The School of Greatness - 155 How to Manage Success and Overcome Anxiety with Amanda Enayati

Episode Date: March 25, 2015

"Stress isn't so much about what's happening to you but how your body is reacting to what's happening to you." - Amanda Enayati If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at www.lewishowes.com/155.

This is episode number 155 with CNN health columnist Amanda Aniety. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro-athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome everyone to this episode

of the School of Greatness podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today. My name is Lewis Howes. If this is your first time joining, then welcome. And thank you so much for joining the community. We've got a new guest on today. Her name is Amanda first time joining, then welcome, and thank you so much for joining the community. We've got a new guest on today. Her name is Amanda Aniety, and she is a regular columnist for CNN Health and serves as the stress and technical correspondent for PBS Media Shift.

She writes for national publications, including the Washington Post, Time, Reader's Digest, amongst many others. And she's got a new book out called Seeking Serenity, the 10 new rules for health and happiness in the age of anxiety. And with more demands than ever, most of us are overwhelmed with an unending stress of communication and a constant pressure to do more, creating a destructive cycle of stress. And I loved this interview with Amanda today because we dive into how stress really shapes us and a lot of the stories that she went through as a child

that were very stressful for her and really how to manage stress and also what good stress is and bad stress is and why we actually need stress in our lives. So as opposed to people that just say they want to be stress-free all the time, you actually don't want that. And Amanda talks about why you want to actually experience stress throughout all areas of your life. I think you guys are going to really enjoy this one. So without further ado, let me introduce you to the one and only Amanda Aniety.

You're banished from your country, right was so we the revolution happened i was a little girl and we had to leave they were you know i remember periods of people up on rooftops saying death to america they were asking what religion we were in class and it was making me very uneasy because i knew that i wasn't the right religion. But it wasn't even just that. I lived in five countries without my parents because they couldn't get out for a few years. Wow. And then later I came to America and I just happened to find myself in some very brutal

circumstances. I was there in the West Village when the towers fell that morning. And I was in, you know, I was a lawyer, I was a firm lawyer for a while. And that was actually pretty, pretty hard, as well. So in many, many different ways, I'm saying being a lawyer is not stress free. I mean, of all of it, it was probably, you know, everything else was like a band-aid ripping off, you know, even cancer. I guess cancer was the worst because I thought I was going to die. But that, you know, being a lawyer, it's like an everyday low-grade misery that bubbles up every once in a while. So there are all of these different things, situations that I've found myself in that have kind of brought me to the place where I am.

And I'm not happy that any of it happened. But I certainly, like you said, I feel like I've gotten a ton out of it. Right. Wow. How do I say your last name, Amanda? It's Aniety. And somebody just pointed out to me that it sounds like anxiety. Oh, that's amazing.

That is amazing, isn't it? It's meant to be. So I'm here with Amanda Anayati. Thanks so much for coming on. I appreciate you. Thank you, and I appreciate you. Yeah, and you just came to the forefront saying that Anayati sounds like anxiety, and you're a stress columnist for CNN Health, that's right?

Yes, and PBS Media Shift. Okay. And it sounds like we've been talking for a little bit so far, and it sounds like you've had a fair share of stress in your life to qualify to write about this column and to write about this book that you have, which is called Seeking Serenity, the 10 new rules for health and happiness in the age of not aniety, but anxiety. I like the age of aniety. That's pretty cool. That's good, right? Yeah. So I'm excited to learn more. We've just been talking before here, and I'm excited to learn

more about what you've been up to because I don't know too much about you except for what I've read in your book and what we've been talking about so far. So let's kind of keep going along with your story really quickly. You were banished from your country as a small child and then you had to go to five different countries. Is that right? I did. My parents couldn't get out right away. So I landed first in Holland.

Then I was in Germany and France and Scotland. I was in a boarding school. So I kind of was skipping from relative to relative to school to relative. And I guess at the time, it was between eight and 13. And at the time, it seemed like a great adventure. And of course, some of those wounds don't really emerge. The unseen wounds don't always emerge right away. So it wasn't for years, decades, until I realized how tough that had been and the impact that it had had. That's interesting. I actually went to boarding school when I was 13 as well.

Yeah. Did you like it? It was great fun, right? I loved it. I mean, I couldn't wait to get out because my parents were just, I love my parents and they're amazing, but they were constantly fighting and it was like stress in the house every day as a child. And it was like screaming and fighting and slamming of doors and stuff like that. So I was just like, get me out of here. My older siblings were off to college and I was just like, I don't want to deal with the stress anymore.

I don't want to deal with this aniety. Right. So I was like, get me out of here. And it was a great adventure. I mean, it was really strict. I don't know if your boarding school was strict and disciplined, but mine was. It was in Scotland. So you can only imagine. It was very, very strict. But I loved it because even back then, as much as I thought it was a grand adventure, there were these feelings that I had of not belonging and kind of being a guest in someone else's house and wanting to tread lightly and not bother people. And so as a child, you know, you need opportunities to do things and get in trouble and run with great abandon and make noise.

And I kind of held myself in a very particular tight way because I didn't want to impose. So at boarding school, as strict as it was, we were all there in boarding school. So I was in the same situation as every other kid. So it was kind of wonderful. I did. I loved it. Right. That's cool. So what country are you from originally? I was born in Iran. I was born in Tehran. I'm actually a Tehran girl. Tehran. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. And what was your family's religious beliefs?

