How to Recenter Yourself With Dr. Liane Davey

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2:31When's the last time you felt able to sit down at your desk or wherever, roll up your sleeves and have a great, great session of work? I was in my garden on Saturday and I dug out a whole bed. I mean, I get a little nuts. I dig out old roots. I get the shovel in there. But after a couple hours, I looked at a bare patch of dirt and I felt like a million dollars. I hadn't worried during that time. My brain wasn't like swirling or ruminating. I was just focused on clearing out that garden bed. And damn it, I did. Today's guest wants you to have more days like that at work and less days caught in what she calls the thought load.

3:20You know, if you've been listening to the show for a while, if you follow mental health at work. And if you're way up on your anxiety knowledge, you know that burnout isn't actually about workload. It's about anxiety. It's about the thoughts. It's about being triggered. It's about the swirl. It's about the what ifs. The thought load is dragging us down and it's helping ruin work, says Leanne Davey, an organizational psychologist, author of many books, including The Good Fight, one of my favorites on productive and healthy conflict, which we'll talk about. and we'll talk about how understanding your family of origin can help you have a healthier relationship with conflict.

4:00And the new book, Thought Load. We get really practical on how to make space in your brain to stop feeling always in a swirl and more like you can have a good day's work. My conversation with Dr. Leanne Davey.

4:20Leanne. Hello, Maura. Hello. Hello. Hello. So I'm really excited to have you on the show. And there's such a thread, you know, between all your work. I'm going to steal a question that a fellow podcaster, Kate O 'Neill, asked you because it's such a good one. I mean, I think a lot of people know you for your great work on conflict, your concept of conflict debt. the idea of good fights at work. Your new book is about the thought load, the cognitive emotional price of being sort of overwhelmed in our heads and in our to do lists. Is there a connection between conflict or conflict debt and the thought load?

5:13I really am starting to think there is a very direct line in dark black sharpie between the two. So if we think about the three pieces of thought load, so there's the load part. So all that we have to pay attention to, like the cognitive piece, and then the emotional piece, that's the load. And we carry that load on, you know, with our, you know, physical, cognitive, emotional, spiritual energy. So those three pieces, so attention, emotions and energy. Now let's think about if I have heavy thought load, let's think about whether I'm set up for a good fight or not. So a to have a good fight, I have to actually have been paying attention to the topic I probably needed to have read the read the primer documents I need right I need to have some mental bandwidth to have insight to add something of value.

6:05If you're high, you're high thought load, that ain't happening. I like, you know, I'm here in the meeting, but I I did everything I could just to get my bit prepared. I haven't read your stuff, right? So there's that piece. Secondly, you have to be emotionally invested and willing to say something that might upset somebody else, might cause defensiveness. And when you're emotionally triggered, who wants to do that? You're like, hey, you're the hang in there kitty. You're like, you want me to, and then on the energy piece, like who's just, who has that spare little bit of energy? Maybe, maybe there's a couple of moments in your week where you're like, I got this and you take the high road and you start the good fight.

6:46But you know, Thursday at four o 'clock, you ain't doing it right. So what I've come to realize in putting the two pieces of work together, of course, the good fight came first and then thought load. But now I'm realizing if we don't manage our thought load first, there's no hope that we are going to have the wherewithal to have the good fight. So I'm realizing there is this incredible link. Yeah, they're connected. Take us through, I want to talk about your work on conflict, A, because I know my audience loves to talk about this. And you have done such wonderful work on the connections between emotion and conflict.

7:22But talk us through Thoughtload. What is Thoughtload? Why is it an important thing for now for us to think about? Yeah. So, you know, we know the statistics. We know that people are just feeling incredibly overwhelmed. getting to Friday night and feeling exhausted, but not able to point to anything meaningful that they're proud of accomplishing. I'm like, I got, I got here, but you know, I don't know what I accomplished. And so most of us immediately go to like the workload's just too high. It's too high. But the organization scientist in me was watching and monitoring and looking at productivity levels and in the actual clients I consult with, I was watching and, you know, stuff wasn't actually moving ahead.

8:04I started to realize it's not the workload that's killing us. Most of us would love to just be able to do the work. It's everything else around the workload. And I've called that thought load. So all the things that are taking your attention, the decision fatigue, the diluted attention, it's all the things that are triggering us, making us feel vulnerable, under threat, and all the things that are wearing us out physically, emotionally, spiritually, all of that. So that's our thought load and invisible tax on our performance that comes from this treacherous triad. And the scary thing is the neuroscience, I know your audience loves the neuroscience, the neuroscience of the three pieces of thought load are terrifying because every single piece amplifies and exacerbates the others.

8:55So if you think about it, as your energy goes down, unfortunately, one of the first things to go is your ability to calibrate what to pay attention to and what not to. So you start paying attention to all the wrong things. And I'm sure you relate to that noisy narrator and right, everything going, the squirrels running rampant. The next thing to go is your ability to figure out, was that a threat? Did she give me the side eye? Is he like, is my boss thinking I'm stupid, right? And all of a sudden, you're triggered with a very low threshold. As you become more triggered and more anxious, you try to multitask as you multitask, your energy depletes fat, right?

