New York Women Leaders Association NY Chapter Meeting: Don't Crack Under Pressure!
Tejal Engman of DoubleVerify discusses ideas and strategies to help you not crack under pressure for the New York Women Leaders Association Chapter Meeting.
Transcript
items so kja can you please say hello and give us a self introduction hello there how are you it's nice to uh be here Ginger thank you very much for having me it's great to see all of you are panelists keate speakers here and for the attendees who are here live and who will be listening to us on the recording welcome um my self- introduction is going to be very short and sweet because in my presentation you're going to learn a lot about me and what I do so very briefly I am the senior vice president of investor relations at a technology company called double verify right so my job which is within Finance basically involed involves pitching the stock and the investment proposition to institutional investors and um getting them to own or hold the stock for a longterm period right that's what I do um and so the reason why this topic which today is um don't crack Under Pressure strategies to maintain composure spoke to me is because I'm having a very very stressful year so let me just First share my screen so you see what I'm talking about give me one second
perfect so I felt I am uniquely well positioned to talk to you about pressure and stress because of what I'm going through this year and to give you some context I have been one of those Executives who felt like she's always had it under control I've obviously been in now for over 20 years I've worked in a variety of positions across investment Banks within corporates and I came to DV as a pretty seasoned and you know well sort of healed Finance professional who'd been around for a long time and who'd seen many different markets my last IR job was to work for a hotel Real Estate Investment Trust during the pandemic when there were lockdowns everywhere and no one could go to hotels so I truly thought I had seen it all and that I would not crack Under Pressure until this year and to give you a little bit of context because I need to give you context on exactly what happened um double verify is a recent Tech IPO the company went public in April of 2021 I joined right after that in May of 2021 so I've been with the company since its very first earning SC right and it was a tech darling this company was just phenomenal it still is phenomenal but you know consistent Revenue growth of above 30% incredibly profitable it was just a stock and a company and a management team that could do no wrong because the numbers were exemplary our CEO was a master marketer and I loved selling the investment proposition and I did so loudly I would have I'm not kidding at least six to seven calls a day with investors just bitching the story and broking the stock and feeling so good about doing all of that right and this year things went very very wrong right and what happened was we just had a cohort of customers who stopped spending in the way that we anticipated they would for completely idiosyncratic reasons that was specific to those companies and we had a shift in ad spend away from environments where we had our full Suite of products into environments where we had coverage of products right and now we were in Uncharted Territory this is the com a company that's consistently grown very very strongly finding itself in a position where things are going completely contrary to plan and not knowing how to navigate that and all of us were just figuring it out as we went along so I was holding it together we started the year with a big Miss versus what the street expected us to deliver on guidance and that's where you see this first drop you see in the February time frame you see that first drop and I held it together and I was like we'll we'll get through it we'll get through it it'll be fine and then we thought we'd lowered guidance enough and that we would be okay going forward because the worst thing you can do as a technology company is have to lower guidance twice right you're trading at a completely High mult a very very high valuation multiple that multiple is built on trust TR that you will execute and that you will perform and if you break that trust you lose your multiple and once you lose your multiple it's really difficult to get it back and guess what happened things started to look even worse than we thought back in February and we had to lower guidance in May and that's when you see the second leg leg and at that point I cracked we just had our earning SC the stock was down as you can see here almost 30% overnight so in one night we wiped out over $2 billion of market cap lost many many investors that I had personally pitched the story to a lot of money and I was completely overwhelmed not just by stress but by emotions of anger how could we get it wrong how could we not see this happening do we not know how to forecast what is going on how is this happening of guilt of having lost people money that is the last thing I ever wanted to do of a lot of Shame for that same reason and just fear that we didn't know how to navigate this and I didn't know what was happening and I should probably run for the exits because I don't know what's going on and I don't have control over the situation and I do invest your relations and I don't do forecasting and how am I supposed to navigate this Etc and I was feeling all of these emotions still trying to keep it together when our CEO very kindly called me into a room just to see how I was doing and he asked a few questions he's like I always want you to give me feedback Etc and at that point I flipped and I completely lost my composure and I lost it and I told him how this was unacceptable how we'd lost people so much money how you know I I couldn't look these investors in their eyes anymore how it was appalling that we couldn't have seen this coming how you know how could we not forecast and how could we get this so wrong and who was to blame and whose heads should roll because of this Etc right and I I almost was yelling at him and at that point I had an outof Body Experience where I could see myself shouting at the CEO and at the same time I could see his completely shocked and pained expression and I could see all this emotional garbage that I was throwing onto him and I could see how he was taking it which was really really well but he was obviously hurt like it was tough everyone was going through a really tough time and at that point it was just like an epiphany of how is this serving me how is the serving him how is the serving the company how is the serving the greater good none of what I'm doing right now serves anybody right and that is the thing with stress and with crack in under stress you have to in your journey of getting to a Breaking