Hello, friends, and a very warm welcome to France Alpha with Dr. Ash. Are you ready to transfer into your conflict? First is now Dr. Ash has worked in education across three continents. India, the United Kingdom, and the United States. To help you transform your stress into a powerful tool for growth and resilience. Each week, it would be a practical tool and life-changing insights from people, including the boiling frog, to help you manage your stress, find balance, and live a life of purpose. Please join us every Friday at 5 p.m. and let's start turning stress into strength together. Now let's dive into today's episode.
SPEAKER_01Welcome to the Transforming Stress with Dr. Ash podcast Funella. Good to be here, Ash. Lovely to have you in the beautiful Scotland, Glasgow. And today we are going to discuss the environmental management aspect of the boiling frog.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, which is crucial. And of course, we're building on resilience and self-management, which we've already discussed.
SPEAKER_01Yes. As you know that environmental management can be a really make or break. And we know that things change. And you and me know it very well. Living with the Irish weather and the Scottish weather. Yep. Really most beautiful countries of the world. Yeah. But the weather changes. Yes. And we are we we basically change according to the weather. Yeah, yeah. We're constantly adapting. Con constantly adapting. And you mentioned the word adapting, adapting. Yeah. If I were to summarize this entire environmental management in word one word, a single word will be adapting.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. And I see the quote here that we have from Darwin Ash. And this is one that people sometimes get wrong because they talk about survival of the strongest or the smartest. Or the fittest. But in fact, it's not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.
SPEAKER_01So in this particular section, what I'm teaching, what I'm sharing with the listeners and the readers is adaptive leadership. Now there are five pillars to adaptive leadership. And I know I've got you've got the book in front. I have the book right now. You start with how do you manage time? How do you manage conflict in the environment? How do you manage micro stresses? And many times we are in the situations that uh the systems are really old, and we are doing the same thing again and again. So creative innovation.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the diversity, that diverse element. Yes.
SPEAKER_01And last but not the least, are we going to cognitive overload? And the cognitive overload is uh equally crucial because I will uh I will tell you more about it, that how it is so important to be aware of the different kinds of cognitive overload. But why don't we start one by one? Yes. What what is your favorite? What what what what is your most uh something which you think suddenly can increase the temperature of the surrounding environment?
SPEAKER_02So, what would be the worst stressor that I could think of? Honestly, I do think that conflict with other people that can be hard. And that sometimes you might have a sense, not not that somebody's shouting at you, but maybe there's passive aggression, maybe somebody just isn't speaking very much, and normally they're quite communicative. Those sorts of things can really get to you, I think. Right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So let's have a let's touch on all these five pillars, yeah, and then one by one we'll take a deeper dive. Yeah. So I fully agree with you that conflict is something which can increase the temperature all of a sudden.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01If somebody comes in enters a room, yeah, you don't get along, yeah, you can feel the heat. You can feel the heat increasing in the environment.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, suddenly the emotional temperature just changes. Yes, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And equally if there is low level dysfunctions in a team, that slowly increases the temperature and creates a boiling frog environment. We've been in several uh situations where uh whether it is in uh hospitals or whether it is in primary care or any different kind of working environments, when the team dynamics are not good, it increases temperature in the environment. Let's talk about cognitive overload. When I say cognitive overload, what are the things which come in your mind?
SPEAKER_02I think about overwhelm, about the just so many demands, so many um psychological demands really, managing relationships with people day to day, the just the constant um overstimulation from media, social media. You know, we're looking at our phones for so many legitimate reasons, but also I think it it can end up just being something we do habitually, but we're just stuck to our phone. Yeah, I think that's a huge stressor. And cognitive overload, I mean just dealing with our normal jobs, but dealing with all of these other inputs as well. And I think distractions are the sorts of distractions too. Yeah. All of that.
SPEAKER_01Distractions are big and uh takes us back to what we discussed in the first section uh in the self-discipline versus distractability. Yeah. Then you mentioned about uh the smartphones, yeah. That the smartphones are making us dumb. Literally, somebody was recently telling me that people some people are spending more time on the screen more than the sleep. Oh, cool. So they might spend eight, nine hours on their phone, and these are very busy people. Yeah, yeah. These are very successful people. Yeah. And they might be getting five hours of sleep or six hours of sleep. That's a huge investment of time, isn't it? It's a huge investment of time. Yeah. So this smartphone is a remarkable tool, yeah. But if the the distraction it has increased, and the scattered attention and scattered focus, it results in issues with time management.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And that brings us to another skill, how do you manage your time?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, and all tied up with that is energy as well, isn't it, Ash? Here and there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. When you say time management, I used to feel that there's so much of work, so much of work, and uh in the hospitals things are getting busy. There are patients to see in different departments, managing the teams, administrative work, educational work. But uh ultimately I realized that the key is how you manage your energy, how you manage your strengths, how you manage your values. And we will go into the details of that, into the when we discuss, uh, when we take a deeper dive into the time management. You might be having a full day. Yeah, but let's say if your physical batteries are low or mental or emotional, how productive are you going to be during that day?
