Developing the Psychological Immunity to Stay Alive While You’re Starting Up – Dr. Sherry Walling

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0:15my name is cherry walling as Jordan said those of you who are newer to Micro Kampf know that I go with Rob we're a pair I'm a clinical psychologist and before spending a lot of time with founders hanging out in rooms like this I spend a lot of time cultivating expertise in treating post-traumatic stress disorder so I work with people who have been through very intense things which actually helps me be surprisingly qualified to work with y'all so so much of what is going to make you successful or not successful in your venture is about what happens in your head the mind game of this the part

0:57of this that is about your own wit your own capacity to logic through to choose to decide any number of things related to your business but perhaps more importantly to decide what kind of life you want for yourself what kind of choices will shape who you are in the context of building your business man is condemned to be free condemned to be free because once thrown into the world he is responsible for everything he or she of course does the weight of what you're doing is heavy there's a tremendous responsibility on you to choose well how you live to choose well how you build your business to choose

1:51well in any number of the millions of tiny little decisions that go in to what you're creating and the burden of that is significant the stress of that is significant and it's also your great gift isn't it because you all are kind of like masters of the Internet's which means you have tremendous skills that are desired you have lots of choices do you keep consulting do you quit your job and launch your app how do you do that those are kind of heavy questions they're heavy burdens you're free to choose but you bear the responsibility of all of those choices so no pressure

2:42we know where the poison is right it's in both choices it's in all of the things there are lots and lots of ways to live and all of them are hard in their own ways so you are choosing which poison to take you're choosing which poison glass to drink from and you know it's gonna be hard don't you if you don't you will after my talk um but we have to get in to the corners of your mind the parts of you that can be honest about how hard this is because we come to a place like this and I think it's really easy to play a little bit of like

3:28comparison game kind of wanting to tell the story of how well you're doing how well your app is doing how much you're killing it and those are great stories because they inspire all of us and they're important to hear and it's Fortin to learn from each other but one thing that I loved about what Jordan did today was to really talk about some of the failures some of the really really tough moments because your ability to handle those moments to handle failure to handle discouragement to handle all of the things that go along with what make this hard that's going to test whether you're actually going to be

4:02successful or not so we have to create little spaces even in your own head to be honest about your struggles and hopefully with the room in the room with other people to create some space to be honest about your struggles because it's going to be hard and I say this not just as you know someone who's sort of coming up here and with the warning flag but I say this as a psychologist there are some very significant mental health burdens that go along with being a founder go along with being an entrepreneur we see increased levels of anxiety and depression in the founder community we see incredible isolation sometimes

4:49within the founder community and I'm sure you all know stories of folks who have kind of flown too close to the Sun and have crashed hard and the most extreme cases have crashed hard and taken their own lives there is a price that you're paying for this you're drinking some poison and I know this we know this as a family this picture is from 2007 or so this was the year that Rob was transitioning from consulting into doing products it was the year that I was doing a research fellowship at Yale we had this beautiful two-year-old and from the outside it looked like we were killing it like we

5:38were you know sort of talented people with great opportunities and the sweet little family and things were kind of all as they were supposed to be sort of like living the dream but for like six months we would work long days and come back to our very cold New England apartment and and and sort of have this conversation very very cordially very respectfully about how we were going to handle shared custody because we couldn't sort of stand each other anymore and we wanted to dissolve the family and when we look back we talked about this year a lot and when we look back on this year in our lives we look

6:26at all of the things that went into making it hard but we also look at all of the failures that we sort of had all along because we just weren't telling the truth about heart how hard it was which means we weren't allowing ourselves to do what we needed to do to really be prepared for the toughness so to speak like if you know you're gonna run a marathon you're gonna train right hopefully you're gonna be ready you're going to like prepare your mind on your body to do something intense but if you're not telling yourself the truth about how hard the thing is that you're

6:58going to do then you don't also give yourself the open door to prepare and that we won't do again because we sort of recognized being a founder is very difficult difficult on the founder it's difficult on the family and we have to be prepared we have to train so how do you win the battle of wits the first thing is that you have to really know the poison the Dread Pirate Roberts spent years building immunity to I Akane powder you have to know the poison you have to tell the truth about what you're preparing to do and then you have to build immunity you have to do active

