Speaker 1: Pushkin. Our dominant model and narrative is that we should deny, reduce,
Speaker 1: and avoid stress, and that is not always the case.
Speaker 1: Every single person I know can tell of the time
Speaker 1: where their stress helps them. That's Medube Akinola, a professor
Speaker 1: at the Columbia Business School and an expert on stress.
Speaker 1: Medube is on a mission to change how we think
Speaker 1: about short term stress, the kind we feel when we're
Speaker 1: preparing for a big presentation at work or before a
Speaker 1: difficult conversation with a friend. She says, we can reframe
Speaker 1: our stress as something that actually helps us. It's often
Speaker 1: your mindset about stress that can influence the extent to
Speaker 1: which it can have harmful or helpful effects. So when
Speaker 1: we have more of a stress's enhancing mindset that leads
Speaker 1: to better outcomes. On today's show, What Science teaches Us
Speaker 1: about the Upside of Stress, I'm maya shunker and this
Speaker 1: is a slight change of plans, a show about who
Speaker 1: we are and who we become in the face of
Speaker 1: a big change. It's easy for us to see stress
Speaker 1: as the enemy. In a stressful situation, our heart races,
Speaker 1: our blood pressure rises, our breathing quickens, and this can
Speaker 1: all feel pretty uncomfortable. If we could wave a magic
Speaker 1: wand that would eliminate all future stress from our lives,
Speaker 1: many of us would wave that wand to do. Pay
Speaker 1: believes that if we can make a small shift in
Speaker 1: our mindset, stress can actually be a powerful asset. So
Speaker 1: can you start off by sharing what it is that
Speaker 1: got you interested in studying stress in the first place. Basically,
Speaker 1: I grew up as a child of immigrants, and anyone
Speaker 1: who is a child of immigrants knows that there is
Speaker 1: just stress involved in that experience. The stress of moving
Speaker 1: to a new country, the stress of having kids, raising
Speaker 1: kids in a new environment, the stress of being far
Speaker 1: away from your family if you've come from a developing country,
Speaker 1: being able to support your family while also trying to
Speaker 1: help your kids learn a new language. Here, all of that,
Speaker 1: and so I realized later on in life that I
Speaker 1: had absorbed a lot of that stress. Heck, to this day,
Speaker 1: I still watch my parents stress and have to say
Speaker 1: to myself, wait a minute, pause, do all the things
Speaker 1: that I advise other people to do. So that is
Speaker 1: a piece of why I study stress. But also one
Speaker 1: of the things I love about my parents was that
Speaker 1: they were very education focused and so the stress of
Speaker 1: doing well in school, not even just the pressure that
Speaker 1: they put on us. They didn't put much pressure on us.
Speaker 1: They just sent us to one of the best private
Speaker 1: schools possible and said, you know, you do you. But
Speaker 1: in that process that meant that I experienced the stress
Speaker 1: of being one of few black people in every classroom
Speaker 1: I was in. So then there's a stress of adjusting
Speaker 1: and adapting to environments where you are the only where
Speaker 1: you're different. So all of those things combined led to
Speaker 1: me eventually studying stress. Yeah, there's this charming story in
Speaker 1: the Dufe about your high school yearbook and the fact
Speaker 1: that clearly you weren't the only one thinking that you
Speaker 1: were stressed out. Can you tell us a bit about that. Yes, So,
Speaker 1: you know, in high school usually you have a yearbook,
Speaker 1: and in our yearbook there are roasts. In those roasts,
Speaker 1: it highlights who you think you are and who you
Speaker 1: actually are. And my dream was that I was best dressed,
Speaker 1: is what they said. But my reality was that I
Speaker 1: was the most stressed. So even senior year, you know,
Speaker 1: even senior year, they saw that in me, and I
Speaker 1: saw it in myself. But the thing about it is
Speaker 1: there were so many ways in which that stress helped me.
