Lessons

Lesson Info

Reducing Stress: Social Proof

right now, I want to bring on our special guest. His name is Ari Meisel. Having have you ever heard of Ari? My cell, The author of less doing more work? Um, art of less doing dot com, I believe, is his website. I do subscribe to his blawg, but I hope I quoted that right. And we'll ask him if I didn't. Let's go ahead and bring Ari on via Skype because he has a really cool story when it comes to stress. Ari, how are you doing? Hi, Ben. How's it going? It's going great. Awesome to see a man. This is so cool to bring you on live during the session. Yeah, Excited. Teoh, be back and be doing something with you. Now you guys are is a productivity expert and he just got done teaching creative live course. What was the name of your creative life course? Sorry. It was the less doing. How to make everything in life easier. The art of less doing how to make everything in life easier. So, um, he has some really cool techniques. I love his stuff, especially when it comes to stress reduction and prod...

uctivity. But today even though Ari and I could probably talk for, like, three hours right now about productivity. The reason that I brought Ari on is because Ari has a really interesting story. Ari, can you tell us about ah, health condition that you had to deal with? Um, that that was really, really serious over the past several years. Yeah. So basically seven, almost eight years ago now I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, which, for those who don't know, is a chronic inflammatory condition that affects your digestive track. It's incredibly painful and very misunderstood and considered to be incurable. And I was taking 1.16 different medicines a day, and I was getting sicker and sicker, and the medicines were making me even sicker. And, uh, after one particularly bad night in the hospital, I I decided I had to do something different. So I went on this long process of self tracking and self experimentation, got off my meds after four months, and then imputed my first rap on a couple of months after that. Eso being on all these different medications, having your entire you know, gut inflamed. We talked about God inflammation a lot. Yesterday we talked about like, you know, slippery elm bark and L glutamine and supplements and stuff like that. But where does stress control fit in here? I mean, what what did you do? As far a stress goes to shut down that inflammation that was happening in your gut. It's interesting because, you know, a lot of someone's you mentioned. I've tried pretty much every single one of them, some with good effect. Someone bad. And Cat's Claw was a particularly good one, by the way. But once I had figured out in my mind the fitness aspects and the nutritional aspects, which was a big one, obviously, and the supplement aspects I was doing good. But I wasn't doing great, and I realized that there was still this big component in my illness, and that affected me as well as many other people with chronic conditions and their lives. General that had to do with stress stresses and inflammatory agent stresses, a hindrance to progress and and which is where less doing came from. It was this goal of creating a productivity system to help people sort of free up their time and reclaim their minds to do the things they want to do. But I came across a very interesting techniques along the way. What are some of those techniques that you used? So I have tuned in for some of your presentation, but have you covered H r v yet? We talked about H R V. Yeah. Okay, so So So you already covered. But Harvey variability was an interesting one for me because I am a yoga instructor, and yoga was instrumental for May. But I felt like I kept needing toe Bio Hackett and made getting more and more effective. So the yoga was great, but I I'm not. I'm not someone who can meditate very well. And a lot of people have that issue, you know? It's their minds raise. They do this. And for me, I Technically I guess I could meditate, but it didn't have the benefit I was looking for, necessarily. Heart rate variability was really interesting. And what it showed me was it is not so much how you respond to the stress as much as how you recover from the stress. Sort of that resiliency. Right? So believe it or not, and I know that you'll understand this really well the idea for me to go towards doing triathlons and then doing tough mudder and eventually doing Ironman France was that the crones was the hardest thing I've ever dealt with in my entire life. And I needed something harder to give me sort of perspective on that situation, but also to create more stress in a controlled way that I could then learn to recover from. Interesting. So are you said that there were a few other techniques that you used. You mentioned H R V, and you mentioned yoga and meditation. Were there any other little things that you found to be particularly helpful? Yeah. You know, I I wouldn't have believed it, but, er thing mats and and the other thing sheets. I was really shocked. I haven't gotten to try doing the A post 11 magnetic device yet, but I I've found a lot of interesting benefits on the everything just just in terms, at the very least, in terms of better sleep and that obviously helping to, as you just said, sort of restore everything you track heart rate variability. And what happened when you did, er thing or grounding? No, that actually. So when I was doing the interview tracking stuff. I had not even discovered our thing. And so I sort of dabbled with that later. But you found that your crone's disease and got inflammation. What was happening to your digestive system when you did