7:42things that get you ready for the task at hand so I came powder what are the I Akane powders of the startup life what makes it hard this is not a rhetorical question yeah the hours yes the time uncertainty balance or lack of balance money no safety net self-doubts times 2 being lonely I missed that one critics yes fear of failure fear in general so anxiety is sort of a big term to encapsulate a lot of the things that you all said fear anxiety worry burnout which is part of the ours problem part of the loneliness problem this sense in which you just don't have the raw

8:53material to do what needs to be done you just don't have the horsepower isolation loneliness being the solo founder being the one person who is responsible for all of its failure fear of failure and then what I call implosion there we go oh no I have to do these again get there yeah implosion when things really get bad and really fall apart so I want to talk about each of these pieces because I want to outline what the poison is we're gonna study the poison together first one is anxiety so this is the real that plays in your mind when you are awake at 2:00 a.m. and your heart's beating fast

9:44and you can't breathe because you're really not sure if you have enough money to make payroll or if you have enough money to fund the next aspect of your startup these are the things that you can't control perhaps the what-ifs the shoulds the things that swirl in your mind and it you experience it in your body as well anxiety is a very embodied experience it's very very closely tied to long-term health problems when your mind won't stop your muscles get tense you get digestive problems you don't sleep well you have headaches people experience impulsive behavior increased heart rate irritability feeling frantic distracted seeking escape this is the

10:30fight-or-flight response and it's a really powerful important neurological capacity when you're being chased by a tiger but when you're spending years building a startup your body isn't meant to sustain that level of adrenaline that level of arousal so it becomes very dangerous to go very dangerous to your body very dangerous to your relationships and frankly you just can't think very straight so it's dangerous to your business to a study that looked at the relationship between or the the level of anxiety and founders looked at the level of anxiety in encounters as well as their spouses and found both founders and their spouses to experience significantly greater levels

11:22of anxiety than non entrepreneurial families so the other piece of this is that what you are embarking on is a shared experience for the people that love you for the people around you which kind of I think ups the stakes so there's some poison in it for you and for them of course anxiety is not all bad it helps us to be awake it helps us to be alert this is the yerkes-dodson principle when anxiety or aroud physiological arousal is at a certain level we see it ooh laser pointer we see it peak here performance peaks there but when the anxiety becomes two months per much

12:13performance begins to plummet so some anxiety fine great you're doing something important you're doing something hard of course you're gonna be like a wake about it but when that anxiety begins to saturate you and overwhelm you your brain no longer functions effectively and it's not helpful to keep powering through when you're flooded with anxiety so if anxiety is sort of this sense of being like on fire and unable to turn away and like totally absorbed and kind of swimming in the ups and downs the troubles of your app burnout sort of happens on the other end of the spectrum burnout is this sense of emotional exhaustion I can't care anymore

13:04I have no more FS to give it's often accompanied by cynicism this is when you are like irate at your customers you sort of learn to hate your customers because they just want from you things that they maybe you can't perfectly provide or they're tweeting about you in ways that feel unfair and unkind you become cynical and you begin to feel what you're doing has no point that it's all of this effort that you're putting in is is for nothing a lost sense of efficacy so burnout is when the flame kind of begins to to go out but here you are halfway through a startup or having a little baby company

13:49and you're exhausted and tired and there's no more energy and there's a little point of poison I'm glad someone mentioned this because I think one of the things that might drive all of the other mental health problems drive some of the anxiety drive some of the burnout drives some of the other aspects of poison that we're talking about I think it really might come down to isolation there's this whole new body of research into the health consequences of loneliness so people who are lonely literally do not live as long as people who are not lonely when you control for all kinds of other health factors etc

14:40and most of you in this room are doing startups relatively by yourselves maybe you have some programmers who work for you or you hire out some marketing and design but especially at the beginning this is your baby it is your thing it lives in your head it is a product of your blood sweat and tears and you are the one who is responsible for whether it succeeds or not and that's scary and it's isolating no one cares as much as you do I love my husband I'm super proud of him I have been part of the conversations and involved in the whole journey for the last 17 years of this

