How to Stop Work From Taking Over Your Life

23:08Find your favorite flavor at premierprotein.com. Deadlines move, plans change, and sometimes opportunities pop up out of nowhere. When you need branded gear fast, 4imprint is ready to deliver. 4imprint offers hundreds of promotional products in their 24-hour category. Everything from custom apparel, bags, and drinkware to writing tools, trade show staples, and high-tech gear. At 4imprint, it's not just fast. It's done right. Your logo is printed with precision. Your order is packed with care. And it all ships out fast. And with their 160-degree guarantee, you can be confident it'll show up right on time, just the way you planned it.

23:52That's what it means to be 4imprint certain. So if you're prepping for a last-minute event or jumping on a big opportunity, you don't have to settle or scramble. With 4imprint, you get fast, reliable service and peace of mind built right in. Check out their full 24-hour selection at 4imprint.com. 4imprint. For certain. Life moves fast. At American Military University, they are ready to help you keep up. AMU's flexible, affordable online programs in cybersecurity, IT, space studies, and more are designed for service members, veterans, and their families. AMU provides the support you need to take the next step, wherever life takes you.

24:37American Military University, built for what's next. Learn more at amu.apus.edu.

24:50We have an unconscious mind, an automatic mind. And it's not a self-organized thing. It's not a self-conscious thing. But it does listen. It does pick up on the messages we give to ourselves. Psychologist and work stress expert Guy Winch argues that we need to be a lot more careful about the inadvertent messages we're allowing our poor minds to hear on repeat. And so many of us tend to have so negative self-talk that we are replaying doubts, even as we're trying to prepare like, oh, but things never go well for me. And the boss just never likes me no matter what I do. And then your unconscious mind is hearing that.

25:25And why should you then feel confident? It's going to generate anxiety. It's going to generate doubt. And you can't say to your unconscious mind, feel confident because it's unconscious. That's not how it works. But you can whisper to it by changing your self-talk to, well, I'm really preparing more than I ever have before. Or like, I am so glad I'm investing all this time doing what I can. I'm so glad I reached out to a few people to get help because now I feel much more confident. Now I'm really doing everything I can. You can message the confidence, the preparation, the control. Those are the things you want to be messaging.

25:57And so you really want to watch that internal dialogue. You've also noted that when we try to change our internal dialogue, it has to be believable. We can't just be like, oh, it's perfect. Nothing's going to be stressful today. I'm not worried about that terrible quarterly report I have coming up. How do we hack the believability of that self-talk better? You just have to be accurate. Don't have to tell yourself, I am the best salesperson in the entire department if your track record doesn't show that. You can say to yourself, here's where I stand in terms of sales. And I'm putting in all this work now because I think I can really improve and move up that list.

26:29That is accurate to the extent that you're actually putting in the time and the effort to improve. So you want to be accurate, but you want to be accurate slash optimistic. And Guy argues that another thing we need to be accurate about is how we choose to name the annoying tasks we face at work. A lot of the times when we procrastinate or when something stresses us out, it's because we feel it's an unpleasant task. It can be unpleasant to us because it's anxiety provoking, it's stressful, it's unpleasant, it's boring. however we define it. You know, it can be an expense account. That's too boring for me.

27:01It can be the difficult email to write this difficult person. That's stressful. And when we think about tasks that way, A, they stress us out. B, we're really inclined to procrastinate and put them off because we don't want to sit with those unpleasant feelings. And when we do that, we're taking the 15-minute tasks, say, 15 minutes of unpleasantness, and we're smearing it over an entire week by putting it off and then thinking about it all the time and then getting more worried about it and more stressed about putting it off. Now I really have to do it, but I don't want to do it. So you actually took something that's limited in terms of the unpleasantness and you supersized it.

27:35Now, if you redefine the tasks that you tend to put off like that, or you tend to find unpleasant as nuisances, which they are. Nuisances are things we tend to take care of right away. When it's a nuisance, there's a fly, there's a pebble in your shoe. No one is on a hike and says, I have got a pebble in my shoe. I'm going to take that out in five to six miles. We don't do that. We're like, oh, I'm going to take that out right away. hey, the tag that's bothering me on this collar, I'm going to rip that out. Nuisances, we take care of right away. So start defining these stressful, obnoxious, difficult, unpleasant tasks as nuisances to yourself.

