Creativity Is Connection w/ Eve Rodsky and Dr. Aditi Nerurkar

particle on an asteroid flying through space, so exactly. Yeah, just aspect or aspects. Welcome to Go ask Alli. I'm Alli Wentworth. In this season, I'm digging into everything I can get my hands on, just peeling back the layers and getting dirty. Okay, well, this episode is about beating back COVID depression. I'm digging into how we can bring

more fun, creativity and connection into our everyday lives. Listen, guys, it's been two years and in an unprecedented time, a global pandemic, and I think the stress of the pandemic, I think what's been going on politically and even in our own personal lives has put us in this kind of malaise bubble. And so this podcast is about how we get through this COVID nineteen depression, how we have hope, and how we learned to play more. I'm curious to

know if people had hobbies during this time. I mean, I I ate a lot of ice cream and watched a lot of streaming. But then I kind of, after about six months, realized that it is the creativity that was kind of lifting me up out of my sofa, and I started doing little things like making Valentine's cards from scratch, writing letters. I started writing a book, and I realized that these little creative things were life preservers in this pandemic world we were living in, and they

helped me get through it. And I do think that there is real data we're going to find with having fun and finding creative outlets and finding connection, particularly in an uncertain world. And I have two very esteemed guests today to discuss this. Eve Rodsky has a Harvard train background in organizational management. She explores the cross section between

the science of creativity, productivity, and resilience. Eve is a New York Times bestselling author of fair Play, a gamified life management system, and the upcoming follow up, Find Your Unicorn Space, Reclaim Your Creative Life in a Too Busy World? And Dr Aditi new Rootcar Dr. A. Dt new Car is a physician at Harvard Medical School and a medical correspondent with an expertise and stressed resilience, burnout, and mental

health during the COVID nineteen pandemic and beyond. Her work has been featured in The Wall Street Journals and and Oprah Magazine in the Washington Post. She appears on air as a medical commentator for MSNBC and NBC News and writes a column for Forbes, and Together they co host Time Out, a fair play podcast. Hello Eve and ad I am so glad you guys are here, because everybody

I know is depressed. It's been two years. I used to be an extrovert, I used to be social, I used to be flitter out in the world, and now I don't like leaving our apartment. I find that a lot of my friends are kind of in this steady, low grade depression, and we got to figure out how to get out of it. Well, Ali, I'll just say, first of all, thank you for having us my pleasure fix the problems we spent a lot of time thinking

about these things. And really, you know, I don't think either of us necessarily thought we would spend our life speaking about protecting our time and stress and resilience. But I would say in the past ten years, I interviewed people in seventeen countries and I said, how do you feel about your home life right now? This is before the pandemic. And there's one word that came up the most in my word cloud um, that was drowning. And then if I asked people to unpack what that word

meant to them, Ali it was overwhelmed plus boredom. Is this predominantly women that are saying this or both men and women? It was men and women. But I would say I spoke probably at this point two thirds of my interviews, I'd say, or more are women. And I said, in seventeen countries. And this idea of overwhelmed and boredom

is a really deadly combination. This idea that we literally can't find a minute in our day to do anything, but that every single thing we do is too important to cast it aside, so there's literally no time left for ourselves. That's the combination we're trying to address today. I also found when I speak to my girlfriends, everything feels and this is pre COVID too, very transactional. Life

is just lots of transactions. Everybody felt like my life is just about like paying bills and getting this and getting through the day and what's tomorrow. And then this global pandemic hit and it was sort of like, well, I'm doing that now, but I'm losing my kind of happiness and I'm even losing my sense of resilience because I can't take this anymore, you know. And then you have the warring about maths and you just go, oh my god, I you know, I'm just I'll rewatch succession again.

I came, you know what I mean. It's like the pandemic was like a slap in the drowning face a little bit, you know. It is that we are living through the perfect storm. Alle We like you said, tensions are high prior to the pandemic, and now we're entering year three and in doctor speak, it's like we've gone from an acute condition to a chronic one and we need that cognitive shift. But we weren't prepared for that.

We were prepared for a pandemic sprint we thought a couple of weeks, maybe a few months the summer, and then we'll be out of this. And here we are in year three. So this is a real cognitive leap that we haven't been able to make. And pandemics, even I talk about this a lot, pandemics really stoke our primal fears and it is a fear of survival for lack of a better word. Right, we are very adept at stress, and stress can be a really adaptive response

to in an acute situation. We're very good, our brains are great for that. But when it becomes chronic, that's when things like burnout, anxiety, depression, and all of these mental health conditions, which are at a record high right now, that's when they set in. So it's not you or me or Eve. It is a collective issue because it's not us. It's our biology and it's that biology of stress that continues to be pushed against its limit now entering year three. Well, so let me ask you this.

