I get a team. It's a you project. It's doctor Rebecca. We're going to formal doctor Rebecca hart Hie, I should say, And Tiffany and Cook who's not a doctor, but you could be one day. Tiff I don't reckon.
I could not WITHHD no way.
What would you like to be a doctor of? What about a doctor of punching people in the face? You could do that?
Let me be a doctor of that.
Well there you go. I'm sure there's a degree awarded for that.
Well, she's a boxer, so you and I don't want to give her any cheek, you.
Know what, but respect much respect absolutely, Now I know why you're captain lying Craig. This makes sense, doctor Craig, Doctor Harper.
Excuse well, no, not really. I'm actually about three months away, so you can hopefully call me that in three months. But I'm just stumbling towards submission. Hey, thanks for coming on the show. How are you.
I'm wonderful, Thanks so much for having me. I am Yeah, I'm super excited to be here. Well, you are a lot of stress. Got a lot of stress in my life right now.
I've heard about It's a good thing.
It's a good thing.
I'm here to help.
Yeah, well, good good, I always need help. I am in Greenville, South Carolina, us.
Of A Yeah, perfect. What time is it there? So it's o seven hundred is here? What is it over there?
It is a semmenteen hunderd hours? So yeah, perfect, Yeah, just the evening rolling into the evening.
Give us a little bit of a snapshot. So for my listeners who are just meeting you for the first time, give us a little bit of a snapshot. Rather than me read something off a screen which will bore people to death, not because of your actual bio, but because of my voice, give us a bit of insight into who you are and a little bit of your backstory, if you would.
Yeah. Sure, grew up in a really small town of St. New York and was a farm girl. Didn't really know what she was doing with her life. Loved the theater, but you know, as an eight year old, not really a steady career in the theater. So I'd stuck to what I was good at, which was science, and earned a whole bunch of degrees in science. I have a master's in Ornithology random facts Birds, a bird nerd, and
a master's degree in evolution human behavior. And then I did a PhD in stress physiology and I've now used that degree and a lot of the research since then to help people transform their stress to serve them. And now I'm a keynote speaker and an author and live in large love to serve Hike. Got two dogs, Guinness and Murphy. That's me.
That's hilarious. That's hilarious. Using stress to serve them is not something that most people think about, right. Most people think stress is doing me a disservice, not a service. What does that mean? How can stress service? Let's die?
I love it. I love it. I mean I like to think of myself as the pr agent of stress. Right, stress really needs a pr agent here. It's got to get a better spin. Yeah, it's got to get a better spin. So, like my best analogy probably is I think think about Olympic athole. You know, they're not breaking world records at practice. They're breaking world records when the pressure of the stress is that it's peak and we all have that opportunity. It's about how we think about
stress and use stress for our advantage. Because stress is just energy. It's our body producing this energy to move us through a challenge, and we don't get to control the energy that we receive. What we do get to control is how we utilize it. And so instead of saying, oh, stress is debilitating, how can it be enabling to us? And that's what I help people do.
I feel like a lot of people say stress as an external thing with an internal consequence, like there's something happening out there which creates something happening in here.
Yeah, love that, And I think that's true, right, something happens externally, we have an internal response. And then there's two pieces to that, the first of which I think is the funniest because humans are the only animal on the planet that we're aware of that actually creates stress of our own minds. So, you know, Robert Sapalski, famous stress physiologists, wrote, wrote, why zebras don't get ulcers? Because you know, zebra gets chased, they don't die, They go
back to eating grass lyon missus. The hunt doesn't sit there and go oh, I'm a failure. I suck at life. You know, like this is terrible. It doesn't create more stress. Humans do that. We create our own stress in our brains. We could tastrify as we sit there just like, oh, grinding ourselves down, and that's that's not healthy, not a
useful use of stress. And the other piece, the second piece that I'll say, is yes, sometimes you don't have control over the external factors the stresser, So stop trying to fight against that. Like I say, invite the tiger in for teaue, have come have the SEBT with me. Let's sit down, let's figure this out. How can I get curious in that moment and begin to use this energy that I'm getting from this thing I can't control to appoint me in a direction that actually is useful.
Yeah. So there's the stuff that's in our control and the stuff that's out of our control. And I feel like for many of us anyway, not all of us, but the stuff that's out of our control gets way too much attention and focus and energy.
