Become Unstressable - Mo Gawdat and Alice Law

0:00Did you know, as staggering 70 to 90 % of all non-emergency doctor visits in the US are now linked to stress. Let that sink in for a moment. Stress has become an epidemic and it's taking a massive toll on our mental and physical well-being. But here's the good news, it doesn't have to be this way. What if you could learn to not just manage stress but to become unstressable? That's exactly what we're exploring in today's episode and I couldn't be more excited to dive in with two absolute experts on this topic, Mo Gordat and Alice Law. Mo is the former chief business officer of Google X and the author of Solve for Happy, and he's on a mission to help 1 billion people find joy.

0:48Alice is a renowned stress management consultant who's worked with top organizations and individuals around the world. She's the host of the Unstressable podcast and co-author of their new book on this topic. Together, Mo and Alice bring a wealth of experience and insight to this critical issue. In our wide-ranging conversation, we cover everything from the physical symptoms of stress and burnout to the mental impact of constant pressure. We debunk the dangerous myth that stress is a badge of honour, or the price to pay for success. And we discuss how to employ the right amount of stress. Good stress, useful stress.

1:30As Mo put it, there is a gearbox between the pressure that you apply and the feeling of stress. Fix the gearbox so that when you apply the pressure, it results in productivity and growth and success and innovation and all of those other things. It doesn't result in burnout and collapse and panic attacks. While at the end of the day, stress management isn't a productivity hack. I mean not everything has to be a productivity hack. If other people and your business rely on you, you need to make sure you can be relied on. And that starts with making sure you're at your best and not dealing with chronic stress.

2:10I had a great time speaking with Alice and Mo and I can't wait for you to hear this conversation. So let's get to it. My conversation with the wonderful Mo Gordat and the lovely Alice Law. Let's go. Okay, so, well, I have a first question, but the almost more pertinent one to say is, started in what might have been a more stressful scenario, running a bit late, trains were late, etc. You definitely didn't look stressed. You definitely didn't. Yeah, it's a brain defect. On brand, on brand. Apologetic, yes, but not stressed. that's good respect i felt like there was a little bit of stress on your face a little bit it was because i hadn't looked in the mirror since 6 a.m and i was like oh dear i should probably check someone's gonna look at me now okay fine i also really needed the bathroom so i was like you know that was always a bit of stress there wasn't there wasn't a chapter on toilet training there is a certain level of stress that happens when you're a first time first number one bestseller so she just made bestseller for the first time yesterday and uh the road to that is actually quite stressful so you have to give it you have to give her respect for you know sustaining this so far and just just so we understand dopamine hits now that you've been a number one bestseller multiple times you just don't give a fuck anymore right you're like oh it happened again i i oh it's wednesday yeah i honestly and truly never judge anything as good for me or bad for me what about the first time what about the first time you never really know right so you could become a first seller a first time bestseller and that would destroy your life and it happened to many to so many people there are so many people like yours i mean it's been going downhill ever it's not great it's not going well i'm happy with it i'll take this life anytime but you see there is there is a lot to learn about not celebrating or not um you know condemning anything other than really fully and you know completely immersing yourself in it and living it i you know you never really know what is good for you becoming a bestseller now i think this book specifically was delayed a year and a half and throughout the process Alice of course having put so much effort in it a bit longer yeah no I mean more than more than normal like in books normally take a year to come out after you've finished them and and yeah and it came out at the perfect time like really this is the absolute perfect time for Unstressable and it reminds me a little bit of that I think is a Persian parable, the we shall see.

4:53Yeah. You know, it's in every culture. It's Chinese, it's Persian, it's, you know, Turkish, it's everywhere. Yeah. Not English. English is, this is shit. It's like, this is bad. Why haven't we seen yet? It's supposed, we're supposed to see at 1.44. It's like late, very late. Why am I not a best seller yet? But congratulations. Oh, thank you. Not to Mo, obviously. Oh, come on. But congratulations to you. Congratulations to you. Congratulations. She put in most of the effort. How does it feel? It's still not sunk in yet in a nice way because we're still on the joyful, just meeting so many people every day, which is so nice.

