Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 373: Optimizing Your Stress | Modupe Akinola

Episode Date: August 25, 2021

Stress – which many of us despise and try to avoid – does not actually have to be a bad thing. Rather, it’s our relationship to stress, our mindset about stress, that determines whether we are helped or harmed by it. Today’s guest has the science to back this up and the practical tools to help you transfer her insights from the lab to your life. Modupe Akinola is an Associate Professor of Management at the Columbia Business School and host of the TED Business podcast. She is also one of the featured experts in our Stress Better course in the Ten Percent Happier app. In this conversation, Modupe talks about what she’s learned during these extraordinarily stressful last couple of years, what she calls the “stress mindset” (and how to cultivate it), and the vast resources available to us for handling stress (and how to tap them). We also dive into another of Modupe’s areas of expertise: how to have productive conversations around the often stressful–but critical–issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Get ready for the upcoming Ted Lasso Challenge by downloading the Ten Percent Happier app today: https://10percenthappier.app.link/install Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/modupe-akinola-373 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. 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. Hello, hello. My guest today is here to make what I'm going to go ahead and call a classic TPH style argument. Here's the argument, stress, which I think many of us despise and

try to avoid at all costs. Stress does not actually have to be a bad thing, rather it's our relationship to stress, our mindset about stress that determines whether we're helped or harmed by it. Also in classic TPH fashion, my guest today has got science to back this up and practical tools to help you transfer her insights from the lab to your life. Medupa Akanova is an associate professor of management at the Columbia Business School. She's also the host of the Ted Business Podcast. That's a new gig for her, the Ted Business Podcast. She's great at hosting.

Go check that out. I should also say that closer to home, she's one of the featured experts in our Stress Better course, which resides in the 10% happier app. That course also features TPH fan favorite, Seven A. Slassy. In this conversation, Medupa and I talk about what she's learned about stress during these extraordinarily stressful last couple of years, what she calls the stress mindset and how to cultivate it, and the vast resources available to all of us for handling stress.

We also dive into one of Madupa's other areas of expertise, which is how to have productive conversations about the often stressful but always important issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Before we dive in one exciting programming note, we are launching a special series of episodes right here on this podcast next week. It's called the Ted Lasso series. For those of you who haven't seen it, Ted Lasso is a very funny delightful show on Apple TV.

Plus, it's about an American football coach who's hired to manage a British soccer team despite having no soccer experience at all. The show has been a huge hit. The fans are die hard and I count myself among them. And in fact, it recently earned a record breaking 20 Emmy nominations. It's hilarious.

And season two is airing right now. I do want to stress though that if you have no plans to watch the show, it doesn't matter as it pertains to our upcoming episodes. They will still be very useful. I promise we're going to be bringing on some top scientists from Berkeley and Stanford who will talk about how the research suggests that compassionate people are happier, healthier, and more successful. Ted Lasso is very compassionate, very kind, and that's the only reason he's able to achieve any modicum of success

in a very uncomfortable situation, coaching a sport he doesn't know. Also, as part of this series, we'll have a bonus meditation from the one and only Sharon Salzburg, really one of the leading proponents in the west of loving kindness or compassion meditation. And we're going to introduce you to a phenomenal Dharma teacher who will be making a TPH podcast debut. And there's more. The week after we launched the Ted Lasso series on the podcast, we're going to launch a Ted Lasso challenge over on the 10% happier app. Every day for five days in a row, you'll watch a brief video from me

that interrogates why and how to learn kindness. In those videos, I'll serve up some fun clips from the Ted Lasso show to show you various examples of what kindness can look like in action. Then I'll talk a little bit about how to operationalize that in your life, and then we'll kick it over to a Rockstar meditation teacher by the name of Loss Armiento to guide you through a meditation specifically designed to help you practice what you just learned. It's really a radical

notion, the idea that kindness, love, if you want to be grand about it, that these are not factory settings that are unalterable, these are skills. It's an incredible notion and we're going to teach you how to do it in this challenge. It's free and all you have to do is download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps and get excited. It starts on September 7th. All that said, let's talk about optimizing stress now with Medupa Akinola. Medupa Akinola, welcome back to the show.

Thanks for having me back, Dan. It's good to be back. It's been a minute, since we've spoken. You reminded me before we started rolling here that the last time you're on the show was 2019, a few things have happened in the world and in our respective lives. Since then, just a couple, just a couple. You are really, really well-regarded expert in stress, and obviously stress has been a salient part of many of our lives. Over the last year and a half, this is perhaps too broad a question, but let's just start here.

What have you learned about stress since early 2020? I would say that I've learned to live my research, which focuses on the importance of understanding that not all stress is bad, and that if we actually acknowledge stress and welcome it and try to use it, we can be our best selves. And so often the message is like deny that it's there, it's okay, like manage it.

