906: How to Optimize Your Workspace for Your Wellbeing with Dr. Esther Sternberg

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

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
Thank you so much for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m so excited to hear about the wisdom you have stored up in your book Well at Work: Creating Wellbeing in any Workspace. And you’ve worked with some very impressive clients, and I am so curious about your work advising the Vatican because, historically, the Catholic church makes a big deal out of getting high-quality spaces, churches, art. And I’m thinking about Bishop Robert Barron recently, I heard him say, “I take beauty very seriously.” I was like, “Ooh, that’s a fun turn of a phrase.” Tell me, was that intimidating and what went down there?

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
No. What went down? Well, I had been, in my previous book, in Healing Spaces, I had written about Lourdes, the pilgrimage site in the south of France. And when I spoke at Lourdes, I was not aware that Pope Benedict’s Minister of Health was in the audience. And at the end of the talk, Monsignor Zimowski asked me would I sign a copy of the book for the Pope, and would I speak at the Vatican. So, that’s a pretty impressive signing.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, the Pope got a book, and then you got to meet him.

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
Yes, that was Pope Benedict. So, when I spoke at the Vatican, Monsignor Zimowski, who was Pope Benedict’s Minister of Health, came up to me at the end of the coffee break, and he said, “Stick with me after the mass.” And I said, “Okay.” I followed him after mass.

But when I went to the convening, I was ushered into a separate area, and there were about ten of us. When the Pope arrived on stage, we were each individually invited up, and I didn’t know that you’re not supposed to shake his hand.

So, I put my hand out, and he took it and held my hands in his hands as if they were baby birds, and he looked directly into my eyes as if he were really looking into my soul. And all I can say is it was one of the most spiritual experiences I’ve ever had. And I could understand what Monsignor Zimowski was saying to him, he was telling him about my book, my previous book, Healing Spaces because I could understand French, and he was speaking Italian, and I could understand what he was saying.

And I was trying to figure out what do you say to the Pope. I thought, “Should I say something about my book?” And then I heard Monsignor Zimowski say, “And she is of Hebrew origin.” And at that point, I just could not think of anything to say, so I just said, “Shalom.” And we had a moment of connection over that that felt really moving, especially with Pope Benedict’s history during World War II, and it felt like…it just was very deeply moving. And that was my experience with the Pope.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
My pleasure.

So, I spoke at the Vatican. It was a conference that they hold yearly for the 120,000 Catholic orders that run hospitals. And I spoke about Healing Spaces, and about Lourdes, and how do you bring that kind of spirituality and wellbeing into hospital spaces. And that was the previous book.

This book, Well at Work: Creating Wellbeing in any Workspace asks the question, “How do you do that in any workspace? How do you bring wellbeing beyond health, beyond getting rid of toxins and germs and allergens? How do you bring wellbeing into any workspace?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is a juicy question, and one well worth digging into, and something we haven’t done much of before out of 900-ish interviews, so I’m excited to dig in. Can you tell us then, just how much of a difference does it make to have a workspace that is, I want to say, optimal in terms of wellbeing perspectives versus, “Fine. Like, you know, it’s fine. Yeah, I guess I got a comfy plate to sit. Yeah, I guess it works”?

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
It makes a huge difference. And I have to say when I started studying this, I was surprised at the difference that it makes. I don’t know why I was surprised, well, I think I know, because we take for granted our spaces where we live and work and play and learn. And we don’t pay attention to how much they affect us even subconsciously.

So, 23 years ago, I started working with the then research director of the General Services Administration, that’s the agency of the federal government that builds and operates all non-military federal buildings in the United States and around the world, all your libraries, your courthouses, your embassies, and so on – Kevin Kampschroer.

Because the question that Kevin asked me, when we first met, I was at the National Institutes of Health, he was at the General Services Administration, and he asked me as a member of a sister agency, could I help him to measure the impact of the built office environment for the over a million office workers in the federal government over 374 million square feet of office space.