15:24startup life but I don't care as much as he cares let's be honest it lives in him in in his head and and I can be a good partner to have but I just don't care as much as he does so he's gonna carry that weight by himself

15:42I'm so glad that Jordan talked about this today because this is again one of these essential pieces of how do you cope with this day in and day out and this is our experience of failure because as Jordan talked about failure is inevitable nothing is going to go according to plan nothing is going to work the way that you want it to there will be big F's and little F's big fails and little fails but the way that you talk to yourself about what's happening when you have a setback is incredibly important the way that you cope with how it feels when the thing that you're

16:22pouring yourself into doesn't love you back doesn't do what you're asking it to do do you feel ashamed do you stop talking about it do you not tell anyone do you build a narrative about yourself that says I'm just not good at this or do you ignore it all together and kind of brush it under the rug and fail to listen to it or pay attention to it failure should be at the sort of front of our minds all the time not because it's the thing that we're afraid of per se but because it's the thing that we know is part of the process and open your eyes and see it

17:02coming it's a lot easier to deal with the poison when you know the poison and you have some immunity to it one of the reasons that I do this work and spend time with founders and you know leave my cushy clinical practice is because I've seen this go terribly wrong I've seen it go terribly wrong where people's lives fall apart people lose their families people lose their businesses people lose their lives and I want to not let that happen anymore I want to create a culture of technologists or a founders or of entrepreneurs or however you want to describe yourselves I want to create a culture of people who are really able

17:53to be well and want to be well and want to live a full and whole life outside of just selling and getting more customers that's good too but the risks are real we are vulnerable creatures we can get hurt we can break and sometimes when you go all-in when you fall in love with this company with this idea and you do everything that you can to create it and to make it sometimes it just doesn't work out and I want people to know that that's a recoverable experience the worst case scenario it all doesn't work out is still a recoverable experience so now that I have thoroughly depressed you

18:40which is what I tends to do in my talks apparently yesterday I talked a lot about death so this is gonna be better [Music] the truth is that we know that there's sort of poison everywhere right we we could be talking about you becoming a physician or you opening a mechanic shop it's all hard there's just different iterations of what's hard so let's take a moment and if you will if you feel comfortable to do so just close your eyes for a second where you are because one of the best superpowers that I can give you as a mental health professional is something your body already knows how

19:27to do so put your feet flat on the floor put your hands in your lap or beside you or just on the table in front of you somewhere where they're supported where you feel comfortable just notice like a moment of silence

20:00and then pay attention to how the oxygen enters your body coming in through your nostrils sort of traveling down the back of your throat imagine it traveling down your neck through your chest all the way down under your ribcage maybe all the way down to your belly button see if you can get that oxygen all the way down there maybe let your belly expand when you inhale and then let's reverse it as you're ready to exhale pull your belly button in towards your spine and let that carbon dioxide reverse direction and travel all the way up through your ribs through your neck the back of your

20:48throat out your nose and do that a couple times maybe slowing your breath so that it takes four counts in four counts out counting in your head slowing everything down

21:37there's a little bit of magic in stillness

21:45notice what's happening in your body maybe you're sinking a little bit more into that chair maybe your heart is actually slowing down a little bit so when you're ready you can kind of wiggle around in your body and come back open your eyes

22:16sometimes I'm afraid after I could do my talks that people are gonna be like that lady just told us that we should breathe and maybe that that's what you say that's fine but it you guys it is it is a super power if you can learn to do that well if you can identify when you need to calm your body down and just slow everything down that way four breaths four seconds in four seconds out we'll turn the table on how you're physiologically experiencing anxiety so deep breathing is sort of this like new area of research in in mental health and we know that deep breathing improves

23:02heart brain and digestive function it stimulates the immune system and it helps to regulate mood decrease anxiety and maybe even alters the expression of genes there's a new study that came out in science actually read about it today that's trying to I'd done it where it did identify this little set of neurons right here in the back of our brains and those little set of neurons appear to be the kind of like rain emergency response alarm bell and they are triggered by respiration so as your breathing changes this little posse of neurons shoots information to the rest of the brain sort of about the status like uh-oh