I think at the beginning of the pandemic, you know, it was it was all fear based. You know, we all freaked out and we were you know, windexing or bananas or whatever, it is you were doing. And there was a real, you know, talk about survival mode. It was like, oh my god, how do I not die? And I got COVID very early on, which you know, of course I remember that this is scared the ship out of my family. And George had very different symptoms. Remember he was asymptomatic, and of course I was Laura

from Little Women. But um, you know which I said to him, I said, this is reason enough to get divorced, the fact that you have no symptoms and I've been in a room for three weeks of fever. But there was that kind of fight or flight panic we all had. And then it was a little bit like, okay, enough, already this is going on way too long. And I feel like now after you know, a macron has dissipated a little bit, that fear of death has gone, and now it's just well, you know, we're okay, but this

just key. I have to wear my mask and I have to keep getting tested. But you know, and I think that's where the malaise and the depression come in. This middle ground is hard for a lot of people to chart. I I found, well, I'll just say that Adam Grant called it languishing, right, this idea that we're languishing, And so I did, and I started to think about, well, what's the opposite of languishing. And we've been talking a lot about the word flourishing, right, this idea of how

do you flourish? And one of the best ways to start to flourish again is really to understand that daily flourishing is associated with creativity. Daily flourishing is not going to be solved anymore with a walk around the block or even getting back to whatever normal was dally flourishing. And we're not going to get there by having a drink with a friend. Ali, Like you said, I'm an extrovert. I don't even want to get out either. But it's this idea that we have to become interested in our

own lives again and what does that look like? Well, especially for women, I think that's so hard because our time is our most valuable currency, especially in a capitalist patriarchy, and we've been taught to give it away to literally everybody else. One time, journal studies said women have been interrupted every three minutes and forty two seconds on average during the pandemic. When you don't have the ability to pay attention. Then the stress just exacerbates. And so what

does it mean to be interested in your own life again? Well, I think that's you know, we can't tell you what it is for you, but we can tell you how to find it. I mean, for Ali, you know this podcast, it's important. You know, whether you make a dollar from it or billion dollars for you know, it's important. It means you're in a flow sta pay them. Yes, yes, let's let you have the time away so you know,

mommy's on. I see your headphones on. Right, the idea of not being interrupted, But it really requires three things. It requires the ability to pay attention, sustained attention for something that you love to do, and it requires actually physical and mental space. This just reminded me that pre COVID, for my birthday every year, I used to go away by myself. Yes, you know, and my at the beginning, my husband George was like, this is very odd, and

my girlfriends were like, you're going away alone. I said, yes, I am going away alone. And I would go away for a long weekend and I would, you know, walk on the beach or hike in the mountain or wherever I was, and I would read, and I would think I realized I didn't give myself any time to think about anything, like what do I think about the death penalty? You know what I mean? Like do I even like

these sneakers? Did I just buy them? Because I was told like just just I got to really, you know, for lack of a better sentence or to be a little cringe e. It was like I had a weekend with myself, and I found not being able to do that even during COVID was really hard for me because I haven't had any time to reboot, to unplug any

of that. And I I think that's part of the depression of getting a little bit lost in this time where I've got kids and dogs and a husband and stuff, and you know, I got to clean the vegetables, I got a vacuum. I gotta, you know, make sure everyone's happy. And it's a lot, and I think women always give themselves up first. We need that space. Yeah, I have so much to say about that. You know what's interesting is, first, the reason that we are at this spot right now

in year three's because we've had no recovery. So we went through that hyper vigilance and that state of acute anxiety, and what's supposed to happen after acute anxiety is a period of recovery, and we have never gotten that areod of like big side, deep breath, recalibration, out of fire, flight back to arrest, and digest state. I mean biologically, we just went from active, Oh my god, are we going to die? To know it's this low grade thing

that never goes away. We function well when there's an end. That's why marathons or marathons, because we know that there is a finish line and we can get there, but that finish line just keeps moving and moving. So this is why we're just you know, all of us are running on fumes. And even I coincidentally, Ali just spoke today about this idea of creating a space and really carving out a physical space. I used to do the same.