And could I determine whether those spaces stress people, whether they felt relaxed, and how could he design spaces to optimize wellbeing? And so, we began. Before the interview, you asked me about this ring that I’m wearing, this health-tracking ring. We began back in the early 2000s using clunky dinosaur health trackers which were about the size of a landline phone attached to your chest with wires and glue and whatnot.

And we moved on subsequently to use state-of-the-art wearable devices to measure the impacts of up to 11 different environmental attributes: sound, light, temperature, humidity, layout of the office space, and so on, on various aspects of health and wellbeing, both stress and relaxation response, mood, physical activities, sleep quality.

And what is really striking is that the spaces where you spend over 90% of your waking hours, that’s indoors, and much of that is in workspaces, they have a tremendous impact on your stress response, your sleep quality, your movement, and they can be designed thoughtfully to optimize all those aspects of health, or they can be designed without thought to actually end up stressing you, and impairing your sleep, and in making you sedentary and so on.

So, really, that’s what the book is about. The book is, really, about three things. It’s the journey that we, the researchers, had together as we elucidated these connections. It’s about how to embed all seven domains of integrated health into the built environment wherever you work.

But in order to enhance your resilience, you need to engage in all seven domains of integrated health. So, those are sleep; resilience, which is your stress and relaxation response; environment, which includes not only the air you breathe and the light you see but also the green environment, nature; movement; relationships; spirituality; and nutrition.

And the built environment can enhance every single one of those seven domains, and that’s really what the book talks about. It can help individuals wherever they work at home, in an office space, to embed those seven domains of integrated health into their work environments.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. And so, I’m curious, with some of these metrics associated with sleep or stress, is the difference…? I’m the kind of dork who will read the full text of some scientific journal articles, and say, “Okay, it was statistically significant but is that just because you had low variance and a large sample size? Or is it just like, ‘Whoa, it is night and day. Folks aren’t like 2% less stressed in a great space. They were like half as stressed in a great space’?”

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
Well, no, it’s, “Whoa!” So, the very first study that we did was in a building in Denver that was being retrofitted, and we studied about 70 people, which is not a huge number but it’s big enough, especially since we were using two different measures of the stress response. We were measuring heartrate variability, which is what most of these trackers, health trackers, based their stress response levels on. And we also were collecting salivary cortisol, that’s the stress hormones cortisol in the saliva.

And we also asked the people how they felt in different spaces, and we compared the people when they were in the high wall, six-foot high wall cubicle space that was dark, musty, poor airflow, high mechanical noise, no circadian light, no sunlight, no views, and we compared them to the people in the spaces that were retrofitted with lots of great airflow, low mechanical noise, open-office design, no high cubicles, beautiful views to the outside, and lots of morning sunlight.

And what I was really shocked at is that, as we published that paper in 2010, is that the people in the old space were significantly more stressed than the people in the new space, and their stress response was significantly higher even when they went home at night and while they slept, but they were not consciously aware of the difference when we asked them if they were stressed or not.

So, your body recognizes the stress, your physiological stress response is higher, and you really do take your office space home with you at night. So, that was in 2010. And then in 2013, after I left the National Institutes of Health and moved to the University of Arizona to be research director at the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine, we continued with state-of-the-art study looking at about 270 office workers and four federal buildings in different parts of the country, and we, again, found the same thing.

So, to speak to your nerdy question, it can be statistically significant but is it biologically relevant? Yes, it is, especially if you’re finding the same thing using two completely different ways of studying of measurement, and in two completely separate studies.

We found in the people in the open-office design, which is really a misnomer. It’s really active-office design, a mid-century architect Probst defined it as active-office design. And, unfortunately, that became the dreaded cubicles when companies tried to squeeze as many people into a single space as possible. But, really, open-office design where there are lots of choices for people to go to, depending upon the kind of work they’re doing, what they’re doing, where they need to go, whether they need to gather, and so on.

