891: Finding Calm, Balance, and a Cure for Workaholism with Dr. Bryan Robinson

Pete Mockaitis
Bryan, welcome back to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Thank you, Pete. It’s great to be here again.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to chat about your book, Chained to the Desk in a Hybrid World: A Guide to Work-Life Balance. But I think one thing we didn’t touch on last time you were here is your fun tagline that you heal by day and kill by night.

Dr. Bryan Robinson
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
That you’re a psychotherapist and a murder mystery writer. Tell us about this.

Dr. Bryan Robinson
That’s right. That’s balanced, isn’t it?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I got to wonder if I’m one of your clients, am I inspiring content to your novels?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
I would do this to my clients but just don’t cross me because people that cross me end up as one of the victims in my books, so.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. All right.

Dr. Bryan Robinson
I’m teasing, of course. My focus really is on healing, but the murder mysteries are just fun, the play part.

Pete Mockaitis
And how many have you written?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Two so far. And, in fact, one of them, the first one is being made into a television series. I can’t talk too much about it yet because it’s still under negotiation but we’ve already done the pilot, and it’s going to be happening sometime, probably next year.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s exciting. Congratulations.

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Yeah, thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have any principles by which you write by that make for a great murder mystery?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Principles? Yeah, well, some life experiences that you take and exaggerate. Like, I was at the supermarket here about a year ago and the woman behind me didn’t put the stick between my groceries and hers, so they charged me, like, $300 or $400, and I thought, “What?” And it took us 20 or 30 minutes to undo all that mess. But what I thought, “Wow, this is a great way for two people to meet before they die.” So, I used it in a novel.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That is good. And then maybe there’d be some lingering information on the receipt.

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Yeah, all right. Yeah, all kinds of things.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Can you tell us more about the book Chained to the Desk in a Hybrid World? What’s new and interesting? You’ve got a lot of experience in the universe of workaholism and exploring that. What’s new in the hybrid stuff?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Well, the book is really about work-life balance. That’s the subtitle, “A Guide to Work-Life Balance.” And things have been changing, as probably everybody listening knows, all over the world, in the workplace specifically. People are not working as much in the office. They’re working more either in hybrid ways or at home, which has brought up another whole problem. And that is, “Where do you set the boundaries?”

And one of the things that research has shown since we’ve started working more from home is we’re living and working under the same roof, and that means there are no boundaries. So, it’s caused a huge problem in overworking and burnout. For example, let’s say I have a project and I work till 5:00 or 6:00, and then I think, “Hmm, I can just keep working and burn the midnight oil and get this done.” And there’s more of that happening, and, therefore, more people are having mental health problems as a result of it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s fascinating. Could you give us some statistics associated with the frequency, the prevalence of this overworking at home and the mental health challenges?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Yeah, the last statistic I saw was 40% of the people who were working remotely were saying, because they didn’t think about boundaries, and so they would just go in and out of their office, or they’d go throw on some laundry, and so it’s 40%. And that’s pretty high for an increase in burnout. So, obviously, what needs to happen is if we’re living and working in the same environment, we need to have some kind of mental understanding of where that line is.

For example, right now, I’m in my home office, and I work from here a good bit. I also have an office downtown but I imagine that my office at home, after 5:00 or 6:00, is five miles across town. I have a rule, I don’t go into that place, unless it’s an emergency, after a certain amount of time. I also have an understanding with my family, “You can’t just come barging in any time you want to.” Like, if your spouse works in a doctor’s office, you’re not going to bounding into that office with the doctors with a client, or if it’s an attorney with someone.

So, we have to also honor the boundaries of the people we live with. And what a lot of people have done is to spread out their work on the kitchen table or in front of the TV, which, really, you have other family members who want to watch TV or have dinner. It’s not respectful for them. So, it’s really raising or a heightened awareness of boundaries so that you can function in these two different worlds that have collided, have come together.