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. And when you say strengths and values, it almost it also makes me think about self-awareness and self-reflection. Yes. Because those really need to be present for us to know what our values are and what strengths we're trying to leverage in those situations.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Einstein used to say one thing that you cannot judge a fish's ability to climb a tree. It's it's not the strength. It's not the strength. Yeah. So if you if if anyone is in a position or in an environment where they are not matched with their strengths, they are forever leaning against the wrong wall. Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01That's another key insight to understand. Yeah. Any other thing which comes to you when I say time management, right? Because I know you mentioned that people are getting busier and busier, yeah. Yet the productivity is going down.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. Because sometimes there are knock-on effects. People are stressed, they're distressed, they're not happy. And I think in those circumstances, our ability to be creative, to engage with things in a creative way, and to find the kind of innovation that we're going to talk about, that shuts down because it's just about survival. It's not about something finding something new. And we need to be able to open that up for ourselves a bit and um not not have our poor brains sort of crouching in on themselves in terror from all this input. We need to find ways to just loosen that up. And I think also the fact that with your book you're working with this theory around right brain, left brain, and how these connect with the what what we sometimes call the primitive brain. Yes. And that the you know, the logical brain, the the left brain tends to just shut down when we've got all these signals coming through. But the right brain, the creative side, that can still communicate. So so we're really thinking about that. And obviously, part of the way you've done this in the book is to use these great visuals, yeah, which we've been discussing with each section. Um, but we're we're gonna look a little more at how we can use creativity and tap into our creative energy. But to do that, we need to be managing our time, which will help us to have some energy available to be creative.
SPEAKER_01So, Funella, uh, one thing you mentioned about the chronic stress. Yeah. And the chronic stress can lead the person to be more at the level of the limbic system. You might have heard about limbic hijack or amygdala hijack. Yeah. People who are chronically stressed, they find it more difficult to work from their prefrontal cortex, which is also the CEO of the brain. Yeah. And that's why the decisions might not be rational. The right brain, which is more intuitive, self-awareness and imagery is easier to provided you're connected, provided you are having some kind of mindfulness practices. Absolutely. And you're slowing down, but it's if you are able to inculcate some kind of practices, then it can change the game. Well, these are resources, aren't they? Yes. And other thing is about when you mention about the right brain, what strikes me is creativity. Yeah. And I talk about creative innovation as one of the chapters that if we are stuck doing the same things again and again, can we really think out of the box?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we we can't see new possibilities. We're just in the same groove all the time. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. If we get think from the right side, we'll try to see, you know, how how we can break that pattern.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's so important. Finally, I would like to add one more thing which is really important to the context of managing the environment, is management of micro stresses. You mentioned about conflict. Sometimes conflict can be on your face and you recognize it. Yeah. So and so has come to the point. And I can see it's on your face. Yeah. But micro stress is more, as you can see, it's under the table. Yeah. It's sneaky. It's a constant niggling little thing. It's a niggling little thing, but more than that, it can be outside our realm of awareness. Yeah. Yeah. And it's important to understand and pinpoint first of all, what are the signs of chronic stress, chronic micro stress, identify the micro stress, and we'll discuss more in our deeper dive. And then what are the antidotes? How do you manage the micro stresses? And that is actually the strategy and the solution and the strategy to manage the boiling frog environment. And that's why if you see the cover, the cover of the book, the cover of the book shows a jacuzzi, and the frogs, instead of boiling to death, I've brought this philosophy of the jacuzzi effect. Now they have been able to understand the stresses in the environment, the micro stresses in the environment, they have been able to temper down the temperature. Now they are relaxed. They're absolutely enjoying themselves. Enjoying the jacuzzi environment. And I felt that when I used to see a lot of colleagues, professionals around me burnt out. And equally when I used to see patients over the last three decades from different industries, backgrounds coming with stress, high levels of stress, I used to wonder people work so hard in their lives and towards what endpoint? Yeah. Yeah, what's it for? What's it for? What is the end emotions? What are the end, what is the journey bringing them to? And it's not just the living in 24-7 stress, but also the manifestations of stress, how it affects your physical health, how it affects your mental health. Of course. Yeah. And can we find better ways to temper down the temperature and make it a nice and a comfortable jacuzzi?
SPEAKER_02Because we're not saying there shouldn't be heat. We need challenge. Heat is there, it's a part of the life. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Welcome to life. Yeah. There's going to be stress. Yeah. But high stress. There's going to be high levels of stress.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01What we want to say is that the stress should not be 24-7 all around the year, which is unregulated, unmanaged, and also toxic levels of stress.
SPEAKER_02Well, absolutely. I have clients who come to me and they might say, There has been no single big event in my life, but I feel completely stressed out. I feel tired. I just can't seem to think clearly. And I think that's the micro-stress that you're talking about. Because what when we channel into what's going on in their lives, sometimes there's an absence of supportive practices of these kinds of strategies that you're talking about. And definitely a presence of those micro-stresses. And they wear and wear away at people. So I think this is a really good approach to highlight that and to just look at what are the strategies. And I think the reflective awareness sections we've got in each chapter, and also the leaps to action part, which is helping people to move into I suppose if the first part's a diagnosis, it's kind of moving into the cure. And so there's there's plenty in the book that's going to help you take immediate action to start to feel a little bit better.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Thank you, Funella. Like I shared this with you before, if you go to a forest and if you see 100 trees, not two trees are going to be similar. That's why I've created this boiling frog framework. And every individual can go through this framework and get an answer for themselves. Not one answer is going to be the similar to the other person's answer. Let us go and have a deeper dive into what we have discussed, and I'm really looking forward to this conversation with you. Thank you. Me too, Ash. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00If you enjoyed today's episode, we'd greatly appreciate it. If you could leave a five-star review, a like, or subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcast. Your support helps us reach more people. We'd love to hear your thoughts. So don't forget to comment and share for more tips and updates. Please be sure to check out our social media links in the description box below. We can't wait to have you with us next time as we can see what stress is resilience. Remember, it's not the stress itself, but how we rise above it that defines our strength. So stay resilient and keep thriving. And we will see you next time.