KELLY MCGONIGAL: Harnessing the Hidden Gift of Stress

22:25So that is true. But what's really interesting, this is like, this is such a paradox. It is true. So let's take, for example, an alarm response. You think like the classic fight or flight response. If every time you get any kind of alert in the world, whether you're a family member needs something or you get an email or a Slack message, or you hear something in the news, or you remember something that you want to do. If every time you get some kind of alert that says you have to respond to life, if you have an alarm response, fight or flight, sympathetic overdrive, higher levels of cortisol. It's true that that as a physiological state, maybe more than you need to actually meet the moment.

23:07And also if you get stuck in it can lead to things like increased risk of diseases, systemic inflammation, changes in your brain that aren't healthy. That's a story everyone's heard. So here's the big paradox. As soon as you stop fearing what your body does in moments of stress, when you understand it as an attempt to help you, your nervous system response starts to change. I mean, this has been demonstrated in a lot of experiments that if you're having that kind of alarm response and you simply say to yourself, okay, body, you're trying to help me right now. You're saying this is something I care about, I don't need to fix this in order to respond.

23:50When you don't think, I need to take a certain number of breaths in order to calm my nervous system, or you don't think I need to leave the room because I can't handle this conversation right now, or you don't say, I need to keep my peace, I'm putting up boundaries, all the stuff people do to try to protect their nervous system. If instead you're like, okay, this is a natural physiological psychological response. And if this is a moment that matters or something I care about is at stake, good time to think about who and what I care about and look for a decision I can make or a choice I can make or an action I can take or something I can say, right?

24:25That really reflects my values, my goals, and the opportunities in this situation. And I don't try to focus on controlling my nervous system. All of a sudden your stress response is healthier. You've got a healthier balance of cortisol to DHEA and other hormones that actually keep your nervous system balanced in the long term. You're going to have increased release of neurochemicals that also make your brain more resilient so that you recover faster from stress. There are all these biological changes that come just from accepting that it's okay to be pushed off of some kind of homeostatic ideal.

25:00And I think that's sort of one part of, you know, if you actually are interested in regulating your nervous system, one way to do it is to not panic when you sense yourself shifting through normal physiological states. And the other thing is a lot of times, you know, if you're interested in experiencing a regulated nervous system at the global scale, meaning throughout the course of the day, your cortisol levels rise and fall in a way that is supportive for mental health and brain health. You show an ability to move in and out of sympathetic activation. You have sort of baseline levels of hormones that are healthy for your heart and your immune system.

25:44If you want that kind of regulation, which isn't about in this moment, I need to get regulated. If you want to have a system that's functioning in that way, that is often less about trying to control stress and more about having experiences in your life that teach your nervous system this kind of balance and flexibility. And those are things like human connection in person, spending time in nature, experiencing moments of play or fun, experiencing moments of self-transcendence, connection to faith, spending time with animals, making art, appreciation. There are these really important psychological states that you could describe as antidotes to stress, but those are the things that are most likely to create a nervous system that functions in a way that's really good for your health and really good for your mental health.

26:38And that's different than I hear so often people like looking for a breathing technique that in this moment is going to achieve some kind of nervous system change that I think I need to do in order to be my best self or protect my health. You know, it's funny because for years, I would basically panic before I had a speaking engagement. You know, I'd feel my palms sweating, my underarms sweating. I was shaking butterflies in the stomach and all that stuff. And I don't know if I came up with this on my own or somebody gave it to me, but I started repeating this mantra. This is just my body's way of preparing itself for peak performance.

27:15The shift was almost immediate because then I started welcoming those feelings because I know that I think better when I've got adrenaline, you know, going in my system and I perform better. So why would I welcome that? I wouldn't want to suppress that. I perform better when I've got it. But it's just a, it's interesting. And that's the easiest of the mindset hacks. So, because as I said, there's a lot of different types of stress, but I will say this one is classic. If you're in a situation where you are anxious and you need to perform, what you just described is absolute A plus excellent way to support yourself, it works because it's true.

27:54In performance situations, people who have more sympathetic arousal, people who report being anxious versus experiencing no anxiety, they do better. They give better talks. They sing more on pitch. They get better outcomes in a negotiation, whatever it is. And then this idea that if you accept it, that helps you do even better. That has been shown across such a wide range of stressful, what you could call performance situations. My favorite one that was published more recently, because I've been talking about this for like 15 years now, this research is when it first started to come out, was so useful because I was teaching undergraduates at Stanford who would panic before an exam.

