0:00 61% of people feel expected to just get over stress yeah it's like just power through the moment CEO of calm author of recharge David code good stress could lead to resilience you're never really going to have a stressfree work environment not everything has to be 24/7 365 because at some point you've caused a lot of bad stress that's a real kind of indicator for you to say I need to really kind of take a hard stop and figure out how I recharge the number one Health and Wellness podcast J shett J shett the one the only J sh hey everyone welcome back to onp purpose the number one place you come to become happier healthier and more healed
0:47 thank you so much for tuning in today today I'm so excited because I talked to a really good friend someone that I respect so highly and admire so deeply and I've had the fortune of knowing for the last couple of years I'm talking about David Co the CEO of calm the leading app for meditation and mindfulness and a new author of his book recharge that offers tips for the best mental Wellness practices in today's Digital World the book has interviews with rappers Rebels and innovators as he travels talking about stress burnout and feeling drained if any of you are feeling stressed right now now this episode's for you if you're feeling drained from work right now this
1:34 episode's for you and if you need to recharge this book and episode is for you please welcome to on purpose the CEO of Cal David Co David it's great to have you here thank you Jay for having me here today I'm so excited H I'm so excited because I really feel like ever since we met I felt like we hit it off right away yeah yeah right away right away and I've been fortunate enough to have you interview me so many times so I'm glad I get to repay the favor uh this time round and I wanted to ask you just just to just to get our blood boiling just to start with some fun I wanted to ask you uh David what's something that you're not calm about I think there's a lot of things that I'm not calm about uh throughout my day I will tell you right now I am in
2:23 the throws of my my oldest daughter applying to colleges even though I try to peer very calm in front of her and cool and Collective you know and you don't want to be like a helicopter type of parent there are times where I'm just like you know I want to get in there and say something but I realize almost like the best thing for her is for her to go through it and I have to kind of take a back seat and so it's it's kind of going from where you take the wheel to like you're in the passenger seat and then you're in the backseat kind of peering every once in a while but I can't help myself from like I don't know when she first learned to drive by like saying oh I'm I'm I'm stepping on the brake here and there right but uh that's one thing right now that is probably a little stressful yeah no I can imagine I read a
3:09 study that said we process around 72 gigabytes of information per day yeah which the research likened to reading tolkiens The Hobbit every single day that's nearly 96,000 words right right and you think about that and you go no wonder we're overwhelmed no wonder we're burnt out no wonder we're stressed and you have this really brilliant analogy comparing the brain and our mind to a battery that's right walk us through this because I really like this in your book recharge the way you break it down and explain it you know the recharge uh came from a good friend of mine and we were talking about mental health and I just asked her I said you know how's it going with your kids and she goes you know I was talking to my kids and I just
3:56 said How's your battery and I was like wait what and she goes well I said How's your battery I said why and she said well if I ask them how they're doing I get the plane fine and because they're kids they're just like I'm fine but if I ask them like how's your battery they're like well it's at like 50% or it's or so you may need a snack because they're little or it's at 75% she's like oh you're okay or sometimes they're at 25% and they just need something you know to decompress while we were talking about it a light bulb just went out and that light bulb that went on was about like she took something that at times can be charged and she took something and really simplified in a way that I think we would all understand regardless of
4:43 age and I asked her I was like can I run with that and she was like yeah sure whatever right and we still laugh about it Brenda and I because she's like wow you actually took it and I was like yeah I used it as a theme I talk about it I go to clients I'll go out and it just kind of resonates with people cuz it's simple and it doesn't kind of draw out any emotions it just says like hey how's your battery how you feeling and I think that sometimes that gets lost because we all we try to make it bigger sometimes than it is and it's really nice when you can kind of just simplify it and just ask yeah how how's your battery how you doing I I love the question how's your battery even more than how you're doing like you said because I think sometimes we I think you also mentioned that we
5:28 can scale everything up to a 10 that's right so everything can feel like it's a 10 it's the worst or everything can feel like oh it's just plain old fine that's right and then you don't have much to play with whereas when you get a number walk us through the different breakdowns as you do in the book yeah because I think when you look at zero to 100 we're very good at feeling zero and maybe a 100 right like if it's your kid's wedding chances are you'll be at a 100 if it's like your kid's birthday like you're at 100 like there's these joyful Blissful moments in life that people experience and we go yeah that was a 100 moment and then we all know what a zero moment feels like you lost a loved one who sadly passed away you got you know you lost your job like there's these
6:15 very zero moments walk us through how you break down the zero to 100 yeah and I I tried to do it really simply you know I I have found and and I'll talk about my own kids at times when I ask them that question how their battery is I noticed that they check like most PE people they check their phones quite often and at some point it just becomes like a reflex and they don't even know they're checking it but when they do look at it and the poers down or it goes yellow or it goes red they they get a little panicked like oh my God I got to charge it imagine my surprise when we're in like airports and they're like going up to people D can I use a little your charge right I think we've all been there where we don't have a charger and you like I need something can somebody help me out most times people are really kind and
7:01 they'll just you know kind of help you especially if you're a kid I thought about then putting it into zones and I put it into four zones and I just said you know if you're at 75 to 100 you're probably fine and meaning that you know you're you're in a Zone where you're just moving along if you're at 50 to 75 you're probably in a place where you might need to start to think about how you may want to recharge if you're in that 25 5 to 50 it's time to start figuring out take a break you may need to take a walk you may need to put down the phone you may need to stop the Litany of Zoom calls that you're on right now right and if you find yourself 0 to 25 that's a real kind of indicator for you to say hey something's probably
