KF #26. Being Resilient

Pete Mockaitis
Megan, thanks so much for joining us here on the How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Megan Lyons
Thanks, Pete. I’m excited to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, me too. You one time placed second in a crossword puzzle competition. Tell us, how does a crossword puzzle competition work? Is it live, are they all gathered in the same space? What’s the story here?

Megan Lyons
It’s absolutely as nerdy as it sounds, in the best possible way. I embrace my nerdiness. It was a college competition held by Will Shortz, who is the editor of the New York Times crossword puzzle, a famous crossword puzzleist. And he hosted a student competition at my college. And I loved crossword puzzles, I still do. It’s a great way to kind of tune my mind off from everything else. So you just sit there in silence and he gives you a crossword puzzle, and you race to finish it in the most accurate way and as quickly as possible, and then you run down the auditorium stairs and turn in your puzzle, and that’s it. Then they grade it and you win or don’t win.

Pete Mockaitis
It seems like, when you mentioned the racing part, that you can just build a whole movie or a dramatic story out of the event. So, was it like that? Were there hundreds of people in rows and rows and rows of tables, or what was it like in the scene?

Megan Lyons
It was a college auditorium, so there were probably 200 people or so. And you have those little folding desks that come from the side of your chair and then flip over. So it’s not the most spacious atmosphere; everyone’s kind of squinched in together. I guess you could make a movie but there’s a lot of silence going on, a lot of scratching your head, so it might be a bit boring.

Pete Mockaitis
You’ve got to have maybe the montage music, and then the bits and pieces. Well, I’ve never been very good at crossword puzzles. I’m usually pretty good at trivia contests. And so, I don’t know, what’s the key? How does crossword excellence bloom?

Megan Lyons
The skill is in two things. One is repetition. So, you’ll find the same words used over and over and over, and as soon as you can get a little hook, as soon as you’re 100% sure of a word, then you can start using the letters that are there to fill in the rest. And then number two – I have a weird memory thing, where if I read, let’s say, 48 across, and I don’t know the answer, in my mind I still can see the clue. When I look down at the puzzle where 48 across should be, I can still see that clue. So I can keep it all in my brain, which makes me just a little bit quicker.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool, that’s cool.

Megan Lyons
It’s fun.

Pete Mockaitis
I love the game Bananagrams, in which you are competing to form your own words with others. Have you played that one?

Megan Lyons
I have played. It’s been quite a while, but you make up words. Is that true?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I guess if you’re cheating. [laugh]

Megan Lyons
Oh, okay. I think the people I played with must have been cheating, because it was frustrating to me.

Pete Mockaitis
I don’t know why, I looked up words with the letter Q that don’t have a U in them, which has served me so well. And I don’t even know if I’m pronouncing it right – qintar.

Megan Lyons
I don’t know that one.

Pete Mockaitis
I believe it’s an Albanian currency worth half of a lek. And the plural is qindarka. But I might be pronouncing it so wrong. But everyone says, “You made that up.” It’s like, “Please, challenge me.” It is my go-to for a Q with no U, because Ts and As and Rs and Is are plentiful.

Megan Lyons
I love that. If I see it in a crossword puzzle, I will send you a picture.

Pete Mockaitis
Please, that would be so good. So anyway, that’s the crossword story. But you’re also applying your mental skills to another endeavor – your business, The Lyons’ Share Wellness. What’s it all about?

Megan Lyons
Yeah, so it’s about cutting through the junk basically – the fat diets out there, just the diet culture in general, I guess, the conflicting information out on the marketplace. The diet industry’s a $60 billion industry, because everyone’s saying something different. And I want to get to the root of what actually makes people feel better mentally, physically, emotionally. So mainly what I do is one-to-one nutrition consulting for people who want to lose weight, solve digestive issues, increase their energy, basically just clean up their diets and don’t know where to start. But my approach is rooted in several things that set me apart – science for one, positivity for two. I’m not about attacking you, I’m not about feeling bad about your decisions or beating you up for anything. And then bio-individuality is the third one.

Pete Mockaitis
There’s so much to go on right away. So, that’s what struck me about your message, because I do hear a lot of incoming requests from wellness coaches, but none of them have your deep background from data, analytical, research-based stuff, coming from McKinsey. So that was really cool and eye-catching. So first, just because maybe it’s on listeners’ minds – what does the word “bio-individuality” mean?

Megan Lyons
In my mind it means that different nutrition approaches work for different people. So there’s not any one-size-fits-all meal plan, diet, etcetera, that works for absolutely everyone. There are a few things that we can talk about as we go into it that do apply to most people, but if it were so simple that there was one magic diet, everyone would be following it and we wouldn’t have a health crisis on our hands.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, when you say “works”, I’m imagining that in two ways. One is, it works for my lifestyle and my schedule and my kitchen setup and my travel schedule, that kind of thing. It works as, I can fit it into what I’m doing with my life. But then I think there was another dimension of “works”, in terms of – which I want to hear your take on – are you saying that individual bodies, our biochemistry will react differently, and substantially so, to the same inputs? Like I may react to high protein or high fat or whatever completely differently than you would.

Megan Lyons
That’s what I’m saying.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, alright. Well, that’s intriguing, because I think that there’s a lot of noise and a lot of conflicting views out there when it comes to nutrition. So, do you have any proof points or a study you could point to that says, “Here’s your smoking gun. This is absolutely the truth.”

Megan Lyons
Oh yes. I think if we had five hours, I could fill it easily with this. But I’ll start with one of my favorite examples, which many of your listeners who are in this world, in the nutrition world, might have heard of – The Inuit Paradox. The Inuits are a group of Eskimos in Greenland and they are super healthy. Their mortality rate is very low, their incidence of chronic disease are very low, at least those of them who are still eating their traditional diet. And their traditional diet is basically all whale blubber. They don’t eat vegetables, and trust me, I am the number one preacher of vegetables, so this study kind of pains me to even admit. But they basically just eat whale blubber all of their lives. And if you look at the science, that could be almost impossible to have no incidence of cancer, etcetera, without vegetables and with so much saturated fat. But they’re remarkably healthy.
And then on the other hand, if you look at groups of people that are featured in books like The Blue Zones or incidences of high octogenarians, people who live a really long time – they are mostly eating vegetables. So I think in The Blue Zones, which studies nine, I believe, of these societies – the average meat consumption is 15 ounces per month, which is four to five really small servings of meat per month. So if you compare that to the Inuits, there’s no one right answer.
And then I’ll give you one more, since I love this stuff – a personal example. I got into it initially because of my own journey into trying to feel better, trying to have more energy. But as I progressed I was having some really serious GI issues – some bloating, just discomfort all the time. And I knew, based on knowing my body, that spinach, almonds and oranges were causing these issues for me. And I went to a bunch of GI doctors and they all said, “Are you crazy? Those foods are really healthy. No, no one can have issues caused by spinach, almonds and oranges.” And finally I found a food intolerance test, and the test showed, remarkably, that I was intolerant to spinach, oranges and almonds. And so those healthy foods for most people just were not healthy for my body at that time, and once I took them out for six months, I felt so much better after that.