Another thing is some days, when I’m working in my office at home, I realize there’s laundry that needs doing, the dog needs to be walked, there’s chocolate cake in the fridge, but I also know, when I think that, that, yes, that’s true but I’m in my office right now, so those things are not available to me. So, that’s just like a mental way of reminding myself to stay on track.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I like that, that mental habit there, “Yes, but I’m in my office and so those things are not available to me.” There you have it. And then to review that statistic, you said those who are working from home have a 40% increased probability of experiencing burnout? That’s the stat?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
That’s right, yeah. Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. That is big.

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Burnout is cumulative stress. It’s not something that just happens. There’s a difference in stress and burnout. Stress, we can recall from. Burnout is more difficult. It’s when you get to the point that you’re exhausted, you lose your sense of meaning and purpose, and you’re not as motivated as you were, you’re exhausted. And it takes a while to get over. You can’t just say, “Okay, I’ll take a week off.” It takes some good time to get through that.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. So, then could you perhaps share with us a cool story of someone who figured this out, they made some good adjustments to boundaries, and saw some nice results?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Well, I can name a lot of people that I know, that I’ve worked with. One is Arianna Huffington, who started The Huffington Post, and in the throes of trying to get that off the ground, she’s written about this in her book so I’m not sharing anything that’s personal or private. She collapsed and hit her head against the desk, her face against the desk, broke her cheekbone and woke up in a pool of blood.

Alanis Morissette, who’s a friend of mine, also suffered what she calls nervous breakdowns because of overworking. It was a real problem that she’s had over the years. Overworking, by the way, or work addiction and hard work are not the same things. We often get those confused because people will often say to me, “What’s wrong with hard work?” That’s not what we’re talking about. Work addiction is when you can’t turn it off.

And to a lot of people, they don’t get it because they think, “Who wants to work all the time?” But, believe me, many people do, and there was a time in my life when I did. It wasn’t just the work. I was running away from something within me. I didn’t realize it. When I was a professor at the university, I had a weekend ahead of me with nothing planned, and it was terrifying.

So, really, it’s about knowing what’s going to happen, and it’s about control. So, what did I do? Well, if I were an alcoholic, I would go and I would get drunk, maybe. But I was not or am not an alcoholic but, as a workaholic, or someone who’s really addicted, it became my sense of medication. And so, I found the campus newsletter and saw that there was a call for grant. And when I wrapped that computer printout under my arm, now in retrospect, it was like an alcoholic putting a bottle under his arm and feeling calm because it gave me a sense of certainty, a sense of control.

Now, where does that come from? I’ve been studying cases, and I’ve done empirical research, and I’ve worked clinically with workaholics, and every workaholic I know of has a history that relates to of living in an environment where things are out of control, often alcoholism or drug abuse or just an unstable family. And one of the things they intuitively learned to do as a child is to take control by caring for a younger sibling, for doing homework and excelling, or just doing things.

As a kid, I remember writing the church Christmas play one Christmas. Now, not only did I write it. I directed it, I acted in it, I built the sets, everybody thought I was great but I didn’t know what I was doing except, now I know that it was my way to control an unwieldy home life that was out of control, that I couldn’t control.

So, these were the kinds of things that form or the foundation for a true workaholic. People tease about it but it’s a serious addiction. And in the research that I’ve done, it accounts for 40% of divorce. If you compare a workaholic marriage to a non-workaholic marriage, there’s a 40% higher divorce rate. And we know that children who grow up in a workaholic home not only have a serious depression and anxiety issues, but they also, compared to children of alcoholics, have a harder time.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s heavy stuff. Thank you for sharing. And I’m curious, when you say you are a workaholic, if you can’t turn it off, and you are uncomfortable with the idea of, “I don’t know what I’m going to be doing. Ah, work, what a release,” I’m also curious, there are times I think when I am thinking about it a lot, it’s almost like that there’s an unsolved problem or case that I’m in the middle of, and it just keeps representing itself.

And I don’t know, it’s almost like, is there a distinction here? Is that sort of the same thing or a different thing? It sort of happens intermittently when there’s, like, a puzzle that is quite not solved, and the incompleteness of it keeps grabbing my attention over and over again.

