Managing Anxiety and Stress as a Startup Founder with Anna Mikeda

create an hour a day, just one hour, where you're answering all the emails, all the messages. Because then when your brain is like worried, oh my God, I have like an email that is unanswered, you're like, yes, but I have this, you know, this hour when I'm gonna do this. So this is not always applicable because sometimes we have like urgent matters, you know, like something crashing or something. But for For that, we can have like a special type of channel, like a special email that we get notifications for. And for all other emails, we don't get notifications. Talk about how founders, start-uppers, entrepreneurs, and just generally people, people who have intense, intense jobs, how do they fight anxiety and achieve their peak performance? So that is our topic for today and a little bit about why I'm here to tell you about this, like what, um, who gave me the right. So I'm a psychologist and a coach and also a mindfulness and qigong instructor. And even though I'm not a founder or a startupper, But I've battled with anxiety and I realized that it's not really about the, the size of the, of the task you have, where it's more about your inner state. And so I was studying a lot to kind of fight this, to fight it, fight the state. And I tried many different approaches. I took a holistic approach. And a certain combination of methods worked for me very, very well. So I will share this combination of methods with you today. And then why specifically with the founders? Why with the Founders Institute? Well, when I moved to Lisbon in Madeira, I had a lot of friends who were in some in crypto, some in Web3, some founders, startuppers, just like people really trying, you know, to bring something new to this world. And as I was hanging out with them, I loved their energy, but I kept feeling that, oh my God, those guys are really, really successful, really brilliant, but they have high-function anxiety. High-function anxiety is basically when you are really awesome, really successful in many ways, but inside you're constantly worried about things. You're constantly like overwhelmed by the amount of tasks. And if we can have like— can you put like pluses in the chat or minuses if you think you are a person who has high-functioning anxiety? So it is basically anxiety, like worrying about things, Even things you can't change about, but also things you can change. Just worrying a lot, but also at the same time being like— when people look at you from the side, they're like, no, this guy or girl, like, they know what they're doing, you know, like they're on the top of their game. Okay, I see mostly pluses. Okay, plus and minus. Yeah, it can be different, it can be, it can vary. And vary with time as well. So, okay, so you guys are, um, are the people I've worked with, successful or soon-to-be successful people who, who are just not, who can't fall asleep at night, you know, who on vacation think about work, etc. So let's talk about what are the instruments that will help us transform this. So, um, so PEACE methodology, this is the one that I've created, and I really like the name because it's very peaceful, and it has 5 elements, and I will talk in detail about each one of them, uh, because the thing with anxiety is that it's a multi-headed hydra. Hydra? Not sure how to say it. It was like this beast from Greek mythology. If you cut one head off, the two come springing out. The thing with anxiety, the paradox of anxiety, is that we can't fight it. We— because if we fight it, if we're actively like on a quest to defeat our anxiety. That's not going to work because essentially what is happening at first, we just worry about something, you know, like worry about like, okay, am I gonna get like enough funding? But then we start worrying about worrying, so it's like a second level. For example, we You know, we think, "Okay, no, I shouldn't be worried. It should be positive thinking." And so we start to try to suppress those thoughts. And who knows what happens when we try to suppress something? You're right, it gets stronger. So the trick is we need to find a way around anxiety without forcing, confronting it directly, find other things on which we can rely upon to be able to stand up straight and confident. Okay, so the PEACE methodology. Let's dive deeper into that. Okay, so the first one is P, is purpose. So, okay, first of all, a lot of you guys already have purpose, but I am going to speak about it once again because of how incredibly important it is. It's the first letter and it's really the basis, the foundation of everything you're doing later. So why do we need purpose? Purpose is the clarity about what are your values in life and what and why you are trying to achieve that. So okay, I bet a lot of you in this group have values like like financial freedom, you know, and that's one of the reasons why you want to become— you are a founder. Or others could have an idea of, like, a value of big, like, a project, like a mission they're bringing to the world, like something that helps the world, for example. And so your mission, your values should reflect your deepest heart's desires. They should be something that you are deeply, deeply passionate about. And I have no doubt that many of you here are like that. But also some of you, and I know this because I worked with a lot of founders and start-uppers, some of you will do something not because you want to, but because you have to. And so this is a really tricky thing. Like, what is the difference between those two? They sound really similar. So when you want something, it's the state where you— yes, you know, being a founder is difficult. Yes, it's sleepless nights. Yes, it's like constantly studying, constantly working. And yet you enjoy it. You're like, you're really on top of the wave. You're in a flow state. But for other people, what they're really wanting is not to, you know, create a company that will help immigrants, for example, or create a new, like, technology breakthrough company or something. But they just need to create something to be successful, you know, to become a rich and famous or to, to prove to their parents that they can do something. So if you are in this business because you need to prove something to someone, because you need to prove yourself to the world, that is not sustainable long term. So the best situ— solution here is to first ask myself, do I want to do it? Or do I have to do it? Do I need to do it? Is there a sense of obligation, like I will not be myself, I will not be valued, I will not be important if I don't do this? And if your answer is I do it because of the need, because of the obligation, then there are a lot of good psychological tools that can help you deal with that and find your true heart's desire. Because that is a long-term solution. And