9:33And you're in this like, downward spiral. So that's thought load. It is the thing that is killing all of us that nobody's talking about, because we keep focusing on the tangible, visible workload things. And I also think it's one of the reasons that leaders and employees are getting really angry at each other, because the employees are like, dude, I can't take anymore. And the leaders are looking at the outputs and the outcomes and saying like, I don't, I don't know what you're complaining about. I don't see that much, because they don't see this invisible tax. So yeah, that's thought load. And of course it's work and home because there's no, there's no wall that stops your work from bleeding into home and your home from bleeding into work.

10:23You know, it's so funny you say that. I feel like, you know, a lot of us in the sort of anxiety community have always thought that burnout is really about anxiety versus an actual workload. And I have this image when I talk to people. There's almost this sort of hankering to just put in like a good clean day's work. You know, that feeling of when you have a task and you sit down and you get it done. You have space. You have time. You may be physically or mentally tired at the end. I spent Saturday in my garden. in, I dug out an entire bed of old weeds and I was exhausted at the end, but boy, was I happy and content and totally in the present, right?

11:13Totally in the present, digging in the dirt, right? That's the metaphor. Yeah. How many of us would just love to be able to dig in the dirt instead of constantly being pulled by just like attention and digital noise and bullshit and reorgs and meetings yeah bullshit just total bullshit yes two-factor authentication how many hours of my week am i gonna spend absolutely exasperated at two-factor authentication not working right you know just stuff like that it's like so just let me do some work have we done this how how has this happened you're an organizational expert above all you yeah how have we done this How have we kind of started killed our craft and our love of a good day's work in favor of everything else?

12:03Yeah, it's a few things. I'm really interested right now in the idea that matrix organizations might have jumped the shark. That if you take a matrix, so think about a simpler time. You probably worked on a team of five or six people. You had work that was fairly discreet, like you could kind of put a bow around it. and you knew the humans, you knew their partners, their kids, their idiosyncrasies, you knew if that like eyebrow is something you should be worried about or not, right? Like, right, it was simpler. From a thought load perspective, now take that and say, once we decided, you know, we went customer centricity, we went, you know, we had to now wrap our multifunction organization around a customer.

12:51And so there were cross-functional teams everywhere. And all of a sudden, you think about your week, and you're now having to pay attention to and, and not be the expert in marketing, if you're a salesperson, but you're expected to keep up with it and know enough and, and expected to know enough about the supply chain or this or that, right, you're in now this community of people. So you're having to pay attention to a lot more. Plus, you're probably interacting with like 40 people in meetings during a week. And instead of five people who are like, oh yeah yeah yeah that's just bob he's like that it's fine right you're like uh like i don't know is that person like out to get me i don't know them they don't know me they don't trust me they're they're giving me the you know the fifth degree because they they haven't seen my track record so all of us and they don't like my department right i had a situation where like the other departments didn't trust the marketing department and so you'd go you'd be like this the lone soldier from the marketing department on the call and you'd have to like take all the arrows from like all the years of the marketing department on your behalf.

13:58And even a good fight in that case is still emotionally triggering. We have lots of, because our brains, like their first thing our brains are asking is friend or foe. Right. Am I safe? And if the meeting starts with, uh, uh-oh, like it could be foe here, right? That emotional triggering of the meeting is going to sort of override everything else. So, so we, we went from, so I think at the most fundamental level, we went from discrete work with small groups of known trusted people into this much more cross-functional work with, you know, broader groups of people. And then, then you throw the technology onto that and you're like, and now every one of those cross-functional teams has a Slack channel or seven and right.

14:45And, and one of them communicates all by email and the other is on WhatsApp and you're like, how do I, what, what, what I'm now tracking, what's what. So, um, you know, I think that's one of the things that has really, um, amped it up. I would say one other fun one. Uh, and when I say fun, I mean, truly horrible. Um, cause that's what happens when you're an organizational psychologist like oh here's a juicy one um we are uh we are human animals who uh you know our biological advantage is cooperation right we don't run faster we don't have sharper teeth but we do cooperate better and so our brains are built to be watching for threat of othering um not belonging you know being ostracized or removed any of those kinds of things are very triggering for us.

15:37Now let's take the other big trend in the workplace. We have weaponized feedback at scale. So now, so first of all, we call it feedback, but haven't taught anybody what feedback is. So mostly what's happening is people are just judging one another. That presentation was really boring. You need more graphics, like whatever, none of that is feedback. and then we've added technology to it so you can do like feedback drone warfare i'm going to send you feedback in the workday system from me way over here safely nowhere near you don't have to look you in the eye send it so it goes immediately into your performance review and you hear the incoming right we so we wonder why people are being triggered so if you're a service employee Yelp is coming at you.

16:26Like everybody is judging everybody else all the time. No wonder we're emotional and anxious and wiped out. So I think that so matrix I'm really worried about and weaponizing feedback at scale. I'm also super worried about the third one, probably the last one I would mention is the pace of change. So Gartner did some research that said in 2016, the average employee faced two organization level transformations a year. And about 75 % of people were like, yep, that's good. That's a good one. Let's do it. Only six years later, that was up to 10. 10 a year, 10 a year, and buy in was down to 40%. So I would say those three things like we have lost the plot on building an organization that is conducive to effectiveness.

