 Good morning. Thank you for waking up early to come to this workshop. How many of you were in Nathan's workshop before this? Okay, let's just give him a sense of who's in the room. And how many of you are, run your own agency? Like have employees? Okay. Yep. How many of you are freelancers or solo folks? Work on your own? All right. And how many of you have a boss? We all have a boss somewhere or other. Somewhere. All right. Let me think. Why did you choose to come to this workshop? What are you hoping for? Because I have lots of things I can talk about, but let me make sure that I'm talking about what you need to hear. Any special requests or things that you want to make sure we mention? Yes. I'm here for techniques. Techniques. Okay. Techniques I have. Yes. Well, I think they might want to hear what you're saying. Thank you. I'm working on like a project manager, and I want to install some mindfulness techniques into the work process so that I would know how to maybe help relax some of my colleagues when they have tough situations. Okay. Other requests, yes? For me, it's steps to take to get there. Like little, what to do, what to try. Okay. If it works. So lots of tactics, strategies. Could be, yeah. Okay. Thanks. Great. Thank you. Other requests, things that you'd like us to talk about today? Yes, maybe how to incorporate mindfulness effectively, because for example, I have tried meditation, but then I get, I don't find the time or I get tired of it or I just don't do it anymore. Then I try again, I try again and so forth. So how to make this work so I feel better. Okay. I'll come to you in just a second. Yes. I know that you work a bit with entrepreneurs, so I would love to know some techniques that are more adapted to, for this particular situation. Okay. How do you deal with mental health as an entrepreneur? Okay. We can do that. This has helped us a lot to me by the way, so that I can kind of use our time well. So it should be important. I have tried a lot of meditation, but kind of when I'm on a physical pain, I try it, but my mind gets much more focused on the physical pain and it hurts much more. Okay. So we're going to know how to focus now on the pain. Okay. So it sounds like that most folks are here for some tactics and problem solving. Is that what I'm hearing? Like specific strategies for things that you can try to optimize mental health. And then we'll leave some time for conversation to talk about ways that maybe the strategies that you've tried are not working super well right now. And we can problem solve some specific points. Welcome Elena. All right. So I thought I might tell you a little bit about why I'm here and that will give you also a sense of what I might be able to offer to you by way of tactics and strategies. So I am married to a serial entrepreneur who has started and sold several SaaS businesses. His name is Rob Lawing. And so for the last 18 years I've been kind of on the periphery of the technology creative kind of community. And in addition to that though, I'm a clinical psychologist. So I have a PhD and my area of expertise is in anxiety and stress. And so I started my career actually, you're welcome. I started my career actually working with people who had been deployed to combat zones, so military veterans. And then I worked a lot with physicians in the ER, people who had very high intensity jobs. And so through the combination of my professional work and my family work, my being married to my husband, I found to this sort of need or this awareness of folks who are creatives or technologists who are running their own business or who are kind of out there on their own trying to craft their version of a good life. But who are also experiencing fairly high levels of stress and anxiety and pressure that are somewhat unique to people in the technology sphere. So for the last several years my focus of my work has been on how to really help support technologists, if you will, word pressers, in the kind of work that you all want to do but also to support the well-being of your minds. And so I am a huge fan of entrepreneurship, of being a technologist, of starting your own business and figuring it out, of leaving your day job or staying in your day job anyway. But really figuring out how to craft a life that works for you. But one of the things that's really core to our conversation about mental health is celebrating what's good, the sort of Instagram version of our lives where it's like, look, here I am in Belgrade having such a great time with all my word press friends. But we also have to tell the truth about what's very hard about this particular version of life that we've chosen. So this isn't an easy path you bear the responsibility for your own livelihood when you're using your brain, your ingenuity, your ability to code, your ability to design, your ability to see the world in a certain way or solve problems in a unique way. And that's the basis of your livelihood. That can be extra tricky, right? Your brain is the basis of how you make your money and how you survive. And with that comes some unique stressors. So some of the things that can make whether you're an entrepreneur or whether you work for someone else, many of us, actually let me ask you, how many of you work in a remote location, either from home or co-working space or okay, I'll have to do it. And how many of you go to an office with other people who have the same job-ish? So we're about half and half. So that can bring with it a lot of isolation, anxiety, burnout, we'll talk a little bit about. The weight of keeping up with, I don't know, new roll-outs in the latest iteration or version of WordPress can cause a lot of stress, failed relationships, lots and lots of people are having difficulty sleeping, certainly especially in the technology sector. Some of these are just life problems, some of them I think are exacerbated by the kind of work that you all are doing that can make it more difficult to sleep, feel more isolated, feel more anxious about becoming obsolete or being behind or not being able to keep up with the latest trends or the latest technology, the latest roll-outs, the latest apps, the latest everything. So there's a lot of instability in our work in technology. So lots of challenges that can, when taken together, really contribute to this underlying constant anxiety that really can eat away at our mental health. And I think increasingly we're seeing this conversation come to the forefront of the technology space and certainly because of the very talented entrepreneurs that we've recently lost. I think we have to be honest about the fact that we have to have these kinds of conversations about mental health, about what it is that brings us meaning in our lives, what it is that helps us to stay around when we feel lost or lonely or desperate and really may have moments of feeling like we'd rather not be here anymore. None of this is simple, right? We don't lose beautiful, talented people simply because of depression. It's more complicated than that. And some of the things that now drive depression, anxiety are things that live in our cultural water. They live in our shared consciousness, our cultural consciousness. It's not just an individual problem. It's not just one broken mind, which is why it's amazing to have this conversation in the community because the way that you interact with others, the way that you build your community, whether it's WordPress or your local community, has significant implications for what mental health looks like for members of that community, right? So we're not talking just about an individual problem, we're talking about a collective problem. So just to give you a little bit of data, the first light is U.S. Stats, and