How to Manage Stress and Achieve Greater Balance with Neuroscience Expert Nina Nesdoly

How to Manage Stress and Achieve Greater Balance with Neuroscience Expert Nina Nesdoly – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDloK2Ehy_Q

Transcript:
(00:00) burnout is best defined I think using the definition of the World Health Organization uses which is an occupational phenomenon resulting from chronic work stress that has not been successfully managed so burnout and stress are two different things and it’s when we have a really high chronic accumulation of stress that people experience burnout burnout shows up in three main Dimensions which are exhaustion when you’re just like perpetually tired run down cynicism when you become really pessimistic really distrustful and
(00:41) reduce professional efficacy so efficacy is basically when you feel that you can accomplish things you can do your job you can get things done so with reduced professional efficacy you start to feel like you can’t people may start to feel like they’re failing at work hello everyone and welcome to the flow over fear podcast where it is our mission to help you to rise above fear and realize your ultimate potential in leadership and life I’m your host Adam Hill and it is my goal to share with you the human side of high performance my
(01:15) guests share their experience with fear anxiety struggle Challenge and most importantly despite all of it how they Rose above it to achieve incredible results so if you’re ready to rise up let’s get started hey everyone welcome to flowover fear thanks for being here today and today we’re going to talk about stress and I know stress is a very important thing it’s what it’s what leads a lot of times to anxiety and is uh one of one of the biggest things that we experience fear in our lives so my guest today Nina
(01:52) nesdali is a professional speaker work stress researcher who helps high Achievers to avoid burnout her unique insights into this in into this stem from her background in management and Neuroscience and her continued PhD education she just finished her first Ted Talk by the way called how to relieve stress when you’re overwhelmed and as of this episode it should be out live so go check that out as a keynote speaker Nina inspires audiences to create work-life balance using insights from Neuroscience she makes challenging
(02:25) topics like stress mental health and burnout engaging and fun and she provides evidence-based talks and workshops to equip teams and leaders to manage stress at work enjoy life outside of work and build resilient teams that can overcome burnout together so I’m looking forward to this conversation because I certainly have and continue to experience workplace stress it is a big deal in a lot of our lives so Nina welcome thank you for being here so much thank you so much for having me Adam yeah and congrats on your
(02:58) Ted Talk that is amazing thank you yeah um so I would love to know first off is how um you know to tell us in your own words what is what is workplace burnout and and and why do we experience it burnout is best defined I think using the definition of the World Health Organization uses which is an occupational phenomenon resulting from chronic work stress that has not been successfully managed so burnout and stress are two different things and it’s when we have a really high chronic accumulation of stress that people
(03:38) experience burnout burnout shows up in three main Dimensions which are exhaustion when you’re just like perpetually tired run down cynicism when you become really pessimistic really distrustful and reduce professional efficacy so efficacy is basically when you feel that you can accomplish things you can do your job you can get things done so with reduced professional efficacy you start to feel like you can’t people may start to feel like they’re failing at work um that’s no that I’m really glad you
(04:13) brought that up because uh I’ve I I’ve never equated burnout to cynicism but I’ve always had this idea that cynicism leads to you know loss of production morale issues all that kind of stuff can you dive a little deeper into that world and maybe how we could turn cynicism around to become you know I guess less stressed yeah so cynicism and depersonalization it’s definitely a lesser-known aspect of burnout I think when a lot of people hear burnout they think about exhaustion and in the media the terms burn it and exhaustion almost
(04:43) get used interchangeably sometimes but really that’s just one part of burnout so with cynicism and another kind of co- aspect of that is depersonalization there’s this sense of distrust this pessimism this feeling that people are out to get you so even when people try to help or reach out to you or especially if your organization or your employer starts trying to support you people will be like well I can’t trust them I don’t like them they don’t mean well I’ve had people I spoke to at
(05:17) workshops and stuff where they’re like well you know my boss keeps trying to offer to help but I don’t believe it so they get to this place where even well-intentioned help is seen as an affront and then there may also be this sense of depersonalization where they start to withdraw from other people they start to not want to be around other people which is especially hard if you are in a position where you work with clients or patients because you might start to develop animosity towards your patients or clients and it it can even
(05:46) be patients or clients that you have a history of getting along with really well but then you see their name on your calendar for the day and you’re like oh my gosh we don’t have the energy to talk to other humans with cynicism specifically if there’s any kind of underlying conflicts going on bringing those to the Forefront is incredibly helpful so a good thing to do around cynicism is to check in with team members or encourage people to have conversations when they do have conflict with other people
(06:21) because Things That Go unresolved conflicts that don’t get managed are a bit of a breeding ground for cynicism because then when people do get tired they’re like well you know I couldn’t Trust Bob over there two months ago where he annoyed me at the printer so he’s like culprit number one for my criticism now yeah that makes a lot of sense and and and uh I see that a lot within the organization within organizations in the past is cultural uh you know the culture kind of falling down because they refuse
