Stress Management for a Balanced Life

Stress is an inevitable part of life, but it doesn’t have to derail your emotional and physical well-being. In this episode, we dive into the nature of stress—what it is, how it impacts us, and most importantly, how to manage it. Join us as we explore EQ-based strategies for creating balance, building resilience, and thriving through life’s challenges.

We’re thrilled to welcome Boaz Maor, who shares his expertise and personal experiences with stress management. Together, we’ll unpack the emotional and physical toll of stress, its connection to emotional intelligence, and actionable strategies you can start implementing today.

This episode is packed with practical tools like mindfulness practices, reframing negative thoughts, setting boundaries, and cultivating self-care routines. Whether you’re navigating a busy season or seeking long-term balance, this discussion will leave you feeling empowered to take control of stress and embrace a healthier, more fulfilling life.

Key Highlights:

• Understanding the emotional and physical impacts of stress
• How emotional intelligence plays a vital role in stress management
• Actionable EQ-based strategies for creating balance, such as mindfulness, reframing thoughts, and prioritizing self-care

Guest Contributions:

• Insights on how EQ helps manage stress effectively
• Stories of using EQ to overcome stressful situations
• Practical tips for staying consistent with stress management practices

Tune in to discover how to navigate stress with grace and intention, and take the first step toward a more balanced and thriving life.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Hello, everybody. I just am so excited for today's session. We are talking about stress management for a balanced life. And when we talk about stress, there's a lot of different ways to address that. There's a lot of different methodologies that we can talk about for stress management. But today's guest, uh, Mr. Boaz, is here to join us because he has such a unique perspective, a lot from his cultural heritage coming into the United States and how he's effectively navigated stress in his life to offer us some really amazing insights. So, Boaz, thank you so much for joining me today.

SPEAKER_01: 0:39

Thank you very much. Drop the mister and I'll be less stressed.

SPEAKER_00: 0:43

It's a habit. I'm sorry. I appreciate that. Okay, so can you give us just a quick little intro on yourself and why this topic is important to you?

SPEAKER_01: 0:55

Absolutely. My name is Boaz. Um, I am a tech person, a parent, an Israeli living in California. Um, I think why this topic is important is because it is not discussed enough in the business world, and it has a lot of people with views that are rooted in all the past that are not yet um adjusted to today's world. The impact of social media, the impact on the changes in politics, the you know, and I find in both business and my personal life that stress has a huge impact um on me, on people around me. And I found that when you think about it and use some technologies and some uh methodologies to impact it, small differences can make big impact. So I'm happy, um I'm very much uh appreciate you focusing on it and sharing it with with the world. I think it's important, I think it's valuable, I think it's needed, and if I can contribute to this, I'd be delighted.

SPEAKER_00: 2:07

Well, I'm so thank you for the opportunity. I'm delighted, you're welcome. Uh so let's just dive right in, right? So let's first uh talk about for you what is stress? How would you define stress?

SPEAKER_01: 2:19

Yeah, so I think the way I think about stress is stress is the pressure we feel faced with a challenge. Now the thing is that the amount of pressure is different and the type of challenges are different. For some people, waking up in the morning is a challenge, leaving the house is a challenge. For other people, nothing is a challenge. They are you know looking for things that will challenge them because they're too comfortable where they are. So at the at the end of the day, it's really understanding that that challenges you. That to me is stress. Now, stress is not necessarily a bad thing. Um, stress is a mechanism all the way from the cellular level to the organism to psyche of nations, which I think is productive in certain zones and less productive in others. Too much stress, just like too little stress, is bad. So maybe the the first thing to think about is what is the productive zone for us? What is that period, that that level of stress that we don't want to go above, but we also don't want to go below, so we can be really productive.

SPEAKER_00: 3:37

I think that's I love that perspective. And really from a physical standpoint, too, um, I've had people say, Well, are you stressed? I'm like, oh no, I'm totally fine. And then my body is saying something different. So my gut's upset, my palms are sweaty, my heart rate's through the roof, maybe I have a lump in my throat. So if you talk about stress and you're like, well, I don't think I'm that stressed, I'm gonna ask you to take a physical body check in those moments where you're having to deliver on a deadline or expectations have been placed upon you that you're like, oh, I think I'm good with this, I can handle this, and then your body's like, no, you're not. You got to pay attention. Um, so can you give us maybe a story of when stress severely impacted you? How did you notice it in your body and how did you deal with it in the moment?

