The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Allison Graham, Speaker, Keynote Speaker, Coaching, Training, Author of Take Back Your Weekends: Stress Less. Do More. Be Happier

Episode Date: August 11, 2023

Allison Graham, Speaker, Keynote Speaker, Coaching, Training, Author of Take Back Your Weekends: Stress Less. Do More. Be Happier Allisongraham.com/voss https://amzn.to/3ORUWNN Working for the weekend? Don’t remember what a restful weekend feels like? When plugging away 24/7 is your reality and burnout looms – it’s time to Take Back Your Weekends! Can you relate to my clients’ stories? "I'm scared that I'm missing my kids' childhood. I work every Saturday and Sunday. It's still not enough." "I feel guilty when I work because I'm not spending time with my family and vice versa. The work doesn't stop." "I didn't enjoy my holidays because I worried about the office, the team and an upcoming project." If these stories resonate, then this book is for you! Typical productivity hacks will not free days each month. The solution is found much deeper. In this short, power-packed book, I share... how to find a feeling of control during uncertain times how to leverage good stress for optimal performance how to problem-solve effectively to amplify your capacity how to recognize and troubleshoot barriers to performance how to emotionally detach from the to-do list ✓ You deserve time to recharge and relax ✓ Your family deserves more of your attention ✓ Your work life deserves focus Take Back Your Weekends. Take Back Your Power. Take Back Your Life.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Now, here shows Chris Voss for the brain bleed. I can't even get it right.

Welcome to the Chris Voss Show. The Chris Voss Show.com, as we've been seeing it for. Welcome to the Christmas show. The Christmas show.com. As we've been singing for 14 years. Thanks for coming on the, I forget starting that whole singing thing 14, 10 years ago, whenever the hell it was. Now I just have to keep doing it.

So you can run up to me and shows ago, the Christmas show. And I'm like security. But thank you very much, folks. We enjoy you being here as always. The Christmas show is the family that loves you, but doesn't judge you harshly is not a, at least not as much as your mother-in-law does and she's

a wonderful woman um anyway uh she paid me to say that by the way so that she could guilt you into uh i don't know whatever she's trying to get out of you um she's i'm sure she's wonderful people are going how does he know my stepmom or my mother-in-law? What the hell is going on? She watches the show. She's really smart. That's why she's trying to make you smarter by, I don't know, being critical of you. So there you go.

We came full circle with that whole segue. Do you see how we did that? It's like an art form, only I just made it up as I went along. Today we had an amazing woman on the show. She's going to be talking about her amazing books and uh stuff she's got coming up stuff she's got in the past and uh how to live a fuller life uh be happier stress less do more who doesn't want that like is there someone sitting around going you know darn it if i could just be less happy and stress more and do less what the hell how do i find that who writes that book but uh this is not her

she's written a book that does the opposite of that and we'll be talking to her on the show about what goes into it but in the meantime we want to guilt trip you and shame you just like your mother-in-law into referring the show to your family friends and relatives go to goodreads.com for just christmas youtube.com for Voss, and linkedin.com Forrest S. Chris Voss. Don't go to all three at the same time. You have to take your time, do one at a time. Otherwise, that address bar is just going to be a mess.

And you're probably going to have some weird site that, I don't know, just don't go there. You can end up in dangerous places. It's the internet. She is the author of the latest book that just came out June 8th, 2021. It's close enough.

It's been two years. Take Back Your Weekends. And as I promised, stress more, do more, be happier. Let me correct that though so that people don't Google my ad, live there. The title of the book is Take Back Your Weekends, Stress Less, Do More, Be Happier. Allison Graham is on the show with us today. She's here to talk to us about her amazing book and insights and how to make your life better so if you don't want your

life to be better still listen to the show anyway uh allison graham joins us on the show she is a keynote speaker author and consultant who works with highly accomplished men and women who love their work but want more mental and emotional space away from the constant stress of the daily grime. Her last book, Take Back Your Weekends, Stress Less, Do More, Be Happier, is giving hope to professionals across the globe that they can have it all. And she's got a new book that she's working on right now. We'll talk about that on the show as well and I think you're going to find out more about it. Welcome to the show, Allison. How are you? I am great. I promised myself I wasn't going to laugh in your intro and I failed miserably. So it was, you always have

such an awesome intro for all of your shows. There you go. They call it, some French guy told me it's called the ramble, what you do, Chris. I believe it's a ramble. The whole improv, he goes, he goes, I love your ramble so much. I just go and listen to the rambles. Like I just go through all the shows and listen to the first five minutes. And, uh, and I'm like, I'm sorry,

dude. Um, get help. No, anyway, I'm just kidding. We love our audience and what they do. So give us a.com.

So if you can find you on the interwebs. Well, I created a.com just for you. So it's Alison Graham.com backslash Voss. There you go. And then you can get to me on LinkedIn and YouTube and all the links are there and join my lift up and it's just easier. There you go. And that'll be on the Chris Voss show as well.

So you can click that link if you forget the Voss part. So give us a little bit of overview about yourself. What do you do and how do you do it? My work is teaching people how to have it all without the destructive stress, the overwhelming stress. And I'm really, I truly believe that people are making life harder than it needs to be, and it's already hard enough. And so I have some strategies that really help people free that mental and emotional grind when it comes to the day-to-day so they can have their success and not give up their

mental and emotional well-being. So that's my work. That's my passion. And that's what I live to do. There you go. And I think you coach on some of that. You speak on it and you write books on it. Is that correct?