Point have that realization that this doesn't work stress doesn't work it doesn't help it doesn't improve the situation it's not going to get the numbers to be better it's not going to make anyone wake up and think they should do something differently everyone's feeling it adding stress to the equation is only going to make things worse right and in that realization is is another realization in that Journey which is this the only way you can get truly comfortable and truly secure is by completely embracing insecurity because life will throw you curveballs you just don't know when it's going to happen it isn't personal it's just what life does it's not about you it really really isn't things are beyond your control in many instances and the only way you're going to deal with this and remain sane is by embracing it you just have to accept that this is going to happen things are going to change it's not always going to go your way and that is okay and that you will be okay right the minute you come to that realization you can actually Implement strategies which I'm going to go into next but you need to have that Epiphany moment because until you do it's very easy to just have this covert hidden stress that just eats at you silently even if you don't have an eruption the way I did where I actually just completely cracked um and was thankfully you know I got away with it um he totally understood and he was he was wonderful about it and I just have to say kudos to him for that but even if you don't have that eruption mode it just eats at you and it nags at you and it wears you down and you need to have that moment where you realize this is just not helping and this is going to be a recurring theme in my life where I'm constantly going to be in situations that I can't control that I I will have to learn to navigate and stress is not going to help and cracking up is not going to help Okay so let's talk about that now first and foremost I am neurotic I've always been I've always been slightly on the higher end of the stressed out spectrum and in my past I've always thought that was a good thing right because it was my stress and my neuroticism and my anxiety that helped me really perform right I always was overprepared for every single meeting I knew all my facts backward and memorized every single financial and every single stat I could parot things in my sleep and that was also due to stress right because I I felt that need to know everything and that made me very very good at what I do right so there is this law called the y doson Law which says a certain amount of stress is not a bad thing right and you see this bell curve where you know if you don't have a lot of stress and you're just studing a comfort zone you probably aren't pushing yourself hard enough either a little bit of stress and a little bit of anxiety can actually make you quite productive and there is an optimal Zone where you're really growing you're really learning you're on top of your gra and that's a good space to be and that is anxiety and there is a way to have a very positive outlook on that and there is a way to get bugged down by it as long as you're enjoying yourself and you're actually learning the process and you're doing the things that make you feel more motivated and feel more inspired you're in the optimal Zone and you can feel when you're in the optimal Zone it feels good it feels great you feel on top of your game you feel like you've got your arms around things but you need to do all of that with the realization ation that you can't have your arms around everything right and the minute you start not like trying to get your arms around everything and things are slipping and that makes you very uneasy and uncomfortable you start getting fatigued and into this negative zone of exhaustion and anxiety and panic which is what I was going into when things were just not going my way and I couldn't I couldn't understand why right so there is that optimal Zone all stress isn't bad stress and that's important to recognize but when you get into that Red Zone which is what I was in it's really understanding that it's only when you regain your balance and have your composure that you can actually think clearly enough to make the right decisions to not make mistakes and to improve performance it's the only way to add value it's very difficult to be able to perform and to deliver what is need needed to be done in that moment if you're going to be outside of your balanced Zone if you're going to lose your composure and if you're going to let stress overtake you and the consequences are obviously disastrous right things are already going badly if you lose it it's just going to make the situation worse and that's not that's not terribly difficult to understand but to to break it down a little bit more there is actually a cognitive response you have a pre front front Al cortex in your brain that's responsible for decision- making and when your stress response just goes through the roof and your body is just releasing this adrenaline and you're spiking you know you can just be overwhelmed by that natural stress response so that it can completely Cloud your judgment and you can make the wrong decisions you can have the wrong response I understand the need to vent but you need to give yourself that moment and then come back right and then if you've been in that response state for a very long time it is exhausting your mind sort of goes into circles you go over the same problem again and again you keep feeling the sense of Despair and that is simply just exhausting it's very bad for you mentally it's horrible for you physically your body actually holds the stress in different places I could feel it constantly in my neck and my shoulders I could feel it in my lower back and it's just you it's in you there is a a a very direct Mind Body Connection and this manifests in all sorts of ways that are bad for your health bad for your hormones bad for everything pretty much right so um once you get to this realization there are so many techniques that can help right but a core part of the realization is not just that stress doesn't serve you right intellect you can understand that stress doesn't serve me it's bad for me I shouldn't do it but how do you actually internalize that intellectual understanding of the problem how do you actually drive change within yourself what I found and you know I'm not the first one to say it you'll find endless YouTube videos on the topic but what I found is that meditation actually does help you realize that there are two 's there is one you which is the mental intellectual part that's constantly talking that's going over the stressful narrative and that's driving you crazy because it won't stop talking about it and won't stop going in circles and then there is the you that can see that mental