50:52
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
stress, people, laugh, talk, great, control, pete, today, laughter, walking, team, mind, remember, happening, main competitor, ends, habit, laughter yoga, multitasking, thinking
SPEAKERS
Pete Alexander, Damon Pistulka
Damon Pistulka 00:02
All right, everyone, welcome once again to the faces of business. I am your host, Damon pistulka, and I am so excited today for our guest. We have Pete Alexander with us today. We are having kind of have such a great time today. Thanks for being here today. Pete
Pete Alexander 00:23
Damon, thank you so much for inviting me to be on your show. I really appreciate your time as well as being able to reconnect with you. Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 00:32
it’s so great, man, so great to be here today with you. I am excited because we’re going to be talking about conquering stress for better team engagement. It’s going to be great. It’s going to be great, man. So let’s get going and get started here. I’ve got a little technical difficulty I’m taking care of here. I’m getting it done right now. And give me just one second
Pete Alexander 00:56
look at you multitasking.
Damon Pistulka 00:58
I’m I’m multitasking here. I’m going to stop this. We’re just going to go the way we are. So Pete, let’s start off today. You and I met a long time ago, and you were on your stress reduction journey after, you know, just about putting yourself out, out of the game. And let’s start there.
Pete Alexander 01:23
Sure, yeah, it was, well, let’s start with how, you know, a lot of us end up dealing with stress the wrong way. You know, I grew up in an extremely dysfunctional family, and I was, I had to be the adult at, you know, less than 10 years old, and that stress that I was put under, you know, I kept on trying to ignore it and I got to be an adult, and that stress not being able to deal with it correctly, just kind of putting it aside and letting it simmer inside of me that carried over for decades, and it didn’t come to a head until 2008 I was dealing with a perfect storm, a stressful activities, including my dad dying and he didn’t have his affairs in order. My mom, who he had been divorced many years prior. She had major surgery and didn’t have the insurance to cover for the physical therapy, so she needed help. I was running my business, and had, you know, all those employees that needed my attention, my kids were small and wanted dad’s attention. And my, oh yeah, my my marriage was heading for a divorce. So needless to say, just a few things on the shoulders. And what ended up happening was, at first, I started losing weight rapidly, and this was prior, prior to that, my body, my back, was giving out, left and right. I couldn’t, you know, I couldn’t sit up, I couldn’t stand I couldn’t walk comfortably, I couldn’t sleep comfortably. But I kept on thinking, Oh, that’s just getting I’m getting older. Well, all of a sudden, I start losing weight. And at first I was thinking, this is fantastic. I’m not doing any special exercise. I’m definitely not dieting, and I hadn’t lost weight since my early 20s. I’m thinking, this is coming off. I’m eating crap and and, you know, because when we’re stressed, what do we go for? The carbs is always, uh, first choice. And what ended up happening is I lost 30 pounds in 30 days, and I thought after the 30th pound came off, I better get some blood work and have this checked out. Sure enough, comes back and I’m a winner. Winner, chicken dinner stress induced diabetes. But you would think that I would have listened to my body about what the stress was doing to me. Oh no, of course not. What I did was I continued to burn the candle at both ends for another 10 years until I ended up in the emergency room one hour from being comatose with a severe case of diabetic ketoacidosis. And for those listening to this live, basically my body was eating itself alive because of my stress and the crazy thing is, is that I just kept on pushing aside and putting aside and putting aside everything, and trading my health for my career. And that is a really bad trade. And I’m totally, totally believe that, had I not changed my ways back in 2018 I wouldn’t be here today. I would have not, you know, I would have been dead by now. And you know, it’s interesting, because after I decided to focus on my health, I. Not only did my stress go down, my glucose numbers as a diabetic went down, my weight went down, and my energy level went way, way up. It was as if I had discovered like a fountain of youth. And you know, and it’s interesting. Now, you know, you and I have known each other for several years, but if you saw a picture of me back in 2008 when I was first diagnosed with stress induced diabetes, and you look at me now, other than a little bit more gray hair, I’m actually look younger today than I did. What is that? 16 year 1818, years ago, or no, 16 years ago? Yeah, that’s nuts. Yeah, that is absolutely nuts. And it’s just that’s what stress does to us. It ages us, and so, you know, that’s why I try and keep on getting the word out to people, because you know, if you’re a stressed out manager, you are not going to be somebody that people like to work with or work for. So,
Damon Pistulka 06:12
yeah, so what I mean, so you’re sitting here, you’re, you’re, you’re like, all right, I gotta do something. Where, where do you go? I mean, where do I be? So I’m sitting here today, I I’m I’m ready to take the plunge and reduce my stress. What are where does someone go?