SPEAKER_01: 4:25

Yeah. First of all, I think the the point you just made about checking yourself is crucial. So many people I find, myself included, sometimes, are not aware of the stress they're at. And you can't operate well, and you can't influence yourself if you're not aware. So getting that check is really important. I notice, for example, when I present at conferences or when I go into a big meeting with a large audience, I can sometimes sense my pitch level going up. I sense the amount of air that goes in versus the amount of air that goes out changes. And I learned to pay attention to that. To me, that is important. I know other people where they start to feel moisture at their fingertips. That's their pitch, right? So you need to be aware of where you where you are. Um, and if you are aware, you are able to influence. Take a slow breath, pace your warding, stop and stand, or maybe move, right? Some people get stressed when they stick in a place, and taking a couple of steps to the side is all they need to move out of that kind of stress point.

SPEAKER_03: 5:55

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 5:56

So I think the po the the first thing that people need to do if they want to improve, just like we do in everything, right? In business, right? You want to put some KPIs and put a dashboard. Why? Because the first thing you want is hey, I need awareness of what happened. People need to develop awareness of their stress level.

SPEAKER_03: 6:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 6:16

And it's sometimes hard because we don't the the I think the traditional thinking, the common thinking is you don't want to be stressed. So we don't want to acknowledge it. I think putting things on the table, even if you don't like them, is better than not thinking about them, not knowing them, not being aware of them. So if you know, just looking yourself in the mirror without anybody, you know, sharing it with anybody, but if you know that you get stressed sometimes, take a piece of paper and start writing down when does it happen, what caused it to happen, why does it happen? Don't share it with anybody, just with yourself. And start to put awareness points for yourself. What do I sense before it gets to the point that it's over the stress limit and I'm out of the production zone? Because sometimes they're leading, most times there are leading indicators, right? You see it happening. If you can influence it a minute before, it can make a world of a difference on your performance, on the way you feel, on the way you act, on the way you perform.

SPEAKER_00: 7:22

Yeah, I agree. And that's a really good segue into our next topic, which is um the link between stress and EQ, right? So EQ is kind of the realm that I live and breathe in. And from a stress management perspective, um I just want to highlight first negative emotions, any emotions, they're energy within your body. So your thoughts generate emotions, and those emotions are energy in your body. And when those emotions stay in your body and you don't get rid of them, there's long-term physical impacts. It can affect your heart, it can affect your gut, it could give you headaches. I struggle with headaches. Um, I actually was holding into holding on to so much stress this time last year that I um damaged the cartilage between my rib cage and my sternum. I was holding all of that in. And so when we talk about stress management from an EQ perspective, right, this is difficulty regulating emotions. It contributes to strained relationships. And when you don't acknowledge or are aware of your stress levels and do something proactive to deal with it, you're gonna be stuck with long-term stress. But the title of this podcast is Stress Management for a Balanced Life. So, how do we find balance? Is it uh we don't have any stress and we're able to completely remove stress from our life? Uh, talk talk through that a little bit.

SPEAKER_01: 8:46

Yeah, I don't, again, we we talk, we we mentioned this a little bit before, right? The the producting zone, the productive zone. I don't think the aim for anybody should be to remove stress altogether. Stress is a process that happens all the way from the cell level in our bodies, right, through bigger and bigger organisms, all the way to the way nations work that has productive impact on us. Right? If you think about you know the zebra in the Sahara, uh in the savannah, sorry, um, without stress, it wouldn't be able to run away from the lion, right? So these mechanisms have been developed all the way throughout evolution. The problem is that exactly like you said, the zebra cannot have stress forever. It will die, right? It needs to have a mechanism to increase and then decrease stress to be in the productive zone for eating, which is a different productive zone for mating, which is a different productive zone for running away from the lion.

SPEAKER_03: 9:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 9:53

There's a fantastic book uh by a researcher called uh Robert Sapolsky called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcer, which is all about people that get ulcer as a response, physical response to too much stress level at high level that you don't manage appropriate. What you are trying to do here is exactly the right thing, manage it to the right level, which is not zero, it's the right level.