Pete Mockaitis
Now that’s intriguing right there – that we could have some food intolerances that we don’t even know about, that by purging can yield dramatic results. Megan, how do I get me one of these tests?

Megan Lyons
Yeah, so I’ll caution you that there are a lot of food intolerance tests out there on, and I’ll tell you how to get it. One way is through me, through my practice. I do food intolerance testing, and so if listeners are interested in that, they could just go to my website or email me and hopefully we can put those links in the show notes. But I’ll caution you even before that, that you know your body the best, and if you’re having some kind of issues, it is easy to take a blood test and get a paper that tells you, “Yes, yes, yes, no, no, no.” But the science is still pretty new, and your experience is much more valid than that.
So I already knew oranges, spinach and almonds before I took the test. I just took the test to have some validation, to have some data behind it to justify what I already knew I needed to do for my body. So I always encourage people, try eliminating those things that you think are causing you issues first. If you don’t know, try some of the common triggers. Almost always it’s gluten, dairy, eggs, nuts, maybe even bananas and avocados would be the next. So try some of those before you spend the $500 or more to get a food intolerance test.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s interesting, because as I think about my own diet and experience of vitality, I don’t know if anything at all is leaping to mind. But I think that there could be something lurking, because some days I feel on fire, brilliant, alive, alert, awake, enthusiastic, and then other days it’s just like, “Huh, seems a little hard to do the thinking that is required of this task in front of me.” And I don’t even know what the variable is.

Megan Lyons
So, I would ask you before you do the test, have you ever kept a really detailed food journal?

Pete Mockaitis
No.

Megan Lyons
I would do that. It’s so amazing how much you can figure out just by keeping a food journal for one week. People find the most obvious things when it’s on paper. It’s like, “Oh, duh, of course. Every day after I eat a donut I feel like junk”, or something like that. Even if you’re not really eating a donut – I’m being dramatic – but you’ll notice patterns just by writing it down. It’s just that we forget. It’s not important to remember what I had as a morning snack seven days ago, so I don’t tie that to my symptoms. And with intolerances symptoms can show up up to 48 hours after. So unless you’re writing it down, it’s hard to do that. And Pete, just for you – if you do a food journal for a week, I’m more than happy to look over it and see if I can find anything for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Aw shucks, thank you. I appreciate that.

Megan Lyons
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so bio-individuality is for real, and we get to the bottom of it with a food journal and / or the food intolerance test. So, could you share with us then, beyond the individuality, and if we had to generalize a bit when it comes to professionals, and I will say, in the United States? Shoutout – thank you, international listeners, but I guess we’re 80% in the U.S. and apparently U.S. has some dietary things that could be a bit different than other nations. So, what are some of the top, top things that have some great evidence behind what we should do if we want to feel more alive, energetic and brilliant every day?

Megan Lyons
Yeah, so I’m going to underwhelm you at first, but when I underwhelm you, if someone says, “Oh my gosh, you’re talking about water” – I’m going to challenge you to see if you’re actually doing what I’m saying. So, there goes the first one, is drinking more clean water. It is so, so, so important. 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated and we don’t even get the feelings anymore, our body stops sending us signals that we’re dehydrated.
But when we are, not only is our digestion impaired, but our brain function slows down really, really quickly. We have fatigue, we need more sleep. There are so many things that happen when we’re dehydrated that I have to give that as the number one tip. So, my rule is always half your body weight in pounds + 16 for every hour of exercise you do daily. So if you weigh 200 pounds and you exercise an hour a day – that’s a 116 ounces of water that you need to be drinking. And this does not include coffee, it does not include soda. It’s really just water. So that always has to be my number one.
Number two is going to be eating more vegetables. And again, this is something that everyone knows who’s listening to this podcast. Eat more vegetables – of course, we’ve heard that all of our lives. But hold up a fist in front of your face – that’s the serving size for your individual person. A baby needs fewer vegetables than a 300-pound male. So, a fist size is a serving size. I encourage people to get 8 to 12 servings of vegetables every single day. Do you think most of your listeners do that?

Pete Mockaitis
No.

Megan Lyons
No, most people definitely do not do that. It’s hard to do in a busy world, when we’re getting information thrown at us from a dozen different angles and we have places to go and we’re not just sitting there picking vegetables out of our garden. But it’s really, really important, and will help you feel, like you said, energetic, more clear at work, just better able to function throughout the day.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, as I visualize the amount of 8 to 12 of my fist – and granted, I have large hands – but it’s substantial. And so, I’m curious, in practice how that’s done. I guess it’s a bunch of salads, is probably the most direct answer. But what’s your take – how do people pull that off? I’ve heard about these greens supplements or beverages. Is that any good, or how do you think about this?

Megan Lyons
Yeah, I always think that eating your vegetable is the best, but then there are several supplements that if we’re just not able to achieve the best case, there are several out there that I’ll talk about. Just to give you an example of how it’s done – my average day in the life, for breakfast I’ll either have probably a breakfast hash, which is sweet potatoes, zucchini, Brussel sprouts, and some turkey and some spices, maybe some good quality healthy fat in there. Or I’ll have a green smoothie, or I have a crustless quiche recipe on my website that’s pretty popular with people. So something like that, I’ll get at least two, probably three servings of vegetables in my breakfast. You’ll notice that I eat a lot of food. I’m a smallish person, but I eat a lot of food. It just happens to be a lot of vegetables.
Then for lunch – you called it – a salad is generally a great way to get in your vegetables, however most people when they start trying to be healthy, it’s like, “Oh, salad. Hold the avocado, no dressing, please.” Something like that. And I really, really encourage you to have healthy fat with your salad, otherwise it’ll never fill you up, it’ll never satiate you, and then you’ll always think of salad as a bad, boring thing. So, load up that salad with a bunch of protein or a bunch of healthy fat and really have something that you enjoy. So that’s another four servings easily with my salad at lunch.
And then I have a veggie pack every single afternoon, which is one of the simplest things I’ve ever made up, but you would be amazed how many of my clients who have paid hundreds and thousands of dollars, they come back and they’re like, “That one thing that you told me, the veggie pack – that’s what changed my life.” So, it’s a little frustrating and positive all at the same time. But a veggie pack is simply a ziplock baggie, or I use these reusable stasher bags or any container full of raw vegetables. And I make seven of them on Sundays. I encourage myself, I eat that before any other snack in the day. I just get those vegetables in, and that lowers cravings throughout the day, that really does pick up your energy, increases the fiber that you’re consuming, so your digestion’s improved, helps you prevent overeating at dinner. So, so many benefits. So, that’s another two. I think I’m at… Let’s see, how many am I at? Eight or nine right now.
And then for dinner I’m generally having some kind of salmon and vegetables, or chicken cauliflower fried rice, with cauliflower obviously. Some kind of vegetables that give me another two or three servings. So for me, I average 10 to 11 per day. I understand that for someone who’s traveling like I used to do all the time, or someone who chooses not to prepare their food for whatever reason, that’s tough. So, you called it with the greens powders. My favorite one is Organifi. I have no connection with them; I just think it’s a really great company. And that’s a powder that you dump into a water bottle and just shake it up and drink it. It doesn’t taste so bad and it gives you some great quality vegetables and fruits in there. And then capsulized for people who can’t even or don’t even want to drink the juice. Juice Plus+ is another good one – that’s a capsule.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good, thank you. And I’ve heard a lot about that Organifi, mostly from podcast ads.