7:48 not right and I need to really kind of take a hard stop and figure out how I recharge and recharge can happen in a number of different ways and so I I've I've often talked about when I've gotten into that zone I just kind of almost go for a walk uh I sometimes go outside i c i take some deep breasts I do a number of things sometimes I may need a workout a workout really helps me to recharge on a personal front and everyone's a little bit different and they'll go to different techniques and so in the book I list a lot of things in the book that you may do you may do one two three four or all of them and and they're just really techniques for you to figure out what works for you mhm yeah yeah I know I and I really like that breakdown because I think we're all better when
8:33 we're measuring things with numbers right there's a specificity there yeah and I'm one of those people I think I think the way your phone is charged says so much about you as a person so my phone is always charged yeah I'm very rarely below 30% or 40% of my phone and I think I try and monitor my personal health in a similar way as soon as I feel myself going below 50% I know it's time for an early night I know it's time to cancel weekend plans I canceled her dinner this evening for that exact reason I got back from work yesterday I left I started work yesterday at like 8:30 a.m. and I got back from a shoot at 9:30 p.m. and I knew I had a dinner tonight and I just said I'm so sorry I
9:20 can't make it for because I knew I had a busy day today I was interviewing you I was interviewing another guest and I was like I want to be really present for that it's really critical stuff and then I need to recharge using your word I need to recharge this evening and I'm always shifting things to recharge and I love that idea because I think we hear the word rest and then sometimes we we feel guilty we shouldn't but we feel guilty like I don't have time to rest yeah but when you think of it about recharging you're reframing it and going oh I do need to recharge because otherwise how am I going to give my best tomorrow 100% 100% And you know it's funny you and me are the same on batteries I keep my battery pretty charged as well I have an electric car too I Marvel at people who can take that electric car battery down to 5% I can't
10:05 do it that stresses me out I'm stressed out when they tell me these stories oh I took the battery down to 5% I'm like seriously how I mean and they're like oh it's fine you know and for some people it works right for me that doesn't work I'm plugging in that battery every night and I'm going to make sure I I charge that battery up others will let it go pretty low everyone's a little bit different that works for them uh I've asked some of my friends who charge it go really low and they're like well if I charge it too much I get stressed like oh okay can work the other way interesting yeah so it's got to kind of work for you and how you want to recharge and different techniques that you want to do you're never really going to have a stressfree work environment anxiety depression and then start to lead to physical ailments because we know there's a linkage good stress could
10:53 lead to resilience it could lead to growth it actually could lead to a stronger culture I was wondering if someone's at a zero when you ask them how's your battery yeah and if someone says I'm I'm at five and I'm talking about emotionally mentally not not their car or their phone what would you say to them how How would how would you communicate with them some of these tools when you're at zero I've learned to like take the space to give them space so we can actually have a proper conversation if you find someone at a really low percentage and I may ask that person like how are you doing how are you feeling and they and most of the time you just want a I'm good because then you just want to keep going and I find that often in the business world as
11:38 well not just in the personal world but in the business world we don't want a response or sometimes we don't have the time to be like if that person who you're asking the question to says I'm not doing so hot and I'm not doing so well then what do you do so I'm very intentional when I ask some of these questions to individuals so that I give I'm ready for that response if it's I'm not doing well like a 5% so I kind of want to frame it there I think sometimes you rush through these conversations and then when they do tell you they're a five or a 10 I think the best things that I have found is you have to be present for them you have to listen you do such a brilliant job at that Jay because even in this type of environment we know as we have this one toone conversation if I was telling you I was
12:24 a five or a zero you'd be all in on this and you would hear me out and then you would start to tell me okay let's let's talk about what's causing that and I've had it times where family members have come to me and said hey I'm not I'm at a five and we start to break it down and I said let me let me put it in another way for you think about your phone and we do checks on our phone and there's things on your phone that drain your battery more than other applications and they're like yeah it's like when you go and apple shows you what's draining or taking up all your memory and what happens when you start to delete some of those things or what happens when you start to recognize what's causing it they're like oh my battery is much more efficient and I'm like yeah so let's how what's causing that in your in your
13:10 personal life right now yeah and we try to create like you know analogies of different things and so it doesn't become a space where all we're doing is talking about all the negativity we're trying to draw parallels to different things in everyday life and so that it doesn't become such a Charged conversation yeah right and that's kind of the recharge concept as well where we're like let's talk let's talk about your mental health because sometimes some people don't want to talk about their mental health but when we bring up the battery conversation or how to recharge it's just a different Framing and again this is something I think you just do brilliantly to bring everyone in and I I try to do the same thing there as well yeah I was going to ask you that actually because I've always felt that with you you've always been present different touch points whether we're at
13:56 dinners events where even when we've traveled and seen each other when we're in New York for a dinner for time earlier this year you're you're always present too and I wonder how do you do that as a busy CEO because I think you're so right that when we answer ask the question how are you doing we are subconsciously hoping someone just says I'm good we are all we almost ask the question and expect the response even before we have a response you're so right like that really resonated with me and the truth is sometimes life is fast for most of us right our schedules are back to back to back we are running from dropping your kid to school running from running to work picking up the laundry doing the laundry whatever right there's so much going on how do you actually
14:44 create space for these conversations and that's part of being a lot more present and intentional as leaders and I'd be curious now for you as CEO as well we're expected to have all the answers we're expected to make many different types of decisions we're expected to play roles in HR but also company strategy and you know when you take a step back you can't make every decision and then there's always things that don't that are the unexpected take your car analogy so when you had your car and you were at 30% you were probably with someone but in the back of your mind you're going how am I going to get home where am I going to charge and you could do this probably better than most but but you still want to be present for that individual that you're with or your friends that you're