I do. I do. And so the next book that's coming up is called The Stress Illusion, which is where my keynote is and everything that's, uh, the future work. And it's fun. Cause we're talking about take back your weekends now,

but like it launched in the middle of COVID and nobody cared about a weekend, right? Like every day feels like it's blurred together. Yeah. But on the flip side of that, it was, it might've been,

I don't know. It might've been more stressful. It was for me. Uh, I've been at home since, uh, what, 2004, uh, when I, when I, we lost the last of our partners and I took over our companies. Uh, so I was used to it. So I'm like, why is everyone doing what I'm doing? Um, what are you people doing? Get your own, get your own space.

Uh, but, uh, you know, it was probably more stressful because people suddenly had their work at home. They had their life at home. They had people that maybe they enjoyed spending time away from each other so they could become more endeared to each other by, what is that I say? The heart grows fonder with distance. Absence. Yes. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Yes.

That's why I keep all my girlfriends in Zimbabwe. I don't know what that means. I don't know if they know either they're probably yeah they're not on tinder uh so uh but then had you had your kids at home too like most people within the kids of the daycare so you had everybody pile up on top of each other and then you had the stress of covid where you're like are we gonna die is are we gonna live are we gonna end up in the hospital you had the stress of COVID where you're like, are we going to die? Are we going to live? Are we going to end up in the hospital? You know, the horror shows of all that that was going on.

So it was quite stressful. Well, and we can use the term stress. We might talk about how we can challenge that word specifically. But I agree that there was a lot of extra pressure and there was a lot of emotional turmoil that added on to that. So I remember one of my coaching clients first, like five minutes in, she just starts crying. I'm like, what's going on? She's like, I cannot get caught up. Right?

Like, it's just, I feel so guilty because when I'm working, I know my kids are there and they desperately need me. And when I'm with my kids, I know I need to be working and the work is piling up. And that's the piece where my work flies, right? It's like, how do we let go of the guilt? How do we let go of those patterns that are actually making the work harder than it needs to be? So I agree. I think burnout was a big issue long before the pandemic. And I think it's actually becoming a bigger issue now that we are like out of it. And people kind of got a taste of what it was like to not be in the office, to not be in the grind and relax. And then they kind of sprung back to old patterns, many people, and they're back

into the grind. And they're like, oh, wait a second. Did I like that? Did I not like that? What do I like? And I'm like, let's design your life in a way that you're going to love it. There you go. And I like that word design. I think that's a big problem with a lot of people, you know, especially me sometimes around the house. You know, I'm like, what was I supposed to be doing? Oh, yeah, some work or something, or I was supposed to answer an email.

You know, and, you know, I go to get a coffee and I'm lost, you know, ADHD, lost in 50 different things. Suddenly I'm like, I don't know, changing the oil in the car and I just wanted to get a coffee. So let's dig into your book. Give us a 30,000 overview of what's inside, some of the techniques or something you want to tease out that help people design their lives. Well, and so Take Back Your Weekend is really about let's change our attitude towards stress and all the workload. Because so often people are waiting like, when I get done this project, when we hire that next person,

when we finally get that big deal, then I'm going to be less stressed. And I'm like, yeah, that that then is not coming. Because when we get through that project, you're going to have another client project. And when you're going to get that staff member, you're going to need, you know, you're going to expand, you're going to need more. And it's this when x then y thinking that has us chasing the future. And that's when our happiness is going to be. So my, my, the in the book is like, how do you accept the fact that everything is happening around you and shift how you're interacting and with all of that chaos around you and all of that pressure? There you go.

A redefining of meanings in a paradigm shift, if you will. Yeah. Yeah. I like it. Paradigm shift sounds very corporate, like very, very, what's that word? I don't know. It doesn't matter. Very, very, like buzzword?

Corporate buzzword? Yes, thank you. That was the word I'm looking for. Paradigm shift. I feel like we could just throw it out there. You know, I usually forget that word. I'm always like, what's that word in corporate? Which is ironic because, you know, it's a buzzword.

So, I mean, you're supposed to remember the buzzwords, but I don't know. I'm 55. The brain's gone already. I'm just waiting for Lobotomy next week. Great call in don't know. I'm 55. The brain's gone already. I'm just waiting for the lobotomy next week. Great call in here from Dom. Hey, Dom, we really appreciate that. Go, Allison.

Some other, hello, happy to be here. Larry, thanks for coming in and all that good stuff. So doing this paradigm shift, you give people tools in your book to take back your power. What does it mean to take back my power? Does that mean I got to go overthrow a country or what's happening there? Well, preferably not. I would hope you would not do that, but it's, it's not. Call Zimbabwe and tell them the fight's off.

The fight's off. It's about this concept of designing your life. So taking a bird's eye view, just looking at it, like I encourage my clients to look at their work week, like a movie, and just observe what's happening and look for the repeating moments of angst, because we all have them, right? That irritating moment that we just live with over and over and over again. And those are the ones where we want to be strategic about how we're designing it. So one of my clients, we started, he said, look, Alison, I have no space, no space to think, no space to feel.