Megan Lyons
I know, I know.

Pete Mockaitis
Organifi – you think it’s cool, and I’m intrigued now because I’ve heard a lot about it. But even more so, eating the vegetables in those moments – that’s handy. So, we got the water, we got the vegetables. Any other big ones?

Megan Lyons
Yes, I want to talk about sugar, but I want to throw in a stat, since you just reminded me that you’re so specific about your requests. So, I have a really great stat, one of my favorites from a 2017 report in the Journal of Epidemiology. It said that an estimated 5.6 to 7.8 million premature deaths worldwide every year could be reversed or maybe attributable to a deficiency in fruit and vegetable intake. So, that is huge. We’re talking millions and millions of deaths every single year, just by eating a veggie pack or something simple like that. So, do it. Eat those veggies, get those veggie packs in.
But then I have to talk about sugar as well. And I wrote a book a couple of years ago called Start Here, which gives some of these basic tips, but lots more statistics behind it. And the sugar chapter was absolutely my favorite chapter to write because I got to see how much of an issue this really is. It is almost impossible to reduce or to avoid added sugar. And I work in this field. I study this day in and day out, and I know more than the average person, but I’m still consuming added sugar all the time because it is in everything. I think it’s 72% of products in the average grocery store that are in a package have added sugar, so it’s just incessant.
And I really believe it’s causing a bunch of our health issues as Americans, but really as the world. If you plot some of the chronic diseases and our sugar consumption, it’s a pretty direct correlation. So, whether it’s actual sugar-laden foods that everyone knows – ice cream, cookies, cakes, things like that, or it’s just getting really, really conscious of where sugar’s hiding – in salad dressings and tomato sauces and yogurt and juices and drinks and bread and granola bars and all this kind of stuff, working on reducing your added sugar, or your sugar intake overall, would be incredibly helpful.

Pete Mockaitis
And what is the problem with sugar?

Megan Lyons
Oh, gosh. Again, do you have five hours? So the basic problem is that when we eat sugar, sugar in our blood stream is not good. Our body doesn’t like that. Our body likes sugar in our cells. And sugar in our cells is actually helpful to some extent. It’s glucose – a lot of people hear of it as glucose – and that powers the brain. It’s easiest for your brain to operate on glucose. So in the cells it’s not a bad thing, but in order to get it from the bloodstream into the cells, we need a hormone called insulin, which a lot of people have heard of, but they don’t know what it is. And I like to think of insulin as a Pacman. Pacman with the mouth opening and closing, it grabs onto the sugar in the bloodstream and it shuttles it into a cell. So it’s actually really, really helpful.
And when we eat something like an apple, the insulin response that we get when we eat an apple – let’s say it has 20 grams of sugar – we get the appropriate amount of insulin to get all those 20 grams into our cells, and nothing’s left over. But when we eat or drink a soda or something like that, which our body doesn’t really recognize – it’s different types of sugars; it’s high-fructose corn syrup and it doesn’t have nutrients and fiber and things that help our body deal with it – we get too much insulin secreted.
So, if you drink the same 20 grams of sugar from soda, you would get a higher insulin response, and that excess insulin is what causes issues. So it causes you to store belly fat, which a lot of people don’t like, but also it turns into much more significant issues in my mind – things like insulin resistance, which then turns into type 2 diabetes, which is something that everyone wants to avoid, and even things like Alzheimer’s. Neurological conditions are highly linked to an excess of insulin over time. I’m certainly not saying that if you have one soda in your life, you’re going to get Alzheimer’s or cancer or any of these things, but over time that excess insulin response is linked to so many of these things.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, noted. So sugar is problematic. Any other key “don’ts” when it comes to getting that high level of energy and mental brilliance?

Megan Lyons
Yes. I really like to focus on the “do’s”, but I’m going to give you a few more “don’ts”, because like I said, positivity is my thing. I think added sugar’s number one. The number two “don’t” that I would say is false health products. So never believe anything that’s on the front of the package if it says “healthy” or “diet” or anything like that. I use in my presentations when I’m using PowerPoint, which is still my consultant crutch – I have a slide with this pure protein bar and it says “Eat good, look great, high protein, low sugar, gluten-free”, all these claims on the front, but people don’t realize that you can put anything on the front of a package – it’s widely unregulated.
And then you turn it over, the first thing I want you to look at is the ingredients there. I don’t really care if it has 20 grams of protein and 0 grams of sugar and 0 calories, which isn’t possible anyway. That doesn’t matter to me if the ingredients are junky. So I want you to look at the ingredients. And I have three rules for looking at ingredients. Number one – fewer is better. So, many of these protein bars and false health foods have 40, 50 ingredients. It’s like chemical soup in there. So, too many ingredients is number one.
Number two is ingredients that you recognize. There are some “energy bars” or “protein bars” – whatever you want to call them – that the ingredients are very simple. You may have seen the RXBAR, which says “5 almonds, 6 cashews, 3 dates, 2 egg whites, and no B.S.”, or something like that on the package. The point is, you recognize all of those ingredients. On many of these bars or health products, you don’t recognize the ingredients.
And then the last one, tying back into our sugar conversation is, I don’t want sugar in any of its forms to be in the first three ingredients. So, ingredients are listed in descending order of volume and I don’t want sugar to be one of the top ingredients. The only kicker here is that there are over 63… Well, that’s kind of a funny thing to say – over 63 – I believe there are 63 FDA-approved words for sugar, so you have to be pretty careful. Look for any kind of sugar – cane sugar, maple sugar, corn sugar, anything like that; any kind of syrup – high-fructose corn syrup, maple syrup, whatever; or anything ending in “ose”.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. 63, interesting. Can we link to that? Do you have that catalogued somewhere?