Absolutely absolutely. And what typically happens then is our response to that is to sit in it without seating action. Yes, and we procrastinate, or we sit and go, well, I don't have any control, and we have this like learned helplessness response instead of saying, what is the smallest step that I can take to run directly at that tiger to run directly at that stressor to run directly and give ourselves agency back to say well, I may not be able to control that, but I can control my
response to it. So yeah, that action piece is huge.
I feel like in a lot of ways, stress is a story that we tell ourselves, or you know, it's an individual response based on a story. Because you know, so my main job is not podcasting, so it's you know, I do a lot of podcasting three hundred and sixty five years, so it's obviously a big part of my life. But it's corporate speaking, and so I'm always in front of corporates and groups and teams and working everywhere from university theaters to you know, like big stages to construction
sites to all that stuff. And people people always talk about how stressful public speaking is. Right, as you've heard, I've seen you on stage. Your great Tiff also gets on stage, right, so all three of us do it.
But and you think, well, I try to get people to think about the space between like the actual objective thing of walking on a stage and talking to a bunch of people versus your story about that, and you go, well, when people go, that's such a stressful situation, and I go, well, how come Rebecca is up on stage with no stress or maybe very low level stress, but more excitement and anxiety,
more excitement and enthusiasm and curiosity. I know when I'm on stage, like, I don't have Maybe I should have, but I've done it for so long. I don't have any fear. I just have excitement. Yeah, so it's not so much about what's going on, It's about my story or individual response to what's going on.
Right, Yeah, you nailed it. I mean, so we don't have control over the heightened arousal response that we get. Like you can't look at your adrenal glands and say, hey, guys, please don't don't release adrenaline in this moment, right, you don't. You'll get to control that. What you do get control is what you're talking about. You know, emotions, you can't control that you get heightened, but you can control their valance. Like what does this mean? Okay, so my body's having
this response? What does this mean? And you know, excitement and stress and anxiety and fear, they all have that same heightened state. The difference is what you choose to interpret that as. And so there's a great Harvard study that had people do this public speaking exercise where they asked one group to say I'm excited and the other group try to calm down. Which, right, that's the advice we give people, just calmed down, yeah, which first of
all is terrible advice for so many reasons. But like, you can't physiologically do that. And what they found is the group that simply told themselves they were excited. Now they didn't feel any less anxious. Yes, but they presented to this group that rated them more confident, more confident, they were better presenters, they like all of those things as a result of simply telling themselves the story that
this response they were having was excitement. And so often, you know, to your point, what I tell people is if I'm out on stage and I'm not having butterflies.
That's not good.
That's a that's a bad sign because it means I'm disengaged or that I stopped caring. And the day that I don't get nervous about going on stage, I need to quit because I no longer care.
I think it's a really curious thing. Over time, how like you spoke about, we can't control the adrenal response. And and yeah, it just hap like it's so funny how fear and all the associated physiological responses can hijack our body. You know, blood pressure, adrenaline, cortisol, all the stuff, you know, sympathetic nervous system. Right. But then over time, we can I think, downregulate that response, right, because the thing that you used to terrify me doesn't terrify me anymore.
So I'm the same guy doing the same thing with a different physiology or a different physiological response. And so what you're not saying is you don't need to be terrified every time you do that thing. Over time you can downregulate that response, right, yes, And now I.
Mean okay, yes, like that exposure therapy of like, okay, I'm an exposure to the same stressor again and again and again. And because our stress response really evolved to life and death situations, Yep, when you don't get eaten by the tiger for the twentieth time you go on stage, when the people don't kill it eto, you're like, oh, I can downregulate a little bit, right, And so that is kind of an exposure therapy type of thing. One of the things I talk about, though, is that the
stress response because it's so singular. Whether you're getting shot at it's like a literal life in that situation, or whether you're stepping on stage, or you're asking somebody for a discount, or you know, trying to sell somebody, all of these uncomfortable situations, you have a singular response. Yeah, And so the objective shouldn't be to try and tamp down that response for every situation. The objective, as I see it, should be to train your brain that the
response doesn't mean it's life and death. Yes, it simply means there's something happening that I have the opportunity to use to my advantage. And that's a different approach in trying to calm down or trying to repeat all the possible outcomes that could happen to try and tamp down the response.
Does that makes sense, Yeah, yeah, absolutely, that's great. So, so we know that, you know, stress and fear and anxiety, you know, they're all in the same kind of swimming pool. But we also know that there's an inverse correlation between really elevated fear and our ability to think clearly and execute, Like cognitive function goes down under extreme pressure. Yeah, you know, so what's that. Is there a sweet spot where I'm nervous,
I feel stressed, but my brain's still working optimally. I can still share my thoughts and ideas and be articulate and read the room and be, in this public speaking example, read the room and create connection and tell a funny story and be fucking hilarious without losing much.