I have some EU Stats for you too. So at least within the U.S., one in five adults experience mental illness in a given year. And mental illness is a huge category of things that includes the most common ones, depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. So those are the three big ones. ADHD is also very common, as you probably know. And this affects a tremendous number of people. And only about 40% of folks receive mental health care. Mental health reasons, at least in the U.S., is the number one driver of disability. So the number one reason why people are no longer able to work or to contribute to the economy, to their communities, at least in the United States, is depression. So it's extremely costly, almost $200 billion lost in earnings per year. And it's, again, these are very complicated kind of issues and so we see that folks who struggle with serious mental illness, long-term mental illness, die on average 25 years earlier than their sort of age-balanced cohort. So this is serious not only because people are sad, but because it ends people's lives. Not even just by suicide, but by over time the lost level of health, the lost level of ability to contribute or ability to care for oneself. And we lose years of productive, meaningful time. In the EU, the stats are somewhat similar. It's about a quarter of the population, 27% of the population that experiences a mental disorder within a given year. And it's the third leading cause of disability in Europe. Six European countries fall within the top 20 countries with the highest estimated suicide rates globally. So, you know, this is happening all over the world. As you all know, I'm just, I'm sure why you're here. I'm telling you about a problem that you already know about, so I'm aware of that. I'm just making the case for why we have to take this super seriously. So we're losing some of our best and our brightest in their ability to contribute work-wise in their ability to stick around and be part of, part of us, to be part of our communities but also to contribute meaningfully to the world. And I think that's, you know, that's the heart of my mission, is to have this conversation in ways that we can help prevent bad things from happening. So I'd like to talk not only about depression and anxiety, but some of the things that are super common in our workplaces, in our lives, like burnout. How many of you have heard the term burnout? It was big. Sorry? Mine was huge. You had a huge burnout. So many, many people have huge burnout. About 30% of the adult workforce, both in the US and the UK, where they've done fairly large-scale studies, report significant experiences of burnout. So what are we talking about when we talk about burnout? What does that word mean to you? Exhaustion, yes. You're having completely unable to function at work, and they are used for social relationships. Yes. So she said completely unable to function at work and in social relationships. What else comes to mind when you think about burnout? Yes. Overwhelm, complete overwhelm. Other experiences are things that come to mind when you think about burnout. Yes, sir. Lack of ideas and interests. Lack of ideas and feeling interested in your work anymore. You can get worse. Sorry to drop in, but I don't know what it's like in other countries, but here in Serbia, if you go to a mental health professional in the burnout, they're very, very quick to diagnose you with something far worse or far serious. You don't care. That's what happens to me, so I spent 18 months of grit. So she's identifying the fact that sometimes it's hard if you go to a mental health professional for them to correctly assess burnout as opposed to depression because they look very similar, but they are different. They have different causes and different treatments. So in many countries, the US included, you have to be, unfortunately, you have to be pretty well informed and able to advocate for yourself and say, no, no, no, I think this is a burnout situation and here's what burnout is. So you guys are right on in terms of the kinds of things that we look for when we see burnout. So burnout has historically not been a formal diagnosis, but recently, the World Health Organization did add it to the ICD-10 which is sort of the international list of all of the problems that you could have. So when now it has a code, which means you can go to your doctor and say, no, I think I have burnout. It's a real thing. It has a code. It's a real thing. So burnout involves exhaustion, physical and emotional exhaustion. You wake up tired, even if you're sleeping well. You don't feel like you have any energy. There's this sense of like kind of numbness or flatness or boredom, like numb, not awake, no passion, no spark, no great ideas. Fatigued, tired. And there's a sense of cynicism and detachment. So this mostly shows up in interpersonal relationships. So when you used to get super excited about a new customer or a new client, now you have really sarcastic snarky things to say about that customer or that client or you're dismissive of your coworkers. You find that you just don't care and you don't care to be kind. You don't care to be patient. You feel like your work is sort of meaningless anyway. What's it all for? You're kind of just not engaged. Like your heart's not in any form. And then finally, you have a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment. And this is regardless of any external data that might say that actually you're doing quite well. You're doing great work. You're getting new clients. It is irrational. It is detached from any data points that say you're doing a good job. You just don't feel like, you kind of feel like you're pushing a boulder up the hill all the time. It's a very effortful. And you don't feel the satisfaction of like, done and done. You did a good job. You never get that sense of accomplishment. So this is a very serious problem. Christina Maslach at UC Berkeley is the one who conceptualized burnout and has been researching it for the last 30 years. And we now have incredibly compelling data that burnout is extremely bad for our, of course, work productivity in our relationships, but also really bad for our brains. So burnout, this sense of detachment, exhaustion has the power to change both the chemical structure, the chemistry and the structure of our brain. So brains of people who are in burnout look very different than brains of people who are not in burnout. And one of the primary differences, I'm kind of science nerd, I promise, I won't forget about the tactics, I promise. But one of the primary differences that we see, you might not be able to do that well from the back, but in burnout are amygdala, which is this almond shaped part of our brain that lives in the center part of our brain. This is a part of our brain that's responsible for negative emotion, especially stress and anxiety. So in burnout, the amygdala is overactive. It actually gets bigger, and it's like pumping more stress, sort of hormones through our body. So we have an overactive amygdala, which is that subjective feeling of stress. But then, because the amygdala is overactive, in burnout we see the connections between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is a part of the brain that helps us talk ourselves down when we feel stressed. And it also helps us plan. It's kind of the rational, most human philosophical parts of our brain. The connections between those parts of the brain begin to fray. Literally the myelin around the neuron starts to die. So we have an overactive anxiety response and an impaired ability to calm ourselves down. And this is happening at the cellular level. You can totally just think yourself out of it. And this cycle