Pete Alexander 06:31
Yeah, it’s a great question, because one of the things so first of all, fantastic, if you have the mindset to be present enough to realize I need to do something about this, because too many people, what they end up doing is they say I’m stressed. I know I’m stressed, but that’s just how I have to deal with it, and I don’t have time. Well, when we don’t have time to take care of ourselves, that’s where we’re going to run into the problems. So the key thing is, is that you have to think, all right. I know that I need to do something different, and the challenge is figuring out what would work for you. Because you know you and I have talked about this before. Damon, you know, something that works for me may not work for you, and vice versa. So you have to experiment with different techniques and find one or two that work for you and utilize those on a daily basis. You know, you mentioned about the the meditation that you do, and, you know, walking in the park, you know, getting in nature. Those are two wonderful ones. Meditation, for me, is not one of my primary ones, because, unfortunately, my mind in and I’ve been trained in transcendental meditation, where they say, Look, don’t worry about your mind wandering constantly when you’re meditating, just bring it back. I don’t, you know, I just don’t. I’m not wired to do it well. So I do several other things, and one of them is taking walks in nature. That’s a That’s a beautiful one that you can do, but it doesn’t have to be something where you have to spend a lot of time doing it. There’s activities that you can do that take one minute literally, and that is something that even if you take one minute a day and you do that regularly, the compound benefits over time will be enormous. You just have to do it. Make it a habit. And you know, I always recommend to people that, you know, they say, Well, you know, things came up. I didn’t get a chance to do it. Okay. Well, if, if you’re a very busy person, you probably run with a calendar. And what I always recommend is, you know, what block five minutes in your calendar every day, preferably at the same time, because you want to make it a habit and treat that appointment like you would any other appointments. So it’s not just in your calendar to be ignored. It’s actually something that you are going to do something with and it you just have to get into that habit, because once, once we do it, you know from the different research says that a habit is going to be formed in anyone for anywhere from 21 to 60 days. So whatever, whatever, however long that takes, once you’ve made it a habit, then, you know, you’re on autopilot, and you’ll get that benefit, but you have to make the effort to do it, and, you know, and just in enjoy the process of figuring out what activity works best for you. Because, you know, one of the ones that I didn’t realize I was utilizing. Until I got trained in it as a as a laughter yoga teacher. I was, you know, I was talking to somebody about when I used to work at Radio Shack, back when I was in college. Those of you who remember the Radio Shack chain, well, back then, you know, this is before, of course, before internet. And we were handwriting receipts. It was so ridiculous. But what I remember was this one holiday season. So our busiest days were the day after Christmas, because, you know, think about this, before or before the internet day, I’m sorry, not day after well, it was a busy day, but day after Thanksgiving was the second busiest day of the year, behind only the Saturday before Christmas. Well, so we were JAM PACKED at the store, and we’re just, you know, handling customers as fast as possible. And this guy came up, and he says, I need to get this TV part, cable part. And so he described it, and he was describing it really a funky way. So I said, Okay, let me I think I know what you’re what you’re asking for. And I brought him over to the, you know, coaxial cable section. And I showed him this part, and I said, So are you looking for something with this end on it? And I kid you not, this guy says to me, I can’t believe Radio Shack people are so stupid. And so wait. So the reason I’m telling this long story is because I remember this very specifically. Instead of telling him, you know where to go, I laughed. I went and I walked away, and I started helping the next customer. As I was helping the next customer, he interrupts me, and I so I interrupt him back, and I said, I’m sorry. I’m too stupid to answer that question. And so he starts getting all mad, and he says, Oh, you’re, you know, he calls me a name. And I looked at him, and I said, it takes one to know one so. But it just, everybody was laughing at that and stuff. And it just, it happened naturally. But what ends up happening is, as adults, we don’t laugh as much as we should. As kids, we probably laughed 100 times a day, if not more, yeah, and that, you know, but think about this. As adults, when we’re dumped on with all those responsibilities, whether it’s work, home, family, you name it, we forget to laugh. And boy, when you start laughing, and even if you’re laughing, forcing yourself to laugh, the benefits of laughter come from, basically, your body excreting those positive hormones, the basically, you know, you get these, these wonderful, wonderful health benefits. The crazy thing is, as smart as our bodies are, they don’t know the difference between a real and a simulated laugh. It only knows that we’re laughing, so as long as we do it for five, six seconds, then those positive endorphins will be released into our body, and we’ll get those health benefits. It’s just got to do it, it is, it is so it just, you know, but we got to remember, I mean, if, if, as adults, we’re probably, if we’re lucky, if we even chuckle five times a day, that’s so true. It really is. Think about that. I mean, you chuckled just a moment ago, and we laughed right before when we got on live here. So you got two? Damon, yeah,
Damon Pistulka 13:49
I think I get a few more than that a day. I do. But it’s not, they don’t come easy, nearly as easy they used to, that’s for sure.