SPEAKER_03: 10:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 10:23

The way I'd like to think about it, the way I find it working for me, and what I suggest to people around is step number one, acknowledge that you don't aim for 100%, or you don't aim for zero, you aim for moving into your productive zone. Second, differentiate between the external influences on stress and your internal ones. I'll give you an example. You may live in a very calm um country, or you may live in a country at war, very different stress level. You may walk into the office to a regular day with mundane tasks, or you may go into the office to the most important meeting this year with your boss's boss, very different stress level.

SPEAKER_03: 11:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 11:16

So the external influence on you is something you need to acknowledge. What's in front of me right now? What's in front of me this week? What's in front of me next month, outside. And acknowledge that you have a lower level of influence over that because by definition it's external. But differentiate that from the internal. Who are you? Some of us are very comfortable with stress at high level. We operate here. That's not necessarily better, it's just it is versus other people who operate here. Know who you are, that knowledge is critical. And so many people just don't, they're not aware, they haven't thought about it. So they go into situations like, oh my god, this is stressful. Hold on. Is it external? Is it internal? The external, you can't influence much. The internal, you can. So then you go into okay, how do we influence the internal? And we can keep on talking about it. But step number one is that awareness.

SPEAKER_03: 12:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 12:16

External versus internal. Where am I against it?

SPEAKER_00: 12:20

Yeah, I love that. And I think to your point, right, um, the internal part of stress and self-awareness. Um, I I think what EQ has taught me the most is that I can't just wing life, right? I I encourage people to create a stress management plan. I encourage people to sit and identify, to your point, habits. You have habits in your life that are subconscious in how you handle things, how you approach things. And until I really made an effort to find what my habits are, I just thought that, well, you know, if it's stressful, I'll deal with it when it comes. But then really looking back at the circumstances and my behavior, it was like, oh, I do have a pattern of behavior that if I acknowledge it, I'm not really thrilled about how I handle that. So then take action. Don't just let it sit out there. Don't wing stressful situations, be proactive because at the end of the day, no one's gonna do it for you. You have to take accountability and acknowledge that, like, hey, uh I freak out when I'm stressed. And the other thing I want to highlight too is to your point, we all are raised differently. Your life in Israel, how you were raised, is very different than how I was raised here in the States. Your level of tolerance, your threshold for stress is completely different than mine. And I think sometimes we view other people and how they handle stress and we patch past judgment. Like, this is no big deal. What are you freaking out about? Just deal with it. It's fine.

SPEAKER_02: 13:49

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00: 13:50

That was my approach. And now when I look back, I realize, man, I was raised in an environment where we dealt with stress a lot. And we just said, keep going, keep pushing forward. But if you weren't raised that way and you've not been taught how to identify or manage stress, then there's empathy and grace there that I have to give to account for their experiences, right?

SPEAKER_01: 14:16

I am so happy you said it. It is exactly what's missing for so many people, right? I think so many of us wake up going to a situation and say, okay, it is what it is, I have to deal with it. Well, hold on. If you break it to pieces, it's easier to deal with. What's the external part that I don't have any influence over? What is the external part I may have? The the team members of mine that I appreciate the most are those who give me feedback. Not those who just say, Oh, boys, you're a senior leader, uh, I do what you tell me to do. There are some of those. I think the better ones, I want to say, hey Boaz, you would be better in this environment if you did this. And by the way, for me, it's better to have this thing.

SPEAKER_02: 15:04

I love it.

SPEAKER_01: 15:05

I don't know who you are. I know a little bit, but if you tell me more, I can adjust my style to you.

SPEAKER_00: 15:12

I love that.

SPEAKER_01: 15:12

Some people say, hey, uh, can we have uh short meetings because I have really hard time with longer ones? Okay, we can talk about it. I have people who I found are more comfortable when we do meeting while walking as opposed to meeting in the office in a confined space. With camera or without camera, what's the level of stress that makes you most productive? I don't know. For some people it's this, for some people it's that. You as an individual need to take control into one, be aware, know who you are and where you operate well. Yeah, then assess the environment and see how much you can influence. If the meeting that you're going into is a meeting with a lot of people, you probably have less influence than if it's a one-on-one. If it's a one-on-one, influence it the way you want it. If it's a big meeting, think about how you change where you are and what you do ahead of the meeting or during the meeting, because you're coping more than influencing. I get it. But be intentional about it.