But instead, we need to be open about what we're experiencing, be present with that, and then think about how that stress can help us in tackling whatever else is on our plate. And I've had to do that a lot in the last few years. You know, we no longer say, oh, a year, it's only been a year since COVID, dual pandemics. No, it's been over a year now. So just reminding myself of that has been really important and being okay with having conversations about that

with others, understanding that we need to be each other's resource, support through all that we're dealing with because it's new. It's new for everybody. You have been on the show before, but for those who didn't get a chance to check that out or haven't used the course in which you star on the 10% happier app on stress, what do you mean exactly when you say not all stress is bad? Because I do think that culturally, it's pretty deeply ingrained into us that we need to read ourselves of stress. So it is true that when you are in a situation where you do not have any resources to cope,

like there is danger, uncertainty, you have to exert a lot of effort, that's a stressful situation. And if you don't have like help with that, people, resources, knowledge, abilities, then you are going to feel like you can't make it through. But that's not always a bad thing. And that our bodies were designed to give us the resources we need to push through some of those situations. So when I say not all stress is bad, what I'm saying is this dominant message and narrative

that the minute you feel that you don't have the resources, you should run away from it, what I try to teach people is the minute you feel you don't have the resources, how can you engage resources? Because we ultimately have everything we need to push through a stressful situation. And the more we understand the types of situations that evoke a stress response, then the better we will be at being present with that when it comes up again. So that's the fundamental premise that it's not a bad thing to experience the stress

that we experience on a regular basis. We're gonna have tight deadlines. Your kids gonna be sick. There's gonna be uncertainty about tomorrow. Can you go to the office? Is it gonna be closed? Will your kids be in school? But if you say to yourself, okay,

I've dealt with this before. Heck, I dealt with this all last year. Then it's easier to deal with what is uncertain coming tomorrow. Instead of saying, that's just a bad thing, I'm going to go back to bed and lie and bed and feed a position and not come back out. So that is the main premise that I try to make sure we all understand stress can be a resource. I'm curious for you, you've been you talked about living your research over the last year and a half and maybe most especially now as we're in, you know, as in the United States,

we're in this, you know, we thought we're in a clear kind of and on COVID and we're definitely not. What are the resources you find yourself calling upon most frequently in your own life? Yeah. So I would say right now, you know, being a professor, there is uncertainty. Are we going to all be double masked? How many people are going to be in the classroom? Will we maybe have to do be a hybrid model? Will there be some people on Zoom? Will I even have a clear mask? There's so much uncertainty. And I could say, I can't handle this. This is too much.

I can't deal with this. When they know I'll figure it out and whatever, whatever. But instead, I have to keep reminding myself, I've taught for the last 12 years. I know how to do this. Last year, I taught on Zoom, hybrid. Sometimes I taught 100% on Zoom.

Sometimes I was hybrid, sometimes I was in person. And guess what? It went fine. So that, to me, is a resource of knowledge and experience that has taught me, I can do this. Now, in the past, I might have said, don't be stressed about it,'ll be fine it'll be okay. I'm not saying that. I'm saying this is stressful. There is uncertainty. I'm sharing with people I don't know how it's going to be and opening my mouth and saying that without feeling weak, without

feeling whatever about doing that. But then saying but I have everything I need and having others help me say, well, what else would you need? What else could I do? How can I help you and learning to figure out what some of those things are? I mean, and it sounds so obvious, but these are little things when you are so caught up in your mind about the stress ahead that you sometimes forget to ask and if you have others help you, then you'll get great ideas about how to address the things that are stressful.

And so another way to put that is, gosh, can we make sure that we are leaning on each other? And not trauma dumping, though. In new term, I learned, trauma dumping. Hmm. Have you heard that one? I haven't told me more. Well, it's like when you just blab and dump all of your traumas that you're experiencing

with somebody else, and you expect them to take it all on. I'm not talking about trauma dumping here. I'm talking about asking somebody or recognizing what you might need and asking people for it, not just asking them to be listening ear to your baggage. So how do you draw that line between calling on others for support and trauma dumping? Sometimes I have to ask myself, what do I need right now? And if that answer is, I need to share with somebody all the negative things I'm going through,

maybe tee them up for that. But don't just drop it all of them. Hey, Dan, I'm going through a rough situate. This might not be a good time for the podcast for us to record. Do you mind if I vent? Cause I just need some venting space. Then letting me vent and then moving on.

Instead of being like, when you ask me how I'm doing, oh my God, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah Also as a friend, I now often say, what do you need from me right now? What do you need? And sometimes someone will say, I just need you to listen. Okay, I can do that. I need you to prescribe. I need you to tell me what to do. I don't know the answer.

And I think those types of conversations come with you first pausing and asking yourself what you need, which we don't do. And creating the space to know what the answer to that might be. A guy named Chris Gurmur was on the show seven or eight months ago. He's one of the world's leading experts in self-compassion and many things he said in that conversation of stuck in my head,

but one of the things he said is that the pre-eminent self-compassionate question, which you should be asking yourself regularly, not in a selfish way, but in a way that implies sort of self-respect and self-care, is, what do I need right now? Yeah, yeah. And then also, I mean, the ultimate is then being able to give yourself that without having to rely on others.

But the first step is asking, I'm really interested in the porousness between self interest and other interest. And as having a conversation with a friend the other day who's gone through hell over the last couple of years lost, lost some children, you know, has had to be health problem, just a whole litany of terribleness, not a word, but whatever. And he was telling me that many years into it, he realized that actually he had enough capacity now

to help other people, which in a weird way made him feel better. And I see that in my own life too. I have had a very lucky life. I have not had the traumas that he or many of the other people I know have endured. But that's an interesting thing to think about as we think about resourcing ourselves during stressful times. Yes. I mean, if you can give yourself what you need, then you create space to be able to support others in what they need to. I think that is so right.

