#388: How to Eliminate Stress

Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast, where our goal is to help you increase

your reputations a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability

to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results.

Hi, I'm Perry Holly, a Maxwell Leadership Facilitator and Coach.

And I'm Chris Cody, Executive Vice President with Maxwell Leadership.

Welcome and thank you for joining.

I want to encourage you to go to Maxwellleadership.com slash executive podcast there.

You'll see that there's a link to the blog that'll go along with this podcast.

You can download the learner guide right there, or you can actually leave us a thought,

a question that we can unpack in a future episode.

Well, today's topic is titled How to Eliminate Stress.

Wow, that didn't bring him running.

I can't wait to hear what Perry's got in store for us.

Today, it's going to be amazing, but it's about really trying to figure out really what's the

source that's driving the stress.

How do you eliminate stress at the source of what you're dealing with, not just managing the

symptoms that we all have around the stress?

And so this big idea comes from Travis Bradbury, shared by George Stern on LinkedIn,

and it hits leaders like right where we are.

Like if you say that to me, I think all of us go, I get it.

Yeah, me too.

I feel that type of stress.

So really the secret in beating it and we're going to unpack this today is,

is how do we become proactive in the things that we're doing?

It's not just about your mindset.

It's actually about how you design your day and what does that structure look like?

And so if your calendar is packed, like each one of us are, then so is your nervous system.

And so it's a leadership issue.

It's not your personality issue.

And John Maxwell says, I love this.

You don't manage time, you manage your priorities.

And so if you don't protect your priorities,

then stress is going to show up.

Perry, I cannot wait for you to tell me how we're going to eliminate stress.

Well, I've been worried about you.

I'm lost.

Yeah.

Yes.

People say, how do you manage stress?

Do I look stressed?

I mean, do I, but I don't feel it like I guess some people might,

but this was helpful to me.

Some of us hide it better than others.

We all have it.

Right.

Yeah.

But before we go to the practical, I definitely want to give you some practical ideas,

but the authors kind of laid the ideas out in three areas to kind of frame the discussion.

Number one was that calm is, is designed.

It's not reactive.

And so I think this one really hit me was low stresses and something you rise to,

to come up to, in the moment, it's, it's an invisible kind of preparation for things

and that you can't just be reactive.

The more reactive you are, the more stress you're going to feel.

I believe that.

I think so.

Yeah.

The second thing they brought up was that stress comes from friction, not workload.

This one was really surprising to me because calm leaders aren't doing less.

They're just switching less back and forth the things that are coming and going.

And the switching costs they talked about, rush transitions, decision fatigue.

That's kind of where stress lives.

And John teaches that energy not time is the leader's most valuable asset.

So I think what I took from this was, it's not doing a lot of work this stresses me out.

It's kind of doing the wrong kind of work, or work that's not fulfilling,

or work this outside of my, my area.

Number three, they talked about white space is a leadership signal.

And this was when leaders protect margin, they communicate that they have boundaries,

they, you know, they control, they have them long term thinking.

And I thought that was so impressive.

I'm going to do next week's podcast on margin.

I just thought this was something my wife challenged me on about 20 years ago.

And I struggled a big time with putting margin into my day.

So you're going to need somebody else to help you with that.

Yeah, I think we are both.

Yeah, I see your calendar.

Yeah, but we'll get to that next week.

Yeah.

Well, so let's look at some of these fractical secrets as Perry kind of set that up for us,

of people who never seem stressed.

Now they probably are, but, but they have a little bit of stress.

So this one has your name written all over it.

It prepped the night before.

I, I, I, preparation is a leadership behavior because it does protect what Perry was saying,

but it protects how much you are reacting throughout the day,

throughout a situation, throughout a meeting, whatever.

And, and as you plan and you prepare, it can have a little bit more structure.

And if not, and it's chaos, and you kind of feel like you're playing catch up all the

single, I know that's something that would, would drive stress.

John says it with the phrase of you're either preparing or repairing.

Oh, man.

And that could be a meeting or relationship, your day, your schedule.

And so make sure that you are preparing for what's coming up and, and you're spending time

preparing for all that you have to do the next day.

And I know for you, and why I thought about you immediately is that, you know,

all the way back to one of our lessons we did with

Tuesday's coming, right?