We were Baha'is. So on my father's side, for generations, we'd been Baha'i, but before that, they were Muslim. And on my mother's side, for generations, they'd been Baha'i, but before that they were Muslim. And on my mother's side for generations, they'd been Baha'i, but before that they were Jewish. So we were sort of the perfect Iranian family that kind of incorporated every belief and we lived it very nicely until the revolution happened. And it became very, the extremist government arose. They didn't like that. No, not at all. Gotcha. So your family stayed in Iran, but you left.

Is that right? My brother had already been studying in the United States. He was only 15 years old. But at that time, there was this thing that certain families did, middle class, upper middle class families, where they actually sent their children, their boys mostly, overseas to study at university and high school. So my brother at that point was already here in LA studying. And my family sent me out because even before you saw what you saw on TV with the people in the street and the flag burning. Late at night, when it got very, very quiet.

This is like the Argo movie, right? That's right. That's right. And people were up on rooftops. They were stomping. And there was this whisper of death to the Shah, death to Iran. And I remember that as a child. It was like a ghost howling.

And it was kind of terrifying. And then there was an episode, there was an incident where my school bus, the kids were ushered off and the school bus was turned over. And there was people in the street and fires. And right after that, my parents sent me out. Not before, but after all the bad news. Okay. Crazy.

But it got worse. yeah of course but you were out and traveling around okay i was and then after that you were living in new york city as a lawyer and you were you were in the west village during 9-11 i was so we landed in la and i went to school back east um and then i lived in DC for a long time. And then we were in New York. We had just been there about a year. We were living in a fifth floor walk up on sixth and bleaker. And I had just gone out to walk my dogs and we start, we saw the, we heard the crash, the boom, and we saw the fire and traffic had just stopped. And there were all these people standing on sixth Avenue, just looking.

And when you used to be able to stand on sixth and you had a straight view, straight shot view of the twin towers. And we stood there, all of us, my neighbors, people just watching. And I remember saying, did they get it? And then all of a sudden you hear a rumble and the, and the tower fell the first tower. And I remember saying, did they get everybody out? It was this sense of, it was just so incredibly surreal. But yeah, we were there in the downtown when it all happened.

And what was that like for you afterwards? I mean, how long did it affect you for? So it's kind of crazy because you think what happened in Iran would be so different than what happened in the States with the Twin Towers, but it pushed these buttons of panic and terror. And all I wanted to do, I remember being completely rational. Now, at that time, I'd already been working as a lawyer for a very long time. I remember just saying, we have to get out because they're coming. Now, don't ask me who was coming because I had no idea, but all I wanted to do was

get out. I was panicked. And there were people standing in line waiting to give blood. And my husband wanted to go to the hospital and he wanted to go see how he could serve. And all I was thinking was, oh my gosh, we've got to get out of here. It was really this, you know, all I can think of is it was some kind of a post-traumatic reaction. It triggered something from when I'd been a child. So it was really brutal. And for weeks, you know, there was this mist downtown. We were breathing this chalky air and there were some people walking around with those things you put on your face, the masks, the hospital masks. And I remember thinking, well, that's odd. Why are they wearing those hospital masks? I mean, it's just a little chalky. But of course, it turned out to be a very smart thing because ultimately a lot of people got sick. Yeah.

So, yeah, it was a very surreal, strange time. And how old were you during that time? How what? How old were you? Were you in like your early late 20s? Yeah, I was in my 20s. I was in my 20s. Gotcha. Yeah.

And then in your 30s, I read that you had- No, I'm sorry. I was in my early 30s. I'm trying I'm sorry. I was in my early 30s. I'm trying to do math. I was in my early 30s. And then also in your 30s, you got late stage cancer. Is that right? Yeah.

So I got married a year later, kind of worked through the trauma, had a couple of kids. I took some time off from my law firm. And my kids were one and two. And I had been nursing, you know, I was trying, uh, when you're breastfeeding, your breasts are kind of, you can't tell, they feel kind of lumpy. Sometimes you get clogged milk ducts and I had thought I had, I know the feeling. Well, so I thought it was just, you know, a clogged milk duct. I mean, I'm a healthy person. I, all my life I'd eaten well, I pretty athletic. And so my mom was visiting from LA and she said,

and we had just moved to the Bay area. We were in Silicon Valley. And my mom said, you know what, just go get it checked out. And I thought, yeah, sure. I'm going to get it checked out. Never in a million years would I have thought that it was a late stage cancer, which of course it was. It was, it was a, I was in big trouble. It was huge and it had spread. No way. What happened next? Well, I got a really poor prognosis and I remember sitting there and you know, you're in your thirties, you're like people in their thirties, you're not really thinking about dying and the end of your life. And I remember that when the call came through and I was sitting in a chair and people

talk about this experience where all of a sudden that everything seems to get really super clear. I remember I, you know, I picked up the call. I knew it was from the laboratory, from the doctor. And I never in a million years would have thought that they would have said, yes, it's cancer. And that's what it said. And all of a sudden, the ceiling seemed to kind of get really close. The whole room closed in on me. And they say that getting a cancer diagnosis is so hard that it actually leaves a mark in your brain. And I know why that would be because I just, it's like my world just closed in. And I looked over and I saw my kids toddling around. And I remember in the weeks that followed, knowing how bad it was, knowing how the poor, the prognosis was thinking, oh my gosh, I am going to die. I am in so much

trouble. And so it was probably the darkest period of my life because at every other time, I didn't think, oh, this is, you know, every other time I thought, oh, I'll be okay. We'll work it out. We'll get out. Oh, I can find a new career. Oh, everyone's going to be okay. Oh, as a country, we're going to get past this 9-11. But this was so personal. It was in my body and I just didn't know what was, I thought I was going to die. Wow. That's crazy. And what happened after that? So I am nothing if not scrappy. That is my favorite word. I am so scrappy. And the one thing that all of this adversity has taught me, and you know, I'm a big Trekkie. Did I ever tell you? I'm a huge Trekkie. You've been to Star Trek? Oh my God,