part talking and is the witness to that chatter and is just there and it's the it's what your core is it's who you really are that is who you really are and the minute you get that objectivity which was my outter body experience when I could see myself talking to my CFO yelling at my CFO um CEO sorry and I could see his response that that witness is the person you need to tap into and the one way that I found to actually tap into that witness is through meditation and the meditation technique is really simple you just focus in your breath and You observe your mental chatter and you just observe the thoughts without any judgment so the whole idea is to just not have any likes or dislikes to the thoughts that you're observing but just to allow them to be because when you allow them to be you allow them to release the energy that those thoughts bring about in you and you just witness that and you let it pass and in so doing you sort of real realize that there is a distance between you the Observer and you the mental crazy person who can't stop talking and can't stop chattering and that gives you a lot of peace and that helps you just calm down it's almost a way of processing all of that stress and that negativity in a really safe environment in the right way so you're releasing it and letting it go out safely and and coming back to your central midpoint of composure and calm once you get there you can start doing the other things right so you can you can do your time management you can figure out what you need to prioritize how what you can actually control and what's the best thing you can do in that particular in that particular situation you can reaffirm and ref reframe your mental chatter so now you're getting from the internal witness to the mind that can't stop and you're speaking to the intellectual mind and reframing that stressful situation through affirmations or whatever works for you by by internalizing what you know the good that could be in the situation right this has been tremendous learning the what I've been through this year has been huge vast amounts of learning for me personally for me professionally I'm part part of the senior management team I can now see things in a much clearer manner I can make suggestions that add a tremendous amount of value and I can do all of that because I'm actually reframing the situation from being this horrible thing that I need to run away from to an opportunity for me to learn and grow and to add value and that reframing has really really helped me to to be a contributing member of the senior management team and to make the best of the situation and then um you know over time as you as you keep practicing this this way of dealing with life and life stresses which I can tell you will happen repeatedly throughout your professional Journey throughout your life even beyond your professional careers you know you you gain a large amount of emotional intelligence you sort of can feel your stresses happening well in advance of when they do so you know heading into the next earning score into the next set of reports Etc I can already see what's going to freak me out and in advance of that I can sort of regulate and I can calm myself down and I can manage emotions and I can understand how to deal with others who are going through the same thing in the senior management team and how we can deal with the situation together I now really at a very visceral level get the Mind Body connction ction and I have firsthand experience of how when I exercise which I'm by the way not very good at doing in a regular basis the firsthand experience of when I do my Pilates lessons or my yoga lessons how much better I am at my work and how much better I am at dealing with stress because I've sort of reversed the cycle right instead of attacking it from the mental and the the meditation the witness I've actually attacked it from the body I've let the body release the stress gone for a massage even just let the stress out physically which is sort of helped the mental balance come through and it really really is a virtuous cycle you do the mental which helps the physical you do the physical which helps the mental and it Con it constantly works and builds and its each other and you do this over time and you sort of develop what I call stress tolerance so if you if you learn to do this on the small stuff and you don't blow up on the small stuff you get better better at handling the big stuff and by the way I thought I had been doing this but I realized that you know up until now in my professional career where I hadn't gone through anything quite this horrible like even in the pandemic when I worked for the hotel re the whole world was brewing up it wasn't like we as a company had done anything wrong I'd never been through this experience of feeling culpable like feeling like I had done something really horrible that I shouldn't have done it this was a completely unique experience in my professional career but I re recognize that you know in the small sort of stresses in my personal career whether it be you know my son not doing his homework or my husband traveling too much or whatever it might be I had been blowing up pretty regularly and I hadn't built up that resilience as I should have over time and it actually took this huge event for me to wake up and realize that this is a muscle that I really need to develop and I realize now that by developing it at work I'm getting so much better at exercising that same muscle in my professional life I'm blowing up a whole lot less I'm learning to navigate things in a much gar way I'm so much happier as a result of finding that equilibrium so um sorry great so this is this is the last slide that I have where 24 minutes in I'm going to go through just the summary the key strategies are mindfulness meditation has really really worked for me but there are easy breathing techniques the for count inhale the four count five sixc count exhale so the longer exhale shorter inhale and doing that repeatedly instantly calms you down um cognitive reframing once you've once you've actually gone in and calmed down at a very deep level reframing it for the intellectual mind works a lot better than if you did the reframing first and try to calm down next so there is a sequence to the to the steps that makes more sense um when you actually are in that situation you try and apply apply it building the emotional intelligence to understand that this is not about you it's not personal that everyone else is going through something similar and then building resilience if you aren't facing a big stress in your life use the small stresses to build up this resilience over time and then you know just just practice again the small leads to the big and I wish I'd tackled the small earlier but I've started with the big and I'm going to the