5:29But it's nice to actually see it in people's hands. It's a strange feeling because we've, yeah. I actually have to say what is really brilliant about this is because books normally take time to ramp up there. This one really shipped into the number one spot on Amazon. and so accordingly a lot of people got it at the same time. I have to admit I am so pleased with the feedback so far. You know, we went on the Chris Evans show yesterday morning. I mean, that will do it. He was so fab. He was amazing. Like he basically said this might be one of the top five books I've ever read. He made so many notes.

6:10Exactly. The whole thing was all over his book. And so that really as an author is what you look for. What you look for is like, did it work? Because I will tell you openly, I hate all of the books I write. And I think every author does. You just eventually go to the audio book and you're recording it. And you go like, why did I say that? Why did I not say it this way? Why didn't I add that paragraph? Why is this repeated twice in the book? And you just constantly find things that you think you can improve a little. It is a lot of responsibility to release something that people will read and it will be part of, you know, part of you somehow.

6:45Yeah. but but to find that so many people are happy with it i think is very rewarding and do you suffer a little bit from the you know the issue of expertise which is as soon as you become the expert in the thing you're like well everyone knows that do you really need to say that that everyone knows that yeah and i have that all i literally have it all the time we have that conversation because i was like i said this to you the other day i was like well i don't know if i said enough then you were like well i think you don't realize how much anyone who's actually you've been doing how many hours in a field, right?

7:13I must've done over 10 ,000 hours in stress management now more, thousands. But you just forget that actually one sentence that changed your mindset five years ago is the sentence that will change someone's now that you think is like so whatever. And repetition. Like my friends that think I'm like, I don't know, they take the piss out of me because I still read lots of self-help books, but I'm quite far in that journey. This is in many ways, I'd say a self-help book. and I know most of the stuff in here actually because of what I do in my field, right? And we met like years ago as well, like, you know, similar fields and interest areas and stuff, so I know a lot of the stuff.

7:50But when people would say that stuff to me, I'm like, well, I still suffer from all the problems that I'm learning about in all the books. So until I don't, I haven't absorbed the lessons. And the only way that you really absorb those lessons is continue learning and practicing. And until I'm there, I need to keep reading them and reinforcing. And I think that's like the right way to approach self-help if you are well perfectly like mo like philosophically zen and understanding there is no good there's no bad or whatever there's still plenty to learn but as we discussed yesterday you're at least a year older than me it's funny you bring that up i mean just for everyone to understand i had a horribly stressful week last week right there is there is an an an an incredible approach in the west to perfection which never really happens okay you see that the idea is when we when we promise that you become unstressable this is sort of like the aspiration it's not something you'll you'll get at the end of the book you'll get when you constantly make being unstressable your aspiration right and you get closer and closer and closer and closer to it and then you know i'm i'm going through a very tough personal time because of my mom's you know health condition and because of a sort of an unethical business deal that I found myself the you know the victim of and you know and you have to somehow still stop and tell yourself okay I'm not unstressable today right but the game is how do I come back from that state of like this is way too much to becoming unstressed and how quickly does it take you yeah yeah okay what are the different types of stress and how boring is it for you to still have to tell people like it's new it's funny we were talking about this earlier because someone's like is there any good stress and so that good type of stress is you stress right eu stress and that is the stuff that actually makes us perform better it's supposed to can't go on and come off it's your natural fight or flight response charges you ought to be superhuman a threat's alerted let's run away or fight, deal with it.

10:02Adrenaline, cortisol, curses through your veins and you get reconfigured to be able to deal with it. And you're essentially put into survival mode. And a little bit of that just before you need to run a race or stand on stage and speak or have a deadline that you know is due, say in like two days time, and you know it's going to end then. It goes on and comes off. It's actually good. I do believe that because it's coming back off. And in that moment, it makes you be like, okay, you know what? I'll do this. Great. I'll speak a bit better. I'll, you know get that deadline done but then the opposite of that is stress the chronic stress that we live in all the time as modern society and that is the stress that simmers in the background and just keeps our system on flooding us with cortisol slowly over time or or you know full on but like continually dripping in and chronic stress is the silent killer of our happiness and health i truly believe that and it's debilitates us when it's over time it doesn't make us superhuman it makes us ill it makes us you know a list of things we can go into but it makes us perform less better yeah i feel like it's sort of like people have had this epiphany around inflammation in the body and how connected that is to uh various diseases it feels like stress is very much that sort of trigger yeah that i guess emotional version of it yeah i mean 70 to 90 percent of all non-emergency doctors related visits in the u.s alone is somehow now linked to stress which is i mean that's just crazy you think about it because of information like you say because of the emotional reasons for why that illness has arrived and or and the physical but it's mad so there's good stress there's bad stress typically audience on secret leaders business and entrepreneurs what kind of stress do you think they generally are working from a place of For those, it's horrible stress.

