How to Never be Stressed with the Stress Expert Alice Law

[Music] hello and welcome back to dream girl I'm Sheen your host and today we're joined by the wonderful Alice law Alice is a lot of things um I'll try to do Fair Justice to her introduction um she is a podcaster herself she's also a stress and wellness expert she is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller unstress and she's just generally here to solve all of our stress problems hi Alice hi big Big Jing how are you I'm good thank you thank you so much for having me of course super excited to have you here

so what are the stress levels today stress levels are good actually today they're good we um thought we were going to be late but the traffic suddenly was on my side so you know I was like oh wow you had a good experience with the traffic exactly oh seem I understand why she's not stressed now so tell us give us a little Introduction about yourself your career trajectory till now yeah so I mean I really didn't think I was going to do this at all I originally thought I wanted to be in fashion I went

to do a fashion degree at University and was doing every like fashion internship Under the Sun every summer before then um and then went to go and work for Neta Porte after University in The Styling placement then and it was then I decided I was like actually after the styling Graduate program I was like I want to start my own fashion line so I went to get a job on the side I was like I stumbled upon being a PA for um a Russian aar's family office which was again quite a high stress environment because

I was PA for two MDS and you know it was like that constant kind of keep going keep going um they were wonderful and we were a small team I was very lucky because at that time um from having had a very lucky upbringing in Terms of stress I was you know lucky that my parents were together and my dad had built himself a successful business and I hadn't struggled with you know anything like bullying or stuff at school like so many people do and I just had those usual teenage ANS and Growing Pains of

exams and you know your crush and various things going wrong we all deal with um my dad was well my dad had cancer when I was three but he recovered and my parents hid it so well at that Point me and my sister just thought that he had flu and was recovering in the spare bedroom after he came back you know I mean it was just like I was very you know in a very nice bubble almost no big bumps exactly and then it was what I'd like to call the universe was like well you

need to understand the other side and you can understand how extremely calm you can feel and then how extremely stressed and so it kind of sent me to what I call stress school so I experienced loss in every aspect of my life um continually one after the other which originally started when my dad after the 2008 credit crisis like so many people struggled with having to put his business businesses into Administration from Financial struggle over you know period of a few years forced to sell our home and at that time that was like the first

time I'd really seen my dad like really really stressed and his demeanor started To change he was laughing less and sort of drinking a bit more and it was just a bit of a different yeah different angle to him cuz he was always so charismatic with all the answers and calm and yeah wonderful and during that time my eldest half sister Suzanne got diagnosed with colon cancer out of the blue and that was a big shock cuz my dad like I said he was um he was diagnosed when I was three with cancer recovered but

he had actually lost his twin sister to cancer At the exact same age that my sister now was with the exact same age children and the exact same like gender children so boy and girl and so for him I remember him walking into the kitchen just being like I can't believe this is happening again you know what is happening and so Suzanne had a fouryear struggle with it and um you know that was as anyone knows whose family member has cancer was just horrible thing to deal with and watch and we devastatingly lost her four

years Later and um it was during that time that my dad so he his business had gone under he was had a lawsuit against him that was from people we actually knew for a loss on investment that was wrongfully accusing him of something but he only managed to prove that in his final days so it was this ongoing thing and it was draining his finances a lot of stress um you know there was Financial struggle there was that mental struggle he was now making himself more Ill you could see and after actually my sister's funeral

he got rushed to hospital 4 days later um from a blood clot cuz he'd just been depressed and not not moving and they scanned his body found you know resolved the clot all was well but they found that he now had cancer again and at this point because he was just so devastated from losing his daughter he' lost his business he just felt he was at that generation as well men provide and he felt that was His identity um he'd really just given up and I was so stressed at this point she I was just

I can't even imagine I was I can feel my heart really Rising I was you know I go to work like I say and I was my job was to remember stuff for other people I could barely remember my name CU I was so stressed I'd forget things all the time and I had a relationship at the time that had just ended after my sister died from him cheating on me when he moved abroad and I was just I realized at this point I then got made redundant when my bosses had to leave the UK

market and they were like do you want to move abroad and I was like No And you know you're just like everything just felt like it was just continually one thing after the other and it was over this period of time I realized I was like well nothing that's happening can be changed by me it's all very externally out of my control so I was like what can I do you Know so I started to at the time self-study and start to understand stress and study meditation and mindfulness and you know raiki and how it

works in the mind how it works in the body all these different things and I was like oh wow this stuff really works and it was um bringing me back to myself again and it was then four years after my sister died that my Wonder ful dad was rushed to hospital um and we lost him devastatingly 3 weeks later to a Burst stomach ulcer that had burst and caused internal complications and so for me I was already doing what I was doing just before then you know for a couple of years um but that really