And to the extent that you then have experiences of that, you can share with others those experiences and that's connection. That's like sharing your humanity with each other. That's like seeing myself in you in a way that allows me to help you. And I think that's the ultimate active compassion. But I do think you need boundaries

because I have found that I need to know when is the right time to be a resource to somebody else. Sometimes I just don't have the capacity to do it. And then I'll be listening and rolling my eyes and not wanting to be there, which is not the right space to be in because I needed to first take space

and give myself what I needed. So learning your boundaries, and again again if you know yourself then you'll know when you have the capacity to be there for others because we can't always be there for others. We're talking about resources that we can draw upon in order to embrace our stress and navigate a difficult time on planet earth. We've talked about asking for help, we've talked about providing other people with help because that can feel good and make you feel stronger. It's kind of enobling. What are some other resources that come to mind for you that other people listening right now could avail

themselves of at this moment? You know, when we first talked, had I been to my first Vipassana? Yes. Yes. And, you know, I do have to say, I have kept up my practice of stealing my mind in the morning. First thing I wake up is my time to be quiet and to meditate. And I like to say close all those open

apps that would seep into my day and to me yelling at somebody. And that has been the greatest gift for me, being able to spend that time first with myself and checking in and saying, where am I today, and just being present with that. And you know, you know the experience. Sometimes you'll do that. And like, I'll be, I'll be, I'll be, I'll be, I'll be, I'll have thought that I will woke up like, yay, happy for the day. And then there'll be like a tear coming out in that time that I spend with myself.

I'm like, I guess there's some sorrow in there that I didn't realize was there. And so I don't care if it's one minute, two minutes, five minutes, being able to check in with yourself is the first thing. Then you can ask yourself what you need. And then you can, but like, if you don't have time to check in, then you're just on autopilot.

And we have to stop that because you're just then going to keep getting hit by stuff and not have the capacity to deal as flexibly and as effectively as you would want to. So that's been a huge piece for me. I'm trying to think of other resources. Oh, there's clearly exercise or whatever it is that keeps my mind and body connected has been really

good too, enforcing myself, whether it's just like going out for a walk. When you're in this COVID zone and you can be on Zoom all day and never leave your house, being able to say, I'm going out for a walk at least every day if I can. That's a resource and then just like breathing in fresh air. I mean, come on. These are basic things that I think we need

to just attend to a lot more. So I've been very sensitive to finding me time in the morning and then also enjoying and taking advantage of the nature around us because it's a beautiful resource. You used this term before we started rolling. What is a stress mindset? A stress mindset is a frame or lens in which you understand and view stress as enhancing, and not just as debilitating. So it is a perspective on stress. And if you have a stress

is enhancing mindset, that suggests that you understand that stress can have beneficial properties. that you understand that stress can have beneficial properties. If you have a stress is debilitating mindset, then your dominant perspective is that stress is negative and can have negative repercussions. But the idea is how can we move people from a stress is debilitating mindset to a stress is enhancing mindset? Because sometimes we think that it's stress itself that determines whether your outcomes will be good or bad. And my colleague, Alia Krumman, I have found that it's your mindset about stress that dictates whether or not the effects of stress will be helpful or harmful.

So that's when I refer to stress mindset, that's what I'm talking about. So for instance, we recently, or not recently, we recently published a paper, but ran the study a while ago, where we had students expose them to a couple of videos talking about the enhancing properties of stress. We've all seen the examples of an athlete who in when they're adrenaline moment,

they hit the buzzer beater or they, you know, have this amazing, make this amazing goal. And that stress of that moment facilitated that one can argue. But we also know the situations where the same thing has happened and you miss the buzzer beater or you miss the goal and hit the post instead. And we found that when we show videos of stress being enhanced, stress is debilitating to students, to college students, that during exams, and these are exams that are like eight months after they saw these videos, they have more positive mood, they

experience more positive mood during exam period. So there is something about knowing that the stress that you're experiencing isn't always a bad thing. Is it as simple as just watching some videos or listening to this conversation, then all of a sudden we've got a stress mindset? No, it's continually reminding ourselves to and thinking about all the times in your life where you've been under stress but have overcome it in some way or another. and we all have this past year as a wonderful example of how we survived and how we made it through, but we each have situations. Big or small, where we didn't think we would make it

out of that stressful situation, but did, and we need to keep reminding ourselves of that. We also need to watch other people when they go through those situations and see how they have made it through. I'm not saying that you should always expose yourself to stressful situations, but what I am saying is,

when you allow yourself to experience that stress, then you will have more examples of what it might feel like to work through it. So don't run out for stressors, but when they come your way, think about all the ones that you've dealt with in the past and how you've gotten through. Something I've heard you say in the past

that's really stuck with me is that, and this is easier to do, I think, if you have a mindfulness practice, if you have some sort of self-awareness, but when you notice you're getting stressed, you might feel it in your body, you can remind yourself, yeah, this is your body getting you prepared to act. Yes, yes. When you feel your heart beating really hard,

that's your body saying, it's on, it's happening, I'm ready for you. And that's a stress-s-enhancing mindset versus, oh my God, my heart is beating so hard. I'm really stressed. This is a bad thing. Slow down, heart slow down. No, we want to use our bodily signals as a message saying, okay, this is time. It's time. And I think that if we remind ourselves of that too, if my palms are getting a little sweaty, that's okay. It's not a bad thing.