So, the people in the open-office design were 32% more active during the day than people in private offices, and 20% more active than people in cubicles. The people who were more active during the day had substantially better sleep quality at night, were less fatigued the following day, were significantly less stressed when they went home at night, 14% less stressed every single night, accumulates to a medically relevant reduction in stress load, or if you’re more stressed, that’s a medically relevant increase in stress load, if you’re in the old kind of spaces.

And, again, people were not really consciously aware of the difference. So, it really does make a huge difference to design the spaces where you spend most of your time to minimize your stress response and optimize your resilience.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Okay. So, let’s zoom into the world of a typical professional in which they may not have broad sweeping authority to adjust their space a ton in terms of, like, “Hey, call up the architect and the contractor. We’re making some moves.” Now, of course, we do have more control in our own homes, whether you own or rent. But I’d love to hear what are the sorts of interventions that are within all of our power that give us just a huge bang for the buck, like, “Boy, if you just tidy this up, you’re going to see a world of difference”?

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
Well, so one of the reasons that Kevin Kampschroer, he’s now Director of High Performance Federal Green Buildings for the GSA, and Chief White House Sustainability Officer for the GSA, so he has the power to implement these things across the federal government. But one of the reasons that he needed the data is to make a strong argument to the people that need to spend the money that this is important, that keeping your workforce healthy and happy is really important, and it’s important enough to spend the money on.

Now, if you’re in an organization where they’re not aware of the impact on health and wellbeing of office spaces, you can certainly advocate for it. You can advocate for it by bringing in the data. And there’s now tremendous amount of data, not just our data, but other collaborators working in the field. And I would say that pre-COVID, it was an uphill battle.

And what happened is that people who got used to working at home don’t want to go back to work in an unpleasant workspace. You go back to work in a cubicle farm, even if the ventilation is absolutely wonderful, nobody’s going to want to work there. So, there is a big problem now of organizations trying to get people to come back to work in the workspace, in the office.

And one of the points that I make in the book is that we have a lot to learn from the entertainment industry, from the hospitality industry. When Disney imagineers created the Disney theme parks, they didn’t force people to go to the theme parks. They figured out a way to attract people to go to the theme parks. Same thing with your spas. I live here in Tucson about ten minutes from about five global major spas, and you walk into any of those places, and right away, you feel wonderful and you feel relaxed.

Well, why can’t you do that in a workplace? It’s not rocket science. And it’s become actually really imperative and urgent that office owners, developers, organizations recognize that if they want their workers there, their workforce to come back to work, they need to create spaces that are attractive, and that actually are wellbeing workspaces, not just healthy workspaces. And you do that by embedding each of the seven domains of integrated health into your workspace.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, let’s assume folks have gone ahead and they’ve assembled some data, they’ve made the pitch, they’ve got a favorable reception, and that’s cool. But, still, it’s going to take a while for them to get their act together to do the renovations. What are some things you recommend that we can start with right away?

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
Well, you don’t have to renovate necessarily. So, one of the big points that we discovered, and it was pretty obvious, but we really have proof of it, is one size doesn’t fit all. So, if you think about the high-rise office towers in the mid-century and up until 2000 and beyond, they tried to be one size fits all and one size fits none, basically.

There’s temperature, people are comfortable at different temperatures, different humidities, and one thing that you can certainly do is use local devices to optimize your own personal workspace. And one of the things we found is humidity really makes a difference. We published a paper, “Dry is not good, and wet is not good. It’s not the temperature, it’s the humidity that counts.”

And we found that when the humidity is less than 30% relative humidity or greater than 60% relative humidity, the stress response is significantly higher, again, 25% higher if it’s less than 30% relative humidity. Well, you can put a humidifier on your desk, improve the humidity there. If you’re in a wet climate, you can put a dehumidifier there.