Star Trek. Yes. I used to watch Star Trek as a little girl in Iran dubbed in Farsi. So if you could just imagine Captain Kirk talking in Farsi, that was me. And I had an older brother. We were both into space, into science fiction. So there is a story in Star Trek about the Kobayashi Maru. And the Kobayashi Maru is a no-win scenario. And every cadet that ever went through the Starfleet Academy failed the Kobayashi Maru because the idea is to see what they will do and how they will react in a no-win scenario. And Captain Kirk was the only cadet in the history of Starfleet to actually pass the Kobayashi Maru.

And he did it by essentially cheating. He recalibrated the game. And when they asked him what he did, he said, I don't believe I reprogrammed it. And the reason why is I don't believe in no one scenarios. And I remember I was thinking about here I was, here were my kids. I had just been like this massively miserable lost lawyer forever, not daring to get out of the profession because I didn't know what else I was going to do. And just so in a fog. And I remember sitting there thinking, I don't believe in no-win scenarios.

I'm going to figure something out. There's got to be something here, right? So I was a lawyer. And what do lawyers do really well? We research. That first week, I lost something like five to six pounds because it was so hard and I just couldn't even eat. I was so stressed out and so terrified. So I remember sitting down with my computer and going through all the possibilities,

searching all of the stories of people who had been in really tough situations, particularly with cancer, but also other really tough chronic illnesses or, you know, really scary illnesses and kind of making a list of everything that people had tried. And at the end of the day, I had pages and pages of things that were diet related, stress related, exercise related. Some people had gone to healers. And I remember looking at this list and thinking, okay, I'm going to eliminate about 50% because they don't sound credible to me. I mean, they may well have been, they were wonderful people, they had great stories, but it just didn't sound credible. So I eliminated about a third of what was left over because I thought, well, this could be wishful thinking. It doesn't

seem so rational or I can't do it. And then I eliminated another third because I thought, oh, this is too tough to do. It's too specific to this person's thing, their illness. So there was at the end of the day about a page left of people who were rigorous, left of people who were rigorous, well-thinking people who had made a really compelling case for things that were alternative or complementary that had either saved their lives or prolonged them for a very long time. So that was my list. That was my way. I set about doing those things.

What were those things? There was clinical nutrition, you know, food as medicine. Yes. There was the power, the mind-body connection, the power of the placebo and kind of willing it and working very hard and kind of doing whatever you have to do to make something happen, putting something together. I'm not saying you sit in a corner and you don't do anything and you just will yourself to get better. I'm saying you do everything and you create a very active, positive mindset that helps enable you. You create better narratives for yourself. And this actually ended up being what really emerged for me when I started as a stress researcher, as the key to stress. And so I took those things

and exercise was one of them. You can reduce your chance of recurrence and, and getting sick to begin with by exercising for a certain period a day. That's all over the literature, the scientific literature. So I set about doing all these things. And another thing was all my life, I had wanted to be something. I had a vision of what I would have done in my wildest dreams. And I never had because I was too afraid because I made excuses because I blamed my parents because they were so traditionally Iranian and they wanted me to be a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer. Always an excuse, always blaming it on this person, that person. Oh, I can't do it because of X, Y. You know what I did? I said to myself,

I will never go back to the practice of law and I'm going to figure out how to be who I was meant to be. That also happened for me in that very first week. And it changed my life, I'm telling you. Who were you meant to be? I had always read a lot as a child and I had always written a lot as a child. And I tell stories, you know, I sit around with people and strangers. And when I meet strangers, we sit and we tell stories. I want to hear their stories. I want to tell them my stories. I'm a person who thinks a lot in terms of stories. And I knew that I was meant to be a

storyteller. And I had actually over the years kind of shared it with people here and there. And I had always been told that I was delusional, that everybody wants to tell stories. Everybody wants to be a columnist. Everybody wants to be a writer. But very, very few people get to do that. So my construct was, oh, it's impossible. Oh, I'm already a lawyer. I'm already vested in being a lawyer. I've already spent all this money going to law school.

I've been in a law firm. I make X amount of money. This is a good lifestyle. At that moment where I wasn't sure whether I was going to live or die, amount of money. This is a good lifestyle. At that moment where I wasn't sure whether I was going to live or die, none of that mattered. There were two things. One was I needed to be who I was meant to be. And the second was I did not want to leave. If I was going to leave this world, I did not want to leave feeling like there were any strained relationships, like I hated anyone or anyone hated me. I just wanted unity and I wanted harmony. It was really interesting how those two things became

very, very clear. And do you think that stress and all the stress you built up over the years was a major cause of the cancer? I think something happened. So I think, you know, it's a very interesting thing about suffering is that we do our best to not suffer, but life is suffering. That's one of the major tenets of Buddhism and just about every other faith, right? Nietzsche wrote, that which does not kill me makes me stronger. If you look at every one of our faith traditions, the pathway to becoming who you are, to the diamond emerging from the rough, is always through adversity. There's a great children's book that says you can't go over it. You can't go under it.