28:32This was like perfect set of studies coming out. But since then, it's not just exams or competitions or speeches. This one study actually looked at people who had to deliver bad news in healthcare setting. And the same type of mindset reset worked for them. If they were feeling anxious about having to deliver the bad news and they said, okay, it's totally normal that my heart would be pounding or I'd feel these butterflies or I'd be sweating. It's a sign that I care. It's a sign that I want to do well. I don't have to manage that. They end up not only having a healthier stress response, one that is energizing, but isn't full-blown fight or flight, but also they're rated as being more compassionate by the people they deliver the news to.

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

29:24Michael:I was speaking last October and I was driving to the event, it was somewhere local, and I started feeling those butterflies in my stomach. And I was like, oh yeah, this is just what happens. I'm about to speak. This is a common, this is a physiological response. And what I know now is that it will go away about two minutes on stage at the most, it will go away. And I won't feel anything after that, except I'll be like in a kind of flow state and it'll be miserable leading up to it. You know, like I'll, I'll feel all the, you know, feelings and then I'll get on stage and it'll be fine. It's better when you're actually on stage, right?

29:58It's like, I just wanted to start. And the reason that it's so much better when you start is again, because stress often wants you to respond. So once you're in that space where you can actually do something, then you can make use of that energy. So wait, let me give you another mindset reset. So that's one, a number of people have heard this now. The research is so solid on this, embrace your anxiety or embrace your nerves. So one that I really love that is a harder sell for most people, but is very useful if you can take it. another type of physiological response that can happen when you're stressed is in not a performance stressful situation but what I call the bigger than self-stress where you're in a situation where you're facing something that's so big or so uncertain that in reality you can't do it on your own like this is not a situation like let's say you just got diagnosed with cancer This is not a do-it-yourself, rise to the challenge moment.

30:57And if your brain understands the magnitude of the stressful situation, and it could be not just bad news, but it could just be an unexpected change that you're forced to grapple with, you're going to have changes in your brain and body that make you feel overwhelmed. And nobody likes that feeling. And so instead of it just being like your heart pounding, like that anxiety, you can start to feel things like dread. You can start to feel a sense of inertia, like I can't do anything. You might cry. There are all these biochemical changes that are trying to get you to acknowledge that this is bigger than you and you're going to need to reach out for support and maybe to get you to understand that you're not the only one going through it.

31:42You know, if it's something like a big unexpected change, there may be other people who are dealing with the same thing. And it's going to be better if you try to go through it together than if you try to DIY it. And it's much harder for people to understand because there's not a clear physiological signature for it. When you're feeling overwhelmed, you're starting to feel hopeless. It's not like you can feel your heart pounding and you can say, that's giving me energy. But it's really useful to understand in moments when you're starting to feel overwhelmed by stress, that is not a sign that you can't handle this.

32:14And it's not a sign that there's no hope, but it's your brain and body's wisdom or intuition telling you that you should look for support in your life, whether it's looking for information, emotional support, and you should look for other people who are going through this or have been through this because a lot of the challenges we face in life are not ones where we alone will be able to solve the problem. So that's another mindset reset in same way you would rethink your racing heart. Rethink overwhelm. Again, the most important is it doesn't say anything about you or the hopelessness of the situation.

32:50Michael:That's really good. I'm so apt in those situations. I was actually in one earlier this week where I just felt like this must mean I'm not up to the challenge. Like that's the immediate thing, just like I used to think with speaking. This must mean my body's about to fall apart and totally humiliate me on stage. That's what I thought. These feelings mean like it's about to all come apart at the seams. But when I feel that feeling that you're talking about, the thing I say to myself is, this is the one that's going to get me. I'm not up to the challenge of figuring it out. It's debilitating in the same way, except you're right.

33:26Michael:It doesn't have that signature of, oh, it's that thing happening again. But I love that you're reframing it that way. We have to recognize sometimes what our coping defaults are that are unhelpful. So like for me, I would be likely to withdraw. So if I'm feeling like overwhelmed, I look for ways to pull back, like to be less in communication with people who care about me and a desire to disengage from a lot, not just the thing that's stressful, but just like I'm looking for ways to, I don't know, just to withdraw. Other times people will recognize a negative coping strategy when they feel overwhelmed to try to hide it from other people, like to not let people know that they're struggling because they perceive that feeling of overwhelm, not just like you and I are talking about like, I can't deal with this, but a sign of weakness.