15:30 with in those conversations and what I find is like sometimes we as leaders have to make the space sometimes we as leaders have to show something that you do absolutely brilliantly is to show a vulnerable side to them and talk about our own stories I find that many CEOs today aren't vulnerable I for one was not very good at being vulnerable when I wrote the book though I was just taken back at how many people who I met for the first time were so open and honest and vulnerable with myself and it got me thinking well if they can do it why can't I do it right and if I started to show some of that vulnerability at work
16:17 if I started to give a little bit of space and more time for that conversation would that then make it just more open for others and more safe for others to have the conversation because if I if I'm not having that conversation and saying here's my own Journey then they may feel that it's not okay for them to open up as well right I just be curious like you a CEO right you're I mean you've got all these different businesses how do you do that with your own employees yeah I think it's a for me it comes to the balance so vulnerability is a great point and and I really appreciate that because I do agree that if you create space to share what you're going through with your team they then have the permission to do the same and I think I was mentioning when we did a
17:04 panel at C Coast a month ago or so I was talking about a client of mine that I was coaching who's the CEO of a very large corporation and we'd gone through a transformation they were saying to me Jay I'm you know I'm feeling good and I was like great well you should tell your team about your journey and they were like how can I tell them right and I said what do you mean and they said well if I tell them they're going to think I'm weak and I was like no I promise you they're going to think you're strong and I think we're still redefining and reframing strength in the world today I think there are some of us who still see bravado and arrogance and chauvinism as being strong and I think that's shifting but it's shifting very slowly that's right and so it is a cultural
17:50 expectation as well societal expectation of strength being this kind of facade but I think a lot of us are now realizing well no strength is being able to show both sides and open up and be vulnerable I think the other thing that really comes to mind when I'm thinking about being CEO is I think stress can make people work harder but it's the right amount of stress that makes someone work better so good so true right there's a spectrum of stress and so if I just if I just keep checking in with someone and going have you done it yet are you done yet why are we not there yet why did the numbers not triple this if I do that they're going to feel stress and they may work harder but that doesn't mean they work better right and so to me the right amount of stress and I want to ask you this as
18:35 well talk to me about the difference between good stress and bad stress and and how you've been able to harness the right amount when you've got it right in the book actually I interviewed Dr adidi Nar and you met her yeah she's wonderful fantastic right and we got into this whole conversation of good stress bad stress you stress good stress versus bad stress distress and you know we talked about how good stress could lead to resilience it could lead to growth it actually could lead to a stronger culture you're never really going to have a stressfree work environment agreed you know we're always going to have stress at work we're all going to have deadlines we're all going to have things we're going to want to hit but
19:21 but not everything has to be just like you said 247 365 because at some point it's going to going to stack so much that you as a leader are realizing you're probably not being very efficient your employees are probably not working super efficiently not working well together and they're probably you've caused a lot of bad stress distress in their life that's leading to things like anxiety depression and then starts to lead to physical ailments because we know there's a linkage between you know your mental health and your physical health and so that becomes a very vicious cycle especially in the workplace and that leads to a lot of uh unproductivity what I found with the two is you really have to find that right balance and understand there will be and just talk
20:06 about it there's a push we're all going to make a push we did it recently as a company uh at Comm where we around the elections and we treated the elections like our Super Bowl moment because we knew and we saw the data that people's stress was Rising every day as that day November 5th got closer and closer we saw it in the App Store we saw it in comments we saw it on social so we really came together as a company to do different types of things around that take a breath 30 seconds or 15 seconds of Silence um we we showed animals from the San Diego Zoo on Instagram and we got so many people commenting that day that said hey thank you for the silence thank you for my 15 seconds in this
20:51 world where so many things are happening now people were dialing in from work because they were stressed at work stress doesn't just mean it's at home it was like people were like during the elections coming in from work and so we wanted to give them a little bit so they had a release so they could be more productive so there's a lot of things around stuff that I look at for good stress and bad stress and recognize there's always going to be a push pull but that's the part where you can't do it alone you got to have a good team you got to talk about it you do this so well and make sure that becomes part of your fabric your culture your DNA and I think it's shifting MH but it's slow yeah I think the conversation around mental health in everyday life it's the most approachable it's ever been right I talk
21:39 about things with my own kids today around mental health when I was a child coming you know I'd be curious like for you like immigrant family we didn't talk about our mental health in my household right we talked more about powering through things and I can talk about that later but we didn't really talk about it my kids talk about it they may overuse it at times not use it the right way it's okay they're having the conversation their friends are having the conversation I think that's great but when you go to the workplace it kind of stops you know and I go to so many places and I'm like do you talk about your mental health at work and they're like no and I'm like well let's change that dialogue let's make it as approachable as it is in everyday life and how do we start to do that let's give you the tools and we'll start at
22:24 the top yeah you're so right you're so right what you're painting a picture for me is that I look at the good stress being when we all know what challenge we're up against we know what the goal is and everyone feels supported and I think what often happens is people don't know what the goal is because you're not helping them do that they only see the challenge and they don't feel supported that's right so now they don't know where they're going and they feel if they fall flat on their face they have nothing to catch them that's right as a leader the goal is to provide the goal and the support and then the person can focus on the challenge yeah and be transparent in that Journey you know I um I speak to many CEOs in the valley and and over the world and you know a