You've got to go through it. And we work so hard to avoid legitimate suffering that we actually end up suffering probably a hundred times more because we avoid it because we avoid it than if we could just suck it up and go through it this is what i have taught my kids we have it we have it sound like a good football coach yeah no but we also tell you know my kids are eight and ten and we try to exercise a lot of empathy we really have conversations but we also have a thing in our house we call suck it up a tube. And that's the ability when there's no other options left to actually just kind of strengthen and, you know, suck in your gut and just go through it.

And I think it's a really important trait. And they, people talk about that, right? In Silicon Valley, they say fail early, fail often. It takes a lot of suck it up-itude to fail early and fail often. You got to toughen up and go through it sometimes. Yeah. I'm a big believer that we should experience pain in some way every single day and pain as much as possible. I mean, maybe not as much as possible, but every single day do something that's painful because you're going to grow from that experience. Yeah. And I don't know if – and, you know, we were talking about reframing stories earlier. And I think there's a – you know, I don't think we have to necessarily suffer.

We can reframe it as, okay, this is a painful situation and I'm going to experience pain right now. Exactly. It's going to be an uncomfortable conversation I have to have with my girlfriend or I'm out of shape. And so this is going to be a painful experience for the next six months. Or I'm about to give a speech and I don't need to suffer, but I'm going to be nervous and afraid and it's going to be painful. So I think that's powerful is to understand that life is painful. And really, it's exactly right. Adversity is the pathway to growth. But if you look at the examples around us, and I know you are a top athlete, our top athletes willingly move into situations that test their limits. They make themselves uncomfortable. They put themselves in situations of discomfort and they stay there as long as they can. Because what does that do? It helps them become elite athletes. It helps them perform better. This is such a dramatically different way of looking at stress and adversity. It really helps you reframe

the challenges that you might have lamented or avoided or resisted in the past. It really helps strengthen you and gives you the guts to move through it. Yeah. So we're talking about serenity and I'm just curious what your definition is of serenity. You know, yesterday there was a hashtag on Twitter about happiness, about what, what does happiness mean or something to that effect? What does happiness mean? So we, we operate from these very skewed definitions of serenity and happiness. And it is in many people's interest to actually help us connect serenity and happiness and joy to products, to things that we can buy, to things that are outside of us.

My definition of serenity is knowing that I am working very, very hard to be the person that I was meant to be, to achieve my purpose and not to stop there, but take that purpose and actually serve people. So it's both passion and purpose, right? It's not enough to be self-realized. It's not enough to sit there and meditate for days, to be who you were meant to be, to learn and expand your mind, to take up all the space that you were allotted. That's the first step. And the second step is to then take that and actually be of service in the world. And that is my definition of serenity and joy and perfection. That is what I hope to do and aspire to do. I like that. And you talk about these 10 principles in your book, and you separate them into three different parts, the world, mind, and body.

Can you talk about some of these points? Absolutely. So if you, in fact, take the adversities that are besieging just about all of us. I mean, if you look at the research that surveys that come out year after year, and you think about what it is that people are stressed out about, and these very common themes emerge, this idea of loneliness and not feeling like they belong, this idea of feeling stuck, this idea of being stuck, not just in the constructs of our society, but in terms of how they're going to come up with solutions. People struggle with defining what success means. They have money problems. They have problems with meanness.

We feel like our society is becoming more vitriolic and kind of unkind and incivil. People have problems with weight and obesity and disease. They have problems with their stuff and feeling like they're constantly surrounded by clutter. And then there's also this sort of through line of feeling like your life is passing you by, like you're not truly there and kind of you're mindlessly going from thing to thing to thing. We're all stuck on these little whys. And what I mean by the little whys is the things that we have to do. I have to take out the trash. I have to wash the dishes. I have to turn in this assignment. I have to make my paycheck. These are the things that are the

little whys. But then when you put the little whys together, they create the big whys. Like, what do you want to be about? What do you want your life to be about? Who do you want to have been? And if your little whys aren't adding up to the big whys, or if you're spending no time thinking about who you are, why you're here, how you're being of service, then you're in big trouble. So there's this huge disconnect because we're so stuck on

these little whys, but not spending any time thinking about our big whys as a society. Now, if you take all of those stressors and you work backwards from them, and you look at the science that's emerging from our wonderful psychologists and sociologists and neuroimmunologists, we have some amazing scientists and journalists and writers and thinkers and philosophers and historians. And you put all of that together, you take all those slices and you see what is emerging from those slices. There's a very clear path to how we should be living so that we can live purposefully. We can live joyfully and happily. And what I was trying to do with the second half of the book is take all of those beautiful slices that our talented scientists

and writers are putting out there in small pieces and putting them together and seeing what emerges. What emerges is an amazing roadmap to living. I love it. Yeah. I mean, I'm looking at the goals that you have right now in your book, and they all make sense to me when I'm reading them. Being resilient, belonging, being creative, being present, all these different principles make sense to me. So I get it. I love it. And here's the thing. Our generation, there's cars that are parking themselves, there's TVs that talk to us, our know, calls for us. Everything is easier, but it seems like we're more stressed out than ever before. And why do you think that is? And do you think also every generation thinks