But then we can also engage tools to not let that overcome us. So for instance, if your heart is beating really hard, there's a reason why we say, we'll do some deep abdominal breathing. Because then that gets your heart rate down and allows things to flow more efficiently, I would say. So that's a very important tool, the physical tool of breathing and then the psychological

tool of reminding yourself that this is not a bad thing. And some colleagues have found in their research that when you remind students of this before they're taking like a GRE or an entrance exam or something like that, they perform better on the exam. So these are real when you tell students or people this before they negotiate in like a mock job negotiation, then when they do experience this kind of like increase in stress hormones, then when they do experience this kind of like increase in stress hormones, they actually perform better, knowing that it's not a bad thing to feel anxious. And you know, Alzenwood Brooks has some research showing that when you re-apprise your

anxiety as excitement, so when you say, oh, you know, I'm excited. I'm not just anxious and nervous about this. I'm excited about that. Then that can lead to beneficial outcomes. All of these are examples of what it means to have a mindset that what's going on right now, the stress you're experiencing isn't a bad thing. This is somewhat idiosyncratic, but when I hear you say this, I do hear it through the lens of somebody with panic disorder.

And so when I feel my heart start to race, I know from experience that this can actually go super pear-shaped. And so I can do my best to remind myself, yeah, this is my body, my best friend, my ally, getting me ready to deal with whatever's come my way, but this ally has mutant need before. Yes, it has mutant need before, but more often than not, it hasn't. So this is getting into the next skill, which is like positive self-talk, because your mind is going to go to those 10 instances of mutiny. But you have to say, oh, but there were 20 instances where there wasn't mutiny. And so this is constantly reframing and reframing to say, and guess what?

There might be more mutiny experiences, but I'll be okay. Because you made it through the last one. So this is all aligned with it, because they're not always going to have the perfect outcome. But we know we've bounced back when we've had negative outcomes. And that is okay. That's what I mean when I say acknowledge your stress. Egnolage all of it, the good that can come from it and the bad that has come. Knowing that more often than not, it's the good although the bad looms large.

So it's on us to prevent that looming large thing. Because man, we will let it, we will let it loom large. Can you say more about positive self talk? Cause I, I can hear a skeptic saying, oh, well, is this, you know, some like rainbow puking unicorn technique or like, what is positive self talk? Well, it's sunny because, you know, I know when we first met, we were both like, yeah, meditation for skeptics.

Cause we're both like, yeah, breathe for an hour a day, like that's ridiculous, whatever. And here we are. Positive self-talk is just, we have this person in our head that is going to often tell us how we are awful. This is just, you know? Oh, you can't do that well. You totally screwed that up.

You know, you can't run up that hill. And positive self-talk is just offering a balanced perspective to that negative that you always tell yourself, oh, you might not be able to run it today because you're tired, you're like you're tired. But if you stretch more, you can get to it. That's all I'm saying. It's just every negative thing you can tell yourself, there is a flipside

of positive and remind yourself of that. And it can be helpful. How do you form the habit of counter-programming your inner dialogue in the face of millennia of evolution that have left us with a pronounced tendency toward, you know, what's called the negativity bias. How do you similarly remember to revert to a stress-enhancing mindset? These strike me as really attractive evidence-based strategies, but doing them seems like a whole different kettle of fish. It is the knowing-doing thing. You have to practice it. And to practice it, you need to notice it.

There's nothing more I can tell you, but just to keep it. There it goes again. There goes my negative person saying that, you know, I'm not prepared. I'm gonna mess up the interview. Oh, but you didn't, that was fine. You're fine.

So each time, just trying to remind yourself and practicing it and noticing when these thoughts arise because they arise all the time. So you have ample opportunities to practice, ample. And then watching other people too. So then you become good at noticing it and other people, which I also think helps you notice it in yourself. So practice, I'm sorry, there's no shortcut. Because you, you are the person who knows yourself the best. So there's no one else that's going to tell you how to do

this every day, but you watching, noticing, observing and trying it. And the things I'm saying, some of them might work for you, some of them might not. You need to figure out what works for you. Much more of my conversation with Medupa Akanola right after this. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting.

Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brown-Oller, we will be your resident not-so-expert-expert. Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking. Oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong. What would we do differently? And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone.

So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. Let's talk about an area of life and culture that is maximally stressful for many of us, which is diversity, racism. You've been working on these issues for years. Of course, the last time we spoke, it was pre-George Floyd. I know you've been working on these issues for years. Of course, the last time we spoke, it was pre-George Floyd. I know you've been doing even more work on this year plus.

I'm just curious to hear what you've learned and how it's gone for you. This past year was so intense because I think that it made us all have to do some deep introspection and have to observe the ways in which race has deeply affected us. You know, somebody who said that this DEIA, diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism work is hard work and heart work. And so I have found that my heart has been hurt a lot. And just for context, I co-chaired a task force aimed at understanding how systemic racism was present in my workplace, which is Columbia Business School, which meant holding around 44 listening sessions with faculty, staff, and students to hear their experiences.