I've lost touch with my wife. Like he was just like, I'm burned out. And he calculated, because he's a numbers guy, 128% capacity. Okay. So he's like, here's what I should be working, but here's what I'm actually working. Six months later, we got him down to 38% capacity. There you go. But now here's the risk. We start to redesign our life. If we don't strategically fill it

in the way that we want to spend our time and how we're going to do it, then we're just going to fill it up with old patterns again and end up right back into the same situation, which is what we saw with COVID where people were like, you know, okay, oh, this is great. I get to spend time with my family and I'm, you know, not on the airplane all the time. And now they're, you know, flying a million miles and doing the same old, same old, right? Because we just boomerang back if we aren't strategic about how we choose to design our lives. There you go. What's that old adage? Those who fail to plan, plan to fail.

Yes, they do. Yeah, there you go. There you go. I'll buy into that. So the example that you used of the gentleman and moving him from that massive amount of burnout to a smaller percentage, is it about working more efficiently or is it about planning more lifetime or balance? Or how do you kind of equate that down and try and make that square? It's got to be everything, all of that, all of the above.

But here's a lot of times we think about the do, time to task, like time to task ratio. So I have a 15 minute task and I've got to fit it in, in this little spot that I have. But we never just do something. We always have emotion around it. And often that is misplaced. We always have a storyline around it. And often that is misplaced. We always have a storyline around it. And often, often it will default to negative. And often we put some barriers to performance or habits around it. And in, you know, my model, I would look at that as maybe judgment or worry or not saying no, not setting boundaries, all of that. And so that it's not the doing that's hard like if you literally just sat down and did all your work all day long you'd be fine people people would not be burned out right yeah the

wait that person i remember uh i sat down with a friend of mine he's a vice president at a big company international firm sits down and she's like i i'm like how's it going she goes awful i'm like oh wow what's going on she's like i I'm like, how's it going? She goes, awful. I'm like, oh, wow, what's going on? She's like, I got to go get a new job. I'm like, tell me more. She's like, three weeks ago, corporate head office sent down this new reporting system. And I'll tell you, they don't understand what it's like on the ground. And they disrespect me and I'm too busy and I don't get it. Like, just on and on. And she's like, I'm not going to do it. And I'm like, oh my God, like, this is a big deal.. Like how long is this report going to take you? And she's like 15 minutes.

I'm going to quit my whole job and career. But it was about a bigger issue. Like it was about the feeling like she was suffocating. It was that she didn't have the support, but she wasn't dealing with any of those issues. So she took it out on a report. Wow. Right. But this sort of thing is happening all the time, right? It's the, it's the relationships. It's the, the, am I resenting that person isn't doing as much work as I'm doing, or they don't know how to like, they're not doing their job well enough. Like all of that is what makes our jobs harder than it needs to be.

And so I have a problem solving framework. So we go in and we identify those repeating moments of angst, i.e. procrastination. And we say, okay, let's work on a system for you. Not a system that's going to work for Chris Voss, not a system that's going to work for Alison Graham, but one that's going to work for the individual because not everyone is created the same as we already know plus i don't have any report anger issues so no no but it's just one example but you think about it like how many times have you seen this play out yeah there's probably a great experience in this too because you you mentioned you know being resentful of other people i i can see this being

issues in marriages uh in workforces in uh in everything i mean i resent my dogs because they don't they don't go work and pay rent and i'm very resentful of it and it makes me angry sometimes but no i'm working on it i feel like you would not i'm like just imagining my own dog who's down to sleep over there i'm like nobody could ever resent you, Winston. It's all good. That's true. That's true. I'm making stuff up.

But no, I like your concept of recognizing that there's, and you talk about this in the book, that there's, you know, the emotional connection that we have to our to-do list is kind of a problem. Because it just kind of seems to add more weight and work to it than if we just kind of look at it and go well that's 15 minutes and just do it yeah right and it's interesting because emotion so actually if you look at this as the ice cube that became the snowman which is the metaphor that's in the in the book and it's like the job is to mount the ice cube that's what we have to do okay but we never do that as a human. No, no, no. We're so much more complex.

So we have this huge pile of snow available to us and it's the emotion. So, and often misplaced, as I said, and then the, you know, we add the next layer and the next layer of, so the storyline and then the barriers to performance. And we still have to just melt the ice cube cube but now we got to get through all the snow too and when you think about the family like that misplaced emotion and I saw this happening a lot I still do um and you know maybe people don't want to admit to this but let's imagine you're really nervous about cash flow you know or something in your business you just lost a big client or you know whatever's going on and your child comes up to you and you're in like this huge pressure situation and the child comes up to you and says, Hey, you know, daddy, can we play? And you're like, Oh, I told you to

go away. And you snap at the child, like that's misplaced emotion. So now you've taken the child who's asked the question and you've made it harder by adding a layer of unnecessary destructive stress around that. So you're just becoming a wrecking ball of destroying everybody else around you and pissing everyone off. Then everyone hates you and wait, this is describing my life. What's going on? I don't think it's that dramatic. But you know, because it's subtle. Yeah, sometimes it is subtle. Like it's so subtle.

Sometimes it is. Yeah. Right. And it's, but then it can also be the road rage incident. Oh yeah. Where people freak out. Right.

Or the Karen incident. Yes. Oh, every one of those, I think, oh, that'd be a great media hit. It's basically like something's going on in their life.

Right. And then this other trigger comes in and they just explode. It's like me when a coffee maker won't work in the morning, pretty much. That's really, that's why I use the French press. People die if I don't get the, if I don't get the coffee.