11:49Yeah, exactly. That's right. Excellent. I have to admit, I mean, I did achieve quite a bit in the business world in my life. And a lot of people don't realize that. It's not because I subjected myself or my team to stress at all. Look, life is generous with the stressors it will send your way, right? You don't have to create synthetic stress on top of that. And I think there is a misunderstanding in management and entrepreneurship that we, you know, because a bit of stress is going to squeeze 10 % more of my performance, I might as well find a way to simulate that or to, you know, to produce that artificially, if you want.

12:35and my favorite boss at Google when I started, which was a very harsh, very tough manager. I always had a conversation with him end of every January saying, can we please stop the synthetic stress, right? I mean, the business in itself is just giving us enough stress. And his view was like, yeah, but you guys are coming back from holiday and everyone is so relaxed and so on. And I would simply say, look if if you think that we're relaxed by the end of january you've hired wrong okay don't don't stress us fire us honestly right and and this the thing is this the thing is um there are so many other modes of operation in an organization that are so much more productive than stress right Stress is basically you pushing the RPM of your engine to 9 ,000 RPM to get a few more horsepowers out of it.

13:34You could install a turbocharger, and the turbocharger is teamwork. You could install a turbocharger, and the turbocharger is a state of flow where people are allowed to actually be doing their best. You could install a turbocharger, which is fantastic teamwork because people are not cursing each other because they are hyper stressed and and somehow because these require more talented leaders pushing and adding a little bit of stress requires a good manager and and i have to say with respect that there is a big difference between the two right that that you know and i i would probably say any manager can be an annoying manager that's that's not a skill right and it's it's the easiest way to squeeze 5 % more.

14:19If you really want to build beautiful, sustainable, creative, innovative, growing business, you may want to give up the 5 % extra and allow that environment where you get 100 % every now and then. That basically doubles your business, right? And I know there is a lot of talk that stress is good for you, but that doesn't mean you should go out seeking it. It basically means when it's there, use it for as long as it's good for you, by the way, which is half a day, you know, an overnight one time because you have a proposal coming or a review coming or whatever. But don't make that the habit of the organization.

14:59You'll kill the organizations. Basically, if you keep that engine at 9000 RPM all the time, it will melt. And that's really what happens to us through burnout, you know, and through all the anxiety and panic and so on that we get. Yeah, I'm reading a really interesting book at the moment, now that I've finished yours, obviously, called Winning Not Fighting. And it's essentially like the concept of it is in the 60s, for some reason, a bunch of management consultants picked up The Art of War and said, this is the business book that everyone in business needs to read. And so all business suddenly became about taking war parables from a book that certainly has this hilarious chapter of pretending he's Sun Tzu writing this, hoping that corporations in the 20th century will eventually adopt a war philosophy.

15:48But, you know, he talks like, you know, in a very animated and clear way how that philosophy has permeated throughout business. And war is stressful. Like, you know, I'm sure there are ways of making war unstressable. and I'm sure these are possibilities, but the idea of making that the cultural identity of organizations and companies and competitiveness, right? And so his whole thing is about, you know, teaching it through peace and winning and like non-adversarial and this thing called Wing Chew, which is a martial art. But anyway, it really struck me because I was like, that is a fascinating thing, isn't it?

16:23That culturally, everyone would say this actually will drive growth. 100%. Because if we're all aggressive with each other, it will drive growth and that will create a culture of, like you just said, my manager being able to stress me. And that perfectly fits into a really big, broad philosophy of the art of war. Yeah. So I openly remind me because I actually read the art of war when I was a young junior salesman. Yeah. You know, just becoming a manager. Because everyone tells you to. Yeah. And I really struggle to understand where's the relevance. You know, of course, you think about competitors and beating the competition and so on.