34:14And that if I reveal this weakness, I make myself vulnerable or I make myself appear less competent. Again, in situations where you feel overwhelmed, especially, you know, like by midlife, you know, sometimes when you're There are developmental stages where you can feel overwhelmed by having to tie your shoe. But by midlife, most of the time, our brain is actually pretty good at understanding this is a situation that's bigger than me or not. And so if you're feeling that kind of overwhelm, it's a really clear signal that to overcome some of those tendencies we have to not want to ask for help or not to let other people know we're struggling.

34:53And to actually view that feeling as the sign if you feel the tendency to withdraw or to not disclose, that that's actually viewed instead as a signal, this is time to be more transparent because that's the only way to activate resources. Wow. That's good. Your books are full of people who use movement to come back from devastating setbacks like strokes, paralysis, loss. How does that work in the terms of rewiring us to deal with those kinds of situations? Oh, yeah. Exercise and movement, it's almost a miracle. If you were, if you're going to ask for like, what's the number one thing you can do to improve your brain's capacity, both to deal with stress and recover from stress.

35:40So to deal with the hard stuff and also to make your brain more sensitive and responsive to the good stuff in life, to make it easier to connect with other people, to increase your capacity for joy and for meaning and for pleasure. Exercise, as far as I can tell, is the only thing that you can do that increases both capacities, resilience, and I guess what I could call joint connection. And it happens at so many different levels. It happens at the biochemical level. You might've heard me say this in another interview, but I still think it's the most important thing to understand about movement.

36:18When you move your body and you use muscles, your muscles secrete chemicals into your bloodstream that travel to your brain and act like antidepressants, both in terms of increasing resilience and increasing your sensitivity to joy and responsiveness to social connection. And it's any type of movement. You lift stuff, you walk, you run, you swim, you dance, you do yard work and garden. If you're using muscles, your muscles' natural pharmacy is putting these chemicals into your bloodstream. And movement is pretty much the only way you have access to this. So it's even at that basic level of movement is like unlocking this pharmacy that's good for your brain and all types of movement work.

37:00But then when you actually get into the psychology of movement and you have people who are power lifting and literally lifting something heavier than they knew that they could carry, or you have people who are out in nature and experiencing a sense of connection to something bigger than themselves through nature. Or like I, just before this interview, I taught a dance class and I teach these community dance classes. And we sense in that moment, we are a community. We celebrated a woman's birthday. We actually roped in. Sometimes we have like babies walking by. We bring in parents and their babies.

37:33We had someone walking by. It's St. Patrick's Day. He had on a green shirt. We brought him in and we celebrated him. So we're connecting to this quality of community celebration. Like every form of movement has its own psychology. So when you add the biology of this resilience and supporting your brain, and also the fact that the experience itself can be quite meaningful and profound and teach you about who you are and the world around you, that's why there are so many stories like this of people who are able to move forward after grief or move forward after a major change in their lives because movement works at all of these different levels.

38:12Love that. I usually ask people who ask about movement to tell me about their favorite form of movement. Do you two have a favorite form of movement that does something for you like what I described? Yeah, I think for me, it's as simple as exercising, like lifting weights. You know, so I do strength training three days a week. I have a trainer come to my home who works out with me and my wife. And part of what I love about that is the social connection with the three of us. Yeah. You know, because we're all pretty serious researchers about health. And so we're always sharing with one another our findings.

38:43And it's just great. Plus, there's accountability. I go through an hour and I'm like, wow, this is already done.

38:50Michael:Same for me. So we actually have the same trainer. We don't train at the same time, but we have the same trainer. Love that. I love lifting weights. I did it this morning. And I always feel better at the beginning than I do at the end. My favorite movement. Wait, did you say that right? Wait, wait, reverse that. No, reverse that. Sorry. I always feel better at the end than the beginning. At the beginning, I'm like, oh, I don't want to do this. But there he is on the porch, you know, got to let him in. But my favorite form of exercise or really movement, because honestly, I don't know that you count it as exercise is walking.