23:10 lot of times I'll ask them how do you prioritize things with your employees how transparent are you and I'll will tell you many of them are not that transparent or they'll be like these are the most important things and then they'll add five more and then five more right and I'll be like oh okay what did you take away and they're like what are you talking about I mean what did you take away and they're like nothing and I'm like well how do you think that's affecting your employees and they're like I never really thought about that so I've just compounded and stacked the problem as a leader and you didn't take anything away and it C and and and it Cascades down like a megaphone think about what that employee is going through and walk in
23:58 their shoes for a minute you know we at the top have the luxury of of having more control over our schedules but that person may not have as much control over their schedule they're just ticking through things yeah and if you just keep adding and not taking certain things away and saying this is important this isn't important here's how I think about it here's how I'm being transparent you're adding more stress to your company you know leaders struggle with how to be vulnerable is it going to be used against me yeah is someone going to write about it and say I'm tooo weak is the board going to think I'm weak as a leader that's ultimately also a fail of corporate stewardship because they have to also look after your mental health at calm i i l this when I first got introduced to
24:43 calm and started taking calls with the teams and I took my role of chief purpose officer I got integrated into the culture I loved the little things and the focus on the little things at meetings ATC whether they're on zoom in I want to these smaller things that are happening on a daily basis because I think often companies think they need to put out a thing that says we're focusing on company mental health and they're doing these big things but calm internally yeah let alone the work they do with other companies and workplaces but K internally had some really nice yeah cultural things that I noticed from the outside in as I was being integrated walk us through some of those daily things that you think create the rituals in practice itic es that help people it
25:30 was interesting for me my first day of come I walk in and there Michael and Alex who you know well Founders right and they love you and they talk about you all the time and how you all first met and they uh introduced me to the company warm welcome so inviting and they started the meet the whole all hands off with a meditation and I wasn't really used to that you know and I was I was kind of sitting there uh and I kind of noticed everyone and normally we listen to someone like yourself we'll turn you on or turn one of our other kind of narrators on they do great and everyone just kind of sat there in the moment and whether it was sometimes it's you know really quick 30 seconds sometimes it's 5 six minutes some like three minutes and
26:16 they listened and it was and I kind of was peeking at times looking I'm like is everyone kind of closing their eyes you know around here you know looking the and they were just in the moment it was a moment for me that showed me how much they cared and I was like wow this company cares this is enforced you don't have to be here you don't have to do this and they were there and they were present and they were in the moment so that's like some of this that was one of the ways I knew this company was going to be different and then I watched as the company did things around gratitude where we end every all hands with gratitude we read things that have come into us and it's a reminder of the impact we're having and I think that's why sometimes I'm so stressed because I
27:02 feel this weight of responsibility where every second of every day someone is using the product and I just feel like if we're not answering them or not helping them in the moment someone's not getting something that they need and I feel that stress and I feel the the resp it's really responsibility yeah and I talk about that with the employees and I think it's really important to talk about that so we do the ude piece at the end we have zoom free days you know where where I talk to employees about hey if you're in a moment where you find yourself in five zooms take a beat you don't need to do that and if there's meetings that don't make sense just like you did tonight which was great just say no it's okay you know we'll figure it
27:49 out and I do that too and I try to be a lot more purposeful now because it helps me then be more present in the meetings that I need to be in yeah right and rather than saying it's not the quantity of meetings that I'm in it's those quality of meeting moments that I'm in and I think people sometimes like misinterpret like quantity for productivity versus like value and I'm much more like okay I'm gonna do I'm gonna focus on quality and it may mean less and that doesn't have to sacrifice my impact I was going to ask you how does it impact productivity and I do think that we've convinced ourselves that if I'm doing more if there's more on my schedule if I'm jumping around we've created our definition of value to
28:36 be around busyness right yes and we all feel we're more important valuable and it's subconscious again you just think oh yeah if I've got a lot to do then I must be doing something yeah how do we start to shift that conversation what have you learned about that I know you interviewed some amazing people as well as you were saying inside the book what did you learn about how we can ref frame what we believe makes us valuable yeah yeah so I had um so two people in particular so John Scully for example the former CEO of Apple he talked about how in the book he was Chief listening officer and I was like really and he's like yeah like Steve asked that we make our own business cards and I wrote Chief listening officer and I sat there and I
29:23 was like wow that's that was great you listen and so cuz so often you know you just start talking and he's like no I became a lot more purposeful if I just listened first said probably less but that impact was greater because I heard what was happening and I thought that was great yeah I had Jack row who's a former seeta in the book he came over and he said sometimes you have to put yourself into neutral and he's like and you have to give yourself space because you can't run at 100 miles an hour and if you don't give yourself a little bit of a break no matter what position you're in you're going to find yourself uh upside down and you're not going to figure out
30:08 how to turn back up and I I appreciated those conversations with them because they're a little bit more old school in their approach they they think we're a little bit more in the middle now and then there's a younger generation right that's coming up who thinks about things completely different it's been such a privilege to be able to kind of to so many different people who are in that in that Continuum to kind of hear how they're managing it right even like how you think about things today and how you manage all that right it just must be a lot coming at you today from many different angles when they're like Jay what do you do right yeah yeah and and I think for me it's it is the old cliche but it's so true like you are only as good as your team and I do think being a leader means taking care of your team