grows, because of course the more active the amygdala, the more damage we have in the connections between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. Just one second, I'll get to you. So when brains are in burnout for too long, the cells begin to die. We see changes in the way that the brain looks and then the brain functions. Which is like a big fat red flag to wave at all of us and say, we have to take this seriously. Because we are changing what our brains look like. And there's possibility for the brain to repair to some extent. But if we let this go on too long, then we've lost some of our cellular health. Yes, question. I was wondering, because some research has proved that for example, people with BPD have a different amygdala that's overworking, would we again be more prone to stress than the other people? The most susceptible to burnout. I would be more likely to get a burnout with BPD. But border disorder or borderline personality disorder? Borderline, borderline. I think any brain that's under stress, whether that's depression or borderline or too much caffeine, any brain that's under stress, any brain that's under stress is more fragile. So if we're not taking care of our stress, then we are at increased neurological risk for the kinds of consequences of burnout that I'm talking about. Borderline personality disorder has been stigmatized by many media, but basically we are people who cannot regulate our emotions the way everybody else does. Dr. Marsha Linnaton, with the world's leading researcher on borderline personality disorder, she said that we are basically a mental equivalent of third degree burns. We have no emotional speed and everything hurts us and we heal more than everybody else and we can get easily overwhelmed. But unfortunately the stereotypes about us are mostly based on characters like Alice. Well, thank you. Thank you, attraction. It's not what we are like. She's a psychopath, actually. So one, a range of ways that the brain can be broken. So it shows up as one of the diagnoses in the catalog of codes. Thanks, Kate. Very nice. I think the point here is that the most talented, smartest, capable among us, we are all vulnerable to being broken, to being hurt, to being stressed, to getting burnt out, to experiencing depression and anxiety. We see this over and over again that this isn't a problem of someone else. This is a problem of us, or if not us, then certainly someone who's right next to us, right alongside us. So it's not something that we can ignore or minimize. So what do we do about it? What happens... Actually let me go back here for a second. What happens in your body when you begin to experience stress? What do you notice happening in the moment when you're beginning to get stressed? Muscular tension. Muscular tension? Headache, heartbeat. What happens to your heartbeat? Accelerated heartbeat, rapid heartbeat, yes? I have had kind of two times. One was like a numbness under my forehead. And I was trying to meditate, for example, and I was not able to focus on the numbness. Okay. And I kind of... I do have something in that part of my body near my heart, like it's just a triangle. I don't know. A sense of tension, tightness. I spent a lot of money going to cardioes and they said your heart is like perfect. Your heart is great, but it doesn't feel great subjectively. Muscle tension in your chest is very common. Especially when people have a panic attack. That's why sometimes people feel like they're having a heart attack because they're constricting in their heart muscle. And extremely, under several days of stress, for example, migraine? Yes. Migraine headaches or... Shortness of breath. Shortness of breath, yeah. Other things in your chest? Itching? Itching. Yeah? Skin irritation. Skin irritation? You break out? Skin picking. You know, being able to concentrate like your brain is not a good setting. Yeah? So you can... Sometimes people have... They chew their nails. They pick their skin. You have probably your own version of the repetitive thing that you do when you're feeling stressed out. I just wanted to say that I have more of this. We all do. We all do. I mean maybe, you know, slightly different things from the menu. But we all do. Our bodies are super hardwired for this response. And it's a great response, actually. This stress response is super important. It protects us. It can save our lives. Think about what happened when you were under threat. Your body has this amazing system where it diverts all of your blood flow to your arms and your legs. It goes away from your chest. It goes away from your digestion. And your body is, like, ready to fight or run or do something drastic to save your life. And your body is super efficient at this. Your heart goes faster. Your blood comes harder. That's why your heart is going faster because it's moving blood in a more rapid rate. Your respiration increases and it goes into your chest. So you're getting the most air that you can between sort of the quickest intake right into your lungs. And this is so powerful, but, as you all well know, when it is not an acute or an urgent situation, when it lingers too long, then we move from acute stress to chronic stress. And that same stress response that's designed to save our lives becomes something that's actually very dangerous and toxic to us. Because our bodies are designed to do that quickly and for a short period of time and then resolve and go into relaxation mode. But most of us live with chronic stress. We live with things coming at us all the time. And so we live in an elevated level of stress, which, over time, breaks down our bodies causing heart disease, muscular problems, some kinds of cancer. I mean, all kinds of chronic health problems are linked back to this stress response but on a ride. So one of the most imperative things that we can do to manage our mental health is to help our body go into a relaxation response and move out of the stress response. Are you with me so far? Yes. Okay. So one way to do this. Well, one thing that we're, like, learning a lot about right now and this is kind of newer science is the vagus nerve. Who's heard of the vagus nerve? All right. You guys are advanced stress response students. So the vagus nerve is a nerve that kind of is centered in the brainstem and goes all throughout your spinal cord and has contact points with all of your major organs. So it is the part of our bodies that's responsible for the calm down response for shutting off the stress response. And one of the fastest ways to communicate to the vagus nerve is through deep, slow breaths. So if there's a way to kind of hack the system to make our bodies move into a relaxation response and out of an anxiety response, out of a stress response, it's the most efficient, fastest acting way is through low, slow, deep breath. Because think about it. Like, you can't be in an anxiety response where your body is attuned to breathing fast and having this sort of dramatic reaction. You can't do that and breathe in a really slow, calm way. How do you do this, you might ask? I know many of you have practice meditation or yoga or things like that, so this might feel a little elementary, but let's start with the baby steps and we can add more complexity or specialization as we go. So I know it's a little warm in here, but we are going to practice breathing if you fall asleep, it's okay. A little undersand. We have to move out of that tight, fast, rapid breath and move lower in the body. So I'm going to walk you through how to do this from a couple frameworks and we'll give it a try. So to start, so I'm going to make recommendations. I'm going to tell, I'm going to just sort of teach it to you. You can do or not do what feels right