small I hope your journey is in Reverse of that and then identifying you know just areas of your life where you can implement this I actually think you can Implement these techniques to everything and what I found is when I when I am in a in a in a good place and I've actually you know been meditating and I meditate 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the afternoon it's not a big in the evening it's not a bit big ask I'm finding that I get a lot more flashes of creativity and just new ways of looking at a situation because I'm not killing myself to find a way out like I'm just relaxed about it when you're relaxed you get a lot more creative about coming up with things have you ever been in this situation where you're trying to remember someone's name and you know you're you're talking to someone oh what was that thing I forget what it's called or what was that person's name it's on the tip of my tongue and you're trying and you're trying and you're trying and it won't come and then you've left whatever situation you in you're just by yourself you're totally relaxing pops into your head right because when you're relaxed when you're calm when you're balanced you sort of just have these flashes of getting answers to problems your subconscious mind has always been working on them it just resurfaces the solution when you are actually relaxed about it so um I hope my story has has sort of resonated with some of you I hope you realize that this is a journey that at any leadership level you can be faced with a situation that cracks you up and that it is okay and it is okay to go through that period of venting and it happens to everyone but it's so much more constructive to find a way to to deal with this um in a in in a in a in a way that is going to actually help the situation rather than just hurt you personally so I'm going to stop there um I'll open it up to questions I see we have some comments in the chat um sorry uh yes thank you so much yes let's go through some of the questions that came through the chat um we'll start with this one from Anna and she says any mindfulness technique apps or resources that you have found my mind is always running um I'm GNA recommend two books actually um I I I there is a meditation app it's called headspace downloaded it I tended not to use it as much um but some people swear by it the two books um that I've found actually the three books that I've absolutely loved um the first one is by the person whose quote I had on the screen Oliver burkman um who wrote a book called 4,000 weeks which is you know if you measured your entire lifespan if assuming you lived till the age of 80 all you've got on this planet are 4,000 weeks and it's a really balanced way of how to think about life in that context of really don't sweat the small stuff it doesn't matter in the long scheme of things none of this matters just gives you a lot of perspective so I've loved that and the second author is an author called Michael singer who's written two books the first that I absolutely loved is um it's called The Surrender experiment and it's just about how you you don't need to control everything in your life just surrendering and allowing the universe to sort of shape your path actually work works and it works remarkably well um and the second one by Michael Singer as well is called the untethered soul that really goes into meditation techniques and why it's important and how it works and what what you can do so those are the three the three resources that I'd
recommend all right so our next question um let's see this one comes from Danny she says how have you learned to not feel guilt taking care of yourself I'm the first person to sell my concert ticket or cancel hip hop when something comes up oh my God I so relate to this I I I I have always deep prioritized taking care of myself for other priorities there's some work that I need to do there's something I need to do for my son there's something there's always something else that's more important than me and I've just realized well two things number one I clearly you know need to work in self-love and that's fundamental and and everyone I think does need to work in it um most people most women especially do what I do so I know it's a very common common issue but two just to realize how much better of an employee a mother a wife I am when I've actually taken care of myself how you can't give what you don't have your cup needs to be full before you can f somebody else's but it's not my saying these words doesn't really matter you have to internalize you have to actually feel that yourself and you have to see the difference in yourself when you do PR when you do go to that concert or you do get that massage or you do do something for yourself and do it for the right reasons don't like go to a wellness Retreat to to just look better for approval right this is really to take care of and to nurture yourself to do something good for you because you want to do it for yourself and you deserve it you see how much better it makes you all around and that's when the penny sort of drops and it becomes a practice well thank you well I think we have time for one more question before we um ask you for final thoughts and go to daniela's presentation and Erin says any advice on telling a cooworker they need to slow down I have been in toxic situations so I'm coming from a place of love not competition that's actually a really good point I feel like there must have been many of my co-workers who would have wanted to tell me to to sort of take some tranquilizers at some point because I was I was um so upset and so stressed for so much of it um you know I think I think coming from a place of compassion and empathy is probably the best way to deal with a coworker that isn't handling things very well or is being toxic in the work environment I think the minute you go in with the right intent to actually help and help that person and help the situation that vibration resonates with whoever you're trying to address in most cases it should resonate unless they're so blocked off they can't feel the Compassion or empathy but going in with that vantage point and really helping them um feel like you understand and that you you're trying to get into their shoes and see what they're going through sort of disarms them and from there you can have a constructive conversation about what can actually be useful and that just in in so doing you're basically giving giving them therapy in some ways right and and giving them that understanding that will calm them down and hopefully make them less toxic well that's so wonderful thank you so much well um before we move on to our next presentation do you have any final words of wisdom for all of our viewers today you know um I just I just want to say if if you go through a really stressful situation and you crack Under Pressure like I did don't beat yourself up for it it just be kind to yourself and it happens it happens to everyone it's it's okay you will be in very many stressful situations in your in your life and that is what life is all about and just learn to whatever has happened in the past just let it go and move on I had the hardest time letting go of of even feeling the stress that I felt and blowing up the way I did so let letting go is the Mantra here and you need to let go of everything and just move forward because that's the most constructive way to be thank you so much for having me well thank you so much for your time
