53. KELLY MCGONIGAL: Harnessing the Hidden Gift of Stress

Episode Transcript

Note: Transcript is AI-generated and may contain errors. Please refer to the episode audio or video for exact quotes.

[00:00:00] Kelly: You can again, contrast that to some of the things we do that we think are stress relievers. ’cause they don’t ask anything of us like scrolling. Actually by not asking anything of us and also not really giving us anything, it becomes its own kind of stress state that is. Like a shut down.

[00:00:22] Michael: Hi, I am Michael Hyatt.

[00:00:23] Megan: And I’m Megan Hyatt Miller.

[00:00:24] Michael: And you’re listening to The Double Win Show.

[00:00:26] Megan: We are so excited to share with you our recent conversation with Kelly McGonigal.

[00:00:32] Michael: It was so good.

[00:00:32] Megan: It was so good.

[00:00:33] Michael: Okay, so Kelly’s a health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford University. She’s the author of bestselling books, including The Upside of Stress, the Willpower Instinct, and the Joy of Movement.

[00:00:45] Her TED talk on stress is one of the most viewed of all time. Get this meg, more than 30 million views.

[00:00:53] Megan: And I kind of thought that was a typo, but it’s not.

[00:00:54] Michael: I know

[00:00:54] Megan: it’s insane.

[00:00:55] Michael: So she specializes in translating neuroscience and psychology into practical tools for everyday life, as you’ll soon hear. But Kelly’s work has influenced leaders, organizations, individuals who are seeking resilience and sustainable performance.

[00:01:10] She’s also known for reframing common struggles as she did twice in our interview with her. Yeah. And it was so good. Things like stress and temptation as opportunities for growth. And her most recent work, which I can’t wait for, it explores how joy is a risk worth taking.

[00:01:28] Megan: It’s really great. And I think the big idea of this is that stress is not an obstacle to a flourishing life.

[00:01:34] It’s a signal that you’re struggling to engage in one. Like, whoa. Yeah. I mean, she will like take your head and spin it backwards in the first 30 seconds of this conversation. The question is, is not as we learned how to eliminate stress, but how to respond in ways that build strength, connection, and joy rather than drain them.

[00:01:53] And as somebody who I think myself feels very present to just all the stress in the world, I think there’s a lot going on right now positively, negatively, just, it’s just a lot. I would just say hashtag a lot and a lot that creates stress. This is the conversation you need right now.

[00:02:11] Michael: So here’s our conversation with Kelly Mcgon.

[00:02:16] Megan: Kelly, welcome to the show.

[00:02:18] Kelly: Hi. Thank you for having me.

[00:02:19] Megan: I’m so glad that you’re here. Selfishly. I’m so glad that you’re here because I have been feeling a lot of stress lately. We were just talking about that before we, we were just talking about that before.

[00:02:27] Michael: Got on with Kelly.

[00:02:28] Megan: I know, and I feel like somehow we end up with like the perfect experts at the perfect time.

[00:02:33] Kelly: What’s the biggest source of your stress right now? Because, you know, we use the word stress to, to refer to just about everything in life.

[00:02:39] Megan: Yes.

[00:02:39] Kelly: That requires us to respond.

[00:02:41] Megan: As I’ve been talking to people, you know, we, fortunately in our world, we have the opportunity to talk to a lot of people. Pretty frequently.

[00:02:47] And the things that I keep hearing are not only true from our audience, our community, but I find are true in myself as well. And you know, the combination of all the things that are happening politically, geopolitically, you know, you every day you open the news and you’re just like, oh my god. Like some huge thing, right?

[00:03:06] So that’s one thing. But then what’s happening with AI since the beginning of the year? The acceleration, the sort of almost like a tsunami experience, like being chased by a tsunami. You know, like maybe not all a bad tsunami. Like a lot of kind of great stuff. A lot of. We’re not sure stuff. Like I was just talking with someone in a meeting right before this and he said, you know, I just, I feel like I can’t see six months out anymore.

[00:03:29] This is another business owner. I feel like I can’t see six months out. I used to, could see six months out. Now I can’t. And when I think about your work, and I think about this idea of stress and the experience of anxiety and uncertainty and all of that, it feels like we’re living in kind of a singular moment of this convergence of different types of uncertainty.

[00:03:51] Some good, some bad, some we’re not sure all happening at once. But at. At a level of scale that, I mean, maybe COVID would rival that in our living memory. Mm-hmm. But that was all bad. You know, this is like not necessarily all bad anyway. What are you seeing as someone who is an expert on stress that is the same or different right now as compared with maybe the period that you studied most when you were writing most about this and speaking most about this?

[00:04:17] Kelly: So I’ve been teaching and writing and, and studying stress for about 25 years now. Yeah. And when I first got started, people like to talk about stress and what I think of as the low level daily stress. It’s the deadlines, it’s the pressure.

[00:04:30] Megan: Yes.

[00:04:30] Kelly: And I remember I had a hard time encouraging people to talk honestly about.

[00:04:35] Real stress, the things that, that really deeply matter to you, and also often feel out of your control. Before COVID, when I would ask people, you know, what’s been the most stressful experience in your life? People almost always say the death of a loved one.

[00:04:49] Megan: Mm-hmm.

[00:04:50] Kelly: And that, that sense of, you know, stress often being these things that we have to cope with that are difficult and that we didn’t always choose for ourselves.

[00:04:58] Since COVID, there’s been more of this type of stress that you were describing, which can feel like there’s a, a level of uncertainty that feels threatening and that requires a lot of us, but we aren’t sure how to meet the moment because yeah, we can’t get a clear, a clear sense of what are all the factors.

[00:05:20] What’s going on in this situation? What choices do I have and what choices will make a difference? And in that way, that is kind of different. There’s also been a growing sense of, certainly in the United States, a growing sense of mistrust of other people. And that has become a huge source of stress in people’s lives.

[00:05:35] I think that is, uh, almost a kind of cynicism or loss of a, a sense of goodwill that you can count on from others and that you bring to others. It’s actually, you know, it’s one of the great antidotes to stress is just feeling like you live in a world where good things happen and people are good, and you can do things that make life better for yourself and others.

[00:05:57] And I would say that, you know, in the last decade or so, there’s been more sense of that being challenged as well, which I think is an underappreciated aspect of stress. Yeah. The going around, not entirely sure if the world you live in is good, if other people, you can essentially trust them. And if you yourself have the capacity to do good in the world.

[00:06:15] Megan: So when you look at. What’s happening specifically with AI and kind of watching that accelerate, you know, and I think that has all these different levels of stress. You know, it’s like a lot of people are worried, what is this gonna mean to my job? Maybe what is this gonna mean to my business? What does this mean for my own sense of humanity?

[00:06:32] Like, very existential

[00:06:33] Kelly: mm-hmm.

[00:06:33] Megan: Really scary scenarios that, you know, some people are, are more inclined to be afraid of. How do you see your conclusions about stress? Like the idea that maybe stress isn’t necessarily toxic, like have your conclusions about stress changed as you, as we’re in this moment, or do you think.

[00:06:53] Maybe evolve is a better word, or do they, they kind of hold from your earlier work?

[00:06:57] Kelly: You know, stress in and of itself is not toxic. Mm-hmm. So, stress from a scientific point of view is the biological capacity to adapt and to learn from experience. So every time you have a stress response, it’s your brain and your body recognizing this is a moment that matters, or something that I care about is at stake.

[00:07:18] And you have all sorts of changes. Some that we’re more familiar with, like sometimes our heart rate accelerates and we feel flooded with energy. Some things are going on that we can’t necessarily sense, like the release of chemicals in your brain that open up a window of neuroplasticity so that you’re better able to really learn from the moment you’re in or the experience that you have.

[00:07:37] Some of it we’re, you know, people are often surprised by the idea that your body might release oxytocin to motivate you, to connect with others, to take other people’s perspectives and to, to look for a way to overcome something stressful together. So stress is, is it’s just huge biological repertoire of responses to help you cope with change, deal with uncertainty, handle threats and challenges, and especially to learn from experience.