to you. So we have an invitation to close your eyes if you wish. If that doesn't feel comfortable to you, don't do it, it's fine. Another invitation is to put your feet flat on the ground and really lean back into your chair. So kind of resettle yourself, move things around, close your eyes if you wish. Just take a moment to notice the chair underneath you, notice how the chair is supporting your body, notice how the floor is supporting your feet, notice that you can release your body into the chair. You don't have to hold yourself up, you don't have to hold your breath, you can kind of flop into the chair underneath you if you wish. Place one hand over your belly button. See if, as you inhale, take air into your body, see if you can get your belly button to move, to expand. You can even imagine that there's a balloon in your belly and as you inhale, the balloon expands and as you exhale, your belly button pulls toward your spine and the balloon deflates. So just play with moving your breath down to your belly and use your hand as a guide. You can even look down at your hand and see if it's moving as you breathe. So the challenge is to pull your breath low in your body. And the second challenge is to slow your breath down and imagine hitting a slow motion button on your body. Breathing in for four counts, breathing out for four counts. You can try it with me if you wish. So inhale, two, three, four. Exhale, two, three, four. Inhale, two, three, four. Exhale, two, three, four. If you find that your mind is wondering a little bit, give it something to do. Perhaps imagine the path where your breath travels. Maybe you imagine bright blue oxygen entering your nose and going down through your throat, down through the center of your body, filling your lungs, your diaphragm, the center of your body with nourishing, life-giving oxygen. And perhaps imagine that carbon dioxide leaving your body, going from the cavity, your belly, up through your core, up through your chest, out your nose. So give your brain something to do as you think about your breath. Count your breath. Imagine your breath. It's okay for your breath to make a little bit of sound. Take a couple more in your own timing. Release your hand from your belly when you're ready. And come in, open your eyes when you're ready. You wiggle your fingers and toes to kind of wake you up a little bit. Alright, how are you feeling after a couple of deep breaths? Anybody ready for a nap? Yeah. What worked well about that exercise for you? And I'll ask you also what didn't work. So first let's start with what worked well. What helped? Or didn't work? Yes. So when I'm like completely focused on the breath, it feels pretty good. Like you are, I don't know, and your mind is out of the body. So the body is completely relaxed and not having any, no any kind of pain or or tensions or anything like that. What it doesn't work is always when I say, I'm trying with some hats, like tall and things like that. And what it doesn't work is that when I'm having any physical pain or any stress-related physical response like numbness, when I can't completely focus, my mind goes and focuses on the numbness, for example, which comes and to be more, more like, more, I feel it more and it doesn't let me in many days. So I think a lot of people can probably relate. Like this works well when you take a couple breaths, but it's also very easy to get distracted. How many of you feel sometimes distracted by either something in your body or something in your mind? Yeah, everybody gets a little distracted about it. I'm like, oh, shiny, leech, leech, leech. That's okay. So this kind of, let me organize my thoughts. This kind of practice is not the only way to calm down and it's not ideal for everyone. There are those of us among us, myself included to some extent, who calm down best in motion. So stillness is not optimal for everyone. You can breathe well while you're walking. You can breathe well while you're moving. You can breathe well while you're dancing. You don't have to sort of sit still and go only internal. That's not the only strategy. However, sometimes, if you're like me before a meeting or a conference presentation or something, you just need like a quick reset and you don't have time to go for a walk and you don't have time to do your yoga moves. So you need something quick and that's where this kind of practice is helpful. So four breaths in, four seconds in, four seconds out can be enough to, in the moment, just sort of reset you real quick. But for things that are more complicated and all of our lives are more complicated, so this is again kind of the entry point. You've noticed that stress response beginning and you want a quick tactic to counteract it. Four breaths, four seconds in, four seconds out. That's sort of one of our best scientifically proven strategies to, in the moment, do a quick turnaround, a quick calm down, I should say. But of course, it's going to break down. So if this isn't something that works for you regularly, if this isn't your optimal regular calm down strategy, then we have to get more creative. We have to think of moving exercises or other things that help you circulate oxygen extensively throughout your body. The work, yes. Don't try to set your expectation too high. I mean, I start for, I think it just goes in my eyes for five minutes. It will already help me out. Yes. To relax a little bit. So when I realize that I don't need to do everything like perfectly and that I don't manage to, you know, follow all the things and to feel all the stuff which is completely relaxed. I'm doing something wrong. I have to start from a very, very low point that only if I, you know, like, I close my eyes for five minutes, it will, you know, like, help me out. And this is enough. I don't have higher expectation than this and this is already helpful. So this is what helped me to actually, because initially I tried to really follow all the stuff, you know, like four seconds, that image is not right, no, it will be properly, then try to focus on these things I appreciate that. I don't know if you could hear him in the back, but he was reflecting on the importance of not having high expectations. And I think a lot of people will say to me, I could never meditate. Like, I can't sit still that long or who has a half an hour to sort of, you know, sit and have deeper consciousness. But four breaths, five minutes, these little tiny interventions can make a big difference. So invitation, let's stand up if you don't want to, that's fine. But the invitation is to stand up and let's try a little bit of a moving breath. Also, I don't, you know, I think we're getting tired and hot. So let's just play a little bit with breath in motion. So we're going to pair an inhale and an exhale with a specific movement. So let's start first with an inhale where we bring our arms up to the ceiling, reach up high, and exhale, flap down. And if you accidentally hit your friend, that's okay. That's how you make friends. Inhale, reach up high. You can even look up and exhale. And down. Let's do that one more time. Big breath in, big breath out. Roll our wrists and give out your breath and let that go. Inhale, your shoulders up to your ears and exhale, shoulders back and down. This is to counteract. Inhale, shoulders up and exhale, shoulders back and down. Close your eyes if you wish. Inhale up, down. Inhale, give yourself a hug. Pull your shoulder blades slightly forward. And exhale, arms open to the world. Inhale, give yourself a hug. Pull those shoulder blades apart. Open the back. And exhale, open up. One more time. Do a little ballet. Inhale, arms and toes up. Exhale, if you have room, you can fold forward or just make a ball with yourself, your choice. So inhale, up tall, reach up. And exhale. Make a little ball. Put your eyes here. You might hit someone, it's okay. Try not to fall over. I don't know if we have insurance for that. Listen for your own breath. Put your feet shoulder width apart so that there's a little space between your feet. Stand up as tall as you can. Like you're a little kid who's trying to get on a roller coaster, but you're a little too short. So you're trying to be as tall as you can be. Roll your shoulders back. Maybe face your palms toward me. Close your eyes for a second. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Open your eyes. Shake it out a little bit. Do a little dance. All right, have a seat. Does anyone feel a little more awake? Yeah. A little sweaty? A little more relaxed? Yeah. Make a video or something. So what we did was really quite simple. Okay, when you think about what happens in your body when you're working on a computer all the time, most of us are a little hunched over, right? So most of us have pain here. And so just think about movements that counteract that. In the time you're kind of opening your chest and putting your shoulders back, a lot of us also have a lot of tension here in our forearms from this action. So thinking about how things are with your wrists, pushing your hands together, inverting that. I'm going to put in a little plug here. So a lot of this movement stuff comes from me from my psychological training, but also from yoga practice. And yoga is one of the tools that has been sort of clinically proven to help reduce the effects of anxiety and depression. And is especially for those of us who have a fairly sedentary lifestyle, who sit a lot, is an incredibly helpful way to deal with both the mental health and physical health challenges of many of our talks. So that's a lot of what we did. This movement just standing like this, this is called Mountain Pose. This is a yoga pose. This is a yoga move, but it's really just opening your chest, standing at your full height. So even taking moments in your day to practice that kind of expansion and feeling solid in your body can be really helpful. Bye. Okay. So the body is one part of this. We talked about breath. We talked a little bit about the importance of integrating your body into your well-being. Would anybody like to experience better memory, better concentration, less motivation to eat a lot, have a better mood, have a stronger immune system, make fewer mistakes? I have an Amazon store set up for... Just kidding. This is free. What is this? Only one or two of these problems remain. For example, I only have the first two in the second column. No, well, these are not only problems. These are the benefits of sleep. I'm going to talk about that. So if you have some challenge with memory and concentration... Basically everything is all shiny. Yes. So many shiny things in the world. Any and everything. Yes. One of the ways to enhance the functioning of your brain, enhance your mental health is to really make sure that you're taking care of your body by sleeping well. I know you may not have come all the way to Belgrade for me to tell you, you need to get some sleep. But it might be the most important thing here. Many of us do not sleep enough. And when we talk about things that make it easy to feel stressed, anxious, depressed, burned out, irritable, unhappy with our lives, one of those risk factors is having a compromised brain, a brain that's not functioning well. And there is no way for our brain to function well if we don't sleep well. Our brain is incredibly active during sleep. It's when we integrate memory. It's when we process the work over the day. And if we don't sleep enough, all kinds of bad things happen. So if you're serious about mental health and you're like, wow, why do I feel so miserable all the time? And you're not sleeping well, this is probably the first area of intervention. So when people come into my office and they're like, well, Dr. Walling, I'm not feeling well. I'm struggling. I'm having a hard time. I ask this question immediately. How are you sleeping? Because it's one of the most powerful indicators that we're doing well or not doing well is how well we're sleeping. Yes. You have a requested episode. You can't really sleep too much. So we want to do about that. Yes. So when we talk about dysregulation or feeling off, feeling depressed, it's either hypersomnia or insomnia, so sleeping too much or sleeping too little. Sleep is one of the first things to get disrupted when we're having a depressive episode or a season of anxiety or when we're in burnout. So to some extent, if you feel like you're sleeping too much or, I mean, some people really, they're in a depressive episode, will be in bed 20 hours a day. So it can be quite debilitating. That's a place where it makes a very hard function normally when you are sleeping that much. And I think there are a couple things I would think about. If you feel like you're sleeping too much, it's actually rarely a problem among technology folks. But if you feel like that's happening, to think about what's the optimal sleep for you and then try to, like, hack the system, sort of speak, like make yourself wake up, use bright lights, use being in motion. On the other hand, sometimes it's okay for a couple days to just call it in and stay in bed. It depends on the situation. It depends on who you are and what's good for you. It depends on what you need to maintain your particular level of well-being. So I don't want to sort of stand up here and say, if you're sleeping more than 10 hours, then you've really got to get up and exercise because that's not the answer for everyone. The answer for everyone is knowing your own self and your own body and knowing what you need when you start to move into depression or when you start to move into anxiety is figuring out what's for you and having a plan for that for yourself. So there's a non-answer to your question. Yes? More than sleeping? I don't have any problems with morning sleep because I get up very tired. But during the night, I wake up seven times than I wanted to do and so you identify you have slept seven and a half hours or so. Yeah. You're not well rested. I go into the entire day. I can't be rested anymore. For example, my girlfriend, she wakes up seven times but for her, it's normal that she doesn't do itself this up and up and up like this at once and I'm already numb the whole day. Yes. So sleep is nuanced. So if you're waking up in the middle of the night, if you wake up and your mind is prevented from entering a REM cycle of sleep, that's our deepest sleep cycle when our brain is most active. If your brain isn't entering REM sleep in a certain cyclical pattern, then it will be very difficult for you to feel rested. So waking up at the wrong time can absolutely disrupt your sleep for a long time. So if you find that you're having sleep in difficulties, either difficulty falling asleep or difficulty with waking up in the middle of the night, what are some strategies that have worked for people? I have a list, and it helps you sleep well. Do exercises? Yes, be very active but not two hours before you go to bed. So earlier in the day. Yes. We really helped to have a nighttime routine. So an hour before I go to sleep, I typically would work until the last minute and then try to go to sleep in my wake. So an hour before I would go to sleep, and I do my things and I read a bit and just have to do whatever and that really helps like that coach is working to move to sleep. Absolutely. So having a really set nighttime routine where you're winding down and an important piece of that is turning your screens off, not looking at screens like the hour before you go to sleep. Yes. So