It costs a lot of money for an entire building to humidify and dehumidify, a lot of energy. So, local solutions are really the way to go. Temperature comfort. There are now heated chairs that you can have an office chair that has heating in the seat if you’re too cold. Of course, your grandmother could say, “Put a sweater on.” There’s lighting. If you don’t have the luxury to be next to a window and have early morning bright sunlight, what we call circadian light from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon is very important for healthy sleep.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, boy, I’ve got Andrew Huberman playing in my head now. He is a staunch advocate for this and I’m a huge fan, so continue.

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
So, early morning sunlight from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon is essential for healthy sleep. It’s a little counterintuitive, what you do in the morning, what you do during the day, affects your sleep. But what we found and other collaborators, Marianna Figueiro, whose work with the GSA in parallel with us, has done a lot of studies on light and sleep and sleep quality.

If you have that early morning sunlight, you fall asleep faster, you have a better quality of sleep, and you have better moods the next morning. But other things affect sleep during the day. Movement, if you’re moving more, you have better sleep during the night. If you’re less stressed, well, that’s pretty obvious, you have better sleep at night. But it’s not only whether you’re stressed because you’re unhappy with your job, or you’re under pressure, or whatever, you can’t control a lot of those things but you can control the elements of the environment that can help reduce your stress.

So, what if you don’t have access to a beautiful view or nature? Nature is also really important in reducing stress. You can take a walk outside. You can look at pictures of nature. Take, what I call, mini meditation breaks, like micro meditation breaks. And it’s not that you’re daydreaming, it’s that you’re giving your brain a chance to go offline from all the emails that are whizzing by and so on.

So, there are a lot of things that you can do. Also, what you eat. We talked about nutrition as one of the seven domains of integrated health. What you eat or what you don’t eat can make a difference. So, a healthy Mediterranean diet is not only good for your health, in general, but also keeps you alert during the day. If you eat a lot of fatty sugary foods at lunch, you’re going to be drowsy in the afternoon. I talk in the book about stimulants like tea, coffee, chocolate, all of that is great but there are individual variations and responses to those things, too, and you have to be aware of them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s a lot of good stuff. Tell me, with the early morning sunlight, you said 8:00 a.m. to noon is the window. So, like if you happen to wake up earlier, we don’t want to…

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
Oh, no, you can wake up earlier. If you want to wake up earlier, you can wake up earlier.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. But in that zone, it’ll be helpful versus if it’s in sort of midday, it doesn’t have much of a circadian impact.

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
Actually, it’s really important to not get too stimulated later in the day. So, blue light, which is full spectrum sunlight can be as alerting as a cup of coffee so you don’t want to have a lot of blue light in the evening when you’re supposed to be going to sleep, and you want to have more redder light. So, one of the ways that you can deal with that is…well, there’s a couple of things.

If you don’t have access to full spectrum sunlight in the morning, you can look at lightboxes, full spectrum lightboxes, and these have been used for depression for decades. You don’t want to use those in the evening because that’ll wake you up and disrupt your sleep. So, you want to have more of a redder light. You want your computer, or whatever screen you’re looking at, to be able to have that circadian light going from bluer to redder as the day progresses.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so then, in terms of general lighting inside a room, are we better off with the full spectrum stuff except for the evening as opposed to like a fluorescent or unnatural type situation?

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
Oh, absolutely. You really don’t want a fluorescent light. Fluorescent lights also have this sound that I remember when I was studying rats at the National Institutes of Health.

Pete Mockaitis
Hmmm.

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
Yeah, thank you. We were studying rat behavior and we couldn’t figure out why these rats were looking so stressed, and then we realized the fluorescent lights were on. And they were very sensitive to the sound and the light, but people are, too, and they’re not even aware of it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, what I love about this, and I’ve had some conversations with my wife even when it comes to home shopping sorts of things. It’s tricky because I just know in certain spaces, I feel amazing, and I dig it. And other spaces I feel kind of gross and I don’t. But I could not very well articulate for you, Esther, “Ah, yes, it’s because of the sound emanating from those fluorescent lights, and it’s like my lighting profile is not mirroring the sun effectively.” And I think that really matches up with what you see in your research. It’s like, “They don’t know they’re stressed but they are.”