Pete Alexander 13:56
Yeah, and it’s, it’s crazy too, because people think that, Oh, we got to have something to laugh at, you know, like, oh, you know, a funny joke or a funny video or something like that. No, we just have to get ourselves to laugh. And then what, what the magic happens is think about this whenever, like, you know, where you know you and I have had this, we were talking, and we start laughing the you know, whoever starts laughing first, the other person, it’s contagious, will start laughing as well. And that’s where the magic is. When you can laugh with somebody else, then you’re sustaining each other’s laughter.
Damon Pistulka 14:35
Yes, yes. Okay, so I gotta ask. I don’t worry. Today I put, I put a tile on this conquering stress for better team engagement. I think laughter is a great thing in the workplace, if it’s, you know, the right way, the right there’s a lot of things you can do wrong about it, but the right thing is, is good, but I do have to ask about your Certified Life. Laughter, yoga,
Pete Alexander 15:02
Mm, hmm. So first of all, you know, it’s pretty funny to say certified, because in if for those of watching, if you’ve ever traveled to the UK, when they use the term certified, that means you’re crazy. It’s like when they were doing like the the red meat, they’d say, if it’s certified red meat, mad cows,
Damon Pistulka 15:29
does that go Yeah,
Pete Alexander 15:32
but yes. So what ends up happening as a certified laughter yoga teacher. So laughter yoga has been around since 1995 it originated in India by a doctor Kataria. And basically the yoga part is a little bit of a misnomer, because it’s funny. When I call it laughter yoga, I get people who show up with yoga mats, and we’re not doing Downward Dog. We’re not doing stretches on the floor unless you want to. Of course, you’re more than happy to do that. But the reason it’s called laughter yoga is because part of our laughter is that we end up doing some deep breathing along with it, and that happens naturally. So that’s where the yogic component of it happens so, but I call it, you know, laughter club, so that people aren’t showing up with their with their yoga mat. There
Damon Pistulka 16:29
you go. That’s, that’s good. That’s good because I, when you said it, I envisioned, you know, the stretching and the other things that yoga, that that my body, I would have to work at a little bit. I know I could do it if I wanted to, because it is, I mean, honestly, people say, Oh, I can’t do yoga. Yes, you can that. You’re just telling yourself that you could do yoga. I don’t care if you’re 100 you could do it, yeah, but you have to tell yourself that. But it is good to understand how that works and and the fact that you know, first of all, you were talking about the stress reduction characteristics of laughing and the deep breathing, yep. And, and it is because I, I, like we talked about before I got on, I walk my dog a lot. The one thing and I see in society today, the people I pass on the street, because I pass a lot of people walking. We’re out getting some exercise. We’re on the in the sun. Yesterday it was, you know, it was this area which was 70 degrees, gorgeous, blight breeze. Why the heck aren’t people smiling when you’re outside?
17:34
Why the heck is,
Damon Pistulka 17:35
I mean, because, because you’re, you’re this, you just, you could be in so many worse places, and we’re out there just relaxing walking. But in you talk about laughter, you talk about this in general, and this, this, we, we cannot walk around. It’s the stress that causes us to be outside in the beautiful day like this, walking around and not just be smiling because a I’m able to walk in this nice weather, and I’m, I’m here, I’m, you know, walking my dog, whatever there could be. It’s just, it’s, it’s amazing to me how many people you walk by on a daily basis won’t raise their eyes up to you, not smiling, not not doing anything. And, man, I feel sorry that that they have not figured out how to reduce their stress to a level that when they’re out doing something like that, their mind is free, right?