28:09Now I've got this nuisance spreadsheet. I have to write that nuisance email. You are going to be much more inclined to get rid of it and to do it now rather than later. I can't say how much this has already helped me. I had proofs for a paper, which is as academic, when you get a paper, you have to check everything and make sure all the numbers are right and everything's perfect and it wound up in my inbox and literally when I was going to bed and I'm like oh god I have those proofs I have those proofs I have to do these proofs but then right after that I read your book and I was like the proofs nuisance gotta get that out of the way then I just sat down to do it you know probably did take me like two hours or something you know it was a decent chunk of time it was a big nuisance but then it was gone right then it was two hours and it was done rather than like over a whole week and I'm telling my husband about it at dinner and I was seeing that email every time I look in the inbox, oh, I got to deal with the proofs.

28:54It's such an easier thing to get out of the way and get it off your desk. And the relief we feel when we do is also a nice little bonbon at the end. One of the big insights of your book is that our stress doesn't really end at work in part because our unconscious mind keeps it alive. How does our unconscious mind keep it alive? When you have a difficult day at work, you're feeling overwhelmed, you had an unpleasant exchange with someone, you felt slighted, insulted, harassed, whatever it is. We don't leave those things at the office. Those are the kinds of insults and worries that we take home with us.

29:26And the way they manifest is that they appear as intrusive thoughts that make us think about the incident, but in an unproductive way. They just make us think about that moment where the boss said, no, that's not a good idea at all, and waved their hand dismissively at us and how insulted we felt and how dismissed we felt and how embarrassing that was afterwards. And there our mind spirals. Now, we're not figuring anything out. We went through the unpleasantness of that incident, and now we are playing it on repeat and putting ourselves through that same unpleasantness over and over and over again at home to no end.

30:02One thing to consider is this is unpaid over time. If you are thinking about work when you're home, you're at work. You're not getting nothing done. You're upsetting yourself. You're stressing yourself out. You're keeping yourself activated and in fight or flight. And it's not voluntary. You're trying to watch a show and it trudes into your mind again. And you're sitting at dinner with your partner and trying to have a conversation. And suddenly they're like, hey, did you hear what I said? And you're like, no, because you're back at work replaying that same argument. Another thing people do, which I always find interesting is because I do it too, is they have the fantasy argument.

30:35I wish I would have said this. And again, there's maybe some satisfaction in having the mic drop moment in your head, but you had to relive the insult to have it. You're still getting all upset about it and it's not going to happen. That conversation went, it's in the past now. So we have to catch when we're ruminating unproductively because it's really damaging us. It'll impair our sleep. It'll stress us out. It'll impair our mood. Over time, it can become habitual and then it predisposes us to cardiovascular disease, to depression. There's just no utility to it. And so we have to catch it And then we have to convert it into a much more adaptive form of self-reflection.

31:13And so how do we banish the rumination? Your book has some of these lovely strategies. You talked about kind of coming up with ways to develop strong intolerance for rumination. Sounds great, but what do you mean there? Once you're aware of how useless and harmful rumination is and how you're doing all this over time and actually harming yourself in the process, you should develop a real antipathy toward it. you should see it as your unconscious mind trying to infect you in some way, trying to bring in unpleasantness into your headspace. And so the metaphor I use in the book, and you can use any, is like you have to think of like a skunk that just sat down with you on the sofa.

31:53You'd like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, I don't want this in my head. And I train myself really well to do it. I still ruminate when I'm in stressful periods because that is a natural thing. I just catch it really, really quickly. By the second round of the hamster wheel, I'm like, wait a minute. Now I'm ruminating. I'm not having that. You know, somebody was really annoying and they disappointed me in some kind of way. And I'm like, how could they do that? I don't understand. The minute I catch like, no, no, no, no, no. You're not going to give that person more stage time in your head. This is not happening in my head right now.

32:21I'm not letting it. And one of the great things about that strategy is because rumination is building off all these unconscious processes, just the act of noticing it can be really powerful because then you're like, wait, I'm doing that thing again. Skunk's on the couch. I got to get rid of this. Right. It frees up so much bandwidth, so much mental space. It allows you to be more thoughtful and deliberate and intentional and present in actually what I'd rather be doing after work. Now I can enjoy the movie. Now I can enjoy date night with my partner because I'm actually more present. Another thing we can do when we get back to our conscious mind for thinking about how to deal with rumination is that we can start dealing with potential stressful problems proactively, right?