And one thing that I learned was the value of listening and the pain of listening. And I would say, you know, I kind of learned the hard way because even just like after George Floyd's death and having the first listening session, I made mistakes. I'm an expert quote unquote and diversity equity and inclusion, but I made a ton of mistakes like, you know, a student shared an experience that was a really tough one. And rather than just listening and acknowledging, which is often what people just want, I kind of said, well, you know, I hope you know that there was a resource

you could have gone to to talk about this or blah, blah, blah, and that just makes people feel like they didn't do something they should have done. Now in my mind, I was just trying to help them. But in their mind, I wasn't acknowledging their experience. So I really had to learn how to shut the heck up. Also, sometimes when you speak, it sounds like defensiveness. Even though that might not be your intention,

you're kind of invalidating someone's experience by saying like, oh, but you can do this, or but, but, but, but here's what's on the website. No, no, no, they just wanted you to listen. So I had to learn that. There were some moments where I was in a lot of pain listening to people's pain. But it gave me the energy to want to do even more.

It meant that I really needed to tune in and be attuned to what I needed, because every day I was very drained, and so I had to stop doing some things that would drain more of my resources, psychological resources. There were times where I had to watch a lot of Netflix because I needed to shut off,

but I learned that listening is hard, but listening is critical, especially when you're dealing with harm, pain, diversity, equity, and inclusion. So that's one thing. I also learned that man, having these conversations, it's difficult, and we often refer to them as difficult conversations, but when you do have them I hope that we will get to a point where we call them transformational conversations Because if they're done well Gosh, they really transform you where you can see someone else's perspective on something that you'd never seen before That transforms how you view another person who looks like them. That transforms how you view the world.

So, I think that's huge. And, you know, my colleagues and I three years ago started this conference, which was aimed at teaching us collectively how to teach our students how to talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion. And there are a couple of things that we learned about having quality, diversity, equity, and inclusion conversations. And one thing is, you have to put yourself in situations

where you have been excluded and also included. You can't understand DEI. If you haven't put yourself in these situations and know what exclusion feels like, know what inclusion feels like and understand the difference. So that's one thing. So I often tell people like,

give me an example of when you were excluded. When were you last in the numerical minority? And if you can't answer that question, you need to put yourself in that situation, or you'll never understand people around you. You know, the second thing that we learned and we talk about is the importance of acknowledging race. Dan, it's so funny because people will not say black person. You will hear so many times people say, like, oh, we want to recruit

a diverse person. Diversity is the property of a group. A person is not diverse. They're black, they are white, they're Latinx, they're Indian, they're whatever we've socially constructed, but they're not diverse. And so we can't even say these things. I mean, just say BIPOC. I don't care. Learn to say it. And my colleagues have this game where it's basically kind of like a guess who type of thing, where you have this tile of people and they're a bunch of different people and you're trying to get someone else to guess who the person has chosen. And you have the same tiles. And these people of different colors, different colors, races, backgrounds. And it is so hard for people to say,

are you talking about the black person on the left? No, they'll be like, is it the person wearing glasses? Is it the person smiling? They will not say race. So can we get comfortable with actually discussing race? Have you ever noticed sometimes white people when they say the word black,

they get a kind of vocal fry, it's like they're a little uncomfortable? And I understand, you know, is African American, Afro American black, African, like if you're nervous because you're like, I wanna make sure I get my term right, then just ask, what is the right term these days? Should I say black?

And if I say black, why shouldn't I say African-American? And when should I? Which kind of brings me to the third thing we learned, which is, no, you're lexicon, no, the DEI language. Be comfortable with it. Everyone in our society needs to be comfortable with the word or the term like white supremacy culture. And not be like, oh my gosh, that means that I,

you know, a KKK person. No, white supremacy culture. It's understanding that whiteness has dominated the culture of most of the organizations we're part of. It's not saying you were a member of the KKK or you believe in white supremacy. No, there's this great DEI list that has a ton of terms. I'll give you some examples of terms.

Like, let's see, oh, how about anti-racism? How about diversity? How about equity? How about prejudice, stereotyping, white supremacy, culture? What about colonialism? We need to know these terms and be familiar with them so that we can have and use the right language because the younger generations know them.

They're being taught them in school. And so if my generation and others aren't comfortable with them, then we're just so behind the times. So those are some things I've learned, some things I'm trying to pass on. The one other thing I've learned is that my voice matters and I know that sounds so obvious. But when you've grown up in the new miracle minority in every environment I've ever been in, from kindergarten, I was one of few black people.

My dominant tendency is to think like, what are the white people thinking? Honestly, I'll be in some of these DEI sessions and I'm like, what are the white people thinking? Before I think, what do you think? I'm not even thinking about what I think, because I've always had to think about what the white people think. So, I've had to say, your thoughts matter,

your voice matters, use it because you have a seat at the table. And again, I might sound obvious because for some people, their voice has always mattered and they've never questioned it. And they've never been scrutinized, they've never felt excluded. But for me, that's been my existence. So stepping back and saying, you can say that now, Medipa, you can really say that without thinking what's everyone else going to think, it's a shift,

I'm still adjusting to it. I am still adjusting to it, which is fascinating. You said a lot in the last couple of minutes that I, and there are a lot of things I want to dig deeper on. I do want to issue one point of clarification when I talked about white people having trouble merely uttering the word black. I don't want to say that as if I'm somehow special. These conversations make me just as uncomfortable as anybody else so that that was not mockery. It was sort of just a good, natured pointing out. My first question, though, is on lexicon.