perfect so I felt I am uniquely well positioned to talk to you about pressure and stress because of what I'm going through this year and to give you some context I have been one of those Executives who felt like she's always had it under control I've obviously been in now for over 20 years I've worked in a variety of positions across investment Banks within corporates and I came to DV as a pretty seasoned and you know well sort of healed Finance professional who'd been around for a long time and who'd seen many different markets my last IR job was to work for a hotel Real Estate Investment Trust during the pandemic when there were lockdowns everywhere and no one could go to hotels so I truly thought I had seen it all and that I would not crack Under Pressure until this year and to give you a little bit of context because I need to give you context on exactly what happened um double verify is a recent Tech IPO the company went public in April of 2021 I joined right after that in May of 2021 so I've been with the company since its very first earning SC right and it was a tech darling this company was just phenomenal it still is phenomenal but you know consistent Revenue growth of above 30% incredibly profitable it was just a stock and a company and a management team that could do no wrong because the numbers were exemplary our CEO was a master marketer and I loved selling the investment proposition and I did so loudly I would have I'm not kidding at least six to seven calls a day with investors just bitching the story and broking the stock and feeling so good about doing all of that right and this year things went very very wrong right and what happened was we just had a cohort of customers who stopped spending in the way that we anticipated they would for completely idiosyncratic reasons that was specific to those companies and we had a shift in ad spend away from environments where we had our full Suite of products into environments where we had coverage of products right and now we were in Uncharted Territory this is the com a company that's consistently grown very very strongly finding itself in a position where things are going completely contrary to plan and not knowing how to navigate that and all of us were just figuring it out as we went along so I was holding it together we started the year with a big Miss versus what the street expected us to deliver on guidance and that's where you see this first drop you see in the February time frame you see that first drop and I held it together and I was like we'll we'll get through it we'll get through it it'll be fine and then we thought we'd lowered guidance enough and that we would be okay going forward because the worst thing you can do as a technology company is have to lower guidance twice right you're trading at a completely High mult a very very high valuation multiple that multiple is built on trust TR that you will execute and that you will perform and if you break that trust you lose your multiple and once you lose your multiple it's really difficult to get it back and guess what happened things started to look even worse than we thought back in February and we had to lower guidance in May and that's when you see the second leg leg and at that point I cracked we just had our earning SC the stock was down as you can see here almost 30% overnight so in one night we wiped out over $2 billion of market cap lost many many investors that I had personally pitched the story to a lot of money and I was completely overwhelmed not just by stress but by emotions of anger how could we get it wrong how could we not see this happening do we not know how to forecast what is going on how is this happening of guilt of having lost people money that is the last thing I ever wanted to do of a lot of Shame for that same reason and just fear that we didn't know how to navigate this and I didn't know what was happening and I should probably run for the exits because I don't know what's going on and I don't have control over the situation and I do invest your relations and I don't do forecasting and how am I supposed to navigate this Etc and I was feeling all of these emotions still trying to keep it together when our CEO very kindly called me into a room just to see how I was doing and he asked a few questions he's like I always want you to give me feedback Etc and at that point I flipped and I completely lost my composure and I lost it and I told him how this was unacceptable how we'd lost people so much money how you know I I couldn't look these investors in their eyes anymore how it was appalling that we couldn't have seen this coming how you know how could we not forecast and how could we get this so wrong and who was to blame and whose heads should roll because of this Etc right and I I almost was yelling at him and at that point I had an outof Body Experience where I could see myself shouting at the CEO and at the same time I could see his completely shocked and pained expression and I could see all this emotional garbage that I was throwing onto him and I could see how he was taking it which was really really well but he was obviously hurt like it was tough everyone was going through a really tough time and at that point it was just like an epiphany of how is this serving me how is the serving him how is the serving the company how is the serving the greater good none of what I'm doing right now serves anybody right and that is the thing with stress and with crack in under stress you have to in your journey of getting to a Breaking Point have that realization that this doesn't work stress doesn't work it doesn't help it doesn't improve the situation it's not going to get the numbers to be better it's not going to make anyone wake up and think they should do something differently everyone's feeling it adding stress to the equation is only going to make things worse right and in that realization is is another realization in that Journey which is this the only way you can get truly comfortable and truly secure is by completely embracing insecurity because life will throw you curveballs you just don't know when it's going to happen it isn't personal it's just what life does it's not