Yeah, and I mean, so what you're talking about is the classic York stats and curve right this upside down. You were like a little bit of stress increases your capacity, and then you fall off the end where you're like, oh my god, this is too much and I'm losing my mind. And the my research says it doesn't. You don't have you don't have to fall off. You actually don't have to fall off. And I'll share I'll share the question that I ask people that I think is
probably most important to this in a second. But really the question is is there a sweet spot? Probably not, because if you just treat stress as energy rather than labeling it this is good, this is bad, this is distress, this is you stress and just say okay, I'm having a response, then there doesn't become a point where it's like, oh, I'm no longer functioning, and you can tell yourself the story of Okay, this is actually opening my blood bessels to help the blood flow to get to my brain
so I can think more clearly. And when you tell that story, your physiology actually changes. When you believe that stress is enhancing, your body responds as if which is pretty remarkable. Even if, even and this is the closet part, even if you don't believe yourself like you can lie to yourself and your body is still those changes. So the question that I've asked people to think about is this. I want you to think of a project or an accomplishment that you're most proud of.
You at it.
Yeah, now, go back in time to when you were in the middle of that project. What was your stress level scale of zero to one hundred?
Zero, two hundred, Yeah, yeah, it wasn't.
Were you going to say, like a thousand?
No, no, no, it didn't really stress me when I explained to you what it was. It's not. At the very start the I guess the stress level was relatively high. Yeah, okay, so yeah out of one hundred maybe, uh well, at the very very start, before I knew what the outcome would be it would have been a ninety five out of one hundred.
There it is, so the outcome, This is what people like cling to is when we are our most stress, we don't know what the outcome is and so we're only kind of looking for control. And again it comes back to this cost of inaction, like yes, I know if I say and I do nothing, I know the outcome. Yes, And that's what people want so much under fear and
uncertain and they want to know the outcome. And it keeps people in this like state of fear and isolation and settledness instead of taking that small step toward and forward and into that into that great future that is terrifying but unknown because we don't control that outcome.
Yeah, it's that is so true. Like we so hate the unknown, the uncertain, the uncomfortable. I call them all the uns right, you know, the uncontrollable. It's out of our control. And we love we love certainty and predictability and familiarity and the known. We love to know what's coming. Whereas you know, real resilience is being okay with not knowing, Right, I don't know, it might hurt, might not be fun at my not be quick, it might not be pineless,
and that's okay. I might get embarrassed. I might look silly. That's okay too.
And see that's just it, though, like we measure all of the costs of our actions, and those seem really scary, Like I might look silly, I might fail, I might be rejected. Those are those are things that we can measure, and we can look at what we forget to measure is the cost of an action. We forget to say if I do nothing. And this is why you know the concept of adaptive peaks. If you think about like, Okay, I'm sitting on this peak and it's a low peak,
but you know it's fine. I'm settled. I know where I am, I know who I am, I know what this is all about. Yes, and there's another peak like just a mile away, and I can get to it and it's higher and I know it's going to be better. But in order to get there, you got to go down that valley, and that valley is scary and unknown, and then you got to climb up this new mountain.
And it's it's it keeps people. It keeps people in the positions that don't serve them because they're scared of that that first step.
Rebecca, what do people miss understand about stress? Do people use like stress and anxiety interchangeably? Like do they go, oh, I'm stressed, Oh I'm anxious? Sign Yeah.
I mean I think I think we do that a lot, and it doesn't It doesn't bother me as much as other people, Like I use stress, fear, anxiety, all of these heightened, heightened emotions. Yes, there are technical differences, and we can get into it if you want. You know, anxiety is more like fear about the future and the unknown stresses that immediate challenge. Sure, there's differences, but I think I think it's okay because it's all just energy.
And when we learn how to channel that and use it to our advantage, and rather than sitting there and in this state of constant concern and worry, we can point it in a direction to move forward into action, toward the tiger, toward the stress, or toward that roar, rather than away from it, which is not helpful.
Stress sign you yeah, yeah, one hundred percent. The idea of being comfortable in discomfort. You know, as a physiologist,
you would know that. Me. I've most of my background was working with or a lot of it was working with teams and athletes at an elite level, so you know, getting paid to hurt people in a good way, so much fun, so much fun, you know, and teaching people about the benefits of you know, the physiological and emotional and psychological and performance benefits of doing stuff that in the moment is fucking horrible. You know, it's like, yeah,
I know, this sucks. I get it. But what we're trying to do is create a positive outcome, which is so you can run faster, jump hi, lift more, punch harder in TIFF's case, you know, whatever it is. But in order to build that strength and competence and level of performance, whether or not it's standing on a stage or running in a race or being in the middle of a gunfight in war, you know, the principle is the same. We need to do hard to kind of get hard. In a way, that's so true.