33:02We can look ahead to prevent the rumination from coming in. You've talked about the strategy of finding your stress minds. What does that mean and how can we use that strategy better? I always ask people when I'm giving talks, who thinks their job is stressful, like nine out of 10? And people are like, oh, it's 10 out of 10. And there's always someone who shouts 11. You know, there's always that. And I'm like, okay, but that's not the case. Your job is not at 11. break it down into what the specific components are and rank those. Now, maybe some of them are tens. Maybe that meeting with the boss and the client that hates you is so unpleasant, that's a 10, but you have it once a month.

33:38Maybe this task or this meeting, which is always people feuding and fighting and not getting along, is an eight or a nine, and you have it three hours a week. But once you start going through that, you'll find that there are some eights, there are some nines, maybe some tens, but there are a lot of threes and fours and fives and sixes because there are the lunches and there are the boring meetings. There's plenty. But once you know what the tasks are, you can start looking at the ones that stress you out most. And those are your stress minds. Those are the ones that kind of explode every week.

34:08And then you can start to strategize about how to deal with them. I asked Ben Walter what he thought of Guy's strategy for categorizing your daily stress minds. Ben said we can go even further by offloading our stress minds altogether. Find ways to not have to do the things that stress you out the most. It's okay. Let's be honest. We are less stressed when we do things we're good at. Now, we don't want to only do things we're great at. Otherwise, we're not nerve-sided. We're not challenged. We're not pressed in the same way that we talked about. But the things that we know we're bad at and that we just don't have a gift for, we might never be good at.

34:44Find a way to not have to do them. That's not always possible, but it's possible a lot more than we think. Pay an outside vendor to do it. Take the whole process out of your business process if you can. Find the things that cause you the most stress and find a way to either engineer them out of your business process or to offload them to partners, employees, or some other party. But that also has a strategy for the stress minds you can't realistically unload. It's a practice that we talk about a lot on the Happiness Lab, the act of radical acceptance. Simply accept the fact that stressful situations are a normative part of most jobs, especially if you're a small business owner, like the clients Ben's supports.

35:23Sometimes there's a time to be stressed and a time to not be stressed. You know, I say to people who want to start their own businesses, just know the first two years, you're going to be stressed the whole time. Yes, you can help manage it. But the early phase of starting a business is highly, highly stressful, even for the most resilient people. But there will come a time at which you can take some of that stress off. You know, a lot of if you're in retail, guess what? Q4 is going to suck. It's just the way it is. My wife works in online retail. She always tells me like, Ben, Black Friday's coming.

35:53I know we're not going away for Thanksgiving. We just don't. So I think having in your mind that there are some times that it's okay to be more stressed. And as long as you protect other times that are less, that can give you more fortitude to cope. It also just normalizes what you're going through. I think it forces you to give yourself a little grace and self-compassion because you're like, this is normal. Of course, I'm feeling stressed. I'm in my first year of the business, or of course, I'm feeling stressed. It's Q4. Common human experience. And there's so many studies that show that just having that moment of like, yeah, normal, common human experience, it reduces the stress because it stops you from beating yourself up about the stress when you're in that tough time.

36:29Right. It's like saying if you've had a loss in your life and you're sad, well, that's normal. You're feeling grief. That's normal. And then there's times when you are stressed and that's okay, too. And I think we don't give ourselves permission. It's, I'm feeling stressed and I shouldn't. Well, no, maybe this is a time you probably are going to feel stressed. So far, we've heard Guy and Ben's strategies for managing stress at work. But what about managing stress when you get out of work? When we get back from the break, we'll discuss what the evidence says about how to truly relax and recharge.

36:57We'll learn why so many of us tend to decompress in the wrong ways and what we can do to unstress our leisure time. The Happiness Lab will be right back. Thank you.

37:36with a local cuisine fueled by San Diego's year-round farm-fresh produce. San Diego isn't just a destination. It's a disposition. Come to the bright side. Plan your trip to San Diego by going to sandiego.org. Funded in part with City of San Diego Tourism Marketing District Assessment Funds. On the Happiness Lab, we often focus on why dramatic lifestyle overhauls don't last, but small, manageable changes do. That's what I like about Hero Bread. It's a simple swap that doesn't require willpower or constant decision-making. Hero makes sliced bread, bagels, tortillas, and more, with 0 to 5 grams of net carbs per serving, 0 grams of sugar, and up to 19 grams of protein, while still delivering the familiar, comforting experience people associate with bread.