Like there's actually sirens and warnings that go off and they're like, warning, warning, Chris is obtaining his coffee. Don't go near him. And I've had girlfriends say I'm like a giant bear in the morning. they're like, warning, warning, Chris is obtaining his coffee. Don't go near him. Don't, don't. Yeah, I've heard girlfriends say, I'm like a giant bear in the morning. It's like, we just leave you alone, let you putter about and get your coffee. And once you have your coffee, you know, we've entered the no-kill zone,

and no one's going to get mauled to death by Chris Voss when he gets angry. And then it's safe, which is interesting because that's actually signs of sirens go off it is now safe to move about the house so move about move about uh whereas once i wake up i'm just up like i'm like okay well here we go i'm awake but a french press would help with the coffee maker not working just that's probably true i never breaks down but i threw a good one out out there but uh if it ever did it be, there might be a small crisis in the house. There might be. But think about how a bad day becomes a bad day.

That's true. Here we go. Right? But like, okay, so let's say you wake up, you forgot to charge your phone. And now your alarm didn't go off. You're late. And others in the house got up late too. So, you know, everybody is out.

And then you, your coffee maker doesn't work and you get into the car and then the barista gives you the wrong order and you get to the office and you're like, you know, oh my gosh, it's such a bad day. When in actual fact, what you had is a series of irritations that when looked at individually have absolutely no emotional relevance in your overall life but because we tend as a society to blanket them all together and emotionally just put all of it on and like have it dominoing we end up with this bad day when in actual fact it was not a bad day yeah and then if you if you piss some people off then you know you might have to deal with that all week or you might have to apologize to somebody that's right it was just over spilled coffee yeah and and suddenly you know somebody's really offended or maybe your boss fires you because you're being an asshole at the office because you know you said something wrong to somebody i remember one time i i was having a really bad day

and i was struggling i think with a printer and a training manual that we had. And I was really having a really hard time. And this is when I was very young. Um, and I was, there was supposed to be some meeting I was supposed to go to. That was one of those corporate meetings of the pain in the ass, you know, that you're like, does this really have to be a meeting? And I, I walked in the meeting late grumbling and mumbling and the, and the, uh, the guy who was doing the training was upset because I'd walked in late and rightly so. Uh, it was, it was, uh, you know, it was just bad manners on my part. And he said something to me and it popped me and I popped them back. And, uh, he said, you need to leave my training right now

and I realized that I just fucked up and I left and of course my manager at the time when I was young had a conversation with yeah how bad I was and and it's something but it was example about how I let this whole cascade this avalanche landslide of the problems that is happening throughout the day come to a meeting that and and offend somebody and and you know it might have almost got me fired because uh you know i don't know the printer wasn't working right or some stupid thing you know whatever so imagine how people are so busy that they're not getting the time or they don't have a manager who's bringing them in and maybe it's not that big a deal but it just keeps cascading all day long they're creating all these

destructive stress hormones all day long and then they go to the gym to try to so they're not a grumpy bear when they get home to release all the stress hormones that have been building all day long and i'm like okay what if we stopped creating them in the first place what if when the printer isn't working we had the ability to go oh the printer's not working and I'm having a moment of angst that's completely unnecessary because here's a printer that's not working and by the way I have had my share I will date myself as well I've had my share of printer um burnouts right like like total back in the day when and they never worked when you were in a hurry right it just didn't happen but it's interesting about the walking into a

meeting thing because here's a something that i had to learn to do uh because i part of my story is i have chronic neuropathic pain it was uh post-surgical and my neurologist told me that I was never going to be off pain medication. I would never work full time again. And it was time for me to go on disability. Yeah. And so I left that hospital and it wasn't because I was like hyperventilating. No, no, no, no, I'm not going to give up and I was like devastated but I was so scared and he said I said that's not the answer and he said well then you're going to have to learn how to be resilient and I left that hospital defiant I was like I am going to show that doctor I am not giving up I am not going on disability and I am not going to let this pain define me. But it's interesting because the meetings were the hardest.

Really? Because I would be in so much pain and sitting is my most uncomfortable position. And I'd be trying to like mind my P's and Q's and be in the meeting and being active and everything. And my pain would just be like, right? And I would just blow over or I wouldn't have the patience for somebody i'd be like oh my gosh you've already made the point get on you know like and i just so i eventually had to create a system of like walking into a meeting and before i literally pause in the doorway this is back in the day when we actually went into people's rooms to have meetings offices what do

you speak of what boardrooms and i would have to check in with my pain level. Wow. And I would go, I'm at an eight. That puts me at risk. And see, if you are someone who, say you had a fight with somebody in the morning, and that puts you at risk to take that energy and that anger out on somebody else,

then we've got to notice that, and you at risk to take that energy and that anger out on somebody else. Then we've got to notice that and you've got to bring, you don't have to do anything, but it's advisable, to recognize the charge that's in that so you don't take it and apply it to something that's unrelated and misplace your emotion. There you go. You talk about in your book about how uh to leverage good stress wait there's good stress it seems like an oxymoron for optimal performance tell us how that paradigm shift in good stress because anytime when i hear the word stress i get stressful right and they they think this is i'm so glad you brought this up because this is pivotal for me and my journey and has been for others and i hope it will be for you so I used to have this little secret of like I actually loved being stressed like I was a columnist I had to put out four columns a week

and by golly if I started at 6 a.m I got it in at three o'clock in the afternoon but if I started at two dang I was going to be so focused and I was going to be on and I just ride the wave of it. Right. And I was like, I kind of like that feeling, like it can energize us. And so this is empowering stress, it can be used to maximize our productivity. And this is all in the book, take back your weekends. But essentially, there are three elements to it, we need to have a goal, a reasonable deadline, and accountability. So if I was, okay, so if I was say procrastinating one of my specialties that I've had to overcome and I still practice my own stuff every day, I would, if I was procrastinating on a client project, I would call the client and say, look, I'm going to get you this by noon tomorrow.