I have questions about the lexicon because I worry that every culture has its own terms. So I'm married to a doctor and she's constantly using terms like bolus or coborbid or thorax. I am a journalist and we have a million terms. Like I'm sure you don't know what a Vosad is. Or well, soundbite has gotten into the culture,

but we have our own set of terms to a live hit, a live top, a live tag. These are all just little terms of our meditation circles. As all, we have, we talk about sacred space and the goddess and whatever. There's lots of, like a dumb, dumb, dumb know, we have, we talk about sacred space and the goddess and whatever a lot there's lots of dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, so my, these, it is important. And when you're entering a culture, of course, to learn the lexicon.

However, the lexicon can be used in a way that is off-putting to outsiders. And my worry is that in the DEI world, and I am a very enthusiastic participant in the DEI world, but I do worry that the language can be off-putting, can be used in a way that is actually kind of self-righteous at times, and creates a further distance from the very people who most need to hear these messages. So, am I an out of touch old white man or am I on to something? I completely agree with what you're saying. And the challenge is how do you use these words in a way that people understand the dynamics. And the way I like to think about it is,

if there is a word that makes you shudder, then there is some dynamic underlying that that you need to understand. That's what mean you need to go around saying, like you are, this is a white supremacist culture, I'm not saying that. I'm saying, if anytime you say the term or when you hear someone say it,

you tune out or you're like, I'm not interested, you need to check that and be familiar and understand the terms and your reaction. And any term can be used in a good way or in a way that alienates people. And I do think it's critical to be thoughtful about what words alienate. But I also think it's equally important for the person who feels alienated to understand why that word had that reaction. And it's usually because

of some historical thing that needs to be worked through. Yes, yeah. White fragility, even though that's become a loaded term, is real from what I can tell. So yes, it may be true that people are having outsized reactions to DEI world terms of art because it's just making them uncomfortable or pointing out some truth they don't want to face. So I'm not denying that in any way. I'm as a professional communicator though, often really focused on how can I get concepts

across to people in ways that I will get by in rather than alienation. Yeah, I agree. And you know, it's funny because I also think that it's helpful to substitute terms that are sometimes interchangeable. So like, people feel better when you say like white privilege than when you say white supremacy culture, which are kind of similar, right? It's like there are privileges that come from being part of a

culture that where you are the dominant narrative in that culture. That feels much better. So in audiences or situations where you want to get people to understand and listen and not shut off, you might want to use different terms. And I think that that's important. What's interesting is that that is coming from a perspective of a Gen Xer, which is me. And you know, Gen Xers, we're right in the middle there and we're like, wait, you know,

we need these people to be happy and those people to be happy. But the millennials, they're like, no, this is a term you should use and you should feel fine with it. And if you have an issue with it, there's a reason. And so I find that to be really interesting because how I grew up and the world I grew up in is one that is more about let's be sensitive to get others on our side.

And I'm finding that the younger generations have less tolerance for that than our generation, which is really a deep thing. I'm sympathetic to the argument from the younger generation. I really am. And I'm temperamentally, and obviously chronologically very close to you. This is a bias that both of us are harboring that I think is very good to challenge, but it doesn't mean it's all wrong either because the millennials, just like every other human being on the planet, they harbor biases too, which may be in some way unskilful. Right.

Right. So that's another thing I learned is like, wow, my approach is shaped by the world I entered. I was in business before being an academic and my generation pioneered the whole like work life balance is an important thing. And now it's like, and then just a lactation room and there's a this,

we just like dipped our toe into work life balance and that feels like, okay, that was progress. You know, and so we're still learning how to be bold and how to be brave when it was just, you know, we were in the dip our toe in and hope that it works. So that's been a mindset shift that I've had to make. The final question I wanted to ask you on this subject of DI, it's not a major question. It's just a really strong point of agreement that it was something you said that I fear could slip by,

which is that yes, conversations about race, conversations about diversity can be hard and they can be utterly invigorating and transformational, I believe, was the term you used. But I would just be even much less grandiose and much simpler that they can be fun and exciting and fascinating. And so I would encourage people to do this stuff not because it's like eating your vegetables, but because it makes your life more interesting. Yeah, I absolutely agree. And it kind of goes back to our earlier conversation,

though, because you have to practice for it to be fun. You know, you have to try to have a lot of them for it to be fun. Because it's stressful. It is. You do not know sometimes who you're talking to, what their perspective will be. And so the more you have conversations

and feel comfortable with the uncomfortable pieces, the more fun it will be and the more fun it can be. But it can also be exhausting. Yes, and humiliating. Yes. Yes. Lots of, lots of things for sure, I completely, I don't wanna oversell this.

I'm just saying that often it is fun, always it is interesting, and yes, it can be hard to. Well, you know, I think it can be better when we make it safe to make mistakes. Yes. We're still not in a place where we make it safe to make mistakes. I saw a quote recently that was on a slide during a speech from Sonja Renee Taylor, who is one of the world's leading proponents of self-love. The quote was, something along the lines of thou shalt not judge because thou has f'd up before too.