23:53we're breathing fast breathing shallow we got an emergency here and the brain then responds accordingly

24:03so how do you win the battle of wits you have to build immunity you have to Train you have to get yourself ready to do something hard and you have to do this in multiple dimensions of your life in your body and your mind and your self and in your relationships so breathing is one of those skills that if you can just remember to do it I promise it will help you here's another one I know that some of you are into marketing so I have like a marketing question how much do you think I could get people to pay for a product that improves memory improves

24:53concentration decreases excessive eating improves mood builds immunity decreases accidents and mistakes improves productivity improves skin clarity and extends life does that sound like a really good thing to sell on Amazon do you think I would make a lot of money doing that if I could bottle it up who knows what I'm talking about sleep so sometimes you might find yourself saying why do I feel so terrible and your body will say cuz coffee is not a meal eat a vegetable sleep and you're like I don't know why I guess I'll never know and your body's like oh my god if you battle your body you will lose if you don't let

25:57your body and your health be part of the superpower of what you bring to your startup you are missing a major asset if you abuse your body weeks months years on end you will decrease your productivity you will be irritable and unpleasant and you'll be ugly so for reals so do this thing well by not shortchanging what you already know you need you can make lots of sacrifices for your startup I get it you love it like a baby I did this whole talk yesterday about the neuroscience behind how deeply attached people are to their startups I get it you will do crazy things for this

26:51company that you love fine but please eat and sleep while you're doing that and maybe drink water let's go a little bit deeper here part of this work is really understanding your own self your own capacity to do hard things but it's about being self reflective about knowing your blind spots about knowing what kind of customer is likely to help facilitate you being irrational and terrible and knowing what kind of customers your sweet spot because some you want to pursue and some maybe not so much so really knowing how you can best utilize your own internal assets to be successful so part of that is figuring

27:39out wow what kind of person am I am I paying attention to what's going on inside of you and I talked about this about like having an inner life having a capacity to be self-reflective what does it look like inside of you is it sort of like dry and crusty and uninteresting like a place of like a potential murder scene or sorry I was just what's what's the movie with Walter White the show Breaking Bad yeah okay it isn't like Breaking Bad in your world or when you think about what's happening inside of you is there some life in there are you aware of your own

28:22interesting thoughts are you aware of your own emotional life are you taking care a sort of tending that are you keeping it well watered self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it when things get very difficult if you have a deep sense of your own value and your own desire to preserve and take good care of your own soul in her life emotional well-being you'll have that much more energy to protect something that's important to you so how might one do this the first thing that goes into creating an inner life is to pay attention or as y'all

29:22might say track your personal metrics cultivate self-reflection pay attention to how you're doing so some personal metrics you might pay attention to are noticing the highs and lows in your day in your life what do you really love what are your sweet spots what pieces of your work your family experience your day-to-day life really kind of infuse you with nrj where do you feel good and satisfied and where do you not what pieces of your work of your business of your family of your existence kind of take joy from you where are you like oh you're dreading it you hate it it sucks so knowing knowing pay

30:15attention where am i alive and where am I feeling dead and numb and bored allows you to be able to choose hey how can I get more aliveness how can I readjust things so that I am living in my sweet spot more and how can I begin to let go of some of the things that are consistently showing up on my low point scale so I have a friend named Kari and we talked most Sunday nights and we review our highs and our lows from our week and we've been doing this for years now and we just take little notes and sort of jot down and we notice

30:55patterns in each other's lives over time and one of the things that was really powerful for me in this kind of practice tracking these personal metrics was to realize that week after a week after a week I was really irritated about some very specific parts of my job as a professor I really hated faculty meetings I really hated grading I really there was a whole pile of things that were just on that I really hate this list and overtime tracking this data looking at the data over time I was like I don't think I should be doing this job I'm not actually happy doing this job and I'm not sure that I