Like you know it, you know when you're with clients, you know when you're coaching calls,

you spend time preparing, you have a schedule in the morning of, of, you know,

preparing and, and it just helps reduce this distress when that moment arrives.

A few weeks ago, I had a, some of my calendar that you and I were doing together,

but neither one of us had really talked about it.

It tends to do it.

But I, but seven, eight days in advance, we started like, what's that about?

And what do they expect?

And that preparation, I would have been freaking out.

A little bit like, you put me in front of an audience.

I don't really know doing what I don't know.

No, I have time.

And so I was able to, uh, to prepare for that.

So I think it lowers that level of, and I noticed that preparing,

repairing comes from today matters.

John's book, I swore I'd never read it.

And then somebody said, you need it.

So I read it and it changed my life.

But about how, John says, your success is determined by your daily agenda.

So what are you doing today?

Are you repairing from all the things you didn't do yesterday?

Are preparing for what's to come and then preparing for what's to come?

Is what helps bring the stress level down.

Number two was always arrive early.

And I was known for coming in on two wheels, uh, late in a hurry, you know,

hair on fire and, um, stress just flies from that.

It says, I'm just, I'm not prepared.

I'm not, uh, I'm not on time.

Those types of things.

And that event that we're talking about, you and I, you know, we arrived,

I think 40 minutes, 30 minutes early.

Yeah.

And then we, that gave us time.

And then people had things going on.

You and I were calm because we, we had done some prep.

And we got there on time with plenty of time to get set up and to go with it.

So I think you can start to calm, invite calm in when you said,

I'm prepared and I'm early to do that.

That sounds so basic.

Yeah.

But it's true.

It's, it's 101, but we don't do it.

Yeah.

We're not prepared and we come in fast and come in hot.

I'm not, yeah, I'm going to be stressing.

And even a benefit of that in this example, uh, was that we were able to gain

some additional intel that helped you.

That was big.

Yeah.

Set up the content because we were there.

We didn't come flying in and, and whatnot.

So it's good.

Number three is schedule what matters.

If it's a priority to you, but it's not on your calendar,

at least in my world, it just feels like that's not a priority.

And so I need to make sure that everything I have with appointments,

think time, project time, downtime, my calendar is blocked out.

Now, you then have to follow through with what's on there.

That's something I've had to learn over time too,

is I'm going to schedule it.

I've created tension.

I just got to keep it on the schedule because it matters.

You know, tell me this before I go to number four.

Just thinking about, we said it upright.

They say, why does this even matter?

Why is your stress level or how you show stress level affect your leadership?

I mean, the reason I brought this is that I'm thinking some of the people

I've worked for over the years were here on fire out of control.

And I was not influenced positive by that.

I kind of back off and are they a wreck getting ready to happen?

Or are they in control of their surroundings and themselves?

Is it self-management, self-leadership that makes you have more influence

than the audience?

You see that?

And don't you say that you're making everyone feel something?

And so you know it.

When someone's stressed, you can feel it.

You can sense it.

So how approachable do they feel?

Right?

Like how?

And so I think the fact that you're making people feel something

and it's contagious.

We're talking about this too.

You should be contagious.

And so the last thing I want is for my team to be

you know, leveled up and stressed

when they don't have to be.

And so yeah, I think you're making them feel something.

You gotta be aware of that.

And then it's contagious.

So then all of a sudden they're going to start being that way as well.

Almost contagious.

And if you're, it's always anxiety.

Yeah.

If I'm watching my leader, they're freaking out.

Maybe I should be freaking out.

Yeah.

But oh no, I don't want to, I don't want to be passing this on

to the team to do that.

Number four, I just wrote down like, reset quickly.

So if you do find yourself that, you know, this isn't a,

I'm never going to be stressed.

I'm never going to be freaking out.

I'm never going to be anxious.

But when I find myself there, is there something that resets me

and that I can go to?

Is it a walker, get up and walk around the building one time?

Is it go get a cup of coffee?

Is it go sit down and talk to a trusted friend?

Is it, you know, go listen to some music during lunch hour?

What is it that helps reset you and makes you calm?

And this, I was thinking about it for me was,

I tend to want to just get up and go walk.

Yeah.