really sealed the kind of mission that I had really I really wanted to help people to understand not just the effect stress has on the individual but on the family and how we all have that responsibility and also have that ability to change things for ourselves in the way we Respond to life and so it's now my mission to try and help as many well mine and mo we my co-author on unstress wonderful Mo we have a joint mission to take a million people a year out of stress because sounds big but we think it's

doable you know and it's so important to us well first of all I'm very sorry for your loss losses and it's wonderful to see how you've turned this into a mission and I truly respect that and I think you're doing great great Work and I think a million is is very doable because the number of people around the world who are stressed out it's crazy I know and the fact but for me what I want to understand right because there's so much strength of character that I see here right because the way you so I'll

tell you why I think that because for me when I whenever something goes wrong but I I have this weird habit of like going in my head and I have this mental checklist and I'm Like okay but this this this this is okay right now so it's just this one problem I can handle it because the rest is fine but when you go through the checklist and nothing is going right like how where do you get the comfort from it you don't know what where to turn to and the fact that you were able to

turn that into self- introspection and trying to find out what the problem is what do you think helps you become that kind of like strong person you're Very kind I think it's interesting you say that because I had a teacher actually in America who works with this stuff and she said that you always heal one parts one part first and with unstress for example we work with you know mental emotional physical and spiritual stress and I definitely know that the spiritual healing was the way in for me to find the strength just for the order

that I needed to do it my body was the last part I ended up healing Strangely enough and sometimes it's completely the other way around for other people and different different layers different times it's right for that person that soul I think I found yeah I found you know originally I was listening to my first Inn was listening to the authors at Hay House at the time on podcasts and just as as at that time this is when I was first started reading about all this when I was 203 34 now and at that time

social media Was not flooded with the stuff you what I mean people like me were not annoying you onl or vice versa it was really you know my friends weren't talking about it it was very isolating like you say it's like so I think I found that strength originally through a sense of spirituality and trying to make sense of this this to make myself not feel like a victim that life had done this to me and rather that the more I learned from these incredible spiritual teachers Whether it it's like Dr Wayne Dy and reading

and all these different people I started to put together my own sense of understanding that this was happening for me for a greater reason and even if I couldn't yet see that you know I did have at that point hopes later I'm going to write a book one day I never knew when that would be and that I'd be sat here talking to you about my book now but you know me it's it's a very it was definitely I think that sense of going Inward spiritually first that gave me the strength to then tackle the

mental side and tackle the emotional side that was my personal experience because like I said everyone's different and some people have been in such a traumatic state of stress growing up that they have to heal the nervous system in the body first to even be able to access that side so it's really um it's really dependent on what what's the first part for you that's going to give you that in But for me it was spirituality that makes sense and you know I like you said about life happening um for you because I remember one

time I was on a walk with a friend of mine and I kept complaining at that time I just had a car accident and I hated my job and I kept saying oh all of these things are happening to me I don't get it I'm such a good person and he stopped me and he said why do you think life is happening to you rather than for you who do you think is out There trying to get you like who's the enemy and I was like that's true what why is the victim mentality right you

immediate become a victim but who's you're a victim to who like this is true isn't it and it's like when you think about it when you think about before those challenges everything you can never see it usually when you're right in it or definitely not before if you think about something terrible happening in the future but when you look back and You think about the version of you before that challenge if you've actually moved through it and you've done some healing and some introspection some awareness and you've grown you can't really recognize the person you

were before in a great way you think God I wouldn't trade myself for that version anymore that and I could never have become this version without this extreme Challenge so I think it's it's definitely like you say like changing That to not be the victim but rather using it as much as you can and look now you on this Mission and how many people's lives you're going to touch you're already touching so that's amazing but you know what I find extremely funny is all of our stress response right and I know you talk about this

a lot how stress also affects our physical health and all I was stress responses for example getting anxiety and stuff in the past all of these used To be triggered when we were running away from danger or like you know about to be killed but now you get an email on your phone and the same stress response the fight fight fly comes in but and you touched on this as well the start is all external factors we we live in a world where we are constantly connected to everyone else and also but loneliness has never

been as high in the world depression has never been as high so how do you protect yourself maybe this is Something from the book as well how do you start to build these skills in order to be a little bit less swayed by the external circumstances yeah I mean like you say it is we are first of all it's really important you said that because I think something for everyone to realize is that while you might not have something in adversive commas in your mind that stressful going on in your life right now your nervous

system doesn't care because of the world you've Put it in we've all decided if you're listening to this most likely to live in the modern world to live in a fast-paced environment or to you know be a working professional whatever it is and so you're going to be subjected to a lot of micro stress which will come on to that's actually flooding your system in a way that it's never had to deal with before and so that as the base level on top of life's challenges that you can't control makes for a very very Interesting

