Making Stress Work In Your Favor with Heidi Hanna

Hello, hello, welcome to Inside Scoop. I'm Paula Rizzo. Today we're talking all about stress. Raise your hand, put a little yes in the comment box below if you're feeling it. If you feel like there's some stress coming your way, look, we've all been under stress for a very long time, but now add in working from home, living from home, playing from home, doing everything from home, the stress compounds, right? And so today we're going to talk about it, and I'm going to bring in an amazing guest in just a couple minutes, a friend of mine for a long time. Her name is Dr. Heidi Hanna, and I've been interviewing her for years about stress because she has a different take on it, and I want to be able to bring that take to you because it's, it's a, it's a way better way of thinking about and Dealing with stress. So throughout the broadcast, if you have questions, comments, thoughts, you want to share this with friends, go ahead and do that because this is only, you know, as good as we all make it. So make sure that you leave us your questions and your comments, and we would love to, you know, dive in on that for you. I also have a checklist for you if you go to paularizzo.com/list. It's a whole bunch of ways that you can be less stressed with list making. You know, I love a good list, so check it out for sure. And I also am a LinkedIn Learning instructor, which is actually very fun. Uh, and the reason I'm a LinkedIn Learning instructor is because of Heidi Hanna, who I'm going to introduce you to in a second. And one of the courses that I have— I have several, but one is called How to Set Boundaries and Protect Your Time. And if you go to paularizzo.com/linkedin, it has all of my courses there. And you know, if we're talking about stress and how to handle it better and how to make sure that you're, uh, you know, living your best life, as Oprah would say, you want to make sure that you set some boundaries. It's a kindness that you do to yourself, for sure. And, uh, speaking of LinkedIn Learning, uh, Heidi Hanna is also a LinkedIn Learning instructor. And so I am thrilled to have her here with us today to be able to chat and talk all about why stress is actually pretty good for you. Hi Heidi, how are you? Heidi, you're muted. Let's unmute you. And then I want you to— there you go.

So funny. Okay. I've been so good at that this last year. And I know that's the t-shirt for 2020. It's like, you're on mute. So what's so ironic about that is I started to say, of course, right when we go live, there's like the Coast Guard is flying overhead and the technology, you know, right before we got started, it was like down to the wire that my computer's updating. It's just, it has been, it's been a year. And it's been a week and it's been a day, but I'm glad to be with you.

Yeah, well, thank you. And you and I go way back from my days as a TV producer at Fox News. I've interviewed you for both my books, Listful Thinking, Listful Living. I just can't get enough Heidi Hanna in my life. So I'm just thrilled that we're still connected after all this time.

I'm glad someone feels that way because I can definitely get enough. But I always enjoy talking with you. And I remember from the first time we met, actually, It's so crazy the way timing is. I won't take too long with this story, but right before I met you, I had a friend who had just passed away and I actually ended up dedicating my book Recharge to her. Actually, it was Stressaholic that I dedicated to her because she was an anchor in Manhattan.

I remember, yes.

Judy Martin. And I was so excited to tell her I'd just taken a job doing some consulting with Canyon Ranch in a place that she loved. And so I was gonna take her there. She was really stressed out and dealing with a bunch of stuff. Long story short, 2 days before I came to New York, she passed away unexpectedly. And it was so shocking. And I remember coming to the Fox studio and being like, okay, I'm gonna channel my inner Judy Martin because I had never done this before. But it was such a cool experience to be able to be there talking about stress addiction, which I honestly think was a big part of what happened with Judy. So it's been a passion of mine to speak out about it. And I'm so glad that we can talk about it today as well, because my whole perspective has certainly evolved over the last year. Last year.

Yeah, absolutely. And you know what, one of the, one of the things that we talked about that day and every other day that I've ever spoken to you and interviewed you, because I, I love your perspective on it, is that stress is actually not that bad for you. Yes, it manifests in your body and it can cause awful things to happen, but there is a reason that you can use stress to your advantage. Tell me about that, because that, for me, as both a TV producer and a person, has always struck me as, huh, really? Is that actually true? But it is.