Pete Alexander 18:32
And you know what? I think a lot of the reason for that is the fact that even when somebody goes you know you’re walking by, somebody who can, won’t make eye contact to you, won’t smile, whatever it’s because even though they’re outside, they’re still connected to their electronics. And that’s a problem, because we have to be able to detox some, and I’m not talking about just, you know, sleeping overnight. We have to disconnect. And, you know, I always think about, you know, now that covid is over with, I still have gratitude for going to a restaurant, because I took it for granted before and, you know, and I remember when I first went into a restaurant after covid started, and I thought to myself, oh my god, I so miss the buzz that you know, or in a restaurant and the whole experience. But I’m sure you’ve seen this, and I’m sure people watching have seen this. There’ll be tables where, whether it’s two people, three people, four people, they’re all on their phones. They’re not talking one word. They’re not interacting in the environment, nothing. And I think to myself, Why do you even bother sitting at the table? Why not just get the takeout? Because you’re not getting any of the benefit here. And the reality is, you know, you. What your phone what you’re doing is you’re telling the other people that you’re sitting at the table with that your phone is more important than them being present with you. So one of the great things that my wife and I will do is we will put our phones, you know, I’ll put them away, put it in pocket. Don’t leave it out, you know, turn this, you know, the the ringer off, just so that we can be present during the meal, because it’s too easy to pick up that phone. And basically, even if you just check the text or check the email or check the voicemail, ping, whatever it is that’s pinging you. What does it do? Like, let’s say, for example, you and I are having a conversation right now, and then all of a sudden, I go and I pick up my phone now, just a moment, and then I come back to you. What did I just tell you, that whatever the phone is more important, right? Yeah, it’s just not, I mean, be present with the person that you’re with or the people that you’re with, and if you can get into that habit, that really works, and especially if it’s with people that report to you, those people on your team, because you’re telling those people that your phone is more important than them. And you know, you may not mean it to be that way, but that’s what you’re telling them. And you know, the we were making the joke about as you were starting up the the recording, that you were multitasking, and that’s another one that’s a killer, because think about it, you go into a meeting, you got your computer there, you got your phone there, and somebody’s, you know, talking. We’re having a conversation, and what are you doing? You’re checking your email, you’re checking your texts, whatever it is. Well, the problem is we do not multitask well. And men are worse than, than, than, than the women in this for sure, but we do not multitask well. And clearly, the studies have shown that multitasking actually creates more stress for us, because what ends up happening is we’re more likely to make mistakes when we’re multitasking, and when we make mistakes, what happens we have to fix those mistakes, and when we have to fix those mistakes, that takes more time. Yeah, anything you think that you saved in multitasking is totally lost because we have to fix whatever we’ve made the mistake on. So,
Damon Pistulka 22:34
yeah, especially when you’re doing deep think work, man, you there’s no way to multitask. You just need to turn everything else off and yes, you know, I’ve you’ve heard me say this many times. My my phone notifications have been turned off for years. I even, I don’t even if I turn it on, because I have to listen. I don’t even recognize that it’s a phone anymore. When it goes off, I’m like, yep, what’s going on, you know? But it helps me a lot. Because even even that bit, and you flip it upside down so you don’t see anything, is a huge, huge help for me. But these, these distractions when we’re doing these things is just a huge waste of time and and I think, just like you said, you’re not only you’re you’re having to go back and redo yourself. It’s not as good as you know, not as good as you could have done when you’re doing the things you’re doing, but it also increases the stress, because you’re trying to get your mind to do something that’s really not meant to do absolutely.