(06:58) to you know confront the issues the major issues and yeah you know that that’s always that’s always a hard task because just it it involves kind of getting past that fear do you have any suggestions on how we can kind of get over that get past that fear just have the courage to do it the courage to get cynicism or to confront conflict specifically yeah to confront conflict in in some of those areas because I feel like leadership might be one of the causes of of avoiding that that that uh healthy conflict resolution
(07:32) so I think with Conflict at work one of the important things to remember is that in some ways it’s meant to be stressful and it’s okay if it’s stressful and it’s okay if it feels hard as humans we’re really hardwired to be weary of conflict with other people and of disagreements with other people in the research we refer to something called social evaluative threat and this is when we feel like we’re being evaluated by others our brain perceives that as really threatening this is rooted in our ancestry because
(08:08) hundreds of years ago when we were dependent on groups and tribes and things for survival if you were evaluated poorly by the group and you were kicked out of the group Food Water Shelter these your access was compromised so we’re really we’re wired to be really nervous about having any kind of conflict with other people that might mean that we get kicked out of the group or we get disliked or anything like that happening I find that just knowing that can often be helpful for overcoming conflict and interpersonal situations to just remind
(08:44) yourself that it’s totally normal and natural to experience a heightened stress response when you’re dealing with other people so it’s okay if tension runs high if anxiety levels get high like that’s a natural thing sometimes it means that you know we’re not going to show up as our best or say the right thing in the moment so if tensions are running really high it can be good to take a break get people’s perspectives separately if you’ve got leadership intervening and some kind of conflict so that you don’t
(09:14) have that situation where people are just you know kind of going at it in a a big a big fight in the middle of the office or something like that but yeah I think just recognizing that it’s okay for people to be upset by conflict right there is a really good start in terms of how we resolve it some something that I see too much in organizations I think is this expectation that we’re going to learn how to not have feelings in response to conflict and that’s just not the case yeah I love that uh response so thank
(09:47) you and I I want to get into your your story and how you got into this field because you know it’s it’s it’s really neat where you’re taking this and and your unique perspective on it um but I think this is this is really helpful this kind of rabbit hole we’ve fallen down um because the idea of of just acknowledging the the the anxiety around that conflict or or acknowledging that this is evolutionarily speaking normal for us to feel and okay that’s there’s there’s something really validating and
(10:18) freeing to that uh so I I don’t I I know we we tend to forget I mean we live in this world and as human beings any of us living in this world have only lived in in you know the the uh the recent you know the present right so we haven’t experienced tribal cultures but evolutionarily that’s in us so I I would love it if you could kind of expand on that uh because all of the Millennia that we’ve been living around campfires and you know in in those tribes getting kicked out of a tribe was deadly not so
(10:52) much anymore but it’s still in us it’s very true our brains have evolved over the years but at this point technology and Society has evolved a lot quicker than our brains have which means that we have threat responses in our systems that may or may not make sense relative to what we encounter today so I saw a meme the other day for example being like how do I teach my brain that fight or flight is for being you know real danger not getting an email and that’s very much people’s experience where because we we are wired
(11:31) and it is biologically important for our survival to perceive and detect threats that translates into other areas and kind of modern day stressors that are new that our brain is like oh that’s super threatening like we better Panic right now and in reality sometimes sometimes it’s not and that is especially the case in the western Workforce all right so are we overstimulated do we just have too much information coming in for our human Minds to process is that where all of our Stress and Anxiety is coming from
(12:05) so it’s hard to say with respect to that we don’t really have the data yet to really conclusively say that you know stimulation social media these things are like a definitive problem for Stress and Anxiety one of the things that we do know is that the content matters so what you’re taking in if the content that you’re consuming is stressful is leading to comparing yourself to others is making you feel inadequate then that will naturally contribute to being stressed out also my intuition and based on my my background
(12:43) in the Neuroscience is that it’s probably not great if you know you’re on Tick Tock or something and in the span of under a minute you are exposed to maybe I don’t know 50 to 60 different ideas because you’re trying to find something to watch like it’s a lot and it does require a lot from our brains to switch from one thing to another and to focus on new things and process all of this information whether or not processing itself is like a bad thing it’s hard to say at this point what we
(13:19) do know is that your brain can only focus on one thing at a time so if you are focused on external stimuli you cannot simultaneously be focused on your own internal world and your own experience so I talk about this in my TED Talk actually as a key to stress relief one of them is to limit information in and those are the two big reasons the content you’re taking in could be a source of stress and if you are taking information in you’re not focused on relieving stress from your body you can’t be because you can only
(13:51) focus on one thing at a time I gotcha so so our our desire to be distracted maybe from the daily life might be causing us more stress and it’s not relieving it yeah exactly so it’s hard to say like the exact effects of the processing information but it definitely stops us from process or from releasing other things that we’ve experienced so I believe it’s contributing to some of the build up and people will do things like use information and Technology to numb out and then in the long run people