I used to go away in Boston to a hotel room for two nights when it just got too much, and my husband would always joke and say, what's the deal. You're going to meet someone like what's going on? What's his name? Yeah? And I'd say, no, you don't get it. It's like the greatest joy to sit in a robe for two days, order room service, not talk to anyone. And so then that was our deal. And then he'd say, like, go for it. What a gift that is because you

just get time to yourself. We haven't gotten that opportunity right now. And our brains, you know, especially because we as women but also men, but but women. We are multidimensional beings, were spouses, where mothers, were workers, were friends, and to do all of those roles, well, we need spaces to do them in. We are now confined. We are confined to one space, our home, one little room where we're supposed to do everything and all of it well, held to the same standards. Our brains do not work

that way. We function best when we are in different spaces, you know, without getting too scientific. When we are in resilient mode, let's say pre pandemic, we are governed by an area called the prefrontal cortex, which is like right behind the forehead. This is what is memory, organizational planning, cognitive functions, higher complex cognitive functions under stress. So since two now, we are being governed by the amygdal out that is our stress response. We call that the lizard brain.

It's the part of the brain that has not evolved. So whether it's a tiger in the forest, caveman time, or a metaphorical tiger that we experience now, we had that same acute stress response, and that going on for year one, two and three can cause lots of problems like sleep fragmentation, elevated cortisol which causes weight gain, inability to concentrate, inability to feel productive, all of the challenges that we're having in our relationships because we're seeing these

people every day. That wasn't how life was designed. To live with your spouse, work with your spouse, have breakfast, lunch, and dinner with your spouse, and then all of the parenting and the schooling that we're doing with our children. So it's a pressure a cooker situation. And what even I explore in our podcast is that ability to be able to have that respite. I think if it as like a tea kettle were trying to change the temperature,

that the temperature can't change. These are external factors, the pandemic and all of these other factors. But we can open up that lever to blow off the steam to have that therapeutic release. And so that is what we are really talking about that idea of releasing the steam even in the midst of a pandemic and that pressure cooker situation. I want to release some steam. And by the way, I know a lot of people that got divorced during this period because there was no releasing of

the steam or anything. Yeah, and it's time for a short break. Great, let's get back to it. So when you think about the space at home, I am fortunate enough that I have a few different spaces that I can go to that I can claim my own, and my kids can claim their own. And I think about women all the time, like single mothers who have a bunch of kids who don't have space. What do you say to them? You can't tell them like, well, why

don't you go meditate in the car? You know, I wonder about women that don't have the luxury of space in terms of cubic feet. It's actually very, very hard to be a single parent in America. So I think about my mother a lot. Who is that we were a small apartment in the Lower East Side, single mother and all the single mothers that I spoke to in seventeen countries for my research, And what we realize is

that we need to fight for the bigger solutions. But also you can take these small steps of agency in your own life. And the first step is that you don't need to be all things to all people at all times. It's okay to be unavailable from your roles. That self talk is really really important. The batting back of guilt and shame. Literally, even the ritual of listening to a podcast for five minutes on their way to work,

baking a pie for a friend. These things that are communal are really really important for single parents who've been taught that they can do it all and they can't. So what I would say, it's the connection to the community that has been the most important for single parents. Curiosity, connection, and completion are three really important things for creativity, but

that middle part that connection is very very important. So one single parent I spoke to recently, I met her through another woman who does this of women who have celiac, who also fake treats for other celiacs that taste as good as gluten filled pastries. And her reason for being right now is this idea that I can make a pastry that tastes good for my community, so there's something small for them. A sweet treat during the pandemic, and

I thought that was really beautiful. So I would say it's really about this connection to a wider community that we've all said that is it nice to have, but it's a must have, especially in a country that has no social safety net, no paid leave, no universal child care, no health insurance, that's not tied to our jobs, and is losing all sense of community none our country as

a whole. Yeah yeah, none, yeah, And that's it. And the beauty of this sharing Celiac treats with your community is that some of the people you're going to share with or maybe people you've never met before. I would say writing my second book, I've connected to people on their creativity, like my new friend David in Texas, who took up bull writing in his sixties. I will say that, Ali, I probably never would have spoken to David in Texas, the bull Rider, if it wasn't for the community. You know,

I wouldn't have met you. So sometimes when you just take that first step into a creative life, you don't really know where it's going to lead you. But I will tell you that a creative life is a connected life, and that's one that absolutely we need right now. You know, the great irony of this pandemic is that we all feel alone, isolated, and unable to cope. But if you were to knock on your neighbor's store, they are going

through the exact same thing. So we are having an individual experience of trauma isolation, and yet it's this surreal collective experience. And what's been so fascinating in therapeutic terms as a doctor, we call it the group effect. It's this concept in medicine of why group therapy is so important. It's because when you go through a difficult experience that challenges you and really forces you to grow, and you meet with people who have had that same difficult experience.