17:15We really have. So what we've got is now organizations that, you know, really are focused on activity and responsiveness, a bunch of activities that don't lead to much output. And even if we are productive, the outputs are in no way connected to the outcomes that make us effective. So we've really, we've lost the plot in a big, big way. You know, it's interesting. I want to go back to what you said about HR software, or what's it called? Business? Well, there's so many like, but Workday is one of them. There's so many of them. I was talking, I had an episode on AI with a journalist last week. We were talking about, you know, a lot of these business softwares are offering to use AI to sort of listen to conversations, pick feedback out, put them into various, like you said, performance reviews.

18:03You know, it's like a, it's like a big brother system. Talk a little bit for those people who work for themselves or work in small organizations or don't understand, talk about the impact of software and performance management on conflict, on thought load, on everything you study. So two really interesting opposing things. So one of the problems is that all of these large language models are all built to be completely sycophantic ass kissing to you, even when I've asked it, please, even if I said something like, please, you don't need the gratuitous, you know, it'll be like, oh, you're so right.

18:46I shouldn't do that. You're like, oh my God. Good point, Leanne. Wow. Yeah, that's an excellent point. And so the other thing is when you're hearing about people in intimate relationships with AIs And every interview I've had, it's like, it just gets me. I'm like, it doesn't get you. It just knows how to say what you want to hear. So we are probably becoming less and less feedback resilient as humans, right? We are getting more and more and more of our input from something that is programmed to kiss our asses, right? And so then all of a sudden, now you get feedback from someone. and I was talking to somebody in one of the world's largest professional services firms recently.

19:32And she said, I was giving this feedback to a person who I think is a real star. She's a real up and comer. So I was giving her this feedback to help her accelerate even further. And she was incredibly taken aback. She became defensive. I'm like, yeah, because we're losing our feedback resilience. And I know this is a person who could deliver really good feedback, but we just don't want to hear it. We want this low friction life where no, it tells us what we want to hear. We push a button. It gives us what we need with a little ingratiation thrown in for good measure. So that's one half of the AI equation.

20:10Now, if we take the other half, could AI add value in giving better feedback? There's some optimism there, I think, because we could actually teach AI what feedback is, teach it that it's not judgment. What it needs to be doing is picking out a behavior and then sharing the impact of that behavior. But the problem is, does it understand the impact of the behavior on other humans? Or does it just understand the impact? So if it can't get that half of the equation, it's not feedback. But at least there's some hope that AIs could help us. So I might engage. I've seen a lot of companies are doing building really cool AI bots for coaching.

20:50Yeah. So I could practice, I could say, Oh, I'd like to give more some feedback about how her questions really opened up some wonderful new avenues for me on the podcast. Help me form that like I'm thinking of saying this, and it could say, Well, that's just judgment. You know, what was what was it specifically that Maura did that that really made you feel that way? Oh, it was when she asked this, you know, so maybe there's some hope there. But I think if we if we what I worry more about is that just like conflict, feedback is something that makes us really uncomfortable. Yeah. So I fear we're going to try and just outsource it all to the AI.

21:26And how do softwares like Workday take that load from us? Like what is the role of those enterprise-wide platforms in the feedback conflict teaming world? Well, I think what could it be or what is it? What are you worried about and where do you see it? I think right now it just makes it expedient. It just means like HR departments can say, okay, well, we provided that vehicle and we can allow feedback to move around the organization at scale. check. But what I'm worried about with AI is how it affects our depth of processing, right? Are we actually engaging in wrestling? Like when I put together a piece of feedback for a client, I am wrestling with that.

22:17I'm starting with a judgment because that's where feedback starts with like, oh, that person seemed really defensive. But if I tell a client you're defensive, that's judging them and shutting them down. So I have to wrestle with, well, what did they actually do or say that left me with that impression? Okay, let me think about it. And you know what, maybe I'm not ready to give that feedback yet. Maybe I need to have another call and pay more, right? It's, it's an active thing to get quality insight to really fight for the gem of something useful for them. If if I just outsource that to a piece of software, first of all would the software catch that that the client was defensive i don't know maybe maybe it would pick up an llm could probably pick up wording that was sort of um negative or contradictory it probably could but but would it pick up the body language if if everything they said was was like what they're supposed to say but they're like passive aggressively giving you the whatever, would it pick that up?

23:25So it's like, what scares me is trying to outsource human connection to an AI. That just seems dumb, right? And it seems fraught, especially if they're going to ingratiate, then we're in trouble for people losing their ability to give a constructive conflict to give feedback, and we lose the ability to receive it. It's, I feel like you and I are going to be in business for a good long time now because this is going to get, it's going to get ugly. You know, but I have to tell you that, that the amount of people I know who say, gosh, I just, you know, I had to give a difficult piece of feedback.

24:03I had to, you know, and I just, I had, I put it in my, in my, in my clod or my chat sheet and it really helped me. And it was so clear. And, you know, I feel like one of the most popular utilities I see is in conflict management, because people have the sense that if I want to just say, oh, Leanne, you suck. Like you just really bombed that person. You know, if I just like have a more measured conversation with my LLM, it will help me get to a more adult place. And that's a good thing. Like you think, I think it's okay if you can, there's also really cool research emerging about using LLMs for studying.

24:41Yeah. And like, there's a way you use it and it's making students feel way overconfident. they're like, yeah, yeah, okay, I got it, I got it, I got it. And then they're doing really poorly relative to the control group on the test. And then there's another way that they're programming the LLM to ask thought provoking questions that cause the student to process the information differently. And they're getting like a 15 % performance boost. So to me, it's not AI or not AI. It's is the AI encouraging depth of processing, encouraging you to wrestle with something. So if it's just saying you're so right more, that's exactly what to say to Leanne, then it's probably not very helpful.