Megan Lyons
Yes, I will find it for you and get it to you.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you, cool. Okay, so we got some big “do’s” and some “don’ts”. I want to hear your meal planning and prepping approach. It seems like you’ve put tons of thought into this and have it down. And I guess I’m just coming to terms with, time after time I’m hungry and I just don’t have a plan. And then it’s just kind of whatever. It’s like whatever I can grab and put in my mouth in the time I have before the next appointment. And I think I’m just coming to terms with, “This ain’t working so well.” And you’ve really got a process down. Can you lay it out for us? How does that work?

Megan Lyons
Sure. First, I meal plan and food prep for exactly the reason you said. It’s not that I believe everyone has to do this or else you’re not fancy or something like that. It’s not for the Instagram, believe it or not. It’s just that my lifestyle is full, it’s busy, and I like it that way. But if I’m walking in from work at 8:30 p.m. and I’m starving, I’m not about to spend an hour cooking my dinner. I would much rather go pick something up or drive through something or whatever. But if I walk in at 8:30 p.m. and my meal is already ready to go, I’m excited about it, I’ve made it a few days before and all I have to do is heat it up, then I’m much more likely to go ahead and eat that. So, it all comes from… Have you ever heard of Shawn Achor? He wrote a book called…

Pete Mockaitis
The Happiness Advantage.

Megan Lyons
Yeah, exactly. He talks about lowering the activation energy of habits that you want to encourage, and this is a long-studied theory or tactic that I believe to be true. And almost every occasion when we make things easier that we want to do, we will actually do them. As silly, as simple as that sounds, it’s so true. So meal-planning and prepping is all about just making it easier for me to eat healthily. And basically what I do – I’m going to give you the 30-second version, and then I have a webinar that is maybe 45 minutes. For anyone who’s really interested in going into the weeds, they can access that.
But basically what I do is I have this template, which is a grid of the week, and all of the meals. I block off any events where I’m going to be served food or I’m going out to eat, and then I put a box by those occasions where I need it to be all ready to go, five minutes or less, no preparation required. And then I just start plotting in meals.
So I have probably four or five breakfasts that I rotate through all the time. I don’t really get bored for breakfast; it’s just something that I want nutritious and quick and delicious, and that’s it. So I plot one of those in. Then I do the same for lunch and dinner, with probably a little bit more variety. And then I go to the grocery store. As soon as I get back from the grocery store, I chop everything right then. Don’t even spend the time to put it back in the fridge. It seems like you’re just wasting two minutes, but those two minutes every single week add up, and then you have many more excuses later. So chop it right away.
And every single week I have something in the crock pot, something on the stove, something that’s raw, and something in the oven. And so, that just makes it easy for me to be like a mad scientist in the kitchen, doing four meals at once. By the time I’m done, I have, I like to say 21 meals for the week, but I really don’t actually. I probably prepare 18 of my meals for the week, and I have it all ready to go in glass storage containers, and it just makes my life so much easier.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so good. One in the crock pot, one on the stove, one in the oven, and one raw, you say.

Megan Lyons
Yes, that’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
So then we can have all of them going at the same time – the crock pot’s crocking, the stove is burning. Well, not burning, you know…

Megan Lyons
Yup. Hopefully not burning. Although I have set off the fire alarm at least five times in my food prep.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you had a few things going on at once. And then you’re making them in pretty substantial quantities. So is that fair to say, the crock pot might have six meals in it?

Megan Lyons
Exactly, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. And so, let’s talk about these glass storage containers.

Megan Lyons
Sure.

Pete Mockaitis
I guess I’ve looked a couple of times at Amazon, and once again I interrogate the Amazon options. I don’t know how many times I’ve clicked into, “No, no, show me all reviews”, and now I want to keyword-search several things within them.

Megan Lyons
I like this.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s kind of my approach. So these storage containers, I guess in my world, I’ve yet to quite find the ultimate. And I’ve looked maybe three times and sort of aborted the mission after about 20 minutes of, “I can’t quite find what I want.” And then something else takes me away. So, I guess in my dream world, the perfect food storage container would be about meal-sized, so one meal – there you go. It stacks together, so you can stash them away in the kitchen without taking up gobs of space. You would have some kind of a lid or a spill prevention, so that if you needed to put it in a briefcase or a suitcase, you can do that. And then you can microwave it. And I’ve heard – and maybe you’ve got the dirt on this – is that it’s sort of bad news to microwave plastics, because it can release phytoestrogens or something bad.

Megan Lyons
Yeah, that’s the BPA thing that we hear about. I think it’s true. I wouldn’t stress about microwaving plastic one time, but if you’re going to do it every day, I definitely do recommend staying away from plastic.

Pete Mockaitis
So lay it on us – what is the perfect solution? You said you’re using glass.

Megan Lyons
Yeah, I do. I use these snapware glass dishes, I guess, that I got from Amazon, and I have a little bit.ly link. Do you use bit.ly links ever?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, absolutely.

Megan Lyons
They just make my life easier, yeah. So it’s bit.ly/storemyfood, all lowercase, just to give people the exact ones that I use. But I have to say I’m not as particular as you, and I’m patting myself on the back because I meet all of your requirements. They are meal-size, they’re glass, they are leak-proof, they snap together, they don’t take up too much space, they’re dishwasher and microwave-safe, all that kind of stuff. And I really like them. They’re a bit of an investment upfront – I think they’re probably $4-$5 each – but they’re worth it over time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I want to go there immediately and take a look. So, that’s cool. And are they heavy if they’re glass?

Megan Lyons
Yeah, they’re heavy. So, I walk to work every day, and I just transitioned to a backpack. I’m regressing in my age. But I used to have a bag that was over one shoulder – then that was too heavy because I was bringing all my food. So I then switched to a roller bag, but then the roller bag was kind of a pain and it made loud noise. So I went back to the old school backpack. And I just consider it part of my extra workout to get my food all the way into the office and back.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood. Well, thank you. At last, maybe we’ve cracked the code here. So, much appreciated.

Megan Lyons
Of course.

Pete Mockaitis
And then for the recipes – I am a fan of things you can make a bunch at once. So you mentioned the crockpot, so I think that’s great for stews or chili. What are some of the other go-to’s, like, “Hey, this is quick and easy to make a bunch of food at once that segments and stores and lasts well?”