their generation is the most stressful? I love that you asked that question. That's actually really such a perceptive question goes to the heart of why is it that we have this narrative that we have about how stressed out we are now? I don't think, and some of the top experts in the world who, whom I interviewed for the book, don't think that we live in the most stressed out generation. There are two main differences. A, we think that we are are two main differences. A, we think that we are one of the most stressed out generations because we have this story circulating. We have these stories of how stressed out we are circulating constantly. And what happens with those stories? Because humans have something called emotional contagion, because our emotions are viral, they go viral. When I walk into a room, if I'm not

in a good mood, I'm kind of pissy, I pass that pissiness on to the next person. That's true. Right? Or if I'm joyful, then I can pass that on to the next person. But what happens is we're so connected and we have this sense of adversity that all we're doing is circulating this sense of constant adversity around. And so if you really become mindful of it and go around day to day and kind of listen for the phrase, oh my God, I'm so stressed out or she's so stressful or this is such a stressful situation, you will hear it constantly because it's become part of our cultural narrative that we are all so stressed out. And then that narrative goes through the ether, goes through

our phones, goes through the articles we write and the movies we make and the films and the music that we make. And it sort of passes around like a big virus. And so we all have this perception that we are stressed out. Now, here's why that's a problem. Because stress isn't so much about what's happening to you, but how your body is much about what's happening to you, but how your body is reacting to what's happening to you. Right. And so if you think that you are always stressed out and you're always under siege, then your body is always going to be reacting as if it's under siege. And that right there is the definition of toxic stress. It is endless. It goes on for a long time.

It's long-term. You don't know what to do about it. So you're basically walking around constantly with cortisol flowing through your body and in a state of inflammation. That is a recipe for disaster. I love that. you know, if you're not physically creating cancer in your body, you're creating cancerous environment in yourself and spreading that to other people if you're constantly stressed out. And I love this in part two of your book where it says stress as a guide, speaking into what you just said there. You know, Gandhi says your belief becomes your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become

your destiny. So just speaking into what you were saying, the more you do those things, it becomes part of your body and it becomes part of your life. Exactly. It's a downward spiral. So if I was to, you know, say you have a friend who is constantly stressed out and who's like always in their head and speaking in a negative way and saying how stressed they are and they're constantly just like, they're not calm. There's no clarity. They're just negative Nancys constantly. And they said, Amanda, what do I need to do to be less stressful?

How can I be calm? If you were to say like, here are three to five things to get started, what advice would you give that person? Well, my first advice is this idea that pervades. There are two things that pervade in our culture constantly. One is people get really pissed off at you when you say you're going to have to create your own world because they say, oh, do you mean I created the negativity around me? And the difference there is mindset. There's some amazing research coming out of Stanford by Carol Dweck

and a fantastic, brilliant researcher named Aaliyah Crum. And the research shows that if you have a stress mindset, if you're walking around in responding in a stress mindset, then you will really sort of suffer from that stress mindset. So the idea is to first examine your stories and say, am I walking around? Do I have a stress mindset? What are the stories that I'm telling? am I walking around? Do I have a stressed mindset? What are the stories that I'm telling? And the first part of my book, the first chapter of the second part of my book about resilience really deconstructs our stories and tells us the elements of how we can figure out what stories are circulating, how we can be mindful in the moment, how we can be self-aware, how we can increase our mental agility, and how we can cultivate optimism. There's this idea going around and all this

writing every once in a while about the power of negative thinking. There was a whole magazine that came out about it recently. And somehow people have this misperception that optimists have it all wrong, that optimism means inauthentic exuberance. And I think that is so wrong because I'm a huge optimist and I don't deny pain and misery at all because I don't think that's optimism. I think optimism ultimately is the ability to suffer, but to continue to tell good stories that propel you forward instead of remaining in the suffering, right? It's interesting you say that because I just interviewed a guy named Todd Cashton on a book called The Upside of Your Dark Side. I don't know if you've heard about this, but it's all about

using your negative emotions to move you forward and why it's actually good to have these kind of dark emotions to achieve greatness in your life. Absolutely. And the key right there is that you can't remain in the suffering, but you also can't deny the suffering. If you deny it, you will learn nothing from it, and it will happen again. You have to move through it. They say success consists of getting up just one more time than you fall, and that's absolutely true. And there's another researcher whom I love. Clearly, I love my scientists. You're a lawyer. Yeah. Jamie Pennebaker from UT Austin, who really showed the power of storytelling, of writing down our stories and making sense about what's happening

to us. There's a part about him in the book where you kind of understand his methods and how it has led to these dramatic outcomes like people with AIDS taking the time to tell their stories and writing about them. They have higher white blood cell counts and they actually thrive and do much better at the end of the study or men who have lost their jobs who take the time to tell their stories and try to make sense of it. Not only do they have better health outcomes, but they actually find jobs faster. So a really important element here, the first step is to tell better stories. Now, you want to hear the second step? Of course. The second step is to understand that all stress isn't the same. We have been spending all this time painting every kind of stress with the same toxic brush. And stress as the bane of modern living, as the worst thing about modern life, really is only a story that

we started telling ourselves in the 1950s and on. Really? Before that, the idea of adversity and difficulty was that if it didn't kill you, it was going to make you stronger or at least glad you weren't dead. But stress comes in different kinds. Like you were saying earlier, the stress that you feel before giving a speech is going to help you give a better speech and be more animated and more energetic as you give a speech. There's stress that helps you jump out of a way of a car as it's about to hit you. There's all kinds of stress. There's a scientist named Firdos Debar from Stanford that shows that if you experience a short burst of stress as you're about to go into knee surgery, you will actually recover faster than people who did not feel that short burst of stress. Really? So in many, many ways, stress can be wonderful.