25:22If it's saying, okay, that's one way. What's an example you could give her that would help her? Or what's an objection she might come back with? And how right so that's the difference? Are you using it as a coach as a thinking partner to help you process more deeply consider scenarios that you might not have come up with. Just consider scenarios would be good. Exactly right. All of that feels really helpful. I feel like I could take everything in the good fight and turn it into a bot coaching tool that would, that would be useful, that would cause people to slow down, think it through and be more prepared.

26:00What I'm worried about is just like, I don't, I don't like, I don't want to think about this. I don't want to be uncomfortable with this. So I'm just going to put it in and let Claude tell the person in their language. Right. So that's the big difference. Claude, put this into. Claude, translate this. Right. And then you're not getting the wrestling piece. You're not getting the perspective. I think it's the perspective taking. Perspective taking. That's great. Sitting, getting up on the balcony, all the stuff you learn. All the Heifetz stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, you know, I took Heifetz's class.

26:30Get out. I did. I studied with Heifetz. And then I took his January intensive and kind of had a breakdown and had to leave and went to sleep for a week. I found it. That's a whole other conversation. But it was very challenging. Yeah. But so, but again, where's challenge? Like, that's what you want, right? Something that you actually have to wrestle with both cognitively, but also emotionally. Like that's, that's the human experience. That's the sticky stuff. That's the stuff you remember forever. You know, we're already seeing just even in digital communication, the amount that we retain of digital communications, like, like 20 % two days later, right, it's just gone, because there's no depth of processing.

27:17So if you're treating your work relationships or feedback or an engagement with somebody on a cross-functional team who disagrees with you, if you're just taking this expedient path, whether it's AI assisted or not, there is no true connection, no insight, no perspective taking. And in the knowledge economy, you're not going to get anything good out the other end. Like that's a garbage in, garbage out kind of situation. This is an ad for a book. But not just any book. It is a book that will change the way you think about business and maybe how you run your business. It's called Life at the Speed of Play by Mark Pincus.

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32:23He shared some, some interesting research on with me of just like, we don't even want to do anything that's hard. Like even intellectually hard, like there's really good evidence that we want to avoid things that are hard, right? We, we want to, we're, we are animals, right? We want to, that's our brain's way of protecting ourselves. Right. So, you know, now add a huge thought load and things that are both cognitively and emotionally hard? Who's got the energy for that? Which is why like one of the most common responses I see to things these days is just, I can't, like, just kind of like, like, I can't even engage with the concept.

33:00It's like, I can't, I can't, right? Yeah, so interesting. So I think when our thought load is really high, we can't be creative. When our thought load is really high, we don't deal with novelty well, because we just kind of go back to old playbooks. When our thought load is really high, we're not present. Like whether it's at the dinner table, and all of a sudden somebody says something and you realize you've been gone for 30 seconds, you're like, sorry, just took a short work trip somewhere in my brain, right? And all of those things are really, really knocked out by high thought load. And in a knowledge economy job, even if we're producing stuff still, what we're producing is not going to be the stuff that moves the needle on any of the outcome that matter for our business, right?

33:49We're producing slop in that case, right? We're just trying to get through the day. Oh, we are just, or sometimes just the meeting. Like forget the afternoon. I'm just trying to get through like one meeting. So for a listener, let me think of this is kind of a question. This question may not make sense the first time, but I'm going to try it. Okay. Because we are okay with struggling. Let's go. That's right. Let's do it. Stick with me. So you're talking a lot about anxiety and being triggered in a way that creates overwhelm and distraction and, you know, just that I can't, you know, avoidance, whatever.

34:27There's also the anxiety, the triggers that provoke challenge and innovation and curiosity, right? All the people that the stress mindset reframe people, all the concepts of stress reframe people would like us to take on and say, oh, I'm triggered and this is great, right? Like we're going to invent something new here. In both cases, we are feeling big emotions and people are triggering us. How do you try to work with your clients to understand that nuance? because I don't think we're ever going to live in a world where we're not triggered and stressed. Right, right. Yeah. So you stress and distress, right?

35:14Correct. How do I go from I can't to, okay, let's, you know. Let's start. Let's start, even if this feels uncomfortable. So you're the anxiety expert more than me, but I would say anxiety is worrisome for me because it's generalized, right? And so it's really hard for that to be constructive and helpful. If it's stress, if it's discreet and attached to something, then it absolutely can be helpful. So when I have an anxious response, which I get quite often, it's been one of my like menopausal symptoms. Interestingly, it's terrible, but my anxiety is really peaking. So what I really focus on so the language I use in the book is when the dragon is breathing fire, it's because they're protecting treasure.

36:09So if you all of a sudden notice, you just started breathing fire, like, oh, something just, and that can look differently for different people. Many of us, the fire gets, gets directed inward as opposed to we start saying mean things to ourselves, that's fire, or we get really snippy with somebody else, or there's a lot of different versions. But the key thing is that when it's stress and when it's attached to treasure, then there's something super useful there. That's good stuff, right? So then the person who says like, oh, I've been triggered. This is awesome. I would say that's a situation where it's like, this is awesome because I just got great data about what my treasure is, about what I care about, about what matters.