Speaker 1: It challenged me, and it pushed me. So I kind
Speaker 1: of always felt like stress isn't always this terrible thing
Speaker 1: that we need to run away from and avoid and deny.
Speaker 1: Maybe it is helping us in some ways too. So
Speaker 1: let's start with the basics. If you can give us
Speaker 1: kind of the stress one oh one, how do you
Speaker 1: define stress? I feel like the simplest definition is when
Speaker 1: the demands of a situation exceed your resources to cope.
Speaker 1: But you have to then take it a step further
Speaker 1: and say, well, what are demands? And often demands are
Speaker 1: there's some type of danger in the situation, there's some
Speaker 1: type of uncertainty. You need to exert a bit of
Speaker 1: extra effort in this situation. Then when you think about resources, well,
Speaker 1: what helps us overcome danger, uncertainty, extra effort we need
Speaker 1: to put into something. Well, when we have the knowledge
Speaker 1: and the abilities to tackle that thing, when our personalities,
Speaker 1: our dispositions can be helpful in tackling that thing, and
Speaker 1: also when we have externals aboard other people cheering us on,
Speaker 1: other people teaching us, that's when we have more resources. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's interesting about this definition is that when it comes
Speaker 1: to stress, it's really about our subjective assessment that we
Speaker 1: have the resources to cope. So it might not be
Speaker 1: the objective resources. In fact, I might have the mental
Speaker 1: and physical resources to cope with the situation, but if
Speaker 1: my self perception is that I don't have those resources now,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, it is a stressful situation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I would almost reframe the definition as feeling like
Speaker 1: the demands of the situation exceed your resources to cope.
Speaker 1: Is that right? Yeah? A lot of it is our
Speaker 1: subjective assessment of it, which is a piece of why
Speaker 1: I tell people don't say like, don't be stressed, that
Speaker 1: shouldn't stress you out, because it doesn't matter. Subjectively, I
Speaker 1: am feeling stressed. So that's what needs to be taken
Speaker 1: into consideration, my subjective experience of it. On a physiological level,
Speaker 1: can you tell us what happens to us when we
Speaker 1: experience stress? So when we experience stress, our sympathetic nervous
Speaker 1: system gets activated. It's that part of our body that
Speaker 1: tells us do you need to fight or do you
Speaker 1: need to flee this situation? And when that happens, we
Speaker 1: get adrenaline, we get dopamine, we get cortisol, all of
Speaker 1: the resources we need physiologically to move to act, to
Speaker 1: do what we need to do. This process is a
Speaker 1: very adaptive one, so that when you're done with the
Speaker 1: stressor ideally your body wants to go back to its
Speaker 1: resting state, where those hormones decrease, that adrenaline decreased, you
Speaker 1: get back to resting and relaxing and all that. That
Speaker 1: is a normal physiological response to an acute stressor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love you're sharing that, because stress obviously gets a
Speaker 1: really bad rep but it's not just this random bad
Speaker 1: thing that our body's experience. It exists in part because
Speaker 1: it is highly adaptive and there are many situations in
Speaker 1: which an active stress response helps us do what needs
Speaker 1: to be done. Right, So, in other words, you mentioned cortisol, dopamine, adrenaline,
Speaker 1: How do those translate into increased performance increased acuity? Just
Speaker 1: help me build that bridge. So essentially, your body is
Speaker 1: being taxed and your heart rate is increasing because again
Speaker 1: you're getting ready. That cortisol is giving you the energy
Speaker 1: that you need to be attentive, to be focused to
Speaker 1: approach the situation, and when you have increased cortisol, you
Speaker 1: are attentive to threats often in a good way. You're
Speaker 1: like waiting for what's happening. You're able to remember things
Speaker 1: in a different way, and so we need to remember
Speaker 1: when our bodies are acting. It's telling us you've got this, now,
Speaker 1: let's use this. But one of the problems is when
Speaker 1: we can be overactivated and too attentive to threat and
Speaker 1: those levels of the dopamine. The court is all the adrenaline,
Speaker 1: all that are staying elevated kind of chronically, and that
Speaker 1: is what leads to disease and all of these problems
Speaker 1: that we want to avoid physiologically. So that's kind of
Speaker 1: the stress cycle. Okay, so now you've given us the
Speaker 1: lay of the land on the basics of stress. Yes,
Speaker 1: one fascinating thing your research focuses on is that how
Speaker 1: we think about our own stress, our mindset, and our
Speaker 1: attitude towards stress can actually change its impact on us. Yes,
Speaker 1: can you first walk us through the two types of
Speaker 1: mindsets that we can have towards stress. So the two
Speaker 1: types of mindsets are a mindset that stress is enhancing.