concoction of stress which is where we really struggling because no one's well I know I definitely wasn't brought up being like but this is how you calm your nervous system this how you regulate an emotion this is how you deal with your thoughts we just weren't taught how to do that so we've kind of been thrown into this modern world having no idea how to deal with any of our systems and then expecting expecting the best just power through just power Through and that's the thing so I mean for our you know my starting point

is always awareness right we can never change what we're not aware of and so in the book unstressful we looked at putting together this model that can actually show you where your stress is coming from not just from the outside from the inside as well so it's called a ton of stress so it's t NN and that's you know macro external which we call trauma in the book trauma is a big topic But for the sake of this model it's the macro external stresses in your life that you can't control so these big events that

change your life that you expect to cause you stress and they do at the time but most people bounce back and have Pro post-traumatic growth you know like we were talking about earlier and it's an intense at the time and then it'll go away but that's macro EXT we can't do anything about limiting that macro internal is obsessions and Obsessions are that one story that you will tell yourself over and over again that causes you a lot of internal stress so it can be triggered from an outside event or it can just be completely made

up from something we've decided subconsciously within ourselves so for example you have a really bad breakup and then you convince yourself forever that you're never going to meet anyone that you're always going to be alone that you're not worthy and that's the Continual narrative that you tell yourself and that internal conversation can set your stress response off so obsessions of the macro external then you have M micro internal so that is what we call noise and that is just because our brains are hardwired to look for threats to keep us safe every human being being

naturally has around 80% negativity bias in our brains and so it's just looking to keep us safe of the threats so those little negative Comments that we internally tell ourselves you know me looking in the mirror in the morning and saying oh Alice your hair's frizzy today like one of those comments isn't going to kill you but most of us don't make one common in the day we allow them to be littered through and so that's the micro internal and then the micro external which is going back to that point that we were talking about

this modern world that we've created for ourselves is what we Call nuisances and nuisances are everywhere it's the best word ever they really are nuces the thing you know and nuisances are you wake up to an aggressive factory setting alarm that jolts you out of bed I kid you not I had a new phone the other week and I'd swapped it over but for some reason my alarm cuz I woke up to a very soothing like alarm meditation song did you have the emergency the emergency and I had this flood of cortisol and I was

like This is the reason I haven't done this for years why do people wake up like this you know you're just automatically putting your system on as soon as you woken up someone will turn over look at their phone go immediately into their phone start swiping bar of notifications exactly notifications WhatsApp notifications the aggressive you know upsetting news headlines multiple different ones going to social media you'll be upset either by a comment that Someone's made on a public post or your post or you'll be upset that you saw a friend doing something that you wish

you could you know comparing yourself to an influence or whatever it is then you um go and look at your emails you haven't replied to something you realize you're going to be late to that you know you've already sort of flooded your system with micro stress before you've even gotten out of bed then you'll go to the kitchen and you might have you know realized That you don't have any coffee pods that dayk g milk gone off you know if you're a mother or you know your child's sock is missing for school and you're late

and it's you then get stuck in traffic on the way to your meeting the average person we looked at will have had about 15 to 18 micro stress doses before they've even left the house and so when you think of it that way if that's building up in your system and that's your starting point for the day because You've gone straight into your phone you've gone straight into reaction rather than response you're not giving yourself a good chance for the rest of the day that's going to stress you out from the modern world when you're

coworker comes up to you and tells you something upsetting and then you've already got this level or you know your partner says that they can't pick the kids up that evening and you now have to work it all out and all these little Things add up add up add up and then when the big thing happens you can immediately break but equally when another small thing happens it's like the straw that broke the camel's back you know it's like oh and that's the final St and so when you look at where your stress is actually

coming from from those trauma obsessions noise and nuisances and get obviously really honest about the internal as well you know how much are you talking to Yourself negatively what story are you telling yourself at the moment that's really actually giving you a lot of stress and is it even true when we can work out where that stress is coming from then we can actually limit the needless stress that we can control so limiting for example the amount you're watching the news because let's be hon honest if something is incredibly important in the news someone around

you will tell you look at it so you don't Need to watch the news seven times a day because our brain can't tell the difference between you being there and you watching it you know emotionally the reaction the stress response will go off it's the same and so limiting things like that changing your aggressive factory setting alarm you know giving yourself actual space and boundaries with your WhatsApp notifications with your social media with your email times and just creating a little bit of a System in that digital influx and VAR little micro stresses in your

life once you've limited what you can with those then you can actually move on to deal with learning the skills to manage you know your mind your emotions your body and your soul and that obviously we handled you know how to process stress that we can't control and actually you know regulate our nervous system wow okay so much there's so much to digest here I was Just thinking while you're talking to me and I was like there's so much you know the thing about waking up in the morning and not looking at your phone immediately