39:20Michael:I love walking. I love walking outside. Usually I'm not listening to anything. I'm trying to be really just present to whatever, you know, like looking at birds, looking at the trees. Like, I love that. I like to walk slow. My husband's like a really fast walker, you know, so we laugh because like. he'll like get ahead of me. And I'm like, honey, slow down. You know, like I love, I walk like I'm like an old lady and I'm not mad about it. It's just fine. And then the other thing that I love is gardening. I became a gardener about a year ago. So this is my second season gardening. And if my hands are in the dirt, if I'm picking up bags of, you know, literal crap that's going into my garden or flower pots or digging or carrying a hose, whatever, like just, I was outside all day this last Saturday, planting all my early spring stuff.

40:10Michael:And it was absolute heaven, absolute heaven. Like I just, I don't think you can be a happy person and be indoors all the time. Like I think those two things are like, they cannot exist. Do you agree or disagree? I agree. I mean, it's going to be different for different people. People have different things. Not that everybody needs to be a gardener. I mean, clearly, but. So this is one of my favorite ideas that nobody ever asked me about. So I feel like you're queuing me up for this. Okay, great. I'm cuing you. I don't even know what about, but let's do it. Yeah. Okay. So in psychology, there's been this understanding for the last maybe decade or two that the human mind has a default state that tends to, when it's left to its own devices, for many people, the default state is to worry, to mind wander in ways that are often unpleasant.

40:58So maybe you ruminate over past experiences. You're replaying things like, what could I have done better. You're creating scenarios about the future that aren't great. You're maybe being critical of yourself or of others. And there's been a lot of thinking about how do you get people out of that default state if the default state is negative, if it's rumination, it's worrying. And being outdoors is one of the ways to do that. Exercise is another way to do that. This is my theory. I actually think the human mind has two different types of default states. There is this kind of rumination worrying that is the trying to make sense and protect yourself default state.

41:40And it's the one that people get stuck in. But I think there's also a default state that is really about being in the world and having to be present because there's a lot of opportunity and things to react to and maybe an activity that you're engaged in that requires you to pay attention. Yes. And I actually think that that is a default state of the human mind or brain. And most people experience it as a tremendous relief compared to the default state of rumination and worrying and being in nature. I think that's the context in which this other default state, like what it, what it is made for.

42:20And so when you put yourself back in nature, and especially if you're doing something like gardening, where you also are engaging with the world or you're, you open your senses to everything you can hear and see and smell, like you were describing on a walk, you basically tap into this other default state. And there's some interesting research that, particularly for people who have really, you know, sometimes your mind is not a friendly place and people who really struggle with thoughts that are upsetting and unhelpful, that something as simple as going for a walk outdoors is one of the fastest ways to find relief.

42:53So I definitely I recommend that for folks.

42:56Michael:Okay. Here's another example of this that is kind of a little bit, uh, out of the box. So like a week and a half ago, I've decided I want to be a beekeeper. So I'm not sure if that's going to be this year, if that's going to be next year, but I'm just fascinated by it as a gardener, you know, it's like adjacent because you need the pollinators and all that kind of stuff. Well, so I went out to the middle of nowhere to this beekeeping workshop for a day, never been around bees in my life. Like, I mean, I got the little suit for Christmas, you know, feel goofy in it, the whole nine yards. I go out to this beekeeping workshop with this guy who he has a t-shirt on that says, don't tread on bees.

43:32Michael:Like don't tread on me, but like don't tread on bees. You know, it's like real corny sense of humor. It was great, but we're out there. And of course there's a risk of being stung. You know that, which has a way of hyper-focusing the mind. But what I realized, first of all, the way that he kept bees as opposed to like another experience I had later in the week with a different set of folks was almost like the Tai Chi of beekeeping. He moved in this almost like, you know, how you see people doing Tai Chi at the park and they're slow and like, it's just very rhythmic and, and fluid. It was like, that's like, he, he was like that with the bees.

44:07Michael:And what I noticed about myself, I'm gesturing if you're, if you're listening and not watching, I'm pulling out this frame, which is like the little rectangle that has the honeycomb in it, has the bees on it, is that you can't think about anything else but those bees when you're doing it. It's not like you're thinking about your to-do list or what you're going to make for dinner or those can be traffic or some war. Like you literally can only think about the bees that are close to your fingertips and what are they doing in that honeycomb right now. It's amazing how to me, these nature-based experiences, particularly the ones that require a lot physically like that are so immersive.