Speaker 1: It can help us in terms of our perform ours,
Speaker 1: our growth, our learning. The second piece is that stress
Speaker 1: is debilitating. It harms us in terms of our health
Speaker 1: and vitality and our performance and our growth and our learning.
Speaker 1: And it's often your mindset about stress that can influence
Speaker 1: the extent to which it can have harmful or helpful effects.
Speaker 1: So when we have more of a stress is enhancing
Speaker 1: mindset that leads to better outcomes. I love this research.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if you can give me a couple of
Speaker 1: examples of how introducing this mindset shift was actually able
Speaker 1: to help performance in different contexts. So in one study,
Speaker 1: we had people just watch a video showing the many
Speaker 1: ways in which stress can be enhancing. You can imagine
Speaker 1: things like that stressful moment in a soccer game and
Speaker 1: somebody makes the goal. We can each think of times
Speaker 1: when we have risen to the occasion. When we show
Speaker 1: people these videos and then have them engage in a
Speaker 1: creative task, we find the they're more creative. We find
Speaker 1: that they are more attentive to positive things in the
Speaker 1: environment versus negative things in the environment. On the flip side,
Speaker 1: tell people or show them videos of when stress can
Speaker 1: be debilitating and see the opposite, they're less creative and
Speaker 1: also generally more negative mood, more attentive to threats. So
Speaker 1: that's some of the research we've done. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: know that you work at a business school and you
Speaker 1: often think about psychology as it applies to organizational behavior,
Speaker 1: and you did some similar research when it comes to negotiators. Yes,
Speaker 1: so often people are very stressed in the context of negotiation.
Speaker 1: So in this research, we basically just told people that,
Speaker 1: you know, a little bit of stress before negotiations is
Speaker 1: actually okay. So we had half the people we told that,
Speaker 1: the other half we didn't tell anything prior to negotiation,
Speaker 1: and we found that for women who experienced cortisol increases
Speaker 1: in the negotiations, So physiologically they were stressed. However, they
Speaker 1: were told a little bit of stress is okay in
Speaker 1: the negotiation, they outperform those who were told nothing about
Speaker 1: stress being helpful for negotiations. So there's something about knowing
Speaker 1: that this is actually an okay thing, that when your
Speaker 1: body is having this response, that can lead to beneficial outcomes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And one of the most fascinating insights is that our
Speaker 1: underlying physiology can change when we adopt a stress as
Speaker 1: enhancing mindset. So it's not just that I think more
Speaker 1: positive thoughts, it actually can affect our physiological response to
Speaker 1: stress at this underlying level. I think that that's absolutely
Speaker 1: right that when you have an enhancing mindset, it can
Speaker 1: affect your body's response to stress. There has been research
Speaker 1: showing that the walls of your blood vessels, rather than constricting,
Speaker 1: they're more likely to dilate with a stress's enhancing mindset.
Speaker 1: And the importance of the mind body cannet is something
Speaker 1: I think we often forget. And you know, our dominant
Speaker 1: model and narrative is that we should deny, reduce, and
Speaker 1: avoid stress, and that is not always the case. Every
Speaker 1: single person I know can tell of the time where
Speaker 1: their stress helps them. So instead, and this research we
Speaker 1: talk a lot about how can you acknowledge your stress,
Speaker 1: welcome your stress, and use it in a way that
Speaker 1: will be beneficial because it is designed to help you.