Megan Lyons
Yeah, so in that meal-planning webinar I have, I think 20 or 30 of my favorite meal-prep recipes that people can download as well. But think of things that have some liquid in them or that you’re not just tasting one food at a time. So for people with texture issues, meal prep can be a little harder because something like a fillet of salmon doesn’t reheat as well as a chicken chili or something like that. But if you can do soups, stews, casseroles, quiches, any kind of stir fry dish, or I love cauliflower, rice and zucchini noodles, things like that, with sauces on them – all of those reheat really, really well.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect, thank you. Well, Megan, tell me – this is so good. Anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Megan Lyons
Oh, there are just so many. I think the last thing that we didn’t talk about was the impact of the gut microbiome on our health. And this is just getting so much press lately. It’s one of my pet peeves when people come to me and they say, “I saw this study that says obese people have a different gut microbiome than non-obese people, and so this is just how I’m going to be the rest of my life.” Or whatever, fill in the blank with something other than obesity.
But one of my favorite studies is when they used mice, but they’re trying to right now extrapolate this to humans, and they switched the mice from a plant-rich diet to a Western diet with refined sugars, low quality fats, all this kind of stuff. And their microbiome, the gut bacteria, changed within one day. So it is true that if you are obese or you are sick or you have type 2 diabetes or something –  it is true that part of it is your gut microbiome, but it’s a bit of the chicken and the egg here. You have the power to change it.
So, I always encourage my clients – take one step in the right direction. Don’t get overwhelmed by all of this information and say, “I have to do everything or nothing”, because that’s why people do nothing. Just do one thing – make a veggie pack this week and have one every day, or try to trade your soda for water tomorrow. Just do one thing and you will feel so much better from that that you’ll get the snowball rolling and it’ll keep growing.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s excellent. So, quick question on the gut microbiome – are probiotics amazing? What’s you take?

Megan Lyons
The right quality probiotics are amazing. Unfortunately most probiotics on the market are heat-processed, and that deactivates most of the good stuff. So be sure you’re getting a good quality probiotic. The one that I usually recommend I get from Amazon or a health food store – it’s Garden of Life, The Ultimate Flora. I’ll give you a link to put that in the show notes as well. But if you’re not getting that one, just be sure that it says that it’s not been heat-processed or it’s in a dark glass container. Or even better, eat some probiotic-rich foods, like sauerkraut or kefir or kimchi or some of these things with weird names that taste a little bit bitter. If you’re getting true yogurt with actual probiotics and you tolerate dairy, that’s great too. It’s just as easy or just as possible to get your probiotic from food.

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

Megan Lyons
Absolutely. It’s one that many people will have heard, but I wrote it on my entrance to high school wall – we got to decorate the wall. So it’s always been my favorite. It’s Thoreau: “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.”

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

Megan Lyons
I think that one that says 5.6 to 7.8 million premature deaths could be prevented if we just eat five to eight servings of vegetables per day.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And how about a favorite book?

Megan Lyons
Right now my favorite book is Food: What the Heck Should I Eat by Mark Hyman.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Megan Lyons
Favorite tool is FollowUpThen. It’s a free email tool that helps me keep track of my clients. It sends you a reminder when you should follow up with someone by email.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite habit?

Megan Lyons
My morning routine. I do a 10-set morning routine every morning – meditation, gratitude journal, exercise, drinking a bunch of water, things like that. And it just makes me so much more productive every day.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget you share with folks that really seems to connect and resonate and they say, “Wow, Megan, that’s so good!”

Megan Lyons
It’s, “Every day, every meal, every bite is a new opportunity. Make the most of it.”

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

Megan Lyons
My website – TheLyonsShare.org has almost everything, but they can also find me on social media at TheLyonsShare on Instagram or Facebook. Or they can email me – megan@thelyonsshare.org.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. And I think it’s so important, so I’ll just say – Lyons Share, as in your name, as opposed to the animal. And two S’s – LyonsShare.org. So, great stuff. Thank you.

Megan Lyons
You are hired. You can be on my marketing team, because I say that so many times per day. Thank you for filling in the blanks here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you just shared so much important stuff, with regard to the recipes and the meal planning and the items. I think it’s so important that we don’t miss out, because that’s great.

Megan Lyons
Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And do you have a final challenge or call to action you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Megan Lyons
Well, we talked about the veggie packs enough, so I think that’s going to be the challenge. Make a veggie pack, one for every day. Start with five days during the week – raw vegetables, anything you like. Just get a fist size in there and eat that before any other snacks for one week, and let me know if you don’t feel better. I will be shocked.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect. Megan, thank you so much for bringing some clarity and some sanity and some wisdom to this important topic. It’s been a lot of fun, and I wish you and The Lyons’ Share Wellness all the best!

Megan Lyons
Thank you, Pete. It’s been fun for me too.

Pete Mockaitis
Tony, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Tony Schwartz
Thank you. Really happy to be with you.

Pete Mockaitis
I’d love to hear from all of your energy management practices how’s that paying off when it comes to being a grandpa.

Tony Schwartz
Yeah, I have four grandkids and it’s all joy, no pain because as they tell you, it turns out to be true, you don’t have to actually be responsible when things start to blow up and they always do with young children. But you get all the fun time and then the moment that it isn’t fun, you hand them back over to the parents.

It’s all renewal. On that energy expenditure/energy renewal axis which we focus on, grandkids are one more way to get renewal. In fact, I’m sitting in the apartment of one of my daughters. When this over I’ll go hang out with my grandkids, two of them.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome, yes. You don’t have the night shift to contend with either.

Tony Schwartz
Yeah, that’s right. I sleep at night. That’s my thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. I want to dig into The Energy Project. Tell me what is this organization all about.

Tony Schwartz
We are a company that helps big companies or big organizations understand what I would say are the invisible human factors that stand in the way of great performance, whether that’s a lack of energy or it’s blind spots and fears or stories that people tell themselves.

There’s just an enormous amount that organizations generally do not take into account that stands in the way of getting stuff done. It’s what’s going on inside people. What’s going on inside people has a profound impact on how they show up in the world. But we haven’t been comfortable as a culture talking about those things.

What we’ve done at The Energy Project is really to create a language that allows leaders of organizations to feel comfortable and their employees as well in addressing all these things that have up till now simply lurked in the background having a big influence that no one was willing to address.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’d love it if you could give me just a couple biggy examples.

Tony Schwartz
Yeah. Let’s say you have a leader who is very angry and frustrated, a person who spends a lot of time in what we would call the survival zone. That leader is easily triggered by what he perceives to be as examples of incompetence or not getting his needs met.

What we would focus on is what’s going on inside that is making you feel that way. What are you missing? What are you not seeing that’s your responsibility? What kinds of strategies could you undertake to better manage the way you show up, the way you respond under stress or under pressure?

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent.

Tony Schwartz
That would be an example. Let me give you an organizational example.

You have an organization that is incredibly collegial. This would be an example I’m taking from one of our clients. People treat each other with great care and kindness. There’s very little conflict in that organization.

On its face it looks like everything is great except decision making is completely paralyzed and people are actually extremely anxious because they don’t know beneath the surface comments that are so positive what’s actually going on because nobody has permission to actually say what’s actually going on.