we're planning to have this program when it's 12 am and I think maybe I might not have enough sleep so I'm starting to worry about who I am. Yes. This is like the most exciting thing that I have to do. It doesn't matter maybe I can get some sleep that I have tomorrow I can sleep whatever I want I don't get away if I fall asleep I sleep okay I don't mind. I feel something to read and don't worry about this. I feel helpful to try to accept that depending on the type of work that you do maybe you are not like other people like 7 hours might not be okay for you you might need 9 hours and this is okay or 10 hours. So don't try to think that maybe you should guess 8 hours or 7 hours and then wake up even if you don't feel after some day you realize that it's not good enough for you but it was hard for me to accept that in some periods of time when I was very stressed it's okay to sleep like 9 hours or 10 hours to make sure that I'm well rested. Yes. So I think you said two really important things and just for those of you who maybe didn't hear in the back the first thing that he mentioned was the importance of not stressing out about sleep so if you're finding that you're awake after you want to be just get in a little pattern in our minds where we're like I really gotta go to sleep I really gotta go to sleep which of course makes it really difficult to sleep when you're stressed out so to just say alright well I'm having a night where I'm not sleeping a lot I might need to make some adjustments in my day and that's what it will be and then the second thing that you mentioned is that everyone has their own sleep needs so you might be last of all hours might be 7 might be 8 but some people need 10 or 11 hours of sleep and that's the way that your body is working and there's not much to be done about that. For example if you have PCOC PCOS story maybe say what the acronyms are because the polycystic ovary syndrome and you get insulin resistance and you often get high effects such as PMPD, Remastered Historic Disorder they just simply have spells of sleep that can last like up to 14 hours and there is not much to think about that because you feel like the truck has run you over Yes, our need for sleep can go up and down There's this difference between the ovulation and the cycle a couple of times and I'm trying not to consider myself breathing because of that I think when your body needs sleep the most compassionate thing you can do is just let your body sleep like isn't that something to fight? Other sleep comments, yes That's a pretty basic thing but for me it's best to sleep in complete darkness Yes, so in a very dark room that the other recommendation is a cold room a room that's sort of failed and then you have like a fozy blanket some people like a weighted blanket with a little bit of pressure from their bed clothes and that can help you to feel sort of calm there's a calming response there Yes, go ahead Sorry, no I guess you could write things down before you go to sleep Yes There's a lot of times we have a lot of things going on and usually if I don't write things down and it's something important that I'm thinking about by the time morning comes I forget about it, it's crazy it was really important and interesting and in the morning I wake up totally, it's gone So keep a little notebook by your bed It's sort of a journal Yes, especially the things that you want to do tomorrow so that you're not like I have to remember this, I have to remember this Yes I don't have my troubles sleeping I sleep well I have trouble going but I found a three useful techniques one of them listening with headphones, some stories whatever it is like on someone talking even in strange language the second technique was reading a book before reading something or while you're on bed and the third one when I want to put my daughter to sleep I fall and sleep before her Have your daughter put you to sleep I wanted to say that having your kids really helps you appreciate sleeping Thank you children Thank you I think one of the tendencies that some of us have is to pull our laptops into bed with us or either start the day with our laptop in bed just, oh I've seen you do one more thing before bed and that's a big no no so if you want to optimize sleep your bed is for sleep, maybe a little reading and for sex that's what happens there no email, no twitter no Slack none of that should be in your bed let your bed be the sleep intimacy zone not any kind of reading so having a TV in your room really not doing anything in your bed except for those kinds of things can be a helpful contextual cue that tells your brain we do these activities in this space and these activities in this space which can prime your brain to do those activities in the right time and place one of the things I have on my playlist is to improve my bedroom uh-huh not your phone yeah I am a big fan of no screens in the bedroom, at all no phones okay, I'm going to skip some of this let's just, we talked a little bit about body that's another tech related problem that is pretty significant is if you are sitting most of your day and not taking time to move around you put yourself at risk for all kinds of physical and health problems and the minimum viable effort to counteract that is 30 minutes of movement three times a week you don't have to run marathons you don't have to do cross but you don't have to be just one second you don't have to be fancy in the way that you go about this you just need an elevated heart rate some little gentle beads of sweat and you're moving your body three times 30 minutes at minimum that's kind of the research based minimum standard to counteract all of the bad things that happen when you have an overly sedentary existence is 100 kilometers on a bike per week too much is 100 kilometers on a bike per week like three times 30 something too much am I overdoing it you have to check with your doctor but everybody has a different body in the sense of like what restless and need to let it out and if you sort of experiment with what works best for you in terms of noticing how you feel when you are exercising a certain level and you make adjustments so I think we can all use a little bit of scientific method with our own mental health so you do an experiment what does it feel like if I run at this time of day for five miles or five kilometers how does that feel in my body and then I make an adjustment and then I try something else it's an it's an evolving highly individualized process so you know when you see online like this is the this is the magic bullet this is the morning strategy that will optimize your productivity some of that is really not helpful because your body works in a different way than every other body so your responsibility as someone who is committed to optimizing both your mental health and your ability to contribute in a meaningful way to the work that you find important is your job to figure out to be the expert about yourself about how your body works how your mind works so it's amazing to utilize resources listen to people like me to you know read things online who is responsible for doing what you can to sort of prevent problems from happening by optimizing how you take care of your body in the way that your body needs it's highly individualized alright and of course this is necessary because when we work against ourselves we always lose it's a journey it's your personal journey if you have to find a way alright so one other sort of set I wanted to talk about a little bit is to think about not so we talked about mental health broadly we talked about the relationship between mental health and the body where we think about breath where we think about sleep where we think about