about you it really really isn't things are beyond your control in many instances and the only way you're going to deal with this and remain sane is by embracing it you just have to accept that this is going to happen things are going to change it's not always going to go your way and that is okay and that you will be okay right the minute you come to that realization you can actually Implement strategies which I'm going to go into next but you need to have that Epiphany moment because until you do it's very easy to just have this covert hidden stress that just eats at you silently even if you don't have an eruption the way I did where I actually just completely cracked um and was thankfully you know I got away with it um he totally understood and he was he was wonderful about it and I just have to say kudos to him for that but even if you don't have that eruption mode it just eats at you and it nags at you and it wears you down and you need to have that moment where you realize this is just not helping and this is going to be a recurring theme in my life where I'm constantly going to be in situations that I can't control that I I will have to learn to navigate and stress is not going to help and cracking up is not going to help Okay so let's talk about that now first and foremost I am neurotic I've always been I've always been slightly on the higher end of the stressed out spectrum and in my past I've always thought that was a good thing right because it was my stress and my neuroticism and my anxiety that helped me really perform right I always was overprepared for every single meeting I knew all my facts backward and memorized every single financial and every single stat I could parot things in my sleep and that was also due to stress right because I I felt that need to know everything and that made me very very good at what I do right so there is this law called the y doson Law which says a certain amount of stress is not a bad thing right and you see this bell curve where you know if you don't have a lot of stress and you're just studing a comfort zone you probably aren't pushing yourself hard enough either a little bit of stress and a little bit of anxiety can actually make you quite productive and there is an optimal Zone where you're really growing you're really learning you're on top of your gra and that's a good space to be and that is anxiety and there is a way to have a very positive outlook on that and there is a way to get bugged down by it as long as you're enjoying yourself and you're actually learning the process and you're doing the things that make you feel more motivated and feel more inspired you're in the optimal Zone and you can feel when you're in the optimal Zone it feels good it feels great you feel on top of your game you feel like you've got your arms around things but you need to do all of that with the realization ation that you can't have your arms around everything right and the minute you start not like trying to get your arms around everything and things are slipping and that makes you very uneasy and uncomfortable you start getting fatigued and into this negative zone of exhaustion and anxiety and panic which is what I was going into when things were just not going my way and I couldn't I couldn't understand why right so there is that optimal Zone all stress isn't bad stress and that's important to recognize but when you get into that Red Zone which is what I was in it's really understanding that it's only when you regain your balance and have your composure that you can actually think clearly enough to make the right decisions to not make mistakes and to improve performance it's the only way to add value it's very difficult to be able to perform and to deliver what is need needed to be done in that moment if you're going to be outside of your balanced Zone if you're going to lose your composure and if you're going to let stress overtake you and the consequences are obviously disastrous right things are already going badly if you lose it it's just going to make the situation worse and that's not that's not terribly difficult to understand but to to break it down a little bit more there is actually a cognitive response you have a pre front front Al cortex in your brain that's responsible for decision- making and when your stress response just goes through the roof and your body is just releasing this adrenaline and you're spiking you know you can just be overwhelmed by that natural stress response so that it can completely Cloud your judgment and you can make the wrong decisions you can have the wrong response I understand the need to vent but you need to give yourself that moment and then come back right and then if you've been in that response state for a very long time it is exhausting your mind sort of goes into circles you go over the same problem again and again you keep feeling the sense of Despair and that is simply just exhausting it's very bad for you mentally it's horrible for you physically your body actually holds the stress in different places I could feel it constantly in my neck and my shoulders I could feel it in my lower back and it's just you it's in you there is a a a very direct Mind Body Connection and this manifests in all sorts of ways that are bad for your health bad for your hormones bad for everything pretty much right so um once you get to this realization there are so many techniques that can help right but a core part of the realization is not just that stress doesn't serve you right intellect you can understand that stress doesn't serve me it's bad for me I shouldn't do it but how do you actually internalize that intellectual understanding of the problem how do you actually drive change within yourself what I found and you know I'm not the first one to say it you'll find endless YouTube videos on the topic but what I found is that meditation actually does help you realize that there are two 's there is one you which is the mental intellectual part that's constantly talking that's going over the stressful narrative and that's driving you crazy because it won't stop talking about it and won't stop going in circles and then there is the you that can see that mental part talking and is the witness to that chatter and is just there and it's the it's what your core is it's who you really are that is who you really are and the minute you get that objectivity which was my outter body experience when I could see myself talking to my CFO yelling at my CFO um CEO sorry and I could see his response that that witness is the person you need to tap into and the one way that I found to actually tap into that witness is through meditation and the meditation technique is really simple you just focus in your breath and You observe your mental chatter and you just observe the thoughts without any judgment so the whole idea is