I know this but I still do it I'm I will just scroll through I won't I won't open anything I'm already stressed I woke up to this stress because I looked at it and I was like oh no oh she didn't do this oh no and I was like okay so much to tackle and I was like oh I'm just Going to sleep for five more minutes and then I'll wake up but the stress is already there now it's already there and it's like out of sight out of mind right so if you have it

on your bedside table because of the addiction we have to our phones and that dopamine hit we get the average person now studies show tap and swipe their phone over two and a half thousand times a day which is which is crazy but that so that's the sort of addiction we've Created for ourselves so I always say to people if you're are struggling to have that boundary to say no because it's just so easy when it's there we just think oh just pick it up and check it no matter what then it's you know put

your phone in a what I call like a graveyard for the evening put it in a drawer for two hours in a different room out of sight out of mind or when you're going to bed put your phone on airplane mode and either charge it out of the room on The other side of the room and get like a you know nice physical alarm like one of those light ones that get light that soothing whatever it is but just to try and make yourself not go on your phone first thing the morning to create that

space no I agree I think that that's a very good point because we all start our days badly and as you said I had this um I had this thing where I read this thing about you know uh we The Voice you hear the most in your whole lifetime is that Voice in your head and and then I I got really sucked into this and apparently you know some people don't even hear it as a voice some people see it as pictures I I have a friend like that and it blew my mind yet I

was like wait wait am I hearing it or is it picture I don't know I don't know anymore but and I was like no but I'm not that harsh to myself I'm pretty every now and then I will say it but then that thing I was reading said it's not just about the mean things It's also about the victim mentality is that voice a victim does it keep telling you oh but this is not going to happen for us this is hard for us you know maybe let's just not do it let's go back to

our comfort that's also bad yeah and then I realized but that that is there in my head I do do I do think that sometimes you know especially when things don't work out it's like oh it's always me like why doesn't it work out for me and I was like yeah that's that's The voice it is she's telling me that and that leads to all the stress that happens so it is the inner dialogue as well and it's and people automatically think it's just oh but I'm not mean to myself in my head but 100%

it's like the same thing if you flip that voice around you know if you had someone who was following you around all day that was telling you how amazing you were and how stuff was going to work out how great and easy everything is you come back at The end of the day feeling pretty good about yourself and your life or at least thinking I could handle this you know I've got this the same way if you have someone following you around all day telling you how useless you are you're terrible and how this is

going to go wrong and you can't do that you'll come back at the end of the day feeling drained feeling stressed feeling tired and that's reality we do have those two voices on either shoulder it's up to us Which one we're going to allow in and that you know having that realization that you're not that internal dialogue and you can control it is one of the most powerful things we can do for you know for our mental stress for example because it has such an effect on us on our system on setting off our stress

response on our self-confidence on our self worth and just our ability to actually think resiliently yeah I can get this done or I can get through this Or I can't okay let me ask you a question then but because you're saying if the good is there as well it will then replace the bad but I've noticed this with myself that I for example I post something and I can get a thousand positive comments and then I get this one person who's just a little bit mean and that's the one thing that I hold on to

and I've seen this experiment that they do with a lot of people is the same thing right we all catch that negative Thing so then how do you counterbalance that that is because that is the natural negativity vir right so it's your brain being like no there's the threat we have to noce the threat we might not survive um because our brain is wired to keep us safe and like you said earlier you know what used to be the tiger is now the email you know your system hasn't called out with the modern world it's

just trying to keep you safe so the same response is still going off so when that Horrible comment comes in the natural human thing to do is to look at that and then just sit with that and go in with that and then think well why have they said that what have I you know and start to actually question the reality of what at the end of the day this mean person who's clearly very very un happy themselves because you know happy people don't hurt other people that's the reality isn't it and so it's looking

at then okay the facts so you have to ask Yourself okay the facts are I've had one comment out of a thousand so I'm not Mo I can't do maths in that sense but the reality is that it's you know not not 1% of that entire interaction you had on statistically so what is it about that one comment that's I always do this reflection it's either like shutting it out and telling yourself okay brain you know choose bring me a useful thought you changing that dialogue with yourself what are the great comments that have Made

you feel good pick five and start to like reread those and why why are those true and then why is the one that isn't kind actually either untrue because most likely it is untrue why is that one untrue or why does it matter to you and starting to go into that reflective awareness because the more we can realize okay if that's upsetting me what is it within me I need to heal so that this doesn't upset me anymore because that person's opinion really is Invalid you know it shouldn't shouldn't have that effect on us but

it does we're human and it can upset us so I always think about I always say with emotions for example a negative emotion is only ever trying to alert you of one or two things it's either trying to alert you to something outside of yourself that you need to take action on and change or something inside of yourself that you need to process and heal that's it and so when we can understand when we're Being triggered by that you know that upsetting comment okay well should I take action and block this person and ignore them