And if I'm can walk and maybe they'll talk to myself a little bit,

but I don't, I don't really want to be around others.

Do you know what it is?

Yeah.

What do you say?

So for me, it is being by myself.

Yeah.

Right?

Which it's interesting is you think about my personality.

I can come across as extroverted by, I'm right in the middle.

And so I can go either way.

And for me, it is to just, just to have some, some self-time quiet,

nobody around similar.

Obviously what you're talking about with the, with walking around.

I would also say too, I love being outside

when the weather's appropriate, right?

To be able to do that.

And, but you got to figure it out to your point,

figure it out what it is that can reset you.

It's a breathing technique.

All kinds of things that it could be.

It's a secret.

Yeah, for you.

Yeah, for you.

The next one is, and I'm going to laugh by this one,

keep one list because I mean, I am notorious for sticking notes

and give me that paper and, oh, now I'm using a remarkable

and I'm going to send myself an email.

And so, man, what I found is that I have to,

the kind of reset, I have to take all of my notes

sometimes when I'm moving fast and then I have to put them

in one place.

And when I know that they're there and I've cleaned up all

the scrap paper and put that reduces my level of stress.

And so, it's so true, right?

So, how do we keep one list?

And for me, the importance of keeping a list

is getting it out of my brain and getting it out of my head.

Because if not, I'm thinking about it.

I don't want to forget about it, right?

And so, your brain is created to help solve problems

and to creatively think.

It's not created to store a ton of information.

And, I mean, I don't know about you,

but the older I get, the harder it's getting

to keep all that stuff stored up in there.

So, I got to get it out.

I'm just saying, I'm just saying,

I don't know if you're there yet, but I feel that.

You're a child.

But that leads into another one that this is,

it's called it Capture Your Input.

And this is probably David Allen

and getting things done type of stuff from years ago.

But, saying that, like you said,

I've got all this stuff coming at me.

I've got text messages, I've got emails,

I've got phone calls and voice messages.

I've got people stopping by the door

and jumping into your office and sliding into my DM.

Can I say that right?

Can I say that right?

I'm not that twice today already.

I'm proud of you.

That's so good.

I've never said it ever.

And I've said it twice in one day.

Trying to remember things is dangerous

because it adds stress because then you just hit on it.

Your brain is trained to close loops.

This is David Allen.

Close loops.

And if I have an open loop,

like you'll do this, don't forget to take the trash out.

Don't forget to take the trash out.

Don't forget to take the trash out.

Your brain keeps going until you say,

I'm writing it on a sticky right next to the,

on the kitchen counter, it says, don't forget to take it.

Now my brain can let that go.

I can close that loop.

And so I'm capturing my inputs

and keeping one list.

You and I both have gone to electronic paper.

We've gone to electronic notebooks.

And I struggled with that at once.

But I had files everywhere.

I had paper everywhere.

I had sticky notes.

I had to do it now.

I just opened up my remarkable.

I put it in there.

I can search on it.

It's there.

I know it's captured.

So by you making the list one list,

capturing your inputs, closing the loops in your head,

it brings your stress level down to, I know it's all captured.

I know I didn't have to remember that.

I didn't, what am I forgetting?

I didn't forget anything because it's written down.

It's written down.

Yeah.

Number seven is, man, how do you choose your top three?

I think this is so important.

Not your easiest three, but your top three.

And for me, most of my days will fall apart

because I've just had way too much to do.

And then I get to the end of the day.

And I don't really even feel like I completed anything.

How many of you felt that way?

Well, that's because there's no, like, for me,

what I realized, no finish line.

If I knew that I would say, okay,

these are the three things I've got to get done.

Back to David Allen getting things done.

The three most important and then one must, he says, right?

And so everything else is not as urgent as those things.

And we got to make sure we focus on,

if you do that, you go, man, I feel like I cross the finish line today.

Even though we know we're going to get up tomorrow

and there's going to be a ton of work there.

And so the other thing is I, you know,

with the highs and how our matrix, when you look at this

and you start talking about the urgent, what's important

and what do you focus on

and where your priorities try to still it down, right?

To, hey, what are the three most important and one must

that I do and then knock that out

so that you feel like you accomplish something?

Well, I had a yesterday.