38:25That makes it easier to enjoy breakfast wraps, sandwiches, or family dinners without feeling like you're on a plan. They even offer limited-batch items, like a 2-gram net-carb croissant made in a Sonoma-based French bakery, which shows that nutritious choices can still feel indulgent and rewarding. If you're looking for an easier way to make better everyday choices, head to Hero.co and use my code HAPPINESS for 10 % off your first order. All figures are per serving, not a low-calorie food. Baked goods contain up to 18 grams of fat per serving. See Nutrition Facts for more info. When life gets really busy, taking care of yourself can feel overwhelming.

39:06That's why Premier Protein shakes are my go-to. They have 30 grams of protein, 160 calories, no added sugar, and they taste amazing. With flavors from caramel to cake batter, it never feels boring. I love the cafe latte flavor. It's like having an iced coffee milkshake every morning. And Premier Protein isn't just about fitness. It's for getting your time back. Premier Protein powers me to say yes to more, whether that's a quick walk in the morning or a break for yoga at lunchtime. Find your favorite flavor at premierprotein.com. That's P-R-E-M-I-E-R protein.com. Or at Amazon, Walmart, and other major retailers.

39:47Deadlines move, plans change, and sometimes opportunities pop up out of nowhere. When you need branded gear fast, 4imprint is ready to deliver. 4imprint offers hundreds of promotional products in their 24-hour category. Everything from custom apparel, bags, and drinkware, to writing tools, trade show staples, and high-tech gear. At 4imprint, it's not just fast, it's done right. Your logo is printed with precision, your order is packed with care, and it all ships out fast. And with their 160-degree guarantee, you can be confident it'll show up right on time, just the way you planned it. That's what it means to be 4imprint certain.

40:29So if you're prepping for a last-minute event or jumping on a big opportunity, you don't have to settle or scramble. With 4imprint, you get fast, reliable service and peace of mind built right in. Check out their full 24-hour selection at 4imprint.com. 4imprint. 4certain. Life moves fast. At American Military University, they are ready to help you keep up. AMU's flexible, affordable online programs in cybersecurity, IT, space studies, and more are designed for service members, veterans, and their families. AMU provides the support you need to take the next step, wherever life takes you. American Military University, built for what's next.

41:15Learn more at amu.apus.edu.

41:25These days, we talk a lot about stress on the job. But psychologist Guy Winch likes to point out that handling work stress isn't just about what you do during your work hours. It's also about how you spend your time off the clock. What's interesting for me is that the nature of work has changed so dramatically since the Industrial Revolution and our approaches to recovery have not. In other words, in the Industrial Revolution, you spend 15 hours a day, you know, stirring fabrics in a vat of dye, and then you get home and you need to rest. But we sit, usually eight, nine hours a day, and look at screens.

42:00And our way to recover from that is to get home and sit down and look at screens. And our brain is like, so wait, what's happening? How is this different, really? It doesn't matter that the content is different. We're doing the same thing. And the research shows that to recover effectively from the workday, we need to de-stress. And so resting and relaxing has its place. If you want to veg out for a few hours, fine. That won't drain your batteries further. It won't recharge them, though. To recharge, to revitalize is a really important ingredient of effective recovery. So it can't just be about the veg out.

42:37It can't just be about the screen binge or about the social media. You know, so many people are like, oh, I spent three hours looking through reels. And I'm like, three hours through reels? They're short. So how many different, your attention is like, your brain is like, that was not calming to me at all. You know, I did not feel calm by that. So we have to add in the recharging stuff. And the recharging stuff, unfortunately, doesn't happen on the couch. It actually means we have to get up and do something. The problem is our mind, again, the automatic unconscious mind will say to you like, no, no, no, no, you're totally wiped out.