from my account or should I take action and just you know get off social media whatever it is or has this hurt me so much that actually I'm going to use this as a teaching moment for myself to be like why has this comment activated something in me that actually isn't you know anything to do with me and sort of journal on that being like Okay what is this about why do I feel that way why might I feel that way and what can I do about it you know and um it is definitely just

trying to navigate with the mind to say right this is how we move through it rather than getting attached to this one person who's trying to bring us down in this sad day of thst yeah that I I really like what you said about negative emotions being one of two things and I think a lot of times we'd don't want to see the mirror right That it's putting up against you being like why do you feel this way why is it triggering that little piece of you it's probably because as you said there's something that

needs to be dealt with on the inside but you know in today's world where hustle culture is kind of like the main thing everyone needs to be hustling because even for me you know my whole life I I I've done a PhD I was working a corporate job then now I have a business and I keep adding on things and I'm like Why because I've realized that if I'm not busy if I'm not overworked I tend to think that I'm being lazy and that correlation between you know being overworked is what you are going for

in terms of that guaranteed success guaranteed that you're working hard is something I see around me I have a friend um she quit her job to do her business and now she's going back to get a job not because her business is not working because she's Underutilized and I thought M that's the hustle culture because we have become so addicted to that feeling of stress yeah that we think if we don't have that I'm not working so how do you recognize the line and that boundary between you know being about to get burned out almost

and just you know doing your normal amount of job so it's it's I love that you said that because I talked about in the book was saying you know being busy has become like a status symbol today and It's you know if you ask a friend often how are you I'm so good I'm so busy it's such a normal answer for people and it's like why is that the answer instead of actually saying you know I'm great you know work's going well but I've taken some space to myself today and I went for a walk

on the beach I feel good I did some exit you know whatever it is but it's like no I'm just I'm so busy I'm doing this I don't know if I you know it's just constant we are like We're always on the go like you say we've created this culture that somehow glorifies being busy as productivity and success and puts down if someone has space but has actually created something that's doing well that will make them panicked think well this is too good to be true what no I must be doing something wrong because other

people are looking at me with judgment because guess what they're busy and miserable they hate their job are Envying the fact that you've managed to create something that you've realized has a balance in life you know that typical work life balance question that everyone wants to solve and if we can actually learn to work you know smarter not harder in the sense of actually having boundaries within our day no one is more productive when they're stressed and unhappy we're 31% less productive but we have decided that Society thinks that when you're stressed you'll get More

out of your employees and that's not true that's short true short term like when you have a five day deadline and you think okay I need to get this over the line continually chronic stress which leads to burnout like you were talking about is just debilitating us making us less productive making us unhappy making us less you know able to have great relationships both personally and professionally it just is no good for anyone and eventually leads to Disease and illnesses and fatalities like my wonderful dad and we've created like you say this society that glorifies

being stressed and busy over having you know this modern day essentially what could be called the modern day Flex of actually having space and calm and contentment whilst also getting the results we want because somehow it's all got mixed up in our heads but I think to begin to start that we have to start putting in really good Boundaries within ourselves for what we know we need to make your system yourself the best possible version so then it can deal with the challenges that come from work the challenges that come from life but also you

can get so much more done in a short space of time when you are feeling good everyone knows that the more stressed you are or the more emotionally upset you are the more distracted you are because you're either frantically doing things in a different Way and when we're in fear we're not doing anything that's that great you know we're not making good decisions or not being productive or you know you're actually blindsided by if you're suppressing your emotions and feeling negative emotions and not you know moving through them and facing them you're distracted by that

everyone knows that feeling of feeling anxious in a conversation because of something going on in your life and you're with a group Of friends and all you're doing is sitting there thinking about how anxious you are you're not here not in the conversation that's the same with your work that's the same with the things you're doing so if we can begin to think okay if the priority was the starting point is me feeling the best I can and then everything else will fall into place that's the mental shift we have to have and it doesn't

take 5 hours a day this is where people get This wrong it's not like okay well if I need to manage my Str I don't have the time is a lot of people's a lot of people's answer and I'm like if you don't have the time you're the perfect person to need to manage your stress because no one is that busy that's the reality you know we all think we are but everyone can make 10 minutes in their day to do a breathing exercise everyone can make five minutes in their day to actually check in

with themselves and Ask themselves how they feel you know do tiny little interventions throughout the day and yet we tell ourselves I'm so to I'm just so busy I'm so busy yeah um um so yeah I think it comes back to like actually creating the space for these practices and noticing and becoming aware of when you are getting to the starting point of feeling stressed rather than the end point of being burnt out and in hospital and that's when you take action we've really got to get out Of this cure society that we're in it's

like prevent as much as cure you know and if we can build this resilience for managing stress when you're not stressed that's when you see the results to just first of all be the best version of yourself and better your well-being but then when really really hard times are going on in your life and a period of challenge happens you will be able to bounce back 10 times quicker than you did before because you've built this Essentially toolbox for yourself within yourself MH yeah and I honestly I was just thinking about this story because one