When you share your experience with others, it validates and normalizes the experience for you, and that has a direct

impact on your stress response in your biology. Yes, so absolutely, this universal theme of having literally no no space is it's happening, and especially because during the pandemic, not only were women interrupted every three minutes and forty two seconds, so there's actually no mental space, but women's unpaid labor increased by Jesus, so there was no actual respite because your physical space is being occupied by homeschooling, homework, possibly

trying to you know, fit in work, and there watching Toddler's dealing with aging and ailing parents. My sister in law lives in a tiny apartment in Brooklyn with my younger brother and they have three kids, one of them on the spectrum, and all were being home schooled, but you know, in different ways. My brother is a teacher, so he was home, and you know, my sister in law had these three kids who were scared, anxious, have their own issues. We're trying to do school work. You know,

she was like, I can't do sixth grade math. And I just thought, my god, this poor woman, how is she getting through? And of course she would cry, and I just thought, this is women all over the globe right now, all over the globe. The husbands, for some reason, we're saying they take precedence because you know, their job, and the women were trying to talk to their bosses under the kitchen sink while they're nursing. I think the biggest problem with the home is that, um, it presents

very small. We think we're fighting about who's bringing home the blueberries. We think we're the only ones fighting over whose turnatives to homeschool our child in sixth grade math. Or you know one woman that every time my partner forgets to put the laundry in the dryer, I dumped the clothes on his pillow. You know. So we think we're having these micro fights, but actually this is a such a systemic issue. And so I think if we're here just to say you're not alone. It is so

hard to be a working parent in this country. And if anything, the silver lining of this pandemic can do anything, it's one thing. It's returned us to our value, used to what's most important in our lives. I mean, why don't we do holiday cards in elfh and the shelf, Like, let's retire all these things that other people told us we had to do and return to the things that we care about. And number two, recognize that we have to change things in this country. But the first thing

is the awareness. We're finally aware that this is not sustainable anymore, especially for women. We cannot live like this anymore on the backs of the unpaid labor of women. You know what's so interesting is that the statistics are bleak. Seventy of the workforce say that this has been the most stressful time of their entire professional career. Sixty plus percent of people note at least one feature of burnout, and seventy say that COVID is most likely the culprit.

So we're using the pandemic. You know, you hear it all the time. It's a public health crisis, it's a public health emergency, but on top of that, it is an occupational health crisis, it's a family structure crisis, and it's a parenting crisis. So in many ways it really speaks to all of our societal ills and in thinking through how do we get out of this, how can we make it better? You've mentioned that the silver lining

for her is returning to our values. For me, the silver lining of this pandemic is that finally in the workplace, in the home, we are finally understanding that mental health is the shadow pandemic. As a physician, I've known this for a long long time, right, Like, these statistics are definitely worse now than they have been. But we've always had a mental health crisis. We've always had that sense

of overwhelmed depression, anxiety, mood disorders, insomnia. But over the past couple of years, there's been a tripling in prescriptions written for these conditions. But these stress related conditions have always been there. You know, there's this one statistic sixty eight percent of all primary care visits have some sort of stress related component. It's been happening for a long time. It is much worse now, at least now we're recognizing

it and bringing it to light. I now don't know any teenage or that isn't suffering from anxiety, whether they're medicated or not, or their self medicating with pot or something else. I feel like there's a whole generation of

kids right now who need help. But one of the things that was interesting about researching creativity as a solution, you know, this idea of being interested in your own life, not just creativity with the paintbrush, but this idea that this flow state activities that make us come alive are a way to return us to the things that we remember about ourselves, the same way Ali, you're your retreat, your ability to think, like you said, to ask yourselves,

why did I buy these sneakers to make decisions for ourselves. It's really interesting because I went really pretty deep into positive psychology as I was researching my second book, And what's been fascinating about positive psychology, this how to be Happy movement, There's been lots of books. The happiness has