Dr. Bryan Robinson
It depends on where you’re coming from. If you’re coming from a place of having to or striving or requiring yourself to fix it, that’s one of the forms of workaholism, that if you have this compulsive need to get it finished versus being curious. Curiosity, if I’m curious about something, that’s not work addiction.

But if I have this thought in my head, “You have to do this. You’ve got to get this done,” when, in fact, there are a few things that I have ever had to do, that’s more the pressure. That triggers what we call the sympathetic nervous system, the fight or flight. But if curiosity is coming more from what I call is what is known as the parasympathetic nervous system, or the rest and digest response, so it’s coming from a different place inside of us.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Bryan, I’m just going to take a little curiosity break right now and ask how do you know all these famous people? What’s that? What went on there?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Well, they contacted me because they had read some of my work. So, Alanis Morrisette tells everybody that she worked with me. As a therapist, I don’t go out and broadcast who I work with, but she’s written about it and she talks about it, and people call me and say they want to work with me because they hear that I worked with her.

And Arianna and I worked together. I write for Thrive Global, which is her big thing now since she left Huffington Post. And I’ve written about a lot of different people. I write for Forbes, and so I’ve interviewed them, and so I’ve just heard. One of the things that I’ve learned as a therapist and having the privilege of being able to hear the internal system of people, and also interviewing people for Forbes, is we’re all struggling with something.

Everybody on this planet is struggling with something inside of us, some more serious than others. We don’t often talk about that because people are afraid that if they let other people know, they’ll be judged or they’ll be humiliated, but what’s happening more, especially well-known people, like Prince Harry or Alanis, Jewel, I’ve interviewed Jewel, talk about the hardships and how they got over them.

Then the more people realize they’re human, and what they’re going through is the human experience, and they don’t have to judge themselves because judgment throws you into a cycle of feeling worse. It’s like if you’re already suffering from something, and you judge yourself for it, that’s like fighting the fire department when your house is on fire, which adds insult to injuries.

So, one of my goals is to let people know some of my struggles, which I’m not ashamed of, but I’ve been able to get through them and land in a place that I really feel good about, which I’ll call my central command center, or the C mode. And there are 10 C words that will tell you you’re there.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Lay it on us.

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Okay. Curiosity instead of judgment. This goes back to what I was saying. Most of us, if we fail or make a mistake, we have that little voice in our head that judges us, and that’s the worst thing that can happen. As you become more aware of that, and you go into curiosity, and say, “Why did I yell at her?” or, “Why did I throw that soup across the room at my husband?” or, “Why did I snap at my child?” then you can get to some understanding of who you are and why that happened instead of judging, so it doesn’t add insult to injury.

Calm versus anxiety. Well, we all want to be calmer, but yet we find that difficult because many of us are living such busy lives. But we know that cumulative anxiety creates health problems and early death, that’s a fact, a scientific fact. But if I can be calmer, I can be happier, I can be more productive, and I can live longer and have fewer health issues.

Clarity instead of confusion. If I have a mind that’s cluttered, it’s going to be more difficult for me to perform and to succeed. But if I have clarity and I understand what’s happening inside of me and why I do what I do, and if I have some understanding of why someone else maybe does what they do, then I can live more from a central command center, from that C mode.

Connection instead of isolation. We know that loneliness and isolation is a huge public health problem in this country. And the surgeon general, under both Obama and Biden, has pointed that out and written a book about it. So, connection is really healing for all of us. And people who are able to connect, especially in their older years, have fewer health problems, and, again, they live longer. These are all tied to longevity and happiness.

Compassion instead of cold-heartedness. Now, when I say compassion, I’m talking about caring about other people. And as I said before, all of us are struggling with something but we don’t really recognize that, we don’t see it, so we don’t know it, but it’s something we have to just…an awareness we need to carry with us so we can be kinder to people because we don’t know what they’re going through. But it’s also important that we’re kinder to ourselves.

One of the recent studies that has just come out that I find fascinating but I’m not surprised is that people who practice self-compassion have better cardiovascular systems. In other words, people who don’t practice self-compassion have higher cardiovascular risks. And they’ve actually studied the linings of the arteries to show this. This is not just somebody’s opinion. It’s a very rigid, highly scientific article. I’ve read the actual research itself. And I could talk about each one of these probably for an hour.

Then there’s, of course, confidence versus intimidation. You see so many books about confidence, but if I can really feel confident, that’s strength and that allows me to overcome just about anything. But if I’m intimidated, which is just another form of fear, or if I shrink in a situation, I’m going to be less successful and, of course, less happy.

And then there’s courage. Courage is really versus fear. Stick your neck out a little bit. If you stick your neck out, that’s how you grow, but a lot of us are afraid to stick their neck out, and it feels like we want to stay in a secure place, which is understandable. That’s the way the brain works. But if you stay in too comfortable a place, you don’t grow and you don’t succeed. And people do that and they never understand, “Why am I not happy? And why have I not been more successful?” Well, it’s because their minds have kept them stuck so they can be safe.

Then there’s creativity versus stagnation. Creativity comes from the central command center, which is the opposite of the inner critic. The critic, if anybody who’s creative knows about the inner critic, it tells you, “You can’t,” “You must,” “You should,” “You don’t know what you’re doing,” “You’re going to fail.” And so, then we recoil and we stay in our safe place. But if we stick our neck out, that’s where creativity comes from. We’ve learned we can do something different and reap the benefits.

And then there’s comedy versus drama. This whole thing of lightheartedness and laughter, we know the science. It makes us feel better and it lightens our load no matter what we’re dealing with. It makes us feel better. And then there’s celebration versus exhaustion. Celebration is when we’re grateful for what we have instead of focusing on what we don’t have.

So, celebrating our birthday, and rituals, and being with other people, that builds our life and makes us happier, and makes life worth living. So, those are the 10 Cs, if we want to live from a place of chill or a place of calm.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, those 10 Cs are associated with the chill and calm. And I do see how these things tend to hang together in terms of, “Okay, when I’m in the confident group, I’ve also more courage, I’m more brave, have more courage, and I’m more creative.”

Dr. Bryan Robinson
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
“And I’m more likely to laugh at stuff,” comedy. So, they hang together.

Dr. Bryan Robinson
They do.

Pete Mockaitis
So, if we are on the opposite side of those 10 Cs, we are un-chill, we are uncalm. Because I’m wondering it sounds like maybe I have 10 gateways I might enter through to try to get over to the chill side of things. Or, what do you recommend?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
You’re absolutely right. They’re all connected, it’s like a big puzzle. Now, those C words, some people call it a higher state of mind, a higher form of living, but the ones you’re pointing out – cold heartedness, isolation, confusion – we call those parts in psychology. And they’re often protectors. They’re parts of us that take over and eclipse the C mode, and they’re trying to protect us from…they’re based on survival.

Fear, anxiety, worry, confusion, those are all actions that they want to keep us, I don’t want to say trapped, that’s not their goal. They’re survival parts that automatically come out that keep us safe. They respond to threats. So, we’re hardwired for those more negative parts. It takes a little bit of…you could call that a lower state of mind.

But it takes a little bit of awareness and understanding to live from those C words. So, it’s a higher state of living, and it takes practice and awareness. It’s not something that’s just going to happen. We have to pay attention and want to live from that place. Can I give you an example of what…?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure.

Dr. Bryan Robinson
This is what got me out of the work addiction. This is what led me from the pit into more of an awareness. And I haven’t arrived anywhere. Believe me, I have my issues that I have to deal with like everybody else. I was a professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and the creative arts center invited Tibetan monks to come and perform on our campus.

So, what they do is they have these instruments and these beautiful costumes. It’s incredible entertainment. Well, we found that outside, right before the performance, there were a group of religious fundamentalists who were circling and with signs that said that Buddhists worship the devil and they’re evil and demonistic. And, of course, I was furious with these people because it was such a horrible way to welcome strangers to our campus.

But when the monks found out, they all went outside, and, at that point, the group was singing “Jesus loves me” with their hands in a circle. They joined hands and sang “Jesus loves me” with a smile on their face, a compassionate smile. And I remember thinking, “I want that. That’s what I would like to have,” because I was fuming and seeing that, and thinking, “How can they do that? I don’t get it.”

And it’s something I’ve aspired to, and I haven’t arrived anywhere but that set me out on a journey to live more from a better state of mind, and a healthier state of mind, and a longer state of mind, and it changed my life.

And I can tell you what I have discovered. I’ve kind of boiled it all down and have harnessed the three As that I practice every day.

So, if I have fear, or if I have anxiety, or if I have worry, or if there’s drama, or if I’m confused, first of all, I have to be aware because most of us don’t even realize we’re in one of those states because they’re so quick and we’re so used to swimming in the water we’re swimming in. So, awareness is the first A. And when I’m aware that I have worry, then I acknowledge it on the inside. And this is so different from what most of us do. Acknowledgement is the second A.

And the way I do that, and this is based on research, I focus on that, let’s say, the worry, and I talk to it like it’s a person, and I use third-party language. Now, this is all based on research. It used to be we’d say people who talk to themselves are crazy. Now, it’s one of the best therapeutic tools we have. And so, I’ll say, “Worry, oh, so you’re here. Okay, pull up a chair, let’s have a cup of tea or…” I prefer coffee.

Now, what I’m doing is I’m talking to it just like it’s a person who just walked in the door, “And so, tell me what’s going on.” And I’ll get a message, I’ll get an image, I’ll get words, or I may just get a sense of what that is, “Oh, I see. So, you’re worried about the MRI. Yeah, right. Well, that makes perfect sense to me.” Now, notice I’m not fighting it, I’m not debating it, I’m not steamrolling over it, I’m not ignoring it. That’s the worst thing you can do. I’m befriending it. I’m inviting it in.

As I do that, I start to feel calm. I’m curious. I’m compassionate with it. Now, that’s the own ramp. And the third A is allowing it to be there, allowing it because it’s protecting me. It’s saying, “Bryan, you need…something is going to happen, and you better get worried, you better get ready for this. This could be bad news,” so it’s not my enemy. Why would I want to fight it or ignore it? I want to appreciate it and welcome it in, and say, “Thank you for letting me know this but I got this.”

So, you feel a separation from it and you’re able to move forward with more of those C words. So, that’s the triple A that is the own ramp to some of these C words.

Pete Mockaitis
So, we’re aware, we acknowledge, and the third A is?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Allow. Allow it to be there. Don’t fight it. And there are actually two more that I don’t often tell people because it can be overwhelming. You can’t just get this overnight. You got to practice it. Like, if you go to the gym, your muscles are not going to build up unless you lift the weights. You got to do the work. If you practice this, you develop the muscle memory though.

So, the two more As is appreciation. If you practice this, after a while you’ll start to appreciate, “Wow, thank you for being there for me because I used to hate you or I used to fight you or resist you. But now I see how you’re trying to protect me, just like my ribcage protects my vital organs, and my cranium protects my brain.”

And then the final A is acceptance. And acceptance is when it goes really deeper into, yes, and it can be worry, it can be fear, it can be whatever, and you’re able to go then out once you worked inside. It’s an inside job, as we say. You’re able to go forward into an uncertain situation, a scary situation, public speaking or results of an MRI, or fear of a divorce, or somebody’s going to leave you that you love. It can be a myriad of different experiences, but it’s these Cs strengthen you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s cool. And so, when you say that’s the pathway, when you’re un-chill, work through the three or five As and return to chill.

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Exactly. That’s it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Dr. Bryan Robinson
That’s my ticket.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s your ticket. That’s the one. All right. It’s funny, I was going to say, I was thinking at first when I heard the 10 Cs, so I could do any of them, it’s like I’ll just watch something funny and then I’ll return to chill. Is that also accurate?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Yeah. I was talking to someone today and we’re going to be doing a podcast, actually, and so she and I are going to do it together, and she said, “Oh, I got this great guy, and he wrote this great book, and, oh, it’s fabulous. You’ve got to read it and we got to have him on.” And then you could go on the dark side, but then she said, “But then I found out that he was dead.”

And we laughed but not because he was dead but just because of the absurdity of it. So, you can bring comedy to a situation, or you can go on down the dark path. We have a choice of what we want to focus on. And that’s true of any of these C words. You have a choice on, “Do you want to focus on cold heartedness or compassion?” Cold-heartedness is a protector. If I’m coldhearted, that’s a part of me, it’s not even me. It’s like my skeletal system. I have a cranium and I have a sternum. Well, cold-heartedness is protecting me from being hurt because I’ve been hurt before.

So, if you look at each one of these that’s on the opposite side, they’re all protecting us. We just don’t stop to think about it that way. But in protecting us, they keep us stuck. They trap us and we don’t realize it but we can get ourselves unstuck if we look at those Cs, and each person listening just says, “Which one of those would I like to build up?” And you can make that a goal for this coming week.

One of the things I did, only because I wanted to practice some of these, at the beginning of 2023, well, my only resolution was I’m going to do one kind deed a day, especially for somebody I don’t know, a stranger. And, boy, has that helped me. It’s helped me, first of all, become more compassionate with people I don’t know instead of making snap judgments.

And some of the things I’ve done is bought groceries for people. I do that a lot. When I can tell they don’t have much money or they forgot their credit card one day, and I said, “Forget it, I’ll pay for that.” And it makes me feel good. Or, I’ll hold a door for somebody. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. It doesn’t have to be money.

But if you want to be more compassionate, think of little things you can do for somebody, or just compliment somebody. Our mind tends to go into the negative because we are born with what’s called a negativity bias for survival but we can offset that by starting to look at, “Wow, gosh, you look beautiful today.” I found myself saying things I would never have said to people 10 years ago, and it feels good to me, and it feels light, and you get smiles and people look at you, and you feel connected to the world.

So, you’re right, you do one and then you feel these other Cs coming in along with that one C that you started with. We often say curiosity is the gateway because it’s easier to get to. If I can just be curious about, let’s say somebody snaps at me. My automatic reaction is going to be to snap back or to maybe call them a name.

But if I pay attention to that space, there’s always a little space in there before I react, I might say, “Now, how do I really want to be?” And I might think, “Well, she’s having a hard day,” or, “She’s misunderstood what I meant.” So, if I can just take a second before I react to that, I feel like I’ve just hit a homerun. It’s a great feeling to be able to stay in your central command center and respond from that place instead of from that protector.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. Thank you. Well, tell me, Bryan, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Well, I will say that, I’d said earlier, I didn’t know how to get to where the monks were, and I still am not where they are. I can’t promise that I’m always going to be in the C spot, or the C mode, I call it. And I always tell people, “If you see me pounding the steering wheel and I’m stuck in traffic, I’m human. I’m just like everybody else, but I don’t judge myself if I get angry. I don’t judge myself if I’m scared. I don’t judge myself if I feel stagnated.” I’ll allow that to be and acknowledge it, which paradoxically shifts me over into the C mode.

So, the thing to watch out for is judgement is such a quick thing that our parts do to protect us that it can be there before you realize it. So, just know that curiosity is the gateway, and practice that for a little bit, and be curious before you react, and watch what happens. It’s amazing. It will change your life.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Well, my favorite quote is by Viktor Frankl, that everything we’ve been saying relates to. Viktor Frankl wrote a book called Man’s Search for Meaning. He was in Dachau and Auschwitz, and his wife and he were separated. She was sent to the chamber, she was burned. He didn’t know that but with people dropping dead around him, and him starving and literally no clothes, knowing he could die any minute, he made a vow to himself, “One thing they can never take from me is my will.”

And so, the quote that I think about all the time, and that I love to share with people, because none of us are in the Holocaust, hopefully. We’re trapped in other ways inside because of the way we think or because of what’s happened to us. The quote is, “Between the stimulus and the response,” the stimulus meaning the event that happens, and how I react to it, “there’s a space.” Most of us run real shadow with that space. But if we start to be aware that there’s a space, and we take that pause, then we have a choice. We realize we have a choice.

And in that space, when I make the choice, I’m free. I can never be trapped by anybody or anything. So, the quote is, “Between the stimulus and the response, there is a space. And in that space, we have a choice. And when we choose, we are free.”

Pete Mockaitis
And can you share a favorite study or bit of research?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Well, there are two. One is about Ethan Kross of the University of Michigan, who did the study on self-regulation that shows people who speak to themselves in the third person versus people who speak using “I” pronoun, perform better.

And it’s incredibly scientific experiment that he did showing how when I say, “Bryan,” or “You,” instead of “I,” I separate out from the me, and I have more, like, a bird’s eye view of what I’m doing. It’s almost like somebody else is talking to me. And I have less anxiety and I have more confidence. That’s one. And the other is the study I mentioned earlier about self-compassion and how that leads to better self-care and lower cardiovascular disease.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
I guess my favorite book, there’s so many, but Huckleberry Finn, I read it as a kid. I could read it tomorrow and just love it. I love Mark Twain.

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

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Well, I’m going to go back to self-talk. It’s something that has really helped me separate out from those negatives that I mentioned earlier. Because when I talk to myself, it gives me an objective, I zoom out and I’m able to see the whole picture instead of just the myopic view that I had.

So, self-talk, in a way, it’s a certain way of self-talk though. It’s like I use my name, “Bryan, you know you can do this,” or, I say, “You know what, have you thought about this?” It’s almost like there’s someone else talking to me, and it widens my perspective, and it helps me see potential instead of just the problem.

Pete Mockaitis
Very cool. Is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Yeah, it’s something I borrowed from John F. Kennedy. Some people listening may not remember this, but he had a famous quote that said, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” And so, I borrowed that and changed it a little bit, and it’s, “Ask not how life is treating you. Ask how are you treating life.”

And what that means is we all have curve balls coming at us. That’s what life is. It’s joyful, there are wonderful things but we’re all going to have things happen to us that we don’t want. But what do we do that? Instead of focusing on, “Ain’t it awful? And ain’t it terrible? And, oh, my God, you won’t believe what happened to me,” which is what we tend to do, and that’s okay.

But if you can add to that, or flip it, and say, “So, what am I going to do with this? How can I turn this into something that will make my life better or benefit me? And how can I live from a higher state of mind as a result of this?”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And can you tell us, if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Well, my website is BryanRobinsonBooks.com. And so, they can, from that, find out how to get in touch with me. And they can also read more about some of the work I’ve done, the articles I’ve written for Forbes, and some of the books I’ve written, and even there are some films on there, and even see the pilot, the novel that’s called Limestone Gumption is on there, so.

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

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Well, what I’d ask everybody to do is, based on that last quote, because right now, people listening to this are struggling with certain things – fear, grief, anger – and that’s okay. That’s our humanity. But how can you flip that? For example, I can focus on my shortcomings but what are my tall comings? Pete, I don’t know if I ask you to list your tall comings, you might immediately think, “Well, I can do my shortcomings in a flash,” but you have to think a little bit about those tall comings sometimes.

Tall comings are just the opposite. It’s like what are you creative at? What are you good at? What are you talented at? What are your qualities that people are drawn to you for? That’s one. And have more green time with your screen time. So, I call it flipping, have a to-be list with your to-do list. If you’d focus on the negative and flip it, there’s always a positive side. You can’t have an up without a down. You can’t have a right without a left.

So, if we just teach ourselves to look more on the positive, and that’s not ignoring the negative, it’s adding to it. It’s seeing the whole picture. It can make a huge difference in our lives, in our health, and our longevity. We know that for a fact.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Bryan, this has been a treat. Thank you for this. I wish you much luck with all your chilling.

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Thank you. Appreciate it. It’s been great being with you, Pete.