SPEAKER_00: 16:16

Yeah. And I'm gonna highlight here just quickly that when I say that self-awareness is the foundation and the front door to emotional intelligence, that's exactly what it is. If you don't know who you are, what motivates you, what drives you, why you have the emotional triggers you have, why you think in the terms that you do, that's where you start with emotional intelligence because everything we're talking about comes from a place of self-awareness. And so if that's something that you struggle with, I'm gonna encourage you in this moment to reach out, do research, talk to somebody, go through, read a book, find a therapist, but don't let another day pass without taking action to answer the question: who are you? Without labels, without titles, you're not just a mom, you're not just a husband, you're not just a corporate executive. That's a label. Remove the labels and find what remains because that is who you are to your core. And it's not just how you were created or made to be. You have a choice. And there are ways and methods that I teach that are out there for anyone to research from other people like Daniel Coleman, uh, Simon Sinek teaches some of that stuff. So just be mindful that if you're not really sure who you are, this is your call to action, that it's time to figure it out. Okay, so now I kind of want to talk about stress management practical strategies. So um, but can you share a few of the strategies that you have implemented or that you would like to share for individuals who are like, well, this is all great, but how?

SPEAKER_01: 17:50

Um yes, I can share some things that worked or didn't work for me, but I want to put a preamble to that. What worked or didn't work for me doesn't necessarily mean it will work or don't work for you. So I think step number one is that awareness you talk about before. Step number two is try a number of different things and figure out what works for you. I'll give you an example. For many, many years I've been thinking about, procrastinated, didn't do anything about it, meditation. I've heard so many good things about it. I know a bunch of people for whom it works very well. For whatever reason, I didn't do it. And then about a year and a half ago, I decided I'm going to try it. Started with three-minute sessions in the morning, worked well, moved to four, five, six, seven minutes. I do now ten minutes almost every day. I must admit, it hasn't changed my life.

SPEAKER_03: 18:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 18:52

I tried, I may I I sense some impact, not as much as I thought or read about or worked for others. I still try, I commit to it, but it didn't work as much as I thought. Taking one a day walking meeting made a big difference on me.

SPEAKER_00: 19:15

I love that.

SPEAKER_01: 19:16

You know, I think three or four years ago, maybe during COVID in the winter time, I noticed at some point that I walk into my home office and it's dark outside, and by the time I leave, it's dark outside, and I'm like, hold on, time out, something is wrong here. And I started to proactively say, okay, I look at my calendar, beginning of every week and every day, sometimes, and I say, okay, what is the one meeting where I either just need to listen, I don't need to interact much, or have a one-on-one with someone that I know we can just have a call and I don't need a visual or a screen in front of me. And I do at least one meeting a day walking. It made a huge difference on me. The change in space for my office, the change in uh context, the movement made a big difference. Um I started to read more, listen to more, because it it listening to a book for me does the same thing that meditation I was hoping and doesn't do as much. It clears my mind of the mayhem of thoughts that go left and right. It focuses them on a book, which again, meditation is supposed to focus on something else. Yeah, that helped me. I don't know if it helped other. If you talk to me 15-20 years ago, I probably read 10-15 books a year, about once a month. Not bad, but I now read slash listen to about 50, about once a week. So change the way I think, change the way I walk, calm me down, it works for me. Maybe it will work for others. I would put it into three advice. One try things. Try until you figure out what works, and if something doesn't work, put it aside, try something else. Two, commit to whatever you try and whatever you do to do daily. If any of you read Atomic Habits, um James Clear, I think is the the author. Um, it's amazing, and it's a that's one of the main points. Small things done many, many times make a huge impact. Very good book, very good methodology, works very well. And three, do not aim to make huge change. Another great book that really I thought made a lot of sense to me is uh 10% happier than Harris. The whole concept I'm not changing my life, I'm just trying to aim for 10% better. 10% is huge when you really think about the impact of it.

SPEAKER_00: 21:56

So true.

SPEAKER_01: 21:57

Walked for me.

SPEAKER_00: 21:58

Yeah, I love that. What What great advice. So I have one more question because we didn't really discuss that in our pre-call, but I'm curious. You say this term um find the balance to be your production zone, right? Is that the term you used?

SPEAKER_01: 22:14

The productive zone. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 22:15

Productive zone. How do I figure that out? How do I figure out where my productive zone is?