44:48Michael:Like that's how I would describe it. It is just fully immersive. You cannot think about anything else when you're doing it, even if you wanted to. It's not a choice. You're just totally fully focused. It's wild. And like a really nice thing to contrast that to would be the experience of like scrolling on your phone. Yes. And how really like disembodied that is. Yeah. And it's a focus in a different way. It's like your attention gets locked in, but your actual engagement with life becomes so compressed and narrow. So when you're doing something like you were describing with the beekeeping or anything that, a flow state, by the way, is actually a form of a stress state.

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

46:03You can, again, contrast that to some of the things we do that we think are stress relievers because they don't ask anything of us, like scrolling. Actually, by not asking anything of us and also not really giving us anything, it becomes its own kind of stress state that is like a shutdown. wrong. It happens when we're sedentary, you know, there's a metabolism to not moving your body. That is a kind of a stress state. It doesn't look like a stress response the way I'm talking about it, but it's a state that is not good for you to be in for a long period of time. If you are not engaging with life in a way that really asks something of you, your body and brain goes into the shutdown mode and you could feel it.

46:49And the more time you spend in it, you think you have no energy to do anything else. And it can become this kind of downward spiral. So I often encourage people, they find themselves in that spiral where they're feeling tired and more tired and more tired and more drained. And they notice that what they're doing is an activity that asks nothing of them. Is there anything that you could do at home or interacting with somebody else that just asks a little bit more from you? And you might be surprised at how much energy that gives you or helps you reset your outlook.

47:27Listen, before we wind this down, we got to talk about joy. And you've got a new book coming out called Joy is a Risk Worth Taking.

47:35Michael:Such a great title, by the way. We love it so much. I'm glad you love it. Can I just tell you where it came from? Yeah, tell us. I have been teaching and talking about joy since about a decade now. And the funny thing is whenever you teach about something, people will say they want it until you're teaching a course on it. And then they give you all the reasons why it's not actually possible or not a good idea. I experienced this also when I was really focused on teaching empathy and compassion. People are like, oh, I want to be a compassionate person. Wait, what do you mean I have to have compassion?

48:10Don't you know that empathy is exhausting? And how can you have compassion for whatever situation? So the same thing happened with joy. And it was so interesting that as soon as people say, oh, I want more joy. Joy is good. Wait, joy? You want me to feel joy? Don't you know the state of the world right now? It's morally irresponsible to want or feel or show joy. Or joy isn't possible because the reality of my life is so difficult. My capacity for joy is so diminished. Or the things that I confront the most often, which makes me the saddest, is how can I let myself feel joy? That's just inviting the world or the universe to take it away from me or punish me.

48:56If I let myself feel it or show it or acknowledge what's good in my life, I'm going to lose it. To be immersed in all of this resistance to joy, I kept finding myself saying, well, yeah, I know. Actually, I think people wanted me to say joy is easy. Joy is easy. Just do it. What are you talking about? And actually, no, I realized joy really asks us to be brave. It asks us to value the things that bring us joy. It asks us to be vulnerable and admit that the things that bring us joy will also cause us pain if we lose them. And it requires us to be transparent to others because joy is the emotion more than any other emotion that connects people.

49:45So anytime you're feeling joy or showing joy or talking about joy, it's like you're dissolving some of the protective boundaries that you have to other people. And you're so much more likely to experience a state of connection and togetherness. So there's so many ways that joy is a risk. And I decided, you know, we had to just say, just say, you know what, it's a risk worth taking because joy is, you know, it's the emotional capacity to be uplifted by things that are good. And that has absolute intrinsic value, especially when life is hard. Beautiful. You know, we've had Arthur Brooks on this show and talked about happiness.

50:22I would love to know how you differentiate between happiness, joy, and pleasure. Yeah. First of all, I have to say almost everything that Arthur Brooks says, I resonate with so deeply. Me too. So I'm just going to talk about this from a psychological science point of view, because actually I think probably I would agree with a lot of anything that Brooks says about happiness. We may be talking about some of the same things, but in general, in psychology, happiness usually refers to people's global assessment of how life is going. So if I were to ask you, are you happy? Most people start ticking through, how do I feel about work?