So let's have a quick call to check in. And then all of a sudden I had an accountability. I had to get it done. And so that to me is empowering stress. And those who are a little bit more interested in the stress, they probably have ever heard the, they probably heard the eustress and distress. So good stress,

bad stress. Okay. Have you heard this? So eustress is E-U and it means like Eureka and right? Like it's a good thing. Distress means dis-ease, right? Like this is the bad stuff. And I live with that model in my business. I've been in business for 17 years now and I've been teaching this work since probably 2012 usually the math I don't know what the math is there but anyway and I live with that model for years and then all of a sudden I ran into some situations that were significant in my family's life and in my life. And I always considered stress that was there to tell you you're in danger as a good stress. Because if you fell downstairs and had to call an ambulance, you would be totally inspired and focused,

right? Which is what empowering stress does. But I realized I was like, why am I feeling so much anxiety? Like, what's wrong i am good i teach this stuff i should be able to get over this and i realized oh my gosh it's because there's survival stress ah fire flight mode even more than that it's like it's the stress however you respond fight flight freeze fo um fawn uh the survival stress is there to teach you that you're in danger it tells you that you or someone you love is in danger there is no way to escape it you can't escape it you you cannot like it doesn't matter how good you are if you want to like you know meditate or whatever it's like your body is going to send every stress hormone it has. Where I'm saying we have the power to

redesign our relationship with stress is stop creating the snowmen, the destructive stress to make the survival stress harder, because there's a lot of stuff going on in our lives. And we're all facing, you know, stuff in the background or even just in the world dynamics. And that stuff, if you're pretending it doesn't affect you or, you know, in the background or even just in the world dynamics and that stuff if you're pretending it doesn't affect you or you know oh well you know i'm fine well no you're not fine you just went through a divorce or you you know your uh parent just got cancer or you know diagnosis or whatever no you're gonna have a reaction to that so the way i look at it is when we have survival stress, we honor it.

We ride the waves. We accept it and we don't judge ourselves for it. There you go. We use empowering stress to get the responsibilities done in the shortest amount of time and with the greatest level of focus so that we don't let anything slip through the cracks. And we work on our problem-solving abilities for the human experience to stop creating destructive stress that complicates survival stress. There you go. Would you say that the empowering stress maybe is connected with less emotion or is there a control of emotion uh in there on either part like i study a lot of stoicism epitetus and stuff we keep it close by um so is is emotion the key to separating the empowering stress from the negative i don't think it can be it's what emotion are we putting on it

now i'm hoping we can get into that conversation about emotion. Because there are some things that I'm all in. Like, I love hearing the stoicism, but I got to tell you, there are pieces of it that I'm like, yeah, that doesn't work. Yeah, there's, I mean, yeah. Right? Obviously. Like, there are things like, for example, we hear people say all the time, don't focus on what you can't control. Right?

I'm going to call BS on that. And here's why. What defines you the most as a human being? What lights your soul the most? It's the things that we can't control. Those are the things that matter the most to us. Well, you and your coffee. I don't know.

But that's the very stuff that we need to lean into and fully process emotionally. Right. But I didn't answer the question. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Please do. So empowering stress is more of a strategy.

And yes, if we start pulling unnecessary emotion into it, then, you know, irritation as an emotion or resentment isn't going to get us into our greatest flow state. There you go. So, but we need to recognize the emotion. So we're not ignoring it and stuffing it down. And then that's called deflection and that's not healthy either. There you go. So a good, that was the word I was actually bringing up with you, a flow state or a vibe.

Cause there's like sometimes where, you know, I need to do some work and I really enjoy what I do or some of what I do, or, you know, I don't know. I enjoy my coffee. And, but, but so you'll get into that work vibe and you're, you kind of feel a little bit of stress cause you're doing stuff. Like I, maybe I feel like a little bit of stress

doing out, but I love doing this and it's very productive and it helps other people. And I learned so much and hopefully our audiences too. And if you don't damn it, you better learn something. No, I'm just kidding. Uh, break the fourth wall,

Chris and upset people. Jesus. They're just trying to listen for Christ's sake. Anyway, before I segue again, um, you know, like gym stress is another thing where if I go to the gym,

I feel like I'm in flow, even though it's a little bit stressful. You know, I'm like, ah, this hurts a little bit. It feels good for some reason. I don't know if it's a testosterone thing. But it feels good for everybody. It's like embrace that. Empower yourself to do more of it.

Right? Like design your day so you have actual bouts of good stress. Like if you're not getting focused work time in, or you're getting, you're not getting that flow state in, then you're probably never going to be in your true, uh, powerful productivity mode. Yeah.