30:55 that's right in one sense I feel like that's all leader actually has to do is be the coach therapist support right system or provide and bring those things in for the team and you almost become a coach and yes you're being strategic yes you're being a Visionary but a lot of it is just loving people and supporting people I find at least I find like that's what most of my time is taken up doing because everyone has their emotions and as long as you have smart people that you're working with then those people are the the people that investing in them as humans yeah is allowing them to do what you trust them to do that's right but the thing that's holding them back is usually something emotional or mental it's rarely professional that people have challenges in I find it's something they're going
31:41 through in their personal life it's a mental block that they have and if that doesn't get healed and accessed in the workplace that's going to be the spanner in the works like that's going to be the thing that bottlenecks the process creates inefficiency creates a lack of trust that's right that's the kind of stuff that gets in the way yeah and and a lot of times too when you talk to people they have no idea what's happening outside the workplace you know but so much that happens outside the workplace affects the workplace it's really important for companies too to have mental health support tools for employees so when they need things people to talk to you know applications whether they're Cal or others therapy if they need it if they just make those available and known that's another step
32:27 in the process so that's why I always tell people it's not just one thing it's kind of like a number of things you have to put together because people may take bits and pieces of each to make it their own but it kind of shows them when they need it it's there yeah and a lot of times people will go look for things on their own you know they'll search and they'll see if you got tools and what companies and I do find that you sometimes will lose good people because you're not supporting them in their Journey yeah and so the more you could be there for them and they know that they become become some of your most loyal most productive most culture bearing you know carrying the flag employees yeah and you didn't have to tell them to do it they just kind of did it on their own absolutely and I feel like those often are the best ones and I and we have a
33:14 lot of those uh and I'm very and I just feel very privileged that we have so many folks like that that that they just care deeply and it's personal for them I um my previous company I started was a caregiving company and thing I noticed in that company was that so many people that were caring for others were suffering right they and then they had to go to work and people had no idea that they were doing like five jobs caregiver they were worrying about their finances they were trying to figure out how they help people and then they had to go to work and and they had a Litany of things they had to go do and most people have no idea all these things are going on in their people's lives right because sometimes we just don't ask the question and because we're so busy ourselves or some times we don't want to ask a question because we're so busy
34:00 ourselves we can't take anything else on but I just feel that if we are just more aware and we create space for employees and we listen to what they have to say flexible work schedules what are they asking for that's why I constantly PLL our employees as well what do you value and they'll tell us and then if we have stuff that they don't want we put it away I sometimes like oh all my employees want this gym membership and then nobody uses it right and and they're like ask yeah and I'm like now I just ask let's have our team go out and and say here are the top 10 things what do you want yeah and then we'll take away a couple things that they don't use you know and we'll try to ask that almost every year totally I I I
34:45 couldn't agree more we I love gift giving it's one of my love languages and you were so kind to bring me a gift today which was very thoughtful and very useful and and both of which I will and the reason I'm saying that is I love giving gifts too and so you know over the years when it comes around the holidays I love getting gifts from my team and for a long time I'd always be guessing like what everyone wanted and you assume that something's cool or trending or whatever it may be and then you start to realize what you just said people didn't really want that yeah and then at one point we were like okay well then we won't give gifts we just you know thank people and whatever else it was but then we were like no but people like people like itone enjoys it and so it's so funny we've started polling over the last few years like what kind of
35:32 gift would everyone like and the number one answer this year was infrared mask like so what you call that was the number one request yeah the red light the red light yeah so that was the number one request and we like oh easy now we know what everyone wants so we're going to get that because it's easier rather than us guessing yeah and and I agreed that I do think people inside of organizations today want mental health tools they want meditation practices want mindfulness uh opportunities and tools and apps and everything else I do believe there is a big demand for that and I think it's only growing oh yeah because people are feeling that if you don't have that you can't have that conversation in the workplace that's right I think this is the part that I want companies and leaders to understand if you're not
36:18 providing tools to support people with their mental health they don't have a vehicle to talk about it at work that's right if it's available to everyone and they see it come out in the newsletter and the teams available and everyone knows about it they can say oh yeah did you see we're using Comm now and you know I've been doing this one and which one have you been doing and now it allows for connection and conversation and Community as opposed to without it someone may just never talk about the fact that they've been struggling to sleep for seven days 100% right 100% And and I and I find that too amongst the younger generation they just expect these things yeah you know and they're asking for them and they'll give up other things along the way yeah and so and they're very vocal around it and we've seen it now in all Industries you
37:04 know we've seen it happen in banking where people feel like hey you're not listening and it it takes a moment where they have to go to the Press almost right it shouldn't have to ever get there yeah if they were listening to those kids and listening to your employees then you've got a continuous feedback loop yeah more companies the Baseline will be you have to have these Services going forward and and I think over time then that will open up a dialogue and I also think with CEOs today I'll tell you because it starts so much at the Top If you start to have some of these conversations and say Here's how I think about it here's how you're being vulnerable that too opens up a different conversation and then that can just kind of percolate within the company and and then I think the
37:49 whole thing starts to move faster right and then we can start to get more into a conversation of like okay now how do we get you the right Care at the right time when you need it however you need it cuz so much of the conversation we're having right now is pretty basic in my mind and we just need to get farther along in the conversation yeah I think a lot of people will question listening to us going well how does mindfulness or meditation actually help burnout or how does it help stress so that's one thing and I mean there's tons of science on that but I think there's still so I want I want you to answer that and the second thing is well how does this affect my productivity right like how does it actually get people to do the work that