become its own industry. What happened was that there became this really strange reagul era individualism, like I have to do this alone, and that's sort of been co opted by the happiness movement, sort of like as one woman said, I've gratitude journal myself to death that somehow that that's the way out of this, right And the truth is, it just isn't. The more we say I want to be happy, or you say to your kids, I wish you happiness, it's actually the really the wrong way to

look at things. So if you put happiness in this place, this is what I found, and it's actually been really helpful to me to understand that if we're happy all the time right now, we'd be literal sociopaths, right um. But the true definition of mental health is having the appropriate emotion at the appropriate time and the ability and strength to weather it. And what I find so fascinating about that is We're gonna have a lot of difficult emotions right now, but it's the ability and strength to

weather how do you do that. You can do it through hedonistic adaptations, which is, you know, for me, emotional eating, smoking weed like you said, binge, watching TV, doom, scrolling check check check. That is happiness, right, that's happiness without meaning. And then if you look at meeting without happiness, meeting without happiness is associated with caregiving. But when do you

actually get meaning and happiness combined? That's the ability and strength to weather this thing, and so many of us, or at least in my research, so many people said, well, I don't have those experiences anymore. I may have those

happy without meaning experiences. I may have meaning without happiness, which is my caregiving, But when am I actually having that time from meaning and happiness to explode, whether that's crocheting and your crocheting class, baking a pie and sharing with a neighbor, hip hop dance like I've been doing, whatever it is for you, those we have to bring those back and we have to equate it with the

same priorities that we give to breathing. Literally, So I think about a lot of people I know during COVID. I have one friend who I actually uh talk to on my podcast because she found out during COVID that she did not have COVID, she had stage four lung cancer, and so she was forced to kind of reassess everything in her life very quickly. And I said to her, what's getting you through? And I was expecting, you know, some deep Buddhist poem and she said, I'm taking online

ukulele classes. And I was like, oh, yes, okay, all right, yes, and so and more and more people have said, you know, after they went through getting high cholesterol and binge watching every show, people started to go, you know what, I'm gonna try to learn a different language or I'm gonna you know, maybe I should do this. And so is that? Is that what kind of what you mean about finding these creative things in one's life, whether you're good at

them or not, and sort of growing them and nurturing them. Yeah, well we should bring you on the road with us, because you just distilled it very very beautifully good. Creativity loves constraints. This is the time we're extremely constrained, and this is the time where as we said, you know, the walk around the block is not going to do it for us. And yes, so what we're seeing is that the people who are again not happy all the time. We said, the appropriate emotion of the appropriate time, but

the ability and strength to weather it. That's what we're focusing on, that umbrella because it's raining now. We're not sure the storm's ever going to stop. It's this understanding that the intersection of happiness and meaning in these pursuits and active pursuits that make people come alive is incredibly, incredibly important. And this is the thing. We say things like hobby, We say things like vanity project or passion project or side hustle. We literally use words to demean

this thing we're talking about, this this space. We're going back to space. Hobby was a word that people associated with infrequency. Side hustle was a word that people associated with having to modify and make money off of the thing that they loved. Passion project sounded like you can only have one of them, one passion your whole life. So we started to think about and talk about space instead.

And actually the term we use now is unicorn space, which because a lot of people use the term white space, which again when I would talk to my friends of color, they didn't love that word because a white space sounded like a place they couldn't be in right. But then this idea of a unicorn space, right, This something that that's magical and mythical but doesn't fucking exist until we can reclaim it. That's what we're talking about. It doesn't exist.

Unicorns may be magical, but they actually don't exist. Don't tell my five year old daughter that. So this idea that there's a unicorn space out there for you, and it could be more than one. It could be your podcast sally, it could be your crocheting group. I'd say. My favorite is my friend who was the Sam's Club cashier who's now an erotic narrator. And for her, she said, you know, my life is really hard. I have no space, we have one room, I have a toddler. My husband's

an auto mechanic with praise hours. But she makes time to narrate erotic books after her son goes to bed, and she uploads it and it's her favorite part of the day, so much that she tattooed on her arm. Reading books is like breathing air. And so I said, Terrill, what was your life like before you were an audiobook narrator? And she said, well, what's the opposite of breathing air? Wow?