to just not have any likes or dislikes to the thoughts that you're observing but just to allow them to be because when you allow them to be you allow them to release the energy that those thoughts bring about in you and you just witness that and you let it pass and in so doing you sort of real realize that there is a distance between you the Observer and you the mental crazy person who can't stop talking and can't stop chattering and that gives you a lot of peace and that helps you just calm down it's almost a way of processing all of that stress and that negativity in a really safe environment in the right way so you're releasing it and letting it go out safely and and coming back to your central midpoint of composure and calm once you get there you can start doing the other things right so you can you can do your time management you can figure out what you need to prioritize how what you can actually control and what's the best thing you can do in that particular in that particular situation you can reaffirm and ref reframe your mental chatter so now you're getting from the internal witness to the mind that can't stop and you're speaking to the intellectual mind and reframing that stressful situation through affirmations or whatever works for you by by internalizing what you know the good that could be in the situation right this has been tremendous learning the what I've been through this year has been huge vast amounts of learning for me personally for me professionally I'm part part of the senior management team I can now see things in a much clearer manner I can make suggestions that add a tremendous amount of value and I can do all of that because I'm actually reframing the situation from being this horrible thing that I need to run away from to an opportunity for me to learn and grow and to add value and that reframing has really really helped me to to be a contributing member of the senior management team and to make the best of the situation and then um you know over time as you as you keep practicing this this way of dealing with life and life stresses which I can tell you will happen repeatedly throughout your professional Journey throughout your life even beyond your professional careers you know you you gain a large amount of emotional intelligence you sort of can feel your stresses happening well in advance of when they do so you know heading into the next earning score into the next set of reports Etc I can already see what's going to freak me out and in advance of that I can sort of regulate and I can calm myself down and I can manage emotions and I can understand how to deal with others who are going through the same thing in the senior management team and how we can deal with the situation together I now really at a very visceral level get the Mind Body connction ction and I have firsthand experience of how when I exercise which I'm by the way not very good at doing in a regular basis the firsthand experience of when I do my Pilates lessons or my yoga lessons how much better I am at my work and how much better I am at dealing with stress because I've sort of reversed the cycle right instead of attacking it from the mental and the the meditation the witness I've actually attacked it from the body I've let the body release the stress gone for a massage even just let the stress out physically which is sort of helped the mental balance come through and it really really is a virtuous cycle you do the mental which helps the physical you do the physical which helps the mental and it Con it constantly works and builds and its each other and you do this over time and you sort of develop what I call stress tolerance so if you if you learn to do this on the small stuff and you don't blow up on the small stuff you get better better at handling the big stuff and by the way I thought I had been doing this but I realized that you know up until now in my professional career where I hadn't gone through anything quite this horrible like even in the pandemic when I worked for the hotel re the whole world was brewing up it wasn't like we as a company had done anything wrong I'd never been through this experience of feeling culpable like feeling like I had done something really horrible that I shouldn't have done it this was a completely unique experience in my professional career but I re recognize that you know in the small sort of stresses in my personal career whether it be you know my son not doing his homework or my husband traveling too much or whatever it might be I had been blowing up pretty regularly and I hadn't built up that resilience as I should have over time and it actually took this huge event for me to wake up and realize that this is a muscle that I really need to develop and I realize now that by developing it at work I'm getting so much better at exercising that same muscle in my professional life I'm blowing up a whole lot less I'm learning to navigate things in a much gar way I'm so much happier as a result of finding that equilibrium so um sorry great so this is this is the last slide that I have where 24 minutes in I'm going to go through just the summary the key strategies are mindfulness meditation has really really worked for me but there are easy breathing techniques the for count inhale the four count five sixc count exhale so the longer exhale shorter inhale and doing that repeatedly instantly calms you down um cognitive reframing once you've once you've actually gone in and calmed down at a very deep level reframing it for the intellectual mind works a lot better than if you did the reframing first and try to calm down next so there is a sequence to the to the steps that makes more sense um when you actually are in that situation you try and apply apply it building the emotional intelligence to understand that this is not about you it's not personal that everyone else is going through something similar and then building resilience if you aren't facing a big stress in your life use the small stresses to build up this resilience over time and then you know just just practice again the small leads to the big and I wish I'd tackled the small earlier but I've started with the big and I'm going to the small I hope your journey is in Reverse of that and then identifying you know just areas of your life where you can implement this I actually think you can Implement these techniques to everything and what I found is when I when I am in a in a in a good place and I've actually you know been meditating and I meditate 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the afternoon it's not a big in the evening it's not a bit big ask I'm finding that I get a lot more flashes of creativity and just new ways of looking at a situation because I'm not killing myself to find a way out like I'm just relaxed about it when you're relaxed you get a lot more