Yeah. I mean, I'm going to get right to like the, uh, the soundbite at the end, which I don't normally do, which is I really believe stressing is a blessing once we know how to use it for good. And the thing is that our stress reactions are designed to help us to survive in times of threats. The challenge is that we are hardwired in a way that's really sensitive to kind of primitive threats. And non-conscious cues in our environment. And the environments we live in right now are constantly telling us it's not safe to get out of bed in the morning. So we wake up and we feel like there's not enough time to get it done. And our to-do lists, speaking of lists, are like way longer than anything we could accomplish in 24 hours. And it's the chronic stress state that we get stuck in that actually does all the wear and tear. And so statistically, we know that 75 to 90% of medical visits are stress-related. And because of that, then everyone goes, oh, I'm stressed, and that's a bad thing. Stress itself is just what happens when demand exceeds capacity. It's actually helpful until it gets harmful. So if you actually have a stress reaction like fight or flight, when you actually fight or flight something, it works to your favor. But what we tend to do is have that type of experience and then we sit all day long and we're getting bombarded by information overload and lists that are not realistic and all that kind of stuff. And that's what gets us into a chronic stress state. So It's not that stress is good or bad. My favorite thing lately, and this has really been the evolution of my relationship with stress, is that stress is just energy and information that has the potential to help us. But if we don't use it, mobilize it in some way, it will hurt us.

Right. And the idea of chronic stress, so you go from thing to thing to thing. And I remember one time you had explained it, if you're going to a speaking engagement and you're on a stage and you're doing that and it's really exciting. But it is stressful on your body, right? Because you're performing, you're doing things, then everybody's coming up to you at the end. Everybody wants to talk to you, which is awesome and great. But then if then you go to a networking thing right after that, you're not allowing yourself that rest mode. So what is it that has to happen in between all of these stressful things for you to actually balance yourself out a little bit so that you're not constantly like in, in stress mode?

That's the key. It's not that stress is bad. It's the lack of recharging our own battery that's bad. It's flatlining. So everything about the human system is designed to oscillate— heartbeats, brainwaves, blood sugar. Everything's supposed to have a rhythm. And in fact, if you go to the hospital or if you go anywhere and they hook you up to a monitor, you hope that there's some sort of pulse or beat because a flatline is always bad. But the way we do our day, we get up and go and go and go and go and go and go and go and go, all the while thinking we don't have enough time to get it all done. And so we're literally really flatlining. So it's what we do to recharge ourselves. And a lot of people will say, well, how long do I have to do it? What do I have to do? Well, yeah, basic information that we know through science is that we have these rhythms that reset themselves approximately every 90 minutes or so. So circadian rhythms at night, ultradian rhythms during the day. And so you're doing this pattern, and if you don't take a break, then the only way you can have energy is really through fake energy, which is be caffeine, sugar, or stress hormones. So that keeps us up, but that's also why we can't fall asleep at night, is because we're so amped up on fake energy and we're not recharging. Even when we sleep, we go through these cycles of about 90 minutes. Now the one thing I just want to add to that is the more stress we have, the more recharging we need. So in today's day and age, I usually say try to take every hour and give yourself 3 to 5 minutes and to recharge. If you do it consistently, 3 to 5 minutes is probably enough. If you don't, let's say you have to go for 2 hours, or you have a season of life like I'm in right now where it's like I'm really not going to get a break for a while, you need more intensive recharge. So that's when things like massage, right, you know, doing something that's really nourishing for you should not be something you do when you get around to it. It should be absolutely critical. And I'll just give a quick example. I'm dealing with a crisis with a family emergency right now, and I still took an hour yesterday to go get a massage, and it's really hard to do that, but literally my, my shoulders are up in my ears because I've got the stress reaction that's supposed to help me, but I can't do that all day. I got a massage, everything just kind of came down. I took time to eat a healthy meal, and then I went back and I dealt with the crisis. But then it's like I could show up as my best self and really serve the people that I was trying And it is that, it is knowing that, right?