Speaker 1: Now it's important to say, I'm not saying run towards stress,
Speaker 1: like you shouldn't like find more stressors. No, that's not
Speaker 1: what we're saying. We're saying it's not always a bad thing.
Speaker 1: It's actually designed to help you. Yeah, you talk about
Speaker 1: dating your stress. Yes, you know, slight change listeners were
Speaker 1: simply asking for a first date. Okay, you can decide
Speaker 1: if you want to do a second or a third,
Speaker 1: but just go on that first date. That's right. Get
Speaker 1: to know your stress a little better and be kind
Speaker 1: to it. Open the door for it, you know, let
Speaker 1: it in, welcome it, see how it feels. That's what
Speaker 1: we need to do a lot more of. After the break,
Speaker 1: we hear more from a Dube about the benefits of
Speaker 1: this mindset shift, and we talk about its limits. She
Speaker 1: shares her go to strategies for managing stress. When a
Speaker 1: simple reframe isn't enough, We'll be back in a moment
Speaker 1: with a slight change of plans. Are there situations where
Speaker 1: applying a stress as enhancing mindset doesn't make sense? Because
Speaker 1: I can see a situation where if we apply this
Speaker 1: mindset too liberally, we might end up tolerating certain stressful
Speaker 1: situations that we really should try and avoid. So, for example,
Speaker 1: a highly toxic relationship at work or in your personal life,
Speaker 1: that's a situation where you're kind of you really think, Okay,
Speaker 1: we need to change the situation. I need to get
Speaker 1: out of this situation, versus using a mindset shift in
Speaker 1: order to better adapt to it. So do you have
Speaker 1: thoughts on that? Yeah, I do think that our minds
Speaker 1: are so complicated and we will trick ourselves into believing
Speaker 1: a stressful situation is a good one when it's not.
Speaker 1: So that's when the idea. Remember I talked about demands resources.
Speaker 1: One resource is external support, your friends helping you and
Speaker 1: seeing when something is harmful versus helpful for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's helpful to clarify that this is a
Speaker 1: mindset that's almost best to adopt when you're in situations
Speaker 1: where you can't avoid the stress. You can't control whether
Speaker 1: that situation exists or not, right, and so adopting a
Speaker 1: more positive mindset might be one of the few resources
Speaker 1: at hand. That's absolutely right. And the challenge with the
Speaker 1: dominant narrative about reducing or avoiding stress is that there
Speaker 1: are times where we cannot do that. You can't, it's
Speaker 1: not possible. So that's why it's important to understand how
Speaker 1: the stress it's you're experiencing or how your body's response
Speaker 1: can be helpful. Absolutely. I mean, so many people listening
Speaker 1: right now are thinking I don't have any control right
Speaker 1: now over the stressful situation. So the dupe thank you
Speaker 1: for giving us some other techniques. Yeah, Okay, let's say
Speaker 1: we've consulted with our resources, so our friends and our
Speaker 1: family and the people that we trust in our lives,
Speaker 1: and we've consulted with ourselves of course, and we've identified
Speaker 1: a situation in which having a stress as enhancing mindset
Speaker 1: is going to serve us well, how do we learn
Speaker 1: to cultivate this mindset? So a piece of this goes
Speaker 1: back to that, how do I think of my stress differently?