Pete Alexander 23:34
And you know what’s interesting that you mentioned that so there was a study done which was really interesting. So they talked about the Bennet, you know, working on one thing, doing the mindshare one thing, versus working on five things. And here’s the crazy thing. So you would think that basic math, if we, you know, let’s say we have a whole day, eight hours, and we’ve got five things we need to work on. You would think that okay, so 20% is going to be in one project, 20% on the next project, 20% etc, etc, etc. That’s not the case. So if we work on one project, we will be able to spend roughly eight hours on that project. However, if we have five different projects with distractions where we’re thinking, Okay, gotta work on this, gotta work on that. Blah blah, blah, blah blah, what ends up happening is we end up losing 80% of our time transitioning from project to project, our mindshare. So what that means is that if we have five projects, we basically spend 4% of our whole day’s time on each of those projects, and the other 80% of the time is. Lost in ramping down, ramping up between each project. So it makes it much better to if you can, to focus as much as you can on whatever you’re currently working on. And you know, it’s interesting, as you say, you put you put your phone, you know, notifications off. What I do is I go one step further and I leave my phone in a different room. Nope, I do not have it all. I do not have it next to me, because it’s too easy. It’s too easy to get straight. And I remember, you know, I I remember when my daughter was first in college, and I and she was sitting there doing her work, and she and her phone was right there, and it would just buzz all the time. She’d look at it, respond quickly on a text, and then go back, and then she’d start working on the thing again. And she said, she said, Oh yeah, I can do that. I can do that. But I know for a fact that if she just ignored her phone, she would save so much time
Damon Pistulka 26:02
she really would, yeah, and these are great. I mean, these are great things, whether you’re at work or home too, because I tell you that the the same pressures are both places, yes, to really be able to focus and do what you do. And you know, talking about stress in the work environment and working working with people together. What are some of the things that you’ve seen that are effective, like in a team setting, that could really help a team or a group of people working together to to be mindful of stress and help the group, keep it under check,
Pete Alexander 26:42
yeah, well, first of all, being mindful of it. That’s a key one. So our bodies will give us signals that we’re stressed, early warning signs, let’s call it, and if we’re more conscious of those. So, you know, that could be, you know, we get, obviously, both mentally and and physically stressed, you know, and mentally it might be, you know, instead of being able to focus, you’ve got distractions, a lack of focus. That’s a key one. You might also have anxiety about something that may or may not happen in the, you know, in the in the future. And that’s always a bad one, because what do we do as as humans? Our nature’s thinking, Oh, it’s going to obviously be a horrible whatever is going to happen. How do you know that? Yeah, it’s not. And another one, you know, we, I know a lot of people, sadly, who will just say, oh, you know what I all I do is I hit the bottle, or I’ve got some medication to take care of it. Well, all those are indicators that you’re mentally stressed. So those are early warning signs there physically, the most classic one is when we start getting the shoulder and back stiffness. Because, you know, for those of us that work at a desk to you know as our primary work, when we’re stressed, we tend to hunch over, and we don’t even realize it, and that puts a lot of pressure on our back and shoulders. So that’s that’s one that if we’re starting to feel that, you know, if, let’s say, not having enough getting enough sleep or getting too much sleep, that’s an indicator that you’re physically stressed. Oh, you know, bad, you know, something wrong with your stomach where no amount of Pepto Bismol helps. That’s a perfect example of being stressed, the having, you know, the weight fluctuations that I mentioned about, like, and that’s either gaining or losing weight rapidly. Those are all key ones. So you give yourself, you know, if you pay attention to your body, you and you’re aware that, yes, I am stressed, that’s the first thing that you need to do. And as a team, it’s if, if, if the teammates are all aware of, okay, we’ve got some undue stress. And as a team, you come up with what works for the team. So in other words, a great one. So if you’re the manager of that team, and you’ve got some people who you know, are constantly checking their messages, you know, let’s say it’s on teams or, you know, it’s, it’s just a regular, direct texts, etc, what ends up happening is you are setting the standard. So if you are checking your messages constantly, if you are replying to messages constantly, you are setting the standard that everybody should do that you may not intend to do that. Yeah, but if that’s how you were wired, so a great, you know, like, like, for me, I part of the reason I burned out is because I am a doer. I want, I do I want to have my inbox empty at the end of the day. Well, so I frequently, I would have bosses, who would tech send me a message late at night, and instead of me thinking, Okay, I’ll deal with it in the morning. No, I just because I what would happen is I would go to bed thinking about it. It’s much easier for me to just deal with it. And so what you have to do is set kind of the parameters of your team and just say, Okay, what is it from this certain time? No messages, no messages, turn it off. And a great way for each person to do this is to have an end of end of day anchor. And the what an end of day anchor is, is some sort of activity that you do, especially if you’re working at home, but even working in the office, it’s something you do that if you do this as a habit, you make it a habit. It tells your mind that you are disconnecting for the day you’re because you need to do that. And so, for example, I work out of the home, and my wife works at the local hospital. Well, when I hear the garage door open, that’s my indicator that whatever I’m working on, the last email, whatever it is I’m wrapping that up, that’s my end of day anchor for the days that she’s working someone else. It might be something like turning off the computer, or, you know, closing the door to your home, or, you know, office, real office, in an office building. Those are the kind of things. If you can get into that kind of habit, you can mentally disconnect. But the manager of the team has to support that and try and enforce that, because if you have somebody who’s just a workaholic, they’re going to continuously want to respond to every message, so everybody has to be willing to play by the same rules.