And knowing, hey, I'm going to show up better if I do this. Without this, I'm not going to be able to, to get this done. I'm not going to be able to get through the day. I have, you know, as a health producer for many years, I covered self-help, uh, I covered, you know, self-care for a very, very long time. I think people get self-care very wrong because they think that it only has to be the hour massage or it's only a 7-day vacation, which is awesome and you should do it, right? 100%. Most people don't because they just worked at a different location. Now life is a little different, right? But, um, it doesn't have to be that. It can be those little moments. If you're saying, you know, 3 to 5 minutes, what do you suggest that people do in those 3 to 5 minutes? Because I, of course, have a list of things that I like to do to recharge myself, but what do you tell people that they should be doing in these small increments to recharge themselves?

Yeah, so what I like to do is think about two types of strategies: proactive and reactive. So if you want your shorter-term 3 to 5 minute reactive strategies to help, the best thing you can do is train those proactively. So it's kind of like saying if you want to go sprint down the road, you should probably proactively train your body to be a better sprinter. If you want to do breathing exercises that really help you, you should probably proactively do some breathwork, meditation, mindfulness, essential oils, humor. I mean, I've got— talk about lists.

Ah, yes.

So what I'm saying is proactively— let me give you a practical example. Proactively, I have Tommy the Turtle next to my computer, and I just got him recently because for some reason he calms me down when it comes to technology. I also have my stress monkeys, and I keep these with me. But when something's not working with my technology, I put my hand on Tommy the Turtle and I say, the technology is going to be back and I just have to be patient. Now, I'm not going to know to do that if I don't proactively do some meditation and mindfulness. So to me, there's the bookends of the day. First thing in the morning, right before you go to bed, you should give yourself 15 to 20 minutes to proactively train some stress mastery techniques so that then during the day when something happens in the moment, like the technology's not working or getting triggered by one of your parents, or you've gone too long without eating, or all the stuff, then you have those cues where you can actually just Grab the stress monkey, squeeze them a few times, do some deep breathing, think about something you feel grateful for, and get back to it. But you've got to do the proactive to get the most benefits from the reactive. I think that's important.

Yeah, absolutely. And also to have almost a ritual, right? To say, like you said, a morning thing, an evening thing. I often tell people the last thing you should do as you're closing your office for the day, no matter where that office is, I sit down, I make a list. I make a list of everything that I'm going to do the next day, and that to me signals This day is done. I'm not going to work anymore. That is my signal to myself and to everything else. As soon as I'm writing that down, that is it. I want to talk about lists a little bit because— of course, because I know you love lists too. But one of the things that you had told me years ago when my first book, Listful Thinking, came out and that you're quoted in was that you make a just enough list. And I have to tell you, Heidi, all the speaking that I've done, all of the book tours, all the signings, all the things, when I mentioned that just enough list, people go wild. So tell us again what this Just Enough List is and how it works, because it really does resonate with people.

I think that what I realized is this, you know, there's never enough time to get it all done. I'm too much, I'm not enough. I mean, I just grew up feeling like I was too much for people, but I wasn't enough for people. I do think everyone can resonate. I recently did a survey, and I think I've had about 80,000 people take it at at this point, trying to find out what the biggest triggers are for chronic stress. And the number one thing that shows up time and time again is the feeling that there's not enough time to get it all done. Now that is true because we're trying to do more than is humanly possible in 24 hours. So I got to a point where I had this aha moment. I created a Post-it note that said on it, you will not get it all done today. Deal with it.

And I put it up on my computer.

And that way, when I came in and I sat at the computer, I was like, oh, I'm not going to get it all done.

Like, right, permission.

Handle the fact that I'm— so I came to the point that I was like, especially as an entrepreneur, there's literally always something else I could be doing. And the happier I am and the more successful I am, the more stuff I could be doing. People think that I'm going to get to this point where like I'm gonna have all these other people to handle it. At least for me, that's not the case, right? So, um, so the enough list became something, and I would actually take a piece of paper. So on the front, I would decide how many things I felt like I could accomplish today where I would feel like I did enough. There wasn't any superstructure to it. It wasn't like 10 things or 3 things or 5 things. It was just like, what would be enough for me to feel like I had a successful day? And once those were accomplished, the day was done. It could be noon, it could be 2, it didn't really matter. And then on the back side, I would put the optional things because sometimes I'm really on a roll. And let's say I'm like, right now I'm working on my new LinkedIn course, and let's say I want to do 2 scripts. Yep. If I had time and I was feeling like it, I could actually maybe knock out 5 scripts. So I'm not going to keep myself from doing that. But let's say I get the 2 done. At that moment, I take a mindful pause and say, how do I feel? And what would really be the best return on my time and energy investment? Because sometimes my brain says you need to keep working and working and working and working. You have to prove that you're, you know, of value. And sometimes my heart's like, it's a really nice day outside and we want to go to the beach. So I have to kind of go, okay, well, could I go to the beach for 5 minutes and come back? Or do I want to just take the afternoon off? The problem is, especially with technology, we could literally be working 24/7. So we— and this is really the philosophy behind my Brain Boss program— is at some point We have to be the boss of our brain. Our brain is going to move us always towards productivity, survival mode, all that kind of stuff. And we have to kind of tap in and say, but what is my heart or my soul or my spirit want to do? And allow some of that to play and be creative and be loving and be fully engaged. And it's like a constant dance between the two of those systems. The more aligned we are, the more successful, the more productive.

Yeah, and, and also checking in with yourself. I love, I love that idea to check in with yourself and say, you know what, how do I feel in this moment now that I've done this thing, whatever it is. I, I started doing that when I first started working for myself because you know how it is, you, you do things, you're trying to get clients, you're trying to book speaking things, you're doing all this stuff, it's really exciting. And then if you don't check in with yourself and say, did I actually like that? Do I actually like working with that person? You fall into these patterns of doing things you don't want to do And then it actually makes you even more stressed out. So, you know, I, I like to do that, to really check in and even tell somebody like, hey, I loved doing that. After I did that, I feel amazing. Remind me that I love it, or remind me that I hated that, you know. But one of the things that you said, which I remember we had spoken about on the very first Fox interview that you did, uh, with me, was about stress addiction and being addicted to stress and addicted to being so busy. And I think that's what a lot of people struggle with, that mindset is if I'm not doing, if I'm not productive, I'm not worthy. How do we get out of that? Because that is like a whole thing.

It's a whole thing. And so I like to look at really the way that our nervous system is hardwired. It's kind of segmented into 3 different levels. Now, this doesn't mean that it's exactly like this, but some of your listeners may be familiar with a concept called the triune brain. And the triune brain is basically the lower level of the brain and the nervous system is focused on just survival. The middle part is focused on kind of, um, feelings and emotions and love, like kind of reward versus danger a little bit. And then the top part is really more about kind of what we want. Um, there's what we need and what we want. And the reason I say that is because I think that stress addiction can tap into all three of those different areas. And one is that when we are tired, Feeling stressed gives us energy, so it's stimulating, and people really want to get that. It's kind of like, if I slow down, I'm not going to get started again, so I'm just going to stay busy. I had so many people when I wrote Stressaholic go, oh my God, I can't wait to read that, but I cannot let you take my stress away. Like, I need it to function. In fact, on the interview, I said to the gal that was interviewing me, she said, well, how do you know if you're a stress addict? And I said, well, Let's just try right now. Just close your eyes and just relax for a moment. She was like, nope, nope.

I am. I mean, I 100% remember. Yes, it was Julie Banderas. And she was like, oh no, I am addicted to stress. 100%. Like, as soon as you said it, she was like, oh, that's me. Absolutely.

She's like, I'm eating lunch. Yeah, right.

But she's like, I'm like eating lunch over a sink. You know, she's like, that's sort of what I'm doing. You know, like, that's, that's her day, you know.

And think about how we respond to that. Unfortunately, this gets into the more kind of emotional piece of it, which is how do we treat each other with that? As we laugh about it, we're like, wow, she must be so important. So now stress becomes validation. So it's stimulation and it's validation, which is like the busier you are, the more stressed you are, the more important you must be. Right. There's a real story to that as well. Yeah. And then the other piece I think is almost more— it seems like it's logical because it seems kind of like problem-solving, but it's not effective, which is distraction. So we've got stimulation, validation, distraction. Distraction is more like, if I don't keep myself preoccupied with all this stuff, I'm gonna feel my feelings. My feelings don't feel really good. So yeah, just stay in this like, I'm so busy, I'm so stressed mode, and then I don't have to really deal with core issues. And this is something that really, over the last year, was transformational for me. I've been teaching at Harvard Extension for the last couple of years a course on brain health and performance. And then last semester, I was able to co-teach with my colleague on psychological resilience. And I learned so much. And the biggest thing for me when I was stuck in a massive depression last year was the difference between emotional coping and solution coping. And emotional coping is what I always do, which is like, how do I feel better? Let me meditate. Me listen to music. Let me go, which is great when you have no control of the situation and you just want to manage your emotions. But if you need to have a difficult conversation, if you need to do some time management, if you need to actually take action, that's solution-focused coping, and that's actually way more effective. And this is where lists can come in. Like, to me, there's two lists here. One is what are the things I want to do when I'm out of control and I need to recharge my own emotional energy, And the other list is what's going on right now where I could take one small action. It may not fix the situation, but I'm going to feel like I'm taking an action. So again, if I look at my recent situation, I could come up with probably 20 things, choices that I made. But one of them was I had to withdraw from my— I'm working on a second PhD right now at Pepperdine, and I'm so grateful I'm going back this summer. But I got so sick last year that I had to withdraw. So the learner in me was really craving the opportunity to learn. And so I reached out to my colleague Shelley. I'm like, could you— could I just be in your class? I just need to learn. And that's when she invited me to actually co-teach with her. And it was just the most amazing experience. But I had to have a conversation that was hard for me because I don't like asking for help. But when you do that, it's focused on a solution to the problem that's there, not just like putting a Band-Aid on the emotion.

Right. And also though, it is knowing yourself, you know, knowing that that is what charges you up, knowing that that's something that for me, you know, I, I need that. I know that I, I need to be able to, to have that in my life to feel better. And how can I do that at a level that I can handle, right? Like, you don't want it to be beyond and to be too, you know, over the top. I want to talk about the beach because you love the beach. I know you do. You live, you know, you live in San Diego, which is a gorgeous place. I right now am in Miami, so we are both right near the beach and it's terrific, uh, you know. So talk to us a little bit about what being by water, by the beach, will do for you, uh, for your stress levels. But also, what if you can't be at the beach, right? How can you bring the beach to you? Because I know that's something that you talk about a lot as well.

That's my favorite. And you're so good at this, by the way. I've told all my friends, you gotta watch Paula do this because I'm learning so much from you. I cannot wait to upgrade my podcast and my new show that's coming out. So, um, yeah, you read my mind because as you were talking about the benefits of the beach, I mean, hey, I was very intentional about this. It wasn't easy, but I'm looking— like, if I turn my gaze this way, I'm looking at the ocean. Um, and a lot of people are, you know, like, oh, it must be so nice to be there. It is, but it's— it hasn't been an easy journey to get here. I just knew my soul needed that. And so getting to know yourself is really important. But my biggest thing is, how do you take your brain to the beach when you're stuck in the office, when you're stuck at home? And in fact, one of the studies I'm planning on doing is taking a beach, uh, boardroom into a financial services company in Kansas City. So we're going to actually like, right in the middle of the country, no beach around, but actually make the boardroom— we're going to bring in some tactile sand, we're going to bring in some aromatherapy. I mean, just like make it feel like you're at the beach and see what happens. Because the studies are really clear that there's a lot of benefits of being near the ocean, living near the ocean. But what I love so much is it's not so much where you are physically, but the non-conscious cues that your brain and your nervous system are getting. So just to rattle off a couple, um, smell the ocean air. There's something called negative ions in the air, which sounds like it's negative, but it's not. It's actually like breathing in air vitamins. So when we take vitamins, they tackle free radicals in our body. When we smell negative ions, it actually balances out kind of urban living and noise and congestion and all that. We also get the benefits of having our feet on the earth, whether it's on the sand or the grass or the ground. There's something called grounding. With this, I call it sanding, because when you're standing, you get your feet in the sand. Not only do you get, like, if you're in a warm climate, you get the warmth of the sand. I grew up in Oregon, so we have, like, colder beaches. Yeah, but you also get to actually connect your body with this electromagnetic field of the earth itself, which actually mimics the healthiest state of the brain and the nervous system. I mean, there's actually like studies that are done on these like vibrational patterns. There's more physical activity, there's more sunshine, there's more time with family. There's all of these things that are happening. And could you actually mimic that in your own environment by using color? It's basically the 5 senses, right? But I had people that I actually had do a meditation challenge. They listened to the sound of the ocean waves crashing, but then I had another group actually take their shoes off put on Reef flip-flops, use essential oil, and turn a fan on. And it was like the people who actually did this sensory experience were 3 times more likely to complete the 1-week challenge and had 3 times the stress reduction. And so I've been, I've been working with Reef, which is a local San Diego company that does beach stuff, and it's just been a lot of fun. And their whole focus has been how can we help people with stress management and mental health by helping really educate them on the benefits of being at the beach. So it's been a lot of fun.

Yeah. I mean, it is, it really does make you feel so much better. You know, I'm usually in New York City and I love New York City. And it's one of those things where you don't realize the vibration that you're at until you're out of it. And then when you're at the beach and you're in a place where it's like, wait, I can just walk around and I'm not crashing into people immediately upon leaving my apartment. This is a very, very nice way to live, I have to say, you know. And, uh, we have some comments. Mark is saying, amen, I love the sound, smell, and feel of the beach. Thank you for all your comments. Um, Randall is saying, I make lists of what I choose to create each day. That I love. Randall is a producer as well, radio producer. Deb Lee is saying that morning meditation is very helpful for her. Now, I, I love meditation. I, you know, I learned it working at Fox as a health reporter, I have to say most of the things that I do for my health I learned because I was covering it, you know, which is awesome. But just, you know, it was, it was a nice side, side part of the job, you know. And I do try to meditate every single day. I use the Calm app for 10 minutes every day. I listen to that and I feel like, yep, I did it. So for people who are newer to meditation, obviously Deb is doing it in the morning? Are there good ways to get started with it? Is morning better than evening, or what do you think about that?

Yeah, so there's so many different ways, and my encouragement to everyone would be don't think that there's one way to meditate. There's meditation, there's mindfulness. I think it's important to define the difference. So mindfulness is really just non-judgmental awareness of the present moment, which means you're just aware, but you're not trying to change anything.. So a lot of mindfulness practices, like, just notice how you feel, notice how it feels to breathe, notice what your thoughts are telling you, but don't try to change them. Meditation kind of has two different angles. It has open or closed. Open meditation is also more of a mindful, just kind of awareness. I tend to do more of a closed or focused meditation, which is I'm aware of my breathing, I feel my emotions, and now I'm going to take myself to a different place that aligns with how I want to show up. So one of the things I always say is think about who you want to be before you think about what you have to do. And this is a little thing again, right? You can create a list of your to-do list. Yeah, what I'm going to suggest is you, before you do that, write a statement or a word or a phrase or something that is who do you want to be, how do you want to feel, um, what are the experiences that you want to have. And do that first before you get your to-do list because it allows you to anchor into an emotional experience. And just simply, I will say the way I teach this is what I call the brain recharge practice or process, which is to breathe and then feel and then focus. So it's BFF, easy to remember. I have 5 different free guided meditations that follow that breathe, feel, focus formula on Insight Timer, but also my LinkedIn courses. We have exercise files that people can download. And listen to over and over again. I have my Recharge Toolkit website where people can access that stuff for free. So I'm just trying to give these really practical solutions for people so that they don't get stuck in the whole, like, meditation is woo-woo, you know, law. And it's like, no, this, this stuff really works. And it's really about connecting with your breath, having a positive emotional experience, then focusing on how you want to show up.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's not as big a deal as everybody, you know, may think that it is, because I get it, because I one of those people. I was like, oh, meditation, I don't know what that is. I mean, I remember doing a segment on it. It was, you know, the first segment we had ever done. This must have been 10, 12 years ago. And I had a meditation, you know, teacher come on and teach my anchor how to do it. And I remember him saying, you really want me to close my eyes for 30 seconds? You know, like in TV, 30 seconds is an eternity. And I said, yes, I do, and you're gonna do it and it's gonna be great, you know. And, and he did do it and it was great. I have to say. So that was, you know, worked out. But at the time, it was just like, not really something that people had been thinking of.

So people know, and it's still, I mean, I'll just say, here's kind of the kicker. And if I have one takeaway, what I want people to keep in mind is that time is very valuable, but time without energy is void of value. We've all been somewhere where physically our body was there, but mentally or emotionally, we were somewhere else. We don't get value. The value comes to bringing your full and best energy to the time that you have. And if you take time away to recharge, you actually go in manage your better self. So even right now, and you know, there's a lot going on today, and it was like, you know, should I, shouldn't I be here? I want to be here. I love doing this, and I can be here and fully engage here. And then I'm going to take a few minutes, I'm going to recharge my own battery, and then I'm going to go, you know, be with people where I can be fully focused, turn off my phone. And that's what everyone wants from us. They don't really want our time, they want our energy and the time. And so that's why recharging is important. And even able to say, like, when I do speaking engagements, I don't— I never say I'm going to do a meditation, but what I do is say, here's the recharge, breathe, feel, focus. We're going to do it for 2 minutes. And at the end, people come up to me and they're like, you totally snuck in meditation. I'm like, yeah, but I didn't call it meditation because everyone kind of goes, oh, well, I have my thing, or I don't want to do that. Just recharge your brain. Just breathe, feel positive emotion, focus on who you want to be. Do it every day. The morning— the question of morning or evening, they're both so important. They're the bookends. Try to do both. If you had to choose one, I'd probably say morning because it's the anchor for the day. Most people— yeah, like, set the tone. But at the same time, sleep is so important, and so many people are struggling to sleep. If you can just find a guided meditation that you can listen to first thing in the morning and right before you go to bed, it'll make a huge difference.

Yeah, absolutely. And I agree. I mean, I, I know that it's made a big difference for me, and, and sleep as well, you know, since I've been, you know, working for myself, working from home. I sleep a lot more in the morning because I don't have to commute. I don't have to, you know, do calls right in the morning if I don't want to. Um, we've gotten a couple more, uh, comments here. Laura says, I think Headspace is a great app for beginners. I agree. I also have Headspace. I also use that one. Uh, Marisol says, meditation is a key for me. However, listening to you, I just learned that I meditate in the morning and I mind— and, and practice mindfulness in the evening. See, she does it, she does it all.

Here's a great exercise in the evening, just as a reminder, is try to reflect on the positive experiences you had during the day because we're all in such a darn hurry and we have, even in the midst of difficult times, we have beautiful experiences, but our brain is hardwired to focus on negative over positive. So if you can do this, what I call a reflection meditation, by the way, you guys can find a lot of these free on my YouTube page. Um, but a reflection meditation at night walks you through what were the positive experiences, who was there, how did you feel? And if you can actually kind of soak your brain and your body into positive experiences, it's almost, I mean, I honestly feel like that's life extension because what you're doing is you're slowing yourself down. This is why when you're a kid, it feels like a year is like forever. And now it's like, where did the year go? Because everything is new. And everything is really like absorbed by children, but we don't do that. If you can just reflect on it and feel it and take a couple minutes to just be like, I mean, I'm having in one of the most difficult times of my life, I'm having the most beautiful experiences. But if I don't stop to actually soak in those beautiful experiences, you know, life just passes us by so quickly.

Yeah, it's true. And it isn't the— it's the intention and it's the pausing to say, hey, this is how I'm going to do this. And also, I loved what you said before, you know, we're having this conversation. You're fully in this conversation. We're in it together. When this is done, you reset for the next thing you're going to do. And that's the thing that I think a lot of people don't do. They don't do that reset and allow themselves to just like, okay, let me honestly give myself 5 minutes to then prepare for the next thing. So this is—

I'm telling you, this is business critical. This is health critical. This is life critical. Like, after an intense discussion where I'm leaning forward and I'm like, you're gonna get all that I've got for the short period of time. I'm going to lay down, turn everything off, close my eyes, listen to a song, and really embrace the fact that I had this experience with you before I get in the car and go start doing something else. And it doesn't have to be long, to your point. I'm saying songs are perfect for this because we have songs, and I know exactly the song I'm going to be listening to, um, when we finish. And why it's so important to me right now is like, just lay down and listen to one song. We're talking 3 minutes. Yes, give yourself that and then go on with your day. But yeah, we just go, I'll do it later. But you won't. Yeah, you won't, you won't.

And also allow yourself to have the 3 minutes, right? I know. And, and notice, we're talking about mindfulness, notice when you get fidgety because you will and you'll start reaching for your phone about 20 seconds in like, oh wait, should I be? No, you should be doing nothing. You should be listening to the song.

This is your Tech crack is what I call this, right? It's so true.

It is so true. Well, Heidi, this has been amazing as always, so thank you for being here. I hope that everyone, you know, uh, really takes what you're saying and tries it out because it does work. And Amy is saying, this is so important for me that I'm learning this right now. Thank you so much. Uh, Mark thinks we're both rad. Well, we think you're rad, Mark.

I love that word, rad.

Yes, thank Thank you for bringing back the word rad. I love it. And Heidi, you know, you have LinkedIn Learning courses as well. I'm going to pop those up again. I did when you were talking about it before. But if you could just tell us, you know, they're on linkedinlearning.com. Both of us are LinkedIn Learning instructors. Me, because of you. So thank you for bringing me into the family. But these are your offerings there.

What do you have? Like, well, let me just tell everyone, because I'm really excited. I'm filming in a couple of weeks a new course requested by LinkedIn Learning, which is Preparing to Go Back to Work. So it's really about kind of the anxiety. It's not preparing like logically, it's really preparing emotionally with all the uncertainty and all the changes. So I'm super excited. But I introduced you to LinkedIn Learning, and what do you have, like 100 courses now?

I'm working on my 5th, and actually mine is about going back to work too, about the how to be most productive when you're doing a hybrid work, uh, environment.

So this is the way we kind of tag team. It's like, you're so— and I love that because I need the lists and the specifics and I need to, I'm setting up my new studio to be able to film from home and all that kind of stuff. And I go to Paula's courses and then it's like, and then if emotionally you need a timeout, come hang out in my courses.

Exactly. They do go perfectly together. I love that. That's great. And the other, the last thing, and then I'll let you go off, but you do have a recharge toolkit. So anyone who wants to go get that, go to rechargetoolkit.com and you'll be able to keep in touch with Heidi. And you know, if you're watching the replay, Leave us questions below. We're going to continue to answer questions and engage with this here. And people are excited. Christine's saying, I'm so glad that I was able to catch this. Thank you both. Thank you for being here. And Heidi, I will see you soon. Thank you so much for—

Yes, I'm going to have you on my show soon. So just a little heads up because we didn't get to talk about it, but I have a docuseries coming out about how to be the boss of your own brain, and I'm going to have Paula come on and talk to us about lists. Believe it or not.

Perfect. My favorite.

Use our brain to our benefit. Make your brain your friend and not your frenemy. That's what I say.

Yeah. Oh, I love that. That's awesome. That's great. Well, thank you all. Thank you for being here. Thank you all for watching. And until next time, I will, I'll see you later.