I mean, like even even the very it's not even an analogy, Like in order to get muscles, you gotta rip them. You actually have to rip your muscle for them to grow, and I feel like the same is true for our brain. You have to rip it apart. You have to get into that like really uncomfortable unknown space to create new neural connections to say, oh, this isn't bad. This is just unknown, and I can be okay in the unknown, and I can actually grow in
the unknown. But man, is that a scary place for our brains to go because our brain's number one thing is to keep us safe.
Yeah, that is that is the number one.
Thing that our brain wants to do. And we have to override millions of years of evolution to say, actually, I'm pretty safe right now and it's not serving me. Yes, let's see what we can do.
Yeah. Probably, Notice cyber tooth targ are going to be in my field vision anytime soon.
I mean, we pay people like you don't make us uncomfortable. What does that say about us people to make us uncomfortable? That's great.
Here's a little bit of my backstory that you don't need to know, but I'll tell you just quickly. So I set up the first personal training center in Australia in nine ninety and so I trained thousands of people, and I had tens of thousands of sessions, and I had five hundred trainers work for me over the years. But when my client sho is to win or complain, I'd say, so, here's here's what happens. You come here, you give me money, and then I hurt you for
an hour or so, and then you go away. This is the protocol.
This is what we do.
If you don't want that, that's cool. You can just join a gym and do your own thing. But how this works is I make you do things you won't do on your own. Ergo my job, ergo this relationship. So don't come here and complain. And it's just like it was like military after a while, where they would just come in that they did not complain. They'd go,
this is why I'm doing this. And you know there was a bit of fun in that, of course, but but like helping people to embrace things that in the moment are not fun or not comfortable or not even familiar, but there's such great benefits moving forward.
Yeah, I mean this is but did you die?
Right, there's there's this that could be the show that could be.
But did you die?
I love writing I'm writing that down, but did you die?
Did you die?
No?
Great? It means that needs you must have grown, I mean, and so I talk sometimes about PTSD, and you know about eight percent of Americans. I'm not sure what the number is globally, but about eight percent of Americans experienced post traumatic stress disorder after after a major stressor I think that number is probably low. I think probably all of us have some form of PTSD. And I want to label anything, but like going through life is traumatic,
period and of discussion is traumatic. But what we don't talk about is post traumatic growth. We're so f I'm like, this is what's wrong. This is the bad that comes from stress. Post Traumatic growth happens naturally for about fifty percent of people that go through trauma. Fifty percent of people that go through trauma experience a deeper connection to purpose, to community, to like higher power, to their place on earth, a deeper like foundation of wanting to live. Post traumatic
growth is massive. But do we talk about it not because we're fixating on the negative and so so much of this I think is getting that messaging now around stress of like no, no, no, we need stress. The only people that don't have stress, they're dead, Like your aim should not be to be a dead person. Let's use it differently.
Yeah, it's so true. I mean the interesting thing I think about all of I mean, there's many interesting things we're going to talk about. Your book, by the way, I Rebecca's book is called Springboard Transform Stress to Work for You. Yeah, coming at you. Well, it's out now, as you guys, listen to this. It's out now. So god buy fifteen because you're welcome only fifteen. Yeah. Well, we'll start with fifteen, and then we'll think about Christmas gifts. Right,
I love it. But the funny thing is, like with all all the human experience, right, you go, Well, Tiff can eat a handful of almonds and it's a healthy snack. Someone else does, they have an anaphylactic reaction and nearly die. Right, you know, somebody goes for talk therapy. It's amazing. Somebody else that just reignites the stress. Right on every Tuesday at three o'clock, they get stressed and then they're worse for three days. By the way, I'm not saying talk
therapy is bad. I'm saying it's not perfect for everyone.
Right.
Somebody does a job where they work up, they rock up nine to five, they sit in their cubicle, they have lunch with Dan every day, and they fucking love it. Because it's a pretty good job and pretty good pay and pretty good security. If I had to do that job, no disrespect to anyone, I'd hate my life, right yep. So it's not like, oh, you're rest here's the three step plan or here's that deal. Like I think with all of the you know, it's nuanced. There are so
many variables and factors. It's trying to understand that, like with any variable that affects a human, you know that it's not like, oh, there's three ways to get out of this predicament, or there's two steps to create in a piece or the absence of anxiety or not that we want that well kind of, but so like people have got to figure it out personally as well.