36:54And all those things are really useful to know. So that's one of the key things for me is if I can have a stress response and catch it and stop and then go through the cycle, where am I experiencing that? Is it in my gut? Is it in my sweaty pot? Where am I experiencing it to create some distance to what is it? So it's, it's anger ish, but what kind of anger? Oh, I think it's jealousy. Okay, good. And then, you know, where is it coming from? What like, why? What story am I telling myself that is, you know, amplifying this nasty message, right? And then what's one thing I can do? So if you are triggered in something focal, where like this happened, you know, my body did this, my brain interpreted it this way, I'm now telling, that stuff's great.

37:53because then you're in the process where you can extract the data from the emotion and stop the drama of the feeling. That's good stuff. What I worry about with anxiety is it's like, it's not that anyone is anywhere near your treasure. No one's, but your brain has convinced you someone's coming for your treasure sometime, somewhere. And it's so diffuse. That's what I hate about anxiety. It's so diffuse that it's so hard to get data from it. You have to really be a sleuth then like, all right, what's going on? And then you have to go back to things like, has my sleep been poor for the last few days?

38:33Am I under fueled? Is there something I've been procrastinating that's like hanging in there somewhere, right? Then you got to actually do a lot of work. If you're in that triggered moment where there's something that you can concrete, that you can be like, oh, I know exactly what just caused that. Then we can get goodness. So that's the difference for me between stress can be useful, either positive stress that helps us get our butt in gear and do stuff, or negative stress that helps us better understand what we care about, what matters to us, how our relationships stack up. All of that's useful.

39:10That darn generalized anxiety, that's nasty stuff. Oh, that's nasty. That's so interesting. I never thought about it like that because I think anxiety is, when I think of anxiety often, it's exactly what you're saying. You know, it is a signal. It's telling me something. But yes, you're right. It can feel very diffuse and you can sort of just wake up in the morning and think everything's terrible. Right. And I'm going to be, I'm going to, you know, be homeless and, you know, my kids are going to eat cat food. And you don't know why. Right. You know, I think that's one of, that is why it's very slippery.

39:45But I guess the point I want to focus on is that I think it was Mark Brackett at Yale said to me, like, we're triggered hundreds of times a day at work. Yes, absolutely. I will never stop. No. And so the challenge isn't like stop being triggered, stop feeling emotions. No. Emotions are in the human operating system. There's no such thing as stop feeling emotions. It's get better at processing them. At processing them. When you are under thought load, though, I hear you saying our ability to sit with them objectively, just all do all the things we're supposed to do kind of can go out the door. Oh, absolutely.

40:26Absolutely. So, you know, one of the most important chapters in the book, people, people, as I've been in the book launch phase and whatever, people like, okay, but I am so overwhelmed. Right. I can't even do your step one. I'm like, okay, so here's where I want to. Well, step one is really about understanding what's the most important outcome your role exists to achieve. Because so much of this hamster wheel crap is because we've lost sight of what's the single most important outcome our role is here to create. right and when we get re-centered so do you know when you're using google maps and you know you want to like check the traffic up ahead or you want to look at the you like scroll and you move it way off and then there's a little button and it just says re-center I use it all the time right I use it all the time too the first step is is re-center it's like I all of a sudden got on this crazy goose chase of helping this team do this thing that's not my thing re-center I just need to come back.

41:24So I love pushing that button on Google maps. And that's the first step. But some people say to me, like, can't even do it. So I'll give you my favorite, which may be anxiety provoking, but I'll give you my favorite. So the chapter is called do more nothing. And it comes from an epiphany I had 2016. I was watching the Netflix, Michael Pollan documentary on food called cooked. Absolutely. It's like food porn. If you like Michael, do yourself a favor. If you like Michael Pollan, if you like stunning world cinematography, it's absolutely amazing. So in this one episode, I think he's in Morocco and he's talking about the communal ovens where you bring your bread dough and bake and communal ovens.

42:10Beautiful. And he says, like, here's the thing. What's so crazy about food, you could eat all the flour in the world and drink all the water. And very soon after you would die of starvation. But if you mix the flour in the water and left them exposed to the air, where they would collect yeast, you could bake that into bread and live indefinitely. And what I this epiphany I had in the moment was thought load is really when we are choking on flour and, you know, drowning in water. But dying of it because there's been no air. So our our brain pantry is so full, but it's not nourishing. And I think about an anxious overachievers brain pantry.

43:01imagine like uncooked ramen it ain't pretty you know right when you open that ramen and it's like there's so much there but you can't get access to it it's right so in the book i talk about a discipline that i do regularly called a two-week cleanse and the good news is doesn't cost anything and you don't have to drink juice um but what it is is over a two-week period find five or six times where you can spend one hour with zero input, which most of us do not have sensory input. Yep. Sensory input. Well, not none, not no sensory input, but no cognitive input. So most of us start the day and look at our phones immediately, listen to the radio while we make breakfast, listen to the radio in the car and go to meetings.

43:47We really go the entire day without ever having a moment of silence. So the default mode network never lights up in our brains, which is where insight comes from, connection comes from, and I believe where so much of our energy comes from. So five or six times in two weeks, where you get a full hour, so drive with no radio on, garden, right? Run without your AirPods in, do a coloring book, have a bath, my favorite get a massage that's the high ticket one um you will find there is so much wisdom and insight there is so much nourishment that's waiting for you so much in the brain pantry that just needs to be exposed to air and so people are like but like everything is so busy at work it's the craziest time and it's kids recital season and blah blah blah i'm like yep which makes it the most important time to do the two week cleanse.