Speaker 1: When my heart is beating, I'm normally thinking to myself,
Speaker 1: this is bad. But if you can remind yourself that
Speaker 1: my heartbeating is telling me, like I'm excited about something,
Speaker 1: there's something here that I care about. This is something
Speaker 1: that I want to do well, and this is something
Speaker 1: that I can do well. And then that reframes that
Speaker 1: heartbeat not as a bad thing, but as your body
Speaker 1: preparing to act. There have been so many times in
Speaker 1: my life, whether when I was a child playing the violin,
Speaker 1: or whether it's going into an interviews for a slight
Speaker 1: change of plans, I get a little spooked if I'm
Speaker 1: not nervous, because that means maybe I don't care as
Speaker 1: much as I used to. And so I've actually I
Speaker 1: see stress as being a very affirming signal because it
Speaker 1: shows me that I really care about the outcome, and
Speaker 1: it justifies the unpleasantness of some of those feelings. And
Speaker 1: that's a beautiful way of approaching it. That we are
Speaker 1: typically stressed because there's an underlying reason why we care
Speaker 1: about the situation. And if we can continue to ask
Speaker 1: ourselves why why, then that puts a whole different lens
Speaker 1: around why you're stressed and changes your approach. Can you
Speaker 1: give me an example in the dubae from your own
Speaker 1: life in which you started asking yourself the series of
Speaker 1: why questions and it led you to a place where
Speaker 1: you're better able to embrace your stress or at least
Speaker 1: realize okay, good, at least it's serving some purpose. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm a professor, so each semester I teach one hundred
Speaker 1: and forty plus students and the day before class would
Speaker 1: always feel very stressed. And here's the thing, it's not
Speaker 1: that I would also be stressed. I'd also be a jerk,
Speaker 1: you know, I'd be obnoxious to my loved ones, like
Speaker 1: just not a person that anyone wanted to be around.
Speaker 1: And in fact, I'd be happier when my significant outhers
Speaker 1: were traveling or whatever, because it's like I just wanted
Speaker 1: to be focused, and I had to ask say to myself,
Speaker 1: first of all, that's not sustainable over time. I'm a
Speaker 1: good teacher. Students like me, I've done this for years.
Speaker 1: So I had to say, Okay, well why do you
Speaker 1: have this reaction? Why are you stressed? And often it
Speaker 1: was like, I'm stressed because I don't want to do
Speaker 1: badly in the classroom. Why because I feel like what
Speaker 1: I have to share with students is really important. Why
Speaker 1: because I'm training future business leaders to be the most
Speaker 1: phenomenal leaders possible. Why Well, if I do that, well,
Speaker 1: then our organizations will be healthier and people will be
Speaker 1: happier in their workplaces. Well why does that matter? Because
Speaker 1: if people are happier and healthier in their workplaces, then
Speaker 1: we're going to be able to address some of the
Speaker 1: critical challenges in this world, the questions that need to
Speaker 1: be addressed, solve lots of the problems that need to
Speaker 1: be solved. And so when you get to that, then
Speaker 1: it's like, well, ay, it tells you that's a good
Speaker 1: reason to be stressed, but be it also says, you know,
Speaker 1: all right, we'll go get it go do it, And
Speaker 1: that's a piece of just kind of like acknowledging that
Speaker 1: type of stress and welcoming it, because then you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm pumped up. What am I doing? I'm changing the world.