And you feel like, and you feel like you feel really good about it. It's, you know, you're like, I feel stress, you know, I feel like we're,

you know, doing something. It's a little bit of work, but you know, you don't feel like, oh, this is something it's a little bit of work but you know you don't feel like oh this is awful i hate this feeling this is good you you feel like you're accomplishing something too well that's not the stuff that'll kill you right like that's not the stuff when the doctors say stress will kill you they're not saying because you were like working on this great flow state you are all of a sudden at risk that's not the same

same thing there you go there you go thanks rama for uh calling in the show a refreshing take on a controllable versus uncontrollable and you talk about controllable in your book as well how to feel uh feeling or find a feeling of control during uncertain times uh and and control i think it's probably really important for us to try and feel. You talked about self-responsibility and self-actualization and self-reliance earlier. But feeling control makes us feel less of a victim. Tell us about how to find that feeling of control when we feel like maybe we're being victimized or a victim or something's going wrong. Okay. So control. And by the way, there's a difference between controlling and a sense of control that you feel empowered. And this, this model was pivotal for me. And, um, I, I'm so excited. I get to share it. So here we go. We have adversities in our life.

These are the things that are completely out of our control. We're going to have our survival stress, like reaction. It's going to happen. But from every adversity comes new obstacles. And this is what happened the day after I left that hospital. And I went on my operation, fixed my, and I had a big word that I will not say on your family friendly show, Chris, no, it started with an F and it was on a big piece of paper and it was operation, fix my pain. And so if the doctor's right and my pain

is never going to go away, what are the new obstacles that actually come out of that and see so when i was able to draw that out then i took every obstacle and when i was objective about them and instead of just allowing them to keep happening and like oh this is a problem no it's like okay let's look at that and let's be strategic about each one of those obstacles independently. Then it became tasks. They actually became tasks. So tasks we have to do, obstacles we have to solve, and adversities we need to give ourselves the space and the grace to heal. Space and grace to heal.

Space and grace to heal. So when you take something completely out of your control, it's almost like finding the lowest common denominator find all the obstacles that are new and then look at each one of them individually and find the tasks and the tasks we have the highest level of control oh there you go that's how you can feel that sense of i can move forward on this i'm not going to take action on the thing outside of my control directly because i can't fix it but i can pull the math down yeah yeah that makes sense because you know you get you you wake up and get fires uh coming at you all day long and i think my audience has heard

me talk about this a couple of things a couple of times but out two or three months ago i started doing something with uh a, uh, a feeling of control. Cause when I wake up, you know, the phones, we live in this world where the phones, you know, unfortunately I grew up in an era where you didn't have phones. Uh, I don't know that, you know, some other caveman will wake you up and, and, uh, not wrap on the cave door and say, and you go, and then we go kill a woolly mammoth or something. But, you know, there wasn't Twitter or whatever it's called this week. People 10 years from now are going to watch the video going, what's Twitter?

What's Twitter? What's X? Did they file bankruptcy in 2024? Anyway, Elon Musk joked there. And so I appreciate those times where I didn't live with that technology, where I could actually call somebody on the phone and say, hey, how's it going? Or I actually see someone in person go, hello, human being, fellow human being, how's it going?

Instead of, you know, like, who is this on my stupid phone? And so I started doing this thing where I do what I call frame control. You might have a better word for it being the scientist on this. Um, but what I do is I wake up in the morning, I go have my coffee and of course my doggies want their treats. And, uh, so part of my problem was I wasn't spending enough time with them. I wasn't present with them. And then I just felt like just assaulted from the morning on. And I, you know, I didn't mind it. I'm just like, Hey, this like hey this is business you wake up you know 50 million people coming at you you got fires and stuff whatever and you know as long as i have my coffee no one gets murdered and you know we can pace

ourselves and so what i started doing was going out and getting my vitamin d which is really important for my masculinity and my testosterone and it's good for everybody actually but it's really important for men and so i go out i don't I don't open the computer. I don't turn on the computers. I might just check the phone for some emergency stuff. I've got a older mother that I want to make sure she doesn't send me a text that she's in the hospital or anything. Uh, but other than that, I try and avoid all the email. I go sit in the outside and i get my 15 20 minutes soak of vitamin d and i start my rhythms uh i forget what they're called uh there's some sort of rhythm that you start that starts doing melatonin or whatever and uh you're uh it's right on the circadian rhythm circadian

rhythms that's okay there you go not a scientist for the record even though you threw that in there but yeah there you go smarter than me at this point uh, even though you threw that in there. But yeah. There you go. Smarter than me at this point. And so I'll sit there, start my circadian rhythm, spend time with my dog. So I'm being present. We're spending time together as a little family and have my coffee. And then sometimes I'll read Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus or some sort of stoic tome and make notes. And sometimes I'll just sit and ponder about life and be grateful and stuff. And then I come into my office and I'll sit down and I'll start loading up the computers, but we'll start playing George Winston solo piano.

And it creates this frame for me in my mind where my desk is my control center. It isn't the Bob and Dodge and weave of all the fire, you know, people throwing flaming stuff at me going, Hey, answer this email and stuff. And it gives me frame control. And it's like, the world does not greet me. I greet the world in my, in my place of command and power and frame. And that really makes a difference for me. I don't know. Am I crazy or no, we all know I'm crazy, but well, I, I'm not going to give you that diagnosis um so here a couple things i would say about this number one i i like that you're doing a morning routine it's not for me to judge whether or what i don't think it's a necessary part of achieving what you just did

i think it's a really part a healthy part of a morning like a lifestyle and all of that. So two different issues. But I believe the real power for you to use that word power is where we can have the fires coming at us and the proverbial punches coming, but we have the perspective that we understand that that's just happening. Because in your business, you likely have people sending you fires all the time. You've already shared that with us. But did that happen? Let's see, you're in their 14th year or are we into 15? 14.