31:41would have gotten there had I not been tracking this overtime because it was the job that I trained for I went to school for a very long time I was gonna be an academic I was gonna write papers and you know do all the stuff and it was super hard to walk away from that until I realized like I'm just listening to my own self okay so what I don't like this job now I know that I can change it but if you're not paying attention you'll never know if you're not paying attention you'll never know so another thing to maybe record is to look at your

32:15mood look at sleep look at your energy level if you're someone who maybe struggles a little bit with some depression or irritability or you kind of feel that you're someone who gets pulled into the ups and downs of life and you feel like moods that go along with that pay attention to what tends to trigger those there was those lower moods for you or what tends to be associated with sleeplessness for you just begin to notice how your life takes shape within you or sort of shapes how your body is doing another thing to maybe pay attention to and I think Brennan does this we talked

32:56about it on a podcast awhile ago is to simply like notice what you did in your week hey this is what I set out to accomplish this week this is what I did this week but also jot down a little note about how you felt about that activity so you're associating again taking in all of this information about these are the things that I'm spending my life doing do I like them or not because you would be surprised how easy it is to live out a whole life and really not pay attention to whether you're having a good time and I'm not a hedonist I don't think that we should do

33:29everything just because it feels good and we want to have a good time but we do only have one shot at this experience so we might as well do the best we can to have as much sort of joy and goodness in our lives as we can another thing that is sort of this superpower within the understanding of what it means to be psychologically well is to practice gratitude it is really easy as a founder especially early on to know all of the things that need to be done and all of the things that aren't right yet and all of the things on your to-do list and

34:05that kind of pressure can feel really like crappy and overwhelming but if you just notice one or two things that were like hey well this is good I'm grateful for this this was a win today then that can have a really nice counterbalancing effect to the weight of all of the to do's and all of the things that are maybe not working the way that you want them to be balanced in your assessment of how it's going notice the positive things write them down make it valuable enough for you to have a positive emotional experience that you're going to spend the time paying attention and just observe you don't have to judge you

34:48don't have to sort of be critical of yourself for not having more fun doing the thing that you thought would be fun it's not fun it doesn't matter just notice it don't get all uptight about it don't tell yourself that you should feel differently than you do just take in the day your science people right so a lot of this is about anxiety mastery it's about minimizing the things that make you crazy minimizing the things that will eat up your resources needlessly and being very proactive about how you manage the hard things the things that create anxiety for you so like I said you're noticing anxiety pay

35:35attention track the metrics notice what brings you anxiety look around be really again kind of data-driven identify the internal and external causes of anxiety so anxiety can be caused by things that are happening around you in your life anxiety can because it are caused by things that are happening within you in your body and in your mind fear of failure that causes a lot of anxiety if you're feeling like you're waking up in the middle of the night and you're thinking about the what if what if what if pay attention to that that's a source of anxiety that you can do something about isolate the solvable make a list

36:12these are the things that are stressing me out I can get rid of this one I can give that to someone else problem solve and if the things that you can't control because we all know there's lots of things that cause a lot of anxiety and stress and unhappiness in our lives that we just can't do anything about once you've noticed okay this is really tough but I have no wiggle room here I like have to parent this particular kid I'm in can't undo that just kidding I love my kids um then we have a conversation about how do you cope with it if you can't change it how do you feel

36:48differently about it use stress to fuel motivation use stress to help you feel alive and get done don't let it beat you up remember that curve get the right amount of like energy on arousal so that you're not falling down on to the other side of the mountain where you can no longer function well one of the strategies that Rob and I have talked a lot about on this end founder podcast or that we have cultivated in our own lives is to practice regular retreats to spend a couple of weekends a year unplugged separate from everything because we have found that it's very difficult to cultivate this self-awareness it's very

37:41difficult to do this internal assessment of like ah how are things going with me when we're in the midst of the day-to-day tasks that just need to get done the people that need to be taking care of the things that are on our to-do list so actively taking time to step away from the grind in order to do the really deep question of like what do what do I want in my life how is it going what are my goals this is not a vacation I can't stress this enough this is not like I'm gonna go sit on the beach and have a mai tai this is

38:17like a really intense in or work it's a time in it's a time when you step into the bigger questions of yourself and the bigger questions of your business and you do the really hard work of asking like am i okay and if not what do I need to do to be okay it's very focused