SPEAKER_01: 22:25

That's a good question, and I don't have a scientific pure answer for you. But I would say the the productive, so the concept here is stress is good if it's above a certain amount and below a certain amount, right? So the it's good here, it's bad if it's too much, and it's bad if it's too little. Someone told me many, many years ago, if you find yourself at work not having enough stress, like if things are too mundane, then change your job, go look for another job. Because you start to become complacent, you start to become probably lose the edge.

SPEAKER_00: 23:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 23:08

At the same time, if the stress level is such that it bothers you, it freezes you, it impacts your way of assessing yourself and maybe your other right, your your relationship with your spouse or your kids or others, then it's too much. I think that you you should think about along the day, along the week, along a month, what are those signals that show you that you are either too little or too much? I can give you one that works for me. I can look at on a daily basis, weekly basis, yearly basis, and have very strong correlation between the amount of TV I watch and how enjoyable I have in life, and it's a reverse correlation. I really like TV. Days when I watch a lot, I'm not in a good zone. Years when I say, Oh, I watch a lot of TV this year, it's probably a bad year for me. That's me, you might be different, but it's a signal for me, right? When I gravitate more towards the TV, something is bad. For some people, it's good. They sense you can, you can put sense cells on a set and say, Okay, I think I'm starting to eat too much, or I think I thought I'm starting to drink too much coffee, or whatever it is that you know is a signal that you're out of that zone is bad. In a meeting, or again, going into an event, if your breathing starts to be too fast or too shallow, if you start to have figure out what your signals are, yeah, and try to get it into the level where it's not zero, but the level where it feels like it's I'm on the edge and it's good, not over the edge, and too not under the edge.

SPEAKER_00: 25:04

I love that. Well, we're at time, so I have to say thank you so much, Boaz, uh, for sharing your wisdom and our and your strategies with us today. And thank you if you're tuning in. Uh, stress is a part of life. You will never avoid it, it will never stop, but it doesn't have to control your life. So, to Boaz's point, start small. Stay intentional and purposeful and watch how the balance begins to return. So, have a great weekend after you listen to this, and let's make next week about showing up for ourselves and taking the steps toward a balanced and thriving life. See you next week on Friday Feelings. Until then, take care and breathe easy.

SPEAKER_02: 26:35

All good.

SPEAKER_01: 26:43

Absolutely, my name is Boaz. Um, I am a tech person, a parent, an Israeli living in California. Um I think why this topic is important is because it is not discussed enough in the business world, and it has a lot of people with views that are rooted in all the past that are not yet um adjusted to today's world. The impact of social media, the impact on the changes in politics, you know. And I find in both business and my personal life that stress has a huge impact um on me, on people around me. And I found that when you think about it and use some technologies and some uh methodologies to impact it, small differences can make a big impact. So I'm happy, um I'm very much uh appreciate you focusing on it and sharing it with with the world. I think it's important, I think it's valuable, I think it's needed, and if I can contribute to this, I'd be delighted.

SPEAKER_02: 27:56

So thank you for the opportunity.