43:13You can't go to the gym now. That's crazy talk. You can't get up and go meet your friend. You're drained. Our mind doesn't distinguish well between mental exhaustion and physical exhaustion. It confuses the two. We're not physically tired. We're mentally drained and we need to recharge mentally. And everyone knows this. If you're athletic and you force yourself to get off the couch and go for that run, if you're social and you force yourself to go and socialize, if you're creative and you force yourself to go and do the painting or the writing, whatever it is, whether it's 15 minutes, half an hour or an hour later, you will come back feeling way more energized than before you left.

43:51Because of that magical ROI of that second wind, you'll feel revitalized. Except that when you're on the couch, your mind is telling you, no, no, you just don't have it within you. But you do. It's one of those moments where you have to like be the adult, you know, in the brain and kind of take over and disengage from the autopilot and do the thing that's good for you, even though it feels like I can't. But even when you've intentionally chosen a more restorative activity, it can still be hard to switch off. I know that when I'm feeling really stressed at work, it can feel like I'm battling my brain just to turn work mode off so that I can actually enjoy my free time.

44:25So how do we do this better? Guy suggests a strategy he learned as a kid from watching Mr. Rogers. If you're a fan of that show, you probably remember how Mr. Rogers would famously swap his suit jacket and dress shoes for the red cardigan and sneakers he wore at home every day when he entered the house. Guy says that daily rituals like these can be more beneficial than we expect. We have to really help train our brain to shift gears from the workday, which might be intense and conflictual and pressured and stressful, to whatever the home life is, whatever you're doing when you get home, whether it's a dinner with your family, helping your kids with homework, whatever the thing is.

45:04It's a very different mindset. You want to help switch gears. And for the brain, it's really useful to have a ritual that's repetitive because our brain learns rituals. And so when you start something, it starts to anticipate where this is going and then it'll cooperate better in actually shifting the mindset. And I say ritual because people say I have a routine, But a ritual is something that we imbue with deeper meaning. So it's actually a little bit more effective. And it should employ as many of the senses as possible. Music is very evocative for us. So have the playlist that you play at the end of the day.

45:37Actions are useful. I always close the door to my home office. I will walk out. I will close the door. And I will say to myself, your evening begins. Like I will message myself, this is the end of the workday. And then I will listen to a certain kind of music. I will change clothes. So I tend to wear casual clothes. But I have the casual clothes I wear when I'm working. And I have the casual. And people say to me, I'm jeans and T-shirts. I'm like, terrific. Have the T-shirts you wear for work and associate with work. And have the T-shirts and jeans that your brain associates with not work. Because it's very symbolic.

46:10Clothes are very embodied. It makes us feel a certain thing. So if you associate some with your leisure time, you're much more inclined to then feel relaxed. You can use scent, certain candles. You can shift the lighting. You can create whatever the ritual is that works for you, but repeat it every day. You can do it during your commute or, you know, as you get home. You can ask for like, when I get home, I'll need 10 minutes to kind of get my mind straight before I dive into the duties of the household or the parenting. You can ask for that and then use that because then you'll be much more present.

46:39You're also hacking the same thing that causes all the problems, which is your unconscious mind, right? If your mind is unconsciously noticing the clothes you wear, that you're still in the room where you were working, now all of a sudden it's still in work mode. But when you use the ritual to hack like, oh, now new smell, new clothes, your unconscious mind, for better or for worse, is learning from it and changing how you're experiencing the world emotionally. It's so powerful. Absolutely. Another way we can hack the unconscious mind, though, is that we can tell it stuff that we want it to learn from.

47:07You've talked about the power of announcing your schedule in the evenings if you do have to work on some small things. How does that work? I advocate for two things. Number one, I said when I leave my office, I say now the evening begins. but I will also put in my calendar. A lot of people, the evenings are white in their calendar unless they have something that they're doing. Okay, I have dinner here with these friends or this thing that I'm going to, but otherwise it's white. And white is not telling your brain what to do. So I would put there rest and recharge, recover from the workday, spend quality time with your family, put something there so it reminds you, actually there is a task right now.

47:43It's not a goal-oriented one, it's an experiential one, but there is one. But the other thing you can do is like work emails. many, many, many people. They have to respond to them. And what that does is that it can just corrupt your entire evening because you check your phone every five minutes and then you're not detached from work at all. You're fused with work. You're not able to engage and to be present in whatever it is you are doing. So that framing, the feeling of autonomy that you're in charge of your evening is very important. And the way you do that is you frame whatever the task is as the main event.