I was, I had something I wanted to do.

But I had something that I was required to do.

And I had a deadline.

And something I had to get done.

And I knew I needed to get done.

But I was really enjoying working on something

that I could use down the road somewhere.

But it was a little creative moment.

And I really had to kind of call myself on it

because what's going to happen is,

I'm going to play with the thing that I wanted to play with.

The day's going to end.

I'm going to be required to be at the dinner table

and be with the family.

Now, now I've, instead of preparing,

I'm now going to be repairing tomorrow

having to do the thing I should have done.

Yeah.

Which is going to raise my stress level,

raise my anxiety level

when I should have just done the right thing,

the priority thing.

This is the problem with these lists

that we make these to-do lists

is that they're not in priority order.

That's right.

They're in random.

I just thought that I wrote it down.

And then when I have a moment, what should I do?

I look over there.

I don't, do I go to the most important thing?

No.

I go the easiest thing.

I want to scratch that.

I mean, I want to scratch something off.

But it raises my stress level

because now I've got important things

that are hanging out there.

So this is this three most important in one must.

It frees you.

Are you ever going to get all the work done in the day?

No.

No, it's always going to show up.

It's all going to be more and more.

And so I just say, if I start my day with an idea,

actually what I do is I close my day.

I'm not my desk, but I have index cards.

I just grab an index card

and I really look real quickly.

I might to do list and my calendar

and what's coming.

I've been planning for a week or more

about what I-

and what are the three most important things

I need to get done tomorrow?

And then I'll just circle one of them.

This is that's my must.

The must gets done probably before 10 AM

because the more I can get past 10 AM,

the more my day gets out of control.

You know all about that.

And so if-

But then if I don't get any of the other things

that I would list done,

I look at that so did I get my three most important?

Yes, I'm okay.

I can go home, have an enjoyable evening

and get up tomorrow and come back

and do my next three most important things.

Will the list ever be empty?

No.

Will I ever get it all done?

No.

But I will have gotten the most important things done.

And that was what relieves this pressure off of me.

It says, I'm so far behind.

I'm never, Chris is going to call me

and I'm not going to have it.

Well, why don't you have it?

Because I was playing, you know,

Marjoram or something like that.

I'm going to-

Yeah, I love it.

I was going to play Marjoram.

No, I'm sure you weren't.

All right, number nine.

Leading into this, one of the things

that Perry and I talk a lot about

is the fact that, hey,

what are the things that you're doing

that only you can be doing

for your team and for the organization?

And this one is in alignment with that,

which is, how do you protect the deep work, right?

How do you protect the stuff

that where you're creating value

for the organization and the team

and your thinking and you're innovating?

Things that can't be delegated,

like you've got to protect that.

You got to block that time

and you got to make sure

that you are making a little bit of progress

in that that you're taking the next step

that you're thinking on it.

If I'm just like you mentioned,

like if I go through on my day

and I'm just doing the busy work

and then I get home, I'm like,

you know what, I'm going to spend some time

tonight getting in my deep work.

Road to hell was paid with good attention.

I get home and I'm, I eat and maybe I work out.

I'm like, you know, I'm like, what?

No, but also if you're super disciplined

and you eat and then you go get your laptop out

and start doing deep work.

I mean, what, what a message you send it.

Now I stress for a whole nother reason.

Yeah, well, yes.

And maybe more stuff for me.

More stuff for that time.

Yeah, and so you got to protect your time.

And it's hard to do you schedule time with yourself.

And you know, things kind of jump on your calendar

and people want, but I give that away.

No, I can reschedule it,

but I need to keep the time with myself

because that's when I do my work out of the leader once.

I said, you're on every call.

He was a very senior guy.

You're on every call all day long, you're on your phone.

I don't, when do you do your, you take to do's?

When do you do your to do's?

He said, I schedule it.

I go, I can't even get lunch because I scheduled that too.

What?

I didn't, that's why I'm not getting lunch

because I don't block time.

And so by blocking the time, I said,

I don't have to stress about not getting things done

because I know I've got time coming up to get things done.

That's good.

Now, the temptation there is going to be

that people are going to steal those,

you're going to give away those slots

because nobody knows you canceled the call, but you.

Yeah, no, no.

I don't have a rule rule.