creative about coming up with things have you ever been in this situation where you're trying to remember someone's name and you know you're you're talking to someone oh what was that thing I forget what it's called or what was that person's name it's on the tip of my tongue and you're trying and you're trying and you're trying and it won't come and then you've left whatever situation you in you're just by yourself you're totally relaxing pops into your head right because when you're relaxed when you're calm when you're balanced you sort of just have these flashes of getting answers to problems your subconscious mind has always been working on them it just resurfaces the solution when you are actually relaxed about it so um I hope my story has has sort of resonated with some of you I hope you realize that this is a journey that at any leadership level you can be faced with a situation that cracks you up and that it is okay and it is okay to go through that period of venting and it happens to everyone but it's so much more constructive to find a way to to deal with this um in a in in a in a in a way that is going to actually help the situation rather than just hurt you personally so I'm going to stop there um I'll open it up to questions I see we have some comments in the chat um sorry uh yes thank you so much yes let's go through some of the questions that came through the chat um we'll start with this one from Anna and she says any mindfulness technique apps or resources that you have found my mind is always running um I'm GNA recommend two books actually um I I I there is a meditation app it's called headspace downloaded it I tended not to use it as much um but some people swear by it the two books um that I've found actually the three books that I've absolutely loved um the first one is by the person whose quote I had on the screen Oliver burkman um who wrote a book called 4,000 weeks which is you know if you measured your entire lifespan if assuming you lived till the age of 80 all you've got on this planet are 4,000 weeks and it's a really balanced way of how to think about life in that context of really don't sweat the small stuff it doesn't matter in the long scheme of things none of this matters just gives you a lot of perspective so I've loved that and the second author is an author called Michael singer who's written two books the first that I absolutely loved is um it's called The Surrender experiment and it's just about how you you don't need to control everything in your life just surrendering and allowing the universe to sort of shape your path actually work works and it works remarkably well um and the second one by Michael Singer as well is called the untethered soul that really goes into meditation techniques and why it's important and how it works and what what you can do so those are the three the three resources that I'd
recommend all right so our next question um let's see this one comes from Danny she says how have you learned to not feel guilt taking care of yourself I'm the first person to sell my concert ticket or cancel hip hop when something comes up oh my God I so relate to this I I I I have always deep prioritized taking care of myself for other priorities there's some work that I need to do there's something I need to do for my son there's something there's always something else that's more important than me and I've just realized well two things number one I clearly you know need to work in self-love and that's fundamental and and everyone I think does need to work in it um most people most women especially do what I do so I know it's a very common common issue but two just to realize how much better of an employee a mother a wife I am when I've actually taken care of myself how you can't give what you don't have your cup needs to be full before you can f somebody else's but it's not my saying these words doesn't really matter you have to internalize you have to actually feel that yourself and you have to see the difference in yourself when you do PR when you do go to that concert or you do get that massage or you do do something for yourself and do it for the right reasons don't like go to a wellness Retreat to to just look better for approval right this is really to take care of and to nurture yourself to do something good for you because you want to do it for yourself and you deserve it you see how much better it makes you all around and that's when the penny sort of drops and it becomes a practice well thank you well I think we have time for one more question before we um ask you for final thoughts and go to daniela's presentation and Erin says any advice on telling a cooworker they need to slow down I have been in toxic situations so I'm coming from a place of love not competition that's actually a really good point I feel like there must have been many of my co-workers who would have wanted to tell me to to sort of take some tranquilizers at some point because I was I was um so upset and so stressed for so much of it um you know I think I think coming from a place of compassion and empathy is probably the best way to deal with a coworker that isn't handling things very well or is being toxic in the work environment I think the minute you go in with the right intent to actually help and help that person and help the situation that vibration resonates with whoever you're trying to address in most cases it should resonate unless they're so blocked off they can't feel the Compassion or empathy but going in with that vantage point and really helping them um feel like you understand and that you you're trying to get into their shoes and see what they're going through sort of disarms them and from there you can have a constructive conversation about what can actually be useful and that just in in so doing you're basically giving giving them therapy in some ways right and and giving them that understanding that will calm them down and hopefully make them less toxic well that's so wonderful thank you so much well um before we move on to our next presentation do you have any final words of wisdom for all of our viewers today you know um I just I just want to say if if you go through a really stressful situation and you crack Under Pressure like I did don't beat yourself up for it it just be kind to yourself and it happens it happens to everyone it's it's okay you will be in very many stressful situations in your in your life and that is what life is all about and just learn to whatever has happened in the past just let it go and move on I had the hardest time letting go of of even feeling the stress that I felt and blowing up the way I did so let letting go is the Mantra here and you need to let go of everything and just move forward because that's the most constructive way to be thank you so much for having me well thank you so much for your time