if you, it's what you want to do, if you feel like the big passion in your heart, then let's continue to the next step. Another kind of metrics you can use to understand, am I clear about my values? Am I following my values? It is to do a practice of Ikigai. It's a famous practice which is a combination of— you find an answer to 4 questions: What is that I like to do? What is that I am good at doing? What is— what do people pay money for? And what is needed to the world? And if what you're doing is within those 4 categories, then you're in a good place. So purpose, to sum up, purpose gives us meaning, it gives us— okay, I see that somebody said I'm frozen. Can you please write if you can see and hear me? Okay, working, cool. I was saying that purpose will give you motivation, deep and thought-through Purpose will give you long-term ability to sustain yourself when things get rough, when things get difficult. This is really your— our foundation, because if we don't have good foundation, the next steps will be not as useful. Let's go to the next step: Equilibrium. So that is about establishing a healthy lifestyle, healthy day schedule and night schedule as well. So I bet a lot of you have uneven night's sleep, unpredictable night's sleep. So yeah, like you sleep a couple of hours, you can't fall asleep because so too many things happening Please write in the chat if, like, sleep issues are, um, are important for you, are a question for you. So there are some simple rules for establishing a healthy lifestyle. Some of them you know. I mean, it's in a kind of basic sense: eat healthy, exercise, sleep well. And for some reason we don't do it, but please do. Because if you want to be long-term effective, if you want to be successful long-term, this is a must. There is like no way around of it, around it, because otherwise you will burn out. So, um, for example, a very important factor is technology hygiene, because of course you are very You know, of course you're all online, you know, checking out like what is happening in the emails, but you have to find a way of— like a way of controlling this animal, this beast of technology and social media. A simple rule that I follow and a lot of my clients follow is put down phone 2 hours before bed. 2 hours before bed is time for reading, time for thinking, time for spending time with your loved ones. And feel and allow yourself not to be overwhelmed by technology because constant reels, TikToks, Shorts, etc., etc., you know, they break our attention into pieces and it becomes for us difficult to concentrate, difficult to focus. So, yes, be very mindful of technology, especially all the social media. Another thing to do, I will just touch on it briefly, is to kind of research what gives you the biggest dopamine raise. Because of course, okay, we know things that give you higher dopamine, I mean simple ones like chocolate or coffee or drugs as well, some drugs, some medical medications as well. But we want to be able to raise our dopamine levels. So dopamine is responsible for the motivation, essentially, desire to get up and do things, to go searching, to go foraging for food. That was for our ancestors. And for us to be motivated to continue with our business, You need to find what dopamine, long-term dopamine procedures help you to stay, to stay focused, to stay motivated. So for example, something that I took on recently is cold water exposure, so cold water plunging. Very— my body doesn't like it much, but I do feel pretty great after it. Or things like intermittent fasting. There are a lot of dopamine secrets and we can talk more about it in the meeting, but it is important to just know that healthy day routine is your backbone, it's your skeleton, yeah? Without it you will just get lost because there are too many tasks and tasks change too quickly. So think about your perfect day and write it down: what time you wake up, what time you have breakfast, when are you working, when are you watching social media and replying to emails. And once you write it down, try to live that out next day. So this is something for you to do tomorrow, and you will see that it is not as easy as just writing it down, but also if you can maintain it, your efficiency raises 2-3x. Okay, third letter is acceptance. So what we talked about, anxiety being a hydra, you know, like being a being that is very— the more you try to work with it, the more you try to suppress it, the stronger it gets. So essentially, we can't suppress our thoughts. But what we can do— there are many psychological techniques, many are awesome. I will share my favorite one. It's from Action Commitment Therapy that kind of combines cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness. And so what they do is they say that, okay, imagine that a negative feeling came, imagine that you're worried about money, yeah, a classic for everybody. So a thought, a thought came, and suppose it's an unpleasant thought, like unpleasant meaning it's unpleasant physical sensation, so so like you feel it in the body. What we usually do, we try to either suppress it, suppress something, like say, "No, I shouldn't think about negative scenarios, I should be positive thinking," or we rush into some quick actions that, you know, try to kind of shut down our anxiety. But for many reasons, both scenarios are not ideal because we're still trying to suppress the thought. So what we can do instead, we can let the thought, the emotion be. So emotions live for 90 seconds. That's like how long the neurological reaction in the brain goes for. So if you can tolerate something for 90 seconds, you're good. And after 90 seconds, something, you know, there's like a, like a certain blinking of the mind and we have like a new experience. But what happens usually is when we have this 90 seconds and we start building up on it, we start thinking about it, we start thinking, yeah, actually I don't have money and even for rent I don't have money. And I have to ask like my friends to lend me money and oh my God, my friends are gonna think I'm such a loser and then we go into the spiral, you know, and then instead of working we spent 20 minutes or like 1 hour just feeling, okay, I am like not very, I'm just lost, I'm overwhelmed, I'm lost, I'm feeling down. So what to do with this? What to do in a situation when you have a negative thought? And the thought might or not, might not be true, it doesn't matter. But okay, we have a thought that brings also emotional reaction, strong emotional reaction. So the first one is exercise light switch. So imagine there is a light switch. And when light switch is on, we try to, you know, we fight, we fight, we suppress, we try to act, we think of solutions, you know, we're doing something about the problem. But when the light switch is off, we don't do anything, we just allow this feeling, this thought to be. For about 90 seconds or around that time, we are just present with what is. We're not fighting it. And we continue breathing. We continue to breathe. And after that, we start moving into— we allow ourselves to switch attention. To switch to something else. And usually, usually attention switches pretty easily after we We're just present with something for around 90 seconds. So this is the first option. I mean, it's not always applicable because like if you have like a burning question, you know, like, and you need to solve something like right now, something about like finance, like, you know, apply for a loan or something, you do need to solve it. But in most cases when we have this thought, like, you know, in the middle of the night or like in the middle of a shower, okay, like, oh my God, what to do? This is the moment when this is not the place for this thought, and we just kind of allow it to be. We breathe and we let it pass through us as if we're just transparent. Another one, another cool technique is making funny scenarios with our thoughts. So of course there are a lot of thoughts that you think throughout all the days. Thoughts like, um, um, oh my God, where am I gonna find the money? Or, um, I need to hire— I need to fire this person, how do I do this? Or, um, I'm— or like even self-criticism, like I'm just not up to the task of being the you know, a founder. And so when you have those thoughts and you know that those thoughts are toxic, they're not helping you, what you can do is you can create a funny scenario for it. So my favorite one is imagine you're listening to your favorite DJ on the radio who is saying, "Oh yes, and right now my favorite track that has been And number 1 for 2 months straight is coming up: "Why don't I have enough money?" Yes, let's applaud to this awesome track! So we try to make it as funny and as ridiculous as possible. We make it just ridiculous so that we see that it's not a big deal. And once we do that a couple of times with a certain thought, we actually start seeing that it is a silly thought, like it is just blown out of proportion and not really up to the task. So yeah, that's a funny one, and the funnier you make it, the better, because essentially you need to switch from anxiety to laughter. So you kind of have to find really funny scenarios and I have a lot of funny ones, so maybe I'll tell you, you know, in the lounge session. Okay, next one, very important for anxiety and generally for life, yeah, it's to be able to balance your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. So what it is: sympathetic nervous system, it's our action, it's when we are in stress mode and we need to get this work done, we're on a like hackathon, or we are like, you know, we need to just have this deadline, we just need to, to get it done. So we do need this state of stress sometimes, but also we need a stress, we need a state of parasympathetic nervous system when we are relaxed, when we are calm, when we breathe out. So this is Let me give you a metaphor. Yes, so a car, and then we have gas. So this is sympathetic nervous system, and we want to be fast, especially since we're founders, you know, we want to be like really sharp. But then there's also brakes that help us stop and reflect and breathe out and just be present. And then we have the clutch, you know, for the older cars that helps us change the gears. So we need to be able to use all three pedals. It's very important for us for self-regulation. So usually the problem is not with sympathetic nervous system because I bet a lot of you are pretty high up on sympathetic nervous system. But the problem is usually coming down to parasympathetic, relaxing, slowing down, calming down, basically being able to fall asleep like within 20 minutes when we go to bed. And sometimes it's difficult because we're so sped up, thoughts are like really, really, really fast. So what to do? For this, you need to learn a couple of techniques that help to work with, to stimulate parasympathetic nervous system. So the first one is mindfulness, just simple mindfulness, stopping wherever you are and coming back to your body, coming back to the present moment, to your breathing. Breathe with the stomach, so make, you know, deep breaths with the stomach, and then notice 3 things. You say to yourself, for example, I see a computer, I hear birds singing, I feel clothes touching my skin. So we just come back to the present moment, like, what is around me? We stop this mental chatter, this mental roller coaster, and we just go back to the body, to what is actually physically present. So that's one thing. Another technique is vagus nerve exercises. So that is, you know, you can easily find them online, there are many of them, but just to show you my favorite one. It's also very good for people who work on the computer a lot, which you are. Okay, so you basically take your neck, you put one hand on your neck and you kind of tilt it towards your shoulder, but the shoulder you don't raise it up, you put it down. So you feel the nice stretching in your neck here. At the same time, you take your eyes and you look up. You looked into the left, so if your head is tilting towards the right, then your eyes are watching, are looking towards the left. And you stay here for about 5 breaths or until you feel— you will feel like a certain like change. It's difficult to explain. It's like a, like a, ah, like that thing. Like it's like you might want to yawn or something like that. Actually, when you start to yawn, it's a symptom that parasympathetic nervous system is activating. So you do it both sides. And another one of my favorite ones is breathing. I mean, breathing is awesome because— remember the clutch, gas, and brakes metaphor? So breathing is our clutch. We can change the speed of thinking with our breathing. So with breathing, we can activate sympathetic nervous system, so become fired up, become active, and that is actually something that like people like Wim Hof use, you know, for the cold water exposure. Or we can slow down, activate parasympathetic nervous system. There are many good techniques, but usually what unites them, a couple of things. So first of all, usually it is deep breathing when exhalation is longer than inhalation. Usually, I mean, not— this is not always because sometimes they are— they can be also equal in certain breathing techniques, but often. Another thing is to put a hand on your belly and just observe the movement of your stomach. That is also very grounding. Another thing to do is to breathe with sound. So this activates also vagus nerve because vagus nerve goes through like ear, eye, ear, neck, etc. So here in the throat we'll have some vagus nerves, so when we exhale with a sound we activate the vagus nerve. So how to do it? Very simple. So we inhale and we exhale like this.

Ah.

I mean, I bet you do it intuitively, like it's within our nature, but also you can do it consciously when you are too fast, when there are too many things happening. You can just do it on a kind of Consciously just sit down and exhale with voice. So those are main principles of breathing that would stimulate parasympathetic nervous system that we need for being able to calm down, to recycle, you know, to integrate not just the food we eat because digestion happens in parasympathetic mode. But also the thoughts, the ideas, the information that we received, it's very important to digest them as well. Okay, and the last letter is energy. So that's what gives us a lot of energy to wake up in the morning, to go and get, you know, get doing. Get things done. So you may or not believe in energy. This is a personal choice. For me, because I'm a Qigong instructor and I've worked with energy for many years, for me it's kind of obvious that it exists. Just because, I mean, even physics tells us that. And the way you can feel it is by, like, very simply starting to pay attention to it, but paying attention to it when your mind is calm. If you try to pay attention to it when your mind is, like, you know, thinking about something actively, when it's overwhelmed, it's when it's, like, in this exaggerated state, when it's too fast, you will not be able to feel it. But if you become quiet, you can start feeling it. And the way I work with energy, in my opinion, which is the easiest and the most beautiful practice, is to feel the energy from the earth and from the sky. So, in Chinese tradition, energy from the earth, it's, you know, energy of material, of being able to do things, you know, to have the energy to be practical, to achieve things. And so the energy comes from the earth up through our feet into our whole body and goes through our whole body and leaves our head and goes into the sky. And energy from the sky enters. So this energy is more about clarity, about ideas, about inspiration. This energy comes into our crown of the head, goes through our whole body, and leaves the feet. So I find energy exercise to be very beautiful and very, um, like, uh, recharging. I think that 15 minutes of just energy kind of exercises is as good as like 3 hours of sleep. So If you feel that, you know, you're kind of feeling down, feeling like not enough energy, and with anxiety it's often the case because it drains us of energy, you have many energetic practices that can help you kind of raise your level. So, Sanna writes, "My favorite breathing technique is double inhale plus long exhale." That's a really good one, also like it. So this was the end of my presentation. To kind of sum up what I've said, that anxiety, the fact that you feel anxiety, is absolutely normal. It is, you know, of course you'll be worried, you know, of course you'll be afraid because anxiety is essentially fear. But there are techniques to work with it. Not to fight it, but to channel this energy into a different direction. But the trick is that it's not just like one direction. It's at least 5 directions that you kind of have to take. So it's the understanding why you're doing what you're doing. It's having healthy day routine. Healthy habits, it's being psychologically resilient, like not falling for the negative thoughts, it's being able to calm yourself down when you need to, and finally being able to achieve a state of just feeling energized, feeling like on top of the world, to do, then to be able to do things. Okay. Now we can move to questions. Also, there are some of my contacts here on the presentation if you are interested. And hi. Hi.

Let's, let's move to the questions. Thank you, Anna, for this presentation. It was really insightful. I enjoyed like every bit of it. I have a lot of questions myself. So it's, it's something that not a lot of people talk about when it comes to like, like Sometimes founders need to hear this kind of talk because they always talk about fundraising, customers, but nobody really cares about the mental health of the founder. So thank you so much for covering this. We have a couple of really good questions. So let me start with this one. So this one says, how to deal with constant feeling that you still have a bunch of things to do, like answer emails, messages, read those articles. It feels like real— pressure, and they are always there. There wouldn't be a moment in life when you've read any old email. So I think it's everybody's struggle.

Hi, Gennady. So you're absolutely right. So the thing is, every, like, unfinished business that we have on top in our list of things to do causes us It takes our, like, our power away from us, basically. You know, it's like if on a computer you have loads of windows open, like loads of tabs, your computer starts to get slower. It's the same, the same thing with our brain. And all those messages, unanswered emails, they are like open tabs that you have to do. So So how to deal with that? Two advices. The first one is to actually do the, you know, the hygiene and separate those emails into important, need to answer, important but sometime later, and not important. And what you do with the non-important ones, you unsubscribe. You just say, "I'm sorry guys, I can't be part of this group anymore." Or like, "I'm sorry, I don't care." Or you just block them. You know, you just, you really put boundaries because your mental space needs to be clean for you to have power to do the things you really need to do. This is one thing. So actually being hard and unsubscribing from people on social media that actually are not useful to you. Or really seeing what emails you can objectively answer and what not. And the second step is to create an hour a day, just one hour, where you're answering all the emails, all the messages. Because then when your brain is like worried, oh my God, I have like an email that is unanswered, you're like, yes, but I have this you know, this hour when I'm gonna do this. So this is not always applicable because sometimes we have like urgent matters, you know, like something crashing or something. But for that we can have like a special type of channel, like a special email that we get notifications for. And for all other emails we don't get notifications. So this is a system that you need to build for yourself to kind of protect yourself from overwhelm. And also being able to just dismiss some things as not important enough. And yes, I'm done.

Yeah, I've also heard that if you, like, someone recommended that to not open the emails at the beginning of the day, because if you start like answering emails when you start working, you will feel overwhelmed and you won't be able to finish the rest of the work. So I don't know if it's a good practice to leave the emails like the last thing to do on your to-do list?

There are many different techniques that talk about efficiency. And one of them is like this. You do, so you do the most important, most difficult thing first. The one that requires most effort. And after that, you do like the, like the smaller things, like answering emails. And after that, you do another big thing again. So it's like, yeah, you people need, founders need to experiment to see what is the best day structure, what works for them best.

Good. Thanks, Anna. You have another good question from Thomas. He says that I have a family, beautiful daughter. I could, I could be satisfied with my life, but I'm not. I feel, I feel every day that my purpose is bigger. Than what it should be yet. I do not know what my purpose is. I want to build this company, but how can I balance myself?

Okay, questions about purpose are deep ones. So Ikigai book is very good. It is, you know, it really helps you to see what is your purpose. But another thing is to really go over your values, kind of do some deep inner digging, like inner work. Like, what is it that really makes you happy? Because your work should be connected with the things when your heart is just like full of love, you know. If you, for example, if you really like spending time with your daughter, maybe it's something to do about like, you know, like helping creating activities for children. So what to do is like do this exercise, like sit down and write down all the situations when you were super, super happy in life. Like just like, you know, like you wanted to scream and hug people and dance, like this super, super happiness. And after that, once you've written down those situations, look what are they repeating themselves? Like, what is the thing that's repeated? Is it like maybe performing? Is it music? Is it your family? Is it helping others? And once you see the things that are repeated, this is one of your important values. And you can definitely work with your, with your, like, know that this is part of your purpose. So yeah, I think that's That's it.

Thanks, Anna. Uh, let's go to next question from Victor. He's asking, what are the most common triggers for anxiety for founders in your experience?

Oh, there are so many, uh, uh, and so different for everybody. So for some people, it's their mother, you know, uh, calling them to ask how their success is. For some people it's social media, actually a lot, for a lot of people, social media and seeing success of, success, you know, of others.

LinkedIn.

Instagram. Yeah. So please, yeah. Unsubscribe from people who are motivating you in a bad way. Yeah. Just don't, don't see them. Also for the other people, it's just like reading news and that, okay, my God, economy is going to, yeah, like it's depression, what to do. For some people, it's when they're criticized. So yeah, a lot. But I think the one that is the most like in our age for us, it's the social media. It's also toxic positivity. Sometimes, yeah.

Yeah. So since you mentioned social media, there is a question here about social media that I like. It's from Marcel. He says, one big issue I currently have is the need to get dopamine from social media. When responsibilities get overwhelming, I've uninstalled apps and removed accounts, but somehow I end up consuming them anyway, cheating myself. But what would you recommend? It's a very good question. Thanks, Marcel.

Yes, and the one that all of us have faced, because I'm sure, like, I've known when I've written in my journal, okay, social media 30 minutes sharp, you know, and then in the evening, 2 hours, 2 hours in Shorts, YouTube, or something like that. So sure, okay, it happens. The first thing to do is not to be angry with yourself, not to be like, oh my God, like, 'Why did I do it?' Like, you know, like this type of behavior. No, please don't, because it does not help. But what to do is to apply curiosity to this, because curiosity is a very open-ended feeling. It's a feeling that is very, um, like high vibration, so to speak. Yeah, it's like a feeling that can take us out of anxiety, of like the vicious thought circle. So what you do is, okay, for example, you find out that, okay, you just notice that, okay, 2 hours and I'm still in Instagram. And what you do there is you say to yourself, okay, I'm not going to be angry with myself, but I'm going to be curious. And then you're like this, hmm. I wonder, how do I feel about this now? Like, how do I actually feel about after spending 2 hours in social media? Do I feel good about myself? Like, does my body feel good? Do my emotions feel good? Like, was it really worth it? Because I guarantee you the answer is no. Like, you don't feel good about yourself. You don't enjoy how your thoughts are, like, very shallow. And So you do it once and, you know, and you check in with yourself and you're like, I don't like it. You do it twice, three times, five times. What happens then is if you do this several times, your body will switch to, you know, it's like reinforcement learning. Like, your body gets feedback. I don't like it. I actually don't like it. I don't enjoy it. And at some point, your body will be like, I don't want to do it. Like, actually, I would rather do something else. But you need to be very kind, like, not pressuring yourself, not being angry with yourself, just being curious. Is it actually pleasurable? Because if it is, like, let's just continue watching. But if it's not, okay, what is it that we can do? And another thing to be done, so yeah, you know, we live in 21st century, social media is not going anywhere, like, We just need to establish a healthy relationship with it. So I also get what you said about like needing like a dopamine, you know, like small dopamine hit. And fair enough. But when you do that, be like, choose something that is really kind of healthy for you to something that is good for you with a timer as well. For example, I do 15 minutes of cat videos. Okay, so that's my dopamine hit. That's my thing. Like, after working with a difficult client, like, you know, I'll watch a little bit of cat videos and that makes me happy. But even if I overwatch it, I just ask myself, hmm, did I actually enjoy it? And, you know, like, after half an hour of cat videos, I don't enjoy them that much. I'm like, ugh. You know, how much can I watch? How many cats can I see? Okay, I'm done with this question.

Yeah, and sometimes if you— I do believe if the problem persists and you start like actually enjoying spending too much time on social media, I think then you should— you need a detox. I think it's more serious than you think. So There are some apps that I used to use. Like, there's an app called Digital Wellbeing. Like, it helps you put limits. Some phones, like smartphones, you can find this on the phone. But if you don't have it, it's like you can limit each time you spend on social media, and the screen just stops working and tells you, oh my God, you already spent 30 minutes. Come on. Like, you need to have something to do. So yeah. Another question— like, I have two questions about failure. So let's start with this one from Emilia. Any tips how to overcome the fear of failure? I know that most fail and that's how you grow, but the feeling of anxiety, fear is very strong for me. Only facing it and accepting, only facing it and accepting works?

Yes. So facing and accepting it is a necessary step. And so one of the practices is to actually Imagine all those scenarios where you fail, you fail miserably, and you can— you just allow yourself to imagine the worst possible scenario. Like, uh, you know, like everything failed, uh, like, yeah, you know, you have like debts, and, and just like imagine that, experience it, allow your body to, to experience it. Because sometimes we are not as afraid of something as we are afraid of the fear of it. It's like a psychology trick that we have. Like, we fear the fear itself. And sometimes it just takes really observing the fear and allowing it to be, you know, to be present, to see that it's actually not that bad, to actually 'You know, like, even if I fail, I will still have, like, parents and friends who love me. Even if I fail, I will still be, you know, a good person, and I will still, you know, be able to do some goodness in the world.' So this is one approach, to actually imagine yourself fail and live through it and see that it's, it's not as bad as we think it is. And secondly, it is actually adopting a growth mentality. So I'm sure most of you are familiar with it, but if not, I will kind of talk about it because it is a beautiful, beautiful tool, like a must-have for all founders. So growth mindset is about actually enjoying the effort. So enjoying, even enjoy making mistakes. Because with mistakes you get experience. And yeah, sure, I know it can be difficult. I know, like, if you lost something that you worked very hard on, like, it's difficult to enjoy it. But that's kind of what we're going towards, to really enjoy the game more than the result. And, um, and one trick here, how you can change your, um, like, um, mindset is to start— so I hope all of you do self-talk, things like, you know, like, well done, okay, this was good, because that is important for us, you know, to feel validated by ourselves. But in this, uh, in this self-talk, uh, don't use things to be like, oh, I'm so smart, I'm so brilliant, you know. Don't use things like that. Use things like, I'm gonna succeed because I work really hard. I'm gonna succeed because I'm really resilient. I'm gonna succeed because even, uh, you know, if I, if I fail, I know how to get back up again. That is why I will be successful, not because I'm like smart or, or pretty or anything else. So we place attention not on the qualities we have but on the actions we take, on the mode of being. So growth mentality is one thing, one key. Second key is imagining your failures and just seeing that actually it will be okay. It will be.