something like, er thing, you could actually feel that in your gut? Oh, absolutely. And I mean, I would wake up in the middle of night in pain before that. I mean, you know, way before that. But, uh, the crones would wake me up even if it wasn't something that was actually so painful. I would just not digesting properly. And I remember with everything she eats, it was like the first night I tried on my it was like the especially if I had in a long time, and I woke up feeling refreshed for the first time in a long time. Wow. Now, if there was one big tip that you were going to give to our studio audience is the people who are watching right now. If you had Teoh kind of like, take your the biggest lesson that you've learned dealing with crone's disease and, uh, kind of managing stress if you could give people like, one actionable thing that they could literally go do today. What would be that one thing? That's that you'd recommend that folks go on Dio and I'm putting you on the spot here. I know I didn't tell you. I was gonna ask you this question, but that's totally fine. No, I really do believe in this idea of stress inoculation. That's that's really where you know, you could tell somebody to try the stretch doctor app or get the the M Wave two and hook that up themselves today and try that up. But that's that's not gonna have the quick, necessarily effect that you're looking for. As much as putting yourself intentionally into a stressful situation and important thing for people to realize is that stressful situation could be driving in traffic. That's a pretty big one, for a lot of people are getting cut off by somebody. It could be having a fight with your spouse. It can be not doing so well at work, and it can be doing a Tabata interval, you know, So those things are extremely stress on your body. But if you're putting yourselves into that and it's at least a somewhat controlled situation. Then you can very quickly not only realize you're not going to die, Um, and you will recover, and eventually you'll get fast about it. But it's it sounds corny, but it's basically the idea of sort of pushing yourself to your edge to really find out what you're made of annoy. And then once that happens, you can handle an enormous amount of stress once you stop recognizing it. A stress. This is really cool, you guys, because this returns to, for example, what I was talking about with the rhythmic breathing where I was telling you how running can be stressful. But you can go out during a hard workout and teach yourself Train your body toe, actually produce less cortisol during that hard activity by simply engaging in nasal rhythmic breathing. So I love Ari's idea here of actually training your body by putting it into stressful situations had actually become less stressed, and how to maybe even raised the ceiling in terms of what you can handle. So Ari man through devices right below the screen there that I buy altitude mask in the power long. That's a stressful situation Yeah, Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, and even even this little rolling device. Of course, if you put this in certain areas of your body is extremely stressful. So, Ari, thank you so much for coming on. Um, again, like you guys. I'm serious. He's a wealth of knowledge. If you haven't tuned into his course, you need to check it out. I had the pleasure of reading a review copy of his book on the airplane. Ride Down Less Doing More Living, right? Yes, exactly. So less doing more living is the name of the book, Ari. Thanks so much for coming on my session, man. Hey, thanks for having me, Ben. Good luck with the rest of it and enjoy. Alright, guys, let's give our hand. So we've got some time for questions on, but you get some questions about what are we was just talking about that whole concept of stress inoculation, which I love. I'm totally adding that to my vernacular. Um, let's go ahead and fire away, Barris comment. But we talked about that cold thermo Genesis yesterday, and a lot of people talked about how they had this fear of like I don't want to turn the water on. It's gonna be cold. I guess that kind of goes back to his idea of stress inoculation in which you turned the cold water on it. It's freezing. And you're like, I don't want to be in here. Oh, my God. And your body is like, you're gonna die. And then, after, like, two minutes, you're like, Wait, just cold water gonna live, so yeah, Yeah, And you'll find, you know, so many comments yesterday about people you walked up to me. They're like, I try the cold shower this morning, and it really, really sucks, but I feel great. But what happens is eventually it actually kind of quit sucking like you feel pretty good now and then you have to figure out a new way to create that. Suck it. Um, like tomorrow morning, I am waking up before my flight. I'm running down to the San Francisco Bay and I'm jumping in with my goggles and it's about 49 degrees and I'm setting my clock for 45 minutes and I'll go swim for 45 minutes and force myself to stay in the water for that period of time. That's an incredible hermetic stress. But the rest of the day, after my warm shower, I will feel like a 1,000, bucks. And for me, that's kind of a form of this new word that are just taught us. Stress inoculation. So it kind of raises that roof in terms of what you can actually handle. How about from the Internet? Do you have some questions that have come through the chat room? There was a question. When are you mentioned that he used Cacs Cat's claw and they were asking if it was in a bionic? Asked if it's in conjunction with something else on def. It has to be combined with something for it to be effective. Man, I