of my friend he is a lawyer and he messaged me being like this is it I'm done I hate this job I'm overworked I hate it and I was like why don't I just go outside for a minute like go for a little walk walk and then after 15 minutes you message me like oh it's all fine it's okay I just needed some air and that's that's exactly what you're Saying is that we build it up so much we forget where we are we forget that life is bigger than this and then you just need

little breather it's okay this is not it and then you come back you're like oh actually this is a completely okay situation totally it's like we even you know when we're stressed and busy we forget to drink water like a basic thing you need for your body to not be in stressed you know like oh I haven't eaten all day or haven't Haven when was The last time I drank like 5 hours ago you know all these basic things that make your system even more stressed I know and that's the thing I feel like I

feel sad for Our Generation because the other thing that really resonated is when you said when we're sitting with a group of people and you can see that this person is not here and you can see someone checking their phone and they got like a work email or something and they're there and you can see the Thinking behind I should probably reply to this email this person messaged me I don't know I just feel like this has become a real problem for our generation and you have people who have career issues people who have relationship

issues do you feel like we have created the right Community for people to feel like they're okay with sharing with their friends where they're going through I think we still got some way to go I think we are better than you know Like my dad's generation for example that was very just like you deal with it stiff upper lip like get on with it yourself yeah I think the the shift has happened into people being able to say I feel anxious or I am stressed and that's great but I think the next shift that needs

to happen is the reality of supporting our communities and different ways to manage it so whether that's in the workplace whether that's your family whether That's your friendship group and when we know that someone's stressed and we're stressed ourselves it's actually you know giving particularly in the workplace you know giving that person and the support they need to manage it so that they can come back and actually work well again you know and instead of get get on get on with it let me know when you're done let me know when you're done okay great

you know and I think I think that just is embedded in culture Right that cultural change of it being essentially cool to deal with your stress rather than it being like taboo both mental health I don't even like the term mental health personally because it's it blankets something that I don't believe is just mental health you I'm such a holistic believer in the way that we deal with mental and physical and health that you know for me stress is mental emotional physical and spiritual it's in those four parts of us and when We can understand

which part of us is getting stressed we can then deal with it in the right way for that part and if we blanket everything is just like you know mental health and make it more of this kind of it taboo is the wrong word but because it was such a new thing particular I mean I know in the UK for years it was like you can't talk about that mean it's like oh my God Americans talk about their feelings in therapy you Can't posibly talk about was just so whereas I think if we can make

wellness and preventative management of stress as well as you know resilience and actually then Having the courage to deal with that in the moment making that something that's Brave rather than God HP pathetic yeah that's when everything changes because the reality is it is brave to do that it is it's not easy to feel your uncomfortable emotions if it was then every single person in the world would Manage them very quickly and easily but the reality is the modern society a lot of us have repressed our emotions for a long time numbed them with binge

watching Netflix overworking overgo out drinking over socializing anything we can do to not feel and so making that you know holding space for each other to tell each other how we're feeling whether it's stress or whatever it is and actually making that the normal I think is just so important because the Reason why we all struggle as well is like that lack of connection that lack of community you know we didn't get to this point in society by not having tribes when we were in cave times like just one isolated person fighting Aline not how

we got there it's really about making these things a collective movement I think and I do think our generation is definitely seeing it in a different way to you know our parents and generations before but there's still Some way to go no agree and I'm sure you know this um Harvard study right the one which is like the longest study ever done or something 80 years where at the end of it the findings were that um the biggest factors contributing to happiness and um what was it like quality of life it was the quality of

your relationship and the community around you rather than success fame money um it was just the quality of your relationship determines how happy you Are and I think that that's another thing that probably we as a generation and especially the future ones are really struggling with because relationships have become something so fleeting we think we are so connected online even now like on the dating apps people are just swiping and swiping and swiping and the idea that oh well if this doesn't work out I can replace it it it meant that people are less willing

to invest time and emotions in a Relationship to make it work and therefore I genely feel like the the best friends I have are people I've known for a very long time so we've carried them forward but I feel like new relationships tend to be very hard to manage and I think that also explains the high stress levels because now you're not very comfortable with this person to tell them how you're how you're feeling what you're going through and at the same time you have the added Gender Factor men and women right I feel like

women like for us we just met and we can look at each other and tell each other our biggest stresses and I can tell you I told you since 10 I used to be stressed but I feel like men don't really do that and it's still taboo for men to talk to each other about their mental health stresses so how how do you see us fixing all of this it's funny you say that because I you know I used to do a lot more onet to one than I do now now It's more like going