(14:23) were hearing people Express you know anxiety is getting worse depression getting worse mental health getting worse and things like that so like I said the research is still working on this to really understand like the specifics of it but it does seem like overall the constant information in whatever the exact how and why is it does seem to be related to higher stress yeah wow yeah I know that I feel I feel guilty of that too of of the I will sit up at night on occasion and just kind of scroll through Tick Tock or Instagram
(14:58) and just like not that not that those are not I mean I know that there’s a debate on whether or not they’re bad uh per se but that’s you know that’s not the debate we’re having is but it is you know doing it at night before bedtime and getting information in less than a minute like you’re saying is probably not the greatest thing well and if it’s before bed then something that we do see very conclusively is that it will disrupt your sleep so that right there is going to also impact stress levels
(15:26) because if you don’t have enough sleep that’s stressful for your body right there yeah is there anything that we should be doing instead of That So reading uh what what other things should we do before bed just to kind of like calm our brains um anything that’s kind of not involving screens and that lets you relax is a good thing to do before bed I think the same goes for the morning as well there is some discussion around how phones when people are on their phones you see brain activity associated with
(15:59) high attention and high focus and when you’re transitioning from being asleep to being awake your brain kind of goes through different phases of attention that include phases that have more mind wandering and more kind of ideation about your day so if you roll over and you pick up your phone first thing in the morning you’re skipping that and you’re jumping straight into all this processing so it’s for both of the edges of your day really whether it’s before you’re falling asleep or just when
(16:24) you’re waking up doing something other than being on the phone and probably other than being on a screen because that bright light is going to decrease melatonin production so then you’re going to have a harder time sleeping is better for you so whether that’s reading whether it is drawing whether it is just sitting quietly on your balcony or talking to your partner or your kid or whatever it is getting away from the screen helps to it helps to signal to your body when it’s actually night time which is the
(16:58) signal that you’re supposed to be getting when it’s dark out but you don’t get if you’ve got the bright glaring light of the phone right in front of you yeah that makes a lot of sense so I do and and thank you for that explanation because I personally needed it uh because I’ve been falling short on that recently um so uh I I want to get into kind of where how you got into this field of study because you have that unique mix I call it chocolate and peanut butter because they’re so delicious together
(17:24) but the uh you know the management you know you used to work for apple and and train teams there and and uh and then Neuroscience where you’re where you’re getting your you know your PhD can you talk about what got you in interested in the study of of stress and and overcoming burnout and that kind of stuff so I did my bachelor’s in Neuroscience which is basically a crash course in how stress will kill you like just put it lightly the reality is like there’s all these different ways stress is going to
(17:58) get you and we learn about all of them in a neuroscience degree so in my bachelors of Neuroscience we would basically start most of our classes with the first week or two at some point we would cover stress because stress is just so linked to all of these other systems in our body and I took a stress and health course at one point so every week it was just like a different thing about stress it sounds Bleak but it actually becomes very optimistic so this stress and health course we started off and we were all like wow this is like
(18:29) this is not the most exciting thing like learning all of these different ways that we’re gonna get sick and all these different diseases but then about halfway through you kind of you kind of get to this point of acceptance and you’re like well I’m just going to do the best that I can with my health and my Wellness because as it life is hard you know right so I’m just gonna do the best that I have so that was really my undergrad and so when I graduated from my undergrad I thought I never want to
(18:56) talk about stress ever again I’ve had it I do not want to look at stress systems I do not want to look at the nervousness I do not want anything to do with it and I went and I did my masters in management with a focus on organizational behavior I had become really interested in interpersonal aspects of the workplace through some of the electives that I had taken through my bachelor’s I also worked for apple and I was a workshop facilitator I did really fun workshops so I did things like things like phone photography and
(19:27) how to draw on the iPad just with customers coming into the store so I had a real love for Workshop facilitation and being at Apple also really sparked my curiosity about organizational behavior because I had a team of 120 people that I worked with so you just kind of see everything in action in the workplace when I got into my Master’s my supervisor was like you know what do you want to study and I didn’t really know for sure but she gave me this packet of readings on burnout and on stress because she’s like
(20:01) you know you’ve got this great background in Neuroscience why not use it and at first I was kind of like hey I know I don’t know if I want to do that and then I read the research from the workplace and I went where is all the neuroscience like there’s so much cool stuff in Neuroscience that could be helping us in the workplace and so that was when it really came together for me and became my mission through my research and doing my Master’s in management and my PhD in management to import things that we know
(20:33) from neuroscience and theories that we have in Neuroscience into what we’re doing in the workplace and incorporate that research together so that’s what I do through my PhD work from a very theoretical perspective and also in my work with organizations and in my speaking it’s very much looking at okay what do we know from Neuroscience what do we know in management research what are the realities of the workplace and how do we bring that all together oh that’s fascinating so uh so is is a lot of what you see out there related to