Right, Yeah, thank you for saying that, because I think for so long it's that sweet spot that you're talking about that people are trying to figure out how do I hit the sweet spot? Well, what's too much stress for some person is going to be too little for somebody else, And so instead of trying to find this like perfect sweet spot for everybody, Yeah don't. It's not a formula. It is a mindset shift it and that can be individualized, that can work for you as in
individual with all of your unique traits and abilities. It's about thinking differently. And so like one of those studies that I found most fascinating in this work is looking at a cross section of about thirty thousand people for eight years, thirty thousand people for eight years, and looking at their different levels of stress. And the most important question they asked was do you believe that stress is
bad for your health? And the people who had very high levels of stress who believed that stress was bad for their health had a exorbitantly high mortality rate, like forty three percent increase in mortality rate. But the people who had very high levels of stress who didn't believe that stress was bad for their health had the lowest mortality rate of the entire study, so lower than the people who reported very little stress in their life. So
what that means, right, It's not about the stress. It's not about your perceived amount of stress in your life. It's about your mindset around what that stress means.
Is it good? Is it bad?
Is it energy? Is it? And so you know, one hundred and eighty two people and I study died not because of stress, but because of what they believed about stress, and that to me is so powerful.
Now you've opened the door, right right, But no, I just think that you know, understanding that our body can't tell the difference between what is real and what we believe is real. You know, So that if I think, and I've said this too many times, if i think that I'm in danger right now, even if I'm completely safe, like the reality totally safe, the thought and the belief and the physiological response is all aligned with me being
in imminent danger. So now all the you know, art right, breathing, nervous system, everything's going nuts, blood pressure, and now I'm elevated in this state. Now, if I'm a person who does that five to ten times a day, which is lots of people I speak to, I'm just putting my body in this not very good position or state multiple times a day with my own mind, my own thoughts, my own beliefs, my own stories.
Yep.
So, so, doctor, how do we begin to unravel that shit? Answered that?
Yeah, well, okay, Well let's go back to what you do for a living. This is really interesting because you put people under tremendous stress. You are stressing their bodies. Their heart rate is increasing, they're sweating, their mouth is drying up, they're having a full on stress response when they work out. So why the hell is that good? M Yeah, because they think it's good the story. Yeah, it's the story that they tell. So like that stress is good and getting stuck in traffic is bad. Yeah,
what's the difference? The only difference in the stress that you're experience is is that story that you're telling. And so this is this is so much power powerful than people recognize. Like there's so many stories around mindset and and the power of the placebo or the no cibo effect. And I really wish people would pay more attention to this because it's all within your reach, within your grasp,
within your power. You don't get to control the stressors or the outcomes, but you have every control about how you move through them. You have every point of control of how you let them affect you.
Yeah. What's the name of that professor from Harvard that we've had on Jeffrey? Professor Jeffrey Jeffrey ready to go. Yeah, he's a gun. He works in this space. We've had him on two or three times, probably not for a year or.
So, but yeah, do you talk about the housekeeper study. Paton, did you tell you about the housekeeper study? No, tell us, go oh, this is one of my favorites. All right, So two groups of housekeepers split to two different conditions. The first condition is told.
I can kill us.
Yeah, second condition is simply told that they're meeting the Surgeon General's requirement for exercise when they're cleaning. That's it. That's the only difference. They all measure the like the heart rate, how hard they work, they measure their diets. Everything's kept the same. And after four weeks time four weeks, they found a significant difference in their body fat, their
waists of hip ratio, their weight. Like the people that simply were told that they were meeting the surgeon General's requirement had this lower body fat, lower wayte hip ratio, lower body mass index. All of these measures decrease and they can't change anything but their belief. Yeah, and again like this is the kind of stuff I'm like.
Yeah, that's the that's the ship that lots my far. I'm with you. We could bang on about this, well, the Milkshyke study, I'm sure you know about it.
Yeah, that's great one.
There's another we want to talk about it. Again because we've banged on about that. There's another one that I can't remember which university, But they got all these dudes. I think it was all guys. It wasn't a massive study. It was like, I don't know, twenty four people twelve and twelve and they had twelve guys that they I'm getting the numbers wrong a little bit, but anyway, they
put them on a strength training program. It's over eight weeks, and then then they put yeah, yeah, well then they put then they put the one of the groups on nudge nudge, wink wink, anabolic steroids, which they didn't really but they told them they were, and they made these phenomenal gains compared to the first block where they thought they were undrugged with a natural It's like.