38:34 I need them to do sure and and isn't this just a a distraction or slows them down because I know a lot of organizations just feel like this sounds good in theory but how does it help so if we could talk about how mindfulness and meditation specifically the programs that exist on calm how do they make sense for stress and burnout and then how do they make strength for productivity and performance yeah I mean I think I both of those I'll start with the second one first CU it it it comes up a lot and what I often tell people is when I'll just use Comm as an example more than half the people that use Comm today come to us for sleep and they're having moments where they just can't fall asleep most of that comes as we know because they're sleeping next to their de their devices the devices are constantly beeping they don't shut them
39:20 off I talk about like it's hard but you know I keep my phone outside my bedroom not everyone does that when I travel I don't do that and sometimes it leads to you know not a a good sleep and we know when you have a number of those days that start to compound it could lead to irritability it could lead to not being as productive the next day when you go to work because you're just tired right you couple that at times with potentially bad eating habits or some people drinking habits or other types of habits that aren't and that doesn't create and it creates kind of like what I call negative behavior I had that when I was younger because I didn't understand some of these tools and I
40:05 just wish I had some of these tools when I was younger because I didn't I didn't do those things that created positive behavior change um when I was in banking for example I and when I got stressed I turned to smoking and I was just a kid and I was like smoking in the stairwell of Solomon Brothers I shouldn't have been smoking in the stairwell that's number one I talked about this with our employees saying hey I didn't have apps like Comm or tools to help me in the moment I wish I did I probably would have turned to other things and understood that's positive behavior that I could turn to not negative behavior and if I have enough of that then it starts to kind of change the pendulum because I then ended up on a very slippery slope you know you're smoking
40:50 you start to drink a little bit more then I'm eating more at odd hours and then I try to go to sleep and you just know if you're trying to eat Chinese food at 11:30 and you want to go to bed at 12:00 or 12:30 you're not going to sleep well because there's just a lot of stuff just sitting there right keeping you awake and so for me it's been this continuous kind of learning and we talk about some of these things and you know I think in the work force it's it's a little it's no different because then people got to shuttle their kids off to school in the morning and you got to make breakfast you got to do all these things so you you kind of need good sleep at night and it starts I think a lot there and then during the day we need breaks people think uh and it's in the book that you that our brain has
41:36 endless capacity it's just not true we don't have endless capacity you know our brain like everything else needs to recharge and if you can find ways to recharge whether it's listening to you every day uh congratulations on over 600 episodes we were talking about million streams as our chief purpose officer which I so grateful for because there are times where those seven minutes from me where I listen to you whether it's in the car driving my kids uh to school takes 10 minutes uh some days it takes 30 with traffic there there moments that I just cherish or when I'm driving back alone and it's it just helps me then as I start to reenter
42:23 myself to be more productive during the day or during the day I take a short break and I know how to recharge now whether it's going outside walking or others and it makes me so much more productive because what I find is if I work in a manner and I find myself falling below 50% 25% of my battery and I just keep trying to power through my work gets it's not very good yeah it's embarrassingly bad I would say at times and no amount of AI is going to make it better yeah you know it's just not yeah and so I then have to kind of take a step back and be like okay you're trending in the wrong direction take a big and I talk about this at a company
43:08 and with many other companies that are out there today and I know so many employees I talk to resonate around this yeah right because I just feel it's an endless hamster wheel for sure for sure yeah I was as you were speaking I was thinking about how if you have a still mind you actually make quicker better decisions and if you have a stressed mind you actually make slower worse decisions yeah and we think oh well if I take time out to be still I'll lose time but actually if you take time out to be still you'll gain time because you'll make better decisions there'll be more longterm they won't be rushed and haphazard and they'll actually be you'll be a better Communicator I know for a fact that if I'm stressed I don't communicate as clearly yeah I can I can
43:54 be a bit more like rushed and you know kind of like let's hurry this up and short short with people yeah whereas if I'm rested and I'm still then actually I'm able to formulate ideas I can be more tolerant I can be more patient which are all the skills you need and so taking out seven minutes a day doesn't make you slower it actually makes you faster and better and and something I pulled from your book these these stats were really fascinating for me to read so 61% of people feel expected to just get over stress yeah that's unbelievable that 61% of people feel like they expected to just get over stress yeah it's just just why is that when I was younger and I
44:42 didn't understand this uh when I was 14 years old and I think it was much younger I wrote about in the book that it was 14 I actually think it happened when I was younger I just didn't I just don't recollect those times when I got really stressed or nervous and most of the time they're around like tests or speaking stuff or in front of the class I just started to get a tightness in my chest I would I would get shortness of breath at times I would sweat in my hands and I didn't really understand what was happening and I talk to my mom you know and like a very traditional Korean mother she would be like just power through it and I like okay I'm just going to power through it right but she didn't know either what was happening and I don't blame her around that she just didn't understand in the moment you know the reality is
45:28 when you think about your mental health it's not about just do you know and it's not about powering through the moment it's for me it's about powering up you know and it's and that's where the battery analogy keeps coming back in yeah and and I didn't understand some of that and then you cou and then I didn't have the vocabulary it wasn't really until I started getting into Healthcare that I started to understand oh wow this is what you were going through you've been able to kind of manage it and through some unhealthy behaviors at times and now you are doing through healthy behaviors but the vocabulary has changed MH right and you have a better command of that vocabulary so you know how to talk about it now where I didn't know how to talk about it then yeah and so I do think so much of the the population today is about powering through it and I