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
And unless you’re an architect, and even if you’re an architect, you don’t necessarily know what each of these different elements, how they affect your physical health and emotional wellbeing and physiological health. I wanted to tell a bit of a story about the circadian light. So, in the book, I tell the story of there was an engineer. He was actually playing with photography. His name was Ott, and this was mid-century, and he was trying to do timelapse photography with plants, and trying to get the plants to grow.

And he was an early experimenter with LED lighting, and he found that the seeds didn’t grow unless they were exposed to the equivalent of full spectrum sunlight at the right time of day. And he did these timelapse photography, and Walt Disney became aware of him, and asked him to grow a pumpkin from a seed, and he did that. And the Disney imagineers used that to do the animation for Cinderella’s pumpkin coach.

Pete Mockaitis
Hotdog. And all made possible with full spectrum lighting.

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
Right. Well, full spectrum lighting that changed as the sun does. That’s the critical thing, to mimic the sun. Marianna Figueiro, who, again, as I said, was another collaborator with the GSA, worked with submariners. You know, submariners are in submarines for months at a time, and so they used the appropriate lightboxes, blue in the morning, red at night, to mimic the circadian light of the sun to help them sleep.

Pete Mockaitis
And can I purchase lightbulbs that will do that for me with all the smarts?

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
Yes. Absolutely, you can. You absolutely can. Go online, there’s plenty of the smart lightbulbs that will do all of that. And we can do it now because of LED lighting.

Pete Mockaitis
Is there a magical keyword or phrase? Because, my gosh, there are so many lightbulbs at Home Depot and they’re smart for different reasons because they talk to my phone and Alexa. But what are the magic words I’m looking for, for circadian alignment?

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
Look for circadian light.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s the word, right? Okay. That’s cool. Well, we mentioned fluorescent light sound. What else should we know about sound?

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
Ah, we just published a paper, actually, mining the data from these many studies that we’ve done, Karthik Srinivasan is the first author, and we found really interestingly that there is what we call an upside-down U-shaped curve, sort of think of a rainbow, where we all know that sound that’s too loud is not only stressful but also harmful to your ears.

But it turns out that there is this optimal at about 40 decibels, which is interestingly the level of bird song, but lower than 40 decibels, you actually are more stressed. And we’re not sure why this is, but as the sound gets higher, starting at about less than 30 decibels, and then peaks at around 40, your physiological wellbeing improves.

And then as it gets louder and louder, your stress increases. So, there is that optimal. And we think the reason might be because the brain is a difference detector. When it’s really, really quiet, you can hear a pin drop, and that will disturb your focus as much as if you’re in a loud space, say, a coffee shop and somebody drops a dish and it breaks on the floor.

So, sound is really important, and noise is actually the single biggest complaint that people have in open-office design. But, again, it’s not rocket science to design a space to mitigate and minimize noise. You’re sitting in a recording studio. Recording studios know exactly how to minimize noise and direct sound. That’s really important.

What disturbs people is not so much noise, in general, because white noise masks disturbing noises. If you’re in a space and you can distinguish the words of somebody else speaking, that is what disturbs people. So, there are many ways, to rubber flooring, carpets, sound-absorbing tiles. There are many ways to mitigate noise.

And architects will know that every material that you use in interior design has a noise absorption or noise reflection level. And you can intentionally make a space louder or make a space quieter. Concert venues are designed to optimize sound.

Restaurants will often want to sound louder to make them seem more lively. Libraries want to be quieter. So, you can certainly design an office space to minimize noise and maximize comfort. I actually visited, and I described this in the book, Green Mountain Power in Colchester, Vermont, which supplies the power to the entire state of Vermont, and they have a call center which, you can imagine during a snowstorm, when the power is out, there’s a lot of people calling into the call center.