(21:07) say relieving workplace stress and that kind of stuff is is a lot of that just pseudoscience you know is is it not legitimate is it is it is it um somehow contradicting the neuroscience I don’t see it as contradicting so much as just kind of progressing in two different streams and I think that if we can connect them together we can create better experiences for people at work so management does fantastic research Neuroscience does fantastic research but it’s just two very different approaches so and there’s lots of places where the
(21:49) research kind of lines up and lots of places where it kind of diverges but if you look at both Fields you can say hey here’s what we can learn from one that’s going to help or inform the other from a practical standpoint I see yeah so is the is there a difference between it well it sounds like to me that there that there’s that that’s like kind of the subtle difference between Psychology and Neuroscience am I am I wrong on that a little bit so management is very much grounded in psychology as a
(22:20) research field it kind of emerged from psychology so kind of post-industrial Revolution people became really interested in applying psychology to the workplace and that’s really where the field of organizational behavior emerged from so it very much does have its roots in Psychology but that Evolution happened before psychology evolved into Neuroscience which is another evolution of psychology where we started to want to know more about the brain so the two Fields share a lot of roots and it’s really cool to be able to look at
(22:55) things like uh you know a concept for example in management research that’s really well established is this idea of work recovery so different experiences that you need to really effectively recover from work there’s four of them one of them is detaching from work one is having a sense of control over your time another is having opportunities to relax and the last one is Mastery so having hobbies and opportunities to learn and grow outside of work when you take a look at something like that in relation
(23:30) to Neuroscience one of the ways that I teach people to detach from work is using sensory cues because your brain loves patterns and associations so if it compare two things together it’s going to so if you have alerts and sounds coming in on your computer that are pulling you back into work that’s going to take away from your Detachment so I like to take Concepts and our understandings from both fields and look at how one can help with the other I see okay so can you can you kind of give us a a brief maybe definition of Neuroscience
(24:08) and maybe talk about how that compares to the psychology is that that might I mean I know that I’m maybe missing the the uh definition there completely that’s totally fair so Neuroscience is the study of the nervous system and the nervous system is both the brain and the spinal cord and the nervous system so it extends more into the body than I think a lot of people realize often when people think of Neuroscience they just think of the brain but it is about your nervous system as a whole psychology is
(24:39) typically more focused on behavioral aspects how people are behaving how they’re thinking and is usually less concerned with the biological function of that that’s such a helpful definition uh between the two and distinction because I I feel like a lot of people might blend the two together you know myself included and you know I I come I I have my bachelor’s degree in Psychology so that was a long time ago but that’s kind of like how I came to this idea that that well yeah I mean business in and of itself is psychology
(25:12) and we you’re I feel like you’re right because it’s such a new topic we haven’t talked about the Neuroscience of it and I love that you explained there that that Neuroscience is is more about how it affects the whole body uh you know and and because I know when I’m stressed I’m feeling it all throughout you know I’m achy I’m you know tired exhausted and the the physiological responses are pretty significant do you find that to be true as well when I’m stressed and tired absolutely
(25:43) you feel it through your whole body yeah because it really is your nervous system is more than just your brain and it will interact with other systems in your brain in your body and with different hormones and other parts of your physiology so stress can really get I’m all stuck in your body if you’re feeling it and it ends up as headaches and tension and mental fog and fatigue and it really can be a whole body experience yeah well let’s let’s dive into that a bit if you don’t mind what I
(26:19) guess I wanna I’d love to kind of get into the science or the Neuroscience of it what is happening to uh and specifically I’d love to know how what’s happening to our body when we’re burning out or getting stressed and what’s happening to our body when we’re in the zone when we’re feeling good when we’re actually performing uh can you kind of give us an insight into that yeah so when you’re stressed there’s a few different things that are happening first people are probably pretty
(26:46) familiar with fight or flight so when you encounter a really Salient threat where you need to respond really quickly that’s going to set off a fight or flight response your heart rate is going up your pupils are dilated you’re not really focused on cognitive function you’re focused on Survival so even things like digestion or slowed down because that’s not really a priority if you feel like you have to run fight or respond to something fight or flight leads to release a release of epinephrine adrenaline in the
(27:20) body and that’s what is acting on your organs and throughout your body to lead to that really big increase in response one of the things that is interesting though is this response that can be fight or flight that can be really high stress is also when we feel really excited biologically we have the same kind of response happening where the heart rate is elevated we’re pumped up we’re excited so if you think about you know an athlete getting ready to start a race they probably don’t want to be
(27:52) super chill and relaxed when the gun goes off they want their heart rate to go up they want to be in a state of high performance so that’s one of the really cool things is it’s kind of about how you appraise it and how you perceive the things that you encounter so if you feel like you are dealing with a challenge that you can cope with and you can respond to then your physiological stress response will feel like excitement but if you’re dealing with a stressor that you feel like you can’t cope with and you can’t