Damon Pistulka 32:30
Yeah, you know. And one of the things that I’ve actually started using, because I am kind of crazy about that once in a while, because I have work work time almost every day, but not all day. It’s like, I’m gonna spend an hour, I’m gonna do this. So what I’ve started to do is that that future send for messages is awesome, because I’ll send a message, I’ll do it today, but it won’t go until tomorrow morning at 805. Perfect at that, you know, because then I’m getting it done. It’s off my plate. I’m not worrying about it anymore, and and I’m cool with that, and I might, and it’s off of me, and it doesn’t affect them. And to really be cognizant of that, we have so many electronic means to to do it, to make to satisfy ourselves, because we shouldn’t drive ourselves crazy with that. But if it’s something you do, it’s something you just legitimately need to get done and go that that kind of thing is, is helped me immensely over the years.
Pete Alexander 33:29
Yes, and I can speak from it, from the last boss that I had that was a great boss. He did the same thing. So he would say, you know, because I explained to him. I said, Look, if you send me something at 10 o’clock at night, I’m going to start working on it, even though I should be getting to bed. Yeah. And so he changed that so that, because and I, and I, actually, I was the one that found out about it, that what you were talking about, the delayed scent. I said, do me a favor. I know you need to get it off your plate, go ahead and just put it in the future, send and send it to me, you know, at six o’clock in the morning, whatever. That’s fine, you know, because, because then you’ve got it out of your plate too. So it works for both parties, and that is really important. And so just being able to have that open communication with each person, somebody else, you know, maybe they want to deal with it before they go to bed. I don’t know. I mean, you know you want to, you want to be able to be flexible enough for each person, but it just takes a little bit of extra, extra, you know, attention from the from the manager, to be able to know how you know his or her people want, want to deal with that.
Damon Pistulka 34:43
That is knowing your people. And then, then too, as a leader, you can recognize that stress and people and help to you know, like you said earlier, with talking about something like this, don’t be sending that kind of stuff. But also, what. Are some of the things like, when, if you’re sitting in a in a meeting, say, and you go, Listen, I can tell that you’re the leader, and you’re like, Yeah, this just isn’t good. We’re just wound way too tight. What? What have you seen that’s worked well in those situations? Because, I mean, those happen a lot, every day, multiple, you know, gazillion times a day across the world. Those are happening probably right now. Yeah. So what are some things that the leaders can do? So if we, if they’re listening today, they go, Wow, I’m gonna try that tomorrow.
Pete Alexander 35:34
Yeah. So a perfect example, and I’ve used this, and I’ve been part of teams that have done this, it is so important, if you sense as a leader, that, as you said, wound up, you know the tensions in the room don’t keep force feeding through the whatever the the agenda item, because that’s just going to continue to add to it. You know what? Go ahead and say, You know what I’m actually sensing this. There’s issue here. Let’s talk about it. Let’s come to a resolution with it. And there’s going to be some people who aren’t going to want to talk about it, but, you know, the people who need to, they can. And that’s the thing is, you know, don’t expect you’re going to have both extroverts and introverts on your team. Don’t expect everybody to talk about it. If you just go ahead and say, We need to talk about this, let’s clear the air. Okay, well, the extroverts are more likely going to give their opinion, the introverts are going to be listening and thinking about it. And what you can do is say, Okay, we’ve, you know, we’ve gone ahead and we’ve got some of this stuff out in the open. Appreciate it always. Thank people for sharing that. If anyone has some additional thoughts that come up, which you can do this, you could just say that come up after the meeting. You know, there probably is in their mind. The introverts are probably thinking about, Oh yeah, blah, blah, blah, but they don’t want to say anything. Have them reach out to you after the meeting, one on one, send an email, you know, a text, whatever it is, and then that way you can start planning the next step in that issue. Because what was interesting, you know, I remember being in meetings where there was, you know, for lack of the better term, the elephant in the room, and everybody was stressed. I remember one of them in particular was the rumor had it that our main competitor was buying us, okay? And it did turn out to be the case? Well, the problem is, how do you focus on your normal work when you know that the your main competitor is going to buy your company, your employer, and guess what? They’re likely going to keep their people around instead of you. So it’s really hard to focus. Okay, so in a situation like that, as a leader, you do need to get your people to be still productive, but you’ve got to acknowledge a situation like that. You can’t ignore it. And so don’t you know, and if you address it head on, you’re going to build more credibility with your people, because they’re going to realize that, hey, you know this person, this this leader, is willing to talk about the difficult subjects instead of high, you know, sweeping them under the rug.