Okay. But you're getting close. You're going to start. Yeah. August 31st or something like that. Fantastic. So in the last 14, almost 15 years, has every day felt like there are fires coming at you uh i mean some days are better than others but uh most times yeah there's always the time yeah like that's kind of

part of why you do what you do and what you get paid to do and who you are and your job are you saying i get paid to have people throw firing spears at me absolutely as long as they're just proverbial but here's the thing it's going to continue for the next five to ten years so until you decide you're no longer going to do the show and everything else that it is that you choose to do then you're going to keep getting these and i'm like okay so what are we going to do back to the original part of our conversation? When X, then Y thinking,

if you have to wait for those things to stop coming at you for you, but you're like, I'm not saying you are, I'm just saying in general for you to feel a sense of, I've got this, then we've got a problem with how you're relating to the workload. See survival stress. if we think about that as indication that the tiger is coming at us yeah your to-do list is not a tiger

there you go somebody needing you to answer something is not a tiger somebody upset about a comp like you know so it's we gotta shift that yeah plus it's the news of the world you read the news and you sometimes you get caught up in it emotionally. But it does give me that feeling of control, like we talked about in your book. Note to self, move to a goddamn lodge, cabin in the woods. Go to a cabin in the woods. Lodge is the wrong word for that joke. Where the real tigers will find you.

There are no tigers. He's probably there. Bears. Then I'll just have a typewriter, a manifest, and I'll be sending hate mail to people long ways. So probably shouldn't do that either. We've had some FBI people on the show, and evidently it doesn't turn out well according to them. So one thing I wanted to ask you about, it's kind of a callback a little bit to what we talked about earlier about people and emotions and feeling like, you know, this is, this is a constant semi-healthy state to be constantly jacked up on stress and we're, we're doing things.

And, and even though it feels awful, you know, we're doing them to people kind of get addicted sometimes that emotion, or, you know, we've kind of alluded here that maybe I feel, uh, like, you know, everything comes to me as a fire and I have a connection to it. Do people get addicted to that? Cause I've had friends, the people that I've known, that they're constantly on from the moment they wake up. And when you sit down with them and go, hey man, can you just take like five minutes and just calm the fuck on down, relax, and breathe, and let's just like do nothing. And they can't do it.

Okay, but here's the thing that's your expectation for them yeah so removing your expectation for how they should live their life the question i would ask is that a genuine flow state where they actually feel completely fulfilled or is it a way to stay busy enough that they're going to ignore their true emotion and their stuff and stuff down and they figure if they can just keep busy, they don't actually have to look at how much they actually hate their life, right? Or whatever. I mean, that may be too dramatic. But I think a lot of times people get caught up in the do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do because they're not willing to process the emotion or change the

storyline or it's just how they operate and they don't know. Like I've had so many of my coaching clients who have said to me, Alison, if we got me five hours this week extra, I actually wouldn't remember what I would like to do with it. What the hell? Like I don't remember what i would like to do with it what the hell like i don't remember what used to make my heart sing or my soul light up like people who are like oh i used to play the guitar i haven't done that in 15 years because i'm so caught up in doing things and that would be a way to relax but they're not doing it so it like, I have to have people design a bliss list of like, Oh my gosh. Like if you,

one taking a Friday off every summer, it's easy if you're a golfer or a boater or something like that. Sure. You're just going to go do that. But if you don't have anything like that and your world is work and your kids are at school and you don't know, like you will default to just keeping the grind going and the work if you don't actually make a list that says here are the things i would like to be doing instead

i need to make a bliss list although go for it please do one of my problems with being single with dogs and doing whatever i want whenever i want is and i can work anywhere in the world is is uh is i probably have too much bliss in my life. It's probably too much. No, I, but sometimes the bliss needs to be maybe a little bit more productive. Like, you know, uh, you know, I love what I do and, and okay. So do more of that work, maybe a little less video games, maybe a little less, I don't know, going out and doing whatever the hell I do, uh, in Vegas. Uh, you know, it's, it's maybe do some stuff that's a little less i don't know going out and doing whatever the hell i do uh in vegas uh you know it's it's maybe do some stuff that's a little bit more productive we're sitting down and

you know like kind of what i do in the morning like reading maybe more or something like that instead of doing something like i don't know sitting for two hours and watching cnn cnn is a great show we've had plenty of people on from there but you know i was like i was watching cnn today just catching up on some news and and i realized that the cycle had gone around and they were starting to repeat and i'm like why am i watching the same thing for data that i already have and and i'm like well i'm bored and so you know stuff like that stuff stuff that you do that you're like why am i watching you know or wasting my time doing this stupid thing when I should be doing something else, which is pretty much describes most of my life. Which is also like laced, if I can call you out on this, it's laced in judgment.