(28:26) respond to then it can be a more cumbersome experience there’s a another stress response system in your body and a lot of people don’t know this but we have two stress response systems so the famous one is fight or flight the other one is the HPA axis and this is a slower responding system and by slower I mean like milliseconds like it’s still pretty fast but slower from your body’s standpoint and this is the system that releases cortisol throughout your body so yeah so there’s a theory uh it’s called
(29:03) the biocycle social model of stress so you can say that five times fast which says when we have just the kind of fight or flight system active then we’re in a challenge state but when we have both the fight-or-flight system and this slower HPA axis system then we’re in a threat State and that’s when things get really sluggish cognitively and we feel kind of terrible and it’s the the negative experience of stress anytime your body goes through a stress response your body ultimately has to mobilize resources and it is
(29:43) experiencing strain and it’s doing work to respond to whatever you’re dealing with so your body needs an opportunity to recover and even just that process of coming back to a balanced physiological state that takes energy from your body what happens with burnout is we’re being asked to either stay at a really high stress level consistently which is not good for the body it will cause damage over time and the other thing that can be happening is we’re being asked to frequently experience stress and bring ourselves back down
(30:20) from stress without adequate recovery periods so it’s exhausting the body’s ability to establish re-establish its physiological Baseline I see so what I’m what I’m hearing there is that it is if we interpret it correctly it can be healthy for us to experience the stress the stress response uh and and those things as long as we can avoid experiencing it too frequently and or to for too prolonged period of time yeah so either even we experience stress and stressed in a positive way like excitement like feeling really
(31:02) challenged and in management literature we actually differentiate between challenge stressors and hindrance stressors at work so a challenge stressor is something that gives you an opportunity to learn and grow a hindrance stressor is something that just gets in your way and stresses you out and isn’t really helpful both of those types of stressors cause strain on the body so even if you love your work and you’re really excited about something you still need opportunities to recover from a physiological
(31:34) standpoint yeah that that’s uh it sounds a lot like like how we work out our bodies like how you know how we’re physically working at it is that I mean coming from the workout background you have this macro cycle where you’re building up and you’re you’re peaking you’re giving yours you’re you’re basically expanding your your comfort zone and and you’re expanding your physical capabilities meanwhile you’re mixing in the recovery which a lot of people do forget about of
(32:01) course even on the physical level and that’s where they get injured they get hurt and and causes all sorts of problems sounds like there’s a lot of correlation between the two exercise is really the perfect example if you hate running then it’s very easy to convince you to take a break and to not do it all the time but even if you love running you need to take a break and not do it all the time yeah so that that um I mean so what you’re saying there get kind of gets to another question that I was going to ask and
(32:29) it’s and he kind of answered it um I was going to ask you how you feel about giving 110 because when we are you know our our society seems to be very geared toward this idea of of you know giving 110 all the time going going hard or going home pushing pushing to our capacity constantly and and at least on the physical level from the from the exercise perspective I see where that’s coming from because you know it’s sexy it sells you know that kind of thing like those kind of workouts say oh I’m not going to get fit
(33:02) or healthy or or this is what we tell ourselves we’re not going to get fitter healthy unless we go harder to go home but the reality is much different if we kind of maintain that 80 capacity give ourselves the rest give ourselves a recovery we stay tuned are we doing ourselves a disservice by you know listening to the go hard or go home kind of stuff I think so I do not go 100 on anything I go 80 at most and my logic there is that I am a hundred percent of a person there is no 110 for me to give and if I
(33:38) am truly giving a hundred percent to any one thing in my life that I am neglecting myself in some other way when you do that you burn out you are constantly experiencing high stress overextending yourself even if you love what you do and you’re feeling challenged you don’t have opportunities to recover so to me the 110 approach is just too temporary to really even accomplish the goals that are really meaningful to us to cultivate the lives that we want because it will almost inevitably with very few exceptions lead to burnout at some point
(34:19) sometimes I even doubt myself on this to be honest I because I have established really wonderful work-life balance for myself and every now and then I see like uh girl boss on Tick Tock or something who’s got like her three jobs and her business and all this and she’s doing all the things 110 120 and I’m like huh maybe I’m the lazy one you know maybe I’ve got this wrong but every time that happens within about three months I will see that same girl boss energy turn into either silence where this person will
(34:59) disappear from social media for months or them coming on and saying I burnt out or my anxiety has gotten so high that I cannot function or you know I don’t know what I’m gonna do with the situation I’ve created for myself I can’t sustain it that’s that’s so helpful coming from you know a neuroscientist on on this on this subject to kind of get that affirmation and what is what is that by the way where we where we have that self-doubt of like well I’m not pushing hard so so you know I I need to push harder I need
(35:33) to I need is that just a competitive nature because it seems counterintuitive it seems like we’re harming ourselves in that process and thinking that way I think it’s largely cultural I think it’s what we’ve been taught there’s a very strong message whether someone says it to you or not that worth is linked to productivity and that the only way to accomplish anything worthwhile is to burn out like you are never going to be enough or get enough done or accomplish enough if you are not exhausted