[00:08:03] So that holds, and certainly, you know, AI is just one version of the type of challenges that people are facing now. You know, the idea that I’ve been, um, recommending is really this mindset that says, okay, it’s a fantasy to believe that there’s a version of your life that’s not stressful.

[00:08:21] Megan: Mm-hmm.

[00:08:21] Kelly: And that if you were doing life right, you wouldn’t experience stress.

[00:08:25] You know, research is pretty clear that people who have meaningful lives have very stressful lives. They worry more, they experience more anxiety than people who say that their lives feel kind of pointless or less meaningful. And we also know that. The more roles, responsibilities, goals you have, the more often your biological system is gonna look for ways to help you deal with everything that comes up in all of those roles and relationships and goals.

[00:08:52] So that mindset is really about understanding that a meaningful life is stressful. To accept the reality that it’s probably not going to improve. You know, was it somebody was saying recently, there was a, they took strength from the idea that things can always get worse. That it’s sort of an, an antidote to the, the aspiration that, you know, well, things are stressful now, but next year it’s going to be easier.

[00:09:18] Or they’re gonna solve whatever these problems are. The chaos, the conflict that’s going on in the world, or the challenges that I’m facing with my family, my personal life. Somehow that’s gonna get resolved in a year or two. And this idea that things can always get worse is a kind of, it’s probably sounds depressing to some folks, but it really is this idea that you can accept the reality of the world as it is and start to trust your own capacity to deal with uncertainty or change.

[00:09:43] With opportunities as well as threats, and we can learn more about how stress works so that we can harness some of those strengths instead of looking for ways to try to suppress the stress or looking for ways to try to create a cocoon around ourselves as if we could protect ourselves from the things in life that are stressful.

[00:10:02] Michael: You know, one of the things you said that was interesting to me, you said, our capacity to deal with stress, and it seems like the thing that has shifted in my observation is that the volume and the speed of stress, you know, we’re, we’re now exposed to more things than we ever have been as a species. You know, it used to be, I would think, and this is way over simplistic, but there were real threats and there were sort of perceived threats or mediated threats, which really didn’t affect us.

[00:10:31] If you look at some of the things that are happening around the world, they can create stress for us, even. I was watching last night, the first episode of the Pit. Do you know that television series?

[00:10:41] Kelly: I don’t watch it. I’ve heard it recommended.

[00:10:43] Michael: Well, I, I had it recommended. She

[00:10:44] Megan: knows better.

[00:10:45] Michael: Yeah. I listened to it last night and I mean, just the first episode and I felt such enormous stress.

[00:10:51] I started crying several times.

[00:10:53] Megan: Yeah.

[00:10:53] Michael: My wife’s like, what’s going on with you? So I don’t know if it was medical trauma or what, but that’s not even a real stress for me. That’s like a perceived stress in the research. Is there a distinction between those two things? Yeah. And you think because of that, there’s more of it this sort of self-inflicted, because we subject ourselves to those kinds of inputs.

[00:11:09] Kelly: Yeah. So you might know a lot of my, uh, my own research has been looking at empathy and compassion and the type of stress that you’re describing. We could often talk about it as empathic distress. You know, you’re right that our capacity to respond to life. With this stress mechanism, it really is adapted for problems that are close to home, problems in our household, problems in our community, problems where we can actually take action, yes, and protect what we care about or make a change for the better, or cope with a new reality.

[00:11:41] And now because of just the way that technology has changed and the things that we’re exposed to, we’re often exposed to things that can activate our distress response. That is we, we don’t like the things that are happening. We feel for other people’s pain and suffering, but we don’t have a clear way to respond that makes the situation better.

[00:12:02] And so we can fall into the state of empathic distress, where we’re feeling a lot, we’re feeling the emotions that normally they’re there to anchor action. You know, we feel upset, we feel sad, we feel outrage, and those emotions are meant to propel us to help someone or stand up for what we believe in, or change the way that something is working to improve lives for the better, right?

[00:12:24] That’s why we have these emotions. It’s partly why we have a stress response, and if you’re exposed to all sorts of things that generate those emotions and you can’t figure out a clear way to help, which is often the case with a lot of the things that cause us distress. We can get stuck in this state where we feel all of the sort of the push energy that wants to make a difference, but then we can’t channel that into the positive emotions of contribution or connection or helping that gives us hope, and that gives us a sense of meaning.

[00:12:56] And so I think like that’s one of the things that you’re pointing at. Now, it doesn’t mean that we should be in denial about what’s happening in the world, but you know, one of the things I’m often encouraging people to do is to really think about the information you expose yourself to, and how much of your time and energy is going towards hearing about, and maybe speaking about, but not really engaging in a material way with a certain type of problems or stress or outrage versus the things in your life where you can take direct action.

[00:13:29] You can do something to make a difference. And we know that when stress or distress is met with action or connection with other people, it doesn’t have the same toxic effects as if you’re just overwhelmed and flooded with anxiety or sadness or anger. If those emotions get met with the warm glow of, I did something to make a difference, or I talked about this with someone, and we both feel better that there’s, it’s a, it’s a shift that happens that makes that stress not only less physiologically toxic and psychologically weighing us down, but it’s also, it’s how stress is meant to work.

[00:14:05] And so we need to find a way to channel the stress we feel into acts of hope or acts of courage, or acts of productivity, or acts of connection. That’s really what stress is trying to drive us to do, and it’s a mistake to expose ourselves constantly to things that generate distress. And then let ourselves feel the overwhelm that can cause us to do less and less, or even sometimes can cause us to care less and less just a coping strategy that people sometimes

[00:14:35] Michael: use.

[00:14:35] I guess what that means for me is I’m not gonna be watching the pit for much longer. ’cause I think it does, it does create a level of stress that I can’t activate on. And my guess is, and you can tell us on this, this probably has a physiological impact that’s not positive either when you’ve got this

[00:14:52] Kelly: uncontrollable stress.

[00:14:52] Yeah. Well I mean, TV’s a funny one because, well you said it cause you stress. I mean, there’s actually a research that if you are feeling empathy for, uh, work of art like a film or a TV show or literature or music, and there’s actually a. Difference between like the sadness that you feel for a beautiful, sad song or when you’re crying in a film than when it’s something that is real, like you’re crying because you saw something horrible happen in the news.

[00:15:19] Mm-hmm. Or a loved one was hurt or a personal loss. There’s a chemical difference and a psychological difference, and actually for many people is quite pleasurable and does not take a toll. So that’s really something you have to investigate for yourself, whether you’re feeling, because I think one of the reasons is is that we actually like to feel ourselves as empathic.

[00:15:40] And many people, the sort of, the primary feeling they get from that is the sense of connection. They actually like having their heart opened a little bit, but they don’t feel the burden of when it’s real. Because of course when you know that it’s real, or may, you may be, you may be really identified with the characters on the show, I don’t know.

[00:15:58] But when it feels real, it’s, it’s actually, there can be a slight difference in, in what we’re experiencing. But for many people, you know, listening to. Sad music actually becomes like an antidote to some of these feelings of overwhelm because it, it’s some, like, it creates a, some kind of alchemy that that makes it a different kind of experience.

[00:16:15] That’s experience.

[00:16:16] Michael: That’s so fascinating. It did actually create empathy for doctors and nurses that have to work in that environment. Yeah. When it’s like, how in the world do you do that? Yeah.

[00:16:24] Kelly: That’s one of the great things about art too, because imagine next time you’re in a medical setting. I mean, talk about a stressful place to be.

[00:16:32] Everyone’s stressed out, and if you’re there as a family member or you’re there as a patient, and you even just have in your mind the understanding that everyone in this situation is doing their best. Some people have really low capacity right now because they’re in pain, or they’re worried about the life of a loved one, or because they have, you know, they haven’t slept in 48 hours, so everyone’s maybe working below their ideal capacity, and you have this understanding of, wow, this is a really hard place to be and everyone in this situation.

[00:17:01] Struggling and doing their best. That can lead to an entirely different way that you interact with people a different way. I like that. That you experience what it’s like to be in that setting. I think this is, you know, partly, I mean, we haven’t actually even talked clearly about the messages about stress that I try to emphasize, but one of them is this idea that you are not alone in feeling overwhelmed or stressed about the world.

