that they did all these tests, like a half a days test. They found that I'm really good at reading other people's emotions and terrible at projecting my own. Yes. And so what Hoffman Institute does is it helps you understand the range of emotions that you have and it tries to tap into what those emotions are that you're feeling and where those emotions came from.

Where do they come from? Oh, wow. That reaction that I had was what I used to see my mom doing when she'd react in this way. Oh, or my dad would react in this way, or some of the happiest times I felt in growing up was when I got a good grade. So just linking all of these patterns and habits that you develop, that you don't even know, you're developing that are kind of in the ether of your life, Hoffman teaches you what those are, and then teaches you what those are,

and then helps you say, okay, maybe I need to tweak this. Maybe I don't need to live for a good grade anymore. Maybe I don't need to keep on accomplishing, accomplishing, accomplishing, accomplishing, because that's what brought me so much joy, and instead I can just take a walk in the park and feel joy. Feel my emotions and feel,

breathe and feel joy. So, it's a really special place. And there are some amazing people that go to Hoffman Institute, whether it's, you know, Hollywood actors or just highly accomplished educators, highly accomplished actors, highly accomplished, you name the area doctors, you name it. People go to Hoffman. And this range of ages too. There was a person who had just finished college who went to Hoffman. And I think we had an 80 year old all trying to figure out what are some of the ways in which I can leave them,

live a more fulfilled, happier life. And what do I need to change? So, you did acupuncture. You go off to Hoffman and acupuncturist tells you five minutes of a little bit of meditation. You struggle with that because I think frankly because she didn't give you actual instructions, but there may have been other might have been multifactorial.

That's just my outside view, not knowing that much. And then you go off the Hoffman and you start to realize, oh yeah, I'm not feeling my emotions. There's something up here. And then how does that, then you take a radical step, which I'll let you describe, but how and why and when did you do that?

So, Hoffman includes a lot of guided meditation. And so being in these environments where you're sitting for 10, 15, 20 minutes, going through a guided meditation helped me to really see the value of meditation and helped me to see and feel what it means to just have vision and to envision yourself walking through a field, things like that, that aspect of meditation guided. Then I realized that there are so many different types of meditation, and the sitting and breathing was not necessarily the right one for me at the time, but my acupuncturist said, why don't you try tonal meditation? And one of the things I realize in Hoffman is that not only

is that are the emotions tough for me, but then also the feeling of bodily sensations. And what I loved about tonal meditation, tonal meditation is just when you say you take a vowel or something and you just say it out loud as a breath. So, ah. Ah. Ah. You're neighbors think you're crazy when you do this? Well, you know, you know, New York, they don't know what's going on. So, I guess they might. They're like, is that yelling? Is that, is she okay? And what I loved about tonal meditation was that I could feel it in my lungs. I could feel it, and that was powerful for me. So I could do that for 15 minutes. So I got up to tonal meditation for 15 minutes, and I was like,

I can meditate in whatever. And I even there were times where I wanted to go for longer. I'm like, who was this person? So then she said, okay, the next step is to try a 10-day type of meditation thing. And she recommended Vapassana. And she had done Vapassana. She's done a range of different meditation practices. But Vapassana is one that she really likes for the kind of letting go, just 10 days, let go, and feel your bodily sensations, which I think she felt would be good for me as a person who needed to feel more and who suppresses emotions a lot.

Can I describe just for people who, that term can be used to describe a whole range of things, but in this case, the Pasana is Moodu Bay's using it to describe a school of meditation taught by an Indian guy who was raised in Burma where he learned meditation. His name was SNGOenka. He died in the recent years. Actually, it was a great obituary, belated obituary written about him by my friend and former guest on this podcast, David Gellis in the New York Times, not too long ago. It's on my Twitter feed if you want to go look it back at that. Anyway, he was a really remarkable businessman. So not some monk or something like that. He was a businessman who took the kind of Buddhist meditation called Vipassana that was being taught in Burma back in the day. Still taught there now. And, or I guess the country's now called me and Mar. And he started teaching it to secular folks, lay people, and now he's got centers all over the world, and their signature service is a 10-day

silent meditation retreat. Now, you can do it here in the United States, but if you're an overachiever who happens to be named Madoobae Akanola, you go to India to do it by yourself. You go to India. We're going to decided to start his first center. By yourself, you go.

Yes, you do. So I went and but let me say beforehand, my acupuncture said at least for an hour every now and then, just try to sit, light a candle and just sit because you're gonna be meditating for 10 hours a day. But was she giving you instructions for how to sit? She just said, just sit and breathe. And do you present in your breath?

I worry about that. And you know, just, yeah, she did. And you could do that. Did you find it massively frustrating or like was, were you getting anywhere for it? The hour felt like 10 hours. Yeah. Um, but there came a point where I would wake up saying, oh my gosh, I need to sit for

an hour. And that was the weirdest moment for me because that's it. Even before you went on the retreat, even before I went on the retreat, there was a point where I was feeling like, okay, I'm going to sit for this hour and it's torture. I'm going to set my alarm for 30 minutes. Then when the 30 minutes has been 30 minutes, it hasn't been 30 minutes. One is 30 minutes. Finally 30 minutes done.

I need to do another 30 minutes because it hasn't an hour. So that would happen. And then one day I was kind of, I woke up and I wasn't sure if I wanted to do it. And then I said, no, I need to do this. And I sat there for the hour and it felt peaceful. Well, what's interesting, I mean, I have a million questions about that, but in this spirit of moving things along, the, what's interesting about the Vipassana technique is it's a real technique.

Yes. And it's very focused on what's called a body scan, where you're systematically moving through the body, feeling different parts of the body starting at the head or the toes and then moving up or down. Yes. So I can see why your acupuncturist thought, okay, for somebody who's not feeling bodily sensations or feelings, this makes sense for her. So when you arrived in India and arrived at this retreat center, were you losing your mind, were you like, oh, this is great, I'm psyched to be here, how are you feeling? Well, my first thought was, I'm going to be the only non-Indian here.

You know, I'm going to India and I should have known that I'm there's a potential that I'd be the only non-Indian there But it just kind of hit me when everyone around me was Indian which the no problem with that I've been to India before But I was like oh my gosh, I've left New York. I've come to India I'm gonna be here sitting here in 10 days known just just me And it all hit me when I got there and then I met four other people from other countries and we were all like We're just here to experience this and it just it changed the environment for me to feel like wow We are bold brave people courageous coming to another country to try this so and the energy I felt from those four other women was really powerful. Even though you couldn't talk to them.

So, that first day you can talk for a little bit, didn't talk in detail, and then we went into silence and didn't talk at all. But that energy, you really can connect to people's energies in an amazing way that I didn't really understand before I fully got into meditating in this way. So met these women, I was like, okay, I can do it. We've got this. And then the first day sitting there, I was like, what have I got myself into? Ten days of this.

I love it because I've been the exact same thing. Ding ding ding at 4 a.m. And then you need to be in the hall at 4.30. They walk around ringing a bell to wake up, yes. And I was kind of like, okay, 4.30 to 6.30, sitting there, Moniz, herding, cross leg. Like when I was doing my one hour, I was just sitting on my couch and whatever. But then you get to the center and people are cross leg, my knee hurts.

Like, is my is supposed to hurt, is what's going on here and how am I supposed to feel? And I could talk to the teacher, but I don't know if I want to ask the teacher anything and I'm just going to sit, sit it out. So that first day was like, I don't know what I'm doing and I have nine more days of this, but it's okay. But then what happens each night is going, I you see a tape of him and he kind of explains what but it's okay. But then that what happens each night is going. I you see a tape of him and he kind of explains what you just went through and he

captured everything I was experiencing in that video. He was like, your monkey mind is going lots of places. You're wondering, why am I here? You're really hungry and really excited for the next meal. And so I said, okay, I'm not crazy. I'm not the only one. This guy understands what he's doing. I understand what this is part of the process. Just sit with it. And so I sat with it. The next day stuff started coming up.