38:41we all have lots and lots of choices to make about how we spend our time and who we're going to be and we can't make those choices if we're not paying attention so we're always asking what matters to you what's important to you what do you need to stay alive most of us in addition to sleep food water need human connection we are very very relational creatures even those of us that are introverts and really don't actually like people very much we need people we don't need lots of friends we don't need to be the cool kid at the club but we need a couple of

39:33people that care about us that we care about that we're connected to it's an essential part of life it's also super helpful in your business you come to a place like micro coffe because there are other people they get it there are other people who are either a little behind you a little ahead of you but they have different ideas they have different experiences you can learn from them you can teach them you can contribute and there's this beautiful reciprocity that happens when we allow other people to really be in our lives in ways that are very productive for us as humans but also really important for us in our

40:13businesses so if you don't have a crew if you don't have a circle of people who help you to counterbalance the isolation that goes into being a founder you really should not leave Micro Kampf without putting that in place in some way so that can be a mastermind group that can be sort of monthly hangout with other business owners or founders who are in your city it could be virtual it can be in person but you need a place where you can sort of talk about this stuff because the burdens are too heavy for most of us to carry by ourselves over the long run we need some mother

40:55ideas some other information some camaraderie who is your feedback loop who's helping you decide when you're doing well or not doing well who's helping you decide I guess who's weighing in on your important decisions with you everything has been figured out except how to live you are using your creativity and your intelligence your technical skills your marketing skills your language all of all of you to build this business but you're also using all of that to build a life and I think it's really easy especially at the beginning starting your business is like having a baby like nobody is really doing that well like it's all very exciting and

41:59you're sort of in love but it is intense and there's like I think Jordan described it as brute force you're just making yourself do the next thing and that's all fine and good because you're doing something that you love and it's important to you but don't forget to have an integrated life don't forget there are lots of parts of you that need to get fed you can't only feed the business people talk about work-life balance and I don't really like that term anymore because it sort of assumes that you're trying to like level it out or even it out between your personal life and your selfhood and your business

42:39and I just I don't never really experienced that but I like this idea of work-life integration where whatever you're doing just be present in that throw yourself into that and I think this is the antithesis of multitasking so you don't have to balance it all out you don't have to say okay 20 hours a week on my business and then 20 hours a week with my kids and then 20 hours a week in our life doesn't work like that my schedule doesn't work like that take that pressure off but just be aware that whatever you're doing throw yourself in the all-in in that particular piece of your life and

43:17create spaces for all of the parts of you to be important time to play time to be in relationship time to hang out with your friends time to go on a bike ride and maybe you're saying hey I'm not gonna like hang out with my friends that much right now because I'm really working on my business great just schedule it schedule it in in a couple weeks don't let it die altogether don't let the pieces of you die in service of your business so coming back to this idea that this is very hard and I think hopefully I've sort of made the point that one of the things that makes

43:58this easier is having some camaraderie about this because the things that are hard make you special because your founders and you're making something unique you're building something but you're also not special sorry because the challenges that you have are like 85% the challenges of everybody else in this room so you don't get to say other people don't understand you don't get to isolate and cave up and say no one gets me because that's people will get you if you let them in this is hard we are imperfect people we don't do this right all the time nobody lives perfectly and it's very hard to start a

44:47business that is fueled by you but it's also a really great life so if you can stick with it if you can figure out how to make it sustainable for your body for your mind for your relationships for your family it's a good life and you should love it and love that you have the privilege of being able to do it little mental health moments the doctor in me how do you know when you need help when things are going so badly that like intervention is needed when you have a big change in energy sleep or appetite probably time to see your doctor when you find yourself crossing the line

45:36where you are when you lose your mind and yell at your kid or you have like a Twitter rage situation with a customer when you snap at someone or when you you know when you are more aggressive and mean than you normally are when you feel really unable to focus or shift your thoughts and that tends to go on for a long time when you're we call it for separating your thoughts our purse reviewer than without you they won't stop they won't be altered when you find yourself saying I'm just not myself when you are noticing that apathy and sadness flat mood feeling numb that stays with you for a long time