In a case like that we would try to help them understand how to find a better balance between candor and compassion, between candor and care. In fact, one of the primary, what I would call set of opposites that we work with leaders on is to both be challenging and nurturing or challenging and nourishing.

To understand that if you’re too challenging, you overwhelm people and if you’re too nurturing, you are disempowering them. Understanding how to find that balance between those two qualities is the kind of thing we would do with a given leader.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great stuff. Very useful. What really made me want to interview is long ago I read your book The Power of Full Engagement and it was just so, so helpful. I’d love it if you could orient us to a bit of the work you’re doing when it comes to energy and orienting us to the four sources of energy and just kicking us off there.

Tony Schwartz
Sure. The core work of The Energy Project, which is now 16 years old, is built around energy and the notion that it’s as important to manage your energy as it is to manage your time. The notion of energy, we really introduced into the organizational well because nobody thought about it.

Energy in physics is simply the capacity to do work. If you have more energy, you have more capacity. Capacity doesn’t matter so long as demand is less than the capacity you have, but that has completely, Pete, shifted as you well know.

The intensity of demand in people’s lives, almost no one would disagree, has increased dramatically primarily by virtue of the internet and all the demands it puts on us and the fact that we are, by definition, almost never offline anymore.

What we really have worked with to understand is what is energy in the human system. What’s the fuel you need in your time to truly bring your talent and skill to life?

They talk about engagement in the workplace. It’s a very, very important variable that organizations try to measure because it’s one of those things that there’s been a clear correlation made between the level of a person’s engagement and the level of their performance. It’s a very important factor over the last 20 years – 15 years. It refers to the willingness to invest discretionary effort on the job.

What we realized is that willing no longer guarantees able. Energy is about able. You need four sources of energy in order to be firing on all cylinders at work. What are they?

You need physical energy. That’s the ground of energy. That’s the most basic form. Without that nothing else is possible. When I say physical energy, I’m really referring to four components: fitness, sleep, nutrition, and rest.

Rest meaning daytime rest. I was referring to it at the very start of our talk in terms of what provides renewal. I was referring to my grandkids, but of course sleep provides renewal, hanging out, even working out provides both mental and emotional renewal even if it’s physically energy consuming. Those are the four components of physical energy.

Then there’s emotional energy, which is really how you feel because how you feel profoundly influences how you perform. There’s only a very specific way you can feel or there’s a specific way that you do feel when you’re performing at your best. We are helping people to cultivate that way of feeling.

Mental energy really refers to the control of attention, which is of course something we’re all struggling with in the world we live in. It’s the ability to focus on one thing at a time in an absorbed way for a sustained period of time. Critical factor in being able to be effective at work.

Then the fourth one is what we call spiritual energy. If people get nervous around that word, we call it the energy of the human spirit or the energy of purpose, the sense that what you’re doing really matters, that it serves something larger than yourself. Because if you have that feeling and I have it – I’ve got to tell you – almost every minute of every day.

I do something that really gives me a sense of purpose, which is talking about the kinds of things I’m sharing with you right now. It’s an enormous energy source for me in my life and for anybody who takes advantage of it who has a connection to why they’re doing what they’re doing.

Physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Our core work is training people to better manage those four sources of energy and training leaders to better manage not only their own energy, but the energy of those they lead.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, awesome. Well, I want to dig into a lot of what you said there, but first I was just so intrigued by your emotional energy comment. You said there’s one way we feel that really unlocks just great performance. What is that way of feeling and how do we get there?

Tony Schwartz
Pete, it’s how you feel when you’re performing at your best.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, it kind of varies person by person.

Tony Schwartz
No, it’s always the same.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Tony Schwartz
I’m going to ask you how do you feel when you’re performing at your best? Give me three or four adjectives.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, sure. I feel flowing, grooving, enthusiastic. It’s kind of like “All right, let’s keep it going.” It’s kind of like I get into it in such a sense that if I am interrupted, I’ll be irritated by it. I try to ….

Tony Schwartz
Yup, so flowing, grooving, energized. Then the other kinds of words we hear all the time are excited, confident, optimistic, focused, absorbed. Those are the kinds of words that we consistently hear. We never hear somebody say, “Hey, when I’m at my best what I feel is angry,” or, “At my best I’m really anxious.”

The way we feel when we’re performing our best is what we call high positive energy. There are almost no exceptions. That’s the way people perform at their best. We’ve asked literally 200,000 people that question over the last 16 years and always we get the same dozen adjectives or so that people say.

In a way that’s not a big piece of news because if you ask someone, they’ll always tell you. But what most people don’t recognize consciously in everyday life is if I’m not feeling that way, and most people aren’t much of the time, then I’m not capable of performing at my best. That’s what we mean by the right emotions when it comes to performing well.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I’m intrigued then in terms of how to be there more often. I know you teach a lot in terms of strategies and practices, but what would you say are maybe just the real top, top practical actionable prescriptions that just give you a tremendous return on your investment for bringing forth more high-positive energy?

Tony Schwartz
Yeah, well I’d say it depends on which of the four dimensions because all four of them influence high-positive energy. In the end, the feeling is a consequence of how well you’re managing each of these four dimensions.

At the physical level for example, which is the simplest one to describe, the most important thing you can do is sleep at least seven to eight hours a day. 98% of people require at least seven to eight hours of sleep in order to feel fully rested. Vastly fewer than 98% get seven to eight hours a night. If you don’t, by definition, everything else is going to be undermined.

There’s no single practice you can do that more powerfully and immediately influences your overall experience, the degree to which you feel high-positive energy when you’re getting enough sleep.

Second to that, would be intermittently resting throughout the day, meaning your body’s designed to work in cycles of 90 minutes, very much like what happens at night when you move in a 90-minute cycle called the basic rest activity cycle between very light sleep and then down into deep sleep and back out through something most people know as REM sleep, rapid eye movement sleep.

It turns out that the same exact cycle exists during the day. The only difference is that you move from a high state of alertness into a state of physiological fatigue every 90 minutes if – or the degree to which you move into that trough depends on how intensely you’ve worked during those 90 minutes.

But if you build a rhythm into your life of sprint and recover, sprint and recover it’s a vastly more efficient way to get things done and it feeds a better overall feeling in you then working continuously, which of course you can’t do at 100% any more than you can sprint two miles continuously. You’d fall and collapse if you do that. That’s very much at the most basic level, Pete.

I’ve already described to you this spiritual dimension. A practice that makes sense spiritually is to really look – there’s an awareness process that goes into identifying what is it that gives me a sense of meaning, what is it that makes me feel excited to get up in the morning  and go to work, that makes me feel like I’m adding value in the world.

That’s a blend of identifying what you do best because the things that you do best tend to be the things that provide often, all other factors being equal, the greatest source of satisfaction. But they are not necessarily what give you the most immediate pleasure or satisfaction.