Like, oh, I didn't even know that emotion was there. Oh, my thumb starts hurting or oh, and that was again powerful because let me tell you this. My thumb, when I did Hoffman hurt me the whole time. I came back, I told my acupuncturist, I broke my thumb. I don't know, maybe we were doing some things, I sprained my thumb. And she said, you know, your thumb is linked to a meridian that's linked to grief. And so what you're feeling is unmetabolized grief

that's coming up and it's manifesting itself in your thumb. Now I'm like, okay, I'm trying to understand all this stuff. I'm not sure what you're talking about, but I'm gonna believe you, because you're an expert at this and Dan like you, I'm a little bit of a skeptic about everything. A little bit, you're maybe more skeptical. No, I don't think so. So she said this about this, you know,

this thumb, a riddion, linked to your lung and grief. So I was like, okay, I guess I'll process my grief and the thumb pain might go away, thumb pain went away. But when I started the 10-day meditation, the thumb pain came back, which was powerful for me because it said that there might be some repressed grief or repressed something that I have that is coming up in this process.

There are some emotions that I have, you know, really, really stifled that's coming up in this process. So let me stick with it and let me sit with it. I know a retreat is not that, you know, there's a difference between the type of insight work that you're looking at the sort of impersonal process of the mind on a retreat. You're not supposed to be caught up in the story as much. It's different from the sort of emotional work of therapy or something like. But do you have a visibility into what that grief was?

Or is? So, you know, it kind of goes back to what I said, things you pick up from your family. When my parents moved here and left everything, that was painful. And two years later, my mom was pregnant with my older sister and her mom passed away. And she didn't really fully get to go back. She didn't get to, you know, really mourn that loss.

And as a child, I remember there were times where my mom would have red eyes and she'd say she'd have a headache and I would do everything I could to like wet some paper towels and get some ice and put it on her temples. She later told me that it was because she was crying because she missed her mom. So I really feel like some of that grief, it's some of this is generational stuff that is in you and I feel like I was carrying some of that grief, some of that grief and pain that my mom carried. And again, I say this and I'm like, is this all metaphysical and whatever? I don't know, but I know that there's some grief that came from somewhere in me that I needed to process and deal with and accept existed. And even telling my mom that I was experiencing that grief and that I remembered times where I would try to make her feel better, she later, after Hoffman revealed to me that she was crying. So

mind you and let me be more clear in my story. Grief coming out in the thumb, Hoffman actually tells you to go back and talk to your parents and learn more about them. In the process of learning more was when I realized that those headaches that I thought my mom had were her tears crying for her mom. I didn't learn that till decades later, till trying now, trying to uncover some of that.

And so I feel like in my body is a lot, are a lot of these emotions from other people, from other things. And what I'm trying to do now is figure out what some of those are and be president them, and then figure out what some of my own grief is and being present with that. I also, to be honest, had a couple of miscarriages.

And I feel like some of the grief had a couple of miscarriages. And I feel like some of the grief was the grief of that that I didn't allow myself to process. Well, that's huge. So having been through that as the male partner of somebody who had a miscarriage, that's really painful. Very painful. And I just, you know, as a person who just accomplishes the accomplishes and continue, I just continued and, you know, didn't feel my emotions about that.

So I feel like it was my mom's repressed grief, it was my repressed grief that was coming up. And that is some powerful stuff that's sitting and being present and feeling bodily sensations allows you to be present with stuff you didn't even know was there. So by day two, I was like, okay, this thumb is hurting. There's something here. By day three, I was like, wow, there's still seven more days.

But man, I am just feeling present with myself in a way that I've never felt present with myself and I am Seeing things and images and hearing things that I was have never fully been attuned to and There was nothing like that and I was also there was some repressed grief from a friend who had passed away So there was some repressed grief from a friend who had passed away two weeks before I went to the meditation center. And here was the moment where I was like, wow, this is amazing. Remember, I mentioned there were four women I met in the day of. The day it all started, we talked for maybe half an hour, then didn't talk for 10 days. Once the meditation was over, we got to talk.

And in the meditation, I was really thinking a lot about my friend who had passed away of breast cancer, how she would have loved doing this with me, how I missed her, how all that. Finish the 10 days. And one of the women that I met said that she was partially there because she was in remission from breast cancer. And so when I say that energy, this connected energy is kind of there and there was something powerful for me about knowing that I was mourning and knowing that the energy of my friend was kind of there through this other woman and that we were connected in that way is something that you can't experience without

sitting and being present and just trying to let all the other stuff go. So that was my 10-day experience and it was a love hate, but it made me say there is something powerful about meditation. And believe it or not I did that December 22nd of 2018 2018 and finished I guess it was January 2nd or something like that and I've meditated for an hour every single day since how are you feel like you're you've transformed in any significant way? Wait, I want you to just honor the fact that I Just said that I've tried to meditate for five minutes and couldn't do it

Then I got to my tonal for 15 and now I meditate every out day for an hour I don't know who this person is. You think you're looking for a gold star. I am. Yeah, I'll give you one I mean, it's amazing. It is an amazing achievement. Thank you. Yes. Honor my accomplished, accomplished, accomplished self. So yes, so do I feel like it's transformed me? I just feel like I'm just more present.

I'm more present in my life. Just another way is hey, you're here. You're awake. you're awake. I'm awake. Yeah, instead of autopilot. I'm awake and not on autopilot and there are the last weeks, something. Just the fact you can make fun of the achieve, achieve, achieve because you can either be in that story and owned by it and not even know what's going on.

Yep. Or you can see it as just a neurotic pattern that you've had since you were a kid and you can make fun of it and sometimes you're owned by it, but sometimes you're out of it enough to notice it's there, but you don't have to roll. And it comes back when I meditate, too. Yes, yes, yes, yes. You weren't good today. You know, this wasn't a good meditation day because your mind was, your monkey mind was everywhere, you know, and then I'd be like, no, it was a day. And it was a meditation day. Don't judge it. Just be in it. It is what it is. And living life that way is powerful. It is so powerful. So I feel like I'm a lot more calm. I feel

like I just noticed more some annoying email comes and I want to put it right back and say, did it, did it, did it , and then I realize, oh, that's just ego. That really bothered you for some reason. Why? Delete. Sit with it. So it helps me to just be like, okay, this half of my reactions have nothing to do with the person or the thing.

It's coming from a deeper place. Sit with what that deeper place is, and just be with it. And it's just helpful. It makes me less agitated. It makes me, and don't get me wrong. I get agitated, and stuff hits me. I just think that I react in a different way. That's more attuned to the deeper things

that are underlying that reaction. And I feel so much healthier for that. And I feel like I'm more pleasant to be around for that. And then little things start happening and you're kind of like, where did that come from? Like a call I got from a friend that was kind of like, I really appreciate blah, blah, blah. And like you've never said that before. That's kind of cool. So you see people around you changing in a weird way and it's weird.

I kind of am like, I'm in this magical fairy tale land where I meditate for an hour a day. And I don't even know what this is, but hey, I like her. You know? That's great. That's great. That's great.

People say to me, I was actually just on the phone, on Skype doing an interview with a book I wrote is coming out in Brazil and some Brazilian writer or whatever wanted to interview me and she was asking, how do you know if it's working? And you just answered it. I said, you know if it's working, if you're less of a swear word that I can't use because I'm a Disney employee that starts with an A, to yourself and others. And that's the metric I offer. And you just described it. Like, I don't know what this is. It's a little weird, but I don't know who this person is, but I like her. Yep. And this person will who didn't like to feel emotions and would not like to let people see her cry and vulnerability, oh no, we don't do that.

Like you know, sometimes in the middle of meditation some tears will come, not sometimes like, often. And I'm like, okay, all right. Don't know who this is, but it's okay. And that is pretty cool. And it reminds me, we were given this range of emotions for a reason. Why are we only taught to use half of them? No, let's use the full range.

Let's experience the full range and be okay with that. I like to think of it as this muscle. I've overdeveloped the muscle of like resilience and strong and not vulnerable and blah, blah, blah, blah. But I need to also then develop the muscle of vulnerable sad, it's okay, you know, all of those other that range of emotions. And to the extent that we can forgive ourselves more and teach the younger generations that it's okay to use that full range of emotions, I really feel like we're going to be, well, we will have a happier and healthier society.