50:59How do I feel about family? Am I dealing with anything really difficult right now? Am I dealing with pain, loss, conflict? And most people, when they say I'm happy, they're making some kind of general assessment that life is going well. Now, I don't know about you. I spent a lot of time, maybe it's because I'm a psychologist, I spend a lot of time with people whose lives are not going well. And one of the reasons why I'm so interested in joy is because joy happens in moments, but there are these moments that create enough of a sense of I matter, good things are possible, there's beauty in the world, there's something to look forward to, I can make a difference.

51:43I'm not alone. These moments of joy, they give us this immediate sense of an antidote to the feeling that life isn't worth living. And that's different than a global assessment, that everything is going well in life. Joy is really just this emotion. It happens when you see something unexpectedly beautiful in nature, or someone thanks you and you feel appreciated, or you realize that you did something that really helped someone or you laugh with someone, these moments of joy that we have, it just affirmed the value of life. It's essential function as an emotion is to shore up your enthusiasm for life in general and also the sense that your individual life matters, that you have something to offer, that you are cared about.

52:33And I think that's why I love joy so much as an emotion because joy is absolutely possible even in situations that aren't happy or when life is not going well. And I have to say, because I've been conducting surveys about joy for a long time, and I always ask people, tell me about a recent moment that brought you joy. Some of the moments that people share are so the opposite of happy and so the opposite of pleasure. For example, one person at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, he shared with me that one of the greatest moments of joy he'd ever had in his life was taking shelter from bombs with neighbors and the conversations they had in that moment because they were so intimate and he felt so connected to them.

53:15That's not a happy situation. Another woman talked about taking care of her husband who was sick from chemotherapy and feeling so much love for him and feeling so needed in that moment. That's not a happy situation. It's not particularly pleasurable. Again, I think that's why joy to me is such a beautiful emotion because it's almost like it's our capacity to find a reason to live in any moment. The last thing, since you mentioned pleasure, pleasure actually is part of how joy works as an emotion. Joy activates the pleasure circuitry of the brain, which also is the relief circuitry of the brain.

53:55So sometimes it feels like relief more than it feels like an endorphin rush. So we need a capacity for pleasure in order to feel joy. Joy often comes with a wash of feeling that you could describe as pleasurable in your body or warm or light. But the thing that makes joy different as an emotion from simple pleasures is it also activates the meaning system of your brain. And we sense the significance of the moment. Even if you couldn't articulate it intellectually. Like when you see a bird and it's an adorable bird and you just suddenly feel so uplifted or joyful to see that bird, it's not like you need to rationalize it, analyze the deep meaning of it, but you sense the significance of it.

54:43And that's one of the things that makes joy a little bit different from some pleasures.

54:46Michael:I had this exact moment last week. Like I was drying my hair and my bathroom window looks right out into these big oak trees that are in front of my house. And I looked out the window. I'm kind of like a bird person. I wouldn't say I'm a birder, but I like birds, you know. And there was a pileated woodpecker pecking away at some like rotting, like a rotting tree branch had broken off. Well, we have little woodpeckers all the time and are bird feeders, but like probably three times in my life have I seen a pileated woodpecker. And I was like so excited, so transfixed by this bird. I just stood there with my hair diffuser in one hand and like peering out the window, you know, looking out the window.

55:26Michael:And I was like, oh my God, it's a pileated woodpecker. And I probably told everybody I saw for three days that I had seen the pileated woodpecker. Like it was so exciting. And, you know, people are like rolling their eyes. Like you've already told me this story, you know, three times actually, you know. And but like it brought me so much joy that I had seen the woodpecker. This gives me a chance to give people the best piece of advice. If they're still listening or watching, you're getting the good stuff now. Okay. Because you just told me. Now, I don't know if you might have been joking about this, but I'm going to take this totally seriously.

55:57You said that you would tell people about this, and some people maybe rolled their eyes. This is the best piece of advice I can give you about how to increase the joy in your life is to meet joy with joy. Cool. If anybody expresses joy to you about anything that is remotely wholesome, healthy, positive, right? That something good happened to them. There's something they love that they're enthusiastic about, something that made them laugh or smile to let yourself catch their enthusiasm and to see it as an absolutely beautiful expression of humanity and who they are and an opportunity to connect with them.