SPEAKER_01: 28:07

Yeah, so I think the way I think about stress is stress is the pressure we feel faced with a challenge. Now the thing is that the amount of pressure is different and the type of challenges are different. For some people, waking up in the morning is a challenge, leaving the house is a challenge. For other people, nothing is a challenge. They are you know looking for things that will challenge them because they're too comfortable where they are. So at the at the end of the day, it's really understanding that that challenges you. That to me is stress. Now, stress is not necessarily a bad thing. Um, stress is a mechanism all the way from the cellular level to the organism to psyche of nations, which I think is productive in certain zones and less productive in others. Too much stress, just like too little stress, is bad. So maybe the the first thing to think about is what is the productive zone for us? What is that period that that level of stress that we don't want to go above, but we also don't want to go below, so we can be really productive. So many people I find, myself included, sometimes, are not aware of the stress they're at, and you can't operate well and you can't influence yourself if you're not aware. So getting that check is really important. I notice, for example, when I present at conferences or when I go into a big meeting with a large audience, I can sometimes sense my pitch level going up. I sense the amount of air that goes in versus the amount of air that goes out changes. And I learned to pay attention to that. To me, that is important. I know other people where they start to feel moisture at the fingertips. That's their pitch, right? So you need to be aware of where you where you are. Um, and if you are aware, you are able to influence. Take a slow breath, pace your warding, stop and stand, or maybe move, right? Some people get stressed when they stick in a place, and taking a couple of steps to the side is all they need to move out of that kind of stress point. So I think the first thing that people need to do if they want to improve, just like we do in everything, right? In business, right? You want to put some KPIs and put a dashboard. Why? Because the first thing you want is, hey, I need awareness of what happened. People need to develop awareness of their stress level. And it's sometimes hard because we don't the the I think the traditional thinking, the common thinking is you don't want to be stressed, so we don't want to acknowledge it. I think putting things on the table, even if you don't like them, is better than not thinking about them, not knowing them, not being aware of them. So if you know, just looking yourself in the mirror without anybody, not sharing it with anybody, but if you know that you get stressed sometimes, take a piece of paper and start writing down when does it happen, what caused it to happen, why does it happen? Don't share it with anybody, just with yourself, and start to put awareness points for yourself. What do I sense before it gets to the point that it's over the stress limit and I'm out of the production zone? Because sometimes they're leading most times, there are leading indicators, right? You see it happening. If you can influence it a minute before, it can make a world of a difference on your performance, on the way you feel, on the way you act, on the way you perform. Again, we we talk we we mentioned this a little bit before, right? The the producting zone, the productive zone. I don't think the aim for anybody should be to remove stress altogether. Stress is a process that happens all the way from the cell level in our bodies, right, through bigger and bigger organisms, all the way to the way nations work, that has productive impact on us. Right? If you think about you know the zebra in the Sahara, uh in the savannah, sorry, um, without stress, it wouldn't be able to run away from the lion, right? So these mechanisms have been developed all the way throughout evolution. The problem is that exactly like you said, the zebra cannot have stress forever, it will die, right? It needs to have a mechanism to increase and then decrease stress to be in the productive zone for eating, which is different productive zone for mating, which is a different productive zone for running away from the lion. There's a fantastic book uh by um a researcher called uh Robert Sapolsky called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcer, which is all about people that get ulcer as a response, physical response to too much stress level at high level that you don't manage appropriately. What you are trying to do here is exactly the right thing. Manage it to the right level, which is not zero, it's the right level. The way I'd like to think about it, the way I find it working for me, and what I suggest to people around is step number one, acknowledge that you don't aim for 100%, or you don't aim for zero, you aim for moving into your productivity. Second, differentiate between the external influences on stress and your internal ones. I'll give you an example. You may live in a very calm um country, or you may live in a country at war, very different stress level. You may walk into the office to a regular day with mundane tasks, or you may go into the office to the most important meeting this year with your boss's boss, very different stress level. So the external influence on you is something you need to acknowledge. What's in front of me right now? What's in front of me this week? What's in front of me next month? Outside, and acknowledge that you have a lower level of influence over that because by definition it's external, but differentiate that from the internal. Who are you? Some of us are very comfortable with stress at high level. We operate here. That's not necessarily better, it's just it is versus other people who operate here. Know who you are, that knowledge is critical, and so many people just don't, they're not aware, they haven't thought about it. So they go into situations like, oh my god, this is stressful. Hold on. Is it external? Is it internal? The external, you can't influence much. The internal, you can. So then you go into okay, how do we influence the internal? And we can keep on talking about it. But step number one is that awareness. External versus internal, where am I against it? I am so happy you said it. It is exactly what's missing for so many people, right? I think so many of us wake up going to a situation and say, okay, it is what it is, I have to deal with it. Well, hold on. If you break it to pieces, it's easier to deal with. What's the external part that I don't have an influence over? What is the external part I may have? The the team members of mine that I appreciate the most are those who give me feedback, not those who just say, Oh, boss, you're a senior leader, I do what you tell me to do. There are some of those. I think the better ones, I want to say, hey, boss, you would be better in this environment if you did this. And by the way, for me, it's better to have this thing. I love it. I don't know who you are. I know a little bit, but if you tell me more, I can adjust my style to you. Some people say, hey, uh, can we have uh short meetings because I have really hard time with longer ones? Okay, we can talk about it. I have people who I found are more comfortable when we do meeting while walking as opposed to meeting in the office in a confined space. With camera or without camera. What's the level of stress that makes you most productive? I don't know. For some people it's this, for some people it's that. You as an individual need to take control into one, be aware, know who you are and where you operate well, then assess the environment and see how much you can influence. If the meeting that you're going into is a meeting with a lot of people, you probably have less influence than if it's a one-on-one. If it's a one-on-one, influence it the way you want it. If it's a big meeting, think about how you change where you are and what you do ahead of the meeting or during the meeting because you are coping more than influencing. I get it.