nutrition let's talk a little bit about the content of our minds or let me give you a choice no so we can talk about kind of thought process and ways to challenge how we're thinking the content that happens in our minds or we can do some more movement or breathing do you have opinions who would like me to talk to you more who would like to move around or breathe alright captivated if you want to move around or breathe just go in the corner and move around that will be fine okay so let me just be honest we're all a little bit crazy can we just agree on that in the most loving and professional way possible yes you're a little bit crazy we all feel like imposter syndrome we all have self-doubt we all have nutty ideas sometimes we all get anxious we're all irrational or sometimes too rational in a way that crosses over into being irrational we all can be a little bit anal retentive we all get kind of broken in our minds and I think one of the best strategies that we can use when we're talking about the conversation in here is to really accept that there's a certain level of craziness that's just part of how we're made it's cool but also think about how to have a good relationship with the cast of characters that lives in our minds so you know this one? I love this girl able to jump to the worst conclusion in a single bound oh good grief these tights are too tight I think I'm gonna die when we are able to take a little bit of a step back and think about how we're thinking metacognition think about our own thinking we have a little bit more power over the kind of story that we're telling ourselves in our mind so I when we're doing cool stuff in the world there's high highs and low lows like we can be all over the place right so I had this experience a couple of months ago I finished a book which I was super excited about and I emailed Seth Godin and said would you write an endorsement for my book and I was like there's no way he's going like Seth Godin and he wrote back in like three minutes he was like absolutely sent this to me I was like really so I was writing high I was super excited I finished a book that's so cool Seth Godin was gonna he wrote a little thing it's on the back of the book it's so cool and then we came to book launch day and so my husband and I emailed our email list and between the two of us mostly him not me but we sent out an email to 20,000 people all about our book and we're like this is amazing and in the email the link to the book was broken and in like two seconds I was like I am terrible at this I'm never writing another book I'm never doing anything in public no one's gonna read this book from someone who can't write an email I'm clearly incompetent and I should just quit it all it sounds like my mom has that happened to you guys so we all have a little crazy right and we can be super excited one moment and the next moment we're like questioning our contribution to humanity and whether you know like whether we should just like go in the back somewhere and hide that is really normal I think I hope maybe um but how do we do that well like how do we have a good relationship with like the ups and downs and then the self-criticism and the excitement and all of the swirl of all of it and I will tell you one of the most powerful ways to do that is to keep a journal to have a mechanism by which you are getting some of this material out in front of you in a way where you're separating the material the content the voices in your head from where you can look at it objectively you can take it out of your mind so for people who really have a lot of swirling voices a lot of swirling anxiety a lot of thoughts that go round and around and go really fast we um you know often have them keep a journal sometimes you even name the voices like a lot of us have a really critical voice the criticizer the one who's like oh that design is crap you I can't believe you're going to show that to your client or I can't believe that you think your ideas are valid or interesting does anybody have a voice like that just yeah okay so you can name it your mother if that's where it came from or you can just name it like critical jerk or give it a name because that gives it less power gives it an avatar what does your critical voice look like is it like green with a pointy nose and crazy hair and bad teeth or is it like big and blobby and purple and kind of slimy I'm being playful but I'm also that serious 7th when 7th is beautiful very nice red hair so do a witch sort of a witch yeah some of us have a witch that lives in our head the mean kind not the nice kind so you might also think about the voice in your head that is your encourager voice so you have probably a critical voice you might have an encourager voice a voice that's like I think it's going to be okay you can do it just keep trying you can learn this and maybe that's your mom or your dad or somebody else you're a net for that no I don't think an app for that thank you for the idea if you want to make a voices in your head avatar app that would be amazing and I will send you lots of clients but it's on video we all agree on this today but when our voices are loud and when that critical voice is the only voice that you're listening to it's too powerful and when we give it a silly face when we give it a name when we also acknowledge that there are multiple voices in our mind and we don't have to just listen to one sometimes we can actively choose like okay that's enough criticism for a while where's my encourager is it in there somewhere I need to find my encourager voice or my comforting voice or the voice of the people that love me I need to listen for something else we do have some power to kind of change the channel on our thoughts but only when we've done the work to notice how our thoughts are functioning to notice the voices of our thoughts so get out a piece of paper you don't have to use now but this can be a homework assignment get out a piece of paper and give names to some of the different tracks that play in your head and give them avatars or give them an appearance and one of your mindfulness practices I think we have time so first of all who is with me who thinks I'm a kooky lady talking about those voices in a weird monsters thing or are you following me to understand what I mean okay thank you let's all fly our flags together I don't know how to identify what are the names of the voices so for example yes we have sight, voice or being seen in a voice whatever but there are definitely set of voices the truce bro there are certainly common voices so yes and no so most of us have a critical voice that's basically like whatever you're doing is dumb most of us have an imposter voice which is like the you don't belong here voice most of us hopefully if we've been loved reasonably well have an encourager voice a voice that says like get out there kid try again what other voices do you notice maybe a nagging voice maybe an intellectual voice I have an intellectual voice a voice that's like let's just think our way through this problem you might have a a very feeling voice a skeptical voice I think I don't know that science isn't a lot of work on this but I think that many of us construct these versions of our own mind is constructed through both our biology and the set of experiences that we've had so if we had a kind of childhood or early life experience where there was a lot of criticism we might have a very strong critical voice if we were someone who was loved well we might have a stronger encouraged voice so you have to kind of think about what voices literal voices you heard while you were developing while you were becoming who you are what sounds what messages did you hear over and over what shaped you