And on the other side of the spectrum, in many ways, stress can be wonderful. And on the other side of the spectrum, in many ways, stress can be toxic. And that is long extended periods of stress where you don't know what to do and you're just kind of going from high stress to high stress. And then in between there is the tolerable stress from which you can protect yourself, you can make sense of it, and it can help you become a better person. It can help you become who you were meant to be. So you're saying there is such a thing as good stress? Oh my gosh, absolutely. What is that called? Eustress, or how do you say that? It's the idea of acute stress. It's short bursts of stress. You can call it eustress. That is a

term that has been applied to it more generally. But the stress that can be very, very good for you, that can help you take better tests and retain more information, that's acute stress. Gotcha. Okay, cool. Okay, so the second part is to experience the stress and move through it faster. Is that right? Is that what I got from that? The second part is to actually, so here's what you want to do. And if you could see me, I would actually do a demonstration. So if you hold the palm of your hand in front of your face and you close your fingers tightly and see all the peaks of your fingers, right? This is how our days are looking. We're going from peak of stress to peak of stress to peak of stress. What you need to do, then if you open your fingers wide, like a five, you're

looking at your palm. You need to go from high stress point to a low to no stress point, high stress point to low to no stress point. And that is what your day needs to look like every single day. Instead of going from stressor to stressor to stressor, you need to insert these pockets of joy into your life. Now, they don't have to be long. You don't have to go on vacation. You don't have to buy anything. Just figure out what works for you. The best de-stressing device is the one you use. So if you are likely to pick up your dog and cuddle it for a minute, then you do that. If you like a hot bath, then you do that. If you exercise, then do that or listen to music.

It can be anything. But really, the problem with stress is that it's a design issue. We are designing days that go from stress, high stress to high stress to high stress. We need to design our days so that they look like peaks and valleys instead of constant peaks. And what about the people that say, well, I don't want to deal with stress at all. But you're saying I have to go through high stress and then joy and high stress. What would you say to them? It is a delusion. Stress-free living is an absolute delusion. Wow. Who would not want to live stress-free. It would be boring. Life would be boring. No, it's not even a matter of boring.

It's a matter of, well, scientifically, research shows that people who actually experience very, very low levels of stress don't even physically do well, as well as people who do experience stress in a healthy way. So your body needs stress, unless you just want to be a blob sitting in a healthy way. So your body needs stress unless you just want to be a blob sitting in a corner. And even that physically is just not good for you, nor is it psychologically good for you. There is no such thing. Leaning in for a kiss is a short burst of acute stress. Leaning in for a first kiss. I mean, unless you want to sort of be in a sensory deprivation chamber and not experience anything, and I know people go mad doing that, then you just don't want – there's no such thing. protect them from every kind of stressor. And they end up suffering as young adults because they're unhappier. They have higher rates of all kinds of issues. And so in some ways, people who come from this, I'm not making this up. This is absolutely correct. Are you ready for it?

Now, we know that people who grew up in adversity, children who grew up in poverty have all kinds of risk factors for addiction, for suicide, for stress-related disorders, all kinds of things. Do you know who else research has shown is at risk for stress-related adversities, addiction, suicide, all kinds of mental illness on par with kids growing up with poverty? Kids who have everything. Kids who have everything. Kids who have everything. Is that a trip? Entitled kids, yeah.

Crazy. And so I tell my kids, it is my job to help them fail early and fail often. And it is not my job to sit there and protect them and give them everything that you want. And my chapter about being happy and being giving really shows you that the people who are happiest are the ones who have to work for it, who have to work hard for it, are the ones who learn how to give, how to volunteer. The kids, the parents who think they're doing their kids a favor by giving them

absolutely everything. You know how you go to the dentist and they give you that Novocaine and you don't feel anything? You are the dentist and you are giving your child the Novocaine of life because your child is going to be numbed. They're going to be so coddled and they will have gotten everything that they will not experience the most profound, the most beautiful joys of life. What a tragedy that is. I love this. This is a great conversation. Yeah. Yeah. I want to talk about, we mentioned athletes for a second. Why are athletes particularly good at harnessing stress? They know because we train them.

We teach them. They know early on. So in our world, we're taught, what do you hear about stress? Stress-free living. Be stress-free. Get rid of stress. Go shopping so you can get rid of your stress. So all we're doing is walking around trying to

find ways to avoid stress. The athletes are taught that the pathway to being elite is through that suffering. I mean, the athletes are amazing. They're just amazing. They are taught that, and we're taught the opposite. Everything that we hear in our culture and our media is stress-free living. I want you to now be mindful of how often you read slices of research, these articles that talk about stress-free, stress-free, stress-free. We are completely obsessed with stress and we have it all wrong. And I agree that when you look at the little slices, it is legitimate, right? Because people feel like they're going through so much adversity that they want to stop it. They want to stop the suffering. But if you put it all together and stop trying to take the easy way out, you will actually

see what stress is trying to tell you. It is the guide we've been doing our best to, it's the messenger we've been doing our best to shoot. That's what stress is. And I don't know if we went around more points if you had any more, but I wanted to talk about tips on changing your perspective of stress. I don't know if that was going to be one of your feature points for how to overcome stress. I am a big believer in – I have these exercises that I did. I actually did them right after I was diagnosed.