Yeah, there's a trick I always do about this. When I am a bit afraid about taking some certain decision, I usually think about what's the worst case scenario? Usually it's not a huge deal. So I say, so why am I afraid of this? So what's the worst thing that can happen? It's basically I'm just going to lose a deal or something, then I'm still alive. I still like can enjoy life. I still, there are a lot of opportunities out there. So usually this makes me less afraid of taking like a step forward to take a decision. So yeah, I recommend using this. So when you talk to yourself. So yeah, so let's take another question from José. He said, can you please explain again how to do the energy capture for 15 minutes where you visualize how it enters the energy from the head to the toes or something like that?

Yes, so I will soon make a video on YouTube about it because this is my, one of my favorite practices. But let's So we have like 5 minutes left. Let's do like a small meditation, just a tiny one. Okay, so everybody, um, sit, sit straight with, um, with your back straight. You can lean on something, but your back is straight. And let's take 3 deep, full breaths, uh, kind of going back into our bodies. Feeling how our stomach moves. Making sure there is no tension in the body, no tense shoulders or jaws. And with the third exhale, close your eyes and feel your body. Just feel that your body is alive and you're breathing. There is blood moving. There's a lot of things happening in your body right now. And now imagine that from the, from your tailbone and from your feet, there are roots growing inside the earth. Beautiful long roots that are growing to the center of the earth. So you are now connected to the Earth, to the energy of the Earth. Just visualize, imagine it. And then, just like a tree, start sucking in the juices, like the juices of Earth, in the nutrients, the energy that is present in the Earth, like absorbing it. And as you observe it through your roots, this energy goes through your feet, through your legs, through your, through your pelvic zone, and it first accumulates in your lower belly. In your stomach. So as you breathe, with an inhalation, this energy from the earth is raising through the roots, through your legs, to, to your lower, your lower belly. If you can't feel it right away, don't worry, that's totally normal in the beginning. Just continue trying, continue visualization. And at some point you will start feeling the little tingling sensations. And then we continue with the breathing. Energy starts to raise up to the heart. There's like an accumulation of energy in the heart center, in our chest. And then the next stop is the center of the mind. And in this way, the energy has filled our belly, which is our center of will, of health, of vitality. Our heart, which is our center of compassion and love. And our mind, center of our head, which is our center, center of thinking, of reasoning. And with the next inhale and exhale, the energy goes out the crown of our head and goes up into the sky. So just for a second, for a few seconds, feel how the energy from the earth is raising through the roots and going through our whole body, through three centers: belly, heart, and mind, and then leaves our body. And you may notice that you're starting to breathe slower and deeper, and that's a good sign. This energy, it is This is a very, very warm, a very kind of rejuvenating energy. Our bodies feel really good after working with this energy. So this is called ascending flow, flow from the earth, flow to make us materially happy and healthy. And then we bring our attention to the crown of the head. And we imagine that there is a beautiful flower on the top of our head, and this flower opens up as we breathe in. The flower opens up and the energy from the sky, the descending flow, starts to enter our head. And this descending flow, it's, um, It's a different kind of energy, like it feels different from Earth energy. This energy is the color of milk and honey, it's warm, it's gentle like silk, and it flows through our whole body, through our head. First it accumulates in our head, And we, we continue to feel that the crown of our head is open and receiving, and then our heart, and then our, our belly. And then the— this energy goes through our whole body and leaves us through feet and goes into the earth. And for a couple of breaths, we just feel the— this energy going through us, the flow of it. We're just like a channel for this energy. And then we bring attention to them, to the both flows at the same time, to the descending and ascending flow. And we feel that this is, this flow is, these two flows, they are feeding us, they're purifying us, they're taking away all the negative energy, all the anxiety, all the worrying, all the blocks. They're cleaning us as if it's some kind of amazing shower that is not only cleaning us but also giving us power to move on. And let's take 3 more breaths here, just really enjoying this state. And when you finish with the third breath, you can open your eyes.

Okay, thank you.

You're welcome.

Oh, that was really good. So you get to learn and practice at the same time. Thanks a lot, Ana. I think we cannot take any more questions, but Ana will be at the networking lounge if you have more questions to ask her. So thanks a lot for today's— it's a pretty special event today, so we really enjoyed it. So yeah, please don't leave the session. We still have the networking lounge, whether you want to talk to Ana or other entrepreneurs. Stay on the networking lounge and see you in a bit.

Bye.