If we multivitamins, I don't know if they work, but in my head they're working. I'm telling you right now, I'm going to keep taking them.
Yeah, all right, So let's talk about your book. So it's called Springboard Transform Stress to Work for you. Give us Yeah, I can sider in the background and it's beautiful. Head. Fine, give us a little bit of a snapshot of the book, and like, what are the k ideas and themes.
Sure.
Sure, So the idea of the book is exactly what we've been talking about today, that stress is religious energy. And I think for so long the health and wellness space has gotten this really backwards, telling people that have to get rid of stress, and we're fighting these fights against stress and anxiety and fear, and then we feel more broken because we can't get rid of it. Yeah, and instead of trying to get rid of it, I'm trying to say, it's yours to use. So here's how
you harness it. First of all, you recognize that it's not a tiger. Second of all, you invite that tiger that stress are in for a cup of tea. You get curious because curiosity and fear can't coexist. So when we're curious, we begin to transfer this energy into excitement, into adventure, into something that we can use. And then the third step is trajectory. Where do we point that?
Where do we point now that we have all of our sort of butterflies and alignment, where do we point all of that stress energy to serve us in the best way. And it turns out, if you really want to mitigate your stress, all of the things that we're told to do, like meditation and massage and one to one coaching. All of that it doesn't work. The only intervention that actually works to help mitigate stress is service to others. So when we serve other people, we actually
relieve our own stress, which is pretty powerful. So the snapshot of the book is a way to utilize your stress energy in a way that begins to both serve you other people and help you through both personal and professional stressors.
Is this your first book?
It's my second book. It's my favorite. Don't tell the first book, but it's definitely my favorite book. Oh, it's definitely.
I would not dream of it. I would not blame of it. Yeah, so do you have so for people who are listening to this thinking like this makes sense, I like the stories, I like the I just don't know where to start though, And I know there's no as we already identified, there's no three step plan, there's no universally appropriate or effective protocol. But for people who are you know, long time I was going to say suffers, wrong word, but been dealing with stress and anxiety and
not in a healthy way for a long time. Any idea, any suggestions for them? Rebecca.
Yeah, here's where I start. Set a three minute timer and instead of trying to avoid the stressor invaded in, so for three minutes, I want you to stress out of your gourd. Maybe it's like doing push ups. Maybe it's punching something. Maybe it's journaling and catastrophizing it in and going this is you know, I have a phone call come in during this podcast. A now that everybody's gonna hate me, the podcast is gonna bump. I'll never
get invaded again, I'll never speak again. My husband's going to divorce me, and I'm going to die in a ditch like that. That's what we do. We get tastrifize, right, So allow yourself to go there, set that timer for three minutes. What that does is going to move you through that first three minutes of screaming terror that we engage with in our stress. And then when the timer dings, take a deep breath. You not trying to calm down, but I want you to ask yourself a series of questions.
This is where curiosity comes in. How can I grow from this? What will I learn from this? What's the best case scenario? What if it works out? And this series of questions is meant to transfer you to a space where this becomes an adventure. How do I begin to choose adventure? And the third piece I'll ask anybody to do it. And this again, this whole protocol takes
under five minutes. Is to sit straight, put a smile on your face, maybe like punch a little like, get a little confident about it, get a little cocky in the moment. Because what your body does is it's feeding your brain, and your brain is looking to your body to try and understand the signals that are happening. When we get scared, when we get anxious, we're like, we just like get really protected, and we put a frown on our face and we're not smiling because we're happy, y'all.
We're happy because we smile. Our brain is getting feedback from our body to understand the signals that are happening. And so when we throw our shoulders back, we put a smile on our face and we're like, in this moment, going how can this work out? What will I learn?
How will I grow? Our brain is getting the signal that we're acting as if this is an adventure, and as a result, it becomes more of an adventure rather than an ordeal, and we start running towards the thing that is going to bring us our most meaning and purpose in our life, which is actually our stress.
Yeah is lava? Thank you? That's great?
Yeah?
Sure is so what we call maybe distress and you stress, you know, good stuff and bad stuff, like what we would go exercise is a good form of stress because we're doing a hard thing to create a good outcome, and we all know that. And then the other kind of distress where I'm feeling terrified and uncomfortable in a bad way, and all of that is what's happening physiologically in the body and biochemically, is it the same, the same chemicals being produced in u stress versus distress.