SPEAKER_02: 42:02

But be intentional about it.

SPEAKER_01: 43:44

But I want to put a preamble to that. What worked or didn't work for me doesn't necessarily mean it will work or don't work for you. So I think step number one is that awareness you talked about before. Step number two is trying. A number of different things and figure out what works for you. I'll give you an example. For many, many years I've been thinking about, procrastinated, didn't do anything about it, meditation. I've heard so many good things about it. I know a bunch of people for whom it works very well. For whatever reason, I didn't do it. And then about a year and a half ago, I decided I'm going to try it. Started with three-minute sessions in the morning, worked well, moved to four, five, six, seven minutes. I do now ten minutes almost every day. I must admit, it hasn't changed my life. I tried, I may I sense some impact, not as much as I thought or read about or worked for others. I still try, I commit to it, but it didn't work as much as I thought.

SPEAKER_02: 44:56

Taking one a day walking meeting made a big difference on me.

SPEAKER_01: 45:04

You know, I think three or four years ago, maybe during COVID in the winter time, I noticed at some point that I walk into my home office and it's dark outside. And by the time I leave, it's dark outside, and I'm like, hold on, time out, something is wrong here. And I started to actively say, okay, I look at my calendar, beginning of every week and every day, sometimes, and I say, okay, what is the one meeting where I either just need to listen, I don't need to interact much, or have a one-on-one with someone that I know we can just have a call and I don't need a visual or a screen in front of me. And I do at least one meeting a day walking. It made a huge difference on me. The changing space for my office, the changing uh context, the movement made a big difference. Um, I started to read more, listen to more, because it listening to a book for me does the same thing that meditation I was hoping and doesn't do as much. It clears my mind of the mayhem of thoughts that go left and right. It focuses them on a book, which again, meditation is supposed to focus on something else. That helped me. I don't know if it helped other. If you talk to me 15-20 years ago, I probably read 10-15 books a year, about once a month. Not bad, but I now read/slash listen to about 50, about once a week. So change the way I think, change the way I walk, calm me down. It works for me, maybe it will work for others. I would put it into three advice. One, try things. Try until you figure out what works, and if something doesn't work, put it aside, try something else. Two, commit to whatever you try and whatever you do to do daily. If any of you read Atomic Habits, um James Clear, I think is the author. Um, it's amazing, and it's a that's one of the main points. Small things done many, many times make a huge impact. Very good book, very good methodology, works very well. And three, do not aim to make huge change. Another great book that really I thought made a lot of sense to me is uh 10% happier than Harris. The whole concept, I'm not changing my life, I'm just trying to aim for 10% better. 10% is huge when you really think about the impact of it.

SPEAKER_02: 47:45

Walked for me. The productive zone, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 48:13

That's a good question, and I don't have a scientific pure answer for you. But I would say the the productive so that the concept here is stress is good if it's above a certain amount and below a certain amount, right? So that it's good here, it's bad if it's too much, and it's bad if it's too little, right? I someone told me many, many years ago, if you find yourself at work not having enough stress, like if things are too mundane and change your job, go look for another job. Because you start to become complacent, you start to become probably you lose the edge. At the same time, if the stress level is such that it bothers you, it freezes you, it impacts your way of assessing yourself and maybe your other right, your your relationship with your spouse or your kids or others, then it's too much. I think that you you should think about along the day, along the week, along the month, what are those signals that show you that you are either too little or too much? I can give you one that works for me. I can look at on a daily basis, weekly basis, yearly basis, and have very strong correlation between the amount of TV I watch and how enjoyable I have in life. And it's a reverse correlation. I really like TV. Days when I watch a lot, I'm not in a good zone. Years when I say, Oh, I watch a lot of TV this year, it's probably a bad year for me. That's me, you might be different, but it's a signal for me, right? When I gravitate more towards the TV, something is bad. For some people, it's food. They sense you can, you can put sensors on a seven, okay. I think I'm starting to eat too much, or I think I thought I'm starting to drink too much coffee, or I still whatever it is that you know is a signal that you're out of that zone, is bad. In a meeting, or again, going into an event, if your breathing starts to be too fast or too shallow, if you start to have figure out what your signals are and try to get it into the level where it's not zero, but the level where it feels like it's I'm on the edge and it's good, not over the edge, and too not under the edge.