44:49So like walk to a doctor's appointment with nothing, right? Do the laundry, fold laundry. Like it doesn't have to be, I'm not doing anything and it doesn't have to be at a massage, but it does need to be a chunk of time with no input. You will see that a lot of that anxiety and a lot of those emotions, you'd been continually suppressing them, trying to just like move on, right? They get a chance to kind of come out and get processed and get the ideas. Like you hadn't made this connection between that conference you were at last month and this need that the client was expressing this afternoon, right?

45:30And and then all of a sudden, you just feel so much more energized. So the secret kind of in the book is, and if all else fails, do more nothing. I love it. And your body will create homeostasis again for you, you will go back to this energized, ready state. But the reason that we aren't there is that we are going 16 hours a day, where there is never a moment of silence, never a moment with no input. I have so much to say on this, I have been free. I have been for years wanting to create a national campaign to turn music off in public places. Yeah. As an introvert with someone with high sensory sensitivity, I feel like it's an assault.

46:17It's walking to a hotel lobby at 6 a.m., the airport, 6 a.m., blaring. So what's so interesting, and I'm not a neuroscientist, your husband is a neuroscientist, but I've just written this whole book and done this big research study on neurodivergent leaders. We hang out in our demon a lot. Yes. And our task promoting network is the one that we might struggle to turn online a little bit more. Right. But because we are in the daydream, you know, the demon is the daydreaming place. It's where all those neural connections have time to marinate and spark. And right, it is that moment where you're, you're in the shower, and all this shower, yeah, great thought.

46:58But we, a lot of us, hang out in our demon. So we actually feel an inner sense, if we can, of creativity, of, oh my God, I need to go hyper focus on this thing because I just figured it out. So I have to spend the next six hours on this thing because I'm so passionate. I just had this thought, right? That's like a lot of us, our default, which is an amazing place to be and very frustrating. But when we get into the work world of being a human doing and constantly being in executive function all the time, we fry out big time. If we were left to our own devices, we would be in that beautiful demon.

47:43Yeah, because the demon is also the muse. It's the muse. It's the muse, yeah. It's the thought spark. It's the inspiration. It's the making all those connections. And it and then it's that moment where you're like, Oh, I have to go to you know, I must. I did a LinkedIn video. I did the most embarrassing LinkedIn video a couple months ago. So I was in Seattle giving a speech and it had been a rough night the night before of travel super late. I went I delivered the speech I came back to the hotel and I had a bunch of other work I had to get done and I was spent I was totally spent it was like two o 'clock in the afternoon it was this beautiful historic hotel in Seattle with these plush robes and a clawfoot tub I'm like it's two o 'clock in the afternoon Leanne and I was like well take a page out of your own book honey and I got in the bath and no input, just like, and at about minute 25, I like jumped out of the bath because I had to get to the keyboard fast enough to type in this thing because I was so excited.

48:47That's what do more nothing does for us, right? Because the brain pantry was full. There was just no nourishment coming because it had never been exposed to the air, right? So yeah, and our world, we are so i actually changed uh the place where i get my nails done because they used to have a huge tv with the 24-hour news with the chyrons and the this and the that i was like getting your nails done should be the once a month of this lovely one hour of just nothing right and so i literally changed places to a place that has classical music which for me is is good oh i've I've never seen that before.

49:30I know, but I'm like, I think these people are onto something. It costs$10 more. I'm like, totally worth it. Totally worth it. Like, why are we playing cable news? Yeah. When I'm like, I get one hour a month of a little bit of pampering. I don't want to be assaulted by assaults, like the police ticker. Yeah. So it's amazing. So I'm trying. I think that's brilliant. Yeah. I mean, it's funny. I have my my massage therapist knows to leave a notepad by the table because when I'm getting a massage I I get my best ideas I I have written whole book chapters in my head you know um oh that's beautiful that's I think that's an incredible practice and and the thing is you don't if starting with an hour is too much yeah you know you can pause you can pause any time yeah This episode is brought to you by Vinted, a secondhand marketplace app.

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54:42And people really do have chunks. They think they don't, but then I'm like, well, what, how long does it take you to fold the laundry? And they're like 20 minutes. I'm like sold. Just turn off the TV and turn off the radio and just fold the laundry. Uh, it's not like you have to drive to somewhere to pick the kids up from soccer. How long's the drive? 15 minutes. Okay. Just, just, that's fine. Take what you can get. Um, I will often like if you can get something physical in, it really helps, right? So my doctor's office is about 45 minute walk, like I'm just going to book that appointment so that I have the hour before clear.

55:16And I'm going to walk there because I know my afternoon of work will be way more productive because I had that time of just letting it soak, right? Letting it soak. Yeah. So it's so funny that for me, one of the best cures for thought load, or at least the first step to get over that hump of overwhelm is do more nothing. Then we can go back to, all right, now that I feel energized again, what's the single most important outcome I'm here to deliver? What is my role all about? And how do I make my calendar and my week serve that outcome instead of serving everybody else's priorities and 1700 side quests?