(36:07) our culture just kind of has that ingrained so I think it’s a natural response for a lot of us it became ingrained into our own psyches growing up for myself it’s something where I’ve set up a lot of really wonderful systems and I’m very happy with my work life balance and my combination of pursuing my goals and going dancing and going to yoga and doing all of these different things but the reality is that sometimes there’s going to be that little voice inside your head that creeps up and it’s
(36:41) just like but hey you’re lazy and it just happens sometimes so you’ve got to decide I think what really matters to you and for me what really matters is my well-being and my relationships and having a meaningful career in the long run not everything in one month yeah well let me say this now because it’s this is recorded and you can go back to hear it if you need to you have a TED Talk you’re getting your PhD you’re you’re well educated you’re doing all of these things you’re definitely
(37:16) not lazy I want to tell you something about that actually too because I think it’ll be helpful to your listeners when I started my PhD I started in a different program than I’m in now I started in a program that is extremely prestigious it came with a lot of name recognition it opened a lot of doors academically I made the decision to leave after the first semester because I realized that if I stayed there I would not be able to protect my own well-being the environment just wasn’t a good fit for
(37:51) me the approach to the the work of the projects I could see that it wasn’t going to work out for me I was so scared when I left to leave that behind to feel like I was closing these really important doors and like I wasn’t ever going to be able to accomplish what I might have if I stayed in that program and what happened instead is now I’m in a different PhD program almost a year to the day after submitting my withdrawal requests from the first program the opportunity to do a TED Talk a tedx talk came up and I was
(38:31) in a position to say yes to that because I had chosen a program that was more aligned with my values my goals was a better fit for my life this has been more supportive of what my well-being so the whole time I was preparing for my TED Talk my supervisor was on board I was going to yoga two or three times a week and doing my workouts my workload was admittedly you know High a PhD and doing a tedx and speaking at the same time it gets high sometimes but it was manageable and I did not burn out through that experience and when I felt
(39:09) like at one point the tedx talk was a lot more preparation than I had anticipated but I had put myself in an environment where it was okay for me to turn around and say I’m going to need to push a project that we’re working on so I can do this so sometimes it’s really scary to put your well-being first and feel like you’re leaving things behind and I know that you know getting to do a tedx talk is a really big example of it turning out well but I really do think what’s what’s meant for you and what’s
(39:41) going to be meaningful for you and what will really matter and be the right goals for you are not going to leave you burnt out and exhausted and devastated yeah what what type of PhD were you pursuing that it was also a PhD in management yeah so it was the same it was the same topic so it was great because I basically transferred and I brought my credits with me so I hopped right in exactly where I had left off it was really just a matter of the program fit I see so yeah it just just wasn’t a fit and and I I appreciate you sharing
(40:14) that with us because from the perspective of someone who’s who studied this kind of you know the the idea of burnout and all that kind of stuff and still experience the fear in going through that kind of transition um you know can you can you kind of walk us through what that fear looked like how it showed up and how you made the decision despite the fear because I think our listeners would love to hear that one of the conclusions I came to in making that decision this was just through my own kind of reflection was that
(40:51) my life is not on the other side of my PhD program it’s not gonna start for how long do I have left three years from now when I graduate it’s not you know at the time it was it was five years it’s not going to start in five years it’s not gonna wait for me this is my life and do I want to spend the next five years of my life unhappy in a program that is maybe not the right fit for me and sure maybe it’ll open these amazing doors later but do I want those doors opened so badly that I want to be
(41:28) unhappy for this chunk of my life I also felt that the reality was that if I stayed I wasn’t going to finish because I could just see it could potentially get worse than it was so there was a lot of fear there but it was very much yeah the overcoming it was was really just thinking about you know this isn’t this isn’t separate things where I’m gonna you know put my life on hold and do a PhD for five years this is my life this is five years of my life what do I want that next five years to look like
(42:05) yeah did now are you able to turn fear that fear into excitement a little bit it was challenging I did get really excited once I had the like fully T’s crossed eyes dotted on the transfer until everything was really done and set for me to make the move it was largely just fear because I was afraid something was going to fall through once I really had the confirmation I was enrolled in the new program I started to get really excited especially about the city I’ve been I’m only here for a year but I’ve
(42:47) been in Montreal for nine months now it’s one of my favorite cities in the world and it’s where I’m doing my PhD so I’m gonna be moving back home Ottawa is home for me at the end of the summer but it got to be really exciting to go to this city that I love to work with a new supervisor and as the as I kind of got some distance from the initial experience of it the the fear shifted into an excitement for what was what was coming next I gotcha yeah and and that’s uh that’s helpful I mean so we can we can
(43:21) experience fear and still move forward I mean so so fear doesn’t have to be a bad thing is what I’m getting from a lot of this conversation too is that we don’t have to let fear stop us but we can we can you know as long as we manage or as long as we can manage the the stress so that we’re not burning out and you mentioned earlier I think with the start of this that burnout is not the same as stress and I’ve made that that uh I guess that uh comparison you know too often too where stresses burnout