So we're trying to retire the words hobby, side, hustle, passion, vanity project because usually they're typically associated with women, and they're associated with infrequency and nice to have, and this is a must have as we're talking about. You know, humans are meaning seeking, purpose driven creatures, and so when we are able to create meaning and purpose through difficult experiences, that's the growth mindset, right, That's when we embody the

growth mindset. That's when we believe challenges make us wiser, stronger, and more adaptable. What's interesting about that idea of key donic pleasure, right, Netflix, fast cars versus another kind of happiness, which is you dimonic happiness, longer word, kind of scientific, but the science backs up you dimonic happiness, that meeting seeking,

purpose driven drive that we have. You know what's interesting is you dimonic happiness has been shown to influence our immune system, so our cells down to the cellular level, our body recognizes that difference between hedonic happiness and you diamonic happiness. And so what better time than now, year three of the pandemic to really embrace that sense of you dimonic happiness? Ali, what's yours? What's your unimonic happiness. Oh gosh, um, we're putting you on the spot. I

have sort of different things. I'm very crafty, so, like you know, the idea of making Valentine cards is very exciting for me. And I'll do it in when nobody's home, and you know, I'll put on some music and I'll have paints and you know, that kind of thing I love. I also when I would go away on my little alane trips, I love to dive for shells, meaning I like to go out into the ocean and just look for shells and dive really deep down and and and

I can get lost. I mean eight hours can go by and I and the reason I love it is because I'm not thinking about all the things I have to do or should do. And it's almost like a meditative stance. And then there's like a prize at the end. You know, there's the reward of the shell that I usually throw back. But you know it's been in this

horrible pandemic time, I've had to find other outlets. But can I tell you what the beauty of your diving for shells example is, which I think you should calligraphy somewhere, is that when you were talking about that experience, I want to know if you could just go one level deeper, because what I heard was that there was discovery, there was wonder, there was presence. What other values doesn't bring

up for you when you were diving for selves? Um, I I like the simplicity of that pursuit, right, I think that for me and um for I think women in general, because we're multitaskers, we always have in our brain eight million things we have to do, Like you're you're constantly downloading lots of incoming stuff and then again you know, add in not sleeping during COVID, And so for me, there's a peacefulness to my brain that I can't get anywhere else that I could get in the ocean,

like you couldn't be far enough from normalcy or you know, quote unquote my home, there's my dog, see you're directed, yes, exactly. Never quiet. So for me, it's that simplicity, I think. But then you know there's a competitive nature to it too, so I think there are layers to it. Well. What I think is important as a practice, though, is when we're st get home back to space, is remembering that the things you're talking about, our simplicity discovery, foraging, quiet, wonder, peacefulness,

and rigor. So I don't know what you mean by peacefulness even with an obese docs and barking right behind me. Yes, right, you don't need that. But I think the idea of even putting on the wall simplicity, discovery, foraging, quiet, wonder, peacefulness, and rigor and saying you know what, this week, I'm just going to pick one of those words to focus on.

Maybe it's noise canceling headphones, it's the sounds of the ocean, and it's you do that combine with your Valentine's making and saying I'm not discovering shells, but at least I have some of the quiet and the peacefulness this week.

So I always think it's a fun exercise because whatever you love to do, there's a reason why you love to do that, and if you can connect to that reason, then there are other things we can do in this more limiting time that hopefully can help us connect in small ways back to those things like for example, my friends she loves to do pottery. She hasn't been going to a pottery studio because she's immune compromise, But what she did do was she went she feels more comfortable outdoors.

So she's been looking in thrift sales for like a perfect bud vase and just picking a different flower to put in that bud vase to remind her that she loves pottery. And I just thought that was such a beautiful way to do something small. You know, we'll be right back, and we're back. Do you have more tricks, scientific or creative that we can do during this period of uncertainty that brings us more connectiveness to our home,

to our life. Absolutely. You know what's so interesting, Ali is like you, you say, a greater sense of connectivity to our homes and our lives. But I would say, maybe first we have to think about a greater sense of connectivity to ourselves elves, because that's something that we've really lost along the way, right, because we have been

serving everyone else. And so in terms of thinking through, how can we concretely, in scientific terms, have strategies in our day to day lives that improve our situation in the now in the pandemic. One of the ways we talked about just today, even I is like that phone. We often many of us instinctively we open our eyes. One eye is open and we are already scrolling, we're looking at our emails, we're looking at our social feeds.