Speaker 1: I'm feeling right now just hearing you just that process,
Speaker 1: just that process makes a big difference. I really love that, Medupe,
Speaker 1: because as you were sharing this, I related to that
Speaker 1: early stress and I was thinking to myself that, damn
Speaker 1: well deserves stress. That situation definitely desert stress because Medupe
Speaker 1: is changing the world, and so it certainly seems like
Speaker 1: that lecture carries significance and importance because look at all
Speaker 1: these extremely positive downstream consequences, right And the more I
Speaker 1: do that, then it tells me, like, I don't have
Speaker 1: to be a jerk. Yeah, share more about that, because
Speaker 1: obviously stress does not just have internal consequences. It can
Speaker 1: have a lot of external consequences on our loved ones
Speaker 1: and the people we care about. So I'd love to
Speaker 1: dig into that a bit more. I'm sure that's something
Speaker 1: a lot of people can resonate with. Yes, one of
Speaker 1: the first things I tell people to do is to
Speaker 1: acknowledge your typical reactions to stress. What are their emotions,
Speaker 1: what are their behaviors, and what's their physiology? And the
Speaker 1: behaviors one is really important because a it serves as
Speaker 1: a signal when you are going for the potato chips,
Speaker 1: the wine and yelling at your partner, that probably means
Speaker 1: you're stressed. So now do an inventory about what you
Speaker 1: need to do about it. And the reason why it's
Speaker 1: really important for me to always kind of go back
Speaker 1: and ask myself why something matters? Is it Ultimately none
Speaker 1: of us wants to do those destructive behaviors to ourselves
Speaker 1: and to others. And so when you keep asking yourself
Speaker 1: why and you understand the bigger picture, one of the
Speaker 1: things it does, it's like I need that source of
Speaker 1: support to hel we change the world. So I think
Speaker 1: it increases your ability to relate to others in a
Speaker 1: way that can maybe help you in what you're trying
Speaker 1: to achieve, versus them being a distraction that's preventing you
Speaker 1: from doing what you need to achieve effectively. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is so interesting because you know you initially defined stress
Speaker 1: as the demands of the situation exceed your resources to cope.
Speaker 1: And I think what I'm hearing from you is we
Speaker 1: often have more resources than we think, we're just really
Speaker 1: hesitant to ask for them, to admit that we actually
Speaker 1: need that kind of support in those resources. And so
Speaker 1: when we think through this lens, which is my stress
Speaker 1: has a purpose because I really care about these end outcomes,
Speaker 1: it can lead us to feel less sheepish about asking
Speaker 1: a friend for help, asking a loved one if they're
Speaker 1: willing to give us a hand. It's hard for all
Speaker 1: of us to ask people for help. It's one of
Speaker 1: the hardest things. And what's interesting is when we don't
Speaker 1: ask somebody for help, it's often because there is something
Speaker 1: that we're uncertain about, or feel threatened about or worried about.
Speaker 1: One of the ways I interpret what you're saying, is
Speaker 1: it when you kind of reframe your stress, the people
Speaker 1: that seem like demands actually become resources. Yes, you can
Speaker 1: view them more as resources versus as demands. You go
Speaker 1: from thinking of it as the person who's taking away
Speaker 1: from my ability to prepare for class to the person
Speaker 1: who is helping me and can help me in what
Speaker 1: I need to do to make this difference in the
Speaker 1: lives of others. Oh, that's so nice. You know you've
Speaker 1: taught us how changing our attitudes towards stress can lead
Speaker 1: to better outcomes, and also how it is that we
Speaker 1: can cultivate this kind of mindset. But of course, there
Speaker 1: are lots of situations where we overshoot and a shift
Speaker 1: in mindset might not be enough to tamp down that response.
Speaker 1: So what other techniques would you recommend to help us
Speaker 1: to just lower our stress response overall in these kinds
Speaker 1: of situations. What are the types of things that you
Speaker 1: do do pay to manage your stress? So I am
Speaker 1: I'm a big meditator, darn. I was hoping you wouldn't
Speaker 1: say meditation. I know, I know, and I couldn't at
Speaker 1: one point too, you know. And I remember, like when
Speaker 1: I was first trying to meditate, I just fall asleep
Speaker 1: each time, like give me five minutes. I am out immediately.
Speaker 1: But I realized that I really need to slow my
Speaker 1: mind down. You know, there's so much firing that for
Speaker 1: me when I sit and I'm just present first thing
Speaker 1: in the morning, that allows me to just have a
Speaker 1: different response to the many things that will come my
Speaker 1: way during the day. And I say that, and I
Speaker 1: don't like sounding woo woo like I don't like sounding
Speaker 1: like that person meditation is science based, so there's nothing
Speaker 1: woo about it. I have learned in my life that
Speaker 1: it's something that I need because it slows me down
Speaker 1: and it's been so helpful. Taking out some time to
Speaker 1: just kind of be present with yourself helps you to
Speaker 1: think clearly and act deliberately instead of being reactive. So
Speaker 1: one of the types of meditations I engage in focuses
Speaker 1: on body scanning. So you start with your head and
Speaker 1: you scan and you just notice each of your bodily sensations.