(43:54) it sounds like stress leads to burnout is that fair to say yeah chronic and excessive stress leads to burning stress is the definition of stress that I like is that stress is the psychological and physiological response to stimuli in your internal or external environments so it could be coming from your own body you can feel stressed in response to something physical you can feel stressed in response to your own thoughts if you are scaring yourself with thinking over the same Conflict at work over and over again or it can be a response to the
(44:31) external environment stress is a response to a specific stimuli that your body is mobilizing to respond to burnout is I’ve encountered so many stressors I’ve experienced so much stress that the physiological systems in the body that are meant to help respond to that and bring you back from that are getting worn out I see okay and um you mentioned you know you talked about your work life balance you said you found a good balance there and congratulations on that by the way because not a lot of people have and and
(45:07) it’s it’s hard to do it’s really really tough to do which is I guess why you found a really really powerful Niche here to to help people do that what is work life balance look like for you and and how how can people determine that in their own lives so for myself it’s about being able to find enjoyment in both my work and my personal life when I think of work life balance I like to avoid thinking of it as a specific schedule it’s not like work and life are on a specific time clock where work’s
(45:43) got to be eight hours and life has got to be you know the other eight hours and then you sleep or whatever it is and it’s also not that I believe that work and life are entirely separate to me it’s more that you are giving your life outside of work the same kind of attention and consideration that you would your work I think people are really intentional about setting goals at work having things that they want to achieve at work and really understanding what they want their careers to look like we’re taught that really early on
(46:13) you go to a career counselor in high school and they’re like what are you gonna do with your life and that doesn’t involve I want to paint on Saturday mornings or I want to do Latin dance two nights a week which is what I do uh you know it’s it’s what job are you gonna get and we put a lot of attention and a lot of emphasis and a lot of intentional Focus towards our careers so to me work life balance means that we’re being intentional about our careers and what also being intentional about what we
(46:42) want our lives outside of work to look like I see indeed is there any kind of practical tips that you have to help people to find that or maybe evaluate their own lives on how on how they can be more intentional with their personal lives and their work lives I think a great practice is to establish some non-negotiation starting point building a few things a week into your schedule that you’re gonna have there for you no matter what for myself I am working out a few times a week whether I’m at yoga or weight
(47:18) training no matter what’s going on in my work I’m going out with friends or going out with my partner at least one night a week and these are non-negotiables to me because when you don’t have things that you enjoy in your life it’s so detrimental to your brain anyways that the work is ultimately going to suffer as it is things like exercise time with other people time to recuperate are so valuable to the health of your brain and to your ability to focus and be productive that having those there means that the work
(47:56) that you are doing is going to be easier to get through anyways I remember when I was in my bachelor’s degree towards the end of it people would be really surprised when I was in the gym every day like five days a week I guess during final exams because they’d be like you could be studying more but you physically can’t you can only do so much in a day you can only focus so much and that one hour of exercise that I would have in the morning meant that my brain was in such better shape to focus and learn and be productive for
(48:28) the rest of the day that the way I saw it was that if you put in 10 hours of studying you might as well just put in seven hours of studying and go to the gym because the benefits are so high it’s a tough shift to make but I really find the keys to lead with well-being to start by asking yourself what do I need what will I enjoy what will help me feel good and then look at how the work is going to get done because ultimately if you’re taking care of your brain and your health you’re in a better position
(49:04) to do your work anyways yeah I I love that answer I um you know just just the idea of that that we become more effective in say the eight hours that we spend working by taking care of ourselves in the other parts of the day by taking you know whether that be you know our mental exercise of of doing the things that we love spending the time with the people that we love or taking care of our physical health we become more productive in the work that we do and uh and we can create exponential returns if we love both of those things
(49:39) the work and the and the uh uh and and the personal uh I really believe that rest is productive not only for helping you be more productive at work but for producing a life for yourself that you’re actually going to enjoy living yeah yeah it’s that’s a powerful lesson mentally too because we don’t we just don’t listen to that we we have that part of our brain you know that just tells us that we have to go harder we have to finish this project or whatever it is and you know we think that that
(50:15) rest is is such a bad thing and again in the in the exercise world I I got that a lot too my my entire uh early life was spent doing aggressive or trying trying to do aggressive types of exercise burning out and getting injured and it took me until actually like being sober and then getting injured again to to actually scale it back and start doing the 80 and I found that 80 you could do consistently which is pretty amazing um and uh and and the returns are just incredible on that so uh I hope that people resonate with that and and can