In other words you may be – you may love – I mean you may be incredibly good on the saxophone but if your job is to be a salesman, that saxophone is not going to be a source of satisfaction at work. If it is, you’re probably not going to work there very long.

A second component is what do I enjoy doing in the context of what my responsibilities are. A third one is what am I doing that makes me feel I’m adding value to the world or to others. What’s adding value? What do I enjoy most? What am I best at?

Creating a Venn diagram around that, in other words finding the places where all three of those are happening for you is an awareness piece that really allows you to hone in on what deserves more of your attention.

Then once you’ve identified that, we would be helping the people who go through our work to figure out in the context of the work responsibilities that they have, how can they do more of those things in which they’re getting all three of those sources of satisfaction. That’s a couple of examples.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s powerful stuff. Thank you for laying this out. I’m so curious to hear some more inside each of these further. Let’s start with sleep then. Seven to eight hours is just putting in the time. Are there any pro tips other than just sort of blocking that out and getting into the bed? …

Tony Schwartz
Yeah, yeah, there certainly are. There certainly are. I’m happy to share them because this is so critical.

Probably on average when we do our corporate work and I’ll ask the question, “How many people in the room by a raise of hands have got at least seven to eight hours of sleep for at least five of the last seven nights?” I would say the average is probably about 40%. 60% of the audiences I’m seeing are not getting enough sleep.

That doesn’t even address the quality of their sleep. Let’s just say the number of hours that their eyes are closed and they’re more or less asleep.

A couple of really critical things. Number one, you’ve got to identify a time to go to sleep that is consistent and a time to wake up that’s consistent. First of all that will drive a better quality of sleep. Second of all, it will make it less likely that you drift, particularly at night, later and later and end up getting too little sleep.

Building it as a ritual, which is very much at the heart of the way we help people make behavioral change. In other words, a ritual is a highly specific behavior that you do over and over at the same time until it becomes automatic and you don’t have to think about it anymore. Because, Pete, the longer you have to think about doing something, the less likely you are to do it. That’s number one about sleep.

The second thing is that you want to wind down rather than simply trying to go to sleep instantly when you turn out the light. From an hour before you go to sleep, 45 minutes minimum, your ritual ought to include that winding down.

Let me give you an example of what isn’t winding down. Watching reruns of 24 is not winding down. Doing your email, your work email, much less even your personal email is not winding down. Why not? Because the screen creates more alertness and makes it harder to go to sleep.

Taking a shower or one shower or much less – or even better a warm bath or having a cup of herbal tea or having a – reading a book would also be a really good way to wind down. In fact, better a boring book than a thriller because you’re going to fall asleep faster. You wouldn’t want to read John le Carré or any other thriller writer because that might keep you up. There’s a lot of common sense in this.

Then the third tip, if this is not the third or the fourth, I’m not keeping track. The third tip would be that before you go to sleep if you’re the kind of person who struggles to go to sleep because you perseverate, because you start to think of things that you’re worried about and then you repetitively rem them in your mind.

That can happen to people before they go to sleep or it can happen when they wake up in the middle of the night and they can’t get back to sleep. What we suggest and we have seen work really, really effectively is that if you are such a person, write down before you go to sleep on a pad right by the side of your bed what it is you’re worrying about, what is on your mind.

Because by writing it down, you get it off your mind. You give your mind permission not to think about it because your mind is being told by your writing that it will be there for you in the morning just as reliably as if you tried to run it over and over in your head.

There are three just very simple ways to increase the likelihood that you’ll get seven to eight hours of sleep.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. Thank you. Well, now I want to talk a little bit about the intermittent resting. First of all, is that 90 minutes pretty universal across all human beings? Are some 70? Are some 110? Or is 90 the number?

Tony Schwartz
I would say science doesn’t tell us an exact answer to that question, but just as it doesn’t tell us what your sleep cycle will be. It is I would say plus or minus ten minutes probably in the 90s as a percentage. That plus or minus relative to 90 minutes is how long a sleep cycle lasts and how long a what we call an ultradian rhythm.

The sleep cycle is the circadian rhythm of night and day. I’m sorry, the sleep cycle takes place in the context of the circadian rhythm of night and day because the biggest rhythm you have is awake and asleep. Then when you go down into sleep then you have these 90-minute cycles.

Then during the day it’s called an ultradian rhythm. It too, I would say, is a 90 minute rhythm for the vast majority of human beings and within ten minutes or so of that.

I very much have adapted over 16 years, or even longer than that, 20 years during which I’ve been doing this work, my body so that particularly when I’m working intensely, my body begins to scream at me around 80 minutes. I get a little internal alarm clock, which is obviously cued up with an internal rhythm that exists in my body, that’s saying to me give me a break.

Most of us – all of us get this signal somewhere between 70 and – or 80 and 100 minutes, somewhere in there, but we override it. We override it with coffee. We override it with sugar. We override it most of all with adrenaline and cortisol. We override it with our own stress hormones because our anxiety can be arise by any number of – as you well know – any number of things that happen to you over the course of a day.

We use all of these techniques. In the case of adrenaline, we don’t do it consciously. In fact, the more intensely and the more continuously that you work, the more likely it is that you will begin to generate stress hormones. They’re like an emergency source of fuel. But they’re not an ideal source of fuel. Just as coffee is not an ideal source of fuel.

Your best way to energize yourself is to rhythmically move between work and rest. At that 90-minute interval what you want to do is you want to change channels. That might mean mentally and emotionally that what you want to do is quiet the body.

But it also might mean you want to, if you’ve been sitting, you might want to elevate the body because – elevate your physiology, meaning use natural means to increase your heart rate.

Because when you increase your heart rate one of the things that happens is the left hemisphere begins to let go, the verbal part of your brain begins to let go and anybody who has done any kind of aerobics or training, physical training, knows this experience that the more intensely you’re working out the more unlikely or even impossible it is to think. If you can turn off your thinking, that’s a very powerful source of recovery.

It’s the same – not quite for the same reasons – but ultimately the same thing that happens emotionally. Most people find that if they move the body intensely, it’s a source of emotional renewal or positive emotion. It prompts a reduction in anxiety.

Now, the flip side – I call that active renewal. The flip side is passive renewal. Meditation, yoga, taking a walk in nature. All of those are positive and useful renewal activities that you can use in that period when you are disengaging from work and you are in renewal or recovery mode.

Pete Mockaitis
When it comes to these cycles, if 90 minutes is the on cycle, about how long is the off cycle?

Tony Schwartz
The off cycle is completely determined by the individual, meaning it’s when you feel refueled and renewed. You can get in an amazingly short period of time if you are skilled at it, if you ritualize it, if you practice it, you can completely clear the bloodstream of cortisol, which is the most insidious of the stress hormones in one minute by breathing in and breathing out.