16:58that's a stupid mind mindset that basically means you chose a marketplace that is you know already you know saturated and you didn't innovate within it at all and now you're competing like how stupid is that like why don't you find the blue ocean somewhere create something new that benefits the world and you know and and basically wait for the orders to come in because you really you created something amazing well also philosophically there's win and help win you can totally win and help others win and and the pie gets bigger that's the whole point the other side that most you know corporates or corporate managers i will always use the term uh don't understand is the cost of that win right it's the cost of the extra five percent uh you know the cost of of of squeezing 5 to 10 percent more from your entire team is attrition is you know costs of health care is basically them hating everything and so not fully engaging it's the lack of creativity and innovation it's the you know the feelings of helplessness that i can't you know do anything in this organization i'm just a gear in the machine and and you need to calculate the cost of all of this because in all honesty, when we at Google had this 20 % time thing, people were like, are you stupid?

18:19Like 20 % of your salaries are going to waste. And we were like, no, even if they don't produce anything in 20 % time, by the way, they still work 120. Like nobody at the end of the quarter comes and says, I missed my OKRs because I was working on a 20 % project. They still achieve 100 % of their OKRs. and then basically give us the 20 % more for free. And the 20 % more makes them so excited to come to work to finish the 100 % so that they can put in the time. When we come back, we'll explore which ideas are resonating most with readers and which ones are proving more challenging to accept. From the physical and mental toll of chronic stress to the dangerous myth that pressure is the price of success.

19:09so you've both got very different um experiences of this so i want to hear the answer from both of you in your like day-to-day work there will be so you like just to make it clearer you used to work at google massive organization now you have your own team so you're the boss and so you go around the world doing speaking gigs and hanging out and sipping on lattes and notting hill with me actually neither of us doing any work but you know that's besides the point there's a variety of things and you actually do plenty of like corporate work and consulting with big companies and everything else so what are the most common areas of interest where people are like yeah we really need this like totally get you alice and what are the ones where people are like such bullshit i mean funnily like i think i think alice says is ever bullshit no the bullshit question was to mo everyone's just like why is he just talking bullshit all the time exactly no every every every company and it's valuable to get both sides of this right because those are two different environments so what parts of unstressable are really resonating with people in the messages and what parts actually seem like well you know but what if yeah i think a surprising part that's been resonating recently which is makes me super happy is emotional stress side and having that translate to actually companies and you know executive ceos actually realizing that their physical stress is emotional because they haven't processed that so that that whole side is really interesting because of how quickly you can turn around a physical symptom of stress if it is emotions that you have suppressed for so long and a bit like body keeps the score stuff yeah it is but it's it's actually like also so you know with your emotions for example whatever you suppress it doesn't go away it just sits you know what you resist persists as they say and it will sit simmering in the background and it's very common for like you know executive ceos entrepreneurs keep going keep going suppress keep going not doing that moving away from stress they harness it all in the body and eventually the body's like hello actually i'm trying to show you need to release this emotion so it'll wave at you having all these aches and pains and then when you do some emotional release work whether it's like energy work or actual emotional work all those pains go away in a few days or an hour and people are oh that's interesting I've been seeing a physiotherapist for six months and it hasn't done anything well yeah no joke because it wasn't about that so that side of actually people understanding the importance of their emotional language how if you are a leader in a business you cannot actually lead well unless you've got emotional intelligence to understand how your own emotions are managing but how you can actually translate that to your team how that filters in to really create a lot of stress and that's been surprisingly actually twisting in a nice way recently because you just would think like logical, logical, logical.

21:48It's been quite opening to see that. How gendered is that, by the way? Well, surprisingly, it's like men who are actually really open to this. That's what's really surprised me. That man? Visibly. I think that actually makes a lot of sense because if you're a woman in the corporate space, you're trying to compete with men by outmanning them. Sadly, this is the reality. The whole bossy thing. Yeah. Yeah. And it's amazing to see because, yeah, that connection of actually thinking, okay, well, if that changes that, then I should really deal with that. It's a really nice light bulb moment. But the resistance piece, I think, has still been partly, I don't have time.