So that's now what I'm working on. And I teach MBAs and to the extent that I can pass a little bit of this on to them in some ways, earlier on, like, why do I have to learn this in my 40s? Good, I've learned it in my 30s, you know? Why is that late? So if we can do this a little earlier, I think we're going to make a lot of strides in terms of people being able to fulfill their purpose in a unique way.

Okay, so you just walked me very gracefully up to your professional life. So I want to talk about that because you do some fascinating things in your professional life. Can you just describe in a general way the thrust of your research? The thrust of my research is that we encounter stress in so many different ways in our daily lives. And we've been taught the message that stress is bad. You have it, you want to run away from it, you want to avoid it. But in my research, I show that not all stress is bad. And we kind of know this because we've experienced

situations where we had some stress and it propelled us to another level. And so what I try to show in my research is I try to distinguish between stress that can be maladaptive, that can make you freeze and not do well from stress that can be adaptive that can allow you to be in that kind of flow state where you have the resources, the intellectual resources, the physical resources to really accomplish that goal. So I differentiate a stress is enhancing mindset from a stress is debilitating mindset and I show the situations where one or the other can help performance.

So that's my research in a nutshell. And there's so many types of situations that can engender stress. Diversity can be stressful because it's people who are different from each other working together. Power dynamics, you interacting with your boss or someone who has power for you that can be stressful So I look at the context and organizations that engender stress and how that stress can help or hurt particular outcomes

That we're interested in okay. I love this stuff You also have done some stuff on creativity You just want to name that because I want to come back to it Yes, I have because we think you know Oh, maybe if you're in a negative mood, that's a bad thing and you won't be creative, but I've actually found that in certain situations, if you're in a negative mood,

but you actually have a disposition that is aligned with kind of being vulnerable to negative mood, that actually can result in you being more creative. So I think of it as the depressed artist effect, but we can talk more about that or dig deeply into that. Rest assured, we're going to do all of that. That was a good overview, but that was the beginning. So let's talk about the two mindsets you talked about stress is an enhancer versus stress

is debilitating. Yeah. My rear articulating that, correct? That is correct. So how do we know and how do we move from enhanced, from debilitating to enhanced in any given situation, especially since once we're stressed, it may be hard to be flexible. So one thing is just when you're stressed noticing. Okay, I'm stressed right now. And you can take that stress and say, okay, I'm stressed right now. And you can take that stress and say, okay, I'm stressed right now, this is an awful situation,

it's terrible, I'm so frustrated, I'm never going to do well on this because there's so much stress I'm feeling, there's so much pressure, whatever. That's a stress is debilitating mindset, that this is this downward spiral that we get on. And that can have negative consequences. Stress is enhancing mindset is, okay, I'm stressed, but not all stress is bad. Well, why am I stressed right now? What do I care about? Well, I care about doing well. Why do I care about that? Because I want to impress the people around me. Well, why

do I care about that? Because I really love my job, and I really want to stay in it. Why do I care about that? Because I think that I'm operating in my purpose and my job. So then you're taking this moment of stress and it's getting you to, I'm stressed because I want to do well because I'm operating in my purpose, which almost kind of deflates the balloon because you're getting to the underlying reason why and it's allowing you to see that big picture, which then in and of itself reduces some of the stress you're feeling. So we just shot with you this new stress course that's up on the 10% hat. We'll be up on the 10% happier app by the time this that our listeners are hearing

this conversation. You were the expert. You served as the expert in this course, I quite well, I will add. And there were two techniques that you taught us that we then turn around and have you teach the users in the app. I don't know what they're called, so I'm gonna, we came up with shorthands, with shorthand for them among the staff that was putting the production staff that was putting the production

team that was putting the course together. The first, we called it co-opting. Now, I don't know if that's actually you'll correct me on what the actual title is, but your advice if, and I'll say the beginnings of this and maybe you can pick up and just correct where I went wrong and fill in the gaps, the advice is if you're feeling stressed in any given moment, especially if it has to do with performance, you know, you've got a big meeting, you've got to give a talk, you've got to see your boss, or you're taking a test to notice your stress,

and then to tell yourself, actually, no, no, this stress right now isn't bad for me. It's actually my body getting prepared to act. Yes. So another way to call that, co-opting is re-appraising. Re-appraising. Re-appraise your stress. Often or in some of my research, we tell people, when you feel stress and when you feel

that bodily stress response, what do I mean by that? Your heart is racing, your hands are getting sweaty. If you tell yourself, you know, this physiological reaction is actually good. Sometimes people who experience this physiological reaction really do well. Then instead of being like, this is a bad thing that my heart is racing, it's like, oh, this is propelling me to do even better. I remember hearing that and I took a drama class when I was a kid. Being nervous before you walk out on stage is good for you if you don't

let it, you know, yank you around. Exactly. And so just remembering that, like this isn't a bad thing when you're right, if right before you're about to take the SATs, telling students that helps them to perform well. That's actually one of the studies you've done. Yeah. Well, so one of my collaborators at a study and they did it for people who are about to take, I think the GRE, the graduate record examination, or it might have been the test for med school. And- Is that GMAT? GMAT is for business school.

I don't know. But one of those tests, and they said just remember that when you feel that stress response, that it's actually okay, that people do well when they feel that stress response, that it's actually okay, that people do well when they feel that stress response. And people did better on the test. Just knowing that. Just knowing that.

People who were given those instructions versus instructions that said nothing about your stress did well. I've done that for people right before they go into a negotiation. When you feel a little bit of stress during the negotiation, that's an okay thing. So people who got that intervention right before they go into a negotiation. When you feel this a little bit of stress during the negotiation, that's an okay thing. So people who got that intervention, where got

more money in the negotiation. There's physiology here too. There is physiology here too. Our bodies were designed to give us the energy and resources that we need when we experience stress to, for instance, run away from the lion, which was the antiquated way. But now to really thrive under that stress, if you're able to manage it psychologically in an adaptive way. And what do I mean by that? Well, if you're able to say, okay, I am feeling this stress, this isn't going to kill me,

this is a good thing, then your heart can keep on racing and you're gonna be okay. You feel the racing heart as an ally instead of somebody that you can mutiny. Exactly, it's going to help you versus hurting you. And when you feel that and you experience that psychologically, then the walls of your blood vessels expand. More of the blood is circulating through your thoracic cavity and through your body,

efficiently, getting to the places it needs to get to. And that's a piece of how you're able to then thrive under that stress. Get into a flow state. Get into a flow state. Get into a flow state. So that is what I try to teach people. If we can change our mindsets about stress so that we realize that it really can have these enhancing properties, then we will also

exhibit the physiology associated with that and can have better outcomes. But what if, you know, I'm speaking to somebody with panic disorder, I project myself into a stressful situation, my body starting to stress, maybe because I have to all this scar tissue around panic, that it's very hard for me psychologically or meditatively or anything to talk myself off the ledge. Do you hear this kind of pushback? Absolutely. Practice makes perfect. You just need to keep practicing, practicing, practicing, practicing, and figure out there's some deeper underlying stuff

that becomes our barrier. So I think it's about chipping away those things. In addition to then telling yourself, I'm gonna be okay, I'm gonna be okay. Another thing I like to say is to have people rehearse them, think about the times where they did thrive under under stress or where they were having a panic moment and were able to get out of it.

Because when you remember those situations, it's easier to say, oh yeah, I've done that, I've been through that. And to then push through whatever situation you're dealing with in the moment. Okay, so this is the technique number one that we teach in the course, this re-appraisal. You're in a stressful situation, you have to perform, you start to feel the stress, and instead of getting locked into a rabbit hole of, oh my god, I'm stressed, I'm going to be horrible. You say, no, no, no, this is your body preparing you to act.

Now the other technique you offered, and I don't know if this is also called reappraisal, whatever, you would describe this a little bit a couple of minutes ago. It's kind of interrogating what's going on to ask yourself, I'm feeling stressed. So why is that? What's going on? Why am I stressed? And what you keep asking these questions until you get at what you really care about. So the stress points you toward the meaning in your life. Right. Towards the underlying reason why you care. And if you can get to that underlying reason why you care,

and there's no technical term for this, we call it my collaborator, Mollia Crumb calls it acknowledging. Acknowledging that it's there. And it's there because I care about something. So what is the thing that I ultimately care about? And if you get to that, then it's there. And it's there because I care about something. So what is the thing that I ultimately care about? And if you get to that, then it's kind of like, oh, this is this stress is for a purpose.

And when we feel that this stress is for a purpose, you feel so much better about it. So how might this go in a situation? How would you use it? I would use it, for instance, I have a session coming up where I'm going to be teaching African American or senior executives at a company, just how to deal with some of the stressors that they're facing as they continue to progress in the company. And to be honest, I'm stressed about it because I really want to have an impact.

I really want these people to feel empowered when they leave the session. I really want them to know that they have everything in them to overcome the barriers that they face on a regular basis. So one way that I can use my stress in a bad way is to keep tweaking my slides and adding things and whatever and doing more and more and which I found myself doing and I'd say, wait, hold on.

And I had to tell myself, you do this all the time. You have every single thing you need to make an impact with this group. So how does that link to the technique? One, it's why am I stressed because I care because I want them to do well because I know they can, and I feel like a piece of my purpose on this earth is to be able to show people how they can thrive in the environments in which they find themselves.

So I care because I know that if I do my part, it'll have an impact on their journey and we'll see more senior executives of color in Fortune 500 companies and progressing in the companies that they're in. So if that's why I care, I don't need to be sitting here worried about how it's going to go, I'm good. I have everything I need to be able to teach this group what they need to be taught. So I can relax a bit in that. Then the second piece of also thinking back

to all the times where I have thrived under this type of stress. I often have to go back to, wow, most of the time when I teach these sessions, people leave feeling really empowered. People leave feeling like, gosh, I've never heard something like that. People leave saying, wow, thank you for being a role model for us because you as an African

American woman just seeing you teach us this stuff is meaningful because I've never had a black teacher. How about that? So I have to remind myself that my presence is helping accomplish that goal that I want to accomplish and so when I kind of do all that this whole bubble if I have a big session that's coming up, it's deflated. The balloon is deflated. And I can sleep in peace, knowing that it's all going to be okay. And that sounds easier.

It sounds easy, and it is easier than we think. It's easier than we think. It's easier than we think. But mind you, this has taken a lot of the self work to say, hold on, where is this coming from? Hold on, is this because you want a gold star? Hold on, is this because you, whatever it is that has driven me in terms of getting the feeling, the positive feelings that I want in life and what I do, trying to kind of strip that away. And I don't think I was just clear what I was trying to say, but let me put it this way

in the most simplest and kind of embarrassing terms. I have four Harvard degrees. It's not something that I share with people. It's not something that I share with people. It's not something that I share. It's something that I'm proud of, but kind of like that's crazy. Your CV is a thing to behold. Yeah, and so I and I share that because it mean when I say accomplish accomplish accomplishes in my genes, that's just a great example. So I like to get gold stars and I like to be perfect and that puts so much pressure on me and To be able to realize that that has been a driver that is no longer functional in my life

Has been helpful because then it allows me to say I don't need any more accomplishment. I just need to be who I am and be present in that. And my presence will help me to get people to where I want them to be. My vulnerability will help me to get people to where I want them to be. I don't need one more gold star. I just need to be. And so that is what has helped me to come to terms with the stress that I experienced regularly that comes from that burden of being one of the only that comes from the burden of wanting

to please you. You want to be one of the only black people and mostly white people. Oh, and yeah, being coming from the burden of wanting to then please your parents who have made all these sacrifices for you, come from the burden of wanting to, if you're the only in the environment that you're in, you really want to do well because you want to show that someone like you can do well. So all of these pressures I've now had to be like, you're carrying the weight of a whole commuter. Yes, you are.

You are. And I have to say now, oh, I'm good. I don't need to smooth with that person. I'm good. I don't need to smooth with that person, I'm good. I don't need to. I don't think white people understand that because I don't walk around thinking, I've got to make white people. I've got to somehow you need to prove

that we can do it. It's just never on my mind. Prove we can do it and debunk the stereotype about us. Debunk the stereotypes about African Americans and who we are and all of the historical stuff and baggage that comes with African Americans. And that's a lot of pressure and that's a lot of stress to carry with you all your life. So I partially study stress because I've lived under so much of it and I've thrived under so much of it. So how can I use some of the tools that have helped

me thrive to help others thrive and also to not kill us. Because one thing I haven't said is that the stress is debilitating minds at what happens when your body is constantly under this chronic stress is that it creates this wear and tear and this physiological impact affects your cardiovascular system, affects so much, and can kill you. I also want to recognize that I study this stuff because I want to live longer, and I want people who look like me, and people who are just buckling under whatever stress they're under, to learn to adapt to it in healthy ways. It'll keep us around a lot longer. In my life, the stress of being a minority, the only, that's one of the, some people deal with the stressors of an ill parent, of a broken family,

of you name it, we all have our own stress that comes in somewhere, our own traumas. So, whatever it is for you, how can you still apply and adopt these skills to push through it? I've said you just said a lot of really powerful things and some of them several minutes ago that I've been making notes that I wanted to sort of amplify with some comments. So let me just say a few things in response to what you said because it was all amazing. When you're talking about this process for which there's no name, I guess acknowledging

of questioning interrogating your stress, okay, I'm stressed right now, why? Why am I stressed? Oh, cause I wanna do well. Why do you wanna do well? Because I want to help these people. And eventually through this interrogation that you're doing with yourself,

you get to the gold, which is what is important to you in your actual life. What matters the most? And it seems to me that having that connection can just calm everything down. It takes you out of your own selfish concerns, out of your own head, which by the way, a lot of my stress is like, I just want to look look good or I want to get that money or whatever. Yep. But if you can dig below that, then you get to a stiller waters, I think. Yes, yes. The duck paddling under the water has been an analogy that has come up a lot in the

past two weeks. And I feel like it helps you to still paddle like heck, but become above the water. So how can we live that in a powerful way? Because in a lot of cases, you're also told like, just, oh, the stress will go away. It's going to be present in a lot of ways. And so let's not just pretend that there are going to be situations where it's going to be gone. There are going to be situations where it is there. So while it's there, how can we at least do something to stay calm above the water? Is something that my colleagues and I think about a lot.

The other thing you said that I just struck me as having some personal resonance is that you have had this mentality, I think you come by it honestly given the stance your parents took, which by the way, that's not an knock on your parents, your parents did an amazing thing for their children, for their three girls. But you had this mentality of I want the gold star, and you killed it. I mean you killed it by any measure. But I think you're starting to see that that neurotic pattern may not be serving you right now for current iteration of Medube. Yeah, and there's an idea. There's a concept that was

that was mentioned to me by my coach. Uh-huh. A guy who was on this podcast recently. His name is Jerry Kallona. He's a sort of legendary executive coach and he's been working with me. And it's called the loyal soldier idea. Have you heard of that this idea is based on the Japanese story about how after World War II there were these soldiers who hung out on the rocks. I don't know if this is true or legend or or legend or I think it may be true But they they didn't know the war was over so they were how how hold up on the rocks and the Pacific Defending the homeland for years. Oh wow and when they were discovered they weren't you know humiliated or like that They get they were welcomed warmly

celebrated etc etc But decommissioned told you don't need to fight anymore. Okay. Your gold star seeking is a loyal soldier who's gun you can gently set aside and say thank you for your service were good. Yep. And now for me you know my loyal soldier is probably my superstar, great grandfather, you know, grandfather who was pretty mean to my mother and everybody else in his orbit, until oddly enough in his later years when it became really nice, but he was really mean for 80 of his 90 years.

And unhappy and it's this kind of bully or be bullied mode that has operated in me for a long time. I need to take Robert Johnson's gun away and put it down and say, that's not serving me anymore. So I just heard that and what you were saying in it popped up in my mind because I'm writing about my conversations with Jerry.

I don't know if this is gonna take the conversation anywhere, but it struck me as worth sharing. I love that analogy. Just put it down, put it down. You're done. I love that analogy. Just put it down. Put it down. You're done. You are well done. Well done.

The war is over. The war is over. You know? And you've got those degrees up on your wall. The war is over. Nobody can take that away. Yeah. What are you still trying to prove?

By the way, I should say, you are really living this out because after we finished this interview and probably by the time it's posted, you're going to be on sabbatical. You're taking a year, you're not trying to achieve that much this year, I think you have like a crazy itinerary, so you're definitely type A about the sabbatical. Yes. You're not low thing, but you are actually going to enjoy your life and not try to like check more boxes all the time. Yes, and mind you, the process of trying not to check more boxes has been hard,

because I've said to myself, maybe I'll pick up a new language and sweat. No, you're not. No, you're not. You're not gonna do that. You're going to follow up on the projects that you're working on, maybe come up with some new ideas, but you're also gonna relax.

You're gonna relax. So bad is to recharge and to rejuvenate. And yeah, maybe some people will write a book, maybe some people will take a class, you're not. You're not. You're gonna scuba dive. Good for you. Yes, yes.

So let's talk more about stress. Not to minimize the enjoyment you're about to have scuba diving to get you back into stress. But you talked about the fact that you, that interest in the subject because you had felt a variety of stress through much of your academic life and you thought it would be worth studying. And one of the things you talked about was the stress of being the only particular in this context, I think, referring to being the only African American or one of the only African Americans in largely white environments And so you've actually studied a lot the stress around diversity. Can you tell us what you've learned? Yeah, so

some of this also came from before Coming in academic I was in business. I was a consultant at a strategy consulting firm Bannon company Then I got my MBA went back to Bannon company and then had my epiphany of oh my gosh in business, I was a consultant at a strategy, consulting firm, Bain & Company, then I got my MBA, went back to Bain & Company, then had my epiphany of, oh my gosh, I really wanna study some of the things that I'm observing and become an academic.

And one of the things I observed at Bain is that there are some amazing African Americans that would come and some would thrive and some wouldn't do well. And you're like, you're kinda like, well, what are some of the things that are making this experience different? Well, one of them is being the only and feeling like, can I ask for that feedback?

Well that look weak, if I ask for that feedback. And well that look like I don't know what I'm doing. But we know that it is through feedback that you get input into what you can do better and what you are not doing well and all that. So one thing that I saw was that African Americans were more nervous about getting and asking for the feedback they needed. But not only that, what about giving feedback? Well, you're typically receiving feedback from someone who doesn't look like you, a white

male, a white woman or whatever. And there's also fears on their part. Well, I don't want to look like this feedback might seem discriminatory or that I'm not sure how to give this feedback. Oh, there are some stereotypes that say that these people, this person might get angry. I don't want to anger them. And so that can also result in not getting the feedback that you need to get, because the feedback giver isn't comfortable or as comfortable, giving that feedback to you, as a person who looks different from them,

then giving a feedback to someone who looks similar. So that's a mess. That's a mess. That is a mess. And there has been tons of research showing this asymmetry and feedback process. There's processes.

There's also been research showing that physiological responses differ when giving feedback to someone who looks like you versus giving feedback to someone who doesn't. Physiological responses that are linked to like threat and that stresses debilitating often occurs when you're giving feedback to somebody who does not look like you or receiving feedback for someone who does not look like you relative to someone who does in an America that is browning This strikes me as unbelievably important because we are going to be in close quarters with one another And we need to be able to function. Yeah, or organizations will fail or they'll become segregated

Yes, we need to be able to function. We need to be able to recognize when these stereotypes and biases are playing apart. We need to be able to have conversations. And a piece of my work is ultimately to document that there are situations that are stressful, that we might not say are stressful. So one of the reasons why I started studying physiology

in the first place with Wendy Mendez, who was my grad school advisor, one of them, is that if you ask somebody, oh, does giving feedback to a black person, ask a white person, does giving feedback to a black person making you nervous? What would they say? Of course not.

Oh, I'd like to back to anybody, whatever. But when you measure people's physiology, you can see that. And so I like to look at context where what you say differs from the physiological experience to be able to then say, oh, how can we intervene to change that? Because people are sometimes unwilling or even unable to really say that they're stressed when, in fact, they truly are stressed. But how do you unravel this, though? I mean, it's important data to see that people are lying to themselves

when they say they're not nervous, giving feedback to somebody of a different pigmentation. But what do you do about that? Because the cultural stuff underneath that seems quite tangled. Yeah. So what you do is you show them research. You show them data of others, hundreds of others, that experience that, and you ask them to notice.

I mean, I know that you did, there was a podcast with my collaborator, Dolly Chug, and one of the things she talks about in her book is how do you just notice and that we're not gonna be perfect and never biased at all, whatever, but notice when you're potentially feeling differently. The technical term for that, sometimes it's interception.

Notice when your heart is beating. Notice when you're a little bit more nervous with this person versus that person. And then ask yourself the why questions because this is stress. Notice your stress and ask yourself why. And then that can help in changing your behavior and then having conversations about that to change behavior and to be able to treat people equally. And a lot of this is unconscious, which is why it's hard. So that's why I say just notice because there's there's so much value in noticing. Dolly, who you write, you write, she was on the show, recently, Dolly Chug. It was a great episode and that's how I got to you. I'll probably have said

this in the introduction, but I'll say it again. I she was sitting into the chair where you are right now. And afterwards we were chitchatting after the recording. She said, yeah, you might want to meet my friend Medupe, I can know she's at Columbia. She recently got into meditation. She's a researcher in stress. I was like, yeah, I wrote it down. I went upstairs and Googled and I watched some videos. I was like, oh, well, this person's gonna be more

than a podcast, yes. So then you ended up in our stress course and were trying to co-opt you in all sorts of ways. Anyway, one of her concepts that I think is really powerful is good-ish. So if you think you're a good person, which most of us do consciously or so consciously, then when somebody points out that you did something racist or sexist or unkind, you're... That's an attack on something so core that most of us get incredibly defensive. There's a term white fragility, for example,

about how white people react in conversations around diversity. If you think of yourself as good-ish, well, that's a growth mindset. And then you're like, oh, well, I'm a good-ish, but I messed up here. Exactly. I'm good-ish, but I felt a little bit more nervous with this person versus

another person. Okay, good to know. Let me check that. Let me talk about that. Let me think about that more. And let me even have a conversation with somebody about that. Where does this come from? Let me do the Y dance. So why do I feel this way? And I think that can make a big difference. And for me, part of what I want is for people to increase. What I like to refer to it as a diversity consciousness. And by that, I mean noticing when you're in an environment or when you're in exhibiting behavior that is reflective of not having as much exposure to diversity as you would like. That can be anybody because I have a lot of friends who went to grew up in predominantly

African-American environments, went to predominantly African-American American environments, went to predominantly African American high schools, went to predominantly African American colleges, and then get to these environments in the workplace and they're like, whoa. So stepping back and noticing what your assumptions are about white people, what your assumptions are about, people in different socioeconomic categories, and then having conversations about that

can bridge these gaps that we have and allow us all to be, I think, work harder at being good-ish so that the next person we see who looks different or the next person we see who falls into that category, we categorize them in a different way. And man, if we do that, I think our society is going to be so much more integrated and there's going to be so much more potential for working together in the way we need to to make the change that we want to make. This is a slight non-secret, but the, the, a lot of what you have traditionally in your career, counseled people to do in situations of stress is to tap into self-awareness.

No, you were stressed. Do you think you were missing something in that you only recently started actually meditating yourself, which is a massive tool for self-awareness? Yeah. It's funny that you say that because I teach senior executives, and I teach them, I tell them to meditate. Oh, so you were just a hypocrite. My last session, I confessed.

I was like, I was a hypocrite because I've done this for years and I finally just started meditating. By the way, I'm kidding about you. I know you are. I'm a hypocrite on a lot of the things I tell people to do, I'm not good at. I endeavor to do, but I'm not good at it.

Yes, yeah. And so I think that what meditation, meditation has made me more self-aware about where my stress comes from and how to be present with it in a way to disarm it and be less reactive. So almost like to be less owned by my stress and less run by my stress. And I would imagine to follow your own advice even more skillfully because if you're catching your stress in a high pressure moment 15 minutes earlier than you might have before because you've done all this meditation. Well, then you can start doing these techniques of asking yourself the questions or re-appraising

it cognitively earlier. You're less far down the road. Yep. And they say research is me search. So I can say a lot of these things and not follow them myself, but meditation is really helping me to follow them more myself and then just have these glimmers of insights on so many different things that I just feel my mind was so cluttered that it wouldn't allow me to have these deeper insights on my work.

Stay tuned, more of our conversation is on the way after this. Let me ask you just in our sensitive to your time, but let me ask a few more questions about your research. One of them is that you've also, you've talked about talking to senior exec counseling or coaching senior executives, but you've also spent some time with police department. Yes. Yes. I, one of the most stressful environments is trying to figure out whether or not somebody

is armed or dangerous or whatever. So my dissertation was actually a study where I looked at where I stressed police officers out and looked at how stress affects their decisions on the computerized exercise to shoot or not shoot armed or unarmed black and white targets. And so this idea of putting together how our bodies respond with our decision making was something that I wanted to further examine. They had done studies like this on civilians and found that civilians made those mistakes of shooting unarmed black men and things like that. Like we saw with Amidu Diallo years ago.

But what was interesting in my work is that I did find that police officers understressed, engaging in these computerized shooting exercises were very skillful and they were not making the same mistake of shooting unarmed black men. What was interesting in my findings though was that what was happening is they weren't they were very accurate with armed and unarmed black men, but with armed white targets, they were letting those go away. They were not shooting accurately with armed white targets.

So, it's almost like the stereotype that if a person is white, they might not be dangerous, and therefore I will not shoot at them was making them make errors on a different side than we typically see in the news. So that was one of my key findings. And it, one of the things that it taught me because the department that I did that research in, they had actually done a lot in terms of training the officers around race and they had actually had an African American leader of the department. So they've been very sensitive on that dimension.

They attributed the results to that. But it was still interesting that there are still errors being made. And how can we make sure that we are not, we are equally treating all targets in daily life, whether it's police officers or not. So we can't let armed people get away regardless of their race. And how can we make sure that bias isn't filtering in the opposite way that we see in the news? But what I, you know, this question of bias, it's a hard one to untangle, especially for

people who are carrying guns and or have these acute situations. Do you have any instinct about how to reduce the bias? I mean, so a lot of departments are now doing first unconscious bias training and helping officers with that. Does that work? Because there have been a lot of questions raised and I talked about this with Dolly about the IAT, the implicit association test, which tests your bias, but there's a lot of research to suggest that it doesn't actually test much.

So I think what the IAT does is it makes you aware that these biases can exist, but it doesn't necessarily predict behavior. So awareness doesn't necessarily predict behavior. So awareness doesn't always predict behavior. That is one of the challenges that researchers are trying to figure out. Okay, well, when I do show this with the IT, what does it predict in terms of my actions and behaviors? So I do think increasing our awareness of unconscious bias is important. I think everyone needs to understand that these societal stereotypes and expectations we all have, then we all experience

them with your black, with your white, your spaniard, whatever. And then the next step is, okay, I know it exists, and it just goes back to the noticing. So what would it mean in terms of me differentiately treating somebody? And how can I notice that I might do something different and be okay with being good-ish and make a different choice next time? So I think that officers getting this training is good. I think that what we need more of, and there are more companies doing this is more virtual reality training,

where you're measuring your physiological responses, where you're really in the real world situation and showing that these biases can lead to these actual mistakes in shooting and low stakes context that's VR. That's what we need more of so the people can say wow I do do that I can do that and then adjust so that when they're in the real world that won't happen. And finally, creativity. What have you found about the link between stress and creativity? My favorite example of this is the depressed artist. We hear about the depressed artist, Van Gogh, Chuman, you name it.

And you would think that with these depressed artists, many of them experienced really stressful situations that then led to them creating their best works. that with these depressed artists, many of them experienced really stressful situations that then led to them creating their best works. In my work, I show that when you're stressed, and I've stressed people out by having them experience negative feedback. By the way, she designs these truly sadistic stress things in the lab that she puts her test subjects through to make them stressed and then to learn lots of stuff based on that. But you are diabolical.

Oh, you know, well, these are techniques to help us understand real world phenomena. So I'm really contributing to science by doing these things. That's right. So let me step back for a second. I use hormones in my research. I look at cortisol stress hormone, testosterone hormone linked to dominance. There's also this really cool hormone called dehydroepiandrostorone. When your cortisol increases, which is suggesting that you're stressed, you also want an increase

in dehydroepyendrosterone because it kind of counter-balances that stress. But low levels of dehydroepyendrosterone are linked to depression. So what I did in this study that I was talking about with creativity is looked at people's levels of dehydroepyendrosterone, stressed them out out and then looked at how creative they were. Because many of these dispressed artists, little dehydrobrane drosserone, created their best works when they then had this stressful negative mood triggering situation. So what I did find is that if you are predisposed to depression and are exposed to a negative situation, then you're very, very creative and create great arts,

works of art. And that's partially because you're like, wow, I got this, I'm kind of vulnerable to experiencing depression, and I got this negative, I want to change my negative mood. I want to go from this negative mood, I'm feeling to more positive mood, and so I'm going to channel that into my creative product. So I'm going to tear apart this piece, I'm going to make these flowers, I'm going to do all this stuff. So the creativity is in a way acting as a mood repair to facilitate people going from

this negative situation, the stressful situation, to feeling a little bit more positive that's been channeled through the creativity. I mean, I find that, I mean, writing a book right now based on the really stressful, horrifying results of a 360 review I did. And so I'm trying to do something creative and instructive, not only in my actual life, but in the book.

Yeah. And I can recall at least one traumatic breakup where I got really creative at work. It was a consequence. And I don't know if I was kind of trying to paper over my feelings, but I distracted myself with the work. Maybe there were some of that too, but I also know that it was a fruitful time at work.

Yeah, yeah. I've also shown that when you have a stress as enhancing mindset and again get stressed out, you're more creative. Come up with more creative uses of things. So this idea of how can your mindset about your stress and your situation be used in channeled in a way that generates more creativity, allows you to see connections between things. That's a piece of why I also am a big proponent of changing how you think about stress,

because I do think that it allows us to see our world and the connections between things so much more clearly. And gosh, when we see things more clearly, I think that we can have even more of an impact and make a big difference in this world. I had read a study. I think it was your study about tasks switching. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. So because to me, it relates to creativity because I, you know, spent a lot of time writing and spent a lot of time wishing I could be looking at my email, not that I like my email, but I want to not be writing.

Right. So I could be surfing or looking at Netflix or playing with a cat or something. Anything that get me away from writing, which is the worst thing in the world. But you had a view on task switching that was a little counterintuitive. Yes. So in our world, we're like, oh, I shouldn't switch between tasks because that'll make me distracted and I'm not going to be good or whatever. My colleagues in I ran a study where we had people engage in creative tasks. You're giving two tasks. And we wanted to see if, and they were giving a particular amount of time to complete the tasks in different parameters. You can either sit there and work on the

task for six minutes or three minutes and then switch and work on another task for three minutes, or you can regularly switch back and forth between tasks. And we want to see which generated the most creativity. And we did find that the switching back and forth did actually increase people's creativity because if you're working on one task and you get stuck, you're just sitting there and you're stuck and you're stuck and no new things are coming up. But if you're forced to switch, it makes you less fixated on that one thing you were not getting the answer to. And when you move to the next one, it gets you out of that fixated mindset and you're like, oh, and then you go back to it and you get out, you get unstuck. But does this contradict all

the research road and multitasking? So it does suggest that too much multitasking isn't always a bad thing. Multitasking isn't always a bad thing because if switching to something else can get you unstuck, then that's a good thing. But it seems like there's a difference actually between multitasking, which is truly trying to do two or three things at once. And uni-tasking with a switching in a sort of an orderly fashion that might not have the switching costs that are random and rampant when you're actually part of it. Exactly. So, multitasking is, I'm doing things that are pulling my mind in very, very different ways.

Our work suggests that when you are focusing on two types of tasks that are kind of similar that switching between them will generate greed or creativity. I'll just give you an example, just for my own life. Recently, I was on a phone call with a lawyer, one of my little lawyer, my lawyer, who was, she was asking me a bunch of questions and I was trying to pay attention to my four-year-old son was there and we were about to go see a movie and she was asking me a bunch of questions and I was trying to pay attention to my four year old son was there and we were about to go see a movie and he kept asking

me a bunch of questions and I was doing a terrible job at both conversations and feeling really stressed. And I really felt it in my mind as I mean probably this is one of the downsides of meditation I was really aware that sucks. But then the other thing is I've been working on this book that I've been complaining about a lot and noticing that this is, and I'm not switching every three to six minutes, but I am switching sometimes day to day where I will, one day I'll work on one section, but until I feel kind of stuck and then I'll go to another section and run out the string there and I'll

find that I'm rejuvenated on the other thing. That is exactly what we were trying to capture in our work. That if you give yourself the space that allows you to get unstuck, then that will help you in the different tasks that you're working on. And sometimes we say, we think, no, no, no, I'm just going to put as much effort as possible. I'm going to focus and focus on focus. Sometimes you need to just not do that. And that's when you can actually come up with new ideas that are beneficial versus focusing and getting stuck. Is there anything I have a shoot of asked you but I didn't?

Ooh, that's a tough question. Now there's so many things that are coming to my mind. So, what I'm going to say is you maybe should have asked me, well, let's put a couple of things that came into my mind as we were talking that I didn't get to share. One of my hopes with some of the work that I do when I talk about noticing is just as when I walk in the room in a room and I'm like, oh, I'm the only black person in here. I want others to do that type of mental accounting and to go walk into a room and just do an audit and an assessment and say, huh, there are two black people here. There are five Latino people here. There are so that we have this consciousness around diversity for every environment we step into. And to what end?

I'm asking from a perspective of a white person. Why is it useful for me in a society where that's dominated by white culture and oddly enough, white people don't actually aren't really aware of that, although everybody's not white is. Why would it be important for me when I walk in a room to sort of clock that there are what the mosaic includes? Because if you clock with the mosaic includes, it might increase the likelihood that you will walk over to somebody who looks different

than you and have a conversation with them. And when you have a conversation with them. But that come off as like paternalistic and condescending. If you're paternalistic and condescending jerk, yeah, but if you're a normal human being who knows how to have conversations with people, then no. Okay. It's in and I think of it as getting to know different people. We do that at a cocktail party anyway

So why or not this is true or we hide in the corner and wait for our friends to come that's that's a whole different segment of the podcast But yeah, so I think it allows you to maybe Be courageous and be good-ish and have a conversation that you might not have otherwise had, learn something new about somebody that you might not have otherwise known, and given someone an opportunity to feel more comfortable in an environment where they don't, they aren't around anyone who looks like them. It's funny, you're making me think, I have a friend, I'm not going to use his last name because I don't have permission to, I didn't know who's going to come to mind in this conversation. His first name is Willie.

Willie and I have been friends for maybe 16 years. Willie's black, but he grew up in largely white environments. And we've been very close friends in a social setting here in New York City, which is reasonably diverse, but mostly white. And he has noticed on my Instagram feed that my son's best friend is black. And so he's often joking with me about like, oh, so your boy has a willy. It's cool. And, but it's, you know, he came to my house yesterday and we're having a party with all the little

kids who are there and most of the kids were white and he was like, where's willy? You know, where's the little black kid? And it was, like, he was really seeing everything through that lens, which of course made me see it through the lens. He's also said things to me before about the importance to him of the fact that the 10% happier app has teachers of color, even though oddly enough, his favorite teachers are white teachers,

which is interesting. But it was just important to him to know that the people who look like him are represented. And so just for me hearing that as a white person gives me a heightened sensitivity, probably not as much sensitivity as I truly should have, but it's a wake-up call and it's humbling because I don't see it.

I'm not on my mind much of the time. So that's one thing I would say. The other thing is, I'm so happy I picked up meditation in my life. And that one of the things I've learned is that there's no one right way. And that as I get to know myself better and understand more of what I need that, how can I create the mosaic of different techniques that will help me be 10% happier, that will help me. So sometimes I feel like when I talk about meditation, I meditate for an hour, it sounds like there's one right way

or there's everyone should be, no, can we all be, can we all find what's right for us and work hard at that because we're also different so that we should all seek what's right for each person. And the other thing is really get to know your stress, really, really work on getting to know your stress. I think it's all connected because I do think when we do that, you'll kind of walk a lot lighter in life. Yeah, there's just so much more levity that comes with with that. And I want I feel like we're walking around so heavy, carrying around so much. And if we get to know our stress and

and use our meditation to get to why we care and kind of break down, peel back the onion, we'll walk with a lot more elevity, which is what we all need to do. Except getting, you know, your stress and like getting a sense of what are these patterns that are making us stress the loyal soldiers, et cetera, et cetera. That's hard work. So it may make you walk lighter eventually, but let's not pretend it's easy. Oh, no, walking lighter is not an easy thing.

So I do, I love that you just reminded me that it is do the work, which is hard and heavy lifting for that levity. And somebody recently asked me, and I answered this question in a podcast recently when I take voice mail at the end of the show, and somebody asked the difference between insight practices, sort of meditation

and emotional work. And I'm really waking up to the fact that meditation is great, but for me at least it's not enough. So it's very important that I've done it for me. It's very important that I've done a lot of meditation. I have a sense of how not to take all of my inner cacophony so personally and so therefore I'm not so owned by it. But it's also important to look at some of these ancient stories because they're still

driving you. I'm not perfectly enlightened from a meditative standpoint. So I'm still being inked around in ways I'm not aware of. I have blind spots. And so to do the emotional work either in with a shrank or a coach or both or your friends or your wife and really look at this old programming so that it doesn't own you. That too is very important. Absolutely. And that to me is the mosaic, the mosaic of multiple things that we can engage in to learn about ourselves.

Joseph Goldstein, my meditation teacher recently, I was talking about what do you mean by enlightenment? He said one way to think about it is lightning up. Yeah, yes, absolutely. And the other thing that was huge for me is reframing and saying, if I can't give myself 15 minutes in a day, if I can't give myself an hour in a day, but I'll give it to work and I'll give it to them and I'll give it to this and I'll give it to that. What is that saying about how much I value myself? And so that's a piece of what's kept me going with exercising and other things. It's like, let me give this back to me. And supposedly I'll have more

energy to give back to other people, which actually I do feel I really do feel that So can we value ourselves as much as we value doing so much other stuff for other people? I totally agree with that and I would say that for people like me and you who live in a world of relative privilege Or we only have one job instead of having to work three jobs or have 75 kids or whatever job instead of having to work three jobs or have 75 kids or whatever. We do have a little bit more time to invest in ourselves, but for those who don't have that luxury, a minute. Yes. A minute.

You can give yourself a minute. You deserve a minute. And then maybe you'll get up to five one day, you know. That's just the whole. So plug zone. Let's just plug everything. Where can people learn more about you, or you on social media, do you have, I don't know,

workshops, I don't know, whatever you want to tell people about. So, my website, www.madupacanola.com has more of my research, where you can learn about some of these studies that I've talked about. Studies on creativity, on negotiation, if that's something that judges it on, discrimination and the workplace, things like that. I'm on LinkedIn. I don't use it as much as I would like to, but I'm also on Twitter.

And email is also a great medium to reach me. And so- Yeah, I should want to put your email address up. Do I? I mean, I don't know. You want to get emails from lots of people? No. Okay. So she's not gonna put her email address.

No, I'm not gonna put my email address up. But we can hit you up on LinkedIn. Yes, so you can hit me up on LinkedIn and my website and Twitter and whatever. All right, I just saved you. Some people have given out their email address. Like, those are people who really want the emails, but I'm just guessing you know paste on my prior Carpenter. Yes, yes. Yes, not to be paternalistic. No totally. That was just friendly.

All right, this is great. Thank you. Thank you so much for doing it. Thanks to Dali Chug. Yay, Dali. All right, I love that chat with Medoupé. And once again, check out the 10% happier app for the new course called Stress Better. Let's do some voicemails. Here's number one. Hi, my name's Luccia. And I was just wondering if I were to get in a conflict with somebody, how do I balance letting go and realizing they're projecting their insecurities on me and ruminating on the situation to what?

Thanks, Sam. I love listening. Okay, so I have a bunch of things to say about this. I'm just kind of writing them down. I don't know all the details of your particular situation here. So, I apologize if what I say isn't directly relevant. But when you talked about the balance between ruminating it on it, just trying to figure out whether you're ruminating on the conflict too much. You know, I would go back to the old, excellent piece of advice,inole moment in my life. The advice I got from meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein Who was talking about the management of worry? I'm a big proponent of worry

I used to be an even bigger proponent of worry until I encountered meditation and realized that a certain point worrying and rumination crosses the line into like uselessness and Joseph and I were talking about this at one point and he said, look, you know, just say you're worried about missing your flight. At some point, you know, in the 87th time you're running through all the horrible ramifications of missing your flight. It might be useful to ask yourself a simple question, is this useful? And I find that that little mantra is incredibly useful, especially in dealing with interpersonal conflict, because, you know, the old expression about, you know, holding a grudge, it's like taking poison and hoping the other person dies. But you're the one who's

suffering. And so, obviously, I mean, I'm not telling you once you get in a conflict with somebody that you should never think about it by the way that's just impossible. I also think a certain amount of constructive thinking about how can I communicate better, what's the best way to address this with the person, do I care about repairing this relationship, if so what are the best moves, all of that makes sense. But at some point, you might notice that you're just degrading your own happiness and energy levels and resiliency by stewing. And that's where is this useful, can be very useful.

The other thing I was going to say, and this may just be two personal, or two unique to me to make any difference to you, but I'll just say that you use the word projecting, you were talking about the other person projecting or their insecurities or neuroses onto you. You know, one thing that I've learned myself in the past years since I received the 360 review that I've talked about before on this podcast

where I got sort of candid anonymous feedback from a lot of people in my life about my strengths and weaknesses. And one of them is that I personally have a bit of a poker face. I'm not super emotive. And that gives people a canvas onto which they can project their own insecurities or darkest, most paranoid fears. And that is sort of a poisonous element to my interpersonal relationship. So just a, I just throw that out there because it came to mind and I don't know if it's in any way relevant to your situation, but it might be relevant to the situation of somebody listening. And I found that being better

at being a clearer communicator of what's going on for me internally, one word for that would be vulnerability. Go back and listen to the Brunei Brown episode we did a few weeks ago, who talks as a master and sort of skillful use of vulnerability, where you just talk openly about the stories you're telling yourself or how you're feeling at any given moment without necessarily bleeding out all over the place and being modeling. I've found that that really can prevent conflict, which is of course the subject of your question. All right, let's go on to voice mail number two. Here we go.

Hey, Dan, this is Shelby from Kentucky. I've got a question regarding my fairly new meditation and mindfulness practice, which thanks to you for opening up that door. I am inviting myself getting frustrated when I've got obligations to daily lives that take me away from my perceived work or my Dharma practice if you want to put it that way. I feel this sense of wanting to go off and be alone and I think, well, maybe you just need a retreat, you just need this. You just need that. I'm trying to challenge those thoughts because I know that if this is a life long endeavor,

and I know people are mindful and have meditation practices and Dharma practice, while having children in multiple careers. And I'm fairly unburdened at this point in my life. So I have that thought of if I'm already feeling like I don't have enough time or enough personal space to do the work the way I want, how will I feel moving forward. For example, I'm driving five hours today and I'm just enjoying listening to the podcast, the talks and doing some car meditation, which I'm

grateful that you guys offer on the app, by the way. But I'm not looking forward to this evening, where I'm going to have to basically commit time to a certain side of my family that I'm not as close with and just do the visiting thing. Which, you know, afterwards, I always feel good to mark those obligations done and I know that they're the right thing for my community and my little family. But I find myself feeling that I can't be mindful in these moments. And I know you're going to tell me I can practice that in those moments. But I'm just trying to get at what that feeling might be in the center of me that is itselflessness?

Is it my taking this too seriously? Am I looking at the wrong way? That, you know, I feel like I'm almost becoming so mindful within that I'm becoming less aware of my surroundings. So maybe I must be doing it wrong. I'm not sure. I appreciate your insight. Thanks, Stan. Okay. Thank you. I'll do my best with this. I think you raised a lot of issues, and I sort of wish I could ask you some follow-up questions, but so I'll just kind of popcorn style, throw out some ideas.

First of all, congratulations on booting up a practice. It sounds like it's important to you and you're going for it. And that's a big deal. I wouldn't overlook that. That's it. It's really hard for people to get started meditating and you're doing it. So I just pause for a moment and celebrate that. Also welcome to the cult.

Your robes will be coming in the mail soon. So just in no particular order, as I listen to to you speak I was just jotting down some notes. One thing I would say is if you're really feeling like you need time and space to dedicate to this practice I actually think a retreat would be a good idea. Now not everybody can get the time to do a retreat. The travel can be a little expensive. The retreat itself can be expensive, although the two centers where I practice both spirit rock and insight, meditation, society, they have scholarships. So at least that part, you can get some, you can get some help with that. But I would, I would take a look at going on a retreat. Sounds like you've got the fire in the belly. I would check that out.

The other thing is, you know, on the one hand, it's great that you've got a lot of energy to do this, but it also sounds like maybe you're wasting some energy kind of kicking your own butt here about not finding the time or space. So maybe you should lower the bar a little bit and give yourself a break and say, look, some days I'm only going to do two minutes or five minutes or 10 minutes, but other days now I'm really going to clear the time to do more. You mentioned this, you knew I was going to say this, but I think free range, daily life meditations, you're already doing it. You said you're doing a car meditation, walking between meetings, et cetera, et cetera.

You were also talking about meeting with family members who you weren't necessarily, you know, relishing that opportunity. But, you know, listening to other people, active listening can be a form of meditation. One little trick that I was taught recently, it's really useful to get you to tune in and pay attention. It's something called reflective listening,

where you listen to somebody talk and try to reflect back by the end after they've uttered their paragraph or two to reflect back the nugget of your understanding of what they've just said. That forces you to really listen closely and then people, even though they may not know it consciously, really appreciate when you reflect back what you believe you've heard from them, because it's just deeply satisfying to be heard. And if they feel like you have, they haven't got it right, they'll say, yeah, but also x, y, and z, and then you reflect that too. And I find that that really keeps me engaged in conversations and were like that too. And I find that that really keeps me engaged in conversations and it requires focus, attention and mindfulness. And then finally, I, you know, I don't know what your schedule is, but you said you're not burdened in the way that you have multiple

jobs and multiple children. And so I think a real dry, eyed, skillful, holistic look at your schedule might turn up pockets where you actually could be dedicating that time to practice. Not that I have anything against social media or TV or whatever, but you might look at the times where you're doing that stuff and say, well, could I dial that down 25% and dedicate some of those minutes to sitting so I that's a bunch of tools As always it's like you got to play with it and try a few things out and then come back to the list and start again But just to repeat I think the bottom line here is you've got a practice going and that's a huge victory Thanks to everybody who calls in and does do the and leaves these voicemails for us. We love them. I love them. While I'm in the thanking mood here, thanks to Mike D our engineer who's running the boards as I

record this on Sunday morning. And also thanks to the people who produce this show and work incredibly hard. Ryan Kessler, Grace Livingston, Samuel Johns, thanks to ABC News Radio. And also, thanks to our podcast insiders. I keep meeting them at public events. I go to, these are folks who dedicate time every week to give us feedback on the episodes. We really take this very seriously and make changes accordingly. So, deep, deep gratitude to you. And thanks, of course, to everybody who listens to the show. We'll be back soon with a guided meditation that we're going to drop into the feed in

a few days, and then after that we'll be back next Wednesday with a brand new episode. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash Survey.