and that's a good place to start yes you mentioned the journal before what is the best way to keep it using the classical way with a pencil and a notebook or oh no the best way to keep it is the way that works for you the way that you will do so there is some research that shows that the relationship between handwriting is more emotionally nuanced largely because most of us write more slowly than we type so that I would say that the gold standard would be a hand written journal with a sort of you know special bound journal but if that's not going to work for you then use an app on your phone by all means use what works it is thinking a voice I think so intellectualising might be a voice yeah okay you in the red you had your hand up I just wanted to add another voice like a little scared kid yes an amateur voice and a media wise voice so when you I see you I'll come back to you in just a second okay I know you have so many great things to say let me finish this thought and then we'll come back so just to kind of close out the conversation about voices it's one mechanism for which we can have some objectivity between what happens in our mind make it a little less powerful a little more playful a little less controllable so naming your cast of characters that lives inside of your head if this idea is really interesting to you I'm pulling a little bit from something called internal family systems so I can give you that link or you can google it internal family the psychological framework that talks about the voices in our head the practice of journaling is a way of noticing your highs and lows noticing your feelings you don't need to journal like Dear Diary today I had eggs for breakfast followed by a good cup of coffee what you're going for when you're keeping a journal is keeping a record of where you came alive where you felt like this is the moment that I want to live in and also where you felt like I never want to have this experience again so highs and lows it can be a two sentence journal today my high was today my low was that's one of the kind of most powerful data points that you can track over time so I've been doing that journaling practice for like five years and I have a friend and we talk on the phone every Sunday night and I say what was your high for the weekend what was your low for the weekend and we are tracking together the highs and lows of our life so that when we come to a decision point do we have another child do I change jobs do I go on this trip you have all of this record that you can look back on and look and see actually over the course of the last few years some of my most significant highs happened when I was traveling and I was doing this so when I come to a decision point I'm going to look at my own data based on my own life because I'm listening to what I am experiencing in my life and letting that shape me so a journal is a powerful thing because it can get your thoughts away from you but also be a data record and by thoughts away I mean thoughts objective not so powerful and loud and strong in our own minds okay so we have just 5 minutes left and I'm going to hang out in that little sort of public for your area after the workshop if you have more questions for a couple minutes I can chat I'm also I have a podcast where I talk about a lot of these issues called Zen Founder it's free every week and I co-host it with my husband so we really try to talk about the combination of psychology and technology and how those two interface we also talk quite a bit about family and wellness and life so we try to put that out as a resource there's an organization called Open Sourcing Mental Illness that's committed to having conversations about mental health and technology and then as another resource not because I'm trying to promote my stuff but because it's the only resource that I know that's attempting to be a mental health guide for people in technology the book that I wrote with my husband is called The Entrepreneurs Guide to Giving Your Shit Together How to Run Your Business Without Letting It Run You and we talk about a lot of this material that we talked about today so there are resources that are available and I think the fact that you're here the fact that this year at WordCamp EU there are three or four topics or talks that are talking about mental or physical health that we're in the right place having the right conversation about how to really preserve our well-being so that we can do the work that we want to do in WordPress the last thing that I want to end on is that in my work in trauma and stress the thing that consistently research shows to be the most important protective factor so when you are under stress when you're vulnerable in some way there are things that increase your risk for problems and there are things that decrease your risk the things that decrease your risk for mental health problems are called protective factors they protect you the most important protective factor for stress and anxiety and burnout actually is strong relationships having you don't have to have lots of friends you don't have to be a social butterfly but you have to have three or four people who love you and who you love and who will show up for you who will listen to you when you're upset who will encourage you when you're sad you sort out that cast of characters in your own mind so the fact that you're here in a community with other people who care about and are interested in some of the same things that you are is already a great beginning point and I love coming to word camps and WordPress events because of that deep value of we do this together and the same is true about changing the conversation about mental health supporting each other as we have to do this together so if nothing else that you take from this whole word camp experience I hope that you will take the importance of having a couple relationships maybe you make some new relationships while you're here of sleeping well and I'm just making sure that you're taking very good care of yourself in whatever that looks like for you so thanks for your attention I think we might have are we done? 2-3 minutes so we have time for a couple quick questions and then I'll be hanging out and I can chat throughout the day our scope is enough again you have your own body but I will say that I talked to many folks who are like wow doctor I'm really feeling a lot of anxiety I'm feeling really tense there's not any big stressor in my life I don't know why I feel so much anxiety and I'm like how much coffee do you drink? I'm great not you but like if you're drinking 6 or 7 cups of coffee I think that's probably especially if you're drinking like American size cups of coffee where it's like the big gold that's probably too much so I don't know that there's a gold standard but probably like 2 or 3 is 2 or 3 is 7-8 per day I think you're really going to have a lot of anxiety feelings since you're drinking that much coffee also I recommend like after for example 4pm no really? how do you do that? I'm kidding I just started trying to do that yes so anytime that you are using caffeine marijuana alcohol whatever to regulate your body's systems I would say that's probably not the best so using those things recreational or whatever but when it's like I need this to function especially high levels of caffeine your body is going to feel anxious because that's what caffeine does it's a stimulant so all the problems in sugar these things you can get used to get a lot and need them but you can't get this to reduce it and get rid of it all about taking good care of what you have your most important asset is you so take care of those minds take care of those bodies and go have a great work camp thanks you guys