22:25You know, I'm so busy. I don't have time to do this. I don't have time to not stress. I don't have time to not stress because I'm too busy being stressed. And the irony of that is just so funny. And so, obviously, you know, we make time for what's important to us. and you have to think okay well is it important for me to not end up in hospital is it important for me to actually get the most out of my team to be happy to not have burnouts to enjoy my family and my work at the same time you'd hope everyone's answers to that would be like yes it is important but there's still a resistance piece I think because there's a common misconception in the narrative that to do stress management to do any of this work you need two hours a day and that's just not true you know everyone has five ten fifteen minutes and those little increments can make huge shifts and when you actually put that in as a priority then you see huge changes okay so all right i'll go to i'll get to mo's answer first if it's any different in your environments um i yeah i find that it's uh it's quite the shock the real shocking thing for me and i have to say it's maybe because of being of being spoiled at the early google is how convinced managers are of the value of stress, right?

23:37How much they believe that they actually have a skill to stress people. Like, hey, look at me. I'm so talented. I make everyone's life horrible, right? And it's not a secret how many organizations we've spoken to that had a case of suicide at the C-level, right? That's not a joke. Like when you really think about someone who is so fundamental as a role model for the entire organization, who comes to work every day, who is engaged fully, it seems, right? Who you discover afterwards is just unable to cope. And how do we let it go that far? And, you know, how does it affect the rest of the team? It's quite eye-opening for me, honestly.

24:25And it is, the thing that I try to tell people diplomatically is, by the way, annoying people and stressing them is not a skill. Like, really shape up. You need other skills. You need, you know, a leader. We're talking about secret leaders. I love the title because leaders are normally secret, right? They're not the ones that are standing behind and poking everyone in the bum so that they move faster, right? A leader is someone who is so charismatic and has a vision and believes in what he's doing that he doesn't have to push anyone at all. That if he says we're taking that mountain and starts to run to it like an idiot, everyone follows.

25:07This is the skill. This is what we need to develop. And how amazing is it if you could achieve the actual result without really having to annoy anyone at all? How amazing is it that at the end of the mission, everyone's like, man, that was so joyful. Like we loved every bit of it. It's funny for me because it really is just a change of mindset. If you're that skilled and capable to become a leader in an organization, with a tiny bit of a mindset, you can also be an amazing leader in that organization and make it a wonderful, successful, energized, innovative place to be. Do you think that what you just described is an unstressable organization?

25:53I think it's an unnecessarily stressable. How do you say that in proper English? Unnecessarily stressable. It's an organization that is only stressable by the external forces of the marketplace, not by its own doing. I don't know how to say that. That's the next book. It'll be great. Yeah, because the truth is, as I always say, life will throw stressors at you. There is nothing in Unstressable that tells you, and here are 14 tricks to stop life from stressing you. Life will continue to stress you. It's just the skills of stop manufacturing stressors. And, by the way, so many of those stressors you can actually stop or reduce or limit tomorrow.

26:37And here is the skill to deal with the remaining ones. here's a personal challenge that i've i found in life i'm wondering if it relates so i can read unstressable and i can get a lot of the lessons out of it and hopefully avoid that's the whole point of being a good teacher a good communicator is helping other people avoid mistakes and be healthier and have a happier path to success or fulfillment or whatever whatever that promise is um but in my life i've overcome multiple different mental health challenges most of which not very helpful and I don't feel like I need to overcome them um to become a better person there are more obstacles that get in your fucking way that you're desperate to get over however the difference is the one that I would say is a very very valuable teacher was burnout because and I got it when I was 27 um and I was in bed for a month basically I just could not get out of bed one day and it felt very much like I had COVID in 2020 and it was very similar very similar feeling as in I when I had COVID I was like my god this is exactly how I felt with burnout um and I don't think most uh please correct me if I'm wrong I don't think most busy self-involved egotistical I'm incredible like you know mission-driven founders like we all paint ourselves up to be um which of course we're none of those things but we like to tell ourselves with these things because we have to believe in ourselves because you're trying to make other people believe in you too i feel like for some reason you just have to be stupid enough to go through the experience yourself feel it experience it be like oh okay it turns out by working 25 hours out of every 24 i i then had to take a whole month off what's the lesson well the lesson is that was pretty stupid and obvious yeah on reflection and i've never done it since right now really very healthy work-life balance ever since i don't like the time work-life balance just life i've got a good sense of pace ever since because I experienced something.