[00:17:27] And sometimes even just recognizing that every person you encounter, they may also be having a bad day, a bad week, a bad year. They may be grieving, they may be in pain, they may be overwhelmed by pressure. Even just knowing that unlocks a certain kind of common humanity.

[00:17:44] Michael: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:44] Kelly: That makes stressful situations easier to tolerate and also makes it easier for us to be our best self in those moments.

[00:17:51] That’s

[00:17:52] Michael: really good.

[00:17:52] Megan: Okay, so the pit is back on. You’re, you’re in, in three minutes. That

[00:17:57] Kelly: empathy.

[00:17:57] Megan: Yeah. We,

[00:17:58] Michael: we did a complete 180. We

[00:17:59] Megan: did a complete 180. And, and that’s all you’re gonna binge all, all weekend is you’re just gonna binge the pit. Yeah. Just let us know where that turns out. Please report back.

[00:18:08] Okay. Kelly. Should we try in any way to be engineering our lives where we have control to have less stress?

[00:18:19] Kelly: Mm.

[00:18:20] Megan: You know, I feel like there’s this pressure, I think you said something at the beginning about this, that if, like, if you’re quote unquote doing it right, then you have a meaningful life. But your meaningful life is also less stressful than.

[00:18:35] Other people’s.

[00:18:36] Kelly: That’s the hope people have.

[00:18:37] Megan: That’s the hope. Like fingers crossed, that’s the hope, right’s, the But should we, where we have control, I mean there, there we could probably all think of five things off the top of our head that we could go do today that would make our life more stressful. You know, we could pay our mortgage late, we could forget our kid at school.

[00:18:52] We could turn in a project late or you know, not respond to our boss or, you know, whatever. And like the consequences of those things are gonna make our lives. They’re gonna create downstream negative impacts that are gonna be stressful for us.

[00:19:04] Kelly: That’s called stress generation, by the way.

[00:19:07] Megan: Okay.

[00:19:07] Kelly: And often what’s really interesting about the research is the number one cause of stress generation is people trying to avoid stress.

[00:19:15] So they procrastinate. Interesting. They put off a difficult conversation. It’s one of the areas of research that really helps shift my mindset towards stress. What’s fascinating, what happens is people so don’t want to feel stressed that they make choices in the moment that allow them to either, you know, avoid some discomfort.

[00:19:33] Or avoid some pressure, but then things start spiraling and the choices they make, making it, you know, harder for them to meet their obligations or communicate clearly with people they care about. I think that the thing about, you know, should we try to have less stress, I think we should try to be human beings who contribute to less suffering in the world.

[00:19:57] And that is different than trying to construct a life where you yourself experience less stress, or you try to parent in a way that your kids experience less stress, or you try to manage a team in a way where your team is never stressed. I think that’s a nice distinction to make because it motivates us to behave in ways that really looks clearly at the consequences of our actions.

[00:20:19] Are we doing things that make things better or worse for ourself and for others, but in terms of trying to construct a life that is less stressful, see the choices that most people can make are not the stress that they would really like to eliminate. When we were talking earlier, and I said, when I asked people, what’s the biggest source of stress that you’ve had in your life?

[00:20:37] And people mention the death of a loved one, that is not something that you have control over, but people might think to themselves, well, you know, it would be really stressful to take on this new project, or it might be too stressful to initiate a friendship right now, I don’t have time for that. And we look for ways to kind of cut corners around stress that may actually be the type of stress that can be good stress.

[00:21:04] It’s much harder to control or construct our lives to avoid the stress we most want to avoid. And that’s why I generally don’t recommend avoidance as a coping strategy for stress. Because the stuff you can control is likely to be a source of meaning or growth or agency, right? Because you actually have some control over it.

[00:21:24] So already there’s an inherent kind of meaning to it. Anytime something is stressful and you feel like you are saying yes to it, rather than resisting it already, your stress response is gonna be healthier and you’re gonna cope in a more skillful way.

[00:21:38] Megan: So, fascinating.

[00:21:46] Michael: We’ve talked a lot on this show about nervous system dysregulation, regulation and co-regulation. How does that fit into this?

[00:21:54] Kelly: Most people, when they think about stress, they think about fight or flight response or fight flight or freeze response, and it’s a certain shift in the nervous system. Towards sympathetic activation or sometimes we can move into sort of parasympathetic overwhelm.

[00:22:09] And we have this idea that every time we’re stressed, we’re moving into a nervous system state that isn’t good for us. And there’s also this idea that we can get stuck in states that cause a toll for our physical health or our mental health or ability to to function. So that is true, but what’s really interesting, so this is like, this is such a paradox.

[00:22:30] It is true. So let’s take for example, an alarm response. You think like the classic fight or flight response, if every time you get any kind of alert in the world, whether you are a family member needs something, or you get an email or a Slack message, or you hear something in the news, or you remember something that you want to do, if every time you get some kind of alert that says you have to respond to life, if you have an alarm response, fight or flight, sympathetic overdrive, higher levels of cortisol.

[00:23:01] It’s true that that as a physiological state may be more than you need to actually meet the moment. And also if you get stuck in it can lead to things like increased risk of diseases, systemic inflammation, changes in your brain that aren’t healthy. Mm-hmm. That’s a story everyone’s heard, but, so here’s the big paradox.

[00:23:20] As soon as you stop fearing what your body does in moments of stress, when you understand it as an attempt to help you, your nervous system response starts to change. I mean, this has been demonstrated in a lot of experiments that if you’re having that kind of alarm response and you simply say to yourself, okay, body, you’re trying to help me right now, you’re saying this is something I care about.

[00:23:45] I don’t need to fix this. In order to respond. Mm-hmm. Like when you don’t think I need to take a certain number of breaths in order to calm my nervous system, or you don’t think I need to leave the room ’cause I can’t handle this conversation right now, or you don’t say, I need to keep my peace. I’m putting up boundaries.

[00:24:03] All the stuff people do to try to protect their nervous system. If instead you’re like, okay, this is a natural physiological response and if this is a moment that matters, or something I care about is at stake. A good time to think about who and what I care about and look for a decision I can make, or a choice I can make, or an action I can take or something I can say, right, that really reflects my values, my goals, and the opportunities in this situation.

[00:24:30] And I don’t try to focus on controlling my nervous system. All of a sudden your stress response is healthier. You’ve got a healthier balance of cortisol to DHEA and other hormones that actually keep your nervous system balanced. In the long term, you’re gonna have increased release of neurochemicals that also make your brain more resilient so that you recover faster from stress.

[00:24:51] There are all these biological changes that come just from accepting yes, that it’s okay to be pushed off of some kind of homeostatic ideal. And, um, I think that’s sort of one part of, you know, if you actually are interested in regulating your nervous system, one way to do it. Is to not panic when you sense yourself shifting through normal physiological states.

[00:25:16] And the other thing is, a lot of times, you know, if you’re interested in experiencing a regulated nervous system at the global scale, meaning throughout the course of the day, your cortisol levels rise and fall in a way that is supportive from mental health and brain health. You show an ability to move in and out of sympathetic activation.

[00:25:39] You have sort of baseline levels of hormones that are healthy for your heart and your immune system. If you want that kind of regulation, which isn’t about in this moment, I need to get regulated. If you wanna have a system that’s functioning in that way, that is often less about trying to control stress and more about having experiences in your life that teach your nervous system this kind of balance and flexibility.

[00:26:04] And those are things like human connection in person. Spending time in nature, experiencing moments of play or fun. Um, experiencing moments of self-transcendence, connection to faith, spending time with animals, making art appreciation. There are these really important psychological states that you could describe as antidotes to stress, but those are the things that are most likely to create a nervous system that functions in a way that’s really good for your health and really good for your mental health.

[00:26:38] And that’s different than I hear so often. People like looking for a breathing technique that in this moment is going to achieve some kind of nervous system change that I think I need to do in order to be my best self or protect my health.

[00:26:52] Michael: You know, it’s, it is funny ’cause for years I would basically panic before I had a speaking engagement.

[00:26:58] Mm-hmm. You know, I’d feel my, mm-hmm. Palm. Sweating, my underarm, sweating. I was shaking butterflies in the stomach and all that stuff. And I don’t know if I came up with this on my own or somebody gave it to me, but I started repeating this mantra, this is just my, my body’s way of preparing itself for peak performance.

[00:27:15] Kelly: Yeah.

[00:27:16] Michael: The shift was almost immediate because then I started welcoming those feelings. ’cause I know that I think better when I’ve got adrenaline, you know, going in my system and I perform better. So why wouldn’t I welcome that? I wouldn’t wanna suppress that. I perform better when I’ve got it. But it’s just a, it’s, it’s interesting

[00:27:32] Kelly: And that’s the easiest of the mindset hacks.

[00:27:35] Yeah. So, because as I said, there’s a lot of different types of stress, but I will say this one is classic.

[00:27:40] Michael: Hmm.

[00:27:40] Kelly: If you’re in a situation where you are anxious and you need to perform. What you just described is absolute a plus. Excellent way to support yourself. It works because it’s true in performance situations.

[00:27:56] People who have more sympathetic arousal, people who report being anxious versus experiencing no anxiety, they do better. They give better talks, they sing more on pitch. They get better outcomes in a negotiation, whatever it is. And then this idea that if you accept it, that helps you do even better. That has been shown across such a wide range of stressful, what you could call performance situations.

[00:28:20] My favorite one that, that was published more recently, ’cause I’ve been talking about this for like 15 years now. This research is when it first started to come out was so useful because I was teaching undergraduates at Stanford who had panic before an exam, and this was like the perfect set of studies coming out.

[00:28:34] But since then, it’s not just exams or competitions or speeches. This one study actually looked at people who had to deliver bad news. In healthcare setting and the same type of mindset reset worked for them. If they were feeling anxious about having to deliver the bad news, and they said, okay, it’s totally normal that my heart would be pounding, or I’d feel these butterflies, or I’d be sweating.

[00:28:57] It’s a sign that I care. It’s a sign that I want to do well. I don’t have to manage that. They end up not only having a healthier stress response, one that. Is energizing but isn’t, you know, full blown fight or flight. But also they’re rated as being more compassionate by the people they deliver the news to.

[00:29:15] And this is one of those mindset resets that is pretty generally useful whenever you’re in a situation where you start to feel anxiety or self doubt.

[00:29:23] Michael: Fantastic.

[00:29:24] Megan: I was speaking last October and I was driving to the event, it was somewhere local and I started feeling those butterflies in my stomach and I was like, oh yeah, this is just what happens.

[00:29:32] I’m about to speak like I, I like, like this is a common, this is a physiological response and what I know now. That it will go away about two minutes on stage. At the most it will go away, and I won’t feel anything after that, except I’ll be like, in a kind of flow state and it’ll be miserable leading up to it.

[00:29:50] You know, like I’ll, I’ll feel all the, you know, feelings and then I’ll get on stage and it’ll be fine.

[00:29:55] Kelly: It’s better when you’re actually on stage, right?

[00:29:57] Megan: Oh,

[00:29:57] Michael: totally,

[00:29:58] Kelly: totally. I’m always like, it’s like I just want it to start. And the reason that it’s so much better when you start is again, because stress often wants you to respond.

[00:30:07] Megan: Yeah.

[00:30:07] Kelly: So once you’re in that space where you can actually do something,

[00:30:11] Megan: you’re good,

[00:30:11] Kelly: then you can make use of that energy. So, wait, let me give you another mindset reset. So that’s one. A number of people have heard this. Now the, the research is so solid on this. Embrace your anxiety or embrace your nerves.

[00:30:23] So one that I really love that is a harder sell for most people, but is very useful if you can take it. Another type of physiological response that can happen when you’re stressed is in not a performance stressful situation, but what I call the bigger than self stress. Where you’re in a situation where you’re facing something that’s so big or so uncertain that in reality you can’t do it on your own.

[00:30:48] Like this is not a situation like let’s say you just got diagnosed with cancer. This is not a do-it yourself. Rise to the challenge moment. And if your brain understands the magnitude of the stressful situation, you know, and it could be not just bad news, but it could just be an unexpected change that you’re forced to grapple with.

[00:31:08] You’re going to have changes in your brain and body that make you feel overwhelmed and nobody likes that feeling. And so instead of it just being like your heart pounding, like that anxiety. You can start to feel things like dread, you can start to feel a sense of inertia, like, I can’t do anything. You might cry.

[00:31:29] There are all these biochemical changes that are trying to get you to acknowledge that this is bigger than you and you’re going to need to reach out for support.

[00:31:38] Michael: Hmm.

[00:31:38] Kelly: And maybe to get you to understand that you’re not the only one going through it. You know, if it’s something like a big unexpected change, there may be other people who are dealing with the same thing.

[00:31:47] And it’s gonna be better if you try to go through it together than if you try to to DIY it. And it’s much harder for people to understand because there’s not like a clear physiological signature for it. When you’re feeling overwhelmed or you’re starting to feel hopeless, it’s not like you can feel your heart pounding and you can say, that’s giving me energy.

[00:32:05] But it’s really useful to understand in moments when you’re starting to feel overwhelmed by stress. That is not a sign that you can’t handle this, and it’s not a sign that there’s no hope, but it’s your brain and body’s wisdom or intuition telling you that you should look for support in your life, whether it’s looking for information, emotional support, and you should look for other people who are going through this or have been through this because a lot of the challenges we face in life are not ones where we alone will be able to solve the problem.

[00:32:39] So that’s another mindset reset. Love that. And same way you would rethink your racing heart, rethink, overwhelm again, the most important thing is it doesn’t say anything about you or the hopelessness of the situation.

[00:32:50] Megan: That’s really good. I’m so apt in those situations. I was actually in one earlier this week where I just felt like, this must mean I’m not up to the challenge.

[00:33:00] Like, that’s the immediate thing. Just like I used to think with speaking.

[00:33:04] Michael: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:04] Megan: This must mean my body’s about to fall apart and totally humiliate me on stage. That’s what I thought. You know, these feelings mean like it’s about to all come apart at the seams, but when I feel that feeling that you’re talking about, the thing I say to myself is, this is the one that’s gonna get me.

[00:33:19] Like, I’m just, I’m not up to, I’m not up to the challenge of figuring it out. It’s debilitating in the same way, except you’re right, it doesn’t have that signature. Of, oh, it’s that thing happening again. But I love that you’re re framing it that way. We

[00:33:33] Kelly: have to, we have to recognize sometimes what our coping defaults are that are unhelpful.

[00:33:39] Megan: Yeah.

[00:33:39] Kelly: So like for me, I would be likely to withdraw.

[00:33:42] Megan: Yes.

[00:33:42] Kelly: So if I’m feeling that overwhelm, I look for ways to pull back, like to be less in communication with people who care about me, and a desire to disengage from a lot. Not just the thing that’s stressful, but just like I’m looking for ways to, I don’t know, just to, to withdraw.

[00:33:59] Other times people will recognize a negative coping strategy when they feel overwhelmed, to try to hide it from other people. Like to not let people know that they’re struggling because they perceive that feeling of overwhelm, not just like you and I are talking about, like I can’t deal with this, but a sign of weakness, and that if I reveal this weakness, I make myself vulnerable, or I make myself appear less competent again, in situations where you feel overwhelmed, especially.

[00:34:26] Like by midlife. So you know, sometimes when you’re in, there are developmental stages where you can feel overwhelmed by having to tie your shoe, but by midlife, most of the time our brain’s actually pretty good at understanding this is a situation that’s bigger than me or not. And so if you’re feeling that kind of overwhelm, it’s a really clear signal that to overcome some of those tendencies, we have to not want to ask for help or not to let other people know we’re struggling.

[00:34:53] And to actually view that feeling as the sign, if you feel the tendency to withdraw or to not disclose that, that’s actually view it instead as a signal. This is time to be more transparent because that’s the only way to activate resources.

[00:35:10] Michael: Wow. That’s good. Your books are full of people who used movement to uh, come back from devastating setbacks like strokes, paralysis, loss.

[00:35:21] How does that work in the terms of rewiring us? To deal with those kinds of situations.

[00:35:27] Kelly: Oh yeah. Exercise and movement. It’s almost a miracle. If you were, if you were gonna ask for like what’s the number one thing you can do to improve your brain’s capacity? Both to deal with stress and recover from stress.

[00:35:40] So to deal with the hard stuff, and also to make your brain more sensitive and responsive to the good stuff in life. Hmm. To make it easier to connect with other people, to increase your capacity for joy and for meaning and for pleasure. Exercise, as far as I can tell, is the only thing that you can do that increases both capacities, resilience and I guess what I could call join connection.

[00:36:06] Hmm. And it happens at so many different levels. It happens at the biochemical level. You might have heard me say this in another interview, but I still think it’s the most important thing to understand about movement. When you move your body and you use muscles, your muscles secrete chemicals into your bloodstream that travel to your brain and act like antidepressants.

[00:36:27] Megan: Mm-hmm.

[00:36:28] Kelly: Both in terms of increasing resilience and increasing your sensitivity to joy and, and responsiveness to social connection. And it’s any type of movement. You lift stuff, you walk, you run, you swim, you dance, you do yard work and garden. If you’re using muscles, your muscles, natural pharmacy is putting these chemicals into your bloodstream.

[00:36:48] Michael: Wow.

[00:36:49] Kelly: And movement is pretty much the only way you, you have access to this. So it’s even at that basic level of movement. It’s like unlocking this pharmacy that’s good for your brain and all types of movement work. But then when you actually get into the psychology of movement and you have people who are power lifting and literally lifting something heavier than they knew that they could carry, or you have people who are out in nature and experiencing a sense of connection to something bigger than themselves through nature.

[00:37:18] Or like I just, before this interview, I taught a dance class and I teach these community dance classes and we sense in that moment we are a community. We celebrated a woman’s birthday. We actually roped in. Sometimes we have like babies walking by. We bring in parents and their babies. We had someone walking by at St.

[00:37:35] Patrick’s Day, he had on a green shirt. We brought him in and we celebrated him. So we’re connecting to this quality of community celebration. Like every form of movement has its own psychology. So when you add the biology of this resilience and. Supporting your brain and also the fact that the experience itself can be quite meaningful and profound and teach you about who you are and the world around you.

[00:38:00] That’s why there are so many stories like this of people who are able to move forward after grief or move forward after, you know, a major change in their lives because movement works at all of these different levels.

[00:38:12] Michael: Love that.

[00:38:13] Kelly: I usually ask people who ask about movement to tell me about their favorite form of movement.

[00:38:16] Do you two have a favorite form of movement that does something for you? Like what I described?

[00:38:21] Michael: Yeah. I think for me it’s as simple as exercising, like lifting weights, you know, so I do strength training three days a week. I have a trainer come to my home who works out with me and my wife. And part of what I love about that is the social connection with the three of us.

[00:38:37] Yeah. You know, ’cause we’re all pretty serious researchers about health and so we’re always sharing with one another our findings and, and it’s just great. Plus there’s accountability. I like, I go through an hour and I’m like, wow, this is already, we’re already done.

[00:38:50] Megan: Same for me. So I, we actually have the same trainer.

[00:38:52] We don’t train at the same time, but we have the same trainer. Love that. I love lifting weights. I did it this morning and I always feel better at the beginning than I do at the end. My favorite movement,

[00:39:02] Kelly: wait, wait, you said that right? Wait, wait, sorry. Reverse that.

[00:39:04] Megan: No, reverse that. Sorry. I always feel better at the end than the beginning.

[00:39:08] Um, at the beginning I’m like, oh, I don’t wanna do this. But there he is on the porch. Yeah. You know, gotta let him in. But my favorite form of exercise or, or really movement. ’cause honestly, I don’t know that you counted as exercise is walking. I love walking. I love walking outside. Usually I’m not listening to anything.

[00:39:24] I’m trying to be. Really just present to whatever, you know, like looking at birds, looking at the trees. Like I love that. I like to walk slow. My husband’s like a really fast walker, you know? So we laugh because like, he’ll, like, get ahead of me, and I’m like, honey, slow down. You know? Like, I love, I walk like, I’m like an old lady and, and I’m not mad about it.

[00:39:44] And it’s just fine. And then the other thing that I love is gardening. I became a gardener about a year ago, so this is my second season gardening. And if my hands are in the dirt, if I’m picking up bags of, you know, literal crap that’s going into my garden or flower pots or digging or carrying a hose, whatever, like just, I was outside all day this last Saturday, planting all my early spring stuff.

[00:40:10] And it was absolute heaven. Absolute heaven. Like, I, I just, I don’t think you can be a happy person and be indoors all the time. Like I think those two things are. They like, they cannot go exist. Do you agree or disagree?

[00:40:23] Kelly: I agree. I mean, it’s, it’s gonna be different for different people. Yeah. People have different things.

[00:40:27] Not

[00:40:27] Megan: that everybody needs to be a gardener. I mean, clearly, but you

[00:40:29] Kelly: know, but, so this is one of my favorite ideas, this like that nobody ever asked me about. So I feel like you’re queuing me up for this. Okay,

[00:40:35] Megan: great. I’m queuing you. I don’t even know what about, but let’s do it.

[00:40:38] Kelly: Yeah. Okay. So in psychology there’s been this understanding for, you know, the last maybe decade or two, that the human mind has a default state.

[00:40:48] Megan: Yes.

[00:40:49] Kelly: That tends to, when it’s left to its own devices, for many people, the default state is to worry, to mind wander in ways that are often unpleasant. So maybe you ruminate over past experiences, you’re replaying things like, what could I have done better? You’re creating scenarios about the future that aren’t great.

[00:41:07] You’re maybe being critical of yourself or of others. And there’s been a lot of thinking about how do you get people out of that default state if the default state is negative. If it’s rumination, it’s worrying. And uh, and being outdoors is one of the ways to do that. Exercise is another way to do that.

[00:41:25] This is my theory. I actually think the human mind has two different types of default states. There is this kind of rumination worrying that is the trying to like make sense and protect yourself default state, and it’s the one that people get stuck in. But I think there’s also a default state that is really about being in the world and having to be present because there’s a lot of opportunity and things to react to and maybe an activity that you’re engaged in that requires you to pay attention.

[00:41:58] Megan: Yes.

[00:41:58] Kelly: And I actually think that that is a default state of the human mind or brain, and most people experience it. As a tremendous relief. Yes. Compared to the default state of rumination and worrying and being in nature. I think that’s the context in which this other default state, like what it right, what it is made for.

[00:42:20] And so when you put yourself back in nature, and especially if you’re doing something like gardening where you also are engaging with the world or you’re, you open your senses to everything you can hear and see and smell like you were describing on a walk, you basically tap into this other default state.

[00:42:35] Yeah. And there’s some interesting research that, particularly for people who have really, you know, sometimes your mind is not a friendly place and people who really struggle with thoughts that are upsetting and unhelpful, that something as simple as going for a walk outdoors is one of the fastest ways to find relief.

[00:42:53] I believe that. So I definitely, I recommend that for folks.

[00:42:56] Megan: Okay. Here’s another example of this that is kind of a little bit, uh, out of the box. So like a week and a half ago. I’ve decided I wanna be a beekeeper. So I’m not sure if that’s gonna be this year or if that’s gonna be next year, but I, I, I’m just fascinated by, as a gardener, you know, it’s like adjacent.

[00:43:11] Mm-hmm. Because you need the pollinators and all that kind of stuff. Well, so I went out to the middle of nowhere to this beekeeping workshop for a day. Never been around bees in my life. Like, I mean, I got the little suit for Christmas, you know, feel goofy in it, the whole whole nine yards. I go out to this beekeeping workshop with this guy who, he has a a t-shirt on that says, don’t tread on bees.

[00:43:32] Like, don’t tread on me, but like, don’t tread on bees, you know? Mm-hmm. It’s like real corny sense of humor is great, but we’re out there and of course there’s a risk of being stung, you know, that which has a way of hyper focusing the mind. But what I realized, first of all, the way that he kept bees as opposed to like, another experience I had later in the week with a different set of, of folks was almost like the Tai chi of beekeeping.

[00:43:55] He moved in this almost like. You know how you see people doing Tai Chi at the park and they’re slow and like mm-hmm. It’s just very rhythmic and, and fluid. It was like, that’s like, he, he was like that with the bees. And what I noticed about myself, because I’m, I’m gesturing if you’re, if you’re listening and not watching, I’m pulling out this frame, which is like the little rectangle that has the honeycomb in it, has the bees on it, is that you can’t think about anything else but those bees, when you’re doing it, it’s not like you’re thinking about your to-do list or what you’re gonna make for dinner or there’s gonna be traffic or some war.

[00:44:29] Like, you literally can only think about the bees that are close to your fingertips and what are they doing. And that honeycomb right now, it’s amazing how, to me, these nature based experiences, particularly the ones that. Require a lot physically like that mm-hmm. Are so immersive. Like, that’s how I would describe it, is it’s just fully immersive.

[00:44:52] You cannot think about anything else when you’re doing it, even if you wanted to. It’s not a choice. You’re just totally fully focused. It’s wild. And

[00:45:00] Kelly: like a really nice thing to contrast that to would be the experience of like, scrolling on your phone.

[00:45:05] Megan: Yes. Yes.

[00:45:06] Kelly: And how really, like disembodied that is.

[00:45:09] Megan: Yeah.

[00:45:10] Kelly: And it’s a, it’s a focus in a different way. It’s like your attention gets locked in, but your actual engagement with life becomes so compressed and narrow. Yeah. So, you know, when you’re, when you’re doing something like you were describing with the beekeeping. Anything that, you know, a flow state by the way is actually a form of a stress state.

[00:45:30] It’s part of our stress response repertoire. It’s really healthy for you. It doesn’t look like a fight or flight response, but it is a form of a stress response. That flow state is really like saying, oh, here’s an opportunity to engage with life. Often it’s a task that requires me to bring some of my strengths and some of my energy, and it actually is one of those states when we were talking earlier about regulating your nervous system, like what are the, the types of things that create a nervous system that’s really good at engaging with life flexibly and recovering this type of a flow activity is a perfect example of that.

[00:46:04] You can, again, contrast that to some of the things we do that we think are stress relievers. ’cause they don’t ask anything of us like scrolling. Actually by not asking anything of us and also not really giving us anything, it becomes its own kind of stress state that is. Like a shut down.

[00:46:25] Michael: Mm-hmm.

[00:46:25] Megan: Yeah.

[00:46:25] Kelly: Something happens when we’re sedentary. You know, there’s a metabolism to not moving your body that is a kind of a stress state. It doesn’t look like a stress response the way I’m talking about it, but it’s a state that is not good for you to be in for a long period of time. If you are not engaging with life in a way that really asks something of you, your body and brain goes into the shutdown mode and you could feel it.

[00:46:49] And the more time you spend in it, you think you have no energy to do anything else, and it can become this kind of downward spiral. Hmm. So I often encourage people, they find themselves in that spiral where they’re feeling tired and more tired and more tired and more drained. And they notice that what they’re doing is an activity that asks nothing of them.

[00:47:07] Is there anything that you could do at home or interacting with somebody else that just asks a little bit more from you? And you might be surprised at how much energy that gives you or helps you reset your outlook.

[00:47:28] Michael: Listen, before we wind this down, we gotta talk about joy.

[00:47:31] Kelly: Mm-hmm.

[00:47:31] Michael: And you’ve got a new book coming out called Joy Is a Risk Worth Taking.

[00:47:35] Megan: Such a great title by the way. We love it so much.

[00:47:40] Kelly: I’m glad you love it. Could I just tell you where it came from, the title? Yes. Tell us.

[00:47:44] Michael: Yeah.

[00:47:44] Kelly: I’m teaching and talking about joy since I, um, about a decade now.

[00:47:51] The funny thing is whenever you teach about something, people will say they want it until you’re teaching a course on it, and then they give you all the reasons why it’s not actually possible or not a good idea. I, I experienced this also when I was really, um, focused on teaching empathy and compassion.

[00:48:06] People are like, oh, I wanna be compassionate person. Wait, what do you mean? I have to have compassion? Don’t you know that empathy is exhausting? And how can you have compassion for whatever situation? So the same thing happened with joy, and it was so interesting that as soon as you know, people say, oh, I want more joy, joy is good.

[00:48:23] Wait, joy, you want me to feel joy? Don’t you know the state of the world right now? It’s morally irresponsible to want or feel or show joy. Wow, or joy isn’t possible because the reality of my life is so difficult. There’s my capacity for joy is so diminished. Or the things that, that, you know, I, I confront the most often makes me the saddest is how can I let myself feel joy?

[00:48:49] That’s just inviting the world or the universe. Yeah. To take it away from me. Oh, that’s interesting. Or punish me. If I let myself feel it or show it or acknowledge what’s good in my life, I’m gonna lose it.

[00:49:01] Michael: Mm-hmm.

[00:49:02] Kelly: Was a superstition to be immersed in all of this resistance to joy. I kept finding myself saying, well, yeah, I know.

[00:49:09] It’s actually, I think people wanted me to say, joy is easy, joy is easy. Just do it. What are you talking about? And actually, no, I realize Joy really asks us to be brave. It asks us to value the things that bring us joy. It asks us to be vulnerable and admit that the things that bring us joy will also cause us pain if we lose them, and it requires us to be.

[00:49:39] Transparent to others, because joy is the emotion more than any other emotion that connects people. So anytime you’re feeling joy or showing joy or talking about joy, it’s like you, you are dissolving some of the protective boundaries that you have to other people, and you’re so much more likely to experience a state of connection and togetherness.

[00:50:00] So there’s so many ways that joy is a risk, and I decided, you know, we had to just say, just say, you know what? It’s a risk worth taking because joy is, you know, it’s the emotional capacity to be uplifted by things that are good, and that has absolute intrinsic value, especially when life is hard.

[00:50:18] Michael: Beautiful. You know, we’ve had Arthur Brooks on this show and talked about happiness. Mm-hmm. I would love to know how you differentiate between happiness, joy. Pleasure.

[00:50:28] Kelly: Yeah. First of all, I have to say almost everything that Arthur Brooks says I resonate with so deeply.

[00:50:33] Michael: Me too.

[00:50:34] Kelly: So I’m just gonna talk about this from a psychological science point of view, because actually I think probably I would agree with a lot of anything that that Brooks says about happiness.

[00:50:43] We may be talking about some of the same things, but in general, in psychology, happiness usually refers to people’s global assessment of how life is going. Hmm. So if I were to ask you, are you happy, most people start ticking through, how do I feel about work? How do I feel about family? Am I dealing with anything really difficult right now?

[00:51:03] Am I dealing with pain, loss, conflict? And most people when they say I’m happy, they’re making some kind of general assessment that life is going well. Now I don’t know about you. I spent a lot of time, maybe it’s ’cause I’m a psychologist. I spent a lot of time with people whose lives are not going well, and one of the reasons why I’m so interested in joy.

[00:51:27] Is because joy happens in moments. Mm. But there are these moments that, that create enough of a sense of, I matter, good things are possible. There’s beauty in the world. There’s something to look forward to. I can make a difference. I’m not alone. These moments of joy, they, they happen. They give us this, this immediate sense of an antidote to the feeling that life isn’t worth living.

[00:51:54] Michael: Mm-hmm.

[00:51:55] Kelly: And that’s different than a global assessment, that everything is going well in life. Joy is really just this emotion. It happens when you see something unexpectedly beautiful in nature, or someone thanks you and you feel appreciated, or you realize that you did something that really helped someone, or you laugh with someone.

[00:52:14] These moments of joy that we have, they just affirm the value of life. It’s essential function as an emotion is to shore up your enthusiasm for life. In general, and also the sense that your individual life matters. That you have something to offer that you are cared about. And I think that’s why I love joy so much as an emotion, because joy is absolutely possible even in situations that aren’t happy or when life is not going well.

[00:52:43] And I have to say, because I’ve been conducting surveys about joy for a long time, and I always ask people, tell me about a recent moment that brought you joy. Some of the moments that people share are so the opposite of happy and so the opposite of pleasure. For example, one person at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, he shared with me that one of the greatest moments of joy he’d ever had in his life.

[00:53:06] Was taking shelter from bombs with neighbors and the conversations they had in that moment because they were so intimate. Wow. And you felt so connected to them. That’s not a happy situation.

[00:53:17] Michael: Mm-hmm.

[00:53:17] Kelly: Another woman talked about taking care of her husband who is sick from chemotherapy, and feeling so much love for him and feeling so needed in that moment.

[00:53:25] That’s not a happy situation. It’s not particularly pleasurable. Again, I think that’s why joy to me is such a beautiful emotion because it’s almost like it’s our capacity to find a reason to live in any moment. The last thing since you mentioned pleasure. Pleasure actually is part of how joy works as an emotion.

[00:53:49] Joy activates the pleasure circuitry of the brain, which also is the relief circuitry of the brain. So sometimes it feels like relief more than it feels like an endorphin rush. So we need a capacity for pleasure in order to feel joy. Joy often comes like with a wash of feeling that you could describe as pleasurable in your body or warm or light.

[00:54:11] But the thing that makes joy different as an emotion from simple pleasures is it also activates the meaning system of your brain.

[00:54:19] Megan: Hmm.

[00:54:20] Kelly: And we sense the significance of the moment, even if you couldn’t articulate it intellectually. Like when you’re, you see a bird and it’s an adorable bird, and you just suddenly feel so.

[00:54:33] Just so uplifted or joyful to see that bird. It’s not like you ha can, you need to rationalize it, analyze the deep meaning of it, but you sense the significance of it. And that’s one of the things that makes joy a little bit different from some pleasures.

[00:54:46] Megan: I had this exact moment last week, I was drying my hair and my bathroom window looks right out into these big oak trees that are in front of my house.

[00:54:56] And I looked out the window. I, I’m kind of like a, a bird person. I wouldn’t say I’m a birder, but I like birds, you know? And there was a affiliated woodpecker pecking away at some like, um, rotting, like a rotting tree branch and broken off. Well, we have little woodpeckers all the time in our bird feeders, but like, probably three times in my life if I seen a affiliated woodpecker and I was like.

[00:55:17] So excited, so transfixed by this bird. I just stood there with my hair diffuser in one hand and like, look, peering out the window, you know, looking out the window. And I was like, oh my God, it’s a pileated woodpecker. You know? And I probably told everybody I saw for three days that I had seen the Pileated woodpecker.

[00:55:34] Like, it was so exciting. And you know, people are like rolling their eyes like, you’ve already told me this story, you know, three times actually, you know, and, but like it brought me so much joy that I’d seen the woodpecker.

[00:55:44] Kelly: This gives me a chance to give people the best piece of advice if they’re still listening and

[00:55:48] Megan: watching.

[00:55:48] Oh, good.

[00:55:49] Yes.

[00:55:49] Kelly: You’re getting the good stuff now.

[00:55:51] Megan: Okay,

[00:55:51] Kelly: because you just told me now, I don’t know if you, you might’ve been joking about this, but I’m gonna take this totally seriously. You said that you would tell people about this and some people maybe rolled their eyes.

[00:56:02] Megan: Yeah.

[00:56:03] Kelly: This is the best piece of advice I can give you about how to increase the joy in your life, is to meet joy with joy.

[00:56:09] Megan: Ooh.

[00:56:10] Kelly: If anybody expresses joy to you. About anything that is remotely wholesome, healthy, positive, right? That they, something good happened to them. There’s something they love that they’re enthusiastic about, something that made them laugh or smile to. Let yourself catch their enthusiasm.

[00:56:30] Megan: Hmm.

[00:56:30] Kelly: And to see it as an absolutely beautiful expression of humanity and who they are and an opportunity to connect with them.

[00:56:37] Like, wouldn’t you have loved it if every person you told about that bird was like, that is amazing. Did you get a picture?

[00:56:42] Megan: Yeah.

[00:56:42] Kelly: And if you had a picture that you wanted to see it. No, I didn’t get the picture. I know. But would you have loved it if somebody had asked Yes. Because they cared so much about your happiness.

[00:56:51] Megan: Totally.

[00:56:51] Kelly: So this is, this is literally the best. I think this is the best piece of advice I’ve ever given on any topic, is to really meet joy with joy.

[00:57:00] Megan: Mm.

[00:57:00] Kelly: People. And I think this probably comes from having spent so many years teaching people to meet other people suffering with compassion.

[00:57:07] Megan: Hmm.

[00:57:07] Kelly: Right.

[00:57:07] People do not wanna be alone in their pain. I think most people know that. People do not understand that people do not wanna be alone in their joy either,

[00:57:17] Megan: huh?

[00:57:17] Kelly: People desperately want other people. To affirm the significance, the value or the meaning of the things that bring them meaning, yes. Or that lift them up.

[00:57:27] And there’s nothing that helps us feel so connected or seen as when somebody else is happy for our happiness or is delighted by the fact that we are delighted and and shares in that with us. It’s such a validating experience and a moment of true connection. So I say, look for the next opportunity. When somebody shares something good with you, let yourself be moved by that and don’t ever roll your eyes.

[00:57:51] So

[00:57:52] Megan: good. I love it.

[00:57:53] I

[00:57:53] Megan: love it.

[00:57:54] Michael: And for those of you listening that are people of faith, you know there’s a verse in the Bible that says, rejoice with those who rejoice and grieve with those who grieve.

[00:58:01] Megan: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:58:02] Michael: And so beautiful. Well, Kelly, this has been joyful. We’ve loved this conversation with you. If people wanted to begin to engage more with your work, where would you suggest they start?

[00:58:13] You’ve got several books.

[00:58:13] Kelly: Yeah, the books are the things I, you could always just Google me for all these podcast interviews, but really the books are the thing, and every book that I write, I try to make it a message of encouragement that makes you feel like you understand yourself better. Mm-hmm. And also.

[00:58:31] You have some new ideas and some new tools that are gonna really help you do what matters most in your life and be the version of yourself you want to bring to the world. So,

[00:58:40] Megan: well, thank you so much for being with us. This has been truly delightful. Truly delightful. Thank you.

[00:58:56] Michael: Well, that was fun.

[00:58:57] Megan: That was so fun.

[00:58:58] Michael: I love the conversation about joy.

[00:59:01] Megan: Me too.

[00:59:01] Michael: You know, I think, uh, it’s not something I think about, but I feel like I experience a lot of joy in my life.

[00:59:07] Megan: Hmm.

[00:59:07] Michael: Part of it is that I think at my age, you know, the grandkids are an endless source of delight, which is, by the way, another word we should have asked her about.

[00:59:16] Megan: Oh yeah.

[00:59:16] Michael: But just the simple things in life, you know, I used to think I had to travel, you know, to amazing places and all that, to experience joy. But I get so much of that just in the ordinary course of life, and I think it’s just looking for it.

[00:59:27] Megan: One of the things that I know can happen, at least for me when I experience a lot of stress or when I’m in distress, is that I notice things that are good less.

[00:59:39] Mm-hmm. You know, it’s like the threat detection part of my brain is aroused and like, it’s like hyperactive, you know? And I feel like I’ve been talking about therapy a lot because, you know, I’m back in therapy and, oh,

[00:59:51] Michael: I didn’t know that.

[00:59:51] Megan: I didn’t. Yeah, it’s been really helpful. And one of the things that I was talking about, because I’ve, I’ve had some hard personal things in the last, you know, six months or so, and my therapist was, led me through this exercise of noticing.

[01:00:04] Joy, like noticing good things.

[01:00:06] Michael: Mm.

[01:00:07] Megan: And so she had me literally like, list something and then like come up with something in my mind and then feel it in my body. Like what do you notice in your body when you think about that? Like I talked about the ated woodpecker that had not already happened at my last therapy session.

[01:00:21] Or it would’ve for sure shown up in my therapy session. But you know, she would’ve been like, where does this, where does this, you know, feel this in your body? And I would be like, oh, I feel like tingly in my face. You know? And she’d be like, great, you know, stay with that or whatever. And she was just saying that there is this intentional practice of noticing good things.

[01:00:40] Because what happens a lot of times is stress is like your window narrows. Mm. And you see only the negative things. Yes. And not the positive things. And so I think that this sort of like intentional cultivation of joy that Kelly was talking about is a way of doing that. Being really attentive, like paying attention to things that bring us joy and like high fiving each other when we do, you know, like you saw the woodpecker, yay.

[01:01:07] You know,

[01:01:09] Michael: I didn’t even know what a affiliated woodpecker was.

[01:01:11] Megan: Okay, lemme tell you. I have to tell you. And you’re, and you’re gonna get to practice being excited for me. This is gonna be great. It’s a woodpecker that’s literally like the size of a duck. I’m not kidding. What? Okay. So it’s probably like eight to 10 inches tall.

[01:01:24] Of course a woodpecker is vertical like on a tree. Right. You know, it’s not like a duck, like on the water. Like it’s vertical. Like it’s like a dinosaur sized

[01:01:32] Michael: woodpecker. Like who’s a woodpecker?

[01:01:33] Megan: Like Yes. Like, you know when you see the little woodpeckers that you’re your bird feeder, they’re like the size of a hot dog bun.

[01:01:39] Right? Yeah. Okay. Now this is like the size of like a giant loaf of sourdough. Like it is, it is a big bird. Okay. And it is just so cool.

[01:01:49] Michael: Well, I’m excited for you. Do you have a picture?

[01:01:51] Megan: Uh, I don’t have a picture. If I did, I would share it with you. No, but seriously, I mean, I think this practice of noticing things.

[01:01:59] That give us joy and, and like for me, I know I need to be in my garden and I need to be outside. If I’m gonna be well as a person, like I gotta be doing those things.

[01:02:09] Michael: Well, you know, we’ve said for years, and we probably got this from Tony Robbins or somebody, but you get more of what you focus on.

[01:02:15] Megan: Right.

[01:02:16] Michael: And unfortunately, the way that our brains work for our survival is that we tend to focus on threats and things that are dangerous.

[01:02:23] Megan: Right, right.

[01:02:23] Michael: And this is why leaders often can’t celebrate their success.

[01:02:27] Megan: Yeah.

[01:02:28] Michael: Because like it’s in the rear view mirror and all the threats are in front of them. And so it’s easy to focus on that.

[01:02:33] And one of the first things that I did when I got into therapy for the time three years ago was this practice of orienting.

[01:02:41] Megan: Yes.

[01:02:42] Michael: Very similar,

[01:02:42] Megan: right?

[01:02:43] Michael: Where you just start noticing things that are in the present. Yeah. And it takes you out of the future. And Joy does the same thing. Yeah. Joy’s a very present, orienting emotion.

[01:02:53] Megan: Yeah. Well that’s how I felt with the bees. You know, like as I was standing out there that day, like last Saturday with my, my little bee frame, you know, with all the bees on it, I was like, this is all I’m doing. Like, I’m just, I’m watching these bees and like, what is more fascinating than these bees? Like, I couldn’t even get over it.

[01:03:10] Michael: Well, as we learned from Elizabeth Stanley, her book Widening the Window, that part of what stress can do for us if we accept it and use it is to increase our capacity for resilience.

[01:03:22] Megan: Yeah.

[01:03:23] Michael: And so that, like here I am at age 70 and I don’t get as panicked as I used to. You know, when things happen, it’s just more like, okay, you know, I’ve survived similar situations.

[01:03:35] I’ll probably survive this too.

[01:03:36] Megan: I was telling you, I had a stressful experience earlier in the week, and I have this little jar in my bedroom that I keep, like on a little table, and it’s full of rocks that I picked up at, um, Stinson Beach in, uh, in California on a trip there with Joel. And it’s all these like little smooth rocks that are about the size of like a silver dollar or something.

[01:03:55] And I have a white label on the front of it that says things that worked out. And I, I had for a while made a habit of just like all the, every time something worked out that I didn’t think was gonna work out, I put a rock in that jar. You know,

[01:04:08] Michael: what a great patch.

[01:04:09] Megan: And I had another, another jar that said things that didn’t work out, which was empty.

[01:04:14] And not that I have it, by the way, if you, if you know anything about my story, it’s not because I haven’t had hard things. I’ve had a lot of hard things happen, a lot of hard things, a lot of hard things. Um, so this is not coming from someone who’s had no trauma, but I picked it up. And I and I, and it’s, you know, it’s heavy.

[01:04:30] So it has this great like, tactile kind of component and it was like such a good reminder of resilience just to be like, oh, the hard things work out. And if they haven’t been worked out yet, it’s, you know, it’s not the end. You know what, who, who is it that says that if it,

[01:04:44] Michael: I don’t know, but it’s said, it may have been Max Cato, but he said,

[01:04:47] Megan: yeah.

[01:04:48] Michael: You know, everything works out in the end and if it hasn’t worked out, it’s not the end.

[01:04:51] Megan: Yeah. And a lot of us are in the middle of a hard story that feels like it’s the end of a story, but it’s not the end of a story.

[01:04:58] Michael: Well, and we’ve often said to each other and to our customers and our clients, and our listeners said, all of us have survived a hundred percent of the hard things we’ve gone through.

[01:05:08] Megan: Yeah.

[01:05:08] Michael: And our track record is perfect. So why would we think that we’re not gonna survive this next thing? And I mean, I get that there’s ultimately we’re gonna die and there’s bad things that happen and all that. But even the bad things I was sharing, you know, when I went bankrupt in the early nineties.

[01:05:22] That’s not one something I’d wanna relive, but it’s also something I wouldn’t trade because

[01:05:27] Megan: Yeah, it’s weird, isn’t it?

[01:05:27] Michael: Yeah. It’s weird because the, the, the good things that came out of that, in terms of my own empathy

[01:05:33] Megan: Yeah.

[01:05:33] Michael: In terms of, you know, stretching my resilience in terms of learning who my friends were and who they weren’t.

[01:05:40] It turned out I had more friends than I thought.

[01:05:42] Megan: Yeah.

[01:05:42] Michael: More people that were willing to step up and help. Yeah. You know, it was an amazing experience.

[01:05:46] Megan: Yeah.

[01:05:46] Michael: Well, we’ll have all of Kelly’s books in the show notes so you guys can go pick ’em up and start wherever you want. Yes. She’s got several, but man, I’ve loved this time with

[01:05:56] Megan: her.

[01:05:56] Well, thank

[01:05:56] Michael: you. And

[01:05:57] Megan: please go to Amazon right now and pre-order Kelly’s book. Joy is a risk worth taking. Um, if you don’t know. Pre-ordering a book is huge for an author in getting their book notice like, and people need this message, especially right now. So help Kelly out and help yourself out. Go pre-order this book on Amazon.

[01:06:15] It doesn’t come out till October, but as soon as we’re done here, I’m pre-ordering my copy

[01:06:19] Michael: a hundred percent. Okay, guys, I have one quick favor to ask of you, and it’s not to rate and review the podcast, which we’ve asked almost at the end of every podcast. I just wanna encourage you to share this episode with somebody that you think would benefit from it.

[01:06:32] It’s that simple. Just pass along with Joy. I

[01:06:34] Megan: love to share a podcast, don’t you?

[01:06:36] Michael: I do too.

[01:06:36] Megan: I shared a couple with you this week. I mean, I’m just like, I just love to share a podcast.

[01:06:40] Michael: Well, the one I listened to, which was amazing.

[01:06:42] Megan: Yeah.

[01:06:42] Michael: And I shared it with the people.

[01:06:43] Megan: That’s right. Please

[01:06:45] Michael: keep the love flowing.