Something that immediately ignites that dopamine, serotonin and all of those neurotransmitters to go. These are not benign endeavors. They do harm to the brain, especially now when we are hyper vigilant and our fight or flight mechanisms are already on high alert. The first strategy is just right when you wake up, keep that phone far away from your nightstand, in another room, or at least far away. There's so

many other strategies. One of them is idea of stop, breathe and be Many of us are on zoom meetings all day long, and so when you use this with a mindless, repetitive task that you do all day. So for you Ali, maybe it's that you're, you know, one zoom meeting to another to another, and how do you break that up when you feel like it's just this

pressure cooker situation or groundhogs day. When you hit that start meeting button, it's that moment where you can do that brief reset, so you stop, bring awareness your body. Think about your breath for a second, take a deep breath in think about your posture. And when you want to have that sense of being, you focus on your feet on the floor or your body in the chair.

However you want to just wait, you know, a way to recognize and and if you do that ten times a day, fifteen times a day, just that small reset, you can create a little bit more spaciousness into your daily life in the midst of that very hectic work day. You know that pressure cooking. I'm it that we've talked about with parenting and working and all of the things that are happening in that little room. Another really concrete way is to set up a fake commute. So many

of us used to commute. We do very well with commuting because our brains like compartmentalization, We like structure. That's how our brains are wired. Right now, we are multidimensional beings in a unidimensional space. We're doing everything in one space and that's not natural. It's not normal, and it's certainly not good for our brains. So faking and commute, go for a walk around the block, get that little brain space of like, oh now I'm out of that

parent mode and I'm heading into work mode. You know. Eve talks a lot about rituals, and I love the concept of rituals. I called that fake commute a book end to my day. So I start my day like that, I end my day like that. Even though I'm working from home. I love the fake commute because again, the space becomes so small when you're in it for so long long that even if, like you said, a walk

around the block. I mean, I have dogs, as you heard, and they require walks because they need to relieve themselves. But during COVID, they are my fake commute, and they are my you know, ritual eve because I have to take them out three times a day, and so that does kind of make me feel like the morning commute my lunch break, and then the end of the day commute is because I got to walk these dogs. Perfect.

It's already built in. I will up level that too, because and I'll shout out to essential workers, because we obviously know that there are many people who are you still working out of the home. And I remember one nurse in Texas recently said to me that what she's done is she's been taking a picture in nature. She works in a hospital which is very industrial. She said, the fluorescent lights really get to her team, So they all commune with nature in a very easy ritual that

you can pair with with her commute. So what she does is she stops on the way to work, she takes some picture of nature. She says birds are her favorite, but if she can't spot a bird, she'll do a flower or something on the road. She takes one picture during her lunch break and one picture on her way home, and then at the end of the week, her team shares what they do in nature. Yeah. Wow, So maybe you could do that in your walk. Take a picture, Ali, I would see what you see. I'll do all of it.

Why don't you forage for shells in the city? I will. I will look for conck shells in Central Park, you know, I mean the metaphorical shell, of course. I actually sometimes look for old tennis balls or balls that have been lost, you know, keeps me focused. Take a picture of that, right, take a picture of lost items. I feel like that would be so cool to see. Yeah, and there's a lot of lost items in Central Park, that's for sure.

So let me ask you this, what are three things that you both through this process and everything you've been learning and researching. Three things in your own lives that you're letting go that you realize during COVID, like I don't need this, Okay, these are the three things. And I talked about this actually in my second book because they were also very important things for other people. I'm letting go of the belief that I have to be

available to everybody at all times. So I'm giving myself a permission to be unavailable for my roles as parents, parents, and our partner and her professional I am burning guilt and shame, and to do that, I have to often reframe it as I feel guilty because I didn't put down into bed. Two. I made the decision not to put on into bed because I wanted to go forge for shells in such a park after it was dark. Everyone's doing it, and I would say, I'm sick of

not asking for what I need. So a permission to actually ask for what I need in advance, to block out times in my calendar to say, you know what, I don't want to live an overwhelmed and board life seth and I don't think you do either, So like, let's find some time where we both can like come alive alone, and then we're gonna be much better for each other. So how can we show for that? Okay, good,