28:36So the question is, you know, how much can we actually accumulate real insight in our lives through reading about the thing versus having to go through the thing? I think, you know, experience is the greatest teacher in the world. But if you use the lesson, you don't let the lesson use you. And the difference between that is when you actually learn from it when it's beginning rather than when it's actually broken you to the point of okay you burnt out for a month right but you said you haven't burnt out since then and you were young enough to bounce back from it if someone is a leader who's like continually getting themselves to a point that like you know they're in their 50s you have to be realistic can you survive a heart attack in your 50s sometimes not like you can't survive a heart attack in your 20s and you know i lost my dad to stress related illness from a burst stomach ulcer that accumulated and you know burst and caused internal complications he'd been under stress for seven years and it had been wearing him down in different ways was it having a daughter I 100 % it's me it's 100 % all me you're doomed okay good good to know right let me read this again but you know the difference is is you know if you see that this has happened to you and you think right I never want to go into that place again then that's amazing because you've managed to return from it but if actually life keeps nudging you to the point where it's trying to give you a little bit of a stronger reminder because you're not getting it yet a little bit more a little bit more and then it completely takes you out you're never going to win the lesson if that makes sense so I think it's really important to decipher like when you actually need to be aware to start paying attention and so much so often we run through life completely ignoring what it's trying to show us with stress with any health situation until it's completely you know uncombackable that's not even a word our English is I'm learning that neither of you was responsible for the title great title neither of you capable of writing it yeah so the the the analogy is quite interesting then because you're almost saying the only way to learn how to avoid an accident is to have one right well i'm saying that that's stupid i'm questioning yeah and hopefully that is not so i i think i think the best way to learn because of course a lot of us want to learn from experience but the smarter ones learn from others experiences too so you count the falling bodies and tell yourself why did this one fall why did that one fall and and and and interestingly you'll you learn in the process, right?

30:55There are layers of challenges to being unstressable. The first of which is a state of awareness that you're actually stressed. So many of us reach burnout because we think we can take it, right? There is a level of awareness of like, so what? I have a headache for the last three months. So what? That's fine. For the bigger dream of being a unicorn, it's worth it right you know and and and you don't even you don't even acknowledge to yourself that you're stressed that's number one number two is a level of conviction that stress is a reasonable tax to pay like it's fine i'm stressed right that means i'm on the right path as a matter of fact like alice wrote in the in unstressable it's a it's a badge of honor to wear oh how wonderful look at me i'm busy i'm valuable right i'm stressed and and if you're in any of those stages you haven't even come close to working on it, right?

31:49The third stage is, oh, by the way, I'm stressed and I'm getting crappy advice. So I acknowledge I'm stressed. I actually refuse that I'm stressed. You know, there is a layer that basically says, oh, but I can't do anything about it. No, you also have to acknowledge that you can do something about it. And then there is a layer that says, do the right thing, not any crappy advice. And then, you know, it's not a long vacation or the Christmas party that's going to remove the stress, right? And then there is a layer of, and commit to that practice, like going to the gym, right? You know, I can openly tell you now secret.

32:25If you eat healthy and go to the gym three to four, five times a week, you're going to be fit. Knowing that doesn't make you fit. Yeah. Right? You have to, so read the book. Derek Sivers says, if more information was the answer, everyone would be a billionaire with a six-pack exactly right yeah so so read the book 12 times nothing's gonna happen you know unstressable is written in a way where we we say it's a practical guide and we are at really through it all we tell you now put the book down and do a b and c right and and and the idea is i found quite stressful being told by the way you know and and yes by the way if when you didn't when you didn't do it we told you that you didn't do it i heard mo's little voice inside my head We heard that.

33:12But you see, that's the point. The point is, what price are you paying? You know, of course, it's always easy for someone in my place to look back and say, you know what, I wish I had made a million less and spent more time with Ali, my son. Yeah. Right? Everyone else will say, you know, you can say that because you made the million. No, I can say that because I lost Ali. Do you understand? Now, the truth is you start to value things when they're no longer there, right? And you'll value your health when you no longer have it. You'll value your ability to get out of bed when you're burnt out, okay?

33:54Just look around you and see how many are not able, and then suddenly you'll tell yourself, hold on, a bit of balance is needed. Are you familiar with the time billionaire? Time billionaire. billionaire yeah no i think you'd like it especially because you've got the billion dollar happy billion people happy and talking about like you know metrics of success oh i understand what you're saying so the time billionaire is how many seconds you have left on earth and at about 20 you've got about 2 billion seconds left on earth so i'm 38 so i've got about a billion i'm still a time billionaire but over the age of 40 you start to no longer become a time billionaire and i know sorry and it doesn't sound very good to say i'm a time half a billionaire because people are like, pathetic.