Almost. Yeah, So depend upon where you're looking at in the stress response. First of all, I want to say, Craig, please, all of your listeners throw out you stress and distress. Just throw it out. Stop legling your stress good and bad. It just is stress. Stop it all. Stress can be you stress. That's why I.
Feel rebuked, Tiff. I feel like I've been reprimanded.
Do you feel stressed, Craig, I yeah, I'm so stressed.
I'm going to have to go and eight cake.
When we do tell ourselves, and this is early on in the stress response, if it's a typical distress, like something bad is coming, and we tell ourselves that this is my body preparing me to rise to the challenge, it actually changes our physiology. Instead of constricting our blood vessels, it actually opens them. So that's a major shift in the way our body responds to what could be a
bad stressor right. So the more we can get out of these labels and just say this is a signal that my body is about to rise to a challenge, yeah, then stress becomes just a competitive advantage. Honestly, it becomes a competitive advantage.
I feel like I'm always talking to people about biofeedeback the fact that their body is teaching them and telling them or trying to teach them and tell them, and hey, there's this thing that's going on. You know. It's like I'm gaining weight or I'm losing weight, or I just went to the toilet and my wheeze like orange. Maybe I should hydrate, or you know, I could go much worse, but I feel like I won't for you, you know, or I'm not sleeping or you know whatever, and we're
trying to figure out. I'm always pleading with people to try to figure out one what their body is telling them too, to pay attention, and three to educate yourself on your body, because even though there's a lot of you know, similarity and commonality, the truth is that unless you're an identical twin, your physiology is unique. Right, So what will work for one person, you know, and not only what will work for one won't work for the other. What might be great eight for one could be fucking
catastrophic for someone else. And even back I think about I was giving a talk recently and I was we're talking about this, and I said, also, what will work for you when you're twenty might be a major problem when you're forty. You know, When I was a kid, I grew up in the country drinking milk by the gallon. Apart from the fat that I was fat, fact that I was a fat kid, which probably wasn't a great outcome,
but I could drink all the milk I want. Now, if I drink this much milk, I'm gagging like a cat with a fur ball because I'm not producing as much lactase as I did thirty years ago, right, So what will work for you you know now might not work for you on a emotionally, socially, mentally, physiologically. So our body is always evolving, but it's always teaching us.
Right, Oh, it's so graig. I can't. I can't love that comment more. And we have been culturally inductrinated ignore our bodies. Right, It's like, well, it's lunchtime, so I better eat well, are you hungry? Are you hungry? And one of the things that I learned early on is your taste buds are always going to lie to you.
Your stomach won't, but your taste buds will. And so it's learning to listen to different parts of your body too, because my taste buds will always tell me that crispy kremes glazed donuts all day, every day are the thing that I want to eat. And the second I gets past my taste buds, my stomach is like, oh why do you do that to me? That?
Oh why?
So just having an awareness of different parts of your body, checking in with yourself, and this is key because we just talked about pushing beyond our limits as well, so it is not just in the moment because in the moment, this is going to be uncomfortable and I'm gonna go. I don't want to it doesn't feel good. Yeah, okay, what does it feel like an hour from now? Yes, Because to your point, like I was an athlete growing up, and I used to go out and run, like in
the middle of the heat of the day. It's ninety degrees out there right now. If I went out there right now and I ran, I would die literally, like
it's not it's not okay for me anymore. And having those discomfort, that discomfort is important to an extent, and you need to measure it in the moment, in the moment after, in the day after, and then see as an individual, what is that level that I can push you know, a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more without it being a negative feedback. And that's that's really important, and it's very individual.
Now tif you've opened the bio feedback door and the learning from your body. What's your look at that face? What's your blood sugar right now? Will explain to Rebecca in a moment, But what's your blood sugar at the moment?
Three point seven? And last night is the worst night I have had it dipped in to what looks like probably two.
Wow. Dude, dude, oh.
Are you even functional? Good God, woman, are you fascy?
No, I'm eating more than ever eat before bed the last since I've had this, I'm eating before bed. I'm trying to stabilize it. How interesting not having any wins.
The other day we did a podcast, so she's trying to figure out her blood sugar. And by the way, if you ever round Tiff when she's hungry, don't be around Tiff when she's hungry. Like, if Tip's hungry, goes somewhere else, that's not it.
I get hungry, but I don't punch like Tiff.