Damon Pistulka 38:40
Yeah, yeah. I think that that too. As leaders get more time under their belt, they get more comfortable with uncomfortable conversations, because the uncomfortable conversations are the ones that need to be had, but often and often are the ones that reduce the stress the most
Pete Alexander 39:01
Absolutely. And you know another point that you make that I want to expand upon. You know, this uncomfortable. The thing is this, and this is not just for leaders, but also for each member of the team, is realize that trying to control the uncontrollable is an is a complete lost energy stress maker, and that, you know, it happens in so many situations. Because when we have a stressful situation, you know this? Damon, whenever, whenever you have a stressful situation, our human nature is that we’re going to go ahead and focus on all aspects of that. But the reality is, there’s only a subset of that situation that we can affect change. We can change something we can control. Something, so, you know, in any stressful situation. So let’s just take that one back about being acquired by the main competitor, alright, so each member of the team, or you could do a talk about it as a team, and that this one, you know, now that I’m thinking of it, I would have loved to have done this is you make two lists as a team. What can the team control and what can’t the team control? List them all out. And then once you have both lists, then everyone should focus as much energy as possible on what they can control. Because when we can focus on what we can control, what we can affect, change in our stress level goes down. But whenever we focus on stuff that we can’t change, we can’t control, all that is, is that’s extra stress because we can’t do anything about it, and it takes all that energy. So, you know, if you think about it easy math, if we’re spending 50% of our time on, you know, the uncontrollable, and 50% of the time on our on our controllable, but we take the mind share that we’re wasting on the uncontrollable side and shift as much of that over to the controllable side. Now we can actually reduce our stress. Yeah, you know. And that’s, that’s a key one that a team can do. And it’s, it’s a great team building activity, because everybody can list out, oh, you know this or that, both from what you can’t control and what you can’t control, and then you’ve just got it out in the open. And it’s a great dialog to have, yeah,
Damon Pistulka 41:50
yeah. Because it really when you when you dig through the levels of stress, I mean, all the way, talk about them, it is in our mind, and it is how we’re reacting to whatever situation we’re in. And I know that’s easily simplifying it, but what you just said, there is a huge thing, because there’s stuff that, like you said, you couldn’t control the company was being sold. You couldn’t control that that might happen a week from now. You might get laid off because of that. There’s nothing you could do about that. The only thing you could control is what you could control how you did your job, you know, the how you approached your work, and those kind of things. And as you said, by doing that and filling your time with that you’re not letting your mind worry and stew and do on all the things that you absolutely have no control over, and all it does is drive your stress level up
Pete Alexander 42:49
absolutely and, you know, it’s, it’s a great example of this, you know, I used to talk about during, during covid, is people just go, Oh, I can’t believe it, You know, you know, I somebody’s not wearing a mask, or somebody’s wearing a mask, and all these things. And it’s like, you know, anyone who’s a parent, you’re a parent. I’m a parent, you know, has to laugh when they say, well, control your kid. Yeah, there’s certain things you cannot control. And so when it, and it’s so frustrating when we focus on stuff that we cannot eat we can’t do anything about. And so it, but it feels so good when we can actually make a difference. We can affect change. We can, you know, there’s our human nature is we feel feel calmer when we’re under control. And so if we can just look at those two lists and say, I’m going to focus on those that I can control and ignore as much as possible the ones I can’t control, boy, you’re going to reduce your stress enormously.