48:11The main event being relax and recharge or quality time with my family or go for a run, then have dinner, then whatever the thing is, that's the main event. And then when you have to check work stuff, do it in one sitting, if possible, frame that as that's the intermission from the main event of the show that is my evening. And then you're just taking a break from your evening for the intermission about work. And then after the intermission, the show resumes, you're resuming whatever you're doing. That brain hack allows your unconscious mind to still feel like we're at home as opposed to continually thinking about, oh, I have to deal with this thing at work.

48:49So these are all strategies we can use for the end of the workday. But you've also been a big advocate of squeezing leisure into micro breaks during the workday. How can we do this a little bit better? So I said earlier that one of the things we do when we feel overwhelmed at work, pressured, stressed, etc., is we just put our head down and go from task to task on complete autopilot. We're actually not strategizing our day from a psychological health point of view. We are not actually giving thought and looking like, oh my goodness, I have three difficult meetings in a row. What's the best way for me to deal with that?

49:24Oh, you know what? There's 10 minutes here between this one and this one. That would be a good time for me to do some sit-ups or push-ups or go up and down some stairs just to get my blood flow going. I do have 15 minutes here. Let me prepare food to bring and go sit in the park, have some nature around me. That will be really, really useful. After this meeting, let me see if I can push back the next thing by 10 minutes, because then I want to be able to call my mother, my best friend, whatever, and just see a friendly, loving face and just get some good vibes. In other words, be intentional and deliberate about what breaks, what oases you're putting in your desert of a day or your hell of a landscape or whatever it is.

50:06Build in some breaks. There's small things you can do for a minute or two. If you're going to be on social media, look at things that actually make you smile. For me, videos of Vishal puppies, whatever, two or three minutes, guaranteed. Oh God, that's just too cute. I'm in a different mindset already. This was so critical for me when I heard this one, because I realized that what I do when I have these micro breaks in a really busy, busy day, is I'm often, again, using these sort of slightly bad unconscious strategies. So I'm like, well, those are my moments to get through the other stuff. That's when I'll go through my email or that's when I'll check in on what's happening on the news or something like that.

50:41And it's exactly the wrong thing I need at that time. It's like the thing my brain goes to is exactly the wrong stuff that I really need in that moment. The news, it doesn't matter what side of the political landscape you're on, it's upsetting regardless. It's angering regardless. So, like, be very thoughtful about when do I want to be activated one way or the other? When do I want to feel, like, engaged in that way? Do it when it's good for you. Do it when you can come down for it, not just that that net lingers. And certainly don't do it between stressful meetings, because again, that'll put you into fight or flight and then predispose you to go into the next meeting really charged up.

51:15And that means more sensitized, more reactive, all of it. But managing stress can sometimes require more than a restful micro moment. In his work with small business owners, Ben Walter has seen that day-long breaks can also be transformative. The most effective strategies I see are when you reserve at least one specific time every week where you don't work. There's a reason that, you know, whatever your religion, whether your day is Saturday or your day is Sunday, there's a reason that people figured this out like 5 ,000 years ago, that maybe a day of rest is probably pretty healthy for you, both physically and emotionally.

51:49It gives you an anchor and it gives you something to look forward to every week and that you can build on as the business grows. So I think the only way to manage it is to have set times where, but for emergencies, you don't work. But Ben's favorite tip for managing stress isn't about what you do on your own. It's about who you surround yourself with when times get tough. When you carry the weight of the world on your shoulders and you don't have anyone to share that with, it's pretty rough. So one of the big pieces of advice that I give to all of my clients is to find a network. A lot of small businesses have formed a community that support each other.

52:23I gave the example of that coffee company. One of their competitors helped them get through it. And so whether it's complementary businesses or competitive businesses doesn't matter. Find like-minded people who've had experiences like yours, and you should form a support network with them and have people that you can, in a safe way, share your challenges with who can share some of their experiences and how they solve them. It's a really important outlet for people. I meet with small businesses all the time. And the difference between the ones who feel like they are alone and the ones who found their people and know they aren't is dramatic.

52:55You're giving a strategy that fits so nicely with the science of social emotional regulation. One of the great ways we can regulate our emotions and deal with our stress is to talk to other people about it. But it doesn't work to talk to other people if they don't understand what you're going through. And so finding this network of people who are going through the same thing is like the best form of social emotional regulation because they're giving you strategies. that they know are going to work for you. I mean, there's nothing in the world quite as comforting as when someone says, I know exactly what that feels like.