55:58And how do I make my focus and forge time in my calendar, my precious time in my calendar full of my quest? And that tidy and 10 time where I'm like, yeah, that's where I'm going to do the side quest, right? So the book takes you through these really practical things you can do. But I think for your listeners, start with doing more nothing. And then you'll feel like you can take these other next steps. Yeah. Giving yourself permission is obviously the hardest thing. You know, I see a direct bridge to conflict here in a way because I think that when you're ruminating about conflict, either a conflict that you have to have, that you're, excuse me, upset about, that you're avoiding, it's very hard to get the empty time in your head.

56:49So let's, let's, let's move over a little bit. Let's move over to a little bit of conflict. I mean, you coined the term conflict debt. Yeah. I want you to explain conflict debt and, and why, why we need to actually try to manage our conflict debt. Yeah, I picked, I need to make it more visceral. This people, people kept saying things to me like, Willian, don't you have to choose your battles, right? And like, they would have all these reasons, stories, excuses for why they didn't say the thing that needed to be said. Why didn't you say that in the room? And they're like, well, right. And I, and I've needed something visceral to help them understand it wasn't just a cost in the moment.

57:36it's like putting something on your credit card you can't afford and you couldn't afford it in the first place and now the you know the interest and the penalties yeah they're really killing you so I wanted a term that evoked that like this is going to get worse and worse and worse sense because when you avoid a conflict so you know partly the conflict that is going to be on you So I always go back to the Nelson Mandela quote, that resentment is swallowing poison, hoping the other person will die, which is so brilliant. So some of it's on you, if you're sitting with it being resentful and aggrieved about their behavior, I'm like, yeah, that's just making your life worse, right?

58:20Some of it is the cost that, okay, well, we can't actually make the hard call and make the trade off and move forward. And so there's just so much cost to getting into conflict debt that build up. So sure, there was the original principle, the original thing that you, but often then, once you're in that mode, every interaction after is, is adding to the balance, right? You're like, oh, and then because if you're in conflict debt with someone, and you get an email from them, you don't narrate that email like this. Oh, thanks so much for sending over it. You read like, thanks so much for sending over the draft.

59:01I caught some mistakes. And you're like, oh, I bet you did. Right. You read the email with a different narrator. Talk about being triggered also. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so, and of course, if your thought load is high, you're being triggered with a much lower threshold, right? And so it was just an email. Actually, I met the coolest, coolest person. I was giving a keynote in Chicago a couple of weeks ago and I was doing the good fight stuff. And he said, okay, I have to start for the whole audience with this story by way of introduction. He said, I was here in Chicago. My wife was in Des Moines and we were texting each other at night and the whole thing just went south.

59:43We got into this big fight and we both went to bed angry. So he had been through my session before. And he said, so the next morning I called her voice to voice. And I said, okay, can you do me a favor? I'm going to read you your texts the way I read them. And then I want you to read them the way you intended them. He said it was so shocking, the gap between the tone that he read them with and which words he, of course, right? Of course. This is like me and my sister every day. Yeah, every day. Yeah. And so I love that because he'd been through the good fight. He's like, wait, wait, wait. I know what's happening here.

1:00:21But it's so shocking. So if you get into conflict debt, if you're triggered, if your thought load's high, you're reading this email as if it's coming from Darth Vader. That's right. That's right. And it's like, no, it was coming from Princess Leia. Like, what are you doing? But of course, we don't think that in the moment. We don't have the optionality. Like, what else could be true? Right? so yeah that's why you're not having a good fight if you're stuck in this really high thought load high triggered distracted attention low energy right yeah I mean I feel like I feel like that's you know I when I meet anxious achievers when I work with anxious achievers it's that double-edged sword of like I love my anxious energy because I'm so driven and I'm so motivated and I'm always two steps ahead and I'm just like hungry, hungry, hungry.

1:01:13And my brain is always somewhere else. Usually it's replaying a conflict and it's also replaying something I did badly and something I'm ashamed about and something I'm angry at myself about and something I'm worried about and something that I'm sure is going to happen next Tuesday. And it's like, it's this, it's this whole thing. And I think that the thing about conflict debt that's so beautiful is that if you can summon the courage to just, you know, when I work with people with money anxiety, it's like summon the courage to look at your bank account. Oh, yeah, that's a big courage. Take a committed action.

1:01:49I think probably conflict is the same thing. Summon the courage and take a step. The only real antidote to anxiety is action. That's right. Right. That's that is the one fail safe antidote to anxiety. but when we're anxious, it tends to immobilize us. That's right. So what is one thing, no matter how tiny, what is one thing that I could do that will move this in the right direction, or maybe not even don't even put the bar that high, it might not move it in the right direction, but at least it will unlock it. At least it will unstick it. It may unstick it and not go any inch forward. But it will unstick it, right?

1:02:31And so but the anxiety is so compelling. It's so Like it really whispers nasty shit in our ears, right? And it's all false, but it does encourage you to just go around the loop a few more times, right? Like, no, I'm taking the off ramp. That's right. Stop, off ramp. Stop, off ramp. The last thing I want to talk about is around emotion and characters in our head and the stories we tell ourselves. One of my favorite things about The Good Fight that I love so much is that you sort of have these characters. My favorite is grandma. You have grandma. You have teacher. You have dad. You have all of these voices that come into our heads when we are trying either to avoid conflict or navigate it or whatever we're doing.