into companies and the platform and I do limited work Consulting with you know leaders in businesses all apart from one of my onetoone clients have been men and I truly think whereas the you know the platform and stuff and that's men and women but these group things have been a lot of women and I truly believe that's because with this for example I've tried to strange as it sounds to Brand what I'm doing with stress is like cool and Non- taboo and a way for you to have tools to move it forward to fix this

right yeah and I think men individually have responded to that very well because they've been like well I can see a Stress Management consultant and that's something I can like actively do to like move forwards I'm not just sitting there it's more logical yeah it's more logical right it's giving someone the tools and equally okay well I'd rather talk about my stress by myself CU I don't want to Know so it is really interesting like you say it's that complete difference between men and women and women are comfortable being in groups to talk about these

things totally and um I think that's starting to change you know with the more you know we're cying to create with unstressful and companies like different kind of you know groups within the group so it's like okay well if you know male leaders are in this group then they will all relate to each Other and they'll be more open to share whatever it is whether it's leaders and female and male but it is definitely a different difference naturally between women and men and I actually read this once it was so interesting because it's literally ingrained

in us from day one boys are raised for outward you know going outwards it's like throw ball you caught it well well done mom and dad are like that's great you know where as girls were praised for going inward it's Like oh sit still look good be pretty kind sit down great and then girls were praised that way so that naturally teaches girls to go into their emotions at an earlier age and boys to go into action at an earli age and that's the kind of difference between that emotional girls are always a young age

like emotionally looking around emotionally intelligent emotionally curious and men are naturally WI into action just like they were in cave Jes Like go out of the cave and go and Hunt some food and come back and I think you know that struggle of society really seeing emotions as a weakness in men for years in terms of this patriarchal society of masculine go out do achieve in both women and men it's like in business we've been praised for doing going out achieving more doing more no one has been praised in the last 20 years for knowing

more within themselves sitting still and actually being W but Now finally businesses and the world has started to shift to realizing that emotional intelligence is a huge skill that is needed to be able to be a good leader in a business and to be able to be in a good relationship and with yourself and someone else and I think that that shift like you say it's like men is still struggling to I think have the courage to have that first step but what I've noticed as well is that once they do and they share with

you know Their friends their Community all of them are thinking the same thing inwardly they just have been too too scared to you know vulnerably share at that point and I think it's just something naturally that has come to women much more easier it's so interesting when you brought up the way like kids are brought up right it's so true and it's the same thing with how girls are always told to like nurture and look after everyone so that's why we Develop empathy and you know I saw this real who knows if it's a real

study or not but I saw this real where it was a study where little girls are asked um they they put salt in the food that's what it was they made the food salty it was meant to be a dessert and they gave it to little girls and little boys 5 years old right and the little girls would lie about it and they' be like M yeah it's nice but the boys like this is disgusting it's got salt in it and it's Because little girls at 5 don't want to hurt someone else's feelings imagine they

have empathy at that age and it's because we've been told to be that way so and it also that's the Catch 22 right with I think you know going into that angle of female stresses with why men are so good at saying what they want stating what they want taking action getting what they want and boundaries and women will overly compensate to make sure everyone Else around them this a generalization but you see this a lot with all my female friends with a lot of women I meet and myself you know I've had to train

myself to actually put great boundaries in the last couple of years because I realized from awareness I was like I've got terrible boundaries this I'm still bad at it still working on it exactly and you it is a forever progress but I think that's like you say that classic thing if if a 5-year-old all the Girls were sat there being like M that's great the SP is great but is that's the thing I'm the same I recently was having I I was meant to have a very difficult conversation with some people that I hired who

are not doing the the job the way they should be doing and for me that was so hard and I realize it's because people pleasing Tendencies I don't want to offend some someone else I don't want make to make them feel like they're bad But then my boundaries are completely crushed yeah people are there and I'm like but I I I want you out I don't know how to tell you and then I I I recognized that the issue is I was bad at setting the boundaries in the first place these people are not aware

of these boundaries so it's not really entirely on to them so boundaries with emotional stress are such a huge either hindrance or help you know the quote I think from Gandhi that I love I put in The book was you know a strong no is better than a weak yes and that is so true you know the amount of stress that we you know both men and women cause themselves by just putting more on your plate saying yes to something that you know you don't need to do that week but you have said yes because

you feel like you should do it for either that person that deadline whatever it is and then you get to the point of doing it and you were already at the capacity where you Think I just don't have the capacity the space for this you do that thing and you resent the person and then you cause yourself stress and it's this cyclical cyclical cycle of emotional stress so boundaries in general you know time emotional actually you know looking at your schedule every week and taking out what you know you're just putting in there for the

sake of pleasing somewhere else or putting in for the sake of squeezing into that week when you know It's not actually a priority or necessity that week it's such a good skill to get into every Sunday evening I tell that to clients look at your schedule ahead and limit what is actually not necessary next week because what that next hour that you took out could be that hour that is the reason why you feel recharged and you have a great you know date with your partner that evening which you wouldn't have had and you would