56:36Like wouldn't you have loved it if every person you told about that bird was like, that is amazing. Did you get a picture? Yeah. And if you even had a picture that you wanted to see it. No, I didn't get the picture. I know, but wouldn't you have loved it if somebody asked because they cared so much about your happiness? Totally. So this is, this is literally the best. I think this is the best piece of advice I've ever given on any topic is to really meet joy with joy. People, I think this probably comes from having spent so many years teaching people to meet other people's suffering with compassion.

57:07People do not want to be alone in their pain. I think most people know that. People do not understand that people do not want to be alone in their joy either. People desperately want other people to affirm the significance, the value, or the meaning of the things that bring them meaning or that lift them up. And there's nothing that helps us feel so connected or seen as when somebody else is happy for our happiness or is delighted by the fact that we're delighted and shares in that with us, it's such a validating experience and a moment of true connection. So I say, look for the next opportunity.

57:45When somebody shares something good with you, let yourself be moved by that and don't ever roll your eyes.

57:52Michael:I love it. I love it. And for those of you listening that are people of faith, you know, there's a verse in the Bible that says, rejoice with those who rejoice and grieve with those who grieve. Yeah. And so, beautiful. Well, Kelly, this has been joyful. We've loved this conversation with you. If people wanted to begin to engage more with your work, where would you suggest they start? You've got several books. Yeah, the books are the things. You could always just Google me for all these podcast interviews, but really the books are the thing. And every book that I write, I try to make it a message of encouragement that makes you feel like you understand yourself better and also that you have some new ideas and some new tools that are going to really help you do what matters most in your life and be the version of yourself you want to bring to the world.

58:40Michael:Well, thank you so much for being with us. This has been truly delightful. Truly delightful. Thank you.

58:55Well, that was fun.

58:57Michael:That was so fun. I love the conversation about joy. Me too. You know, I think it's not something I think about, but I feel like I experienced a lot of joy in my life. Part of it is that I think at my age, you know, the grandkids are an endless source of delight, which is, by the way, another word we should have asked her about. Oh, yeah. But just the simple things in life. You know, I used to think I had to travel, you know, to amazing places and all I have to experience joy. But I get so much of that just in the ordinary course of life. And I think it's just looking for it. One of the things that I know can happen, at least for me, when I experience a lot of stress or when I'm in distress is that I notice things that are good less.

59:39Michael:You know, it's like the threat detection part of my brain is aroused and like it's like hyperactive, you know, and I feel like I've been talking about therapy a lot because, you know, I'm back in therapy. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, it's been really helpful. And one of the things that I was talking about, because I've had some hard personal things in the last six months or so, and my therapist led me through this exercise of noticing joy, like noticing good things. And so she had me literally like with something and then like come up with something in my mind and then feel it in my body. Like, what do you notice in your body when you think about that?

1:00:16Michael:Like I talked about the pileated woodpecker that had not already happened at my last therapy session or it would have for sure shown up in my therapy session. But, you know, she would have been like, where does this where does this feel this in your body? And I would be like, oh, I feel like tingly in my face, you know, and she'd be like, great, you know, stay with that or whatever. And she was just saying that there is this intentional practice of noticing good things because what happens a lot of times with stress is like your window narrows and you see only the negative things and not the positive things.

1:00:47Michael:And so I think that this sort of like intentional cultivation of joy that Kelly was talking about is a way of doing that. Being really attentive, like paying attention to things that bring us joy. and like high-fiving each other when we do, you know, like you saw the woodpecker. Yay. I didn't even know what a pileated woodpecker was. Let me tell you, I have to tell you and you're going to get to practice being excited for me. This is going to be great. It's a woodpecker. That's literally like the size of a duck. I'm not kidding. Okay. So it's probably like eight to 10 inches tall. Of course, a woodpecker is vertical, like on a tree, you know, it's not like a duck, like on the wire, like it's vertical.

1:01:29Michael:like it's like a dinosaur sized woodpecker like yes like you know when you see the little woodpeckers at your bird feeder they're like the size of a hot dog bun right okay no this is like the size of like a giant loaf of sourdough like it is it is a big bird okay and it is just so cool well i'm excited for you do you have a picture i don't have a picture if i did i would share it with you. No, but seriously, I mean, I think this practice of noticing things that give us joy and like for me, I know I need to be in my garden and I need to be outside. If I'm going to be well as a person, like I got to be doing those things.