46:16 do think a lot of the population and I would say more in countries like Korea or Asia even though mental health is the most approachable it's ever been like in in the states it's not really approachable there you know and and that does make me sad at times when I go back home my parents move back to Korea they live there I want to talk about these things with them and it's just not it's not easy for them to talk about right I don't know how it was for you you did you talk about this when you were a kid with it's so interesting what you were saying about your experiences of stress growing up mine were the same and they didn't know what it was either so I would ex it's the same things exams anything high performance related I'd feel like my chest got tighter my heart felt like it wasn't beating the same I'd
47:02 get you know sweaty palms and I remember going to the doctors and they'd wire me up with these monitors like old school monitors these big things I'd have to wear it for 24 hours and I'd go back and they' be like oh he's fine and I'd be like but Mom I'm not fine like there's something I'm feeling and there was no word for it and so I I can very much relate and again my mom didn't know what it was either and she was trying her best to help but we couldn't figure it out and so I got on with it and and I always have and then I was thankful enough to learn mindfulness and meditation many years later that have been my core practices and now it's not that I don't get nervous before I'm going on stage or a podcast I still do but I know what to do and so I have my breath work I know what I have to lock into it's not that I
47:48 don't experience those emotions anymore but I agree even in a South Asian family like I don't think that vulnerability was normal from parents it wasn't common for uncles and aunts to be that way and so it created a culture of always putting your best foot forward always somewhat being performative that's right and I think I never subscribed to that so I started very early on rebelling and just good for you being myself I didn't and uh I wish I had done that yeah and I was just I'm just I started breaking the rules early on that and I'm grateful that I did but now I realize it wasn't that I was breaking the rules I was just expressing my discomfort with having to put up a face or a mask on when
48:35 everything wasn't okay yeah and and I think that's hard for people to do today where I read another stat that said 33% of people feel too overwhelmed by daily stress to think ahead yeah like when you think about that it's like gosh like you know that's what people are under what are some of the you forget that right you forget that you just forget I mean you think about those numbers that's whether it's 2/3 or one3 of all people feeling this way and you start to realize wow that's heavy you know and if you were in a room and three out of 10 or six out of 10 are feeling a certain way you start to realize there's more this is why with corporations I think it's so important that they can take leadership positions again I always go
49:20 back to the top on some of these things because if we're not comfortable being vulnerable and if we're not not comfortable making sure that our HR teams have the tools to talk about this with employees that we don't support some of these initiatives we're kind of in a place where we're saying oh we don't believe some of those stats but the stats are there and growing right and and yes there's you know there's life things that are happening but technology is moving so fast on the other side right I mean we are definitely in an era right now where kids have grown up with their smartphones they act differently than you know when I grew up or when you grow up it's just different we and they grew up with this technology they're very comfortable with it the speed of it witches is coming and so and then
50:07 there's the weight of what's happening just in life around them and so some of these things even at the company level which are interesting and you don't do this is like and I found this a little bit with myself I'll just tell you on a personal front we're taught to play it very safe and I think that's an important thing too I'll tell you A lot of people Miss is that you know you don't want to say the wrong thing so you're not going to talk about your own vulnerability because that's not playing it down the Fairway you kind of want to be boring I'll be frank with you for a lot of leaders not all leaders which we know there's a couple of them that are quite but for most leaders when you go out there they're media trained to be right down the Fairway and what I love when I listen and watch your podcast
50:53 it's so authentic it's so real it's so so safe for all the people that listen and then and it just shows right with how many people are tuning in every day right and listening to you and doing what I did it's like I'll listen to somebody and then I'll go back to that I'll be like oh I remembered that I'm GNA go back to that and it's just because we just play it safe in a lot of places today and you don't want to say the wrong thing yeah and I think it's okay you know like even if I was here with you today and maybe something and I didn't say the right thing today I'm in a space where I feel so safe with you right now I just want to be myself and not everything's going to be perfect absolutely right and and that's kind of part of life and I've started to accept that and I've become much more vulnerable with my own
51:39 employees to be like hey this is okay and because of that in the last couple years we're stronger we're stronger as a company we just had a board meeting and they're like wow this is great everyone's like yes we're doing much better but I think because we're developing and and really building on the right culture we're asking the right questions or and we want to lead by example yeah right what was something you shared with them that you feel was challenging uncomfortable that that led to that breakthrough yeah I um in the last one that you were at I I did talk about my smoking as a kid I talked about me being overweight as a child dealing with that that insecurity um I've always had a struggle
52:24 with food a love FR tribe I'm just G to I guess I'm telling you I love ice cream and I think sometimes and I have a really no matter what I try to do diet-wise I if you put some fries in front of me I'm gonna eat them uh if I if you put some ice cream in front of me and someone my kids are having I'm I'm gonna eat some of that too and my kids are like Dad I thought you're like full I was like I was all right so I struggle with that I know when I'm a little bit stressed I'm a little bit of a binge eater as well I try to obviously develop a lot of healthy habits also around how do you be healthier and so I do I do exercise a lot more but some of those things are
53:09 hard just to get rid of you know it's it's more like you're going to have to live with it and it's how you live with it that's like that comment about stress you're never going to have a stress-free workplace yeah but you got to figure out how you just have more healthy stress right how you stress rather than distress yeah what's what's the most common thing you hear from leaders that they're struggling within their organizations when it comes to stress and teams mental health I I think a lot of leaders today struggle with as I spoke to you about vulnerability and how you gave the story about vulnerability that story plays over over and over again wow you know leaders struggle with how to be vulnerable and I think it's I think it's generational on a personal I think the new leaders that are going to