I love that. What about you? The first thing that I have really given up is this idea that I am an expert all the time, because with COVID things are perpetually changing, the idea of resilience and mental health and stress and burn out, all of these things that I do have that expertise in. I am also a living, breathing example of that experience now, and so that is new and different, and so I'm letting go of that

in the best way possible. The second thing that I'm letting go of is, like you, Ali, I too used to take lots of trips and travel to so many different places. Miami was my winter escape patch. And I have unvaccinated miners at home, so I can't do that right now, and so I have had to create that sense of escape in my daily life, in the drudgery of cold and dark Boston, and I am creating that for myself every single day. Even yesterday in degree whether I was able to do that and that was a

win for me. And the third thing that I'm really letting go of is that idea that we really do need to know everything and have that sense of perfectionism. I have been very good over the years, but the pandemic has really brought that to light. And so every day I try to zoom out focus on what really matters. It's our health, our family, and love and those really

cheesy things which we often took for granted. And when you can just zoom out and look at those essentials of what makes life meaningful, everything just goes from there. So I have a little a little gimmick I do on my podcast, which is I've spent an hour asking you all kinds of questions, and now I get to turn it around and you guys get to ask me a question and you can ask me a question about anything you want. Oh my god, I love this so much. Um. Okay, if you were on a desert island for a year,

sounds like Heaven, tell me the top three things. If you came off after that year, you would have said, Wow, I can't believe I did that. Well, because I'm on a deserted island, there is a survival aspect of it. So I would like to feel like I built a hut with a conk shellf fence by myself. I knew how to spear fish. I knew, you know, the basics of I knew how to live. I think the second thing is I would have had a year by myself

and in my own head, which is amazing. So I think I would come off the island with a hell of a book, right which I'm already I'm already optioning into a movie. I feel like that bug. Yeah, I got Reese Witherspoon already attached to this, um And I think, I mean, I would come back a better wife, mother, person, and friend for sure, because I would have so much time to think about the important things. But I think the most empowering thing is my conk shelf fence, which

people will talk about for centuries. Again rights back to the creativity. I love it. I can't help it, um DT. What is your question for me? My question for you, Ali is more of a personal one. How do you still laugh yourself? And how do you give people the ability to laugh with the situation that we're in right now? I will tell you this. For me, laughter is an incredibly healing thing, and I deal with so many different things with humor, and so it's sort of just who

I am. And during the dark days, certainly the beginning of COVID, I used humor as a way to help my kids. To my husband and I remember one night we discovered the show called Love Island Australia, which is just about people hooking up. It's it's the lowest, most disgusting, misogynistic show, and we all would watch it together and of course I would do running commentary about, you know,

just the girls in the bikinis and the heels. And one night our family decided to have Love Island dinner, so we all dressed up, even my husband, George Stephanopolis put on a bathing suit. We all put on bikinis and heels and spoke with Australian accents and we were laughing so hard. I think one of my daughter's Peter pants.

And that to me was about getting through a dark time with humor, and I I try to create those as much as I can in my life because otherwise, you know, I'm I'm under the covers, you know what I mean, with the shades down. So humor has saved me, and I think during COVID certainly helped my family. Well I'm crying because I'm laughing with that vision is so funny. Oh, gosh, I have I have a photograph that I promised my family I would never show, but you know it is.

It's an image that will stick with us forever. And the accent like I love that and the accent oh yeah, oh no. We were fully committed to this, so d c at Eve, I can't thank you enough for coming on go ask Alli and helping us with all kinds of ideas to literally lift our spirits. Thank you so fun, Thank you for having us. I love the idea of

a unicorn space. And when they were talking about hobbies and side hustles, which were not allowed to say anymore, I was thinking about how in the summer of the first year of COVID, I discovered clamming and I literally dipped my toe into it. And then I became obsessed and I ordered a clam rake on Amazon and wellies and I would go out in the afternoon for about an hour and a half and I would go clamming, and I would come back with like two dozen clams.

I also got my fish shirt license, my claiming license, and I would come home and make Linguinian clams, which was great the first thirty times, and then my family got so sick of it. They couldn't take him anymore. And I used to go clamming, and then I would hand it out to people I knew friends in town, and that was my way of connecting to my community.

So not only was it something where I had the headspace to be out in the bay digging for clams, I also got to, you know, feed my family with it, and then I got to be part of my community with it. So Jesus, I could write a whole book on clamming. Thank you for listening to Go Ask Alli. Be sure to subscribe, rate and review the podcast, and follow me on social media on Twitter at Ali Wentworth

and on Instagram at the Real Ali Wentworth. Now, if you'd like to ask me a question or so just a guest or a topic to dig into, I'd love to hear from you, and there's a bunch of ways to do it. You can call or text me at three to three three six four six three five six, or you can email voice memo right from your phone to Go Ask Gali podcast at gmail dot com. If you leave a question, you may hear it. I'm Go Ask Alli. Go Ask Gali is a production of Shonda

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