So yeah, no, no, she's she's I don't know what's one level above hungry, but she is that. So not to hijack Rebecca's spotlight, Tiff, but how do you feel right now?
This is an interesting conversation because I don't aside from obviously fatigue and crashing and shitty energy, which I've always had, I would assume this is a long term thing which is getting enhanced by perimenopause and hormone shifts. But the since having that awareness, I'm now grappling with the my Yeah, my knowledge of what's going on is called utress.
Yes, this is huge because I have a you know, I have a tracking device, and sometimes I'm like I wake up and I'm like, oh, I feel great, I slept greed, and then I look at my device and I'm like, oh, I slept for shit, and then immediately
I feel terrible. Yeah, so this is an interesting like I I would love to do it, like to play a little, and I don't want to compromise your health at all, but it'd be really interesting for people one who is tracking to just keep tracking like how they actually feel, and then go back and look at the data and see how well it matches. Because I think so often now because we have the ability to measure everything, we're like, wow, I feel like garbage. Oh that's why this,
This is why I feel like garbage. And yeah, and we let that drive it rather than the reverse, if that makes sense.
Yeah.
I reckon tracking is good to a point and then it's bad. But it's free, like your bunch of gris three that it was too love you.
Got that checked. That's that's scary, that's scary.
Yeah, how many times a day do you eight tif do you reckon at the.
Minute hundred all the time, all the time. You don't want to pass you like a little worths right now, like just suck on some hard candy or something.
About My suspicion is for the for the level of intensity that I've always trained when I'm competing and even when I'm not, I think that looking now, I would be too low cap. I'm like, I'm not deliberately low cab, but I assume for how much in the intensity I train that's been going on for a while.
Yeah, that's probably the case. Yeah, it's amazing how much our nutrition affects. Oh my gosh, there's so there's so many factors. And of course the soon to be doctor Harper, you know in physiology, like you change one little shift in hormones and everything changes. So it is, and we don't coming back to Youtipe, we do not study women enough,
and especially women athletes, especially perry metopause. Like there's so many factors there that like a small tweak in diet, in hormones and anything, and it's like who knows, who knows what it is at this point, it could be anything. And that's both the joy and the absolute extreme frustration of physiology is like yep, yep, Like my body doesn't process alcohol. How dumb is that? Missing an enzyme that like breaks up a cheap date? But like it took me years to figure that out. I'm like, how are
people doing this or just sucking back guinness? And I'm like, I'm dying over here. So like just learning those little things about your unique body. Who knows what it is with your with your blood sugar?
I don't.
It's an insulin strange it as. I don't know who knows?
So what's the plan, Tiff, Well, this is the thing.
I don't know who to Like, I'm trying to figure out what type of person with what knowledge I want to go to. Like I want someone that deals with athletes. I want someone that understands my background, but also that understands hormones at this time of my life. So I'm trying to do a lot of research before I go and turn to you know, I don't rock up to the LGP that knows nothing. It's a lot, yeah, a lot, Yeah, it's a lot.
I think what's good is you're tracking everything and you are building more understanding about how your body responds to different things as you go.
Yeah, you know, and eye because you have to let go of stories or things that like high intensity training has been my thing for so long and now I'm just strength training and it's really uncomfortable to do that. And it's really uncomfortable to eat a bowl of fucking oats before bed.
I'm like, this is not what we do.
But I'm looking at my blunk sugar, going, well, this is now what we do. Just for now.
You need to heal some shit.
You need to try to heal some shit. Yeah.
I just need some dark chocolate on the bedside table and just wake up on the hour. I just have a little square and back to sleep. You know.
I really hope you go see endocronologist and I want to know the end of the story. I feel like I'm hanging on their edge now, like this is this is a cliffhanger that I need some follow up on. I need some closure on test.
This is interesting, all right, stay tuned, all right now.
The book is called Springboard Transformed Stress to Work for you, Doctor Rebecca High, Did I pronounce heist correctly?
Yeah? You nailed it. Like nace or lace or mice or whatever association you like.
That let's not go with lice. Doctor Rebecca Height, PhD. Not lie. Don't confused that the book is out. Now go and get yourself thirteen copies, twenty seven copies. Well say goodbye off air, but Rebecca, we're going to get you back, even if you don't want to, We're going to get you back. Nice debut on the U Project.
What a pleasure.
We're quite fond of you. You're quite good at that. Thank you so much. We appreciate you.
Gosh, I appreciate the two of you. This was This was truly a ton of fun. And I'm really serious. I want to know the end of the story. Thank you, thank you. This has been a gift.