Well, I stood in this call center, which was open-office design, and it was quiet even though the agents were taking calls because they had rubber flooring, they had baffles on the ceiling that directed sound, they had cubbies that, on purpose, absorb sound, and there were a lot of features that kept this space quiet. So, it’s entirely possible to design a space to minimize sound, and have the advantages of an open-office setting with lots of airflow and light and views to the outside.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful. And I’m curious, when thinking about our own personal soundscapes, or music, or white noise, brown noise, pink noise, anything that we know there associated with focus or creativity, etc.?

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
Absolutely. So, noise, background noise, can either mask distracting sounds, so that’s what white noise does. I have an air purifier, or air conditioners do this, too, and that gives you white noise. Nature sounds are sort of pink noise, brown noise, and they not only can mask distracting sounds but they’re actually calming.

Like I said, bird song is at about 40 decibels, and we associate nature sounds with calming. So, last night, I woke up in the middle of the night, there was a thunderstorm, and in Tucson we don’t get very much rain so it’s really very calming to hear rain on the roof, and it just sent me right back to sleep, hearing that nature sound. Well, if you don’t happen to be able to call up a thunderstorm in your area, you can go online and download any of these nature sounds.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And can you also speak a bit about nutrition? What are some do’s and don’ts when it comes to eating for cognitive performance?

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
Yeah, that was one of the hardest chapters to write, I have to say. I started off with stimulants, with coffee, tea, and chocolate, all of which are great stimulants to keep you alert because of the caffeine. Theanine is also in tea, especially green tea and matcha tea, and that has both a stimulant and a calming effect. So, if you notice when you take your first, well, I’ve noticed this when I take my first sips of green tea in the morning, everything comes more into focus. It’s as if you’re suddenly more aware and alert.
And tea has more theanine than coffee, so it has more of that calming effect at the same time as the alerting effect. You never say, “I’m going to have a calming cup of coffee,” right? You say, “I’m going to have an alerting cup of coffee.” But one of the things to remember with any of those stimulants is there’s a lot of different individual variability, and some people are much more sensitive than others to caffeine or chocolate coffee, so you need to be aware that too much is not good also because it can give you the jitters, you can start shaking, you can be anxious. It can certainly keep you up at night.

So, then when you think about, “What about nutrition?” again, if you have a heavy fatty sugary lunch, you’re going to be less alert, your cognitive performance is going to be poor, you’re going to feel more fatigued, you’re going to want to sleep in the afternoon, than if you have a lighter lunch, what we call a Mediterranean diet, high in vegetables, protein like a little bit of fish or a little bit of meat, or if you’re a vegetarian, beans or whatever protein can be added to the vegetables will keep you more alert in the afternoon.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, tell me, Esther, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
We haven’t really talked about spirituality, and that was another chapter that was a bit hard to figure out. How do you bring spirituality into the workplace? And I don’t mean let’s all do a prayer circle. That’s not spirituality. Spirituality has many elements to it, and one of them is flow. It’s moments of meditation, so being able to go offline for even a few seconds, sort of micro moments of meditation.

There’s also, in spirituality, a sense of purpose, being part of the greater good. There’s a sense of respect for everyone around you. And the flow piece is very important for work. How do you get into that space of being in the zone, of being in flow? And all of these things, moments of meditation, being able to get up and walk around a little bit if you feel logy. If you feel anxious, do something that’s calming. All of those things can help you get into that state of flow, which is really a sense of effortless enjoyment.

If you feel effortless but, in fact, when brain studies have shown that the stress response is actually turned on when you’re in a state of flow, but your awareness of your bodily functions is turned down so it feels effortless. So, how do we bring that into a workspace? Well, if you don’t have a place to go to where you can go offline, where you can take little meditation breaks, where you can be in nature, or see a view of nature, if there’s no place to gather with colleagues so you can feel a sense of community, you don’t have that, and these spaces can be designed to allow you to enter that kind of zone.