I can't cancel, I can only reschedule.

Yeah, I can give you 30 minutes.

Now I'm going to take 30 minutes later to do something else.

But if our viewers at home,

if you were keeping a scorecard

that we skipped number eight.

So number eight says, sink your calendars.

This was huge for me because I said,

I have a weekly alignment.

I just noticed I have a calendar for my work

and my family has a calendar at home.

And maybe I have a calendar for something else.

You know, all these ways I track.

And so I started having Sunday night calendar talks,

we call it a time to have a calendar talk at our home

where I take my work calendar with all my commitments

and you know, we travel and we're about.

So I'm not, and she needs to know

when I'm not going to be there

and what she needs to plan for and all that.

But I also need to know what's coming up

with the family calendar.

Where are the kids going to be playing ball

when we're at the dance for sale?

Where does she have a lady's meeting

that she needs to go to that I need to cover

and all these things?

And so we mapped this out a month

to six weeks in advance.

And can things change?

Of course, they can change.

Do they flex?

Yes, of course, they flex.

But and then, but yeah, I got to go back and say,

I see when I committed that I could be here

then I have an opportunity to go

and speak of this thing.

What do you think about that?

And then she'll say, yes, I can move this and do that.

But by having different calendars,

there's a lot of surprises,

which then causes a lot of stress,

a lot of, you know, not on the same page.

And now my stress is going up at home and it work.

And so I just find, have one calendar,

but sync it with everybody else's calendar.

You may have kids that don't live at home.

I have kids aren't at home.

They have, they might be counting on me to do something.

We're all my commitments.

That's good.

So I can track all that to do that.

But let me, before I flip it to you to close,

the idea of these small things,

I'm going to tell you, if you listen to this podcast,

well, that was a bunch of easy stuff.

No, it's simple stuff, it's not easy.

That's right.

And it requires a lot of discipline and effort to say,

I'm going to reduce my stress and anxiety

because I'm going to take a few steps to self-manage

and decide once and manage daily how I'm going to do things.

Yeah, I think that some of these tips were,

I didn't just make them up, they came from a long life

of trying to figure out how to get it all done,

but not freak out about doing it, so.

I had the opportunity a couple weeks ago

to spend the morning with an organization

and we rolled out the resilience content.

We've talked about here and had Valerie on.

And again, I want to encourage you to go to the forum

and just put resilience in there.

If this is right for you or your team,

but it was a great conversation.

We get to one of the rules, right?

We're talking about, hey, what would the future self?

Thank you now for doing.

That's what you're talking about.

You like the preventive measures of being able to do that.

And what are those things instead of saying,

you know, I'm just going to keep playing the game

or I'm going to keep doing this.

I'm going to keep doing it.

Okay, you go ahead and do that,

but your future self is going to be under stress.

And that's what you're saying here.

And that's part of that resilience.

You know, a lot of times I think leaders

feel like stress is a badge of honor.

I got a lot going on, right?

No, it's a design flaw or discipline

that you don't have that even sometimes I don't have

that I fall back into that I need to make sure that I fix

because it's not about surviving chaos

because then your team feels that that we were just talking about

because it is contagious, right?

It's about creating clarity.

And we've said here that if you have lack of clarity

on what's priorities to you, what's driving stress for you,

then you're going to be confused.

And if you're confused, then you're going to have some failures

which we are going to call stress today.

So my challenge for you is I wrap up not only

to go and put resilience in the form

and so we can come help you and your team,

but also do you have clarity on what is causing you stress?

And we just gave you 10 items to go back and say,

I want you to self-assess where am I at on this?

Because I know Perry and I would sit here and say,

man, if we were to do that, there's some areas on here are pretty low.

We have systems in place, but maybe we get a little bit complacent.

So go back through and figure out, man,

where are the root causes of my stress?

And how do I make some changes so that your future self

will thank you for doing that?

Great catch on that one.

Thank you, Chris.

And as a reminder, if you'd like to learn the guide for this episode

or you'd like to learn more about our offerings,

especially that resilience offering,

you can do all that at MaxwellLeadership.com,

slash Executive Podcast.

You can also leave us a comment or a question there.

We love hearing from you.

Very grateful you spend this time with us.

That's all today from the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast.