569: Thriving in the Stress and Uncertainty of a Crisis with Dr. Joshua Klapow

Pete Mockaitis
Josh, thanks for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Joshua Klapow
It’s my pleasure, Pete. Good to be with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I understand that you are a doctor and you have the nickname Dr. Disaster. How did this name come about? And can you tell us a story about when you got to make a cool impact in the midst of a difficult time for people?

Joshua Klapow
Okay, yes. First of all, it’s not a marketing ploy or I’ve had…

Pete Mockaitis
Your PR people said, “It’s going to be hot.”

Joshua Klapow
Yeah, that’s right. No, no, no. So, I got this name back during Hurricane Katrina actually. So, I’m a clinical psychologist by training, and one of my areas of interests is disaster mental health, but I’ve also worked most of my academic career in a school of public health, and so a lot of what I was doing there was crisis communication, how to help people, groups of people, during times of disaster or times of crisis, let’s say that.

Well, as we started getting Hurricane Katrina come through, there was interest from the local media and then from the broader national media because I’m down here in the southeast on how do people cope, how do people deal with terrible things that happen. And so, I did a lot of stuff locally and nationally in the media on Hurricane Katrina and coping with death, and rebuilding, etc. Well, as you might imagine, we had more hurricanes. There was Gustav and then there were tornadoes, and pretty much every time, and my kids were young at the time, anytime something bad happened, you’d see me on local TV, or hear me on the local radio.

And one of the media folks at the university where I work with, he just, one day, he said this, he’s like, “Damn! You’re like Dr. Disaster. Everytime something bad happens, there you are.” And, yeah, I said, “God, that’s depressing. That’s terrible. I don’t want to be known as…” He said, “No, no, no. I like it.” And then my kids were very young at the time, “Dad is Dr. Disaster.”

And ever since then, you know, the line is, people say, “We see you on TV sometimes.” I say, “Yeah, pretty much if something bad happens, there’s a decent shot that you’ll see me or hear me somewhere because that is one of the things that I do is help people through crises.” So, yes, I am Dr. Disaster. I wear it as a badge of honor in that I help people. I don’t like the connotation of what it means because it’s almost like, ‘Oh, God, here comes Josh. Something bad is going to happen.’” And I have to remind them, “No, something bad has happened. Here comes Josh to help.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, then can you tell us, you’ve seen and helped a lot of people in a lot of disasters. How does this current COVID pandemic crisis situation, how is it similar to other disasters? And how is it unique?

Joshua Klapow
It’s unique in many ways. So, let’s talk about how it’s similar. I use the phrase, “Crisis is in the eye of the beholder.” And what I mean by that is we talk about disasters and crises, and we talk about them almost as if there is a formal definition. And if you think about it, a disaster or a crisis could be a global pandemic. It could be also the breakup of a marriage, or the loss of a job, or your dog dies. Crisis is all relative.

And so, one of the things that is very similar is that we are in a state of crisis from the sense of there’s lots of change, there’s lots of uncertainty, and there are lots of unpleasant things either that have happened, or happening, or likely to happen. And if you think about that, that holds everything from a tornado that’s come through, to a sick pet, to a relationship on the rocks, to a global pandemic. And the reason that that holds true is what remains constant is we’re humans. And the human factor remains constant, how we react to threat, uncertainty, discomfort, discomfort globally, everything from emotional discomfort to physical discomfort. All of those are sort of stress responses that happen to us no matter how big, or how many different people are affected, or if it’s just happening to us.

I think what is so different about this one is, if I really can think about it, it’s two things. One, the global nature of it. What I mean by that is so many people are affected unlike a tornado, or a hurricane, or an earthquake, where even if it’s huge, we can say, “It happened in this city, this town, this country.” That’s number one. So, so many people are in the same situation.

The second thing is while for some people there’s very acute levels of crisis, “My loved one is sick. My loved one…” God forbid it, “…is dying.” For many people, the crisis is both a restriction and a freedom, the unknown, “Will I get sick?” and then underlying that, there are sort of two more pieces of the crisis which is, one, financial for many people, and then, two, a complete change, prolonged change, of how we’re living our lives. This is not the storm that blew through and we’ll rebuild. This, even, and I dare say this, this is a little provocative, even after 9/11. The event happened. It was horrible. There were longer-term effects but it didn’t come on as slowly, rise as slowly, peak and stay for as many people. And that is something, frankly, all of us alive right now, with the exception of a few people who lived through the 1917 Flu Pandemic, none of us have experienced ever.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that sets some context. Thank you. So, you say that this anxiety, this experience, it really does impact just kind of the way we think and operate and feel each day. Like, what are some of the telltale signs, like, “Oh, this is actually normal that I’m thinking, feeling, experiencing this, given that we’re in the midst of a crisis situation”?

Joshua Klapow
A lot of people can recognize when they’re under profound stress. They’ll say, “I feel stressed. I feel nervous. I feel anxious. I have a headache. I have a backache. My stomach aches. My stomach hurts. My temper is short,” those kinds of things. But the term that I like to use, Pete, that I think many people feel but they don’t equate it with stress or levels of stress, because for a lot of people it’s not super high levels of stress. It’s just kind of, what I call, it’s not low. It’s moderate. It’s there but we’re able to sort of function. The tornado hasn’t just come right through, it’s, “I still get up every day and I’m doing things.” But people feel discombobulated. That’s my favorite word to use.

Pete Mockaitis
Moderate stress. Discombobulation.

Joshua Klapow
Discombobulation. We like to use down in the South, we like to call it feeling out of sorts. We’re out of sorts. It’s not quite right, “I feel slightly agitated, slightly irritable, out of sync. I may not be sleeping as well but I am sleeping. I feel tired. I feel out of rhythm.” Sometimes a feeling, almost a little bit of jetlag, not a ton of jetlag. I see a lot of people feel like, and I think we’ve all heard this, “What day is it again? Where am I?” It’s that.

And that’s where the discombobulation comes because while there’s peaks and valleys, you know, if you lose a job, then that’s high stress that you can say, “Oh, my God, I know exactly what’s going on.” But let’s say you’ve already lost the job, and maybe you’re managing your books and you’re managing your finances, and it’s kind of okay. It’s not good but it’s okay. Or, let’s say you have a job. What people are feeling is, “I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t know how to manage this.” And, particularly in those areas where we’re much more restricted in our movement, this feeling, for a lot of people for the first time in their lives, “I can’t do what I want to do,” which is very…it’s unique for Americans, right? It’s very unique.

And this came out in the early stages. You’ve heard of the whole hoarding of the toilet paper, right? Why are people hoarding toilet paper? “Well, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to go to the grocery store.” There was no place in this country, in the U.S. anyway, that shut down all grocery stores. They limited it. They limited how much you could buy. They limited, in some cases, how many people could go in. But that’s a stressor for our culture. Not being able to go where we want to go whenever we want to go and get whatever we want to get, and it creates this sense of…it’s a very primitive sense of survival. It puts us kind of into that fight or flight, and we’re not even highly quarantined, right?

For a lot us, it’s just, “Stay at home.” It’s not, “You will be arrested if you go out.” And that is very unique to what we’re experiencing right now.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’d love to, because I think you’re really speaking to something here, and I keep going back and forth on this in terms of there are times in which I’d like, “Hey, well, this isn’t really so bad. I mean, this is the home I like. This is the family I like, my wife and kids. These are people I like, so it ain’t so bad. So, why are you worked up?” And then I think back, “Hey, what about in, I don’t know, war times? Like, the soldiers or those under strict rationing?” I was like, “Have I become soft? Have we all become soft?” Then, I don’t know, it’s sort of like I’m upset with myself for being peeved. It’s like meta upset, and I don’t know, like, “Are we weak? And is that bad?” What do you feel about this, Josh?

Joshua Klapow
I get blasted on this, although with my clients, I think it’s an important one. When I’m talking with my clients, a lot of times this is what comes up. It’s feeling guilty because we feel like we’re under siege. Now, I will say this, if you’ve lost your job and you have no income, and that’s happening at all levels of the socioeconomic spectrum, if you lost your job, “What do I do?” Then you may have a reason to be quite upset, right?

But see, this is the thing. If you’re upset because you can’t go to the grocery store, or you can’t leave, or you have to spend time at home, then you have the right to be upset. Being upset is emotion. It’s an emotion. We have the right to feel what we want to feel. It is what we do with it that has the impact. It has the impact on ourselves and it has the impact on the people around us.

So, for example, if you’re feeling, “God, this really sucks. I’m here at home, I can’t go socialize the way I want to, I can’t go to the restaurants I want. And, yes, I know I shouldn’t feel bad but I do feel bad,” and you kind of get yourself a little bit irritable. And then, as a result, you take that out on your wife and your kids, and you’re mean, and you’re cranky, or maybe you’re in a leadership position, and you’re irritable because of this, and you’re yelling on the conference calls for everybody to work harder. Now, your justified emotion is having a very unjustified impact on everybody else.

This is where managing what you’re feeling is far more critical than whether you’re feeling it or not. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, yeah. It’s a great clear distinction, you know, bright red line there. So, then, yeah, how do we do this? How do we manage how we’re feeling? How do we cultivate this mental health amidst the stuff that’s going on up in here?

Joshua Klapow
It ain’t easy, I can tell you that. And I think one thing, people have to carefully open their eyes to where the sources of stress may be coming from. We can all talk about the restriction part, “I’m restricted in money. I’m fearful potentially for my health. Am I going to get sick? Is a loved one going to get sick?” There are sort of the obvious ones. But I’ll tell you, Pete, those are big sources of stress. But where these things start getting exponential is the inner section of work, life, family life relationships.

So, as you said, there are a lot of us now who are either home with family in a way that none of us have ever been home that way before. Or the opposite, we’re isolated. Maybe we’re not with family and we can’t be. We’re by ourselves. Those pieces, particularly the family dynamics, where I’ve seen more relationship issues, and you’ve seen the statistics, high rates of people, particularly in China, but in other areas, filing for divorce or etc.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I have not yet seen those. So, I thank Josh, bringing fresh info, tell us about that.

Joshua Klapow
Let me tell you, it makes sense. When you’re stuck at home with your partner, whether or not you have kids, and you have to be with them every day, the floodlight is on your relationship. And every crack in that relationship, normal healthy cracks, are going to show. And if you don’t deal with them, and I’m not talking about necessarily going to therapy, but if you don’t deal with the pet peeves and the things that normally you’d be able to skirt by because you’re not spending as much time, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

Throw in there, for some parents, homeschooling. Throw in there for someone like me, two college kids who are now back at home, who are not happy about it, they love their mom and dad, but they want to be at school, and you get family stress that absolutely rolls on top of all of the other stressors. And what happens? People get tired, stress starts wearing them down, it starts bleeding over into conference calls that they may be taking for work. The work stress starts bleeding over to family, and we got a big stress ball that nobody can point to one thing. And that’s what catches people off guard.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. All right. So, I think you’ve very nicely articulated what’s going on here, what we’re dealing with. So, what do we do about it?

Joshua Klapow
Yeah. If you’ve ever been a parent, and you remember when you had a young child, and I’m talking the infant child, the child who was screaming and you’re feeding them every three hours, or even a toddler, one of the things I distinctly remember from not being a parent to being a parent, I used to judge the quality of my time in weeks or months, “This was a great week. It’s a great week. This was a great month.” And I quickly remember, as a parent, that didn’t work, particularly with a young child. It’s like, “Oh, my God, this day sucked. Like, this day was really bad.”

And what I started to realize was I need to think about the quality of my time in smaller increments, “This was a really good hour. This was a good minute. This was a good 10 minutes.” Now, I’m not advocating that, because of COVID-19, we only live and savor the quality of every minute. But what I do mean is you may have a really bad day because of work, because of finances, because of family, but then you may have an awesome day, because, you know what, you got to be on three conference calls and spend some time with your spouse in a way that you never got to. Or maybe you got to do a video conference, and we’re seeing this, reuniting with college friends.

My point is we have got to shift. What we have to do is we have to stop trying to live our life right now as if tomorrow it’s going to go back to the way that it was. That’s what we typically do in crises. What we typically do is we go, “Okay, if I can just ride this sucker out, if I can just ride this out, it’ll be a few days, a few weeks, I’m going to be okay. It’s all going to get back to normal.” I’m not a doomsdayer here. I don’t know how long this is going to be, but I can guarantee you that by next week, even with everything open, or next month, everything is going to be back to normal. And even if it is, that’s probably not the most healthy way to think about it.

What we have to do is look at what’s given to us right here, right now, “What do I have? What do I not have? What am I certain about? What am I not certain about? And how do I maximize that? How do I maximize the fact…? I’m just using things that everybody is doing…  that I can wear shorts all day long now.” And that’s not saying, Pete, to just look on the rosy side of things. What it’s saying is in order to get a grip, you must find the nuggets of goodness in your life because there is a lot of uncertainty and chaos going on.

And if you can cling to those nuggets, what that allows you to do is it allows you to move forward. It allows you to be less stressed, less distressed, sleep better, eat better, etc. And it allows each day to have a little bit of goodness in it, which, frankly, to be honest with you, as humans, that’s about all we need besides food, water, and shelter, in order to make it to the next day.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, we’re noticing these things, and we’re embracing them, and looking at sort of smaller, shorter time increments. Do you have any other pro tips on how we can go about sort of noticing and appreciating and, I suppose, letting these things pass us right by?

Joshua Klapow
You must recognize that, and I know this is a little broad-brushing because everybody’s situation is slightly different. Your brain is going to go offline frequently during this kind of situation. And let me explain what I mean by that. When you’re home and you’re trying to work in particular, but let’s say you’re home and you didn’t work. You took care of the kids, or even if you have always worked from home, you got all kinds of different things going on right now. There may be people that were at home that weren’t at home before.

You may have never participated on so many video conference calls. You may not have had the dog interrupting you every five seconds. Your brain is going to be distracted in a way that it never has before. One more piece to put in, all the newsfeeds, right? I mean, in my lifetime, I never remember a daily briefing where updates were actually new information. I mean, if you think about it.

Okay, so what that does is our brain can’t attend to the task at hand, and you’re going to feel tired, you’re going to feel inefficient. And so, what I’m encouraging all of my clients to do, and the people that I interact with, about every 45 minutes or so, you may notice yourself feeling fatigue. It’s time to take a break. Not an hour break but what I call the bathroom break. If you’re hydrating properly, you go into the bathroom, you should be going to the bathroom about every hour or up to 90 minutes. And, literally, sometimes I have to remind my clients to put in their schedule to drink water so that they hydrate during the day, because I got people that I work with that will go nine hours on conference calls and never stop.

You have to pace yourself. That means taking a minute to, literally, remind yourself, “Where am I? What am I doing? What is the task at hand?” to take your eyes off the screen and look outside, and it’s not an hour of meditation. It’s a minute to get your brain back, focused to the task at hand. Most of us don’t have to do that that frequently throughout our day. Now, I don’t know that everyone has to. I can tell you it doesn’t hurt. And what I can also tell you is you feel so much more focused because your brain comes back online. It’s a critical stress management tool that most people don’t use and they have to right now.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think that’s dead-on because I’ve just been and many, many times I am, I don’t know, on news, or social media, or something, it’s just like, “What is even happening right now?”

Joshua Klapow
Yes. Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
And it’s like I have to regroup. And part of it, I think, is so helpful is, like, when I have days in which I actually write down the key things of the day, then that’s really helpful to remember, “Oh, yes, this is what I meant to do today, and I’ve kind of forgotten about that and got suck into news or whatever.”

Joshua Klapow
And that’s a great example of you might say to yourself, “God, normally I never forget these things. I don’t have to write them down.” Right now, your brain is more likely to go offline. And I’ll tell you where it has a larger impact. It’s not just for you, it’s for the people that you interact with. So, if you think about it, and this is what I was saying, it can cause relationship problems. It’s like, “Hey, I just told you to make a grocery list.”

Joshua Klapow
Can you imagine how it impacts your home life, your relationship life? And, particularly for work, if you’re working from home, how you interact with colleagues, how you interact with your boss. We have to be much more mindful of what our emotions are doing right now. And I love what you said, although it’s not pleasant. You have to sit back and go, “What? What is going on?” That’s a very normal response. The difference is you have to do that while you’re working, while you’re parenting, while you’re being a husband or a wife or a spouse or a partner. That is going to make you tired at the end of the day.

And that understanding, that and then taking action on that, making sure you’re hydrated, making sure you’re well-nourished, making sure you’re writing yourself reminders, making sure that you call a timeout, and say, “You know what, I don’t have the bandwidth, guys. I don’t have the bandwidth to do all these today.” That kind of communication is critical.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so I love these particular bits of sort of in the moment recognizing and good communication with folks. What are some of the habits or recurring practices you recommend that make a world of difference in kind of boosting our overall mental health and resilience, and then, specifically, just providing a large boost of rejuvenation? Like, I guess, where do I get the most bang for my buck when it comes to self-care, Josh? That’s what I want to know.

Joshua Klapow
So, there’s a couple of things and they are things that we all know but that most of us, even those of us who may have done this before, and this is also unique to this particular situation.

So, the number one thing you’ll hear is make sure you’re getting exercise. And everybody is, “Aah, I know the exercise. I know about the exercise.” Let me tell you why exercise is super important. Number one, for a lot of people who’ve exercised regularly in the past, their gyms are closed, right? And so, you’ve got a lot of people who are used to having that metabolic boost in the morning or in the afternoon who aren’t exercising. That throws off your entire metabolic system if you’re an exerciser.

If you’re not an exerciser, the mental fatigue wears on your body. Being strong physically, and I’m not saying start a crazy exercise program, but just getting the blood flowing actually is super important for your immune system, it’s super important to regulate your sleep system. So, that exercise, everybody knows about, even if it’s just for a walk, Pete, is probably one of the best things that you can do. I wish I had another way to say it. You got to get out there and exercise. And if you tell me, “I can’t,” I can show you five gazillion YouTube videos on different ways to exercise. People are finding the most creative ways to exercise that fit their physical needs, their mental health. So, that’s number one. You’ve got to move the body, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
And when it comes to moving the body, I’d love to get your sense. It sounds like you’re emphasizing more so cardiovascular as opposed to strength-resistance training, or anything. Yeah, lay it on us.

Joshua Klapow
Not necessarily. A lot of this depends, A, on your health status, B, on your previous exercise history. So, do not go start running marathons if you never have before. What you’re looking for is physical activity. You want your body moving, you want your muscles stretching, you want your heart rate elevated. Does it have to be an all-out run or trying to do a thousand pushups? No. If you did that before, more power to you, and keep doing it.

I’ll tell you, myself personally, and this has been a big change for me, I was very much into the weightlifting. I went to the gym. I never did anything from home. My gym closed. I went immediately online to go buy weights. You can’t buy weights online. Or if you can buy them, they’re like a thousand dollars now. And so, I was like, “I’m not going to do that.”

I’ve been dabbling in yoga, just dabbling. I’m now doing yoga six days a week. I would’ve never done that before. I’m experimenting. So, one of the things I would also encourage your listeners is if there’s a kind of exercise that you’ve always wondered about, now is your excuse to try something different. So, I think that’s absolutely important. It’s not a particular kind but I don’t want you sitting in a chair for seven hours a day. It’s bad for you. Bad for you.

The other thing that is really important, if at all possible, and I’ll get to the nutrition part in a second, I’ll do that quickly, is get your Vitamin D. Get some daylight. If you’re inside and the weather provides and allows, step outside. The norms have changed, Pete. The norms have changed. It’s okay to hear birds in most companies now in the background chirping while you’re on a conference call. It’s very important that we don’t sit in one room for eight to ten hours a day.

Get outside, get the fresh air even if that’s every hour taking a two-minute break. You need that natural sunlight both for your metabolic purposes, also to regulate your sleep. And if you don’t believe me, try and experiment. Stay in your room, wherever room you’re in, this is assuming you’re not quarantined in a room. Stay in your room for six hours versus get outside every hour for two to three minutes, you’ll feel much better.

The other piece that people neglect is proper hydration and nutrition while they’re at home. We need to drink water. We need to eat good food. If we don’t drink and we don’t pee, and we eat crappy food, we’re going to feel bad. I’m not telling you that you have to become a vegan. I’m not telling you that you have to get completely clean on your health or on your food. But the better you can do, the better you’re going to feel. I can’t tell you how many people right now are saying, “God, I’m snacking. I’m snacking.” Why are you snacking? Because you’re sitting there and you can see the snack cabinet in your own house.

So, these are the kinds of changes. A lot of my clients will say, “I already know that stuff. I already know that.” And my number one comeback is this, “Great. Are you doing it?” “No.” “How do you feel right now?” “Like crap.” “Tell you what, eat a little bit better, make sure you drink a lot of water throughout the day, get your behind outside. Move. And then maybe the last one, too, is…” and this is one that is new, something that I haven’t seen as much. A lot of dysregulated sleep cycles. People are kind of going to bed at strange times because they don’t have as much of a routine. And when your sleep cycle gets off, it messes everything else up. Try to remain as regimented as you can on a sleep cycle. I don’t care if you don’t have to get up the next day till 9:00. Don’t stay up till 2:00 o’clock in the morning just because. The more consistent your sleep, the better you’re going to feel.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. That’s a really nice lineup. Now, when it comes to hydration, how much is enough?

Joshua Klapow
Yeah. So, again, I’m not a medical doctor. I’m a psychologist. But this is the classic, and I have one client who…I was surprised to hear this. This was somebody, she’s an executive, mostly working from home who, literally, would prevent herself from drinking because she was on back-to-back conference calls, and she didn’t want to be late to the conference call. I’m not kidding.

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve been there before. I’ve had those days, yeah.

Joshua Klapow
Well, but that was every day. And it doesn’t take a medical doctor for me to say, “What are you doing? Like, that’s terrible. Don’t do that. You should be going to the bathroom…” again, we all have different health states, etc. Two to three to four times a day to pee and it should be clear relatively, right? And I tell you what, you asked for bang for the buck? Here’s the other reason why I want you to drink water or non-alcoholic beverages. If you’re peeing every 90 minutes to two hours, guess what you can do when you go into the bathroom? You can take that 90-minute to two-hour break to also reset your brain, to take the deep breaths, to come back to a good place. I call it the recalibration bio-break.

And that’s what I said. I said, “Look, if you want to multitask, multitask. Go do your business in the bathroom, and then take one extra minute in that bathroom to reset, to remind yourself, “What day is it? Where am I? What am I going to do?” It’s these little tweaks like this that allow you to carry on, allow you to power forward. What most of us try to do that is wrong is we try to have the good work ethic, “I’m just going to take one more call. I’m just going to do one more recording. I’ll skip this lunch. I’ll skip this water. I’ll power through, and if I do that, then I’ll get to the other side.” Psychologically, physiologically, and behaviorally, that could not be farther from the truth in non-global pandemic times. It is twice as bad in global pandemic times.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s powerful. Well, so, not to get too personal with you, Josh, but I’d love to zoom in to that one minute in the bathroom. So, you’ve just urinated, wow, it’s the first time I’ve said this on the show. All right.

Joshua Klapow
I’m a psychologist. You can say anything you want here.

Pete Mockaitis
You just urinated. What happens in the following minute that can be a great reset in the bathroom?

Joshua Klapow
So, as I’d like to say, you take care of your business. And in this day and age, and you can do this on either side. Either before you wash your hands or after you wash your hands, either way is okay because this is going to involve your brain, and you don’t have to touch your face to do this. What I really encourage people to do is close their eyes or not, but to take some deep diaphragmatic breaths. And we all know this, and I’ll show you the example I give you. But this is essentially the (inhales then exhales). Do that three to four times.

Now, I get a lot of grief as a psychologist because, particularly when I do this in any media, they go, “Oh, my God, this is the psychologist and now he’s telling me to deep breathe.” The reason I’m telling you that is, as your stress levels rise, your breath shortens. And one of the ways that we know that you cannot only relax your physiology, your muscles, relax your muscles, heart rate, blood pressure, but if you relax is to slow your breathing down.

And the classic example I give people is when you see a little child, or even an adult who’s kind of panicky, right, you see a little kid, “Huh, huh, huh.” What do we tell people to do besides calm down, which you should never tell people to do? “Take a breath.” We always tell people, “It’s okay. just take a breath. Take a few deep breaths.”

So, if we tell people to do that when they’re panicking, why wouldn’t we do that after we go to the bathroom and we’re a little offline? So, take three deep breaths, have a nice happy thought, and then. Wash your hands and get back out in the warzone. And it’s critical. I have physicians do this before they ever get back in, whether it’s the E.R. or an O.R., I have them do it all the time. I have athletes do it at every timeout.

It’s critical, Pete, that we do it right now because distractions alone will take us offline and we need to be online.

The other reason that it’s important, if you’re not going to do it for you, it changes the way you interact with your spouse or your significant other. It changes the way you interact with your kids, who, many a kids are very discombobulated right now. It also changes the way that you’re going to interact on conference calls, with your coworkers, your boss, and your direct reports. If you’re in a bad place, it’s going to show even if you’re not “freaking out.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s really resonating. All right. So, that’s it then. There’s the washing of hands, there’s the deep diaphragmatic breaths, there’s the happy thought, then that’s your minute, hey?

Joshua Klapow
It is, yes. Now, here’s what I don’t want you to expect, “One minute is going to last me nine hours.” So, here’s the good and the bad of it. The bad is It’s not going to last all day long one set of diaphragmatic breathing and your happy thought. But here’s a nice thing. It takes a minute to reset.

Again, I’ll share another thing that I do. Before I ever go on air, before I ever take a client call, before I ever switch from one conference call to the next, I make sure I got at least a minute. I’m a high-energy guy. I get going a lot. I reset. And most of us, Pete, don’t do that because we think that that couldn’t have an impact. It’s not a magic pill but it’s what our bodies and our minds need to stay on track in addition to all the other things that we talked about.

And I mentioned it in passing but it is equally important. Own up to your limits right now. Stop. Do not wear yourself out as a badge of honor because it does nobody any good. Work hard but if you’re driving yourself into the ground because you think that’s great, what I’m going to tell you is that by the time you’ve driven yourself just short of being into the ground, you’re no good for anybody. You didn’t do good work at the end. I always talk about, “Come to your limit, don’t go past your limit.” Come to your limit and then back off. You have to right now.

There is this expectation, “I must be a super parent, super spouse. I got to show my boss that I’m doing everything, and I got to be great and have fun and exercise and all that kind of stuff.” I wish I had a better word. It’s crap. We’re human. We’re not machines. And, particularly right now, nobody is firing on all cylinders. Anybody who tells you they’re totally dialed in, totally focused, not worried about anything, is either not human, or they’re lying, or in denial, or in a lot of denial.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, thanks for laying it out there. Now, can you share some of your favorite things. Let’s start with a favorite quote.

Joshua Klapow
It’s from Pema Chodron, who’s a very famous author, Buddhist monk, New Yorker, an ex-nurse actually before she became a monk. And the quote is, “Feel the feelings and drop the story.” I love this because it’s kind of what I was saying as we first started talking.

You’re going to feel in your day all kinds of things. What makes them have an impact is the label, the interpretation, or the story that we associate with those emotions.

Right now, we have to feel the feelings and not have so much interpretation of them tied to them because there’s going to be so many feelings coming and going.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you.

Joshua Klapow
So, I like that one. It’s a good one to live. It’s a good one to live by right now.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Joshua Klapow
Okay, this is going to go very opposite what I just said. It doesn’t contradict it. What made me become a psychologist was the work of B.F. Skinner.

The reason that I loved this was that it shows me, not just that we work only for reward, but that our behavior is predictable, is lawful, is on average. There is rhyme and reason to why we do what we do.

And what that tells me is that if something is not going right, or if something is going right, we can figure it out. We can figure out how to make you feel better, how to make you do something different.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Joshua Klapow
I’ve got two quickly. I’m a sports fanatic. And a wonderful book by one of the most coveted international women’s soccer players, Abby Wambach, Wolfpack. It’s a short read.

Related to that book, not from the writing, is Brene Brown’s Rising Strong. She’s written so many great books. Daring Greatly is one that most people know. Rising Strong, for me, resonated because it was, look, if you’re going to live in this life, you’re going to get your butt kicked. You’re going to get your butt kicked if you’re going to live, and you’re going to fall down.

And you’ve got to figure out, not just how to be tough, because being tough is not about it. It’s about, you use the word self-care, how to get yourself back up on your feet physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually so that you can be strong in the world, which is different than just being tough and guarded and defensive. And Brene Brown’s book Rising Strong really teaches readers how to do that. So, between the two, between having your pack and learning how to rise strong, and then with that quote from Pema Chodron, it’s a good way to live.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Joshua Klapow
I’m a less-is-more guy. My family is they’re Slack and Asana and they got this organizer and that organizer. And my tool is my calendar. It’s an electronic calendar.
The reason that I use just my calendar is if you look at my calendar, you will see my appointments, you will see my professional things on there, you will also see things, my kids love to kid me about this, you will see, “Work out at 5:00 a.m.” I know that I work out at 5:00. I don’t need a reminder to work out. It’s on there every day. My lunch is blocked out from 11:45 to 1:00. Now, do I eat lunch all the time there at that time? No. But it’s on there. My rest breaks are broken out and they’re stated on there. My winddown period, it says, “Wind down for bed with good intentions.” My bedtime is on there.

Now, your listeners may go, “Oh, my God, what’s wrong with this guy?” This is my way of removing excess from my brain. It is structure in my day that I can disregard. I have the freedom to disregard anything there.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, and I think it’s also reassuring in which you can say, “Oh, this is the time of the day in which I’m going to check those things. I need not check them now. There is a designated time in which that’s going to occur,” so you feel all the more free and resilient to just put those aside for the moment.

Joshua Klapow
Yes, I love the way you described that.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. Okay. And how about a favorite habit?

Joshua Klapow
Yeah. If it’s just one it is to exercise. The biggest bang for the buck mentally, physically, socially, and spiritually is moving your body because it has all the physical health benefits that we don’t need to go into, that everybody knows about.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a particular nugget you share that you’re known for, people quote it back to you frequently?

Joshua Klapow
You’ve heard the term “don’t work harder, work smarter” and that’s the one that work all the time.

The idea that, “I must work more in order to be successful” versus “As I get better at what I do, whether it’s work, parenting, relationship, it actually gets easier, and I may not have to work as hard.” And that is a beautiful, wonderful, acceptable thing that you get to have by being good at something.

So, my point is it doesn’t have to get harder, whatever it is. It can get easier. You could work less and get the same thing done. The one related to that, and it’s just aside, is this idea of “I have to.”

What I tell people this. You don’t have to. There are only a couple things in this world that you have to do. You have to eat. You have to breathe. You have to drink water. Anything else you don’t have to.

If you make it a choice, then what it allows you to do is bring the power of you to that choice. And that is really important because there are so many things that we do, most of them are our choice even if we tell ourselves that we have to.

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Joshua Klapow
Social media, Twitter and Instagram. You can follow me at @drjoshk. If you’d like to see my webpage, it’s JoshKlapow.com. And my email, my very public email is askdrjoshk@gmail.com.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Joshua Klapow
We’re told all the time to think outside the box if you want to be great at what you do. If you want to be great at what you do before you ever think outside the box, take inventory of what you have inside the box. What do you already know how to do? What are you good at? What are you passionate about? And I’m talking about reading, writing, gardening, art.

Don’t spend all of your time trying to be awesome at your job by thinking so far out of who you are that you forget the gifts that you bring to the table automatically. It’s okay to think broadly but don’t lose the gifts or the skills that you have nurtured and matured when you’re trying to be awesome because those are your foundation that will allow you to be awesome.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Josh, thanks so much for sharing these good words. It’s been a treat. I wish you all the best for yourself and your clients, and the disasters are manageable and workable in your lives.
Joshua Klapow
Thank you, Pete. I appreciate the opportunity to share this with you and with your listeners. And to everybody, exercise every day and please wash your hands.