53:23That's really hard. And they mean it. That's just calming. Oh, I'm not alone. This isn't unique to me. Other people have had to experience this. Let me learn from them. Work stress may be climbing, but that doesn't mean you have to live in fight or flight mode. By managing your mindset, protecting your recovery time, and building the right support around you, you can learn to keep stress in that healthier, nerve-sided range. If you're curious to learn more science-backed advice on managing work stress, check out Guy Winch's new book, Mind Over Grind, How to Break Free When Work Hijacks Your Life.

53:59And if you'd like to hear more personal stories from small business owners about their make-or-break moments, check out Ben Walter's podcast, The Unshakables. If you have thoughts about today's episode and the science of work stress, we'd love to hear them. You can email us at happinesslab at pushkin.fm or leave us a review to tell us what resonated. You can also sign up to learn more about the science of happiness and join my free newsletter on my website, drlarisantos.com. That's D-R-L-A-U-R-I-E-S-A-N-T-O-S dot com. That's it for today, but be sure to return next week for our special coverage of this year's upcoming World Happiness Report, which we'll be dropping later this week.

54:41That's all next time on The Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos.

54:57Seeking more brightness these days, research shows that simply gazing at bodies of water like the Pacific Ocean can help lower your heart rate and increase feelings of relaxation. Consider a trip to sunny San Diego. Put your toes in the sand. Smell and feel the ocean breeze. Spending time in nature can be great for your mental health. And as you soak up the bright side, feel your taste buds, your health, and your wellness with a local cuisine fueled by San Diego's year-round farm-fresh produce. San Diego isn't just a destination. It's a disposition. Come to the bright side. Plan your trip to San Diego by going to sandiego.org.

55:36funded in part with City of San Diego Tourism Marketing District Assessment Funds. On the Happiness Lab, we often focus on why dramatic lifestyle overhauls don't last, but small, manageable changes do. That's what I like about Hero Bread. It's a simple swap that doesn't require willpower or constant decision-making. Hero makes sliced bread, bagels, tortillas, and more, with 0 to 5 grams of net carbs per serving, 0 grams of sugar, and up to 19 grams of protein, while still delivering the familiar, comforting experience people associate with bread. That makes it easier to enjoy breakfast wraps, sandwiches, or family dinners without feeling like you're on a plan.

56:18They even offer limited-batch items, like a 2-gram net-carb croissant made in a Sonoma-based French bakery, which shows that nutritious choices can still feel indulgent and rewarding. If you're looking for an easier way to make better everyday choices, head to hero.co and use my code happiness for 10 % off your first order. All figures are per serving, not a low calorie food. Baked goods contain up to 18 grams of fat per serving. See nutrition facts for more info. Deadlines shift, plans change, and sometimes you need promo products fast. Turn to 4imprint. 4imprint has hundreds of promotional items available with 24-hour turnaround.

57:01From custom apparel and drinkware to trade show gear, writing tools, and more. Your logo is printed with care. Your order ships fast. And with their 360-degree guarantee, you know it'll show up right and on time. That's the certainty of 4imprint. Check out the full 24-hour selection at 4imprint.com. 4imprint. 4certain. When life gets really busy, taking care of yourself can feel overwhelming. That's why Premier Protein shakes are my go-to. They have 30 grams of protein, 160 calories, no added sugar, and they taste amazing. With flavors from caramel to cake batter, it never feels boring. I love the cafe latte flavor.

57:43It's like having an iced coffee milkshake every morning. And Premier Protein isn't just about fitness. It's for getting your time back. Premier Protein powers me to say yes to more, whether that's a quick walk in the morning or a break for yoga at lunchtime. Find your favorite flavor at PremierProtein.com. That's P-R-E-M-I-E-R-Protein.com or at Amazon, Walmart, and other major retailers. Life moves fast. At American Military University, they are ready to help you keep up. AMU's flexible, affordable online programs in cybersecurity, IT, space studies, and more are designed for service members, veterans, and their families.

58:25AMU provides the support you need to take the next step, wherever life takes you. American Military University, built for what's next. Learn more at amu.apus.edu. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.