wish I was still cats close a new one for me. I haven't used cats call before. That was one when he mentioned that that I made a mental note that I need to go look into. But yeah, I'm not. I'm not quite sure. As far as the cat's claw is, um, other questions, either from the Let's go with one more from the chat room and then we'll take another from the studio audience. Yeah, we had a question earlier about breathing techniques and Gorby Show was talking about having a deviated septum. And he was curious. If you had any breathing techniques. I guess that kind of goes for any other trouble that people have. If they have any issues, can they still use the same techniques? Or do people need to be careful if they haven't issuing that? I personally haven't had to deal with the deviated septum, and I don't know what that actually feels like in terms of how much resistance there is. The nasal breathing, I can tell you. There's a great number of people who have found success using the breathe right strips. You know, the ones that you see, like the football players wearing that you see advertised on TV for joggers and runners. Get those breathe right strips and you put him on. And those can help tremendously if you tend to have hay fever, allergies, autoimmune issues, things like that. The first few times used the breathe right strips. You may have some serious mucus leakage going on, Um, and it takes a little bit of getting used to have kind of opening up those nasal package passages, but could be a really good way to actually clean yourself out as well if you open up those nasal passages with a strip and try doing things that way. So, uh, Peter, like like a comet. When doing all these techniques, we really have to stop and be more gentle with ourselves. A lot of people get hung up on my doing this writer, I suck because I didn't do it and that almost get negates, um, the effects of these de stressing things that we're trying to do. So we just try, need to be consistent with it and keep working on and recognize if we fall out of it, to put ourselves back into those states about it's about habits. It's like I mentioned most of research that's been done on Tie Chief, for example, 8 to 12 weeks of consistent practice to really get that decreasing cortisol. Another perfect example is I mentioned yesterday the use of vine oral beats, and I'll talk about those a little bit. Maura's a strategy for for Luling yourself into a nap or lulling yourself into sleep, and those take usually about 4 to 6 weeks of use before you really start to notice a difference, and your body begins to really respond and becoming trained to using them. So, yeah, all of these little things. These everything from bio hacks, toe lifestyle practices. They do take some. Some habitual practice. Barris. Um, I think it was bionic. Owes question about cats claw. Not 100% sure this company makes it. I think I and makes a tincture form of cat's claw tincture. And that's a really good company. That's yeah. For those of you don't know what a tincture is. This is one of my my little tinctures that all used to reduce stress during the day or to settle down for a nap really quickly. It's called passion flower. So tinctures air just like little extracts that you take and you put underneath your tongue and usually hold for about 60 to 90 seconds. Passionflower is actually one of my favorite ways to reduce stress when it comes to like supplementation. I was going to actually talk about this a little more during that during the sleep workshop. But yeah, there are. There are there are definite the benefits to using like oil or a tincture and extract rather than necessarily like a like a capsule or a powder. Absolutely. So anything else that we that we got from the chat rooms? Oh, if I have a comment from Valerie in the chat room, which I think a lot of people might be able to relate to She was just saying how effective and useful this segment is. She says that she deals with stress like a Zen Buddhist. And then when it's over, she says, she crumbles and she needs to work on her resilience. And that's exactly what we're learning right here. So it's great. Well, fantastic. Well, you guys, I think that's going about wrap up today session on stress. So I'm gonna turn it over to our hosts, even and Chris and let you guys close things out. Well, I know that we have some great stuff with Jess are coming up in the next segment. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that and we'll talk? Then you may have noticed that my wife, who's been part of the studio audience, was not part of the studio audience for this session because she is off prepping for the next session, which is how to get rid of the hidden performance killers in your home. She's going to teach you how we make household cleaners and personal care products that allow us to not destroy our bodies and disrupt our hormones when we are cleaning, when we are making ourselves smell nice when we're doing our hair, Believe it or not, there are ways that you can actually live healthy, smell nice and not necessarily be a a stinky hippie. So you're gonna learn about all that in the next session and in the afternoon sessions today, we're gonna be learning about every hack that exists to get better sleep. And then in the final session, um, I'm going to try and and blow your minds by teaching you how to expand your minds and hack your brain to better performance. So a lot of exciting stuff coming up, lots of exciting stuff, and there's lots of excitement being shared online, Valerie said. OMG, that exercise was amazing. And then she said, This is totally deep and valuable for me right now. I can't even tell you