Yeah, I mean, we've all messed up. We all have messed up and we need to recognize that and be compassionate about that Yeah, I just be compassionate and you know the hardest part for me in the listening sessions that I did was Realizing when my biases had really crept in and when I had messed up. And I got the chance to talk to some of my Asian students about their experiences and all that. And I realized that after many of the Asian hate incidents,

I had never reached out to any of my Asian friends to check in on them. And I can't tell you how much I appreciated after George Floyd when people reached out to any of my Asian friends to check in on them. And I can't tell you how much I appreciated after George Floyd when people reached out to me to just check in on me. And I had not done that, but I'm sitting here and misleading, yes, you know, like anti-brazesum for the cause. And I hadn't sent an email or a text or whatever.

So that was really, really painful. And to me, I had messed up because I hadn't fully been as compassionate. And some of the messing up was also prioritizing the 400 years of pain that I knew black people were in and stereotypes about like model minority. They're going to be okay and da da da da da. But no, they're human. And when they saw someone get beat up that looked like them, they thought of their grandmother or their grandparents. And I'm sitting here not even recognizing that and having that kind of compassion.

So that was huge. So I'm grateful for my friends and they're not judging me for that. And for them appreciating me reaching out when I did. So that for me was a big example of, I think I made a mistake, but I learned from it. Bravo. I was a little mad at you for this, but you started hosting a new podcast not long ago.

I'm mad at you because I was jealous because I wanted you to start hosting podcasts for 10% happier. But anyway, you worked with this tiny little upstart organization called Ted. And you're now hosting the Ted Business Podcast. I want to recommend that everybody listen to it, notwithstanding my jealousy and resentment.

I also want to talk about a few of the episodes because I think they're real. I think almost all the episodes are completely germane to the subjects we discuss on this show, about a few of the episodes because I think they're real. I think almost all the episodes are completely germane to the subjects we discussed on this show, but a few particularly. So one was about how to build trust in the workplace, especially across color lines. So I wonder if you could just share a little bit of what you learned in the course of reporting and producing that episode.

Yeah. So, you know, one of the things about building trust authenticity and being your authentic self. So the Ted Business Podcast features Ted Talks, and I give a little intro and an outro, which highlights like a lesson learned. And the talk you're referring to is a Business School Professor Francis Frye who shares the importance of building trust by making sure that people are authentic and you can show up as your authentic self.

And also being okay with we're all going to have little wobbles and kind of like recognizing these wobbles and knowing that they're going to exist. And I think in our organizations being patient, but also doing all we can to make sure that we are creating safe space for people to bring their full selves to our organization. That means being vulnerable. That means being okay with giving and receiving feedback. That means having authentic, open, honest conversations. Those are some of the key concepts that I think were captured in that talk, and if not

in that talk, in some of the other episodes, because these are key dynamics of the business world. How can we show up as who we are and bring all that beauty instead of stifling it, which can often happen. I can hear people pushing back on you saying, okay, Professor, authenticity. How do I show up as my whole person, as my whole self? And what if I'm in an environment

where I'm in a numerical minority? And I don't feel comfortable being my ulcerer. I fear that people might really hate me if I show up as my full self. So how do I do that? And that's what I talked about in the episode two, which is saying that understand that some people don't necessarily have the freedom to be their full selves.

Because just like I said to you, I've spent my life scrutinizing everything I had to say because I was a numerical minority. So I think it's incumbent on our leaders, our managers, the people we work with to really dig deeper and to try to ask, like, what aspects of you are you not bringing to the workspace? What can we do to help? And look, in some organizations, we don't have sophisticated leaders like that and you're not going to be able to bring your full self, but I would encourage every person to try to seek that organization, to notice when

it doesn't exist, and then to see what they can do to find an organization that's an even better fit where they feel like they can bring themselves. So I hear you on that skepticism and that is one thing that I did say in the talk that like, it is incumbent on leaders to help us bring our authentic selves. And it's incumbent on us to find a fit

where we can be our authentic selves, but it's not always going to happen magically. Say though we are in a reasonably enlightened workplace and we are encouraged to bring our full selves, how do we even know what that means? And we're calling how earlier we talked about the difference between asking for support and trauma dumping. There can be a fine line between being vulnerable or authentic and just kind of bleeding all over the place or show over sharing.

So any thoughts on how to actually do this if we're in a place where it's safe enough? I think that some of it is about language too. I think it's about saying like, I'm nervous about saying this, but I'm going to give it a shot. That then allows the other person to know, oh, this is something that is sensitive. We need to give people a heads up on some of our sensitive things so that they can understand the dynamic. And then depending on how they react, then tells you whether you can go further or not. It's really a give and take where you can keep trying to push the boundaries a little bit. And again, boundaries is not the right word. You can bring more of yourself each day and see how it is received and test the waters.

And what's bad is when we don't even try to test the waters. Because that means we're really shut down. The place is never going to see us. And maybe it's something about us that's not allowing ourselves to do it, or maybe it's the context. And we need to know the difference between the two. Because if it's the context, then maybe you need to find another one. If it's ourselves, then maybe I need to push myself more. And I can do that by saying, I'm a little nervous to say this, but, and having the other person show that vulnerability, too, like, I'm not sure what the right word is to say.

