The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - How to Deal with Anxiety Like Ted Lasso | Foundations Friday #90

Episode Date: April 14, 2023

Ted Lasso is one of my favorite streaming shows. It is a show starring Jason Sudeikis as Ted. Ted is an American Football coach who goes to England to coach and lead a Soccer team there. In addition to the humor and lessons in leadership I get from the show, I am also glad the writers highlight how stress and anxiety can negatively affect those who seemingly have no issues.In How to Deal with Anxiety Like Ted Lasso | Foundations Friday #90, I talk about anxiety and re-share interviews I've had on the KEV Talks Podcast that can help listeners deal with anxiety as Ted does.

If you're not watching Ted Lasso or haven't heard of it, give it a Google. It's an Apple TV show starring Jason Sudeikis, who plays an American football coach, who then goes to England to coach soccer or football, as it's really called there. And really, to me, it is a show that's funny, entertaining, but it's a leadership course, right? You take Ted Lasso, who's a good leader somewhere else. He gets plopped into this new situation in a sport that he's not familiar with, with people that are from another country. But he pulls all the different personalities together.

He builds them up. He gives them some stern guidance when he needs to. He really builds relationships with everybody on board. But behind that, he's dealing with being separated, being away from his family who are still in America. And there's some episodes and you see him build up his anxiety, his stress, his worry, all of those things together. And he has a panic attack on the field and walks off in one episode and he keeps having them and like many do drowns it tries to drown it maybe in some alcohol but also then not knowing what to do and so he reaches

out for help and talks to a therapist and it helps and then he learned some skills like mindfulness to take care of it and you see him work through some things some things from his past from his current state and this latest episode which is episode 5 that came out on the 12th of April, 2023, we see it happen again where he's super stressed, the team's not doing well, and he starts to get shaky hands and his eyes get big and he looks around. If you've ever been really nervous

before a rollercoaster or a flight or you have anxiety, you can see it, you're like, oh man, here it comes. But the awesome thing is, is we've gone on this journey with Ted Lasso where he's learned how to manage it. And you see him do that, right? He kind of accepts it. He sits down and does some mindfulness and some breathing and you see him mouthing. It's okay. It's okay. Right. And there's different ways to do that, to ground yourself, to realize you're safe. You're in a place that's not dangerous, which is what that fight or flight is. It really kicks up your nervous system to say, oh, you got to get out of here, even if you're standing in your office or at home in your bed or whatever.

But he also accepts it like, oh, I can deal with this. And so to me, going through the show and as someone who's dealt with similar issues, it's great to see. And I mean, great to see that they show that you can manage these. Some folks think, oh, I can never get over it. I just have to take these pills or just do this thing or never go out or not talk to somebody or whatever the solution is, but it's not a solution. And so I feel so lucky to have talked to folks like Rhonda Kelly from the All Clear Foundation to Kim Colgrove from Pause First and to talk to Dr. Tracy Marks about her book, Why Am I So Anxious?

And others and just really focus on mental health. And I hope those have been good tools for you. I'll link to those when I make this post just as reminders. But Ted Lasso teaches us a lot. It teaches us a lot about people, about leadership, and as it so happens, about anxiety. And then it can hit anybody at the highest levels and different jobs. I've heard a lot of podcasts lately with high level military folks, law enforcement folks, just public safety that you know, you think these folks are cutting edge, they're kicking in doors, and they're getting terrorists, and they're doing this and that. And guess what, they come home, and they have PTSD, or they have anxiety, depression, all those kind of things. And they use the same tools that we can use, right, Whether we've been tactical or not. And so again, it's refreshing to see that highlighted

so that folks I think can feel a little more normal because it is normal, right? It happens, but we got to put the time in to fix it. We have to address our issues by talking to folks and practice mindfulness and exercise better and sleep and eat better and all these things. We have to be proactive. So I thank you for being proactive and coming to the KevTalks podcast. I hope you'll keep showing up. Please subscribe and share

and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Go to kevtalkspod.com. You can also follow the website there. So when I post, you get the latest and greatest and you can listen to back episodes and read some write-ups I have there. But thanks so much. Please certainly put time into yourself, right?

And have that plan for yourself. Have that plan for your team. Use facts, right? Not just fear and check your sources on the tools that you get. And that's a great thing I think that I provide here on KevTalks Podcasts are legit sources of help for these things. And get involved, right? If you learn something, if you have a tool,

if you have a process you use, share it with somebody else to help them out, right? That's what this life's all about. Help others to help ourselves. Thank you so much for being here. Godspeed, y'all.