Speaker 1: Because the idea behind this is that any reaction we
Speaker 1: typically have is preceded by a physical sensation, and so
Speaker 1: if we can detect and be good at understanding or
Speaker 1: feeling our sensations, then that's preempting are reacting immediately. And
Speaker 1: so I body scan regularly and I find it to
Speaker 1: be incredibly helpful. The other thing, honestly, it's just taking
Speaker 1: a moment to breathe. That minute that I find myself
Speaker 1: like I'm overwhelmed and I have this and that to
Speaker 1: do when the this isn't working whatever, stop breathe, breathe,
Speaker 1: just breathe, and it just slows things down in a
Speaker 1: unique way that then lets you say Okay, how am
Speaker 1: I feeling right now? Let me take an inventory. That's
Speaker 1: what I often do. I need to pause and take
Speaker 1: an inventory instead of just trying to push through. Stop
Speaker 1: and pause. As you look into the future of stress research,
Speaker 1: what excites you most? So? What nut are you? Are
Speaker 1: you most hoping that researcher's crack. I really want people
Speaker 1: to be better at understanding when they're stressed, because you
Speaker 1: are the only person that's with you twenty four seven.
Speaker 1: And so what I'm most excited about are some of
Speaker 1: the technologies that will allow people to notice when they're stressed.
Speaker 1: Is there a buzzing thing on your finger that tells
Speaker 1: you that your blood pressure is super high right now?
Speaker 1: Pay attention. Is there some type of device that is
Speaker 1: telling you, here's what your cardiovascular reactivity is looking like.
Speaker 1: Right now, there's a spike right here. Breathe a little bit.
Speaker 1: And so, as technology develops and can even kind of
Speaker 1: help us in noticing some of these things and can
Speaker 1: just kind of like I think it is like that
Speaker 1: blinking light that says, hey, pay attention, then I think
Speaker 1: that will help us in being able to give ourselves
Speaker 1: what we need, and that ultimately means it will be
Speaker 1: healthier and happier. So that's interesting because I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm sort of excited about technology, and I want to
Speaker 1: get your thoughts on this, because on the one hand,
Speaker 1: I think that kind of self awareness and understanding is
Speaker 1: so critical. On the other hand, we're trying to measure
Speaker 1: so much, and all these measurements are also just proxies
Speaker 1: of stress. Right. Too much vigilance around our physiological states
Speaker 1: and or our mental states can breed almost a new
Speaker 1: kind of anxiety, like a meta layer of anxiety. Do
Speaker 1: you feel in any way that there's limits to how
Speaker 1: much we should be in tune with our body and minds,
Speaker 1: because at a certain point it can be so excessive,
Speaker 1: right where you just forget, like, you know what, I
Speaker 1: just need to kind of exist too, And I don't
Speaker 1: need my little phone or my watch or my ring
Speaker 1: buzzing at me telling me that I'm stressed in any
Speaker 1: given moment because I'm just you know, I'm hanging out
Speaker 1: with my friends and I don't know, maybe I don't
Speaker 1: want the biofeedback. Yes. The thing about stress research, and
Speaker 1: I guess much research, is that you have to know
Speaker 1: yourself and know what works for you and what doesn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're the type of person where the constant monitoring
Speaker 1: will be more stressful, then you shouldn't constantly monitor. But
Speaker 1: if you're the type of person where the monitoring makes
Speaker 1: you say, ooh, I only got two hours of sleep
Speaker 1: last night, but I need to get more and I
Speaker 1: know them and that helps you and helps change your behavior,
Speaker 1: then do it. So for me, I am one of
Speaker 1: those people like I'm hard enough on myself, so I
Speaker 1: don't need a buzzing thing. I need to be more gentle.