I described how, at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, they’re designing a walkway from the parking lot to the hospital because during COVID, the healthcare workers were devastated, they were burnt out. Dr Brian Chong, who’s leading this redesign, told me that he would see the healthcare workers sitting on the curve, in the parking lot, crying. They were just devastated. And they asked for a way to enter the workspace in a state of grace, so transition zones from your daily life, or from your workspace, to your daily life can be really important to help center you and bring that sense of calm as you move from one space to another.

I describe the Japanese tea ceremony, and the tea rooms that were designed in the 1500s, 1400s, that, on purpose, had this element of being able to move from one space to another slowly so that you could leave your cares behind and come into a quiet space where you could focus. And those kinds of elements can be brought into a workspace, or even into your home space.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. And, especially, I’m thinking about working from home environments in which you go instantly, like seconds between, “I’m working, working, working, and family. Here we are.” It’s zero transition can certainly be jarring.

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
Right. Right.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
Well, the 23rd Psalm, I think, embodies all of these elements of the healing aspects of place.
So, I would say the 23rd Psalm is really my inspiration, and it comes to me because it was my father’s favorite psalm, and he would read this often at the end of dinner or lunch. And we discovered after my father died that he had been in a concentration camp in Russia during the war, and we had no idea. We didn’t know what he’d gone through.

But I suspect that this psalm sustained him when he could not be in nature, or go out into nature, or have nature views, and yet he could do that in his mind. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul.” And I think those elements immediately take you to a place of nature, of calm, and it can sustain even in the valley of the shadow of death.

And I think that that is an important element of how a place, whether it’s in your memory or in your mind, can impact your whole wellbeing.

Pete Mockaitis
That is beautiful. And you know what’s funny, I recently saw, and we can link this in the show notes, “The Basque Sheepherder and the Shepherd Psalm.” This was a popular reprint in Reader’s Digest that an actual shepherd is like, “Well, yeah, this is just kind of how we kind of operate. Like, every shepherd knows that sheep don’t like to drink gurgling water so they got to go to the still waters.” So, it’s like very literally, like, “Yeah, this is how you do shepherding right, btw,” which I thought was eye-opening.

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
Oh, that’s interesting.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
I’m right now into Wodehouse who wrote humor in the mid-century and early actually 20th century just because it’s lighthearted and his use of the English language is really, really remarkable.

I love Jane Austen. I love Pride and Prejudice. I think that the structure of these novels, of her novels, really broke ground for how a novel should be written.

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

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
Well, I have my desk. My desk faces a window, and I make sure that I have a view out to nature. I do like to sit outside and work when it’s not 110 degrees outside in Tucson. I like to take a break in the middle of the day to either swim or walk. So, it’s not necessarily a tool. It’s what I do in the space and how I orient the space.

I am very careful to not have too much exposure in the evening to blue light, and I actually have a pair of glasses that block blue light.

So, I think I do a combination of all of these things: access to the outdoors, access to nature, beautiful views. To me, that’s very important.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with readers and listeners in the audience; they quote it back to you often?

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
By engaging in those seven domains of integrative health, and by designing the spaces where you live and work and play and learn to incorporate everything that can enhance those seven domains of integrative health, you can help improve your resilience.

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

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
Well, they can go to my website, www.EstherSternberg.com. There’s a lot of information on there and, of course, they can buy my book, Well at Work: Creating Wellbeing in any Workspace.

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

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
I think the challenge is if you find yourself in a workspace that is not a wellbeing workspace, you can certainly advocate for it. And, especially now, the C-suites, the developers, the owners, are listening because they are very concerned. Building occupancy is still only 20-30% in the high-rise office buildings. There’s a prediction of a downtown apocalypse when leases are up, and footprints shrink, they’re going to be fewer downtown.

And the owners, developers, and C-suite are desperate to find ways to get people to come back, and this is a way to get people to come back: create wellbeing workspaces that attract people to want to go there, to be with their colleagues, and to work together.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Esther, thank you for this. I wish you much wellbeing in all your workspaces.

Esther Sternberg, M.D.
Thank you so much. It’s a great pleasure talking to you.