34:36I'm going bankrupt. But to this point of, you know, there's many different metrics to work out with stuff, but actually, you know, age and the choices that you make with the wisdom of the time you have left, that's like a very important matrix here, isn't it? In terms of what you're choosing to do with your time, with the awareness of the simple fact of fatality, which is a given and then how you map out that sort of picture in between i think it plays a really important part in how to be unstressable yeah yeah i think it's also like when you think about your perspective right i love that concept of time and if you think okay how many i invented time billionaire extraordinaire you know the concept of time in terms of like understanding okay on reflection how many days in a row have i actually acted as if i was you know enjoying the last day of my life if that was the last day whether that's actually in your workplace and you fully engaged in the work you're doing or whether it was actually with your family whether you're on holiday did you act in a way that you'd be happy with that that was the last day or did you consecutively for too many days act in a way that you'd be really annoyed when you left you were like damn it I didn't do that right and so that time you know lesson is okay on reflection if I've spent too many days acting as if you know I shouldn't be then you need to change something and it's really understanding obviously from that perspective okay are you going to keep allowing this to go on forever and suddenly those seconds that you say you're no longer no longer a billionaire or are you actually going to take charge of it and you know use your awareness to take action because like you say you can absorb this as much as you want or understand now I've been doing that for days and carry on but making an actual shift requires a bit of practice and a bit of commitment I think one of the things about practicing new techniques or you know stress is not a new technique right stress is something that people live with experience and then try to unlock one of the things I found very useful in life is context and one of the contexts I thought was great in your book was the sort of four types of stress you know I hadn't really thought about things like that before um so without me butchering it although to give you credit I remember them but you know please share what are the four types of stress that gives you credit by the way because most most people remember them so um yeah that just means i'm as as capable as any other reader um what are the four types of stress and how could how do you actually think they could be especially relevant to understand in context of business and entrepreneurship yeah so four types of stress are mental emotional physical spiritual and like the reason i'm really glad you brought that up because the reason we wanted to write in that context is because you always see with stress management or talking about this topic it's bundled into one heap it's like I'm stressed and that's just like okay we'll just meditate or just do that and the reality is it's so much more specific than that in a nice actually simple way as you know ironic as that is when you understand the complexity it becomes simpler and so your mental stress is actually looking at okay when you're mentally stressed you'll know you're stressed because you're ruminating about the past you're constantly in your head you're thinking about the future anxious thoughts you can't focus you're not fully present you wake up at night with racing thoughts or you struggle to get to sleep because again your mind's still in overdrive just constantly in your head space and then emotional stress is you'll know you're emotionally stressed from one of two things either how you feel or how you're behaving so a lot of the time we you know suppress our feelings and we're stressed so we think i'm not stressed because i don't feel anything but you know those that don't will either feel stressed anxious overwhelmed easily irritated apathetic even depressed because we know long-term chronic stress can turn into depression but if you're not tapped into your feelings the behavioral signatures of emotional stress so many people will listen and be like oh that's me so it's things like okay are you numbing yourself out so are you binge watching netflix because you just can't stand to be alone in your own no thanks for asking because you can't stand to be alone in your own presence or are you overly going out overworking again just to distract is the first thing you do at the end of the day to reach for a drink for stress relief not because you want to but just because you want some form of you know that sigh are is your libido dwindling do you find your memories lacking are you easily irritated and snapping with your loved ones has your appetite changed so are you overeating to comfort eat or have you lost your appetite you know all these different things actually every time you say those things in a public place i see the audience go damn it yeah because she just named it she just named everything exactly she named everything that could happen are you watching tv are you not watching tv are you breathing i'm definitely doing one of those things but it's that constant distraction right you're kind of numb as much as possible and your behaviors change and so when you notice that behavioral system you know that's your emotional stress and the emotional stress comes from not actually accessing your emotions processing them and using them to your advantage because emotional intelligence is you know hugely heightens your intelligence it allows you to be able to understand yourself others better physical stress is interesting because so many of us have these symptoms but like we talked about earlier we just disregard them as being anything to do with stress it's like from the standard side your physical stress is like tension headaches neck aches shoulder aches back aches digestive issues you know huge factor of stress chronic ibs constipation stomach ulcers trouble sleeping again fertility issues skin issues like inflammatory things you know hives eczema all inflammatory you know illnesses are very very you know those very well yeah all of them yeah you know wonderful um and then obviously it goes in more chronic because when you get to that next level you're looking at things like okay increased blood pressure and then you know heart disease type 2 diabetes even studies now show cancer because when you're under chronic stress cancer expressing genes can be turned on and so that's obviously the extremity of those things but again the minor side is what we would allow ourselves to simmer in phrases until we get to the chronic and we're actually in hospital and we're like oh well maybe that elevated heart pressure you know blood pressure is because of stress or maybe my you know type 2 diabetes so we let ourselves break with physical stress often before we acknowledge that it is physical and then spiritual stress is um my god is not as good as your god