46:29couple weeks and when voices about self-harm begin to speak with authority and I say this very specifically because the truth is this that many people have scary thoughts many people have thoughts of like wow I just it would be easier if I wasn't here anymore that's not that special or unusual of a thought to have but when that thought or that voice in your head begins to get really specific about how to enact that situation or begins to get really loud and clear and authoritative then it is time to tell someone it is time to reach out to someone to get some help to see a doctor

47:19to go to an ER to phone a friend's because we can't afford to lose any more of us there are incredible amazing creative cool people in this room and we need we as a society we as a micro calm we as whatever community you want to break it down to we need all of us so we have to figure out how to keep everybody we can't leave any brothers behind or sisters so I want you to like feel in yourself both the heaviness and the hardness of this but also how much of a badass you are for doing it because you're doing hard things it's like you have hard

48:05things for breakfast you're tough you're capable people like you you can breathe through it you can work through it if you just let yourself slow down and calm down and keep at it then you will know that you are not someone to be trifled with and people need to know that I really love oh I'm gonna do it I wanna do the thing in Rob stock he cried I really love I mean to micro cops I really love coming to micro calm because it really is sort of the culmination of everything that we've done right in our lives to decide to do hard things to decide to do them

48:56together to decide to make a life that more or less makes us happy and we find to be meaningful and then to see all of you kind of on your own place in that kind of journey is really really exciting so thank you for letting me kind of lava about mental health stuff for a while and if I can be helpful to any of you in any way there's my info and that is the end of my slides [Applause] thank you so much I really like the idea of the in retreat that we called it time in time in thank you do you have a framework for that I have an e-book haha

49:52I'll get on your mailing list thank you

50:05thanks for sharing all the things you did I think we all appreciate that what do you see in the founder community with regards like substance abuse as techniques for dealing a lot of this stuff I mean I know you mentioned a lot of things that obviously wood drives I don't think I mentioned substance abuse today oversight on my part what do you see a pattern there do you see I don't know yeah I mean I think um I think many many people who have intense jobs try to regulate the intensity of their emotions by using substances so caffeine to wake up alcohol to shut down that's super super

50:46common um and it's a really easy slippery slope into I can't function without my second third fourth glass of scotch each night I can't people believe that they can't sleep even though alcohol does not help you sleep it messes up your sleep but there can easily become sort of a psychological dependence on something that helps you to calm down I think that's a really probably big problem within the founder community and I'm glad you brought it up on the other side I you know some people also can abuse substances to help them stay awake and focus and work longer than probably they should I tend to feel like your

51:26your body is pretty wise and if you listen to what your body is telling you about like I really need to sleep or I really need to move then those kinds of things are really more helpful healthy long-term sustainable strategies then to sort of regulate chemically I'm not fan of like the life hack stuff that has a lot of kind of up-down regulation that's artificial personally and one more what do you think about the impact of physical activity to manage stress and if you think it's positive how often do you do you have to do it I think it's perfect yeah there's a great there's one

52:12very like well-known robust research study that I know that looks at just 20 minutes of cardio cardio activity I think it was three times a week for mild depression and I want to be really clear about that for mild depression that level of exercise so three times twenty minutes each was as effective at sort of alleviating symptoms of depression as a low-grade like prozac or antidepressant medication so first things first if you are not feeling well paying attention to what's happening in your body sleep eat move that is like the first level of intervention for any kind of feeling not okay that should always be first yeah that's not always sufficient

53:00so again you know there are times when medication is important and professional help is important so I would never ever want to try to communicate like just eat sleep and exercise it away because that's often helpful at the beginning and can be great for people who are struggling sort of at that low grade level but anything that I can do to communicate to all of you that mental health professionals are cool and helpful and you should maybe see one I want to sing that song too so mental health professionals are cool and helpful and honestly you might want to at least like have one in your back

53:41pocket because all high performing professionals need a safe place to like let it all out sometimes and it's much better for you to pay someone like me than it is for you to really unload on your on your spouse or on your friend in a way that becomes too burdensome to them so I'm out of time but I will happily talk about this in workshops with people [Applause] [Music] you