Speaker 1: But how I use this technology is to say, like,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of feeling tired. How much rest did I get? Oh? Wow,
Speaker 1: I've been in the danger zone for five days. Let
Speaker 1: me do something that will remind me to get in
Speaker 1: bed earlier. So if you can use it lovingly and
Speaker 1: gently in a way that will help you behave in
Speaker 1: a healthy way for you, that's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: I also wouldn't want us to overuse our technology and
Speaker 1: rely on it to tell us the things that we
Speaker 1: need to rely on our minds and bodies to tell us.
Speaker 1: I just think of it as another metric to use
Speaker 1: to paint a holistic picture of what's going on with you,
Speaker 1: and because it's so hard to be in tune with
Speaker 1: what our bodies you're doing, because we've ignored our bodies
Speaker 1: for so long, these technologies give us greater insight that
Speaker 1: we wouldn't ordinarily have. Yeah, I love that. I think
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. So even doing this work for a while,
Speaker 1: And I wonder, in your years of doing stress research,
Speaker 1: whether there's any example that's particularly salient for you where
Speaker 1: someone reached out to you and said, madupay, you changed
Speaker 1: the game for me, like you really really helped me
Speaker 1: manage the stressful situation or change my mindset. Are there
Speaker 1: any personal testimonials that you can share with us so
Speaker 1: we can see the impact of your research in the wild.
Speaker 1: You know, the biggest example I have is a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, I was talking to a friend and
Speaker 1: she was super super stressed and I literally just asked her,
Speaker 1: what do you need? And she said, I need somebody
Speaker 1: to accompany me to walk through of her home because
Speaker 1: she was closing on it the next day. And you
Speaker 1: know that's stressful, Like you're worried, like am I getting
Speaker 1: ripped off? Is the microwave? Going to work? Is that?
Speaker 1: And just having somebody else with you to help out
Speaker 1: with that is huge, and sometimes you'd think you have
Speaker 1: to do it by yourself and then no one's going
Speaker 1: to have time for you, yea. Or everyone has busy schedules,
Speaker 1: which they do, but can you at least ask first
Speaker 1: and let someone say no. But more often than not,
Speaker 1: people will make it work because if you've cultivated those relationships,
Speaker 1: they'll move things around their schedule to be there for you.
Speaker 1: And that sticks with me because it's something that I
Speaker 1: also need to remind myself to do. Ask myself, what
Speaker 1: do I need right now? What do I need? It's simple.
Speaker 1: So many of the answers to our stress are within us,
Speaker 1: and we just need to ask. We just need to ask. Hey,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for listening. Next week's episode, we hear
Speaker 1: from comedian Hussan Minhaj. In our conversation, Huson gets candid
Speaker 1: about the downsides of his sudden rise in popularity and
Speaker 1: how it's fed an unhealthy obsession with being liked. He
Speaker 1: tells me he's now reconsidering his future in comedy. Being
Speaker 1: an artist is who I am. I do have this
Speaker 1: need to express myself, but I have to find new
Speaker 1: mediums as my life continues. That are less and less
Speaker 1: and less attached to whether people like me or not.
Speaker 1: A Slight Change of Plans is created, written an executive
Speaker 1: produced by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Change Family includes
Speaker 1: our showrunner Tyler Green, our senior editor Kate Parkinson Morgan,
Speaker 1: our sound engineer Andrew Vestola, and our associate producer Sarah McCrae.
Speaker 1: Louise Scara wrote our delightful theme song, and Ginger Smith
Speaker 1: helped arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of Plans is
Speaker 1: a production of Pushkin Industries, so big thanks to everyone there,
Speaker 1: and of course a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee.
Speaker 1: You can follow A Slight Change of Plans on Instagram
Speaker 1: at doctor Maya Shucker. Everything in moderation, That's what this
Speaker 1: is about, except for Girl Scout cookies, but exactment. There's
Speaker 1: no moderation there. Yes,