have argued had you put That other thing in you know all these things are intertwined and so when you can actually get really clear about your own boundaries with your time and what you need it's such an important thing for emotional stress and stress in general now I ask you a tricky question um so you know a lot of times when people are stressed or they are anxious and someone tells them oh don't be stressed they they get really triggered by that they're like oh okay sorry I Forgot I should just think about not being

stressed so how do we are not telling them to not be stressed you said the number one thing is to recognize where it comes from but in a moment where someone is feeling a little bit overwhelmed or stressed by external things what is your advice to deal with that moment that moment I would say ask them two questions because a lot of time you know we want to fix the situation for someone because we're Humans and we either want to help someone we love or whatever it is is to actually ask them instead what they

need so say would you like me to listen and talk to me and tell me everything that's going on right now or would you like me to help you find a solution those are two very different things right a sounding board is a very different thing to someone trying to fix situation and the truth of the matter is is that if the person isn't in the uh you know Position of within their own mind that they want help you can never help someone who's not ready to help themselves right and some people just actually need

that sounding board to be able to then feel H you know what someone cares they've listen to me and now they've had a vent but in a way that they've sort of released and kind of come to Clarity themselves in the way that almost like a coach does you know asking questions and just sounding back What the person's saying rather than saying this is what should be doing you know giving someone that space for them to be heard and seen and listen you know that most people in the world all they want is to feel

heard and seen and that's what most humans need you know that feeling of being like that person really saw me and I really feel much better for that and I understand that now or asking them would you like me to help you find a solution to do something About this and most of the time most people will say no I'm okay I'll work it out because they just want wanted that sounding board you know sometimes the other like Yes actually how can I take action on this but I think it is in that moment just

saying okay I'm here would you like me to you know help you take find a solution or would you like me to just listen and that's the kind of different shift that you need to sort of see which one it is first of all yeah I Agree and I think I love what that you said and you know sah Bloom also always says that where he says whenever someone comes to you with a problem always ask them do you want to be helped hugged or heard right because sometimes someone just needs a hug sometimes they

just need to vent and sometimes they need you to come help now let's let's devise a solution to this but no that's absolutely true and I think a lot of times the mismatch comes with us Assuming what the other person wants and communication always helps all of these things yeah um but now any parting messages about the book anything you want to tell the audience about the book as well so yeah the book um book is you know it's written with the wonderful Mo gal that who's my co-author on it and we are Yin and

Yang you know mo is that wonderful logical engineer as you know and just uh incredible and so we've loved putting the two of us together Because I'm the more emotive you know softer side of those things but we both very much believe in what the other one is saying that's why it kind of has complimented one another in a nice way and it's if you want to learn how to deal with mental stress emotional stress physical stress and spiritual stress and become unstressful in that way so you can manage these parts of ourselves that we

haven't been brought up knowing what is going on and how to deal with it um Unstress is really that solution for people to give them it's a lot of information in it there really is so it's something that we found that people say like I can delve into it and come back to it when I need it as well as reading the whole thing through and we um you know for me it's really about breaking the cycle you know I think with stress and with anxiety you know we break the cycle or the cycle break

you that's the reality of it and having that Awareness to stop and pause and see where you're actually at within yourself and your life stress wise and you know emotionally and mentally physically spiritually it's really starting to be aware and then making the changes after that it's the only way we can do it really amazing and any parting message with people who deal with little day-to-day stresses day-to-day stresses I think it's really my parting message is really really really start to think About how you wake up in the day because how you begin your day

will decide how you respond to the rest of it and I don't think people put enough weight behind the end and start of their day and managing the tiny little daily stresses that we deal with if you wake up and do 7 Days consecutively of a 5 minute morning routine or a half an hour one depending what you have time for because some people would say understandbly you know what my kids wake Me up first thing in the morning and then it's go and I just don't even have time for myself and that is perfectly

fine but you will have time to do for example put a Post-It note on your bedside table when your soothing alarm goes goes off and you don't look at your phone first straight away or your child runs in the first thing you can do is see that Post-It note and it says choose your first thought just taking two seconds to close your eyes take deep Breath and you decide intentionally what that first thought of the day is going to be and make it something that's going to be beneficial to you rather than oh my God

I have done that this is that that that and letting that narrative start straight away every single person has time to choose their first thought of the day with a reminder on their bedside table if you don't have half an hour we all have half a minute and so I think it's yeah really starting to just Make those little tiny changes to see the actual results oh I love that I'm going to do the Post-it note I think you should make it into an alarm clock or something that just goes that's true little voice hello

yeah but honestly Alice this was incredible thank you so much for your time I can't wait to Deep dive into the book and hopefully we'll see you around no thank you so much for having me this wonderful conversation [Music]