(50:56) find out what what um you know I think that what what advice would you give to to leaders out there people who are leading teams that you know because this kind of psychology exists in organizations as well you know where we’re we’re pushing our teams to to a certain degree how do we manage that stress in the workplace your people are going to be at their best from a work standpoint from a productivity standpoint from hitting the goals hitting the sales targets when they have their health and their well-being I think as Leaders sometimes
(51:34) it’s it’s a tough position because there’s so many different tiers of leadership positions right so unless you’re at the very top then you’ve got someone applying pressure to you and so you’re going to apply that pressure to the next line in the organization and it all just kind of trickles down I really see the role of leadership as kind of like holding an umbrella over your team though you can be the one to say I’m going to protect you from these other things that are coming in and that
(52:07) looks like advocating for your team to say no these targets have that have been set are not realistic no these demands that have been placed on the team do not make sense if we keep doing this we’re going to have high turnover we’re going to lose good people and also looking for ways to just mitigate the annoying stressors like paperwork and red tape and things like that the things that waste people’s time and meetings that are about other meetings that people just don’t don’t need the other thing
(52:40) for leaders is I think leaders really underestimate just how strong their impact is there was a study published earlier this year by ukg which does Workforce research which found that the impact that a leader has on employees mental health for those for those employees is greater than people’s doctors so your leader impacts your mental health more than your doctor and as much as your spouse now in many ways it makes sense because think about how many hours we spend at work and around or communicating with
(53:15) leadership and also if I think about the availability of family doctors at least in the Canadian Health Care System it’s quite low so it does make sense to me that doctors actually wouldn’t be like the biggest part of it but that it’s on par with a spouse or a partner I think really highlights just the incredible influence that leaders have teams are going to follow the lead of the leader they really are so if you’re a leader and you want to support your team remember that what you’re doing matters
(53:47) more than what you say if you are saying hey it’s totally fine don’t answer my email at 2AM but you’re sending those emails at 2 am you’re still creating an expectation or creating the impression that this is the way things work so for leaders it kind of works out because taking care of yourself is a great way to take care of your team you prioritizing your own well-being and modeling that for them is going to create a culture where they feel confident speaking up leaving work on time taking their vacations and that will help
(54:27) people to show up to work and be able to do great quality work that’s such such good advice and and so validating because as a as a leader myself I I I struggle with that like idea of like well if I’m if I’m doing this for myself if I’m going in and enjoying something I feel like I’m neglecting this or or you know my my team or or the company and and I know I know that that’s unhealthy because neglecting yourself I’m just not going to be the best leader and if I’m doing more things like even just this podcast
(55:01) I’m learning so much from people like yourself that can translate into better leadership and it just fills me up so um so there’s so much power to that take care of yourself you can take care of your team and uh and and yeah I could talk to you for hours on this subject because it’s so powerful and it’s there’s so so many different nooks and crannies we can dig into here um and uh and I want to be respectful of your time and so you’re speaking on the stage now um not not just in TED talks
(55:30) but uh but all throughout where where can people find you and what’s what’s next for Nina people can find me on social media or through Linkedin or on my website so my handle across my social media platforms is workplace Clarity I also have a website for workplace clarity by the time this podcast comes out I should have a Nina nesdoli.
(55:55) com website up as well just for the speaking aspect of what I do you can also find me on LinkedIn at workplace Clarity I am very focused right now on keynote speaking conference speaking and really getting the kind of messages that we’re talking about today out to a wider audience I also love working with teams so if anyone is listening to this who has a team and you’re like yes we need this we’ve got to work on this I like to come in and offer Workshop series training programs where we really get everyone in
(56:32) it together setting out what the workday needs to look like what people need to change in their own stress relief and Recovery practices and also how Team Dynamics can help people manage stress at work and overcome burnout together that’s fantastic thank you so much for sharing all of that and uh and yeah check out Nina on the social she’s got a great great social presence on Instagram and such such valuable uh information on this on Instagram and Tick Tock and and Linkedin and um and check out her Ted
(57:08) talk because I know that uh that Ted is really you know really uh catering to this one and it’s going to be a really really powerful talk so I’m excited to see it when it comes out should be out right now is this episode drops so go check that out reach out to Nina if you have any speaking uh uh engagements or or have any questions or need any help with uh uh with managing burnout stress and all that good stuff in the workplace or Beyond thank you so much Nina for being here today this has been a huge
(57:37) huge value thanks Adam all right thank you to everyone for being here we’ll see you next time hey everyone Thanks for tuning in to the flow over fear podcast if you’d like to learn more about getting into flow and learn the foundations of flow I have a free video series on my website at www.adamcliffordhill.
(57:58) com to help with foundations of flow feel free to go there and download it and start your journey to Rising above fear and achieving greater flow in your life if you like this episode and I’m guessing you did if you stuck around for this long then please do me a favor and hit the Subscribe button and you will receive notifications when I have new interviews new Recaps and new trainings that pop up on YouTube thanks again for joining us