53:55 rise the ones in their 20s are going to have no problem right because when you look at social media today and a lot of the younger generation they talk about their mental stress and they talk about their mental health and they're very open about it now again they may overuse it or you know but at least they're having a conversation around it I think you know with other leaders today when I talk to them they're just like hey is it a sign of weakness like you brought up and is it going to be used against me yeah is someone going to write about it and say I'm too weak is the board going to think I'm weak as a leader and I think that is the that's ultimately also a fail of corporate stewardship because they have to also look after your mental health you know
54:42 and so when I'm you know I'm fortunate to be on the board of Comm today but if I wasn't CEO I would be asking that CEO hey how are you doing how are you holding up let's not talk about the numbers today you know I find really effective when I meet with CEOs and they ask for some coaching we don't talk about any numbers we don't talk about the metrics we just talk about life and we'll eventually go to that later but I think when we start with more of a trusting place where we can understand what's happening around you then I can be much more thoughtful in the type of advice I give but this also means I have to create the space and the time to do it so not everyone has that right and that's where I think it's just really important to be really intentional right
55:28 be really purposeful in these conversations yeah I think one of the reasons why we struggle to recharge is because when your phone's running out of battery there's only one well we're also bad at this there's only meant to be one type of charger now I've seen people charge their phone with their Mac charger you're destroying your phone right you see it being charg with the iPad charger like but the point is there's one charger yeah and I think when it comes true life sleep is a charger meditation and mindfulness 100% food is a charger working out is a charger and people you love being around good relationships are a charger and if everyone while you're listening to this if you could figure out the most common
56:16 times you feel at 1% 5% 10% 20% and figure out what's the charge you need for that well said right like that's what I think we need to do like I'll give an example I I went to an event the other day and I had to fly out of town and come back into town I got back at like 4:00 a.m. and I worked out the next day and I felt so weak because I hadn't slept well of course and eaten well and so at that point I'm glad I still worked out because I needed it but I told told my trainer I had to get a bit of an easier workout because I didn't want to push myself when I felt weak but it's like it takes little adjustments of figuring out what charge you need right now like now I've had a busy week I had a busy weekend this weekend I know recharge means I need no social plans
57:03 like that's what's going to recharge me and so I wish everyone could just write down while you're listening to this and while you're reading David's book recharge you write down what are those most common experiences you feel when you feel drained when you feel overwhelmed when you feel burnt out and what is your charger so that you don't have to think about it in the moment cuz when you're trying to figure it out in the moment that's when you get more overwhelmed like I know before I go on stage I always practice breath work if I've had a couple of late nights I know sleep is the only charge that's going to solve it yeah right speaking of that because you talked about you know certain rituals are there certain things that you do every day like religion every day that you just do yeah I I kind of do what I call like what I feel is like a good 8020 so like I know five
57:49 days out of the seven days a week I'm working out 5 days out of seven I'm meditating before 9:00 a.m. and then the other two will be meditating after 9:00 a.m. and I like that balance that I have uh gratitude something I'm practicing every single day yeah it's such an important one I think we do something with my team that I love every Friday we'll do a weekly win and everyone's encouraged to share what they believe is their win and sometimes what's amazing about this activity is you feel it will always be like oh we had so and so on the podcast or we won so and so award or and it isn't it's actually these little things that people are doing behind the scenes that are not like these Grand wins
58:35 externally yeah and they believe that that's been their success and I think it's a really great way to actually get to know each other because you get to see what people value as success and you get to understand what people see as value in the work they do whereas we just assume that of course if there's a big quarter then everyone should be excited and it's like well maybe not right because that's not what they equate as their personal success and contribution and so doing the weekly wins on Friday is one of my favorite things to do with my team it takes like 30 minutes to do and everyone just goes around my core team and just shares what was their weekly win it's huge I love that I um I sometimes start my beginning of the week staff meetings with like how was your weekend just tell us something that happened personal you know I also find sometimes we we get into all the
59:22 details without getting to know one another yeah you know and I find a lot a lot of times teams don't work well they can work better together when they're a little bit more personal with one another and it may it doesn't have to be deep it could just be like hey what what did you do some people will say I went on a hike I you know went to my kids game or you know I went I traveled somewhere or binge watched the show and we're all like what show what's your favorite show or something and we just get to learn something a little bit more personal about the individual and then it's less about oh did you hand in that PRD thing right it's just it's more personal yeah and I think and by you just doing your wins every week you know how I just I love that yeah I I think about it it's very simple I think about it like this like you're going to spend
1:00:08 a third of your life at work yeah learn to get along with your colleagues yeah learn to build relationships with the people you spend 9 hours a day with you're going to spend a third of your life with these people you should actually really get to know them you should be able to laugh with them it would be wonderful if you could open your heart with them when we kind of go well works this thing over here and I save all of that for home you're basically saying that 30% of your life you'll never experience Joy you'll never experience connection and I don't think that's the world we want anymore I think we need a world where work can be meaningful and thoughtful and purposeful and again going back to what you said it's not that it will ever be stressfree that's right it's not that it's ever going to be perfect or this Utopia or
1:00:54 this beautiful place everything's amazing but I think one of the things we don't realize is that a lack of productivity stems from a lack of trust yeah when you have trust and you have interpersonal connection things move faster people are not gatekeeping no one's trying to be a bottleneck no one's looking out for how they can be Top Dog there's this feeling of we're all going to win together and I think if leaders can start to figure out what that culture is then people will achieve so
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