So I'm, I usually hesitate from saying black. Can you teach me a little bit, like, or, or, this is after they've gone on Google and figured it out, by the way. Okay, so there's stuff that's Googleable that you can figure out on Google and figured it out, by the way. Okay, so there's stuff that's Googleable that you can figure out on Google and not ask somebody to teach you, but there might be something else

that you can ask for somebody to teach you. Okay, just need to make that clear. Okay, I love that last point, by the way. Another episode is about how to handle it when somebody's kind of bringing the heat to you in a professional environment. If I have, if my memory serves. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, I mean, I think the first thing is, is to really listen. Right? Like, because our first reaction is we want to be defensive. Like, our guard goes up. But instead, if you listen and bring them in and have a conversation and acknowledge, sometimes like how it made you feel, then I think that that is one way to then bring

in your harshest critics and to understand their perspective. But I think some of it again is going back to what we talked about at first, is noticing that your first thing is going to be defensiveness. And connected to what we just said is also recognizing and maybe team people up when they're going to say something that is sensitive to you, right? Like, so that you're ready, you know,

I'm about to bring something up that you might not like. Now again, your critic might just blurt it out. But notice what your reaction is, try not to tune out and try to see it as an opportunity for a conversation. When I am in the grips of defensiveness and I'm really good at being defensive, uh, this is my power ally. And my prefrontal cortex shuts down. I, you know, like, but the reasonable logical part of my brain goes, you know, on tilt and

I just do dumb stuff. So is it better for me if somebody says, okay, I'm going to give you some feedback, they say their thing, is it better for me to say, you know, I've heard that, I want to think about it and let's just come back once I've had a chance to process it rather than try to do it in the moment and most likely screw it up. Yes, your amygdala goes crazy. That like emotion center is like, what? And then you can barely even hear what they say,

because you're like in your mind, you're like, do they just say that? Do they just do that? You know, when I feel that, I have to say, this is not the right time for me to have a conversation and be able to say just what you said. I need to process this. When someone has been vulnerable,

sharing with them, like, I appreciate that you shared that, like, thank you for sharing that. I need some space to process it because it was a lot and I was a little triggered and I need to just understand a little bit more, but I hope you'll be open to us following up in this on the conversation, like,

maybe later this week. We need that. Otherwise, you just react. You just react. And my reactive self is not a good one. And this reminds me of this research where you know, you show people pictures of scary things. And the amygdala goes off if you look at them in an FMRI. If you look at their brain in an FMRI, after showing people scary pictures, snakes, whatever, whatever, the amygdala, the fear center is activated, which is kind of like a reactive center. When you show them these pictures and tell them to state the emotion associated with it,

so snake, scary, you know, like a gun, fear, then the part of the brain that is activated is the prefrontal cortex, which is the more proactive space. So when you just label it and say, like, you know what, this triggered me feeling a little emotional right now or whatever, we'll love some space, that helps you in thinking clearly and acting deliberately. So there is research showing the importance of having that pause moment or day before reacting. Last episode I want to ask you about,

I have never heard this term, and I'm curious for you to teach me what it is and what you've learned about it, reverse mentorship. Yes, yes. So it's usually that, you know, the senior person, Dan, mentors, the junior person who wants to make their way to, you know, being an anchor person, but reverse mentorship is when the senior person asks a junior person to guide them in an area where they're an expert. So the expertise can come from so many different places with folks around us, but we don't tap into it.

So reverse mentorship is really creating opportunities where more senior people learn from more junior people. And in some organizations, that's embedded in the process. And most it's not. And so you see a lot of reverse mentorship happening in the DEI space, where a CEO might ask for guidance or advice from a person of color about some of the dynamics

in the organization because this is expertise and insight that they don't have. Now, I think we should again, do this with caution, especially when it comes to getting advice or expertise from people who are in the numerical minority. However, there is so much to be gained from that process. And I think we need to do more of it in our organization. Such a pleasure to reconnect with you.

Congratulations again on the semi-new show. Thank you. Even though that congratulations get stuck in my throat. In closing, if people want to learn more about you, including the show, including anything you might have written that's on the interwebs, can you just kind of plug your stuff? Yes. So you can find much of what we've talked about on my website, Medupa at Canola.com. And you can find much of what we've talked about on my website, MedupaAkenola.com. And you can find Ted Business anywhere you get your podcasts. So those are the best ways to find me. Yes, I'm also on LinkedIn and I'm also on Twitter and all that.

But this was a treat as always. Thank you for making time to chat. I appreciate it. Thank you for making time to chat. I appreciate it. Thank you again. Big thanks to Medupa, always great to talk to her. Before we head out, just a reminder about the Ted Lasso challenge. I talked about at the beginning of the episode. It starts Tuesday, September 7th,

over on the 10% happier app. Download the app wherever you get your apps and get ready. This show is made by Samuel Johns, Gabrielle Zuckerman, DJ Cashmere, Justine Davey, Maria Whartell, and Jen Poipoy, with Audio Engineering from Ultraviolet Audio. As always, a big shout out to my ABC News comrades, Ryan Kessler and Josh Cohan. We'll see you all on Friday for a bonus. Josh Cohan, we'll see you all on Friday for a bonus. 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.