Damon Pistulka 43:58
Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. Well, I, you know, Pete, I want to, I want to finish up with one thing, because we’re talking about some great things for teens. We talked about what you control, what you can’t control, getting those, those big elephants in the room, out in the open and talking about them. I think those are a couple great ones. And if people are listening, they didn’t hear those early ones. Go back and listen to that. But I do have to bring up one thing, improv. So I’ve seen some of your improv videos. They’re awesome, by the way. Thank you. I gotta believe that improv helps stress a lot,
Pete Alexander 44:38
huge if you are comfortable being on stage. Obviously, yeah, because what’s funny is, you know, when I did my TEDx talk, and you know, any regular present presentation, there’s a certain level of stress that goes into it, because. You know you’re at a set time. You know you have to make sure you get all these different points together. And when it comes to improv, you have no idea us, as CA, as as as cast members. We have no idea from night to night, and we and we could be doing the exact same lineup, because we do games on stage, we could do the exact same games on stage, and one night would be absolutely, completely different than the next night. And the reason is, is because we take all our prompts from the audience. And so what’s great about that, for someone like me, there’s no script. And so it’s literally, if you put in your mind that if you make a mistake, you make a mistake, big deal, and the audience usually laughs more when you make a mistake. So you get out of your head about it’s gotta be perfect. I gotta be really witty. I got to do this. I got to do that. No, you just whatever comes to your mind within, you know, reason, obviously, yeah, you know, if we, if we have some children in the audience, I’m not going to be using some select language, etc, but, um, you know, you, you just basically enjoy being up there on stage and trying to get people to laugh. And that’s, that’s the thing, and be okay with if a if a comment, a joke, whatever you say, bombs. Because, in fact, what’s even funnier, and I’ve done this several times, is if I say something and I hear crickets in the audience, what I’ll do is I’ll say something like that, oh, I didn’t realize there were crickets here in the theater or something like that. And people will laugh, you know. Or I had this one where I I was imitating a particular character, and I made this reference for a of a of an old commercial. And I thought it was hysterical, and I started laughing, and nobody was laughing, and I just kind of calmed down. I said, Yeah, you’re right. It’s not funny. And then people just got it’s just started laughing their heads off because I bombed. And it’s just, it, just you just, you’re able to try. The whole point is just to get people to laugh. And if they don’t laugh, big deal. They’re, you know, if you’ve got a cast member, they can save you with a comment, etc. It’s just, you go with it. You don’t have that script, and you just enjoy it and and, you know, and it’s all about, you know, you know, in making the the audience laugh, and it’s different than, let’s, let’s say, a comedian on stage, because in a comedian on stage, he or she is going to have a set number that they’re going to do. They’ve got, okay, these stories that they’re going to tell and blah, blah, blah, these jokes that they’re going to tell, etc, and they may or may not work for us. The only thing that is that scripted is okay, we’re doing game A, game B, game C, game D, game E. That’s it, and the rest of it is completely up to the audience. So it’s, it’s so much fun and, you know, and I there’s sometimes some of the games where I just absolutely love and there’s some that it’s like, Oh, these are not my favorite, but I have fun with them as well. And it’s just, it’s, it’s neat to be able to be on stage and get people to laugh whenever there’s, you know when, when I have no idea what is going to come out of the audience.
Damon Pistulka 48:45
Yeah, yeah. Well, like you said, laughter helps with stress. So, I mean, this helps, helps everyone in the room when you’re when you’re doing that. So,
Pete Alexander 48:54
oh, it does. And you know, what’s interesting is, is that when I get done with a class, with a class, a show, I am so wired excited. Oh yeah. So I usually, you know, I get to sleep really late after a show because I’m wired from the audience and laughing and stuff like that. But it feels so good. And that’s, that’s, you know, that’s the key is, is that, from a stress standpoint, when we do the stuff that we love, we’re passionate about whatever stress that’s involved with that is good stress.
Damon Pistulka 49:28
Yeah, it really is stuff, good stuff. Well, Pete, thanks so much for being here today. Really enjoyed it. We dropped some good information for people that are thinking about how they can get the stress reduced in their lives, their team lives, and really lead, you know, take that stress level down. Because, you know, we can let it kill us, or we can beat it. That’s, that’s really the choice we have. We don’t want the first one of those. And so thanks for being here today. And I want to say thanks, Ron. Ron, he had. Comment in here, jealous that you met Dan in person before him.
Pete Alexander 50:05
Oh, yeah, yeah. And so Dan’s going to try and make it out to Seattle. So it’s going to, we’re going to get together there, I suppose, in Edmonds, right. Yeah.
Damon Pistulka 50:13
There you go. There you go. It’s kind of the center point. Well, thanks for being here today. Pete, I want to thank all the listeners today. We did have a little bit of technical difficulties on a couple of the platforms. I’ll get that worked out, and we’ll get that. We’ll get the video up there. Thanks for being here today. Pete, if someone wants to get a hold of you and talk to you about stress relief, what’s the best way to do that,
Pete Alexander 50:33
go to Pete, alexander.com, or reach out to me on LinkedIn.
Damon Pistulka 50:37
There we go. There we go. Pete, thanks for being here. I want to thank all the people listening and commenting and all that good stuff. We will be back again with another guest on the face of the business. Hang out with me. Be here, Pete, and we’ll finish up offline. You.