1:02:09Well, you know, we've said for years, we probably got this from Tony Robbins or somebody, but you get more of what you focus on.

1:02:15Michael:Right. And unfortunately, the way that our brains work for our survival is that we tend to focus on threats and things that are dangerous. Right, right. And this is why leaders often can't celebrate their success. Yeah. Because like it's in the rear view mirror and all the threats are in front of them. And so it's easy to focus on that. And one of the first things that I did when I got into therapy for the uptenth time three years ago was this practice of orienting. Yes. Very similar. Right. Where you just start noticing things that are in the present and it takes you out of the future. And joy does the same thing.

1:02:50Joy is a very present, orienting emotion.

1:02:53Michael:Yeah. Well, that's how I felt with the bees. As I was standing out there that day, last Saturday, with my little bee frame, with all the bees on it, I was like, this is all I'm doing. I'm watching these bees. And what is more fascinating than these bees? I couldn't even get over it. Well, as we learned from Elizabeth Stanley, her book, Widening the Window, that part of what stress can do for us if we accept it and use it is to increase our capacity for resilience. Yeah. And so that like, here I am at age 70 and I don't get as panicked as I used to, you know, when things happen, it's just more like, okay, you know, I've survived similar situations and I'll probably survive this too.

1:03:36Michael:I was telling you, I had a stressful experience earlier in the week and I have this little jar in my bedroom that I keep like on a little table and it's full of rocks that I picked up at Stinson Beach in California on a trip there with Joel. And it's all these like little smooth rocks are about the size of like a silver dollar or something. And I have a white label on the front of it that says things that worked out. And I had for a while made a habit of just like all the every time something worked out that I didn't think was going to work out, I put a rock in that jar, you know, what a great.

1:04:09And I had

1:04:10Michael:another, another jar that said things that didn't work out, which was empty. And not that I have it, by the way, if you, if you know anything about my story, it's not because I haven't had hard things. I have a lot of hard things, a lot of hard, a lot of hard things. Um, so this is not coming from someone who's had no trauma, but I picked it up and I, and I, and it's, you know, it's heavy. So it has this great, like tactile kind of component. And it was like such a good reminder of resilience just to be like, oh, the hard things work out. And if they haven't been worked out yet, it's not the end.

1:04:43Michael:Who is it that says that? I don't know, but it may have been Max Licato, but he said, everything works out in the end. And if it hasn't worked out, it's not the end. Yeah. And a lot of us are in the middle of the hard story that feels like it's the end of the story, but it's not the end of the story. Well, and we've often said to each other and to our customers and our clients and our listeners said, all of us have survived 100 % of the hard things we've gone through. And our track record is perfect. So why would we think that we're not going to survive this next thing? And I mean, I get that there's ultimately going to die and there's bad things that happen and all that.

1:05:17But even the bad things, I was sharing, when I went bankrupt in the early 90s, that's not something I'd want to relive, but it's also something I wouldn't trade. Yeah, it's weird, isn't it? Yeah, it's weird because the good things that came out of that in terms of my own empathy, in terms of stretching my resilience, in terms of learning who my friends were and who they weren't. It turned out I had more friends than I thought, more people that were willing to step up and help. It was an amazing experience. Well, we will have all of Kelly's books in the show notes, so you guys can go pick them up and start wherever you want.

1:05:53She's got several, but man, I've loved this time with her.

1:05:56Michael:And please go to Amazon right now and pre-order Kelly's book. Joy is a risk worth taking. If you don't know, pre-ordering a book is huge for an author in getting their book noticed. And people need this message, especially right now. So help Kelly out and help yourself out. Go pre-order this book on Amazon. It doesn't come out until October. But as soon as we're done here, I'm pre-ordering my copy. 100%. Okay, guys, I have one quick favor to ask of you. and it's not to rate and review the podcast, which we've asked almost at the end of every podcast. I just want to encourage you to share this episode with somebody that you think would benefit from it.

1:06:32It's that simple. Just pass along the joy.

1:06:35Michael:I love to share a podcast, don't you? I do too. I shared a couple with you this week. I mean, I just love to share a podcast. Well, the one I listened to, which was amazing. Yeah. And I shared it with other people. That's right. So share away, please. Keep the love flowing. See you next week.

1:06:52So