1:03:26So I want you to talk a little bit about what you learned about conflict in your family of origin and why it's a helpful exercise to do that. Yeah. So my family of origin is a zero overt conflict family. Never, ever, ever heard my dad raise his voice ever, ever, ever, ever. Just not a thing. But we were in huge conflict debt because we didn't have the hard conversations we needed to have. So I had to come to terms with the folks you're talking about. I call them my itty bitty shitty committee. So the itty bitty shitty committee are the these like little versions of my grandma and you know, my mom and whatever that sit on my shoulder and whisper bad advice in my ear.

1:04:05I'm like, I'm 54. I can fire the itty bitty shitty committee like, bye bye. Bye bye. And, and so it's understanding what are your own conflict narratives? And do they still serve you? So the grandma one is a great one, because my grandmother was she was lovely. And She was a real, born in 1904. So like kind of a Victorian kind of manners lady. And her line was always, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. And I'm Canadian. Like we have a nice problem to begin with. And so nice became this expectation. And nice is a very unhealthy thing. It's a very unhealthy word. It's really the way I interpret nice in most organizations is it's like, I'm going to make this comfortable for me.

1:04:52Yeah. Right. Nice is usually not for your benefit. It's for mine. Kind is a way higher bar. So I had to come to terms with like, I don't want to always be the good girl, pleasing everybody, being nice. That's not the right answer. And then there were just a bunch of other characters, right? The like be good and stay out of trouble character, the mind your own business character. And as I came to understand my itty bitty shitty committee and how horrible their advice was, then it gave me a chance to be like, okay, when that tape plays, you know, stop it. And then, you know, have a better answer.

1:05:29I would much rather be kind than nice. Kind means I'm willing to be uncomfortable for your benefit. And that's the kind of person I want to be. So, you know, those kinds of things, when you can get serious about all of the voices in your head, because many of them are not just your voice, right? You're hearing other people's voices. And, and you know what, most of them don't serve us well. They don't stand up to what modern organizations require. And so we have to, you know, we really have to come to terms with them before, become more self-aware, and then really make different choices about what would serve us better.

1:06:08I mean, I think that's, that's the most amazing thing about being an adult, you know, is that you do get the choice. My version of it very much is about your inner critic. And I have a similar thing where I take people through like, the critics in your family, the critics in your head, like, again, little squirrels that you don't, for me, for me, it was always like, you know, stop talking, don't say too much. Don't always know the answer. And then it was, you're lazy, you don't work hard enough. You just, you just skate through life, like all the voices, right? We all have the voices. We all have the voices.

1:06:45all have the voices. And I think the most amazing thing about being an adult is the thing of like, no, dad, I don't want to be like you in this way. Maybe there are pieces of you and I have your nose. That's okay. But I'm going to be a podcast host. It's really good to podcast aren't very good if the hosts don't speak. They're really quite dull. We can have a do more nothing podcast. You just play it. And for an hour, it's just silent. Oh, my God. You know. Yes. And I and so I think that's so incredible. It's like almost like what was your what would you call it? Your model of conflict, your archetype of conflict growing up?

1:07:25Yeah. What's your conflict narrative? Like what's the whole story you tell yourself? And, and of course, there's really when you delve into that, there's really scary stuff, right? There's people who watched abuse happen in their homes. They're like, there's a lot of people being, you know, completely disempowered. Like there's some really ugly, scary PTSD stuff some folks have. And that needs therapy and that needs help. But there's also just the huge majority of us who have a bunch of really unhealthy, unhelpful conflict narratives that aren't in the clinical range, don't necessarily need therapy, but they sure need us to do the work to figure out what they are.

1:08:05And am I still buying into them? That's right. Am I letting them live rent free in my head when they're really not serving me anymore? If we are, they're sitting in our thought load. they're like getting in getting comfy like i'm just gonna be permanently in your thought load here this one's never coming out i it's just i have seasons tickets so i'm just gonna sit right sit and judge you exactly you're not wearing that are you oh oh oh oh i know that's me that's me i got that one it's funny my friend jessica holmes jessica holmes is an amazing speaker and um and And she's a positive psychology expert.

1:08:49She's amazing. So she was doing some coaching with me, doing some of her coaching hours. And I was talking about how I'm really hung up with what a nerd I was when I was in grade 10 and whatever. So she's like, OK, you need to give her a character like you need so that when she comes, you're just like, we don't need you anymore. And then we put her because one of the things when I was in grade 10 and a total nerd is I used to wear outfits that would have looked amazing on a 45 year old. it was like when I look back at what I wore in high school mortifying and so this character Jessica and I like put her in a in a sweater twin set with pearls amazing but she's only in grade 10 and I always just look at her now I'm like you know no I don't I don't need you I didn't need you then I don't need you now yeah just be like bye-bye bye-bye oh but I kind of love her I kind of love her a little bit too well you know it's you have to embrace her I wouldn't be who I was if I wasn't like that, but it's like, you know, the kid in grade 10 who the staff would be fine if you came in the high school staff room.

1:09:49Don't be that kid. But anyway, I was. So here we are. So much, so much to unlearn. So much to unlearn. Liam, thank you so much. It's just great. Oh, this is so wonderful. So nice to chat with you more.

1:10:08that's it for this week's show if you like the show follow us and tell your friends and please leave us a review it really helps the anxious achiever get found by people just waiting for our content i'm your host maura aarons mealy lots more to come in the next episode

1:10:37Thank you.