Like talk about adding that third layer of a snowman. You know, like, okay, here I am. And I used to do this all the time. I'd be on the couch collapsing from pain. I had two to five hours of functionality a day back in the day before I knew how to deal with my neuropathic pain. And I would then sit there trying to relax and I'd be like, oh my gosh, you're so lazy. What the heck's wrong with you? Like get that back up. See how I edited that out? And it's like, what kind of of judgment so then you're not actually

relaxing now the thing i will say about the news is i think that's a good call out because i what we put in is going to impact our mood and it's going to impact our happiness and if like i remember uh when i when the pandemic happened and one of my my clients got so irritated and angry and i'm like gosh this isn't really your personality and as we dug deeper you know what was happening he had cnn on when he went to bed on there like in the background on his computer playing like it was 24 7 there is no person who has enough of a emotional shield to have constant negative breaking news feed into their mind and their soul for 24 hours a day and they're going to stay in their top performance it is not possible yeah and and you know i love

seeing it like i said but a lot of it repeats after a while i mean if you watch you watch the midday show, usually, unless something spectacular happens that's really unique, it's going to be pretty much throughout. And so, yeah, a lot of waste of time. And you mentioned something earlier about people, when we were talking about people that seem addicted to high-stress emotion and constantly feeling the thing where they're, you mentioned there may be burying other issues or they're trying to hide other issues from themselves that they're miserable. And usually I find that, I mean, the people I've come in contact with, I shouldn't judge, I guess, I don't know, is they are miserable and they're miserable to be around because they're lashing out at you.

They're constantly jacked up on whatever. And you're just like, holy, you know, take a breath, on whatever and you're just like holy you know take a breath man like breathe just breathe well and it is unfortunate so there's a lot to unpack in there and including the extra layer of judgment that there's a lot of judgment that comes from me i'm but you know life is so freeing when you stop judging it's like it's just like oh but it's so fun it's so easy uh well and it is also sure fun um but everybody is different and i i think if they're not aware of what they're doing then that becomes destructive because eventually what happens and and i by the way i did like uh i think 14 years of cognitive

behavioral therapy with uh like for my acquired pain um psychologist right and so like i'm obsessed with this stuff right and i still didn't want to feel it and dr tony used to call it my gotta go technique i don't like how i feel over here so i I got to go over there. And we're not taught how to actually go. I don't like how it feels over here. And I'm going to stick with it until I process what it feels. If you think about kids, right? If you were fortunate enough as a child to have somebody pick you up when you scraped your knee, fell off your bike. And they come over and they're like, oh, you know, it's okay.

And then they clean it up and they kiss it better. they're like no it doesn't feel it doesn't hurt anymore let's go for ice cream and you're like as a kid going like what the heck like yeah it hurts it still hurts and i'm gonna get i'm told not to cry and i'm gonna get ice cream so i'm gonna bury that down and then you get on the playground you get bullied yeah and it's like oh don't take it personally they're just jealous i just kept throwing myself down the stairs oh well that was not probably free ice cream for the record but do you see what i mean like we're taught to push anyway we're getting very deep for a afternoon there you go chit chat but people need to hire you to fix these problems in order of the book and oh let's get a plug in here really

quick i know we're rounding out the show for your future book that you're working on right now. Yeah, the stress illusion. So I believe that the way society is approaching stress is fundamentally flawed. And I believe that because we have access to more information about what we're supposed to do with stress. And yet stress levels are increasing, burnout rates are rising, and stress leaves are at an all time high. And so there's a mismatch, and it's not working. And so I have this whole system about how do you blast through the snow? How do you embrace the emotion? All of that, that is in the stress illusion. And that's my work.

Like, obviously, when I go in a keynote i i don't go this deep from stage we just should tell people that so they don't think i'm going to bring up everybody and have their ceo crying um but i will do that behind the scenes i pay to see that i pay to see that at this stage it really is i believe people are making life harder than it needs to be yeah yeah that Yeah. That's so true. And that's what we do. We had a great fun discussion today. Give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs.

alisongraham.com slash Voss. There you go. And then do you have a release date for the new book? We have not decided yet. So it's coming. I think I'm actually going to stay tuned because there's some ideas in the works where we're going to roll it out. The whole book will just be available and we've got some really cool ideas with all the concepts coming. So follow me on LinkedIn, follow me wherever and stay tuned for that so that you can get the information before

the book is out. There you go. And then you probably have like a list or something on your website. People subscribe to get your news. Yeah, it's called the Weekly Lift Up. There you go. The Weekly Lift Up, that's a good thing to have. They come out every week, so give people advice on. Every Tuesday-ish. There you go.

There you go. That's my promise to you, every Tuesday-ish. Every Tuesday-ish. I see the ish there. Okay, well, there you go. Folks, order up the book wherever fine books are sold. Stay away from those alleyway bookstores. You might need a tetanus shot or you might get mugged. Don't get mugged, eh?

Order it up. June 8th, 2021. Take back your weekends. Stress less. Do more. Be happier by Alison Graham. Thanks to Alison for being on the show. Thanks to my great audience for tuning in. You guys are the most brilliant audience in the world, and if you didn't learn something

in this show, you better go back and listen to it about five more times, because we packed in a whole lot of great stuff in here, and Alison made us smarter. So if you're brain bleeding, if you're not brain bleeding yet, I don't know, just keep a band-aid over your ear, because it might be delayed. Anyway,

go to goodreads.com, 4chessgrossfoss, youtube.com, 4chessgrossfoss, linkedin.com, 4chessgrossfoss. That was a crazy place we were on the internet. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.