I was reading a book that all these people sent me books and music and CDs to listen to. I was reading this one book about this woman who had recovered from some serious disease and gone on to thrive and to really change her life and turn it around. And in this one book, there was a name of someone that she had seen in Berkeley. So at the time I was living in Silicon Valley, which is not super far from Berkeley. And it's like the land of crunch, right? Everybody's so crunchy and woo-woo, which I kind of love. And I love it as long as it's backed by science.

You know, I'm all for the woo-woo as long as there's a rational case for it. And so I went to see this woman. Her name was Serja. And she had me do a real serious accounting of my narratives. So the first thing that I did was sit down. And you can do this exercise. It's in my book. You really don't need to show it to anybody. In fact, I recommend that you don't. The things that run through your head on a day-to-day basis that mostly are unconscious thoughts, right? So some of mine are, I was abandoned, right? As a child because of what happened. I also think I'm

scrappy. I think that on a certain level, I can put things together. So I'm good at patterns. You know, there are narratives that, or I am incapable of being clean, or I cannot thrive in a relationship. I'm always going to be alone. These are all stories. You put them down, you divide them into the ones that are going to serve you and the ones that are not. So my idea that I'm scrappy, it sure has served me, hasn't it? It has served me my entire life of knowing that I can, you know, I'm a good pattern detector has definitely served me. The ones where I feel like, oh, I'm always going to be lonely. I was abandoned as a child.

These are narratives that are false narratives and you're looking for them. So like you're riding your bike, you look to the right, guess what? The bike will start going to the right. And when you look to your left, what will happen? The bike will start veering to the left. the bike will start going to the right. And when you look to your left, what will happen? The bike will start veering to the left. You want to know that the direction that you're going to is accurate, that if there is something that you're doing that is toxic, then you need to work on those habits. And I highly recommend Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit. Love the guy, love his work.

And so you want to go into the world with a map that is accurate, that is serving you. If your map is all wrong, you will never get anywhere because that is the first and foremost thing is a map and that map represents your stories. So that right there is the threshold. I love it. Yeah. It's all about the perspective. You also give some good tips at the end of your book for just, I guess, stress-busting strategies, you say.

Yeah. And I'm not going to read them all because I want people to get the book, but there's a lot of great tips in here. But you talk about hanging out with a pet, sleeping, obviously, spending time in nature, reading a book or listening to music. But what I think that everyone can do, you talk about is unplugging every 90 minutes. And I think there's a lot of busy entrepreneurs that listen to this, this show are people that are just really passionate, and they just go all in all the time. And I think whenever I catch myself in the zone for a long period of time, and then I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed or stressed, it's always good for me to just get up out of my chair and walk around and go outside and get some fresh air and just

kind of unplug for a few minutes. And that gives me a big relief. That gives me one of those valleys like moments as opposed to always being in the peak stress. Exactly. So I love these tips you give at the end. You've done so much research. I love all the research you've done. There's so many links back in here to all the books you've researched on. And that's why I really wanted to, I approached this project with a lot of humility because I knew that ultimately there are people doing amazing work out there. I mean, I love so much of the people who are out there doing this incredible work, the journalists that are writing these heartfelt stories that are bringing it together. What I really wanted to emphasize was that this was the work, the importance of this work is in the way that it's put together, right?

We all know that happiness and success are misdefined and that we are defining them in a way that's actually hurting us. And we all know that we have to be kind. We know that we should be uncluttered. These are all things that we know, right? They make absolute sense. Like you were saying earlier, the way that I tried to put it together and to, uh, to really present it in the book was to say, this is what we know. This is what the science supports as well as all of our faith supports and the philosophy and the history supports. And this is how we are misunderstanding it or misdefining it in our society. And this is where we need to do work in order to bring the two together. So the idea is to bring what you believe and how you are living and how your culture is behaving, the constructs in our world, bring them all together.

Yeah, I like that. And why do you recommend that people belong to a group or join a group activity? The single most powerful indicator of modifier of well- wellbeing is the idea of belonging, which if you look at it in a really global way, it's all about unity. Really. If you think about how much we exclude and how many people in our culture go out of their way to exclude others of how we're not owning each other as family. And we are at a juncture in our society where our most established institutions are falling apart all around us. And there are all of these chicken littles writing about how things are falling apart around us. And I get it. And I agree with that. And reality is that they are falling apart around us. But the people that I'm really looking to as my thought leaders are the ones who acknowledge

the reality of what's happening. But then they're able to take all of that and create for me a scenario of what it's going to look like. So it's like a mental jujitsu. You take it and you say, yes, one pathway is we're really screwed. And another pathway is that we can take this and we can, yes, one pathway is we're really screwed. And another pathway is that we can take this and we can create institutions that are better. And one of those institutions is the way we relate to each other as family, as these false constructs that we've created about

race or gender or orientation or all of these things about, oh, you're from this country and I'm better because I'm from this country. Now, having actually lived that in real life, I mean, growing up in the Middle East and Europe and America, I can tell you, you will take my word for it, that we have so much more in common. And if we can sit down and really focus on those commonalities, we will live happier, healthier, better lives, and we will thrive. It is not someone else's problem. Ultimately, it will all come back to you. And this is one of the things I was so devastated around. When we have these periods of national crisis like Ferguson, we all have