40:53nothing to do with religion so it's spiritual stress is basically there's two sides to it one is we become spiritually stressed when we're so out of alignment with our own authentic self and that is that you cannot answer your true who you are without answering with a label so you know i'm i'm a mom i'm a doctor i'm a lawyer that's not who you are that's what you are and when we are disconnected from our true sense of self our authenticity we're being dragged around by what society our family our friends think we should be doing rather than what we know we want to be doing we become stressed and we're disconnected from our intuition which again is guiding you to those better choices better paths for you the other side of spiritual stress is when you're like i know myself well i'm connected i've listened to my intuition i make these decisions no you listen to your intuition and then you totally disregard what it's saying and so that causes you stress because you'll have those reflections of, I knew that.

41:45I said yes, but I felt no. And I knew that all along. And that's then caused me stress later down the line because it's, you know, led to this, this and that. And you just think, oh, why? And that's, you know, what we call spiritual stress. So those four parts of you speak, you know, in these different languages and get stressed in different ways. And when you can understand which part of you is stressed, you can then manage it much more easily because each bit needs a little bit of different attention. So quick interlude, who are you? it's funny actually someone asked us that this morning and then you had to answer but um so I am I would say I'm someone who feels more than they would like to accept sometimes to actually I feel more than I think truly I spend my life feeling around in terms of like I walk into a room and I want to understand people through feeling rather than through the mind I spend my life wanting to make people understand them I've I search to make people understand themselves better um I'm definitely a calm person but also you know it is the difference between you know you can say like I'm calm and I try to be kind and all these things but I'm also a massive perfectionist who strives to be better and all those things all the time and needs to learn to be calmer and kinder to herself quite often so but I think yeah my biggest thing is always I'm just such a feeling person I spend my life Mo and I have this conversation where we'll talk about like how we viewed a situation.

43:09And I'll be like, yeah, it just felt like really like this. And I walked into that room and this person is feeling that and he's like, did you? It's 42. Literally. And we have this difference between us. It's hilarious. It really is. Yeah. Actually, I think this is really one of the most beautiful things I like about this book is how completely opposite we are. Right. Yeah. I mean, we have the same target, the same mission. Actually, you get a sense of how they're coming from two different viewpoints. And very respectful of each other. But also at the same time, it's just is a very different spectrum.

43:43I mean, for me, the old man, to actually... Poor old man, actually. To actually... We're worthy of it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. To look at some of what Alice brings and go like, hmm. because you know when when you if you had read the very first draft of this Alice writes so softly like you know I'm I I want three bullet points one equation and a number that's that's all I mean to me that's the whole book crisper so I hear that word one more time so we're remember? Yeah. So, so I've written my 10 ,000 hours. So I, I, I, and I, I don't claim to be a good writer, but I definitely have been battered by, by editors long enough in my life to know what will come back.

44:42Yeah. And, and Alice wrote so softly and so beautifully, you would feel something in your heart, but I don't know exactly what it is. Right. And I don't know exactly what that, what does that mean to my mind? And that whole concept of CRISPR, CRISPR, CRISPR. And I was so annoying. I apologize. But she's a fabulous writer, honestly. You've mentioned how it's a managerial tactic to press the buttons, push people into stress. Why do people keep doing that? Including the people who allow that to be a motivating factor anyway. Why do we keep perpetuating that activity if there's no evidence it's impactful?