The particular breathing technique that we recommend is in to a count of three, out to a count of six. In through your nose, out through your mouth. The reason that we think that works better is that it extends the recovery, meaning a long out breath is a way to recover.

You know that even just by its opposite, which is if you breathe very quickly, you know when you’re frightened, it actually uses up your energy. It’s very energy consuming and anxiety provoking.

You can get this very powerful recovery in a very short time, meaning the point is not how long you recover, it’s how effectively your recover. Just as on the flip side, it’s not how long, how many hours you work, it’s how absorbed you are, how intensely you focus during the time that you do work.

For example, I’ve now written five books. I’m in the middle of my sixth. The last three, including the one I’m writing, I wrote with a full awareness of these rhythms. My way of writing as in this very moment when I’m writing a new book, is that I’m up at 6 o’clock.

I do not do any other activity before writing. If I do, if I were to look online and start reading the internet news or if I were to check my email or if I were to do some activity in my house, the likelihood that I would get my writing done would drop dramatically because it’s hard to write.

I sit down. I turn off all my devices and I work in an absorbed way for 90 minutes. I will tell you I don’t work for 100 and I don’t work for 70. I work for 90 or 80. I don’t work for 80 and I don’t work for 100. I work for 90 minutes and then I take a break.

That first break is usually breakfast. Then I work for 90 minutes more. Then I take a run. That run is a source of mental and emotional recovery after a very intense cognitive demand that I put myself under. This is how I use my time.

Now, in the first three books that I wrote, each of them took me at least a year to write. One took me nine months, but nine months to a year. I was working 12-hour days. I wasn’t working efficiently. I wasn’t working effectively. I was often finding excuses to stop writing. But I sat at my desk for up to 11 or 12 hours a day as many writers I know do, stupid writers.

In the last three books, I write in three – actually for this book it’s only two, because I also run a company – but the two previous books I wrote in three 90-minute sprints with breaks in between and that was my total writing day, four and a half hours. In those four and a half hours, I wrote each of those books in six months. In the 12 hours I never wrote a book in less than a year.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s powerful.

Tony Schwartz
It’s the energy you expend, not the time you spend.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, nice little rhyming turn of phrase. I’m digging it. I also want to zoom in on this one-minute practice. With the breathing in, I’m imagining one should breathe into the diaphragm or belly as opposed to the shoulders and the ….

Tony Schwartz
Absolutely. Yeah, okay. Good for you. Imagine, let’s do it together. You go in through your nose and you’re counting. And now you exhale through your mouth, presumably from your diaphragm. Six. You may want to purse your lips because you want to extend the breath so you’ve got more time out than in. In three, out six.

Pete Mockaitis
And my mental attention is upon the count or where is ….

Tony Schwartz
Yes, 100%. That’s what will keep you focused and absorbed.

Pete Mockaitis
Are we thinking eyes open/eyes closed? Sitting/standing posture?

Tony Schwartz
I would say sitting, though there is no rule about this. I would also say eyes closed preferable to eyes open. But listen, if you are able to be absorbed with your eyes open, it’s fine. What you’re trying to do is prompt a physiological shift. Whatever works for you, God bless.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, very nice. Very nice. Well, Tony, tell me, anything else you really want to make sure to highlight before we shift gears and hear about a few of your favorite things?

Tony Schwartz
I want to reconnect you to what I started with, which was to talk about the idea that The Energy Project’s work is about the invisible human factors that are standing in the way of great performance. I have walked you through now some description of the factors related to energy: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. But those are not the only factors that stand in the way of great performance.

One of the big insights for us was that the same understanding we came to about this simple concept of energy expenditure by itself is not the ideal way to get things done, but rather

Energy expenditure balanced with energy renewal is a much more effective and efficient way to get work done.

Likewise, no quality, no strength by itself is a virtue. Honesty, as appealing and impressive as it is as a virtue, when it gets overused becomes cruelty. Balancing opposite to ensure that honesty doesn’t become cruelty is compassion.

A person who wants to operate with the greatest amount of flexibility and effectiveness is someone who can move gracefully between honesty and compassion just as they can move between energy expenditure and energy renewal or between confidence and humility or between courage and prudence.

A lot of our work now is focusing on helping people to recognize the ways in which they choose up sides on behalf of one quality at the relative expense of the other and that expense to their own full humanity and maximum effectiveness.

There’s a very close tie between what we understood in our energy work and what we now understand in what we would think of as our human or adult development work.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that. It feels very Aristotelian if that’s the word.

Tony Schwartz
It is Aristotelian. There is an Aristotelian notion that we have adapted.

There’s nothing new under the sun, as you know. I think our contribution in the world is not so much that we’re offering wholly original ideas because almost no one is, but rather that we’re creating a language and a framework in which people can make use of what in some cases are ideas that have been around for thousands of years.

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

Tony Schwartz
Yeah, I’m going to give you a shortened version of my favorite quote, which comes from the Jungian psychologist James Hillman, no longer with us but a wonderful thinker. There’s some Zen practitioners who’ve created various versions of this I think, which is “We have to accept ourselves exactly as we are and never stop trying to grow and change.”

That captures that paradox that I think is so important, which is that there is no single answer. There are no absolutes at this stage in our complex world. The notion that you can accept yourself exactly as you are, frees you to invest your energy in becoming better. But neither by itself is sufficient.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. How about a favorite tool?

Tony Schwartz
Well, I have to say that my PowerBook is my favorite tool still to this day even more so than some of the other modern technologies because I’m a writer.

I’m a writer who actually has a notebook that I have probably several hundred of them that I keep my ongoing reflections in by hand. I still value a pen as a tool as well. But I write my books and I write my articles on a PowerBook. I’ve always used a Mac and I don’t want to advertise for Apple, but that I would say is the most important tool in my life, the most important technology tool.

Pete Mockaitis
Is there a particular nugget that you share-

Tony Schwartz
By the way, one other.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Tony Schwartz
An old-fashioned juice press because I’m a margarita lover and part of the key to great margaritas is fresh lime so that’s a very important tool in my life too.

Pete Mockaitis
It sounds critical.

Tony Schwartz
Yeah, critical.

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

Tony Schwartz
Info@TheEnergyProject.com. Of course, if you just want to read more about what we do it is TheEnergyProject.com. My blogs are plentifully on our website. The book that I would recommend to people until my new one comes out next year is called The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working. That’s the one I’d send people in the direction of.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect. Do you have a final challenge or call to action that you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Tony Schwartz
Make waves.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, Tony, this has been so much fun at long last to meet the man behind one of my favorite books. Thank you and keep doing all the great work that you’re doing.

Tony Schwartz
All right, thanks very much.