different opinions. That is the fact of life. Our perceptions are different. We all know that we will see everything through a different lens. So we will always, always have different opinions, whether in a big way or in a nuanced, small way. The thing is that what we're not doing is entering the moments of our lives, love first. And I know that people think about love in such a woo-woo way, right? I mean, what I'm interested in is practical love. What does practical love look like? What practical love looks like to me is entering a moment with empathy and trying to see how it could feel for a young boy to be shot in the prime of his life. And I don't care whether that kid is a bad kid or a good kid or what color he is, what race he is, what country he's from. I just don't care whether that kid is a bad kid or a good kid or what color he is, what race he is,

what country he's from. I just don't care. It's a child. It is the child in a prime of his life. I have screwed up so much in my life and thank God that I was able to turn some of that around. But I mean, we have all walked paths and we've made mistakes and we've done good things and bad things. We sit in judgment of each other And what we don't do is enter our moments and our biggest conversations love first. And I think that if we were to do that, our political parties would look so different. And our biggest issues that we're dealing with the issues of race and gender and the issues of equality and income inequality. If you were to look at someone with love first, our entire world would change. And there's an exercise called the loving kindness meditation that has actually been

researched and has shown to have these dramatic impacts on your brain and on your body and on the way you move around in the world. And it's a really lovely meditation that's in the book. that's happened to you and where you are now. It's incredible the amount of grit and resilience you actually have to be able to go through the journey you have from childhood to 9-11 to cancer. And even having kids is very stressful. I can only imagine. I don't have them. So I acknowledge you for your resilience throughout your entire life of being in a new country,

everything that you've had to go through. I also acknowledge you for your courage because I believe it's so courageous what you've done to leave what society and family and friends think to be as a steady job that you should be stuck in because you invested all this time and money and resources into being a great lawyer. because you invested all this time and money and resources into being a great lawyer. But actually, I admire and acknowledge you for your courage to take the leap and follow your passion and your purpose. And you're helping so many people in the world seek their own serenity through this work that you do, through your writing and through your creative storytelling.

So thank you for your research and for your commitment to living your purpose. I'm very impressed. Thank you. And I think the important thing here is that we all derive courage from each other. And when we show, everyone experiences fear, but when we're able to kind of move beyond the fear and just throw ourselves in 100% that we get courage from each other. So I thank you for everything that you're doing. And I just hope that we cross paths in person and sending you a very huge virtual hug. I love it. Yeah. I've got two final questions for you.

I want to make sure everyone picks up the book. I'll have it all linked up here at the very end. I'll tell you guys where to get Seeking Serenity back at the show notes on the blog. But two final questions is, I'm curious, what are you most grateful for in your life recently, Amanda? So it would have to be dual try to, I want them to be better. I want them to take up all the space that they were allotted and I want them to use that to make people's lives better. And so I'm so proud of the people that they are becoming. They're only eight and 10, but just they're all heart and really people of great empathy, which I really appreciate. And the other thing is how lucky am I that I'm able to do this work?

I start every session, every interview with just, you know, because I know that we're all connected. I know about the principle of emotional contagion. I walk into it with love. And so I remind myself every few minutes that I just, here I am, and I'm able to send out love through the airwaves. And please forgive me if that sounds so woo-woo. Like I said, I believe in practical love, but the ability to actually impact people

and to provide this image of this big picture of where it could go and how it could be. it could go and how it could be. We're such a young and hopeful group of beings and there's so much good that we can do. We just have to keep our faces in the right direction. I love that. Thanks for sharing that. Thank you. Final question. It's what I ask everyone at the end. It's what's your definition of greatness? And it's what's your definition of greatness? My definition of greatness is to figure out what it is that is the genius in you. We are so, I have a friend named Scott Barry Kaufman who talks about genius and how we have these small visions of what genius, small definitions of what genius can be, but

that everybody has a genius within them and you have to figure out what your genius is and genius is not just the luxury of people who were born in the united states or people who are rich or people who have certain privileges by virtue of having been born there is a genius in all of us. My definition of greatness is figuring out what that genius is and really getting good and honing it and then using it to serve. That is greatness right there, service. Amanda, Anaity, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. And there you have it, guys. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Amanda on seeking serenity.

Hopefully you learned some powerful new insights on stress and the power of stress in our lives. And if you guys enjoyed this episode, make sure to head back to the blog over at lewishouse.com slash 155. We've got all the tips from today's episode linked up back there. So all the great tips and resources that we talked about and that Amanda covers, we got it linked back over at the blog at lewishouse.com slash 155.

Also, to get her book, we'll have a link for her book so you can grab a copy there. I highly recommend this book. I'm holding it right now. I've been going through it. And I love what she covers on these 10 new rules for health and happiness. So hopefully you guys enjoyed this.

If you did, if you know some friends who are stressed out, if you've got a family member who is stressed out, coworker, make sure to send them this episode. I think they're gonna get a lot out of it. I think it's gonna create a lot of clarity for people. It's gonna give people a lot of those tips that'll help them when they're feeling overwhelmed and stressed.

So send them an email. Feel free to CC me on it as well. But send them an email lewishouse.com slash 155. Also share it with your friends over on Twitter and Facebook and social media. And wherever you guys are online, tag me in it tag me at Lewis house, especially over on Instagram, I see all of your photos over there there and I respond to almost everyone that I see. So thank you guys again for being in the community. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast over on iTunes and leave us a review if you have yet to leave a review. And you guys mean the world to me. It means a lot that you guys keep coming back and we've got incredible episodes in the near future. So stay tuned. Thank you again so much. You guys know what time it is.

It's time to go out there and do something great.